Or he might do what Burgoyne did with success a score of years
later, and plant a battery on the heights of Rattlesnake Hill, now
called Mount Defiance, which commanded the position of the French, and
whence the inside of their breastwork could be scoured with round-shot
from end to end. Or, while threatening the French front with a part of
his army, he could march the rest a short distance through the woods on
his left to the road which led from Ticonderoga to Crown Point, and
which would soon have brought him to the place called Five-Mile Point,
where Lake Champlain narrows to the width of an easy rifle-shot, and
where a battery of field-pieces would have cut off all Montcalm's
supplies and closed his only way of retreat. As the French were
provisioned for but eight days, their position would thus have been
desperate. They plainly saw the danger; and Doreil declares that had the
movement been made, their whole army must have surrendered.[625]
Montcalm had done what he could; but the danger of his position was
inevitable and extreme. His hope lay in Abercromby; and it was a hope
well founded. The action of the English general answered the utmost
wishes of his enemy.
[Footnote 625: _Doreil au Ministre, 28 Juillet, 1758._ The Chevalier
Johnstone thought that Montcalm was saved by Abercromby's ignorance of
the ground. A _Dialogue in Hades_ (Quebec Historical Society).]
Abercromby had been told by his prisoners that Montcalm had six thousand
men, and that three thousand more were expected every hour.
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