It remained to
determine at which of these points he should concentrate them and make
his stand against the English. Ruin threatened him in any case; each
position had its fatal weakness or its peculiar danger, and his best
hope was in the ignorance or blundering of his enemy. He seems to have
been several days in a state of indecision.
[Footnote 605: _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X 893. Lotbiniere's relative,
Vaudreuil, confirms the statement. Montcalm had not, as has been said,
begun already to fall back.]
In the afternoon of the fifth of July the partisan Langy, who had again
gone out to reconnoitre towards the head of Lake George, came back in
haste with the report that the English were embarked in great force.
Montcalm sent a canoe down Lake Champlain to hasten Levis to his aid,
and ordered the battalion of Berry to begin a breastwork and abattis on
the high ground in front of the fort. That they were not begun before
shows that he was in doubt as to his plan of defence; and that his whole
army was not now set to work at them shows that his doubt was still
unsolved.
It was nearly a month since Abercromby had begun his camp at the head of
Lake George. Here, on the ground where Johnson had beaten Dieskau, where
Montcalm had planted his batteries, and Monro vainly defended the wooden
ramparts of Fort William Henry, were now assembled more than fifteen
thousand men; and the shores, the foot of the mountains, and the broken
plains between them were studded thick with tents.
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