The English loss in killed, wounded, and missing was two hundred and sixty-two;[315] and that of the French by their own account, two hundred and twenty-eight,[316]—­a somewhat modest result of five hours’ fighting.  The English loss was chiefly in the ambush of the morning, where the killed greatly outnumbered the wounded, because those who fell and could not be carried away were tomahawked by Dieskau’s Indians.  In the fight at the camp, both Indians and Canadians kept themselves so well under cover that it was very difficult for the New England men to pick them off, while they on their part lay close behind their row of logs.  On the French side, the regular officers and troops bore the brunt of the battle and suffered the chief loss, nearly all of the former and nearly half of the latter being killed or wounded.

[Footnote 315:  Return of Killed, Wounded, and Missing at the Battle of Lake George.]

[Footnote 316:  Doreil au Ministre, 20 Oct. 1755.  Surgeon Williams gives the English loss as two hundred and sixteen killed, and ninety-six wounded.  Pomeroy thinks that the French lost four or five hundred.  Johnson places their loss at four hundred.]

Johnson did not follow up his success.  He says that his men were tired.  Yet five hundred of them had stood still all day, and boats enough for their transportation were lying on the beach.  Ten miles down the lake, a path led over a gorge of the mountains to South Bay, where Dieskau had left his canoes and provisions.  It needed but a few hours to reach and destroy them; but no such attempt was made.  Nor, till a week after, did Johnson send out scouts to learn the strength of the enemy at Ticonderoga.  Lyman strongly urged him to make an effort to seize that important pass; but Johnson thought only of holding his own position.  “I think,” he wrote, “we may expect very shortly a more formidable attack.”  He made a solid breastwork to defend his camp; and as reinforcements arrived, set them at building a fort on a rising ground by the lake.  It is true that just after the battle he was deficient in stores, and had not bateaux enough to move his whole force.  It is true, also, that he was wounded, and that he was too jealous of Lyman to delegate the command to him; and so the days passed till, within a fortnight, his nimble enemy were entrenched at Ticonderoga in force enough to defy him.

The Crown Point expedition was a failure disguised under an incidental success.  The northern provinces, especially Massachusetts and Connecticut, did what they could to forward it, and after the battle sent a herd of raw recruits to the scene of action.  Shirley wrote to Johnson from Oswego; declared that his reasons for not advancing were insufficient, and urged him to push for Ticonderoga at once.  Johnson replied that he had not wagons enough, and that his troops were ill-clothed, ill-fed, discontented, insubordinate and sickly.  He complained that discipline was out of the question, because the officers were chosen by popular election; that many of them were no better than the men, unfit for command, and like so many “heads of a mob."[317] The reinforcements began to come in, till, in October there were thirty-six hundred men in the camp; and as most of them wore summer clothing and had but one thin domestic blanket, they were half frozen in the chill autumn nights.