Battle of Fort Frontenac The Battle of Fort Frontenac took place on August 26 – 28 , 1758 during the Seven Years ' War ( referred to as the French and Indian War in North America ) between France and Great Britain . The location of the battle was Fort Frontenac , a French fort and trading post which is located at the site of present - day Kingston , Ontario , at the eastern end of Lake Ontario where it drains into the St . Lawrence River . British Lieutenant Colonel John Bradstreet led an army of over 3 , 000 men , of whom about 150 were regular s and the remainder were provincial militia . The army besieged the 110 people inside the fort and won their surrender two days later , cutting one of the two major communication and supply lines between the major eastern centres of Montreal and Quebec City and France ' s western territories ( the northern route , along the Ottawa River , remained open throughout the war ) . The British captured goods worth 800 , 000 livres from the trading post . Background . The British military campaigns for the French and Indian War in 1758 contained three primary objectives . Two of these objectives , captures of Fort Louisbourg and Fort Duquesne met with success . The third campaign , an expedition involving 16 , 000 men under the command of General James Abercrombie , was disastrously defeated on July 8 , 1758 , by a much smaller French force when it attempted the capture of Fort Carillon ( known today as Fort Ticonderoga ) . Following that failure , many of Abercrombie ' s underlings sought to distance themselves from any responsibility for the disaster . Lieutenant Colonel John Bradstreet renewed an earlier proposal to capture Fort Frontenac , a French fort and trading post on the northern shore of Lake Ontario near where it empties into the St . Lawrence River . Abercrombie , who had first rejected the idea , citing the need for troops to attack Carillon , approved Bradstreet ' s plan to move up the Mohawk River valley to the site of Fort Oswego ( captured and burned by the French in 1756 ) , and then cross the lake to assault Frontenac . Bradstreet assembled an army at Schenectady consisting of just 135 regular army troops and about 3 , 500 militia , drawn from the provinces of New York , Massachusetts , New Jersey , and Rhode Island . By the time his army reached the ruins of Fort Oswego on August 21 , Bradstreet had lost 600 men , primarily to desertion . The trek met with minimal opposition from French and Indian raiding parties , but the route to Oswego , which had been virtually unused since 1756 , was overgrown , and some of the waterways had silted up , causing heavily - laden bateaux to ground in the shallow waters . Bradstreet ' s flotilla of bateaux crossed Lake Ontario , landing without opposition about one mile ( 1 . 6 km ) from Fort Frontenac on August 25 . Fort Frontenac was an important trading center for Indian and French fur traders . The trade through the site was so successful that some Indians preferred to trade with the French there rather than the British outpost at Albany , New York , which provided more ready access to inexpensive British goods . The fortification , a crumbling limestone construction , was only minimally garrisoned , with about 100 French troops along with some militia and Indians under the command of Pierre - Jacques Payen de Noyan et de Chavoy , an elderly veteran of King George ' s War . While the fort was normally garrisoned by a larger force , the limited means available for the defense of New France had forced French military leaders to reduce its size for the defense of other parts of Canada . Noyan was alerted to the expedition ' s advance when Indian scouts took some prisoners , and authorities in Montreal organized reinforcements . However , these forces would not arrive before the British . Battle . The night after landing , Bradstreet ' s men established gun batteries and began to dig trenches toward the old fort . They also attempted , without success to board two of the French ships anchored before the fort . On the morning of August 26 , the British guns opened fire . The French garrison returned fire with cannons and muskets , but made little impression on the British . The two sides continued to exchange fire on the 27th , with the British establishing gun batteries northwest of the fort , about from the fort . On the morning of the 28th , two French ships attempted to escape the harbor , but ran aground after persistent British fire against them . Following a brief council of war , Noyan raised the white flag . Aftermath . With the capture of Frontenac , the British intercepted significant supplies destined for French forts in the Ohio Country . More than 60 cannons ( some of them British cannons the French had captured at Fort Oswego ) were found , as were hundreds of barrels of provisions . To the many provincials in Bradstreet ' s army , the biggest prizes were bales of furs destined for shipment downstream to Montreal . In all , the value of the captured goods was estimated to be 800 , 000 French livre s . Since Bradstreet ' s orders were not to hold the fort but to destroy it , many of the provisions were burned before the army returned to Oswego , using some of the captured French ships to help carry the loot . Bradstreet released the French prisoners after Noyan promised to gain the release of an equal number of British prisoners , and the French began to make their way back to Montreal . They were met by the relief force from Montreal . The French established Fort de La Présentation ( at present - day Ogdensburg , New York ) as a base for supply and defense . Fort Frontenac was again lightly garrisoned in 1759 , but was no longer a site of importance in the war , which ended with the fall of Montreal in September 1760 . New France ' s governor , the Marquis de Vaudreuil , took full responsibility for the French loss , as he had believed that the British " would not dare to enter [ Lake Ontario ] on which [ the French ] had vessels . " He did however force Noyan into retirement . Noyan returned to France , where he spent some time in the Bastille on charges that he misappropriated public funds , and was eventually fined six livres .