Champlain Valley. These forces landed at the north end of Lake George, only four miles from the fort, on July 6. The French general Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, who had only arrived at Carillon in late June, engaged his troops in a flurry of work to improve the fort's outer defenses. They built, over two days, entrenchments around a rise between the fort and Mount Hope, about three-quarters of a mile (one kilometer) northwest of the fort, and then constructed an abatis (felled trees with sharpened branches pointing out) below these entrenchments. They conducted the work unimpeded by military action, as Abercromby failed to advance directly to the fort on July 7. Abercromby's second-in-command, Brigadier General George Howe, had been killed when his column encountered a French reconnaissance troop. Abercromby "felt [Howe's death] most heavily" and may have been unwilling to act immediately. On July 8, 1758, Abercromby ordered a frontal attack against the hastily assembled French works. Abercromby tried to move rapidly against the few French defenders, opting to forgo field cannon and relying instead on the numerical superiority of his 16,000 troops. In the Battle of Carillon, the British were soundly defeated by the 4,000 French defenders. The battle took place far enough away from the fort that its guns were rarely used. The battle gave the fort a reputation for impregnability, which affected future military operations in the area, notably during the American Revolutionary War. Following the French victory, Montcalm, anticipating further British attacks, ordered additional work on the defenses, including the construction of the Germain and Pontleroy redoubts (named for the engineers under whose direction they were constructed) to the northeast of the fort. However, the British did not attack again in 1758, so the French withdrew all but a small garrison of men for the winter in November. The British under General Jeffery Amherst captured the fort the following year in the 1759 Battle of Ticonderoga. In this confrontation 11,000 British troops, using emplaced artillery, drove off the token garrison of 400 Frenchmen. The French, in withdrawing, used explosives to destroy what they could of the fort and spiked or dumped cannons that they did not take with them. Although the British worked in 1759 and 1760 to repair and improve the fort, it was not part of any further significant action in the war. After the war, the British garrisoned the fort with a small