A few hundred neighbouring militiamen were scraped together. Every one of the handful of regulars who could be spared was turned out. And Carleton set off to the relief of St Johns. But Seth Warner's Green Mountain Boys, reinforced by many more sharpshooters, prevented Carleton from landing at Longueuil, opposite Montreal. The remaining Indians began to slink away. The French-Canadian militiamen deserted fast—'thirty or forty of a night.' There were not two hundred regulars available for a march across country. And on the 30th Carleton was forced to give up in despair. Within the week St Johns surrendered with 688 men, who were taken south as prisoners of war. Preston had been completely cut off and threatened with starvation as well. So when he destroyed everything likely to be needed by the enemy he had done all that could be expected of a brave and capable commander.

It was the 3rd of November when St Johns surrendered. Ten days later Montgomery occupied Montreal and Arnold landed at Wolfe's Cove just above Quebec. The race for the possession of Quebec had been a very close one. The race for the capture of Carleton was to be closer still. And on the fate of either depended the immediate, and perhaps the ultimate, fate of Canada.

The race for Quebec had been none the less desperate because the British had not known of the danger from the south till after Arnold had suddenly emerged from the wilds of Maine and was well on his way to the mouth of the Chaudiere, which falls into the St Lawrence seven miles above the city. Arnold's subsequent change of sides earned him the execration of the Americans. But there can be no doubt whatever that if he had got through in time to capture Quebec he would have become a national hero of the United States. He had the advantage of leading picked men; though nearly three hundred faint-hearts did turn back half-way. But, even with picked men, his feat was one of surpassing excellence. His force went in eleven hundred strong. It came out, reduced by desertion as well as by almost incredible hardships, with barely seven hundred. It began its toilsome ascent of the Kennebec towards the end of September, carrying six weeks' supplies in the bad, hastily built boats or on the men's backs. Daniel Morgan and his Virginian riflemen led the way. Aaron Burr was present as a young volunteer. The portages were many and trying. The settlements were few at first and then wanting altogether. Early in October the drenched portagers were already sleeping in their frozen clothes. The boats began to break up. Quantities of provisions were lost. Soon there was scarcely anything left but flour and salt pork. It took nearly a fortnight to get past the Great Carrying Place, in sight of Mount Bigelow. Rock, bog, and freezing slime told on the men, some of whom began to fall sick. Then came the chain of ponds leading into Dead River. Then the last climb up to the height-of-land beyond which lay the headwaters of the Chaudiere, which takes its rise in Lake Megantic.

There were sixty miles to go beyond the lake, and a badly broken sixty miles they were, before the first settlement of French Canadians could be reached. There was no trail. Provisions were almost at an end. Sickness increased. The sick began to die. 'And what was it all for? A chance to get killed! The end of the march was Quebec —impregnable!' On the 24th of October Arnold, with fifteen other men, began 'a race against time, a race against starvation' by pushing on ahead in a desperate effort to find food. Within a week he had reached the first settlement, after losing three of his five boats with everything in them. Three days later, and not one day too soon, the French Canadians met his seven hundred famishing men with a drove of cattle and plenty of provisions. The rest of the way was toilsome enough. But it seemed easy by comparison. The habitants were friendly, but very shy about enlisting, in spite of Washington's invitation to 'range yourselves under the standard of general liberty.' The Indians were more responsive, and nearly fifty joined on their own terms. By the 8th of November Arnold was marching down the south shore of the St Lawrence, from the Chaudiere to Point Levis, in full view of Quebec. He had just received a dispatch ten days old from Montgomery by which he learned that St Johns was expected to fall immediately and that Schuyler was no longer with the army at the front. But he could not tell when the junction of forces would be made; and he saw at once that Quebec was on the alert because every boat had been either destroyed or taken over to the other side.

The spring and summer had been anxious times enough in Quebec. But the autumn was a great deal worse. Bad news kept coming down from Montreal. The disaffected got more and more restless and began 'to act as though no opposition might be shown the rebel forces.' And in October it did seem as if nothing could be done to stop the invaders. There were only a few hundred militiamen that could be depended on. The regulars, under Colonel Maclean, had gone up to help Carleton on the Montreal frontier. The fortifications were in no state to stand a siege. But Cramahe was full of steadfast energy. He had mustered the French-Canadian militia on September 11, the very day Arnold was leaving Cambridge in Massachusetts for his daring march against Quebec. These men had answered the call far better in the city of Quebec than anywhere else. There was also a larger proportion of English-speaking loyalists here than in Montreal. But no transports brought troops up the St Lawrence from Boston or the mother country, and no vessel brought Carleton down. The loyalists were, however, encouraged by the presence of two small men-of-war, one of which, the Hunter, had been the guide-ship for Wolfe's boat the night before the Battle of the Plains. Some minor reinforcements also kept arriving: veterans from the border settlements and a hundred and fifty men from Newfoundland. On the 3rd of November, the day St Johns surrendered to Montgomery, an intercepted dispatch had warned Cramahe of Arnold's approach and led him to seize all the boats on the south shore opposite Quebec. This was by no means his first precaution. He had sent some men forty miles up the Chaudiere as soon as the news of the raids on Lake Champlain and St Johns had arrived at the end of May. Thus, though neither of them had anticipated such a bolt from the blue, both Carleton and Cramahe had taken all the reasonable means within their most restricted power to provide against unforeseen contingencies.

Arnold's chance of surprising Quebec had been lost ten days before he was able to cross the St Lawrence; and when the habitants on the south shore were helping his men to make scaling-ladders the British garrison on the north had already become too strong for him. But he was indefatigable in collecting boats and canoes at the mouth of the Chaudiere, and at other points higher up than Cramahe's men had reached when on their mission of destruction or removal, and he was as capable as ever when, on the pitch-black night of the 13th, he led his little flotilla through the gap between the two British men-of-war, the Hunter and the Lizard. The next day he marched across the Plains of Abraham and saluted Quebec with three cheers. But meanwhile Colonel Maclean, who had set out to help Carleton at Montreal and turned back on hearing the news of St Johns, had slipped into Quebec on the 12th. So Arnold found himself with less than seven hundred effectives against the eleven hundred British who were now behind the walls. After vainly summoning the city to surrender he retired to Pointe-aux-Trembles, more than twenty miles up the north shore of the St Lawrence, there to await the arrival of the victorious Montgomery.

Meanwhile Montgomery was racing for Carleton and Carleton was racing for Quebec. Montgomery's advance-guard had hurried on to Sorel, at the mouth of the Richelieu, forty-five miles below Montreal, to mount guns that would command the narrow channel through which the fugitive governor would have to pass on his way to Quebec. They had ample time to set the trap; for an incessant nor'-easter blew up the St Lawrence day after day and held Carleton fast in Montreal, while, only a league away, Montgomery's main body was preparing to cross over. Escape by land was impossible, as the Americans held Berthier, on the north shore, and had won over the habitants, all the way down from Montreal, on both sides of the river. At last, on the afternoon of the 11th, the wind shifted. Immediately a single cannon-shot was fired, a bugle sounded the fall in! and 'the whole military establishment' of Montreal formed up in the barrack square—one hundred and thirty officers and men, all told. Carleton, 'wrung to the soul,' as one of his officers wrote home, came on parade 'firm, unshaken, and serene.' The little column then marched down to the boats through shuttered streets of timid neutrals and scowling rebels. The few loyalists who came to say good-bye to Carleton at the wharf might well have thought it was the last handshake they would ever get from a British 'Captain-General and Governor-in-chief' as they saw him step aboard in the dreary dusk of that November afternoon. And if he and they had known the worst they might well have thought their fate was sealed; for neither of them then knew that both sides of the St Lawrence were occupied in force at two different places on the perilous way to Quebec.

The little flotilla of eleven vessels got safely down to within a few miles of Sorel, when one grounded and delayed the rest till the wind failed altogether at noon on the 12th. The next three days it blew upstream without a break. No progress could be made as there was no room to tack in the narrow passages opposite Sorel. On the third day an American floating battery suddenly appeared, firing hard. Behind it came a boat with a flag of truce and the following summons from Colonel Easton, who commanded Montgomery's advance-guard at Sorel:

SIR,—By this you will learn that General Montgomery is in Possession of the Fortress Montreal. You are very sensible that I am in Possession at this Place, and that, from the strength of the United Colonies on both sides your own situation is Rendered Very disagreeable. I am therefore induced to make you the following Proposal, viz.:—That if you will Resign your Fleet to me Immediately, without destroying the Effects on Board, You and Your men shall be used with due civility, together with women & Children on Board. To this I shall expect Your direct and Immediate answer. Should you Neglect You will Cherefully take the Consequences which will follow.

Carleton was surprised: and well he might be. He had not supposed that Montgomery's men were in any such commanding position. But, like Cramahe at Quebec, he refused to answer; whereupon Easton's batteries opened both from the south shore and from Isle St Ignace. Carleton's heaviest gun was a 9-pounder; while Easton had four 12-pounders, one of them mounted on a rowing battery that soon forced the British to retreat. The skipper of the schooner containing the powder magazine wanted to surrender on the spot, especially when he heard that the Americans were getting some hot shot ready for him. But Carleton retreated upstream, twelve miles above Sorel, to Lavaltrie, just above Berthier on the north shore, where, on attempting to land, he was driven back by some Americans and habitants. Next morning, the 16th, a fateful day for Canada, the same Major Brown who had failed Ethan Allen at Montreal came up with a flag of truce to propose that Carleton should send an officer to see for himself how well all chance of escape had now been cut off. The offer was accepted; and Brown explained the situation from the rebel point of view. 'This is my small battery; and, even if you should chance to escape, I have a grand battery at the mouth of the Sorel [Richelieu] which will infallibly sink all of your vessels. Wait a little till you see the 32-pounders that are now within half-a-mile.' There was a good deal of Yankee bluff in this warning, especially as the 32-pounders could not be mounted in time. But the British officer seemed perfectly satisfied that the way was completely blocked; and so the Americans felt sure that Carleton would surrender the following day.

Carleton, however, was not the man to give in till the very last; and one desperate chance still remained. His flotilla was doomed. But he might still get through alone without it. One of the French-Canadian skippers, better known as 'Le Tourte' or 'Wild Pigeon' than by his own name of Bouchette because of his wonderfully quick trips, was persuaded to make the dash for freedom. So Carleton, having ordered Prescott, his second-in-command, not to surrender the flotilla before the last possible moment, arranged for his own escape in a whaleboat. It was with infinite precaution that he made his preparations, as the enemy, though confident of taking him, were still on the alert to prevent such a prize from slipping through their fingers. He dressed like a habitant from head to foot, putting on a tasselled bonnet rouge and an etoffe du pays (grey homespun) suit of clothes, with a red sash and bottes sauvages like Indian moccasins. Then the whaleboat was quietly brought alongside. The crew got in and plied their muffled oars noiselessly down to the narrow passage between Isle St Ignace and the Isle du Pas, where they shipped the oars and leaned over the side to paddle past the nearest battery with the palms of their hands. It was a moment of breathless excitement; for the hope of Canada was in their keeping and no turning back was possible. But the American sentries saw no furtive French Canadians gliding through that dark November night and heard no suspicious noises above the regular ripple of the eddying island current. One tense half-hour and all was over, The oars were run out again; the men gave way with a will; and Three Rivers was safely reached in the morning.

Here Carleton met Captain Napier, who took him aboard the armed ship Fell, in which he continued his journey to Quebec. He was practically safe aboard the Fell; for Arnold had neither an army strong enough to take Quebec nor any craft big enough to fight a ship. But the flotilla above Sorel was doomed. After throwing all its powder into the St Lawrence it surrendered on the 19th, the very day Carleton reached Quebec. The astonished Americans were furious when they found that Carleton had slipped through their fingers after all. They got Prescott, whom they hated; and they released Walker, whom Carleton was taking as a prisoner to Quebec. But no friends and foes like Walker and Prescott could make up for the loss of Carleton, who was the heart as well as the head of Canada at bay.

The exultation of the British more than matched the disappointment of the Americans. Thomas Ainslie, collector of customs and captain of militia at Quebec, only expressed the feelings of all his fellow-loyalists when he made the following entry in the extremely accurate diary he kept throughout those troublous times:

'On the 19th (a Happy Day for Quebec!), to the unspeakable joy of the friends of the Government, and to the utter Dismay of the abettors of Sedition and Rebellion, General Carleton arrived in the Fell, arm'd ship, accompanied by an arm'd schooner. We saw our Salvation in his Presence.'



CHAPTER V

BELEAGUERMENT 1775-1776

When Carleton finally turned at bay within the walls of Quebec the British flag waved over less than a single one out of the more than a million square miles that had so recently been included within the boundaries of Canada. The landward walls cut off the last half-mile of the tilted promontory which rises three hundred feet above the St Lawrence but only one hundred above the valley of the St Charles. This promontory is just a thousand yards wide where the landward walls run across it, and not much wider across the world-famous Heights and Plains of Abraham, which then covered the first two miles beyond. The whole position makes one of Nature's strongholds when the enemy can be kept at arm's length. But Carleton had no men to spare for more than the actual walls and the narrow little strip of the Lower Town between the base of the cliff and the St Lawrence. So the enemy closed in along the Heights' and among the suburbs, besides occupying any point of vantage they chose across the St Lawrence or St Charles.

The walls were by no means fit to stand a siege, a fact which Carleton had frequently reported. But, as the Americans had neither the men nor the material for a regular siege, they were obliged to confine themselves to a mere beleaguerment, with the chance of taking Quebec by assault. One of Carleton's first acts was to proclaim that every able-bodied man refusing to bear arms was to leave the town within four days. But, though this had the desired effect of clearing out nearly all the dangerous rebels, the Americans still believed they had enough sympathizers inside to turn the scale of victory if they could only manage to take the Lower Town, with all its commercial property and shipping, or gain a footing anywhere within the walls.

There were five thousand souls left in Quebec, which was well provisioned for the winter. The women, children, and men unfit to bear arms numbered three thousand. The 'exempts' amounted to a hundred and eighty. As there was a growing suspicion about many of these last, Carleton paraded them for medical examination at the beginning of March, when, a good deal more than half were found quite fit for duty. These men had been malingering all winter in order to skulk out of danger; so he treated them with extreme leniency in only putting them on duty as a 'company of Invalids.' But the slur stuck fast. The only other exceptions to the general efficiency were a very few instances of cowardice and many more of slackness. The militia order-books have repeated entries about men who turned up late for even important duties as well as about others whose authorized substitutes were no better than themselves. But it should be remembered that, as a whole, the garrison did exceedingly good service and that all the malingerers and serious delinquents together did not amount to more than a tenth of its total, which is a small proportion for such a mixed body.

The effective strength at the beginning of the siege was eighteen hundred of all ranks. Only one hundred of these belonged to the regular British garrison in Canada—a few staff-officers, twenty-two men of the Royal Artillery, and seventy men of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, a regiment which was to be commanded in Quebec sixteen years later by Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent. The Fusiliers and two hundred and thirty 'Royal Emigrants' were formed into a little battalion under Colonel Maclean, a first-rate officer and Carleton's right-hand man in action. 'His Majesty's Royal Highland Regiment of Emigrants,' which subsequently became the 84th Foot, now known as the 2nd York and Lancaster, was hastily raised in 1775 from the Highland veterans who had settled in the American colonies after the Peace of 1763. Maclean's two hundred and thirty were the first men he could get together in time to reach Quebec. The only other professional fighters were four hundred blue-jackets and thirty-five marines of H.M.SS. Lizard and Hunter, who were formed into a naval battalion under their own officers, Captains Hamilton and McKenzie, Hamilton being made a lieutenant-colonel and McKenzie a major while doing duty ashore. Fifty masters and mates of trading vessels were enrolled in the same battalion. The whole of the shipping was laid up for the winter in the Cul de Sac, which alone made the Lower Town a prize worth taking. The 'British Militia' mustered three hundred and thirty, the 'Canadian Militia' five hundred and forty-three. These two corps included practically all the official and business classes in Quebec and formed nearly half the total combatants. Some of them took no pay and were not bound to service beyond the neighbourhood of Quebec, thus being very much like the Home Guards raised all over Canada and the rest of the Empire during the Great World War of 1914. All the militia wore dark green coats with buff waistcoats and breeches. The total of eighteen hundred was completed by a hundred and twenty 'artificers,' that is, men who would now belong to the Engineers, Ordnance, and Army Service Corps. As the composition of this garrison has been so often misrepresented, it may be as well to state distinctly that the past or present regulars of all kinds, soldiers and sailors together, numbered eight hundred and the militia and other non-regulars a thousand. The French Canadians, very few of whom were or had been regulars, formed less than a third of the whole.

Montgomery and Arnold had about the same total number of men. Sometimes there were more, sometimes less. But what made the real difference, and what really turned the scale, was that the Americans had hardly any regulars and that their effectives rarely averaged three-quarters of their total strength. The balance was also against them in the matter of armament. For, though Morgan's Virginians had many more rifles than were to be found among the British, the Americans in general were not so well off for bayonets and not so well able to use those they had; while the artillery odds were still more against them. Carleton's artillery was not of the best. But it was better than that of the Americans. He decidedly overmatched them in the combined strength of all kinds of ordnance—cannons, carronades, howitzers, mortars, and swivels. Cannons and howitzers fired shot and shell at any range up to the limit then reached, between two and three miles. Carronades were on the principle of a gigantic shotgun, firing masses of bullets with great effect at very short ranges—less than that of a long musket-shot, then reckoned at two hundred yards. The biggest mortars threw 13-inch 224-lb shells to a great distance. But their main use was for high-angle fire, such as that from the suburb of St Roch under the walls of Quebec. Swivels were the smallest kind of ordnance, firing one-, two-, or three-pound balls at short or medium ranges. They were used at convenient points to stop rushes, much like modern machine-guns.

Thanks chiefly to Cramahe, the defences were not nearly so 'ruinous' as Arnold at first had thought them. The walls, however useless against the best siege artillery, were formidable enough against irregular troops and makeshift batteries; while the warehouses and shipping in the Lower Town were protected by two stockades, one straight under Cape Diamond, the other at the corner where the Lower Town turns into the valley of the St Charles. The first was called the Pres-de-Ville, the second the Sault-au-Matelot. The shipping was open to bombardment from the Levis shore. But the Americans had no guns to spare for this till April.

Montgomery's advance was greatly aided by the little flotilla which Easton had captured at Sorel. Montgomery met Arnold at Pointe-aux-Trembles, twenty miles above Quebec, on the 2nd of December and supplied his little half-clad force with the British uniforms taken at St Johns and Chambly. He was greatly pleased with the magnificent physique of Arnold's men, the fittest of an originally well-picked lot. He still had some 'pusillanimous wretches' among his own New Yorkers, who resented the air of superiority affected by Arnold's New Englanders and Morgan's Virginians. He felt a well-deserved confidence in Livingston and some of the English-speaking Canadian 'patriots' whom Livingston had brought into his camp before St Johns in September. But he began to feel more and more doubtful about the French Canadians, most of whom began to feel more and more doubtful about themselves. On the 6th he arrived before Quebec and took up his quarters in Holland House, two miles beyond the walls, at the far end of the Plains of Abraham. The same day he sent Carleton the following summons:

SIR;—Notwithstanding the personal ill-treatment I have received at your hands—notwithstanding your cruelty to the unhappy Prisoners you have taken, the feelings of humanity induce me to have recourse to this expedient to save you from the Destruction which hangs over you. Give me leave, Sir, to assure you that I am well acquainted with your situation. A great extent of works, in their nature incapable of defence, manned with a motley crew of sailors, the greatest part our friends; of citizens, who wish to see us within their walls, & a few of the worst troops who ever stiled themselves Soldiers. The impossibility of relief, and the certain prospect of wanting every necessary of life, should your opponents confine their operations to a simple Blockade, point out the absurdity of resistance. Such is your situation! I am at the head of troops accustomed to Success, confident of the righteousness of the cause they are engaged in, inured to danger, & so highly incensed at your inhumanity, illiberal abuse, and the ungenerous means employed to prejudice them in the mind of the Canadians that it is with difficulty I restrain them till my Batteries are ready from assaulting your works, which afford them a fair opportunity of ample vengeance and just retaliation. Firing upon a flag of truce, hitherto unprecedented, even among savages, prevents my taking the ordinary mode of communicating my sentiments. However, I will at any rate acquit my conscience. Should you persist in an unwarrantable defence, the consequences be upon your own head. Beware of destroying stores of any kind, Publick or Private, as you have done at Montreal and in Three Rivers—If you do, by Heaven, there will be no mercy shown.

Though Montgomery wrote bunkum like the common politician of that and many a later age, he was really a brave soldier. What galled him into fury was 'grave Carleton's' quiet refusal to recognize either him or any other rebel commander as the accredited leader of a hostile army. It certainly must have been exasperating for the general of the Continental Congress to be reduced to such expedients as tying a grandiloquent ultimatum to an arrow and shooting it into the beleaguered town. The charge of firing on flags of truce was another instance of 'talking for Buncombe.' Carleton never fired on any white flag. But he always sent the same answer: that he could hold no communication with any rebels unless they came to implore the king's pardon. This, of course, was an aggravation of his offensive calmness in the face of so much revolutionary rage. To individual rebels of all sorts he was, if anything, over-indulgent. He would not burn the suburbs of Quebec till the enemy forced him to it, though many of the houses that gave the Americans the best cover belonged to rebel Canadians. He went out of his way to be kind to all prisoners, especially if sick or wounded. And it was entirely owing to his restraining influence that the friendly Indians had not raided the border settlements of New England during the summer. Nor was he animated only by the very natural desire of bringing back rebellious subjects to what he thought their true allegiance, as his subsequent actions amply proved. He simply acted with the calm dignity and impartial justice which his position required.

Three days before Christmas the bombardment began in earnest. The non-combatants soon found, to their equal amazement and delight, that a good many shells did very little damage if fired about at random. But news intended to make their flesh creep came in at the same time, and probably had more effect than the shells on the weak-kneed members of the community. Seven hundred scaling-ladders, no quarter if Carleton persisted in holding out, and a prophecy attributed to Montgomery that he would eat his Christmas dinner either in Quebec or in Hell—these were some of the blood-curdling items that came in by petticoat or arrow post. One of the most active purveyors of all this bombast was Jerry Duggan, a Canadian 'patriot' barber now become a Continental major.

But there was a serious side. Deserters and prisoners, as well as British adherents who had escaped, all began to tell the same tale, though with many variations. Montgomery was evidently bent on storming the walls the first dark night. His own orders showed it.

HEAD QUARTERS, HOLLAND HOUSE. Near Quebec, 15th Decr. 1755.

The General having in vain offered the most favourable terms of accommodation to the Governor of Quebec, & having taken every possible step to prevail on the inhabitants to desist from seconding him in his wild scheme of defending the Town—for the speedy reduction of the only hold possessed by the Ministerial Troops in this Province—The soldiers, flushed with continual success, confident of the justice of their cause, & relying on that Providence which has uniformly protected them, will advance with alacrity to the attack of works incapable of being defended by the wretched Garrison posted behind them, consisting of Sailors unacquainted with the use of arms, of Citizens incapable of Soldiers' duty, & of a few miserable Emigrants. The General is confident that a vigorous & spirited attack must be attended with success. The Troops shall have the effects of the Governor, Garrison, & of such as have been active in misleading the Inhabitants & distressing the friends of liberty, equally divided among them, except the 100th share out of the whole, which shall be at the disposal of the General to be given to such soldiers as distinguished themselves by their activity & bravery, to be sold at public auction: the whole to be conducted as soon as the City is in our hands and the inhabitants disarmed.

It was a week after these orders had been written before the first positive news of the threatened assault was brought into town by an escaped British prisoner who, strangely enough, bore the name of Wolfe. Wolfe's escape naturally caused a postponement of Montgomery's design and a further council of war. Unlike most councils of war this one was full of fight. Three feints were to be made at different points while the real attack was to be driven home at Cape Diamond. But just after this decision had been reached two rebel Montrealers came down and, in another debate, carried the day for another plan. These men, Antell and Price, were really responsible for the final plan, which, like its predecessor, did not meet with Montgomery's approval. Montgomery wanted to make a breach before trying the walls. But he was no more than the chairman of a committee; and this egregious committee first decided to storm the unbroken walls and then changed to an attack on the Lower Town only. Antell was Montgomery's engineer. Price was a red-hot agitator. Both were better at politics than soldiering. Their argument was that if the Lower Town could be taken the Quebec militia would force Carleton to surrender in order to save the warehouses, shipping, and other valuable property along the waterfront, and that even if Carleton held out in debate he would soon be brought to his knees by the Americans, who would march through the gates, which were to be opened by the 'patriots' inside.

Another week passed; and Montgomery had not eaten his Christmas dinner either in Quebec or in the other place. But both sides knew the crisis must be fast approaching; for the New Yorkers had sworn that they would not stay a minute later than the end of the year, when their term of enlistment was up. Thus every day that passed made an immediate assault more likely, as Montgomery had to strike before his own men left him. Yet New Year's Eve itself began without the sign of an alarm.

Carleton had been sleeping in his clothes at the Recollets', night after night, so that he might be first on parade at the general rendezvous on the Place d'Armes, which stood near the top of Mountain Hill, the only road between the Upper and the Lower Town. Officers and men off duty had been following his example; and every one was ready to turn out at a moment's notice.

A north-easterly snowstorm was blowing furiously, straight up the St Lawrence, making Quebec a partly seen blur to the nearest American patrols and the Heights of Abraham a wild sea of whirling drifts to the nearest British sentries. One o'clock passed, and nothing stirred. But when two o'clock struck at Holland House Montgomery rose and began to put the council's plan in operation. The Lower Town was to be attacked at both ends. The Pres-de-Ville barricade was to be carried by Montgomery and the Sault-au-Matelot by Arnold, while Livingston was to distract Carleton's attention as much as possible by making a feint against the landward walls, where the British still expected the real attack. Livingston's Canadian fighting 'patriots' waded through the drifts, against the storm, across the Plains, and took post close in on the far side of Cape Diamond, only eighty yards from the same walls that were to have been stormed some days before. Jerry Duggan's parasitic Canadian 'patriots' took post in the suburb of St John and thence round to Palace Gate. Montgomery led his own column straight to Wolfe's Cove, whence he marched in along the narrow path between the cliff and the St Lawrence till he reached the spot at the foot of Cape Diamond just under the right of Livingston's line. Arnold, whose quarters were in the valley of the St Charles, took post in St Roch, with a mortar battery to fire against the walls and a column of men to storm the Sault-au-Matelot. Livingston's and Jerry Duggan's whole command numbered about four hundred men, Montgomery's five hundred, Arnold's six. The opposing totals were fifteen hundred Americans against seventeen hundred British. There was considerable risk of confusion between friend and foe, as most of the Americans, especially Arnold's men, wore captured British uniforms with nothing to distinguish them but odds and ends of their former kits and a sort of paper hatband bearing the inscription Liberty or Death.

A little after four the sentries on the walls at Cape Diamond saw lights flashing about in front of them and were just going to call the guard when Captain Malcolm Fraser of the Royal Emigrants came by on his rounds and saw other lights being set out in regular order like lamps in a street. He instantly turned out the guards and pickets. The drums beat to arms. Every church bell in the city pealed forth its alarm into that wild night. The bugles blew. The men off duty swarmed on to the Place d'Armes, where Carleton, calm and intrepid as ever, took post with the general reserve and waited. There was nothing for him to do just yet. Everything that could have been foreseen had already been amply provided for; and in his quiet confidence his followers found their own.

Towards five o'clock two green rockets shot up from Montgomery's position beside the Anse des Meres under Cape Diamond. This was the signal for attack. Montgomery's column immediately struggled on again along the path leading round the foot of the Cape towards the Pres-de-Ville barricade. Livingston's serious 'patriots' on the top of the Cape changed their dropping shots into a hot fire against the walls; while Jerry Duggan's little mob of would-be looters shouted and blazed away from safer cover in the suburbs of St John and St Roch. Arnold's mortars pitched shells all over the town; while his storming-party advanced towards the Sault-au-Matelot barricade. Carleton, naturally anxious about the landward walls, sent some of the British militia to reinforce the men at Cape Diamond, which, as he knew, Montgomery considered the best point of attack. The walls lower down did not seem to be in any danger from Jerry Duggan's 'patriots,' whose noisy demonstration was at once understood to be nothing but an empty feint. The walls facing the St Charles were well manned and well gunned by the naval battalion. Those facing the St Lawrence, though weak in themselves, were practically impregnable, as the cliffs could not be scaled by any formed body. The Lower Town, however, was by no means so safe, in spite of its two barricades. The general uproar was now so great that Carleton could not distinguish the firing there from what was going on elsewhere. But it was at these two points that the real attack was rapidly developing.

The first decisive action took place at Pres-de-Ville. The guard there consisted of fifty men—John Coffin, who was a merchant of Quebec, Sergeant Hugh McQuarters of the Royal Artillery, Captain Barnsfair, a merchant skipper, with fifteen mates and skippers like himself, and thirty French Canadians under Captain Chabot and Lieutenant Picard. These fifty men had to guard a front of only as many feet. On their right Cape Diamond rose almost sheer. On their left raged the stormy St Lawrence. They had a tiny block-house next to the cliff and four small guns on the barricade, all double-charged with canister and grape. They had heard the dropping shots on the top of the Cape for nearly an hour and had been quick to notice the change to a regular hot fire. But they had no idea whether their own post was to be attacked or not till they suddenly saw the head of Montgomery's column halting within fifty paces of them. A man came forward cautiously and looked at the barricade. The storm was in his face. The defences were wreathed in whirling snow. And the men inside kept silent as the grave. When he went back a little group stood for a couple of minutes in hurried consultation. Then Montgomery waved his sword, called out 'Come on, brave boys, Quebec is ours!' and led the charge. The defenders let the Americans get about half-way before Barnsfair shouted 'Fire!' Then the guns and muskets volleyed together, cutting down the whole front of the densely massed column. Montgomery, his two staff-officers, and his ten leading men were instantly killed. Some more farther back were wounded. And just as the fifty British fired their second round the rest of the five hundred Americans turned and ran in wild confusion.

A few minutes later a man whose identity was never established came running from the Lower Town to say that Arnold's men had taken the Sault-au-Matelot barricade. If this was true it meant that the Pres-de-Ville fifty would be caught between two fires. Some of them made as if to run back and reach Mountain Hill before the Americans could cut them off. But Coffin at once threatened to kill the first man to move; and by the time an artillery officer had arrived with reinforcements perfect order had been restored. This officer, finding he was not wanted there, sent back to know where else he was to go, and received an answer telling him to hurry to the Sault-au-Matelot. When he arrived there, less than half a mile off, he found that desperate street fighting had been going on for over an hour.

Arnold's advance had begun at the same time as Livingston's demonstration and Montgomery's attack. But his task was very different and the time required much longer. There were three obstacles to be overcome. First, his men had to run the gauntlet of the fire from the bluejackets ranged along the Grand Battery, which faced the St Charles at its mouth and overlooked the narrow little street of Sous-le-Cap at a height of fifty or sixty feet. Then they had to take the small advanced barricade, which stood a hundred yards on the St Charles side of the actual Sault-au-Matelot or Sailor's Leap, which is the north-easterly point of the Quebec promontory and nearly a hundred feet high. Finally, they had to round this point and attack the regular Sault-au-Matelot barricade. This second barricade was about a hundred yards long, from the rock to the river. It crossed Sault-au-Matelot Street and St Peter Street, which were the same then as now. But it ended on a wharf half-way down the modern St James Street, as the outer half of this street was then a natural strand completely covered at high tide. It was much closer than the Pres-de-Ville barricade was to Mountain Hill, at the top of which Carleton held his general reserve ready in the Place d'Armes; and it was fairly strong in material and armament. But it was at first defended by only a hundred men.

The American forlorn hope, under Captain Oswald, got past most of the Grand Battery unscathed. But by the time the main body was following under Morgan the British blue-jackets were firing down from the walls at less than point-blank range. The driving snow, the clumps of bushes on the cliff, and the little houses in the street below all gave the Americans some welcome cover. But many of them were hit; while the gun they were towing through the drifts on a sleigh stuck fast and had to be abandoned. Captain Dearborn, the future commander-in-chief of the American army in the War of 1812, noted in his diary that he 'met the wounded men very thick' as he was bringing up the rear. When the forlorn hope reached the advanced barricade Arnold halted it till the supports had come up. The loss of the gun and the worrying his main body was receiving from the sailors along the Grand Battery spoilt his original plan of smashing in the barricade by shell fire while Morgan circled round its outer flank on the ice of the tidal flats and took it in rear. So he decided on a frontal attack. When he thought he had a fair chance he stepped to the front and shouted, 'Now, boys, all together, rush!' But before he could climb the barricade he was shot through the leg. For some time he propped himself up against a house and, leaning on his rifle, continued encouraging his men, who were soon firing through the port-holes as well as over the top. But presently growing faint from loss of blood he had to be carried off the field to the General Hospital on the banks of the St Charles.

The men now called out for a lead from Morgan, who climbed a ladder, leaped the top, and fell under a gun inside. In another minute the whole forlorn hope had followed him, while the main body came close behind. The guard, not strong in numbers and weak in being composed of young militiamen, gave way but kept on firing. 'Down with your arms if you want quarter!' yelled Morgan, whose men were in overwhelming strength; and the guard surrendered. A little way beyond, just under the bluff of the Sault-au-Matelot, the British supports, many of whom were Seminary students, also surrendered to Morgan, who at once pressed on, round the corner of the Sault-au-Matelot, and halted in sight of the second or regular barricade. What was to be done now? Where was Montgomery? How strong was the barricade; and had it been reinforced? It could not be turned because the cliff rose sheer on one flank while the icy St Lawrence lashed the other. Had Morgan known that there were only a hundred men behind it when he attacked its advanced barricade he might have pressed on at all costs and carried it by assault. But it looked strong, there were guns on its platforms, and it ran across two streets. His hurried council of war over-ruled him, as Montgomery's council had over-ruled the original plan of storming the walls; and so his men began a desultory fight in the streets and from the houses.

This was fatal to American success. The original British hundred were rapidly reinforced. The artillery officer who had found that he was not needed at the Pres-de-Ville after Montgomery's defeat, and who had hurried across the intervening half-mile, now occupied the corner houses, enlarged the embrasures, and trained his guns on the houses occupied by the enemy. Detachments of Fusiliers and Royal Emigrants also arrived, as did the thirty-five masters and mates of merchant vessels who were not on guard with Barnsfair at the Pres-de-Ville. Thus, what with soldiers, sailors, and militiamen of both races, the main Sault-au-Matelot barricade was made secure against being rushed like the outer one. But there was plenty of fighting, with some confusion at close quarters caused by the British uniforms which both sides were wearing. A Herculean sailor seized the first ladder the Americans set against the barricade, hauled it up, and set it against the window of a house out of the far end of which the enemy were firing. Major Nairne and Lieutenant Dambourges of the Royal Emigrants at once climbed in at the head of a storming-party and wild work followed with the bayonet. All the Americans inside were either killed or captured. Meanwhile a vigorous British nine-pounder had been turned on another house they occupied. This house was likewise battered in, so that its surviving occupants had to run into the street, where they were well plied with musketry by the regulars and militiamen. The chance for a sortie then seeming favourable, Lieutenant Anderson of the Navy headed his thirty-five merchant mates and skippers in a rush along Sault-au-Matelot Street. But his effort was premature. Morgan shot him dead, and Morgan's Virginians drove the seamen back inside the barricade.

Carleton had of course kept in perfect touch with every phase of the attack and defence; and now, fearing no surprise against the walls in the growing daylight, had decided on taking Arnold's men in rear. To do this he sent Captain Lawes of the Royal Engineers and Captain McDougall of the Royal Emigrants with a hundred and twenty men out through Palace Gate. This detachment had hardly reached the advanced barricade before they fell in with the enemy's rearguard, which they took by complete surprise and captured to a man. Leaving McDougall to secure these prisoners before following on, Lawes pushed eagerly forward, round the corner of the Sault-au-Matelot cliff, and, running in among the Americans facing the main barricade, called out, 'You are all my prisoners!' 'No, we're not; you're ours!' they answered. 'No, no,' replied Lawes, as coolly as if on parade 'don't mistake yourselves, I vow to God you're mine!' 'But where are your men?' asked the astonished Americans; and then Lawes suddenly found that he was utterly alone! The roar of the storm and the work of securing the prisoners on the far side of the advanced barricade had prevented the men who should have followed him from understanding that only a few were needed with McDougall. But Lawes put a bold face on it and answered, 'O, Ho, make yourselves easy! My men are all round here and they'll be with you in a twinkling.' He was then seized and disarmed. Some of the Americans called out, 'Kill him! Kill him!' But a Major Meigs protected him. The whole parley had lasted about ten minutes when McDougall came running up with the missing men, released Lawes, and made prisoners of the nearest Americans. Lawes at once stepped forward and called on the rest to surrender. Morgan was for cutting his way through. A few men ran round by the wharf and escaped on the tidal flats of the St Charles. But, after a hurried consultation, the main body, including Morgan, laid down their arms. This was decisive. The British had won the fight.

The complete British loss in killed and wounded was wonderfully small, only thirty, just one-tenth of the corresponding American loss, which was large out of all proportion. Nearly half of the fifteen hundred Americans had gone—over four hundred prisoners and about three hundred killed and wounded. Nor were the mere numbers the most telling point about it; for the worse half escaped—Livingston's Montreal 'patriots,' many of whom had done very little fighting, Montgomery's time-expired New Yorkers, most of whom wanted to go home, and Jerry Duggan's miscellaneous rabble, all of whom wanted a maximum of plunder with a minimum of war.

The British victory was as nearly perfect as could have been desired. It marked the turn of the tide in a desperate campaign which might have resulted in the total loss of Canada. And it was of the greatest significance and happiest augury because all the racial elements of this new and vast domain had here united for the first time in defence of that which was to be their common heritage. In Carleton's little garrison of regulars and militia, of bluejackets, marines, and merchant seamen, there were Frenchmen and French Canadians, there were Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotsmen, Welshmen, Orcadians, and Channel Islanders, there were a few Newfoundlanders, and there mere a good many of those steadfast Royal Emigrants who may be fitly called the forerunners of the United Empire Loyalists. Yet, in spite of this remarkable significance, no public memorial of Carleton has ever been set up; and it was only in the twentieth century that the Dominion first thought of commemorating his most pregnant victory by placing tablets to mark the sites of the two famous barricades.

As soon as things had quieted down within the walls Carleton sent out search-parties to bring in the dead for decent burial and to see if any of the wounded had been overlooked. James Thompson, the assistant engineer, saw a frozen hand protruding from a snowdrift at Pres-de-Ville. It was Montgomery's. The thirteen bodies were dug out and Thompson was ordered to have a 'genteel coffin made for Mr Montgomery,' who was buried in the wall just above St Louis Gate by the Anglican chaplain. Thompson kept Montgomery's sword, which was given to the Livingston family more than a century later.

The beleaguerment continued, in a half-hearted way, till the spring. The Americans received various small reinforcements, which eventually brought their total up to what it had been under Montgomery's command. But there were no more assaults. Arnold grew dissatisfied and finally went to Montreal; while Wooster, the new general, who arrived on the 1st of April, was himself succeeded by Thomas, an ex-apothecary, on the 1st of May. The suburb of St Roch was burnt down after the victory; so the American snipers were bereft of some very favourite cover, and this, with other causes, kept the bulk of the besiegers at an ineffective distance from the walls.

The British garrison had certain little troubles of its own; for discipline always tends to become irksome after a great effort. Carleton was obliged to stop the retailing of spirits for fear the slacker men would be getting out of hand. The guards and duties were made as easy as possible, especially for the militia. But the 'snow-shovel parade' was an imperative necessity. The winter was very stormy, and the drifts would have frequently covered the walls and even the guns if they had not promptly been dug out. The cold was also unusually severe. One early morning in January an angry officer was asking a sentry why he hadn't challenged him, when the sentry said, 'God bless your Honour! and I'm glad you're come, for I'm blind!' Then it was found that his eyelids were frozen fast together.

News came in occasionally from the outside world. There was intense indignation among the garrison when they learned that the American commanders in Montreal were imprisoning every Canadian officer who would not surrender his commission. Such an unheard-of outrage was worthy of Walker. But others must have thought of it; for Walker was now in Philadelphia giving all the evidence he could against Prescott and other British officers. Bad news for the rebels was naturally welcomed, especially anything about their growing failure to raise troops in Canada. On hearing of Montgomery's defeat the Continental Congress had passed a resolution, addressed to the 'Inhabitants of Canada' declaring that 'we will never abandon you to the unrelenting fury of your and our enemies.' But there were no trained soldiers to back this up; and the raw militia, though often filled with zeal and courage, could do nothing to redress the increasingly adverse balance. In the middle of March the Americans sent in a summons. But Carleton refused to receive it; and the garrison put a wooden horse and a bundle of hay on the walls with a placard bearing the inscription, 'When this horse has eaten this bunch of hay we will surrender.' Some excellent practice made with 13-inch shells sent the Americans flying from their new battery at Levis; and by the 17th of March one of the several exultant British diarists, whose anonymity must have covered an Irish name, was able to record that 'this, being St Patrick's Day, the Governor, who is a true Hibernian, has requested the garrison to put off keeping it till the 17th of May, when he promises, they shall be enabled to do it properly, and with the usual solemnities.'

A fortnight later a plot concerted between the American prisoners and their friends outside was discovered just in time. With tools supplied by traitors they were to work their way out of their quarters, overpower the guard at the nearest gate, set fire to the nearest houses in three different streets, turn the nearest guns inwards on the town, and shout 'Liberty for ever!' as an additional signal to the storming-party that was to be waiting to confirm their success. Carleton seized the chance of turning this scheme against the enemy. Three safe bonfires were set ablaze. The marked guns were turned inwards and fired at the town with blank charges. And the preconcerted shout was raised with a will. But the besiegers never stirred. After this the Old-Countrymen among the prisoners, who had taken the oath and enlisted in the garrison, were disarmed and confined, while the rest were more strictly watched.

Two brave attempts were made by French Canadians to reach Quebec with reinforcements, one headed by a seigneur, the other by a parish priest. Carleton had sent word to M. de Beaujeu, seigneur of Crane Island, forty miles below Quebec, asking him to see if he could cut off the American detachment on the Levis shore. De Beaujeu raised three hundred and fifty men. But Arnold sent over reinforcements. A habitant betrayed his fellow-countrymen's advance-guard. A dozen French Canadians were then killed or wounded while forty were taken prisoners; whereupon the rest dispersed to their homes. The other attempt was made by Father Bailly, whose little force of about fifty men was also betrayed. Entrapped in a country-house these men fought bravely till nearly half their number had been killed or wounded and the valiant priest had been mortally hit. They then surrendered to a much stronger force which had lost more men than they.

This was on the 6th of April, just before Arnold was leaving in disgust. Wooster made an effort to use his new artillery to advantage by converging the fire of three batteries, one close in on the Heights of Abraham, another from across the mouth of the St Charles, and the third from Levis. But the combination failed: the batteries were too light for the work and overmatched by the guns on the walls, the practice was bad, and the effect was nil. On the 3rd of May the new general, Thomas, an enterprising man, tried a fireship, which was meant to destroy all the shipping in the Cul de Sac. It came on, under full sail, in a very threatening manner. But the crew lost their nerve at the critical moment, took to the boats too soon, and forgot to lash the helm. The vessel immediately flew up into the wind and, as the tidal stream was already changing, began to drift away from the Cul de Sac just when she burst into flame. The result, as described by an enthusiastic British diarist, was that 'she affoard'd a very pritty prospect while she was floating down the River, every now & then sending up Sky rackets, firing of Cannon or bursting of Shells, & so continued till She disappear'd in the Channell.'

Three days later, on the 6th of May, when the beleaguerment had lasted precisely five months, the sound of distant gunfire came faintly up the St Lawrence with the first breath of the dawn wind from the east. The sentries listened to make sure; then called the sergeants of the guards, who sent word to the officers on duty, who, in their turn, sent word to Carleton. By this time there could be no mistake. The breeze was freshening; the sound was gradually nearing Quebec; and there could hardly be room for doubting that it came from the vanguard of the British fleet. The drums beat to arms, the church bells rang, the news flew round to every household in Quebec; and before the tops of the Surprise frigate were seen over the Point of Levy every battery was fully manned, every battalion was standing ready on the Grand Parade, and every non-combatant man, woman, and child was lining the seaward wall. The regulation shot was fired across her bows as she neared the city; whereupon she fired three guns to leeward, hoisted the private signal, and showed the Union Jack. Then, at last, a cheer went up that told both friend and foe of British victory and American defeat. By a strange coincidence the parole for this triumphal day was St George, while the parole appointed for the victorious New Year's Eve had been St Denis; so that the patron saints of France and England happen to be associated with the two great days on which the stronghold of Canada was saved by land and sea.

The same tide brought in two other men-of-war. Some soldiers of the 29th, who were on board the Surprise, were immediately landed, together with the marines from all three vessels. Carleton called for volunteers from the militia to attack the Americans at once; and nearly every man, both of the French- and of the English-speaking corps, stepped forward. There was joy in every heart that the day for striking back had come at last. The columns marched gaily through the gates and deployed into line at the double on the Heights outside. The Americans fired a few hurried shots and then ran for dear life, leaving their dinners cooking, and, in some cases, even their arms behind them. The Plains were covered with flying enemies and strewn with every sort of impediment to flight, from a cannon to a loaf of bread. Quebec had been saved by British sea-power; and, with it, the whole vast dominion of which it was the key.



CHAPTER VI

DELIVERANCE 1776

The Continental Congress had always been anxious to have delegates from the Fourteenth Colony. But as these never came the Congress finally decided to send a special commission to examine the whole civil and military state of Canada and see what could be done. The news of Montgomery's death and defeat was a very unwelcome surprise. But reinforcements were being sent; the Canadians could surely be persuaded; and a Congressional commission must be able to set things right. This commission was a very strong one. Benjamin Franklin was the chairman. Samuel Chase of Maryland and Charles Carroll of Carrollton were the other members. Carroll's brother, the future archbishop of Baltimore, accompanied them as a sort of ecclesiastical diplomatist. Franklin's prestige and the fact that he was to set up a 'free' printing-press in Montreal were to work wonders with the educated classes at once and with the uneducated masses later on. Chase would appeal to all the reasonable 'moderates.' Carroll, a great landlord and the nearest approach yet made to an American millionaire, was expected to charm the Canadian noblesse; while the fact that he and his exceedingly diplomatic brother were devout Roman Catholics was thought to be by itself a powerful argument with the clergy.

When they reached St Johns towards the end of April the commissioners sent on a courier to announce their arrival and prepare for their proper reception in Montreal. But the ferryman at Laprairie positively refused to accept Continental paper money at any price; and it was only when a 'Friend of Liberty' gave him a dollar in silver that he consented to cross the courier over the St Lawrence. The same hitch occurred in Montreal, where the same Friend of Liberty had to pay in silver before the cab-drivers consented to accept a fare either from him or from the commissioners. Even the name of Carroll of Carrollton was conjured with in vain. The French Canadians remembered Bigot's bad French paper. Their worst suspicions were being confirmed about the equally bad American paper. So they demanded nothing but hard cash—argent dur. However, the first great obstacle had been successfully overcome; and so, on the strength of five borrowed silver dollars, the accredited commissioners of the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies made their state entry into what they still hoped to call the Fourteenth Colony. But silver dollars were scarce; and on the 1st of May the crestfallen commissioners had to send the Congress a financial report which may best be summed up in a pithy phrase which soon became proverbial—'Not worth a Continental.'

On the 10th of May they heard the bad news from Quebec and increased the panic among their Montreal sympathizers by hastily leaving the city lest they should be cut off by a British man-of-war. Franklin foresaw the end and left for Philadelphia accompanied by the Reverend John Carroll, whose twelve days of disheartening experience with the leading French-Canadian clergy had convinced him that they were impervious to any arguments or blandishments emanating from the Continental Congress. It was a sad disillusionment for the commissioners, who had expected to be settling the affairs of a fourteenth colony instead of being obliged to leave the city from which they were to have enlightened the people with a free press. In their first angry ignorance they laid the whole blame on their unfortunate army for its 'disgraceful flight' from Quebec. A week later, when Chase and Charles Carroll ought to have known better, they were still assuring the Congress that this 'shameful retreat' was 'the principal cause of all the disorders' in the army; and even after the whole story ought to have been understood neither they nor the Congress gave their army its proper due. But, as a matter of fact, the American position had become untenable the moment the British fleet began to threaten the American line of communication with Montreal. For the rest, the American volunteers, all things considered, had done very well indeed. Arnold's march was a truly magnificent feat. Morgan's men had fought with great courage at the Sault-au-Matelot. And though Montgomery's assault might well have been better planned and executed, we must remember that the good plan, which had been rejected, was the military one, while the bad plan, which had been adopted, was concocted by mere politicians. Nor were 'all the disorders' so severely condemned by the commissioners due to the army alone. Far from it, indeed. The root of 'all the disorders' lay in the fact that a makeshift government was obliged to use makeshift levies for an invasion which required a regular army supported by a fleet.

On the 19th of May another disaster happened, this time above Montreal. The Congress had not felt strong enough to attack the western posts. So Captain Forster of the 8th Foot, finding that he was free to go elsewhere, had come down from Oswegatchie (the modern Ogdensburg) with a hundred whites and two hundred Indians and made prisoners of four hundred and thirty Americans at the Cedars, about thirty miles up the St Lawrence from Montreal. Forster was a very good officer. Butterfield, the American commander, was a very bad one. And that made all the difference. After two days of feeble and misdirected defence Butterfield surrendered three hundred and fifty men. The other eighty were reinforcements who walked into the trap next day. Forster now had four American prisoners for every white soldier of his own; while Arnold was near by, having come up from Sorel to Lachine with a small but determined force. So Forster, carefully pointing out to his prisoners their danger if the Indians should be reinforced and run wild, offered them their freedom on condition that they should be regarded as being exchanged for an equal number of British prisoners in American hands. This was agreed to and never made a matter of dispute afterwards. But the second article Butterfield accepted was a stipulation that, while the released British were to be free to fight again, the released Americans were not; and it was over this point that a bitter controversy raged. The British authorities maintained that all the terms were binding because they had been accepted by an officer commissioned by the Congress. The Congress maintained that the disputed article was obtained by an unfair threat of an Indian massacre and that it was so one-sided as to be good for nothing but repudiation.

'The Affair at the Cedars' thus became a sorely vexed question. In itself it would have died out among later and more important issues if it had not been used as a torch to fire American public opinion at a time when the Congress was particularly anxious to make the Thirteen Colonies as anti-British as possible. Most of Forster's men were Indians. He had reminded Butterfield how dangerous an increasing number of Indians might become. Butterfield was naturally anxious to prove that he had yielded only to overwhelming odds and horrifying risks. Americans in general were ready to believe anything bad about the Indians and the British. The temptation and the opportunity seemed made for each other. And so a quite imaginary Indian massacre conveniently appeared in the American news of the day and helped to form the kind of public opinion which was ardently desired by the party of revolt.

The British evidence in this and many another embittering dispute about the Indians need not be cited, since the following items of American evidence do ample justice to both sides. In the spring of 1775 the Massachusetts Provincial Congress sent Samuel Kirkland to exhort the Iroquois 'to whet their hatchet and be prepared to defend our liberties and lives'; while Ethan Allen asked the Indians round Vermont to treat him 'like a brother and ambush the regulars.' In 1776 the Continental Congress secretly resolved 'that it is highly expedient to engage the Indians in the service of the United Colonies.' This was before the members knew about the Affair at the Cedars. A few days later Washington was secretly authorized to raise two thousand Indians; while agents were secretly sent 'to engage the Six Nations in our Interest, on the best terms that can be procured.' Within three weeks of this secret arrangement the Declaration of Independence publicly accused the king of trying 'to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages.' Four days after this public accusation the Congress gave orders for raising Indians along 'the Penobscot, the St John, and in Nova Scotia'; and an entry to that effect was made in its Secret Journal. Yet, before the month was out, the same Congress publicly appealed to 'The People of Ireland' in the following words: 'The wild and barbarous savages of the wilderness have been solicited by gifts to take up the hatchet against us, and instigated to deluge our settlements with the blood of defenceless women and children.'

The American defeats at Quebec and at the Cedars completely changed the position of the two remaining commissioners. They had expected to control a victorious advance. They found themselves the highest authority present with a disastrous retreat. Thereupon they made blunder after blunder. Public interest and parliamentary control are the very life of armies and navies in every country which enjoys the blessings of self-government. But civilian interference is death. Yet Chase and Carroll practically abolished rank in the disintegrating army by becoming an open court of appeal to every junior with a grievance or a plan. There never was an occasion on which military rule was more essential in military matters. Yet, though they candidly admitted that they had 'neither abilities nor inclination' to command, these wretched misrulers tried to do their duty both to the Congress and the army by turning the camp into a sort of town meeting where the best orders had no chance whatever against the loudest 'sentiments.' They had themselves found the root of all evil in the retreat from Quebec. Their army, like every impartial critic, found it in 'the Commissioners and the smallpox'—with the commissioners easily first. The smallpox had been bad enough at Quebec. It became far worse at Sorel. There were few doctors, fewer medicines, and not a single hospital. The reinforcements melted away with the army they were meant to strengthen. Famine threatened both, even in May. Finally the commissioners left for home at the end of the month. But even their departure could no longer make the army's burden light enough to bear.

Thomas, the ex-apothecary, who did his best to stem the adverse tide of trouble, caught the smallpox, became blind, and died at the beginning of June. Sullivan, the fourth commander in less than half a year, having determined that one more effort should be made, arrived at Sorel with new battalions after innumerable difficulties by the way. He was led to believe that Carleton's reinforcements had come from Nova Scotia, not from England; and this encouraged him to push on farther. He was naturally of a very sanguine temper; and Thompson, his second-in-command, heartily approved of the dash. The new troops cheered up and thought of taking Quebec itself. But, after getting misled by their guide, floundering about in bottomless bogs, and losing a great deal of very precious time, they found Three Rivers defended by entrenchments, superior numbers, and the vanguard of the British fleet. Nevertheless they attacked bravely on the 8th of June. But, taken in front and flank by well-drilled regulars and well-handled men-of-war, they presently broke and fled. Every avenue of escape was closed as they wandered about the woods and bogs. But Carleton, who came up from Quebec after the battle was all over, purposely opened the way to Sorel. He had done his best to win the hearts of his prisoners at Quebec and had succeeded so well that when they returned to Crown Point they were kept away from the rest of the American army lest their account of his kindness should affect its anti-British zeal. Now that he was in overwhelming force he thought he saw an even better chance of earning gratitude from rebels and winning converts to the loyal side by a still greater act of clemency.

The battle of Three Rivers was the last action fought on Canadian soil. The American army retreated to Sorel and up the Richelieu to St Johns, where it was joined by Arnold, who had just evacuated Montreal. Most of the Friends of Liberty in Canada fled either with or before their beaten forces. So, like the ebbing of a whole river system, the main and tributary streams of fugitives drew south towards Lake Champlain. The neutral French Canadians turned against them at once; though not to the extent of making an actual attack. The habitant cared nothing for the incomprehensible constitutionalities over which different kinds of British foreigners were fighting their exasperating civil war. But he did know what the king's big fleet and army meant. He did begin to feel that his own ways of life were safer with the loyal than with the rebel side. And he quite understood that he had been forced to give a good deal for nothing ever since the American commissioners had authorized their famishing army to commandeer his supplies and pay him with their worthless 'Continentals.'

From St Johns the worn-out Americans crawled homewards in stray, exhausted parties, dropping fast by the way as they went. 'I did not look into a hut or a tent,' wrote a horrified observer, 'in which I did not find a dead or dying man.' Disorganization became so complete that no exact returns were ever made up. But it is known that over ten thousand armed men crossed into Canada from first to last and that not far short of half this total either found their death beyond the line or brought it back with them to Lake Champlain.

It was on what long afterwards became Dominion Day—the 1st of July—that the ruined American forces reassembled at Crown Point, having abandoned all hope of making Canada the Fourteenth Colony. Three days later the disappointed Thirteen issued the Declaration of Independence which virtually proclaimed that Canadians and Americans should thenceforth live a separate life.



CHAPTER VII

THE COUNTERSTROKE 1776-1778

Six thousand British troops, commanded by Burgoyne, and four thousand Germans, commanded by Baron Riedesel, had arrived at Quebec before the battle of Three Rivers. Quebec itself had then been left to the care of a German garrison under a German commandant, 'that excellent man, Colonel Baum,' while the great bulk of the army had marched up the St Lawrence, as we have seen already. Such a force as this new one of Carleton's was expected to dismay the rebel colonies. And so, to a great extent, it did. With a much larger force in the colonies themselves the king was confidently expected to master his unruly subjects, no matter how much they proclaimed their independence. The Loyalists were encouraged. The trimmers prepared to join them. Only those steadfast Americans who held their cause dearer than life itself were still determined to venture all. But they formed the one party that really knew its own mind. This gave them a great advantage over the king's party, which, hampered at every turn by the opposition in the mother country, was never quite sure whether it ought to strike hard or gently in America.

On one point, however, everybody was agreed. The command of Lake Champlain was essential to whichever side would hold its own. The American forces at Crown Point might be too weak for the time being. But Arnold knew that even ten thousand British soldiers could not overrun the land without a naval force to help them. So he got together a flotilla which had everything its own way during the time that Carleton was laboriously building a rival flotilla on the Richelieu with a very scanty supply of ship-wrights and materials. Arnold, moreover, could devote his whole attention to the work, makeshift as it had to be; while Carleton was obliged to keep moving about the province in an effort to bring it into some sort of order after the late invasion. Throughout the summer the British army held the line of the Richelieu all the way south as far as Isle-aux-Noix, very near the lake and the line. But Carleton's flotilla could not set sail from St Johns till October 5, by which time the main body of his army was concentrated round Pointe-au-Fer, at the northern end of the lake, ninety miles north of the American camp at Crown Point.

It was a curious situation for a civil and military governor to be hoisting his flag as a naval commander-in-chief, however small the fleet might be. But it is commonly ignored that, down to the present day, the governor-general of Canada is appointed 'Vice-Admiral of the Same' in his commissions from the Crown. Carleton of course carried expert naval officers with him and had enough professional seamen to work the vessels and lay the guns. But, though Captain Pringle manoeuvred the flotilla and Lieutenant Dacre handled the flagship Carleton, the actual command remained in Carleton's own hands. The capital ship (and the only real square-rigged 'ship') of this Lilliputian fleet was Pringle's Inflexible, which had been taken up the Richelieu in sections and hauled past the portages with immense labour before reaching St Johns, whence there is a clear run upstream to Lake Champlain. The Inflexible carried thirty guns, mostly 12-pounders, and was an overmatch for quite the half of Arnold's decidedly weaker flotilla. The Lady Maria was a sort of sister ship to the Carleton. The little armada was completed by a 'gondola' with six 9-pounders, by twenty gunboats and four longboats, each carrying a single piece, and by many small craft used as transports.

On the 11th of October Carleton's whole naval force was sailing south when one of Arnold's vessels was seen making for Valcour Island, a few miles still farther south on the same, or western, side of Lake Champlain. Presently the Yankee ran ashore on the southern end of the island, where she was immediately attacked by some British small craft while the Inflexible sailed on. Then, to the intense disgust of the Inflexible's crew, Arnold's complete flotilla was suddenly discovered drawn up in a masterly position between the mainland and the island. It was too late for the Inflexible to beat back now. But the rest of Carleton's flotilla turned in to the attack. Arnold's flanks rested on the island and the mainland. His rear could be approached only by beating back against a bad wind all the way round the outside of Valcour Island; and, even if this manoeuvre could have been performed, the British attack on his rear from the north could have been made only in a piecemeal way, because the channel was there at its narrowest, with a bad obstruction in the middle. So, for every reason, a frontal attack from the south was the one way of closing with him. The fight was furious while it lasted and seemingly decisive when it ended. Arnold's best vessel, the Royal Savage, which he had taken at St Johns the year before, was driven ashore and captured. The others were so severely mauled that when the victorious British anchored their superior force in line across Arnold's front there seemed to be no chance for him to escape the following day. But that night he performed an even more daring and wonderful feat than Bouchette had performed the year before when paddling Carleton through the American lines among the islands opposite Sorel. Using muffled sweeps, with consummate skill he slipped all his remaining vessels between the mainland and the nearest British gunboat, and was well on his way to Crown Point before his escape had been discovered. Next day Carleton chased south. The day after he destroyed the whole of the enemy's miniature sea-power as a fighting force. But the only three serviceable vessels got away; while Arnold burnt everything else likely to fall into British hands. So Carleton had no more than his own reduced flotilla to depend on when he occupied Crown Point.

A vexed question, destined to form part of a momentous issue, now arose. Should Ticonderoga be attacked at once or not? It commanded the only feasible line of march from Montreal to New York; and no force from Canada could therefore attack the new republic effectively without taking it first. But the season was late. The fort was strong, well gunned, and well manned. Carleton's reconnaissance convinced him that he could have little chance of reducing it quickly, if at all, with the means at hand, especially as the Americans had supplies close by at Lake George, while he was now a hundred miles south of his base. A winter siege was impossible. Sufficient supplies could never be brought through the dense, snow-encumbered bush, all the way from Canada, even if the long and harassing line of communications had not been everywhere open to American attack. Moreover, Carleton's army was in no way prepared for a midwinter campaign, even if it could have been supplied with food and warlike stores. So he very sensibly turned his back on Lake Champlain until the following year.

That was the gayest winter Quebec had seen since Montcalm's first season, twenty years before. Carleton had been knighted for his services and was naturally supposed to be the chosen leader for the next campaign. The ten thousand troops gave confidence to the loyalists and promised success for the coming campaign. The clergy were getting their disillusioned parishioners back to the fold beneath the Union Jack; while Jean Ba'tis'e himself was fain to admit that his own ways of life and the money he got for his goods were very much safer with les Angla's than with the revolutionists, whom he called les Bastonna's because most trade between Quebec and the Thirteen Colonies was carried on by vessels hailing from the port of Boston. The seigneurs were delighted. They still hoped for commissions as regulars, which too few of them ever received; and they were charmed with the little viceregal court over which Lady Maria Carleton, despite her youthful two-and-twenty summers, presided with a dignity inherited from the premier ducal family of England and brought to the acme of conventional perfection by her intimate experience of Versailles. On New Year's Eve Carleton gave a public fete, a state dinner, and a ball to celebrate the anniversary of the British victory over Montgomery and Arnold. The bishop held a special thanksgiving and made all notorious renegades do open penance. Nothing seemed wanting to bring the New Year in under the happiest auspices since British rule began.

But, quite unknown to Carleton, mischief was brewing in the Colonial Office of that unhappy government which did so many stupid things and got the credit for so many more. In 1775 the well-meaning Earl of Dartmouth was superseded by Lord George Germain, who continued the mismanagement of colonial affairs for seven disastrous years. Few characters have abused civil and military positions more than the man who first, as a British general, disgraced the noble name of Sackville on the battlefield of Minden in 1759, and then, as a cabinet minister, disgraced throughout America the plebeian one of Germain, which he took in 1770 with a suitable legacy attached to it. His crime at Minden was set down by the thoughtless public to sheer cowardice. But Sackville was no coward. He had borne himself with conspicuous gallantry at Fontenoy. He was admired, before Minden, by two very brave soldiers, Wolfe and the Duke of Cumberland. And he afterwards fought a famous duel with as much sang-froid as any one would care to see. His real crime at Minden was admirably exposed by the court-martial which found him 'guilty of having disobeyed the orders of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, whom he was by his commission bound to obey as commander-in-chief, according to the rules of war.' This court also found him 'unfit to serve his Majesty in any military capacity whatever'; and George II directed that the following 'remarks' should be added when the sentence was read out on parade to every regiment in the service: 'It is his Majesty's pleasure that the above sentence be given out in public orders, not only in Britain, but in America, and in every quarter of the globe where British troops happen to be, so that all officers, being convinced that neither high birth nor great employments can shelter offences of such a nature, and seeing they are subject to censures worse than death to a man who has any sense of honour, may avoid the fatal consequences arising from disobedience of orders.'

This seemed to mark the end of Sackville's sinister career. But when George II died and George III began to reign, with a very different set of men to help him, the bad general reappeared as an equally bad politician. Haughty, cantankerous, and self-opinionated to the last degree, Germain, who had many perverse abilities fitting him for the meaner side of party politics, was appointed to the post for which he was least qualified just when Canada and the Thirteen Colonies most needed a master mind. Worse still, he cherished a contemptible grudge against Carleton for having refused to turn out a good officer and put in a bad one who happened to be a pampered favourite. At first, however, Carleton was allowed to do his best. But in the summer of 1776 Germain restricted Carleton's command to Canada and put Burgoyne, a junior officer, in command of the army destined to make the counterstroke. The ship bearing this malicious order had to put back; so it was not till the middle of May 1777 that Carleton was disillusioned by its arrival as well as by a second and still more exasperating dispatch accusing him of neglect of duty for not having taken Ticonderoga in November and thus prevented Washington from capturing the Hessians at Trenton. The physical impossibility of a winter siege, the three hundred miles of hostile country between Trenton and Ticonderoga, and the fact that the other leading British general, Howe, had thirty thousand troops in the Colonies, while Carleton had only ten thousand with which to hold Canada that year and act as ordered next year, all went for nothing when Germain found a chance to give a good stab in the back.

On May 20 Carleton wrote a pungent reply, pointing out the utter impossibility of following up his victory on Lake Champlain by carrying out Germain's arm-chair plan of operations in the middle of winter. 'I regard it as a particular blessing that your Lordship's dispatch did not arrive in due time.' As for the disaster at Trenton, he 'begs to inform his Lordship' that if Howe's thirty thousand men had been properly used the Hessians could never have been taken, 'though all the rebels from Ticonderoga had reinforced Mr Washington's army.' Moreover, 'I never could imagine why, if troops so far south [as Howe's] found it necessary to go into winter quarters, your Lordship could possibly expect troops so far north to continue their operations.' A week later Carleton wrote again and sent in his resignation. 'Finding that I can no longer be of use, under your Lordship's administration ... I flatter myself I shall obtain the king's permission to return home this fall. ... I shall embark with great satisfaction, still entertaining the ardent wish that, after my departure, the dignity of the Crown in this unfortunate Province may not appear beneath your Lordship's concern.'

Burgoyne had spent the winter in London and had arrived at Quebec about the same time as Germain's dispatches. He had loyally represented Carleton's plans at headquarters. But he did not know America and he was not great enough to see the weak points in the plan which Germain proposed to carry out with wholly inadequate means.

There was nothing wrong with the actual idea of this plan. Washington, Carleton, and every other leading man on either side saw perfectly well that the British army ought to cut the rebels in two by holding the direct line from Montreal to New York throughout the coming campaign of 1777. Given the irresistible British command of the sea, fifty thousand troops were enough. The general idea was that half of these should hold the four-hundred-mile line of the Richelieu, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson, while the other half seized strategic points elsewhere and still further divided the American forces. But the troops employed were ten thousand short of the proper number. Many of them were foreign mercenaries. And the generals were not the men to smash the enemy at all costs. They were ready to do their duty. But their affinities were rather with the opposition, which was against the war, than with the government, which was for it. Howe was a strong Whig. Burgoyne became a follower of Fox. Clinton had many Whig connections. Cornwallis voted against colonial taxation. To make matters worse, the government itself wavered between out-and-out war and some sort of compromise both with its political opponents at home and its armed opponents in America.

Under these circumstances Carleton was in favour of a modified plan. Ticonderoga had been abandoned by the Americans and occupied by the British as Burgoyne marched south. Carleton's idea was to use it as a base of operations against New England, while Howe's main body struck at the main body of the rebels and broke them up as much as possible. Germain however, was all for the original plan. So Burgoyne set off for the Hudson, expecting to get into touch with Howe at Albany. But Germain, in his haste to leave town for a holiday, forgot to sign Howe's orders at the proper time; and afterwards forgot them altogether. So Howe, pro-American in politics and temporizer in the field, manoeuvred round his own headquarters at New York until October, when he sailed south to Philadelphia. Receiving no orders from Germain, and having no initiative of his own, he had made no attempt to hold the line of the Hudson all the way north to Albany, where he could have met Burgoyne and completed the union of the forces which would have cut the Colonies in two. Meanwhile Burgoyne, ignorant of Germain's neglect and Howe's futilities, was struggling to his fate at Saratoga, north of Albany. He had been receiving constant aid from Carleton's scanty resources, though Carleton knew full well that the sending of any aid beyond the limits of the province exposed him to personal ruin in case of a reverse in Canada. But it was all in vain; and, on the 17th of October, Burgoyne—much more sinned against than sinning—laid down his arms. The British garrison immediately evacuated Ticonderoga and retired to St Johns, thus making Carleton's position fairly safe in Canada. But Germain, only too glad to oust him, had now notified him that Haldimand, the new governor, was on the point of sailing for Quebec. Haldimand, to his great credit, had asked to have his own appointment cancelled when he heard of Germain's shameful attitude towards Carleton, and had only consented to go after being satisfied that Carleton really wished to come home. The exchange, however, was not to take place that year. Contrary winds blew Haldimand back; and so Canada had to remain under the best of all possible governors in spite of Germain.