William Johnson, who had recently been named the British agent to the Iroquois, arrives at the southern end of Lac Saint Sacrement on August 28, 1755 and renames it Lake George in honor of his sovereign, George II.

His intention is to advance via Lakes George and Champlain to attack French-held Fort St. Frédéric at Crown Point, which is a keystone in the defense of Canada.

Jean Erdman, Baron Dieskau, with a view to stopping Johnson's advance, had already left Crown Point for an encampment situated between the two lakes (later to be built into Fort Carillon, the precursor of Fort Ticonderoga.)

Dieskau had decided on September 4 to launch a raid on Johnson's base, the recently constructed Fort Edward (at this time called Fort Lyman) on the Hudson River.

His aim is to destroy the boats, supplies and artillery that Johnson needs for his campaign.

Leaving half his force at Carillon, Dieskau leads the rest on an alternate route to the Hudson by landing his men at South Bay and then marching them east of Lake George along Wood Creek.

Dieskau arrives near Fort Edward on the evening of September 7, 1755 with two hundred and twenty-two French regular grenadiers from the Régiment de la Reine and the Régiment de Languedoc, six hundred Canadian militia and seven hundred Abenaki and Caughnawaga Mohawk allies.

Johnson, camped fourteen miles (twenty-three kilometers) north of Fort Edward at the southern end of Lake George, is alerted by scouts to the presence of the enemy forces to his south, and he dispatches a messenger to warn the five hundred-man garrison at Fort Edward, but the messenger is intercepted, and soon afterward a supply train is captured, with the result that the disposition of all of Johnson's forces becomes known to Dieskau.

Colonel Joseph Blanchard, commander of Fort Edward, sees the smoke from the battle in the distance and sends out Nathaniel Folsom's eighty-strong company of the New Hampshire Provincial Regiment and forty New York Provincials under Captian McGennis to investigate.

The bodies of the French troops who are killed in the ensuing engagement (actually Canada-born French colonials and their Native American allies, not French regulars) are thrown into the pool later known as Bloody Pond.

Dieskau orders his Canadians and natives to follow up their success with an attack on Johnson's camp.

However, with their morale already shaken by the loss of their leader, the Caughnawagas "did not wish to attack an entrenched camp, the defenders of which included hundreds of their Mohawk kinsmen. The Abenakis would not go forward without the Caughnawagas, and neither would the Canadians".( Anderson, Fred, Crucible of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766, Faber and Faber Limited, London, 2000, p. 118).

Hoping to shame the natives into attacking, Dieskau forms his two hundred and twenty-two French grenadiers into a column, six abreast, and leads them in person along the Lake Road into the clearing where Johnson's camp is, around which Sir William had hurriedly constructed defensive barricades from whatever materials were at hand.

Once the grenadiers are out in the open ground, the British gunners, crewing Johnson's three cannons, load up with grapeshot and cut through the French ranks.

When Johnson is wounded and forced to retire to his tent for treatment, General Phineas Lyman takes over command.

When Dieskau goes down with a serious wound, the French attack is abandoned.

After the French withdrawal, the British find about twenty severely wounded Frenchmen who are lying too close to the field of fire of Johnson's artillery for their comrades to retrieve them.

They include Baron Dieskau, who had paid the price of leading from the front with a shot through the bladder.

His fall causes great dismay, particularly to the French native allies.

The Battle of Lake George, comprising three parts, eventually ends in a British victory.

Johnson's expedition eventually stops short of Fort St. Frédéric and the strategic result at Lake George is significant.

Johnson is able to advance a considerable distance down the lake and consolidates his gains by building Fort William Henry at its southern end.

Williams' column marches straight into the trap and are engulfed in a blaze of enemy musketry.

In an engagement known as "The Bloody Morning Scout", Williams and Hendrick are killed along with many of their troops.

At this point, the French regulars, brought forward by Dieskau, pour volleys into the beleaguered colonial troops.

Most of the New Englanders flee toward Johnson's camp, while about one hundred of their comrades under Whiting and Lieutenant Colonel Seth Pomeroy and most of the surviving Mohawks cover their withdrawal with a fighting retreat.

The British rearguard are able to inflict substantial casualties on their overconfident pursuers.

One of those killed in this phase of the battle is Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, the highly respected commander of Dieskau's Canadian and native forces.

His fall causes great dismay, particularly to the native allies of the French.

The French and Indian War, known in Europe as the Seven Years War, begins in earnest in 1756.

At the start of the war, no French regular army troops are stationed in North America, and few British troops.

New France is defended by about three thousand troupes de la marine, companies of colonial regulars (some of whom have significant woodland combat experience).

The colonial government recruits militia support when needed.

Most British colonies muster local militia companies, generally ill trained and available only for short periods, to deal with native threats, but do not have any standing forces.

Virginia, because of its large frontier, has several companies of British regulars.

The colonial governments are used to operating independently of each other and of the government in London, a situation that complicates negotiations with native tribes.

Their territories often encompass land claimed by multiple colonies.

After the war begins, the leaders of the British Army establishment tried to impose constraints and demands on the colonial administrations.

The governments of both Britain and France, following the beginning of open conflict between French and British colonists in 1754 with the Battle of Jumonville Glen, had sent regular army troops to North America to further contest the disputed territories of the Ohio Country and other border areas, including the frontier between the French province of Canada and the British province of New York, an area in present-day Upstate New York that is largely controlled by the Iroquois nations.

Part of the British plans for 1755 had included an expedition to take Fort Niagara at the western end of Lake Ontario.

The planned route for this expedition had followed the Oswego River to the lake, with a major base of operations at the mouth of the river (where the present-day city of Oswego, New York is located).

Under the direction of William Shirley, the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, the original Fort Oswego had been reinforced, and two additional forts, Fort George and Fort Ontario, had been built in 1755.

The planned expedition to Fort Niagara never took place due to logistical difficulties, and the fortifications around Oswego had been manned during the winter of 1755–56.

The French in 1755 had the only large naval vessels on Lake Ontario, and moved freely about the lake, between Fort Niagara in the west and Fort Frontenac at the head of the Saint Lawrence River.

Following the failure of aggressive British campaign plans in 1755, a chain of forts along the Mohawk River riverway connecting the Hudson River to Lake Ontario have been garrisoned during the winter of 1755–1756.

The largest garrison is left at Fort Oswego, at the end of the chain, which depends on the others for its supplies.

Two forts along the Oneida Carry are a key element of this supply chain.

The Oneida Carry traverses an unnavigable section between present Rome, New York and Wood Creek that is between one and six miles long, depending on seasonal water levels.

Fort Williams, on the Mohawk, is the larger of the two, while Fort Bull, several miles north of Fort Williams on Wood Creek, is little more than a palisade surrounding storehouses.

Fort Bull is garrisoned by a small number of men from Shirley's Regiment under William Bull, and holds large quantities of military stores, including gunpowder and ammunition, destined for use in the 1756 campaign.

French military leaders in Canada decide in early 1756 to send a raiding expedition to attack Oswego's supply line. 

A company of men had left Fort de La Présentation on March 12 to begin an overland trek toward the Oneida Carry.

Under the command of Lieutenant Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry, a Canadian-born seigneur, the force consists of eighty-four troupes de la Marine, one hundred and eleven Canadian militiamen, and one hundred and ten natives, mostly Iroquois but also some Hurons.

Chaussegros de Lery, having joined the colonial army in 1733 and become an assistant engineer in 1739, had taken part in raids against the British in New England, helped maintain French fortifications in New France and was in charge of the construction of Fort Saint-Jean.

In 1753, he married Louise, the daughter of François Martel de Brouague, commandant of the Coast of Labrador.

Léry's war party, after nearly two weeks of difficult winter travel, arrives on March 24 near the carry.

Léry's men capture twelve British men near Fort Bull early on March 27, while others escape capture and run toward Fort Williams.

Learning from the prisoners of Bull's minimal defenses, he decides to attack immediately.

As he has no field pieces, the only possibility is to attempt storming the fort by surprise.

The fort's defenders manage to close its gates just before the French force arrives.

The attackers managed to fire through loopholes in the fort's walls to distract the garrison, which responds by throwing rocks and grenades over the walls.

After Bull refuses several calls to surrender, the gate is taken down by the use of axes, and the attackers storm into the fort.

Nearly all of the small garrison is killed and scalped, according to a report by Sir William Johnson, who inspected the carnage when he eventually arrived at the head of a relief column.

Léry's men set fire to the works, which include forty-five thousand pounds of gunpowder.

The resulting conflagration destroys the wooden fort.

Léry will be promoted to captain for his successful command.

The loss of the supplies at Fort Bull effectively ruins any British plans for military campaigns against French forts on Lake Ontario, including Shirley's plan to attempt the expedition against Fort Niagara, and may be a contributing factor to the French capture of Fort Oswego in August 1756.

Masschusetts governor William Shirley had assumed command of British forces in North America following the death of Major General Edward Braddock in the disastrous expedition to take Fort Duquesne.

Shirley had laid out his plans for 1756 at a meeting in Albany in December 1755.

In addition to renewing the efforts to capture Niagara, Crown Point and Duquesne, he had proposed attacks on Fort Frontenac on the north shore of Lake Ontario and an expedition through the wilderness of the Maine district and down the Chaudière River to attack the city of Quebec.

Bogged down by disagreements and disputes with others, including William Johnson and New York's Governor Sir Charles Hardy, Shirley's plan had little support.

The Duke of Newcastle, Prime Minister of Great Britain, had replaced him in January 1756 with Lord Loudoun, with Major General James Abercrombie as his second in command.

Neither of these men have as much campaign experience as the trio of officers France sent to North America.

French regular army reinforcements arrive in New France in May 1756, led by Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and seconded by the Chevalier de Lévis and Colonel François-Charles de Bourlamaque, all experienced veterans from the War of the Austrian Succession.

England formally declares war on France on May 18, 1756, nearly two years after fighting had broken out in the Ohio Country.

This expands the war into Europe, later to be known as the Seven Years' War.

French and native raiding parties under the command of Louis Coulon de Villiers, following orders of the Governor of New France, had begun in May 1756 to harass the Oswego garrison from a camp on Henderson Bay (south of present-day Sackett's Harbor, New York).

Montcalm had arrived in Montreal in May 1756 to lead the French army troops.

He and Governor Vaudreuil had taken an immediate dislike to one another, and disagreed over issues of command.

Concerned over the massing of British troops at the southern end of Lake George, Montcalm had first gone to Fort Carillon on Lake Champlain to see to its defenses.

Vaudreuil had meanwhile begun massing troops at Fort Frontenac for a potential assault on Oswego.

Following favorable reports from the raiding parties, Montcalm and Vaudreuil had decided to make the attempt. 

Montcalm had left Carillon on July 16 under the command of the Chevalier de Levis, reaching Montreal three days later.

He left two days later for Fort Frontenac, where French troops were gathering along with a large company of natives.

French forces include the battalions of La Sarre, Guyenne, and Béarn, troupes de la marine, and colonial militia, while natives, numbering about two hundred and fifty, have come from all over the territories of New France.

The total size of the force is reckoned to be three thousand men.

Governor Shirley had received word in March 1756 that he was to be replaced by John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun.

Loudoun's second in command, General James Abercrombie, had only arrived in Albany in late June, and Shirley had spent the intervening time shoring up the supply line to Oswego in anticipation of leading an expedition against the French forts on Lake Ontario.

William Johnson had traveled in June to the Iroquois headquarters at Onondaga, successfully negotiating support for the British side with the Iroquois, Shawnee, and Delaware, forces that Shirley also hopes to use for his expedition.

Shirley had also hired two thousand armed "battoemen", men experienced in sailing and shipbuilding.

Under the command of John Bradstreet, who had been appointed appointed as Governor Shirley's adjutant general in 1755, these men successfully resupply the forts at Oswego in July, although they are attacked by a French raiding party on their way back, suffering sixty to seventy casualties.

Captain Bradstreet survives but his warnings to Governor Shirley and Lord Loudon of the weak condition of Fort Oswego are largely ignored amid their ongoing power struggle.

When Loudoun arrives in Albany in late July, he immediately cancels Shirley's plans for an Oswego-based expedition.