they were to disable the fort, supplies would be cut off and the outposts would no longer be able to defend themselves. The Indian trade in the upper country (the Pays d'en Haut) would also be disrupted. Fort Frontenac was also regarded as a threat to Fort Oswego, which was built by the British across the lake from Fort Frontenac in 1722 to compete with Fort Frontenac for the Indian trade, and later enhanced as a military establishment. General Montcalm had already used Fort Frontenac as a staging point to attack the fortifications at Oswego in August 1756. The British also hoped that taking the well-known fort would boost troop morale and honour after their demoralizing battle defeat at Fort Ticonderoga (Fort Carillon) in July 1758. Bradstreet assembled an army at Schenectady consisting of just 135 regular army troops and about 3,500 militia, drawn from the provinces of New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. By the time his army reached the ruins of Fort Oswego on August 21, Bradstreet had lost 600 men, primarily to desertion. The trek met with minimal opposition from French and Indian raiding parties, but the route to Oswego, which had been virtually unused since 1756, was overgrown, and some of the waterways had silted up, causing heavily laden bateaux to ground in the shallow waters. Bradstreet's flotilla of bateaux crossed Lake Ontario, landing without opposition about one mile (1.6 km) from Fort Frontenac on August 25. Fort Frontenac was an important trading center for Indian and French fur traders. The trade through the site was so successful that some Indians preferred to trade with the French there rather than the British outpost at Albany, New York, which provided more ready access to inexpensive British goods. The fortification, a crumbling limestone construction, was only minimally garrisoned, with about 100 French troops along with some militia and Indians under the command of Pierre-Jacques Payen de Noyan et de Chavoy, an elderly veteran of King George's War. While the fort was normally garrisoned by a larger force, the limited means available for the defense of New France had forced French military leaders to reduce its size for the defense of other parts of Canada. Noyan was alerted to the expedition's advance when Indian scouts took some prisoners, and authorities in Montreal organized reinforcements. However, these forces would not arrive before the British. Battle The night after