Chazy: Where the British Army Camped Before Plattsburgh

Chazy sits near the northern end of Lake Champlain, close to the Canadian border, and the name reaches back to a French soldier. Lieutenant de Chézy of the Carignan-Salières Regiment was killed by the Iroquois in sixteen sixty-six while on campaign in the region. The river, and eventually the town, carried a version of his name forward across two centuries.

The town's most dramatic moment came in September eighteen fourteen. General Sir George Prevost marched south from Canada with between eight and ten thousand British troops, and his army occupied Chazy in the first days of September as the advance column of an invasion. American forces first made contact with the British here, just days before the decisive Battle of Plattsburgh on September eleventh. The American naval victory on Lake Champlain and the British withdrawal that followed ended the last major invasion of the United States in the War of eighteen twelve. The A. Vantine Farm in Chazy still carries a historical marker noting where a regiment of one thousand British soldiers camped on the eve of that battle.