Capture of Fort Ticonderoga

The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga occurred during the American Revolutionary War on May 10, 1775. A small force of Green Mountain Boys led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold surprised and captured the fort’s small British garrison. The cannons and other armaments were later transported to Boston by Colonel Henry Knox and used to fortify Dorchester Heights.

About Capture of Fort Ticonderoga in brief

The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga occurred during the American Revolutionary War on May 10, 1775. A small force of Green Mountain Boys led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold surprised and captured the fort’s small British garrison. The cannons and other armaments were later transported to Boston by Colonel Henry Knox and used to fortify Dorchester Heights and break the standoff at the Siege of Boston. Capture of the fort marked the beginning of offensive action taken by the Americans against the British. The fort was situated on the shores of Lake Champlain, a strategically important route between the Thirteen Colonies and the British-controlled northern provinces. After the 1763 Treaty of Paris, in which the French ceded their North American territories to the British, the fort was no longer on the frontier of two great empires, guarding the principal waterway between them. In 1775 it was garrisoned by only a small detachment of the 26th Regiment of Foot, consisting of two officers and forty-six men, with many of them “invalids” Twenty-five women and children lived there as well. The French had blown up the fort’s powder magazine when they abandoned the fort, and it had fallen further into disrepair since then. The British General Thomas Gage realized the fort would require fortification, and several colonists had the idea of capturing the fort. The Connecticut Committee of Correspondence acted on this information; money was sent into northwestern Massachusetts to raise volunteers for an attack on the fort in the New Hampshire Grants, where it was located.

It is unclear whether the Connecticut Committee instigated or instigated the action prior to the Connecticut Colony’s recruitment efforts in March 1775, or whether it was instigated by the Massachusetts Committee of Safety of the Troops of the New York and New Hampshire. The fort played a role in the dispute over that area between New York, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, as well as the disputed territory of the Grants and the Grants of Montreal, New York. It also gave the nascent Continental Army a staging ground for the invasion of Quebec later in 1775 and the capture of Fort Saint-Jean on the Richelieu River in southern Quebec. It impeded communication between northern and southern units of the British Army. Most significantly, in an effort led by Henry Knox, artillery from Ticondoga would be dragged across Massachusetts to the heights commanding Boston Harbor, forcing the British to withdraw from that city. British forces placed there would expose the colonial forces in Boston to attack from the rear. It was not until May 19, well after the fort had been captured, that British General Guy Carleton instructed Quebec’s governor, GeneralGuy Carleton, to rehabilitate and refortify the forts at Ticoderoga and Crown Point. Carleton did not receive this letter until after the Fort had be captured. After seizing the nearby Fort Crown Point on May 11. Seven days later, Arnold and 50 men raided Fort Saint, Jean, seizing military supplies, cannons, and the largest military vessel onLake Champlain.

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