During the occurrence of these events, Arnold was engaged in his memorable expedition against Quebec by way of the Kennebec. Arriving at the mouth of that river on the 20th of September, he set forth with an army of 1,100 men, embarked in heavy batteaux, to voyage up the wild stream where hitherto had floated only the light craft of the Indian, the scout, and the hunter. Battling with dogged persistence against the angry rush of rapids, and now dragging their bulky craft over portages of swamp or rugged steeps, they made their slow and weary progress through the heart of the pitiless wilderness at the rate, at best, of little more than four miles a day. Through constant strain of toil and hardship many fell sick, and in the passage of the rapids much of their provisions was lost, so that the horror of starvation was added to the heavy measure of their suffering. Men killed and ate their dogs, or gnawed their shoes and the leather of their cartouch boxes, to allay the pangs of hunger. When the head of the Kennebec was reached, Colonel Enos, who was ordered to send back the sick, himself went off with three companies, a council of his officers having decided that it was impossible to proceed, for lack of provisions. But Arnold, with his remaining force, held on his way with desperate determination, and, coming to the Chaudière, followed it till on the 3d of November they came to the first house that they had seen for a month, and there procured some supplies. At Sortigan, the first village reached, they were kindly received by the Canadians and bountifully supplied with provisions. A proclamation prepared by Washington was distributed among the Canadians. It invited them to join the Americans and assured them protection of person, property, and religion, and was well received by them. With the aid which these people afforded, Arnold made an easy march to Point Levi, arriving there on the 9th with about 700 men. Twenty-four hours passed before his coming was known in Quebec. There was such dissension among the British inhabitants in consequence of the opposition of the English merchants to the Quebec Bill, that the city was in no condition for defense. The French citizens had no inclination to take up arms against the Americans; and had Arnold the means of transportation across the broad St. Lawrence, it is probable that he might easily have taken the city. Three days later Colonel McLean arrived there with 170 of his regiment of Scotch emigrants, and at nine in the evening of the next day Arnold began embarking his men in canoes. By four in the morning 500 were landed at Wolfe's Cove, whence they marched to the Plains of Abraham. When Arnold's landing became known in the city, sailors were brought on shore from the ships to man the guns of the fortifications; the loyal citizens became more confident of making a successful defense, and when Arnold sent a flag with a summons to surrender, it was fired upon. He was not strong enough to strike; he could but menace; and when menace failed to intimidate the enemy, there was nothing for him but to retire. Therefore he withdrew to Pointe aux Trembles, seven leagues above Quebec, on the left bank of the St. Lawrence. There, on the 1st of December, he was joined by Montgomery, who had marched his little force of 300 men with all possible celerity through the half-frozen mire of roads wretched at best, and in the blinding snowstorms of a winter already rigorous in that climate. Three armed schooners had also arrived with ammunition, clothing, and provisions. On the 5th the little army, less than a thousand strong, appeared before Quebec, now garrisoned by more than 1,500 men of McLean's regiment, regulars, seamen, marines, and militia. Montgomery opened an ineffectual fire on the town from two small batteries of mortar and cannon. An assault was determined upon, and on the last day of the year, under the thick veil of a downfall of snow, the troops made the assault in four columns at as many points. The attack of two columns was a feint against the upper town. Montgomery and Arnold led the actual assault of the other two against the lower town, and gained some advantages. Montgomery was killed, and his corps of 200 swept back by a storm of grape and musket balls poured upon them from the second barrier. Arnold was carried from the field with a leg shattered in a successful attack upon a battery, and his column of 300, after a desperate fight of three hours, was overwhelmed by the whole force of the British now turned upon it, and it was obliged to surrender.
The command now devolved upon Arnold, and the troops, reduced to 400, withdrew three miles from the city, and there maintained a partial blockade of it.[67] General Wooster, in command at Montreal, sent expresses to Washington, Schuyler, and Congress, and on the 6th of January wrote to Colonel Warner urging him to raise and send on the more readily available Green Mountain Boys, "by tens, twenties, thirties, forties, or fifties, as fast as they could be collected." The response to his call was prompt. In eleven days Warner mustered his men, and despite the rigors of the northern winter, whose bitterness they had so often tasted, they marched in snow and pinching cold to the assistance of their brethren in Canada, and their alacrity called forth the approval of Washington and Schuyler.[68]
The offensive operations of the Americans in Canada were thereafter feeble and ineffectual. Reinforcements had arrived, but smallpox was raging in the camp, so that when General Thomas took command on the 14th of May there were less than 900 men fit for duty. In this condition, and with only three days' provisions remaining, an immediate retreat was decided upon by a council of war. This became precipitate when three English ships of war arrived and landed more than a thousand marines and regulars, and General Carleton marched out with 800 regulars against the Americans, already in retreat.
Artillery, stores, and baggage were abandoned, and the troops scattered in flight, the general being able to collect no more than 300 of them. By day and night they retreated nearly fifty miles before they halted, when, being beyond immediate reach of the enemy, they rested a few days and then marched to Sorel, in sorry plight, worn with disease, fatigue, and hunger.
For the most part, the Canadians proved but fair-weather friends, and gave them little aid now that the fortune of war no longer favored them. General Thomas died here of smallpox, and General Sullivan took command. After the cowardly surrender by Major Beadle of his force of nearly 400 posted at The Cedars, a small fort on the St. Lawrence, to Captain Foster, with a detachment of 40 regulars, 100 Canadians, and 500 Indians, without artillery, and the disastrous failure of General Thompson with 1,800 men to surprise the British advance at Trois Rivières, all the American troops began a retreat from Canada, where an army of 13,000 English and German troops were now arrived.
Arnold, who had been in command at Montreal since the 1st of April, crossed the St. Lawrence at Longueuil on the 15th of June, and marched to Chambly, whence the army continued its retreat in good order, first to Isle aux Noix and then to Crown Point.
During the withdrawal of the army from Canada, the services of Warner and his Green Mountain Boys again became conspicuous. Following in the rear, but little in advance of the pursuing enemy, he was chiefly employed in gathering up the sick and wounded. Some straggling in the woods, some sheltered in the garlick-reeking cabins of the least unfriendly habitants, he succeeded in bringing a great number of them to Isle aux Noix.
Thence embarked, in leaky open boats, the wretched invalids voyaged to Crown Point, their misery mocked by the brightness of the June skies, the beauty of the shores clad in the luxuriant leafage of early summer, and the glitter of the sunlit waters. The condition of the broken army gathered at Crown Point was miserable in the extreme. More than half of the 5,200 men were sick, and those reported fit for duty were weak and half clad, broken in spirit and discipline. A few were in tents, some in poor sheds, while the greater part had only the shelter of bush huts. Colonel Trumbull says: "I did not look into a tent or hut in which I did not find either a dead or dying man." More than 300 new-made graves marked the brief tarry of the troops at Crown Point. Those whom Colonel Warner did not succeed in bringing off, and who fell into General Carleton's hands, were treated by him with the greatest kindness.
So closed this unprofitable campaign, in whose prosecution such heroism had been expended in vain, such valuable lives wasted. Beginning with a series of successes, it ended in disaster, and was fortunate only in that it did not achieve the conquest of a province to hold which would have required the presence of an army that could ill be spared elsewhere,—a province which was chiefly peopled by a race alien in language and religion, too abject to strike for its own freedom, and so priest-ridden and steeped in ignorance that its incorporation with it could prove but a curse to the young republic.