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The British camp awoke on November 22nd to a fog so thick one might have thought a thousand cannons had fired, their smoke lingering without wind to carry it away.
The glow of lanterns barely pierced the grey veil.
The air breathed by His Majesty's proud soldiers was so cold it burned their lungs. It bit at their faces and numbed their fingers.
The ground, saturated by days of relentless rain, had hardened and turned pale overnight, but it was only a matter of time before it softened again into a sticky quagmire.
One by one, the lanterns were extinguished.
Fresh water was brought up from the La Chute River, and fires were coaxed back to life with difficulty. A few voices emerged, muffled by the mist.
Phantom-like figures grew more numerous.
Sergeants and corporals moved through the ranks, distributing the morning ration meant to last until evening. There was bread the texture of hardtack, salted meat, dried vegetables like split peas and beans, and a lump of cheese.
Beer was also served—a harsh, cloudy ale, chilled by the increasingly bitter winter air.
Away from the bustle, the flap of a superior-quality tent was drawn aside. General Murray, dressed in his fine red-and-gold uniform, stepped out.
Clean-shaven, as befitted a respectable gentleman, he inhaled deeply the same icy air as his men.
Above him, the splendid British flag hung limply, like a condemned man at the end of a rope.
His features were a little drawn—he'd stayed up late the night before—but he had still risen at his usual hour. The general shivered despite the thickness of his coat.
There would be no battle today.
Still, he would have no time to be idle: he needed to adjust his siege plan—and bury the dead from the day before.
And there were many of them. Far more than anticipated.
Even with over four thousand men left under his command, the bitter taste in his mouth remained.
Seeing the serious expressions of his soldiers, the general understood that they all felt the same way.
Damn French, the old general muttered inwardly as he passed a group of grenadiers. Their line cost us dearly. I should never have given General de Montcalm so much time. I wanted to avoid repeating Abercromby's mistakes… but it seems I still underestimated them.
He reached the edge of the camp, passed a few sentries, and cast his steely gaze on the fort in the distance, perched high on its hill.
From afar, it didn't look so dangerous—but hadn't he thought the same of that line of earth and logs?
The casualty report he'd received was, and would remain, a warning.
Murray stood there for a moment, motionless, deep in thought.
His gaze shifted to his left, where three men were jotting notes and sketching over a 1758 map.
Military engineers. They spoke in low, serious tones, searching for the best way to bring down the fort at the lowest possible cost.
Later that day, Murray assembled his officers to hear their opinions. Several maps were laid out before them, including the ones modified by the engineers.
Fortunately, their work had paid off. They had identified several weaknesses that could be exploited.
The discussion lasted a long time, but the more the general heard, the more his doubts faded.
By early evening, however, it began to snow.
Tiny flakes, like ash from a massive fire carried miles by violent winds, drifted down.
Little by little, the ground turned white.
***
November 23rd, 6:30 a.m.
The sun rose lazily over Fort Carillon, dragging behind it a pale light that brushed the thick stone walls. In the sky, a few cottony clouds drifted slowly, pushed along by a sharp, steady wind from the north.
The icy air bit at faces, finishing the job of waking the soldiers.
A thin layer of snow covered the ground, rooftops, and cannons. It looked like grains of sand—or crystals of salt.
The snow crunched softly underfoot and melted almost instantly, leaving behind dark, well-defined footprints.
It was easy to see where people had passed.
In some places, like the ramparts or the parade ground, it had already disappeared under the constant traffic.
By evening, in ten hours or so, there would be nothing left—except perhaps in the few corners the sun had forgotten.
Gradually, more and more figures in white uniforms appeared on the narrow rampart. The bayonets gleamed as if made of silver under the rays of the sun.
The uniforms varied slightly depending on the regiment. The men of the Berry Regiment had different pocket styles than those of the Picardy Regiment, and the former wore red cuffs on their sleeves.
The servants, even more tense than two days earlier, made their way through the mass of soldiers and brought up anything that might be useful to withstand a siege.
Though the day before had been calm, everyone agreed that today would be different.
The return of snow reminded them that time was running out for the enemy. It might just be a matter of days.
If they held out until then, they'd be safe until spring.
The British general, for his part, had only a narrow margin for action—so narrow that the slightest mistake could prove fatal.
That's not even counting the losses suffered along that damned line.
It had cost him many brave men. At best, he could launch only one or two assaults, and that without relying on trenches or saps, as was customary.
The time of year wouldn't allow it.
Adam—and he wasn't the only one—hoped the enemy would act rashly, driven by urgency rather than the arrogance that had blinded Abercromby. With their advantageous position, the defenders could surely kill a great many redcoats, perhaps enough to force the enemy commander to retreat.
The real question, however, was whether this fort—defended by only a few hundred men—could actually withstand such an assault.
There was every reason to doubt it.
It was no coincidence that, both in 1758 and now, the French officers had sought to stop the British elsewhere. The walls of this fort were not high.
Against such an enemy, even with Montcalm's men, nothing guaranteed it would hold.
"Captain Boucher," said a junior officer, approaching openly, "Lieutenant Colonel de Trivio is gathering all the captains."
Adam simply nodded and placed a hand on Lieutenant Marais's shoulder, as if to signal that he was leaving him in charge.
"Very well. I'm on my way."
He left the western demi-lune, a bastion sharp as a spearhead, and crossed to the heart of the fort by a simple wooden bridge just ten meters long. The ditch beneath wasn't very deep—maybe four meters—but still a significant obstacle for attackers burdened by gear and exposed to heavy fire.
Adam followed a walkway crowded with anxious-faced soldiers and quickly reached the northwest bastion. It struck him as tiny, almost pitiful in the face of the ordeal that awaited them.
The distance between this bastion and the demi-lune Adam had just left was so short that two men could easily speak to each other by simply raising their voices. That alone said much about how modest this fort was.
At least, it was modest compared to Fort Bourbon—or Fort Edward.
It seemed designed for another era, perhaps to defend against Indian tribes, if that.
Despite their many cannons—eight of varying calibers on this bastion, plus a mortar—and their stocks of powder and muskets, Adam wasn't sure the fort would still be in their hands by the end of the day.
He found de Trivio at the point of the bastion, wedged between two cannons and surrounded by silent officers. No one seemed to notice the stunning beauty of the landscape.
"Captain Boucher, step forward," he said gravely. "Our enemies have finished setting up their artillery. All their guns are over there, on that earthen rise. Do you see it?"
He pointed to a long mound that hadn't been there the day before—a battery of at least ten pieces.
"Yes, sir. Can we reach them?"
"With our mortars, certainly. If they were out of our range, we'd be out of theirs, too. But it will be sheer luck if we manage to destroy their guns. They're well protected. What worries me most is where they're positioned. Only our guns on the left side of the northern demi-lune can reach them. We have just five cannons there."
"So the rest of our guns…"
"…won't be of much use," the officer continued, "at least not against the British artillery. I wager the British will concentrate their fire on that structure to advance their guns. If they succeed, you'll be their next target."
"U-us?"
Adam felt his blood run cold.
The commander nodded and showed a map of the fort, detailing every cannon, every building, even the streams flowing into the lake.
With a wooden ruler, he traced firing angles and the zones each battery could cover.
"The west of the northern demi-lune covers this entire area. As you can see, the enemy battery is well inside it. From the bastion we're on now, we can't hit them. They're in our blind spot. Same for you. But if they manage to destroy the northern demi-lune, they'll be able to slip into this corridor here."
He traced a line on the map with his finger.
"They'll then be able to build a new battery and shell you without opposition."
Adam clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. He already sensed what was coming. He murmured:
"If they manage that, the entire area will be open to them."
He placed his finger on the map, pointing to the northern part of the fort. The lieutenant colonel nodded.
"Exactly. Their infantry will then be able to move in."
Adam met de Trivio's gaze.
"Then we must destroy those guns at all costs. How many mortars do we have?"
"Only three. You have one. Focus your fire on them and pray your gunners shoot true. Our survival depends on it. Move your men down into the courtyard. Keep only the gunners with you."
"At your orders."
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At eight o'clock, the cannons and mortars began to spew fire.
It took a few adjusting salvos before the English were the first to hit their target. Their cannonballs crashed into the walls of Fort Carillon—too low to knock out the French guns, but powerful enough to chip away at the stonework.
"Fire! Destroy their bloody cannons!" Adam shouted, pressing his hands against his ears.
BOOM!
The mortar positioned at the center of the western demi-lune roared. Adam felt the ground shake beneath his feet and the air tremble around him.
Even with his ears covered, the sonic impact echoed inside his skull. A brief wave of heat whipped across his left cheek, quickly swept away by the icy wind.
When he reopened his eyes, acrid smoke enveloped him, as though he had stepped into a suffocating smokehouse.
Adam straightened slowly, as if afraid he might trigger another sudden explosion, and looked toward the English battery. With all the smoke, it was nearly impossible to see it.
The projectile followed a clean arc and crashed down several long seconds later, hundreds of meters from the target. There was a loud explosion—but no real consequence.
"Too far! And too far left! Adjust!"
The gunners, their faces blackened with powder, were sweating profusely despite the cold. They made a slight adjustment to the heavy wooden mount, which—unlike the cannons—had no wheels. They raised the short, thick tube and began to reload.
Its stubby, awkward appearance was deceiving. The firepower of that weapon was terrifying. It had to be, to hurl projectiles over a kilometer.
That was one of its two major advantages. Mortars had far greater range than cannons, regardless of caliber. The other, invaluable to a besieging army, was their ability to fire over ramparts.
For attackers, it was ideal. With a bit of luck, they could ignite devastating fires inside a fortified position.
The price, however, was steep. Mortars were notoriously difficult to aim with any real precision.
BOOM!
"Still too far!" Adam growled. "We're still too far left!"
He watched nervously as each shot crept closer to its mark. It felt like playing battleship and relying on pure luck.
Meanwhile, English fire kept hammering the northern demi-lune.
"AAARGH!"
A dreadful impact shook the entire fort.
Adam spun around just in time to see, with horror, a cannon lift and topple backward with a terrible crash. Shards of stone and clouds of dust burst into the air amid screams of pain and terror.
On the northern demi-lune, several men had been wounded or killed.
In toppling over, the destroyed cannon had crushed the mortar next to it.
That was why most of the soldiers had been sent to the center or the rear of the fort. They were of no use for now, could get in the way of the gunners—and risk being killed for nothing.
"Focus on your mortar!" Adam shouted to the gunners. "If you want to help, blow them to hell!"
His voice snapped the nearby artillerymen back to reality. They were clustered around the mortar like worshippers around a relic.
While two men held the worn iron tube upright, another poured in the black powder—carefully, precisely, not too much or too little. A fourth rammed in the wadding to secure the charge at the bottom, then carefully placed the shell, which was still empty for now.
On all four sides, the man who had tamped the wadding inserted thin wooden shims using a small hammer, ensuring the shell stayed centered in the barrel and wouldn't veer off course when fired.
The projectile—a heavy iron sphere—wasn't solid like cannonballs. It was a bomb, a hollow shell filled with powder and fitted with a fuse acting as a timer.
That was the other major drawback of mortars: the shell had to land in the right place and explode at the right time.
Which meant you needed to be good at arithmetic as well as trigonometry.
Adam, who knew nothing about either, left the gunners to it. After a final check using a strange copper instrument—somewhere between a modern compass and a vertical plumb—the leader of the small team gave Adam the signal.
"FIRE!"
BOOM!
Once again, the blast was deafening, and the powder smoke thick as tar. Adam, short of breath, stared toward the enemy battery, trying to imagine the arc of the shell.
He began to count silently, but even after twelve seconds…
Nothing.
"It didn't explode!" he shouted, heart racing.
But suddenly, just as he turned his head, a loud explosion rang out in the distance—several seconds late.
"Huh?"
Surprised, Adam turned back again and glimpsed the tail end of the detonation through the haze. Dirt and debris were raining down like drops of water near the entrenched English battery.
Too far to cause real damage—but if it had landed just a bit farther, and a bit more to the left, they might have destroyed one or two enemy guns.
"Wait! Don't touch anything!"
The gunners froze and awaited further orders.
"The shell exploded late, but it landed very close to the enemy battery! Aim slightly more to the left and twenty meters farther—I mean, ten toises farther!"
The crew resumed their work around the mortar.
But just then, several English cannonballs smashed into the left flank of the northern demi-lune.
Even at that distance, they retained enough force to rip out massive sections of stone and damage the cannons.
Adam swallowed hard as he watched huge stone blocks tumble into the ditch as if they were made of foam.
The French battery was in ruins.
"Damn it! Keep firing, all of you! Before they reposition their artillery!"
It sounded so simple. But a single degree of angle, a few grams more or less of powder, a gust of wind—any of it could send the shell dozens of meters off target!
After what felt like an eternity—five minutes in combat was an unbearable stretch—the mortar was finally ready to fire again.
BOOM!
The demi-lune trembled once more. After a few seconds, the shell exploded on impact… farther from the target than the previous shot.
Shit!
Adam was seething, but helpless. All he could do was curse the sky.
The English, of course, weren't standing idle. The gunners and soldiers swiftly pulled their cannons back from the mound and began moving them toward what had once been the firing zone of the northern demi-lune.
The French atop the rampart could see them clearly as they advanced without fear.
They merely took care to stay out of musket range. At two hundred meters, they came to a halt.
They were practically under their noses.
All they had to do now was raise a new earthen mound to give their guns elevation, position their artillery—and wipe out the western lunette, where Adam's mortar was still located.
It was no longer a question of if, but when.