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Updated: June 3, 2025
In early spring the chiefs of Canada met at Montreal to settle a plan of defence. What at first they most dreaded was an advance of the enemy by way of Lake Champlain. Bourlamaque, with three battalions, was ordered to take post at Ticonderoga, hold it if he could, or, if overborne by numbers, fall back to Isle-aux-Noix, at the outlet of the lake.
On the next morning it shifted to the south, but soon turned back with violence to the north, and the ruffled lake put on a look of winter, "which determined me," says the General, "not to lose time by striving to get to the Isle-aux-Noix, where I should arrive too late to force the enemy from their post, but to return to Crown Point and complete the works there."
Great as was the disparity of numbers, there was good hope that the centre of the colony could be defended; for the only avenues by which an enemy could approach were barred by the rock of Quebec, the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and the strong position of Isle-aux-Noix, at the outlet of Lake Champlain. Montcalm had long inclined to the plan of concentration enjoined on him by the Minister of War.
They arrived in the morning and, together with a portion of the garrison, moved out and took their place in the wooded and marshy ground between the fort and the river. Scouts were sent along the Sorrel, and these returned about one o'clock, saying that a large number of boats were coming down the lake from Isle-aux-Noix.
It was conceived expedient to destroy the barracks, hospitals and stores at Plattsburgh, Burlington, Champlain, and Swanton, if possible, and an expedition was accordingly fitted out at Isle-aux-Noix. The two captured sloops of war were repaired and made ready for the lake.
While these things were happening in the Far-Civilised-West of that day, the British flotilla on Lake Champlain, had captured two American schooners, the Growler and Eagle, of eleven guns each, off Isle-aux-Noix.
Haviland embarked at Crown Point with thirty-four hundred regulars, provincials, and Indians. Four days brought him to Isle-aux-Noix; he landed, planted cannon in the swamp, and opened fire.
Arnold, moreover, could devote his whole attention to the work, makeshift as it had to be; while Carleton was obliged to keep moving about the province in an effort to bring it into some sort of order after the late invasion. Throughout the summer the British army held the line of the Richelieu all the way south as far as Isle-aux-Noix, very near the lake and the line.
In the night of humiliation when Vaudreuil abandoned Quebec, Montcalm was breathing his last within its walls. When he was brought wounded from the field, he was placed in the house of the Surgeon Arnoux, who was then with Bourlamaque at Isle-aux-Noix, but whose younger brother, also a surgeon, examined the wound and pronounced it mortal.
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