The British advance guard entered Fort Ticonderoga and then charged across the bridge to the Vermont shore. Just four Americans had been left behind at Mount Independence, in the Horseshoe Battery overlooking the bridge. and they had orders to fire a cannon upon the British when they started across. Had they obeyed their instructions, the outcome might have been truly heroic. However, the American soldiers had broken into some of the supplies abandoned by their fleeing comrades, and as a British officer later reported, "we found them dead drunk by a cask of Madeira"