SIR GUY CARLETON
An English officer was passing near St. Louis Gate when, sometime after two o'clock, he noticed rockets go up from the river beyond Cape Diamond. He at once sounded the alarm. Bugles called to arms, drums rolled, and every bell in the city was set ringing. In less than ten minutes every man of Quebec's eighteen hundred was in place. American soldiers marching through St. Roch, Lower Town, have described how the tolling of the bells rolling through the storm smote cold on their hearts, for they knew their designs had been discovered, and they could not turn back, for a juncture must be effected with Montgomery. A moment later the sham assaults were peppering the rear gates of Quebec, but Guy Carleton was too crafty a campaigner to be tricked by any sham. He rightly guessed that the real attack would be made on one of the two weaker spots leading up from Lower Town. "Now is the time to show what stuff you are made of," he called to the soldiers, as he ordered more detachments to the place whence came crash of heaviest firing. This was at Sault-au-Matelot Street, a narrow, steep thoroughfare, barely twenty feet from side to side. Up this little tunnel of a street Arnold had rushed his men, surmounting one barricade where they exchanged their own wet muskets for the dry guns of the English deserters, dashing into houses to get possession of windows as vantage points, over, some accounts say, yet another obstruction, till his whole army was cooped up in a canyon of a street directly below the hill front on which had been erected a platform with heavy guns. It was a gallant rush, but it was futile, for now Carleton outgeneraled Arnold. Guessing from the distance of the shots that the attack to the rear was sheer sham, the English general rushed his fighters downhill by another gate to catch Arnold on the rear. Quebec houses are built close and cramped. While these troops were stealing in behind Arnold to close on him like a trap, it was easy trick for another English battalion to scramble over house roofs, over back walls, and up the very stairs of houses where Arnold's troops were guarding the windows. Then Arnold was carried past his men badly wounded. "We are sold," muttered the Congress troops, "caught like rats in a trap." Still they pressed toward in hand to hand scuffle, with shots at such close range the Boston soldiers were shouting, "Quebec men, do not fire on your true friends!" with absurd pitching of each other by the scruff of the neck from the windows. Daylight only served to make plainer the desperate plight of the entrapped raiders. At ten o'clock five hundred Congress soldiers surrendered. It must not for one moment be forgotten that each side was fighting gallantly for what it believed to be right, and each bore the other the respect due a good fighter and upright foe. In fact, with the exception of two or three episodes mutually regretted, it may be said there were fewer bitter thoughts that New Year's morning than have arisen since from this war. The captured Americans had barely been sent to quarters in convents and hospitals before a Quebec merchant sent them a gift of several hogsheads of porter. When the bodies of Montgomery and his fellow-comrades in death were found under the snowdrifts, they were reverently removed, and interred with the honors of war just inside St. Louis Gate.
Though the invaders were defeated, Quebec continued to be invested till spring, the thud of exploding bombs doing little harm except in the case of one family, during spring, when a shell fell through the roof to a dining-room table, killing a son where he sat at dinner. As the ice cleared from the river in spring, both sides were on the watch for first aid. Would Congress send up more soldiers on transports; or would English frigates be rushed to the aid of Quebec? The Americans were now having trouble collecting food from the habitants, for the French doubted the invaders' success, and Congress paper money would be worthless to the holders. One beautiful clear May moonlight night a vessel was espied between nine and ten at night coming up the river full sail before the wind. Was she friend or foe? Carleton and his officers gazed anxiously from the citadel. Guns were fired as signal. No answer came from the ship. Again she was hailed, and again; yet she failed to hang out English colors. Carleton then signaled he would sink her, and set the rampart cannon sweeping her bows. In a second she was ablaze, a fire ship sent by the enemy loaded with shells and grenades and bombs that shot off like a fusillade of rockets. At the same time a boat was seen rowing from the far side of her with terrific speed. Carleton's precaution had prevented the destruction of the harbor fleet. Three days later, at six in the morning, the firing of great guns announced the coming of an English frigate. At once every man, woman, and child of Quebec poured down to the harbor front, half-dressed, mad with joy. By midday, Guy Carleton had led eight hundred soldiers out to the Plains of Abraham to give battle against the Americans; but General Thomas of the Congress army did not wait. Such swift flight was taken that artillery, stores, tents, uneaten dinners cooked and on the table, were abandoned to Carleton's men. General Thomas himself died of smallpox at Sorel. At Montreal all was confusion. The city had been but marking time, pending the swing of victory at Quebec. In the spring of 1776 Congress had sent three commissioners to Montreal to win Canada for the new republic. One was the famous Benjamin Franklin, another a prominent Catholic; but the French Canadian clergy refused to forget the attack of Congress on the Quebec Act, and remained loyal to England.
BENEDICT ARNOLD
For almost a year, in desultory fashion, the campaign against Canada dragged on, Carleton reoccupying and fortifying Montreal, Three Rivers, St. John's, and Chamby, then pushing up Champlain Lake in October of 1776, with three large vessels and ninety small ones. Between Valcour Island and the mainland he caught Benedict Arnold with the Congress boats on October 11, and succeeded in battering them to pieces before Arnold could extricate them. As the boats sank, the American crews escaped ashore; but the English went no farther south than Crown Point this year. If Carleton had failed at Quebec, there can be no doubt Canada would have been permanently lost to England; for the following year France openly espoused the cause of Congress, and proclamations were secretly smuggled all through Canada to be posted on church doors, calling on Canadians to remain loyal to France. Curiously enough, it was Washington, the leader of the Americans, who checkmated this move. With a wisdom almost prophetic, he foresaw that if France helped the United States, and then demanded Canada as her reward, the old border warfare would be renewed with tenfold more terror. No longer would it be bushrover pitted against frontiersmen. It would be France against Congress, and Washington refused to give the aid of Congress to the scheme of France embroiling America in European wars. The story of how Clark, the American, won the Mississippi forts for Congress is not part of Canada's history, nor are the terrible border raids of Butler and Brant, the Mohawk, who sided with the English, and left the Wyoming valley south of the Iroquois Confederacy a blackened wilderness, and the homes of a thousand settlers smoking ruins. It is this last raid which gave the poet Campbell his theme in "Gertrude of Wyoming." By the Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, England acknowledged the independence of the United States, and Canada's area was shorn of her fairest territory by one fell swath. Instead of the Ohio being the southern boundary, the middle line of the Great Lakes divided Canada from her southern neighbor. The River Ste. Croix was to separate Maine from New Brunswick. The sole explanation of this loss to Canada was that the American commissioners knew their business and the value of the ceded territory, and the English commissioners did not. It is one of the many conspicuous examples of what loyalty has cost Canada. England is to give up the western posts to the United States, from Miami to Detroit and Michilimackinac and Grand Portage. In return the United States federal government is to recommend to the States Governments that all property confiscated from Royalists during the war be restored.
