When the American colonies saw that the war was inevitable they saw too that Quebec was the key of the situation. Washington himself declared that in favour of the holders of Quebec would the balance turn in the great conflict. From the outset there was an eager desire to attack the Canadian capital. Washington believed—with some truth, indeed,—that its defences were ridiculous. He thought, too, that the Governor, Sir Guy Carleton, had no money to buy even provisions, that the Canadians were eager to throw off the yoke of Great Britain and to co-operate with the revolted colonies, and that some even of the few regulars to be found in Quebec would join the colonial army. To take Quebec seemed, therefore, comparatively easy, and the task was undertaken by a man with a sinister name for posterity as a traitor to the young republic, but a vigorous and able officer,—Colonel Benedict Arnold. Wolfe's rôle Arnold essayed to play and Wolfe's fame he fondly hoped would be his.
A fundamental difference existed, however, between Arnold's task and that of Wolfe. Wolfe's army had been carried to Quebec in ships; Arnold's was to advance by land. He chose the shortest route to Quebec from the New England seaboard. It lay through the untrodden wilderness and its difficulties were terrible. Half of it was up the Kennebec river along whose shallow upper reaches the men would have to drag their boats on chill autumn days in water sometimes to their waists; then they must take them over the steep watershed dividing the waters flowing northward to the St. Lawrence from those flowing southward to the Atlantic. Even when they embarked on the upper waters of the Chaudière, which flows into the St. Lawrence near Quebec, the hardships were killing. The numerous rapids and falls on that swift and turbulent river would wreck their boats. At the time no fleet defended Quebec. If, instead of advancing by this land route, the Americans had been able to bring, by sea, an adequate force as Wolfe had done, the later history of Canada might indeed have been different.
Arnold set out in the middle of September with 1100 or 1200 men,—"the very flower of the colonial youth" they have been called. Many were hardy frontier men trained in Indian wars, who knew well the difficulties of the wilderness. But now they were face to face with something more difficult than they had ever before encountered. When one Parson Emerson had committed the enterprise to the divine care in a prayer that, tradition says, lasted for one hour and three-quarters, the army began its struggle across the dreadful three hundred miles of forest. The swollen rivers swept away much ammunition and food, until upon the army settled down the horror of starvation. The boats proved to be badly built; their crews were always wet and shivering. At night the men had sometimes to gather on a narrow footing of dry land in the midst of a swamp and huddled over a fire that at any moment rain might extinguish. The cold became terrible. Many lay down by the trail to die. When the journey was half over, Colonel Enos, deeming it useless to lead the force farther amid such conditions, turned back. With him went some hundreds of men; but Arnold held on grimly. He pushed ahead to get succour for his starving force from the Canadian settlements near Quebec. With a few boats and canoes his party committed themselves to the Chaudière river. In two hours Arnold was swept down twenty miles, steering as best he could through the rapids, and avoiding the rocks, in the angry river. At one place all his boats and canoes were carried over a fall and capsized, the occupants struggling to land. But this reckless courage did wonders. By October 30th, after more than a month of unspeakable hardship, Arnold had reached the borderland of civilization in Canada, and was sending back provisions to his men. It is little short of marvellous that at Point Levi on November 9th he could muster six hundred men, five hundred of whom were fit for duty.
The Canadians and Indians had been very friendly; without their aid the greater part of Arnold's force would have perished. Even before Quebec he was dependent on their kindly offices. Its defenders, among whom were Nairne and Fraser, moved every boat to the north side of the St. Lawrence; the frigate Lizard and the sloop-of-war Hunter, pigmy representatives at Quebec of Britain's might upon the sea, lay near Wolfe's Cove ready to attack him if he tried to cross. But the Indians brought canoes and on the night of November 13th, silently and unobserved, they carried Arnold's force across the river almost under the bows of the ships watching for them. The Americans landed where Wolfe had landed sixteen years earlier. On the morning of the 14th, to the surprise of Quebec's garrison, a body of Americans appeared on the Plains of Abraham, not eight hundred yards from the walls, and gave three loud huzzas. The British answered with three cheers and with the more effective retort of cannon, loaded with grape and canister shot, and the hardy pioneers of Arnold's attacking force retired.
Quebec was not in a happy situation. Montreal had already fallen to the Americans advancing by Lake Champlain, and to force the final surrender of Canada General Montgomery was hurrying to join Arnold at Quebec. For a time its defenders were uncertain whether Carleton himself, absent at Montreal, had not fallen into the hands of the enemy. A miraculous escape he indeed had. Leaving Montreal on a dark night, when the Americans were already within the town, Carleton went in a skiff down the river, both shores of which were already occupied by the enemy for fifty miles below Montreal. At the narrows at Berthier their blazing camp fires sent light far out over the surface of the water. Carleton's party could hear the sentry's shout of "All's Well," and the barking of dogs. But they let the boat float down with the current so that it might look like drifting timber, and, when they could, impelled it silently with their hands. At Three Rivers they thought themselves safe and Carleton lay down in a house to sleep. But, while he was resting, some American soldiers entered the house. His disguise as a peasant saved him; he passed out unchecked. The skiff soon carried him to an armed brig, the Fell, which lay at the foot of the Richelieu Rapids. He hastened on to Quebec, which showed joy unspeakable when he arrived on November 19th. Meanwhile Montgomery pursued his rival down the river and on December 1st he joined Arnold before Quebec.
Now the siege began in earnest. Carleton had 1800 men; Arnold and Montgomery can hardly have had more than a thousand, and these were badly equipped. For the Americans the prospects of success were, at no time, very great, unless they could secure help from the Canadians. This, indeed, was not wholly wanting. Montgomery's march along the north shore of the St. Lawrence to Quebec was a veritable triumph. He promised to the habitants liberty, freedom from heavy taxes, the abolition of the seigneurs' rights and other good things. Some of the Canadians hoped that, in joining the Americans, they were hastening the restoration of France's power in Canada—an argument however of little weight with many, who remembered grim days of hard service and starvation when, without appreciation or reward, they had fought France's battle. The habitants were, in truth, friendly enough to the Americans; but they would not fight for them. The invaders tried to arouse the fear of the peasantry by a tale that when the British caught sixty rebel Canadians, they had hanged them over the ramparts of Quebec, without time even to say "Lord, have mercy upon me," and had thrown their bodies to the dogs. But this only made the habitants think it as well perhaps not to take arms openly against such stern masters. The Church's weight was wholly on the British side. Canadians who joined the rebel Americans died without her last rites. Only one priest, M. de Lotbinière, a man, it is said, of profligate character, espoused the cause of the invaders. For doing so he was promised a bishopric: to see Puritan New Englanders offering a bishopric in the Roman Catholic Church as a reward for service, is not without its humour.
As December wore on Montgomery grew eager to seize his prey. Carleton sat unmoved behind his walls and allowed the enemy to invest the town. He would hold no communication with the rebel army. When Montgomery sent messengers to the gates, under a flag of truce, Carleton would not receive them; the only message he would take, he said, would be an appeal to the mercy of the King, against whom they were in rebellion. Montgomery, too, showed for his foe lofty scorn, in words at least. On December 15th in General Orders he spoke of "the wretched garrison" posted behind the walls of Quebec, "consisting of sailors unacquainted with the use of arms, of citizens incapable of the soldier's duty and He did what he could to make possible this Christmas festivity within Quebec's walls. His men got together some five hundred scaling ladders. Then heavy snow came and the defenders jeered at such preparations: "Can they think it possible that they can approach the walls laden with ladders, sinking to the middle every step in snow? Where shall we be then? Shall we be looking on cross-armed?" The clear and inconceivably cold weather was also one of Quebec's defences for, as one diarist puts it, no man, after being exposed to it for ten minutes, could hold arms in his half-frozen hands firmly enough to do any execution. But by nothing short of death itself was Montgomery to be daunted; steadily he made his plans to assault the town. Meanwhile Quebec was ready. Carleton ordered out of the town all who could not assist to the best of their power in the defence. Some shammed illness to escape their tasks. But this was the exception. Well-to-do citizens worked zealously, took their share of sentry duty on the bitterly cold nights, and submitted to the commands of officers in the militia, their inferiors in education and fortune. On the loftiest point of Cape Diamond Carleton erected a mast, thirty feet high, with a sentry box at its top. From this he could command a bird's eye view of the enemy's operations, to a point as distant as Ste. Foy Church. When one of the besiegers asked a loyalist Canadian what the queer-looking object on the pole really was he answered, "It is a wooden horse with a bundle of hay before him." A second remark capped this one: "General Carleton has said that he will not give up the town till the horse has ate all the hay; and the General is a man of his word." Although Montgomery did not eat his Christmas dinner in Quebec a few days later he was ready for an assault. The crisis came on the last day of the year 1775. Early on that day, between four and five in the morning, Captain Malcolm Fraser, in command of the main guard, was going his rounds in Quebec when he saw a signal thrown by the enemy from the heights outside the walls near Cape Diamond. Fraser knew at once that it meant an attack. He sent word to the other guards in Quebec and ordered the ringing of the alarm bell, and the drum-beat to arms. He himself ran down St. Louis street, shouting to the guards to "Turn out" as loudly and often as he could, and with such effect that he was heard even by General Carleton, lodged at the Recollet convent. It was a boisterous night and the elements themselves raged so fiercely that some of the alarms were not heard. But, in time, all Quebec was aroused and the guards stood at their posts.