The peat-fire flame : folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
in which Highland troops hitherto had been engaged. It is
maintained that at Ticonderoga they were heavily repulsed,
owing to bad generalship. For all that, their valour on this
occasion was admitted readily even by the enemy. But in
the Scottish Highlands this Red Indian name Ticonderoga
—bears another significance, since it is associated with the
ghost-haunted House of Inverawe, situated not far from
the shores of Loch Etive, in Argyll.
Fort Ticonderoga, which is looked upon as one of the veryfew
ruins of historical interest in the United States, was
held by the French under Montcalm. When the British
assailed it in 1758, it is said to have been garrisoned by five
thousand men. Not only was the fort itself quite impregnable
to the instruments of war in use at that time,
but, in order to harass the assailants still more, its walls
were protected by outer defences in the nature of a breastwork
of cut trees and pointed timber—the old-fashioned
method of obstructing an advancing enemy, which in times
more modern and less civilized is achieved by barbed-wire
entanglements. According to contemporaneous accounts, no
fewer than two thousand French soldiers manned this
breast-work. Although the outer defences might have been
destroyed by artillery, General Abercrombie preferred to
have them rushed by assault. The 42nd Highlanders, in
cutting a way with their broadswords, displayed supreme
courage ; but very few of them were able to reach the walls
of the fort at all. As no ladders had been provided, the
soldiers were obliged to climb upon each other's shoulders,
and obtain what footing they could in the holes they had
made in the face of the fortifications with their swords and
bayonets. Immediately a Highlander reached the top of the
wall, he was hurled down to his death by its defenders.
Nevertheless, Major Duncan Campbell of Inverawe and a
few of the men under his command made their way into
the fort; but very soon they, too, were numbered with the
slain. The losses sustained by the 42nd Highlanders were
eight officers, nine sergeants, and two hundred and ninetyseven
men killed. The wounded numbered considerably
more.
The intrepid Campbell was buried at Fort Edward, where
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