Ticonderoga: Provincials Seize the Fort, May 1775

Colonel Allen Reports on the Success of the Operation

Ethan Allen,

Ethan Allen, "Ethan Allen's Narrative of the Capture of Ticonderoga and of His Captivity and Treatment by the British,"  Fifth Edition (Burlington, VT: C. Goodrich and S. B. Nichols, 1849).

Ethan Allen,

Ethan Allen, "Ethan Allen's Narrative of the Capture of Ticonderoga and of His Captivity and Treatment by the British,"  Fifth Edition (Burlington, VT: C. Goodrich and S. B. Nichols, 1849), p. 7.

Ethan Allen,

Ethan Allen, "Ethan Allen's Narrative of the Capture of Ticonderoga and of His Captivity and Treatment by the British,"  Fifth Edition (Burlington, VT: C. Goodrich and S. B. Nichols, 1849), p. 8.

Ethan Allen,

Ethan Allen, "Ethan Allen's Narrative of the Capture of Ticonderoga and of His Captivity and Treatment by the British,"  Fifth Edition (Burlington, VT: C. Goodrich and S. B. Nichols, 1849), p. 9.

Ethan Allen,

Ethan Allen, "Ethan Allen's Narrative of the Capture of Ticonderoga and of His Captivity and Treatment by the British,"  Fifth Edition (Burlington, VT: C. Goodrich and S. B. Nichols, 1849), p. 10.

Never shy about burnishing his own image, Ethan Allen sent a breathless account of the Ticonderoga raid to colonial officials in Connecticut. He would later expand on this story when he published his first memoir in 1779.

"“I have to inform you with pleasure unfelt before, that on the break of day of the tenth of May, 1775, by the order of the General Assembly of the Colony of Connecticut, took the Fortress of Ticonderoga by storm. The soldiery was composed of about one hundred Green Mountain Boys, and near fifty veteran soldiers from the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay. The latter was under the command of Colonel James Easton, who behaved with great zeal and fortitude, not only in council, but in the assault. The soldiery behaved with such resistless fury, that they so terrified the King’s Troops that they durst not fire on their assailants, and our soldiery was agreeably disappointed. The soldiery behaved with uncommon rancour when they leaped into the Fort: and it must be confessed that the Colonel [Allen] has greatly contributed to the taking of the Fortress . . . “"

Ethan Allen, to the Massachusetts Congress, 11 May 1775
Sources
  • Document S4-V2-P01-sp21-D0077 at Digital.lib.niu.edu/