Fort Amity | Page 6

the one commander

whom the Provincials trusted and liked because he understood them;
for whom and for their faith in him the regulars would march till their
legs failed them! Wonderful how youth and looks and gallantry and
brains together will grip hold of men and sway their imaginations! But
how rare the alliance, and on how brittle a hazard resting! An unaimed
bullet--a stop in the heart's pulsation--and the star we followed has
gone out, God knows whither. The hope of fifteen thousand men lies
broken and sightless, dead of purpose, far from home. They assure us
that nothing in this world perishes, nor in the firmament above it: but
we look up at the black space where a star has been quenched and
know that something has failed us which to-morrow will not bring
again.
It was learnt afterwards that he had been killed by the first shot in the
campaign. Montcalm had thrown out three hundred rangers overnight
under Langy to feel the British advance: but so dense was the tangle
that even these experienced woodmen went astray during the night and,
in hunting for tracks, blundered upon Howe's light infantry at unawares.
In the moment of surprise each side let fly with a volley, and Howe fell
instantly, shot through the heart.
The British bivouacked in the woods that night. Toward dawn John a
Cleeve stretched himself, felt for his arms, and lay for a while staring
up at a solitary star visible through the overhanging boughs. He was
wondering what had awakened him, when his ears grew aware of a
voice in the distance, singing--either deep in the forest or on some
hillside to the northward: a clear tenor voice shaken out on the still air
with a tremolo such as the Provencals love. It sang to the army and to
him:--
Malbrouck s'en-va-t'en guerre: Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!
Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre: --Ne sais quand reviendra!
CHAPTER II.
A BIVOUAC IN THE FOREST.
Through the night, meanwhile, Montcalm and his men had been

working like demons.
The stone fort of Ticonderoga stood far out on a bluff at the head of
Lake Champlain, its base descending on the one hand into the still
lake-water, on the other swept by the river which the British had been
trying to follow, and which here, its rapids passed, disembogues in a
smooth strong flood. It stood high, too, over these meeting waters; but
as a military position was next to worthless, being dominated, across
the river on the south, by a loftier hill called Rattlesnake Mountain.
Such was Ticonderoga; and hither Montcalm had hurried up the
Richelieu River from the north to find Bourlamaque, that good fighter,
posted with the regiments of La Reine, Bearn, and Guienne, and a few
Canadian regulars and militia. He himself had brought the battalions of
La Sarre and De Berry--a picked force, if ever there was one, but
scarcely above three thousand strong.
A couple of miles above the fort and just below the rapids, a bridge
spanned the river. A saw-mill stood beside it: and here Montcalm had
crossed and taken up his quarters, pushing forward Bourlamaque to
guard the upper end of the rapids, and holding Langy ready with three
hundred rangers to patrol the woods on the outer side of the river's
loop.
But when his scouts and Indians came in with the news of the British
embarking on the upper shore, and with reports of their multitude,
Montcalm perceived that the river could not be held; and, having
recalled Bourlamaque and broken down the bridges above and below
the rapids, withdrew his force again to Ticonderoga, leaving only
Langy's rangers in the farther woods to feel the enemy's approach.
Next he had to ask himself, Could the fort be defended? All agreed that
it could not, with Rattlesnake Mountain overtopping it: and the most
were for evacuating it and retiring up Lake Champlain to the stronger
French fort on Crown Point. But Montcalm was expecting Levis at any
moment with reinforcements; and studying the ridge at the extreme end
of which the fort stood, he decided that the position ought not to be
abandoned. This ridge ran inland, its slope narrowed on either side

between the river and the lake by swamps, and approachable only from
landward over the col, where it broadened and dipped to the foothills.
Here, at the entrance to the ridge, and half a mile from his fort, he
commanded his men to throw up an entrenchment and cut down trees;
and while the sappers fell to work he traced out the lines of a rude
star-fort, with curtains and jutting angles from which the curtains could
be enfiladed. Through the dawn, while the British slept in the woods,
the Frenchmen laboured, hacking and felling. Scores of