He stood on the rocky peninsula of Ticonderoga.  Behind him the great lake, Champlain, stretched far into north and south.  To the west the ground sloped gently upward a half mile and then sank again.  On each side of the ridge formed thus was low ground, and the ridge presented itself at once to the military eye as a line of defense.  Hugues, one of his officers, had already recommended it to Montcalm, and men under two of his engineers, Desandrouin and Pontleroy, were now at work there.

The final line of defense was begun at dawn, and Robert, whom no one disturbed, witnessed a scene of prodigious energy.  The whole French army threw itself heart and soul into the task.  The men, hot under the July sun, threw aside their coats, and the officers, putting their own hands to the work, did likewise.  There was a continuous ring of axes, and the air resounded with the crash of trees falling in hundreds and thousands.

The tops and ends of the boughs were cut off the trees, the ends left thus were sharpened and the trees were piled upon one another with the sharp ends facing the enemy who was to come.

Robert watched as these bristling rows grew to a height of at least nine feet, and then he saw the men build on the inner side platforms on which they could stand and fire over the crest, without exposing anything except their heads.  In front of the abattis more trees with sharpened boughs were spread for a wide space, the whole field with its stumps and trees, looking as if a mighty hurricane had swept over it.

Robert was soldier enough to see what a formidable obstruction was being raised, but he thought the powerful artillery of the attacking army would sweep it away or level it.  He did not know that the big guns were being left behind.  In truth, Langy’s first news that the cannon would not be embarked upon the lake was partly wrong.  The loading of the cannon was delayed, but after the British and Americans reached their landing and began the march across country for the attack, the guns, although brought down the lake, were left behind as not needed.  But the French knew all these movements, and whether the cannon were left at one point or another, it was just the same to them, so long as they were not used in the assault.

Robert’s intense mortification that he should be compelled to lie idle and witness the efforts of his enemies returned, but no matter how he chafed he could see no way out of it.  Then his absorption in what was going on about him made him forget his personal fortunes.

The setting for the great drama was wild and picturesque in the extreme.  On one side stretched the long, gleaming lake, a lake of wildness and beauty associated with so much of romance and peril in American story.  Over them towered the crest of the peak later known as Defiance.  To the south and west was Lake George, the Iroquois Andiatarocte, that gem of the east, and, on all sides, save Champlain, circled the forest, just beginning to wither under the fierce summer sun.