The French Lines are the un-restored remains of an eighteenth-century defensive wall built to defend Fort Ticonderoga from attack. The French army first constructed the original wall in less than two days in 1758, beginning on July 7 as the British army prepared to attack, building a log wall across the Ticonderoga peninsula. Although outnumbered almost 4 to 1, the French defeated the British after a day-long fight there called the Battle of Carillon. The British returned in July 1759, and as they advanced the French abandoned the lines, allowing the British to use them to besiege the fort; a few days later the French evacuated the fort and the British captured it without firing a single shot. By the American Revolution, the log walls had decayed, and during 1776 and 1777 American troops rebuilt and strengthened the lines. In July 1777 the British recaptured Ticonderoga, and in September Americans under Colonel John Brown captured the French Lines and began a brief artillery attack on the fort, the only time in the fort's history that it came under direct attack. After the Revolution the French Lines gradually fell into ruin as the logs rotted away, leaving the low earthen bank visible today. Built in a zig-zag pattern according to established eighteenth-century military practice, the lines provided wide, overlapping fields of fire so soldiers behind them could shoot from many different angles at troops attacking the wall.