The alarm was completed when to its din was added the menacing sound of cannon. The besiegers began to ply the town with shells, and those who looked out over the ramparts could see in the darkness the flash of guns. Soon began from behind ridges of snow, within eighty yards of the walls of Cape Diamond, the patter of musketry. The Americans were seeking to lead the defenders of Quebec to believe that an assault on the walls of the Upper Town on the side of the Plains of Abraham was imminent and to hold the defence to this point. In fact the real danger was far away.
The Manor House at Murray Bay
(The upper view from the West, the lower from the East)
Montgomery's was a hazardous plan. He had resolved to try to seize the Lower Town first and then to get his troops into the Upper Town by way of the steep Mountain Street, thus taking the defenders of the walls in the rear. It was a desperate venture, depending for its success largely upon the surprise of the garrison which Malcolm Fraser's thorough-going alarm had prevented. Montgomery himself, with a force of several hundred men, marched to the Lower Town from Wolfe's Cove along the narrow path under the cliffs, a distance of nearly two miles, with progress impeded by darkness, by heavy snow-drifts, and by blocks of ice which the tide had strewn along the shore. His men struggled on in the dark hoping to surprise the post which guarded the road below Cape Diamond at a point called Près de Ville. Here were some fifty defenders and the tale of what happened is soon told. The guardians of the post were on the alert, for at it, too, Malcolm Fraser's warning had been effective. As Montgomery bravely advanced, at the head of his men, there was a flash and a roar in the darkness and the blinding snow storm, and, a moment after, Montgomery lay dead in the snow with a bullet through his head. Two or three other officers were struck down. The British heard groans and then there was silence. As daylight came they saw hands and arms protruding from the snow, but only slowly did they realize that the chief of their foes was killed.
Nairne was on duty elsewhere but he did not miss severe fighting. Arnold was to advance on the Lower Town from the north-eastern suburb, St. Roch's, to meet at the foot of Mountain Street Montgomery coming from the west. At first he was more fortunate than Montgomery. When the rocket from Cape Diamond went up he set out. The storm was frightful but it served to conceal Arnold's force from Quebec's sentries. The Americans passed under the height where stands the Hôtel Dieu. Here Nairne was stationed with a small guard. They spied the Americans in the darkness and kept up as effective a fire as the dim light permitted. But the assailants were able to advance along the whole east side of Quebec and to reach the entrance to the Sault au Matelot, a short and narrow street opening into the steep Mountain Street, by which alone the Upper Town could be reached. Here fortune favoured them for, apparently, in spite of Fraser's alarm, they surprised the guard at the first barrier by which the street was closed. The street itself they secured but when they reached the second barrier at its farther end, commanding the road to the Upper Town, it was well defended by an alert garrison. Arnold had already been wounded and taken to the rear and Morgan, an intrepid leader, was in command of the assailing force. Every moment he expected that Montgomery would arrive to attack the second barrier on the Sault au Matelot from the West as he attacked it from the East. But Montgomery was dead and Morgan waited in vain.
While the Americans were checked by the second barrier, Carleton was not idle. There was an excellent chance to send a force out of the Palace Gate near the Hôtel Dieu, by which the assailants had passed, and to attack them in the rear. For this duty Colonel Caldwell was told off and he took with him Nairne and his picket of about thirty men. The force plodded through the deep snow in the tracks of the enemy who, about daybreak, were astonished to find themselves shut in by British forces at each end of the Sault au Matelot. A hand to hand fight followed. The Americans took refuge in the houses of the street and it was the task of the British to drive them out. In this Nairne distinguished himself. "Major Nairne of the Royal Emigrants and M. Dambourges of the same corps by their gallant behaviour attracted the attention of every body," writes an English officer.[8] By ladders, taken from the enemy, they mounted to a window of one of the houses, from which came a destructive fire, and at the point of the bayonet drove the foe out by the door into the street. In the end, to the number of more than four hundred, the Americans were forced to surrender. The casualties included thirty killed and forty-two wounded. By eight o'clock all was over. "It was the first time I ever happened to be so closely engaged," Nairne wrote to his sister on May 14th, 1776, "as we were obliged to push our bayonets. It is certainly a disagreeable necessity to be obliged to put one another to death, especially those speaking the same language and dressed in the same manner with ourselves.... These mad people had a large piece of white linen or paper upon their foreheads with the words "Liberty or Death" wrote upon it." Nairne's account is modest enough. One would not gather from it that his own conspicuous courage had obtained general recognition.[9]
Even with Montgomery killed, Arnold wounded, and quite one-quarter of their force dead or captured, those grim men who wished "Liberty or Death" had no thought of raising the siege. Ere long Arnold was again active and, for four months longer, the Americans kept Carleton shut up within Quebec. So deep lay the snow that to walk into the ditch from the embrasures in the walls was easy; buried in the snow were the muzzles of guns thirty feet from the bottom of the ditch. Sometimes Nairne was actively engaged in scouting work. In February we find him leading a party to take possession of the English burying ground in the suburbs; on March 19th, he went out into the open from Cape Diamond to the height overlooking the Anse de Mer. But nothing happened; a diarist expresses, on April 21st, his contempt for the American attack by writing: "Hitherto they have killed a boy, wounded a soldier, and broke the leg of a turkey."[10]