All
through the winter, after the fall of Fort William Henry, they
had been making preparations on a great scale at Albany. By this
time Amherst and Wolfe were on the scene in America, and they
spent this summer in an attack on Louisbourg which resulted in
the fall of the fortress. On the old fighting ground of Lake
Champlain and Lake George, the English were this year making
military efforts such as the Canadian frontier had never before
seen. William Pitt, who now directed the war from London, had
demanded that the colonies should raise twenty thousand men, a
number well fitted to dismay the timid legislators of New York
and Pennsylvania. At Albany fifteen thousand men came marching in
by detachments--a few of them regulars, but most of them colonial
militia who, as soon as winter came on, would scatter to their
homes. The leader was General Abercromby--a leader, needless to
say, with good connections in England, but with no other
qualification for high command.
On July 5, 1758, there was a sight on Lake George likely to cause
a flutter of anxiety in the heart of Montcalm at Ticonderoga.
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