Fort Ticonderoga (), formerly Fort Carillon, is a large 18th-century star fort built by the French at a narrows near the south end of Lake Champlain in northern New York. It was constructed between October 1755 and 1757 by French-Canadian military engineer Michel Chartier de Lotbinière, Marquis de Lotbinière during the North American phase of the Seven Years' War, known in the United States as the French and Indian War. The fort was of strategic importance during the 18th-century colonial conflicts between Great Britain and France, and again played an important role during the American Revolutionary War.
The site controlled a river portage alongside the mouth of the rapid La Chute River, in the between Lake Champlain and Lake George. It was strategically placed for the trade routes between the British-controlled Hudson River Valley and the French-controlled Saint Lawrence River Valley. The terrain amplified the importance of the site. Both lakes were long and narrow and oriented north–south, as were the many ridge lines of the Appalachian Mountains which extend as far south as Georgia. The mountains created nearly impassable terrains to the east and west of the Great Appalachian Valley that the site commanded. The name "Ticonderoga" comes from the Mohawk word tekontaró:ken, meaning "it is at the junction of two waterways".Afable, p. 193
During the 1758 Battle of Carillon, 4,000 French defenders were able to repel an attack by 16,000 British troops. In 1759, the British returned and drove a token French garrison from the fort. The British controlled the fort at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, but the Green Mountain Boys and other state militia under the command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured it on May 10, 1775. Henry Knox led a party to transport many of the fort's cannons to Boston to assist in the siege against the British, who evacuated the city in March 1776. The Americans held the fort until June 1777, when General John Burgoyne's British forces occupied high ground above it; the threat resulted in the Continental Army troops withdrawing from the fort and its surrounding defenses. The only direct attack on the fort during the Revolution took place in September 1777, when John Brown led 500 Americans in an unsuccessful attempt to capture it from about 100 British defenders.
The British abandoned the fort after the failure of the Saratoga campaign, and it ceased to be of military value after 1781. The United States allowed the fort to fall into ruin, and local residents stripped it of much of its usable materials. It was purchased by a private family in 1820 and became a stop on tourist routes of the area. Early in the 20th century, its private owners restored the fort. The Fort Ticonderoga Association operates it as a tourist attraction, museum, and research center.
Geography and early history Lake Champlain forms part of the border between New York and Vermont, and the Hudson River together formed an important travel route that was used by American Indians long before the arrival of European colonists. The route was relatively free of obstacles to navigation, with only a few portages. One strategically important place on the route lies at a narrows near the southern end of Lake Champlain. Ticonderoga Creek, known in colonial times as La Chute River because it was named by French colonists, enters the lake at this point carrying water from Lake George. The site provides commanding views of the southern extent of Lake Champlain, Mount Defiance, at , and two other hills (Mount Hope and Mount Independence) overlook the area.Lonergan (1959), p. 2
American Indians had occupied the area for centuries before French explorer Samuel de Champlain first arrived there in 1609. Champlain recounted that the Algonquins with whom he was traveling battled a group of Haudenosaunee nearby.Lonergan (1959), pp. 5–8 In 1642, French missionary Isaac Jogues was the first white man to traverse the portage at Ticonderoga while escaping a battle between the Haudenosaunee and members of the Wendat (Huron) tribe.Lonergan (1959), pp. 9–10
The French had colonized the Saint Lawrence River valley to the north, and the English had taken over the Dutch settlements that became the Province of New York to the south. The French and English began contesting the area as early as 1691, when Pieter Schuyler built a small wooden fort at the Ticonderoga point on the western shore of the lake.Lonergan (1959), pp. 15, 18 These colonial conflicts reached their height in the French and Indian War, which began in 1754 and is sometimes considered to be the North American front of the Seven Years' War.Anderson (2000), pp. 11–12
Construction
The French decided to construct a fort here in 1755, following the Battle of Lake George. Marquis de Vaudreuil, the governor of the French Province of Canada, sent his cousin Michel Chartier de Lotbinière to design and construct a fortification at this militarily important site, which the French called Fort Carillon.Lonergan (1959), p. 17 Some have attributed the name "Carillon" to French officer Philippe de Carrion du Fresnoy, who established a trading post at the site in the late 17th century.Ketchum, p. 29 It is more commonly attributed to the sounds made by the rapids of La Chute River, which were said to resemble the chiming bells of a carillon. Construction on the star-shaped fort was based on designs of the renowned French military engineer Vauban. It began in October 1755 and proceeded slowly during the warmer-weather months of 1756 and 1757, using troops stationed at nearby Fort St. Frédéric and from Canada.Lonergan (1959), p. 22Stoetzel, p. 297
The work in 1755 consisted primarily of beginning construction on the main walls and on the Lotbinière redoubt, an outwork to the west of the site that provided additional coverage of La Chute River. During the next year, the four main bastions were built, as well as a sawmill on La Chute. Work slowed in 1757, when many of the troops participated in the attack on Fort William Henry. The barracks and demi-lunes were not completed until spring 1758.Lonergan (1959), pp. 19–25
Walls and bastions The French built the fort to control the south end of Lake Champlain and prevent the British from gaining military access to the lake. Consequently, its most important defenses, the Reine and Germaine bastions, were directed to the northeast and northwest, away from the lake, with two demi-lunes further extending the works on the land side. The Joannes and Languedoc bastions overlooked the lake to the south, providing cover for the landing area outside the fort. The walls were high and thick, and the whole works was surrounded by a glacis and a dry moat deep and wide. When the walls were first erected in 1756, they were made of squared wooden timbers, with earth filling the gap. The French then began to dress the walls with stone from a quarry about one mile (1.6 km) away, although this work was never fully completed.Nester, p. 110 When the main defenses became ready for use, the fort was armed with cannons hauled from Montreal and Fort St. Frédéric.Kaufmann, pp. 75–76Lonergan (1959), p. 19
Inside and outside The fort contained three barracks and four storehouses. One bastion held a bakery capable of producing 60 loaves of bread a day. A powder magazine was hacked out of the bedrock beneath the Joannes bastion. All the construction within the fort was of stone.
A wooden palisade protected an area outside the fort between the southern wall and the lake shore. This area contained the main landing for the fort and additional storage facilities and other works necessary for maintenance of the fort. When it became apparent in 1756 that the fort was too far to the west of the lake, the French constructed an additional redoubt to the east to enable cannon to cover the lake's narrows.Chartrand, p. 36
Analysis The fort was largely complete by 1758; the only ongoing work thereafter consisted of dressing the walls with stone. Still, General Montcalm and two of his military engineers surveyed the works in 1758 and found something to criticize in almost every aspect of the fort's construction: the buildings were too tall and thus easier for cannons to hit, the powder magazine leaked, and the masonry was of poor quality.Lonergan (1959), p. 25 The critics apparently failed to notice the fort's significant strategic weakness: several nearby hills overlooked the fort and made it possible for besiegers to fire down on the defenders from above.Lonergan (1959), p. 26 Lotbinière's career suffered for years afterwards.Thorpe
William Nester notes additional problems with the fort's construction. The fort was small for a Vauban-style fort, about wide, with a barracks capable of holding only 400 soldiers. Storage space inside the fort was similarly limited, requiring the storage of provisions outside the walls in exposed places. Its cistern was small, and the water quality was supposedly poor.Nester, p. 111Ketchum, p. 28
Military history
French and Indian War
In August 1757, the French captured Fort William Henry in an action launched from Fort Carillon.Anderson (2005), pp. 109–115 This and a string of other French victories in 1757 prompted the British to organize a large-scale attack on the fort as part of a multi-campaign strategy against French Canada.Anderson (2005), p. 126 In June 1758, British General James Abercromby began amassing a large force at Fort William Henry in preparation for a military campaign directed up the Champlain Valley. These forces landed at the north end of Lake George on July 6, only four miles from the fort.Anderson (2005), p. 132 French General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm had only arrived at Carillon in late June, and he engaged his troops in a flurry of work to improve the fort's outer defenses. They built entrenchments in two days around a rise between the fort and Mount Hope, about three-quarters of a mile (one kilometer) northwest of the fort, and then constructed an abatis (felled trees with sharpened branches pointing out) below these entrenchments.Anderson (2000), p. 242 They conducted the work unimpeded by military action, as Abercromby failed to advance directly to the fort on July 7. Abercromby's second-in-command was Brigadier General George Howe, who had been killed when his column encountered a French reconnaissance troop. Abercromby felt Howe's death "most heavily" and may have been unwilling to act immediately.Anderson (2005), p. 135
On July 8, 1758, Abercromby ordered a frontal attack against the hastily assembled French works. He tried to move rapidly against the few French defenders, opting to forgo field cannon and relying instead on the numerical superiority of his 16,000 troops, but the British were soundly defeated by the 4,000 French defenders in the Battle of Carillon.Anderson (2005), pp. 135–138 The battle took place far enough away from the fort that its guns were rarely used.Chartrand and Nester each wrote detailed accounts of the battle and describe only one brief period during the battle when the cannons on the southwest bastion were fired at an attempted British maneuver on the river. The battle gave the fort a reputation for impregnability, which affected future military operations in the area, notably during the American Revolutionary War. Following the French victory, Montcalm anticipated further British attacks, so he ordered additional work on the defenses, including the construction of the Germain and Pontleroy redoubts to the northeast of the fort, named for the engineers under whose direction they were constructed.ASHPS Annual Report 1913, p. 619Stoetzel, p. 453 However, the British did not attack again in 1758, so the French withdrew all but a small garrison in November for the winter.Atherton, p. 419