In 1758, British and Colonial provincials made a major error in their first assault upon Fort Carillon (later renamed Ticonderoga by the British), a French held fort on the waterway entrance from New York to Canada.  Although the British forces greatly outnumbered the French forces 16,000 to 4,000, the French forces won the battle that day.  General Sun Tzu would have loved the battle because one of the major reasons that the British lost was one of Sun Tzu’s favorite principals. 

Sun Tzu, if you do not already know, was a Chinese general that lived 2,500 years ago and wrote the manual—“The Art of War”—a manual read around the world by military organizations.  In it Sun Tzu outlines several principals that are generally recognized as necessary to win a war.  One of those states, “All warfare is based upon deception”. 

If only the British commander, General James Abercrombie, had read the manual before the battle, he might have been more successful.  But apparently he had never heard of Sun Tzu.  However, the French commander, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, whether he had read Sun Tzu or not, applied the principal of deception with wondrous results.

Knowing the British would send scouts (spies) to watch the fort preparations, Montcalm skillfully hid the main fortifications from view and created what looked like to the British scouts to be a flimsy half hearted weak fortress. With the British scouts looking down on the busy French forces, Montcalm ordered all his men to look busy building the weak fortress.

The scouts brought the word back that the fortress was weak and vulnerable. Abercrombie sent more spies to check it out and they reported back with the same information. Acting on this information, and unaware that there was not only a strong impenetrable fortress hidden in the woods, but also a horrible array of fallen timbers with sharpened points hidden in front of the deception, Abercrombie ordered the assault. 

Historians note that Abercrombie lost the battle because he lost control of his forces and the attack was badly managed. However, the real reason he lost was his poor intelligence reports.

Let’s hope that American military experts have heard of Sun Tzu and are fully aware that the enemy has heard of him also.

But stupidly, (knowing they had no intelligence), the intelligence gurus sent their intelligence reports up to the top military commanders, and even more stupidly, (knowing there was no intelligence), the top military commanders read the intelligence reports and believed them. 

On Dec 16, 1944, 21^st Army Group’s intelligence summary read—“The enemy … cannot stage major offensive operations.” The only problem was that on that very day, Germany was attacking the American lines at the Ardennes forest with the biggest, strongest offensive push they had ever used against the American forces. In what was to become known as the Battle of the Bulge, the Americans were caught completely off guard and suffered tremendous losses as the Germans pushed their way westward towards the Atlantic port of Antwerp.