[Footnote 509:  Precis des Evenements de la Campagne de 1757 en la Nouvelle France.]

Fort William Henry was an irregular bastioned square, formed by embankments of gravel surmounted by a rampart of heavy logs, laid in tiers crossed one upon another, the interstices filled with earth.  The lake protected it on the north, the marsh on the east, and ditches with chevaux-de-frise on the south and west.  Seventeen cannon, great and small, besides several mortars and swivels, were mounted upon it;[510] and a brave Scotch veteran, Lieutenant-Colonel Monro, of the thirty-fifth regiment, was in command.

[Footnote 510:  Etat des Effets et Munitions de Guerre qui se sont trouves au Fort Guillaume-Henri. There were six more guns in the entrenched camp.]

General Webb lay fourteen miles distant at Fort Edward, with twenty-six hundred men, chiefly provincials.  On the twenty-fifth of July he had made a visit to Fort William Henry, examined the place, given some orders, and returned on the twenty-ninth.  He then wrote to the Governor of New York, telling him that the French were certainly coming, begging him to send up the militia, and saying:  “I am determined to march to Fort William Henry with the whole army under my command as soon as I shall hear of the farther approach of the enemy.”  Instead of doing so he waited three days, and then sent up a detachment of two hundred regulars under Lieutenant-Colonel Young, and eight hundred Massachusetts men under Colonel Frye.  This raised the force at the lake to two thousand and two hundred, including sailors and mechanics, and reduced that of Webb to sixteen hundred, besides half as many more distributed at Albany and the intervening forts.[511] If, according to his spirited intention, he should go to the rescue of Monro, he must leave some of his troops behind him to protect the lower posts from a possible French inroad by way of South Bay.  Thus his power of aiding Monro was slight, so rashly had Loudon, intent on Louisburg, left this frontier open to attack.  The defect, however, was as much in Webb himself as in his resources.  His conduct in the past year had raised doubts of his personal courage; and this was the moment for answering them.  Great as was the disparity of numbers, the emergency would have justified an attempt to save Monro at any risk.  That officer sent him a hasty note, written at nine o’clock on the morning of the third, telling him that the French were in sight on the lake; and, in the next night, three rangers came to Fort Edward, bringing another short note, dated at six in the evening, announcing that the firing had begun, and closing with the words:  “I believe you will think it proper to send a reinforcement as soon as possible.”  Now, if ever, was the time to move, before the fort was invested and access cut off.  But Webb lay quiet, sending expresses to New England for help which could not possibly arrive in time.  On the next night