Expedition under Johnson at the Head of Lake George

General Lyman was a graduate of Yale College, an acute statesman and brave soldier. While waiting on the banks of the upper Hudson for Johnson to join him, he employed his troops in the construction of a strong fort of logs and earth, which they insisted upon naming Fort Lyman, in honor of their beloved commander. When Johnson came in August, he deprived the general of that honor, and gave it the name of Fort Edward, in compliment to a royal scion. That act has been attributed to the jealousy of Johnson, who doubtless did not relish the popularity of his lieutenant; but it is more probable that it was done to gratify his passion for flattering royal persons. He took command of the troops on his arrival, and with the main body he marched to the head of a beautiful lake, more than a dozen miles distant, which the French had named Holy Sacrament, but which Johnson, in compliment to the king, named Lake George. There he formed a camp for five thousand men, protected on the north by the lake and on both flanks by impassable morasses and tangled forests. There the troops sat down in idleness waiting for the coming of wagons with stores and cannon for the expedition. It was a beautiful summer camp; but no trench was dug, no mound was raised, as a defence against an active and skillful foe. The three hundred Mohawk warriors, under "King Hendrick," were allowed to roam the forests at pleasure, for Johnson did not dream that a French army, like a wily serpent, was stealthily moving toward his camp.

While the English provincials were thus making feeble preparations for seizing Crown Point, the French had been busy in the execution of measures to defend that post. Vaudreuil, the governor of Canada, had called to arms every able-bodied man in the vicinity of Montreal, and invited laborers from below to come up and gather the harvests. With these recruits, sixteen hundred strong, seven hundred regulars and as many savages (almost half of them emigrants from the Six Nations), the French were prepared to defend their fortress at Crown Point. A greater portion of them were placed under the command of the Baron Dieskau, who proceeded to the head of Lake Champlain, whence he intended to make a swift march upon Fort Edward, and capture it and its garrison by surprise. Four days, as secretly as possible, he traversed the woods, when it was found that his guides had lost their way, and that he was in the path to the head of Lake George, and four miles from Fort Edward. Indian scouts had told his savage followers of the great guns at Fort Edward, and that there were more in the camp on the borders of the lake. The barbarians, afraid of cannon, refused to attack the fort, but were willing to fall upon the exposed camp at the head of the lake.