A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

The English, according to a letter from Carleton to General Howe, written on the 12th of January, only lost 7 killed and 11 wounded on this memorable night; but, notwithstanding, in view of the small numbers of the garrison, the governor did not follow up his success by any general attack on the American lines; he contented himself with bringing in five mortars and a cannon from Arnold’s position, and settled down with his force to wait for spring. The Americans, from time to time reinforced by way of Montreal, continued the blockade, but it was somewhat ineffective, as firewood and even provisions were at intervals brought into the town. On the 25th of March a party of Canadians, who attempted to relieve Quebec by surprising an American battery at Point Levis, on the other side of the St. Lawrence, were themselves surprised and suffered a reverse; on the 4th of April the battery in question opened on the town with little effect: on the 3rd of May a fire ship was directed against the Quebec relieved on May 6, 1776. port and proved abortive. On the 6th of May English ships once more came up the river with reinforcements, and the siege was at an end. The Congress troops retreated in hot haste, as Levis’s men had fled when Murray was relieved: artillery, ammunition, stores, were left behind; and the retreat continued beyond Three Rivers, as far as Sorel, at the mouth of the Richelieu.

Carleton’s Report.

‘After this town had been closely invested by the rebels for five months and had defeated all their attempts, the Surprise frigate, Isis and sloop Martin came into the Basin the 6th instant.... Thus ended our siege and blockade, during which the mixed garrison of soldiers, sailors, British and Canadian militia, with the artificers from Halifax and Newfoundland, showed great zeal and patience under very severe duty and uncommon vigilance.’ So wrote Carleton to Lord George Germain on the 14th of May, 1776, having conducted a singularly successful defence of an all important point. Murray’s defence of Quebec had been marked by a severe reverse, great sickness, privation, and loss. Nothing of the kind happened under Carleton. He had, it is true, a far smaller army against him than besieged Murray, and he had the inestimable advantage of personal experience of the former siege, but on the other hand the force which he commanded was infinitely weaker, numerically and in training, than Murray’s. He made no mistakes, incurred no risks, his one aim was to save Quebec, and he saved it.

Importance of holding Quebec.

The more the history of these times is studied, the greater importance will be attached to Carleton’s successful defence of Quebec, and his defeat of the American forces beneath its walls; the more clearly too it will be seen that the net result of the American war was due at least as much to the agency of individual men as to any combination of moral or material forces. Whoever held Quebec held Canada; and, if Great Britain had lost Quebec in the winter of 1775-6, she would in all probability have lost Canada for all time. Wolfe’s victory before Quebec, and the surrender of the city which followed, determined that Canada should become a British possession. Carleton’s defeat of Montgomery and Arnold in the suburbs of Quebec, and the holding of the city which followed, determined that Canada should remain a British possession. It was not merely a question of the geographical position of Quebec, great as was its importance from a strategical point of view. It was a question of the effect of its retention or its loss upon the minds of men. The Canadians were wavering: the tide was flowing against the English: one rock alone was not submerged: the waves beat against it and subsided. Thenceforward Canada was never in serious danger. The Americans were not liked in Canada. They carried many of the Canadians with them in the first impulse, but, when once they were checked and driven back, the Canadians were given time to think, and they inclined to the cause personified by the man who had stemmed the tide of invasion and held Quebec.

Carleton as a general,

When the news of what had taken place reached England at the beginning of June, Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Sir Horace Mann. ‘The provincials have again attempted to storm Quebec and been repulsed with great loss by the conduct and bravery of Carleton, who, Mr. Conway has all along said, would prove himself a very able general.’[89] Two months later he wrote again to the same friend: ‘You have seen by the public newspapers that General Carleton has driven the provincials out of all Canada. It is well he fights better than he writes. General Conway has constantly said that he would do great service.’[90] Of Carleton’s merits as a soldier there can be no question. No one ever gauged a military situation better. No one ever displayed more firmness and courage at a time of crisis, made more of small resources, or showed more self-restraint. But he was more than a good military leader; he was also a statesman of high and as a statesman. order, and, had he been given a free hand and supreme control of the British forces and policy in America, he might well have kept the American colonies as he kept Quebec. For Carleton was an understanding man. No Carleton’s character. Englishman in America, or who dealt with America, was of the same calibre. He knew the land: he knew the people: he had the qualities which were conspicuously wanting in other English leaders of the time, firmness, foresight, breadth of view, sound judgement as to what was possible and what was not; above all, he had a character above and beyond intrigue. Had he not been ousted by malign influence, but been given wider powers and a more extensive command, the British cause in North America might have had the one thing needful, a personality to stand in not unworthy comparison with that of Washington.

Carleton was a little over fifty years old at the time of the siege of Quebec. The two American generals who confronted him were younger men. Montgomery was just under forty years of age when he was killed; Arnold at the time was not thirty-five. It would have been well for Arnold’s reputation had he shared Montgomery’s fate. A New Englander by birth, a native of Connecticut, he Benedict Arnold. seems to have been a restless, adventurous man, with no strong sense of principle. His name is clouded by his grievous treachery at West Point, but his military capacity was as great as his personal courage, and of all the American leaders in the earlier stages of the war, he was the man who dealt the hardest blows at the British cause in Canada. From the capture of the forts on Lake Champlain till the fights before Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, at almost every point on the frontier he was in evidence, leading attack, covering retreat, invaluable as a leader in border war.

Richard Montgomery.

Of Montgomery, Horace Walpole wrote that he ‘was not so fortunate as Wolfe to die a conqueror, though very near being so’.[91] He was so far fortunate in his death, that his name has passed into American history as that of a martyr to the cause of liberty. He was known to Burke, Fox, and the leaders of the Opposition in England; and he seems to have been an attractive man in private life as well as a capable soldier. We read in the Annual Register for 1776 that ‘The excellency of his qualities and disposition had procured him an uncommon share of private affection, as his abilities had of public esteem; and there was probably no man engaged on the same side, and few on either, whose loss would have been so much regretted both in England and America’.[92] In America addresses and monuments commemorated his name, Tryon county of New York was renamed Montgomery county in honour to his memory, and in 1818 his remains were exhumed and taken to New York for public burial. In England leading politicians bore tribute to his merits, and as late as the year 1791, in the House of Commons, Fox called to Burke’s remembrance how the two friends had ‘sympathized almost in tears for the fall of a Montgomery.’[93] He died fighting for what proved to be the winning cause, and men spoke well of him. But there is another side to the picture which should not be overlooked. Montgomery was not, like Arnold, born and bred on New England soil. He was ‘a gentleman of good family in the kingdom of Ireland’,[94] and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He had worn the King’s uniform from 1756 to 1772; he had served as a subaltern at the capture of Louisbourg, under Amherst again on Lake Champlain, and with Haviland’s division in the final British advance on Montreal, by the line by which in 1775 he led the American troops into Canada. After the British conquest of Canada he had seen active service in the West Indies. His connexion with the North American colonies consisted in having bought an estate in New York, having married a lady of the well-known Livingston family in that state, and having made his home there after retirement from the army. That retirement took place in 1772. In 1775 he was a brigadier-general in the American army, not concerned to defend house and home against unprovoked attack, but to lead an army of invasion into a neighbouring British province, endeavouring to wrest from Great Britain what he himself had fought to give her, and identifying oppression with one whose worth he must well have known, with a fellow British soldier of Carleton’s high character and name. Montgomery was an Irishman. In his case, as in that of Arnold, the wife’s influence probably counted for much; and the time was one when what were called generous instincts were at a premium and principles were at a discount. But the terms[95] in which he summoned Carleton to surrender suggest unfavourable contrast between his own words and actions on the one hand, and on the other the stern old-fashioned views of loyalty and military honour which Carleton held, and which forbade him to pay to Montgomery in his lifetime the respect which was ensured by a soldier’s death.