Part 1.2: Just A Bit More Overview, and the Academic Death of Arnold
-------
It had been a complicated road to Ticonderoga. In the aftermath of Lexington and Concord, New England had risen up in revolt against the North Ministry, and the other colonies found themselves following suit. The Continental Congress taking action, issued commissions to four Generals and sent one of their own, George Washington to assume command of the Army outside of Boston. Before he arrived though, actions were taken at once with the hopes of strengthening his position before he could even arrive. As it was, three forces converged on the fort.
The New York Government, or more accurately, the New York Committees of Correspondence found their hands full with the securing of the Hudson River Valley and New York at the start of the conflict to send troops North, and thus it fell to New Englanders to act.
The first of these was a Connecticut militia officer who approached the Massachusetts leadership as he brought his men to besiege Boston about his feelings on taking the Fort which he had visited previously as a merchant. Impressed by his plan, the Provisional Government would commission him a Massachusetts Colonel and send him North with a warrant to raise troops and take the Fort. Thus it was that Benedict Arnold began to move out.
In junction with him a member of the Committee of Correspondence was sent ahead to determine support for the Patriot Cause in the Grants and to see if Ethan Allen who had declared in 1774 that if war came he would stand against the crown could be brought into the operation. As Arnold raised men in Springfield, Stockbridge, and Pittsfield, this man would make contact with Allen, the Green Mountain Boy’s Leadership and the Bennington Committee of Correspondence, finding that other wheels were already in motion. After meeting Captain John Brown, Allen refused to accept Massachusetts leadership, but did invite the officer to partake in his operation as one of his Lieutenants, which Brown in the name of observation and in securing the fort agreed to.
The Second force was one dispatched by the Provisional Government of Connecticut. Captain Noah Phelps, dispatched by the Connecticut Committees of Correspondence with a similar goal to his Massachusetts counterpart, found Allen before his provinces forces, under the command of Major Silas Deane arrived. As it was, both Committees agents found the third force in Bennington. Allen had already decided that he was going to take Fort Ticonderoga, and all other garrisons on the lakes.
When Arnold received word about Allen’s plan from Brown, he rushed forward to Bennington, and meeting with the Green Mountain Boys. On finding as Phelps and Brown had that the men would not attack the fort unless Allen was in charge, and that Allen had no interest in waiting, compromised, forming a Committee of War for the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point and joined Allen on the march.
The main force reached Hand’s Cove on May 9th and awaited the arrival of transport. But while Arnold and the other sanctioned forces were aiming to capture Fort Ticonderoga, Arnold had dispatched other forces to strike at other targets on the lake. Twenty men trekked around South Bay to take the garrison of Fort George by surprise, an easy feat when one considered the old Seven Year’s War Fort near the ruins of Fort William Henry was guarded by three men on rotation from Ticonderoga. Another force of thirty was dispatched under Seth Warner to take the barracks at Crown Point from its nine man garrison and to seize the nearby village. A third force of thirty under Samuel Herrick was dispatched to Skenesborough with orders from the Committee of War to seize Skenes sloop and bateaux so as to provide transport for the attack on the Fort.
Skenesborough would thus be attacked on the 9th, in an action that proved to be more about settling scores for Allen than it was about helping the cause. While Skene was on a ship bound for England at the time, his family was present, and were dragged off as prisoners. The homes of the settlement were sacked and burned. Herrick at one point went down into the basement of the Skene house and ordered the digging up of Skene’s late wife, supposedly to secure lead from her coffin for bullets, but everything else buried with her was taken to, the 40 slaves at the settlement were marched off to Vermont as loot to be sold by the men. The furnace was destroyed with parts thrown into the South Bay. Under the claim that he was operating for the Continental Congress Allen sacked his rivals home and destroyed it, with Herrick sailing north on the schooner before the day was though.
It was after midnight when Herrick arrived with the sloop, the batteaux still far behind him. And thus it was that the raiding force at Hand’s Cove began to be ferried across the lake to seize the fort. The garrison, living a life more fit to a village than a military outpost were completely unaware of the events in Boston, and the gates were left open at night as a standard policy to allow refugees a safe haven in the face of danger. Half of the people living in the fort were families of the garrison or civilian sutters. With a single shot fired by a single guard on duty in the predawn hours, there was no way the Fort could have held out. Even if that private had been able to keep his cool enough to slam shut the doors of the fort and bought time to raise alarm.
Of course that single shot he fired did connect. And thus it was that in the first engagement after Lexington and Concord, and before the Battle of Bunker Hill, a Massachusetts Colonel was killed in action. Benedict Arnold died leading the men forward next to Allen, and secured for himself in the early years of the Republic a position as the first senior officer killed in the Revolution. Sadly the shortness of his service and his death in his first action would mean the gallant hero would slowly be forgotten, and while counties, towns and streets across the nation would be named after him, statues in his memory would be ill remembered, and he would secure for himself little more than postage stamps and footnotes, a far cry from his compatriots in that attack.
With his death though, a pair of questions would confront the combined forces of the Grants, Connecticut, and Massachusetts as they gathered at their captured forts. Who was in command, and what would they do next?
--------
Before I start posting the first less textbook segments of the story, at this point are there's any questions? With the exception of Arnold getting shot this is all still IOTL, but obviously we're at the end of that segment of the timeline, the rest of Part I and everything that follows is going to be straight AH, so now's the time to ask.