BATTLE OF TICONDEROGA

JOHN FISKE

T is probable that Montcalm made a mistake in trying

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to defend the point of land upon which the fortress of Ticonderoga stood, for there were several ways in which Abercrombie might have defeated him. He might have sent back to the landing place and brought up all his cannon and used them to batter down these wooden obstructions before charging them with his infantry. That, one would suppose, would have been a mere ordinary precaution. And then there was a hill in the immediate neighborhood where Abercrombie might have planted a few batteries that could have torn the French army to pieces, and must have obliged them to change their position at once.

MONTCALM

Precisely such use of that hill was made in 1777 by General Burgoyne, with the desired result of taking Ticonderoga, and since that occasion it has been known as Mount Defiance. Yet again, if Abercrombie had made a feint with a part of his army upon Montcalm's position, while with his main force he had marched about five miles on the road to Crown Point, he would have found the lake there so narrow that he might have commanded the whole of it with batteries, and thus cut off Montcalm's retreat and left it for starvation to do the rest.

It would seem, therefore, that Montcalm was rescued from a perilous situation by the stupidity of his enemy, and it is among the possibilities that he may have counted upon that very circumstance. There is a curious analogy between this battle of Ticonderoga and those of Bunker Hill and New Orleans. At Bunker Hill the American force was completely at the mercy of the British, and might have been forced to surrender without the loss of a life. This would have been done if the British had simply gone by water and occupied Charlestown Neck, but the brother of the young general slain at Ticonderoga preferred to assault intrenchments, and suffered accordingly.

So, too, at New Orleans. It was not necessary for Sir Edward Pakenham to assault Andrew Jackson's intrenchments, for he might have advanced up the further bank of the Mississippi River and turned the whole position, but he preferred the bulldog method, and, very probably, Jackson should have the credit of having known his man.

With regard to Abercrombie, he seems to have been influenced by undue haste. A rumor reached him that reënforcements were on the way to Montcalm, and therefore he was anxious to adopt the quickest method. Besides, he seems to have harbored that fallacious notion that one Englishman can under any circumstances beat three Frenchmen. At all events, on the forenoon of July 8 the assault was ordered.

The instructions to the English infantry were to carry the works by a solid bayonet charge, an order which seems almost incredible, for as might have been expected, the compactness needed for a bayonet charge was almost instantly broken up by the tangle of pointed boughs and the

trunks lying in all directions upon the ground, and presently the assailants caught in a hailstorm of grape and musket shot on either flank, could only answer by firing in turn. Again and again, with astounding gallantry, the men from New England and Old England returned to the charge. Between noon and nightfall they made six assaults of the most desperate character, sometimes almost winning their way over the parapet, but of course the situation was utterly hopeless. The greater the bravery, the sadder the loss of life. At twilight when the firing ceased, Abercrombie had lost in killed and wounded two thousand men.

Even after all this useless waste of life, there was no reason why the English should have retreated. Montcalm was in no condition to take the offensive, and it would still have been in Abercrombie's power to march down the Crown Point road and cut off all supplies from the French army; but our accounts agree in representing the general's conduct as disgraceful. He seems to have lost his head, and thought only of escaping, as from a superior foe. By the time he had returned to the head of Lake George, Abercrombie found himself a laughingstock.

People called him a poltroon, an old woman, Mrs. Nabbycrombie, and such other nicknames and epithets as served to relieve their feelings.

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WILLIAM THE TESTY

WASHINGTON IRVING

E was a brisk, waspish, little old gentleman, who had dried and withered away, partly through the natural process of years, and partly from being parched and burned up by his fiery soul, which blazed like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, constantly inciting him to most valorous broils, altercations, and misadventures. I have heard it observed by a profound philosopher, that, if a woman waxes fat as she grows old, the tenure of her life is precarious; but, if haply she withers, she lives forever; such was the case with William the Testy, who grew tougher in proportion as he dried.

He was some such a little Dutchman as we may now and then see stumping briskly about the streets of our city, in a broad-skirted coat with huge buttons, an oldfashioned cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin. His visage was broad and his features sharp; his nose turned up with a most petulant curl; his cheeks were scorched into a dusky red, doubtless in consequence of the neighborhood of two fierce little gray eyes, through which his torrid soul burned with tropical fervor. The corners of his mouth were curiously modeled into a kind of fretwork, not a little resembling the wrinkled proboscis of an irritable pug dog; in a word, he was one of the most positive, restless, ugly little men, that ever put himself into a passion about nothing.

Such were the personal endowments of William the Testy, but it was the sterling riches of his mind that raised him to

dignity and power. In his youth he had passed with great credit through a celebrated academy at The Hague, noted for manufacturing scholars with a dispatch unequaled, except by certain of our American colleges. Here he skirmished very smartly on the frontiers of several of the sciences, and made so gallant an inroad into the dead languages as to bring off captive a host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, together with divers pithy saws and apothegms, all of which he constantly paraded in conversation and writing, with as much vain glory as would a triumphant general of yore display the spoils of the countries he had ravaged.

He had, moreover, puzzled himself considerably with logic, in which he had advanced so far as to attain a very familiar acquaintance, by name at least, with the whole family of syllogisms and dilemmas; but what he chiefly valued himself on was his knowledge of metaphysics, in which, having once upon a time ventured too deeply, he came nigh being smothered in a slough of unintelligible learning, a fearful peril, from the effects of which he never perfectly recovered.

This, I must confess, was in some measure a misfortune, for he never engaged in argument, of which he was exceedingly fond, but what between logical deductions and metaphysical jargon, he soon involved himself and his subject in a fog of contradictions and perplexities, and then would get into a mighty passion with his adversary for not being convinced gratis.

It is in knowledge as in swimming; he who ostentatiously sports and flounders on the surface makes more noise and splashing, and attracts more attention, than the industrious pearl diver, who plunges in search of treasures