From the Political Mag., iii. 351. Cf. Jones's Campaign for the Conquest of Canada, p. 112; Mag. of Amer. Hist., June, 1883, p. 409; Moore's Diary of the Revolution, p. 454; B. Sulte's Hist. des Canadiens français (as Lord Dorchester, to which rank Carleton was subsequently raised).
By the 1st of December, Montgomery, with three armed schooners and only 300 men, reached Arnold at Point-aux-Trembles. The united forces now turned their faces towards Quebec, less than a thousand in all, with a body of two hundred Canadians, under Colonel James Livingston, acting in conjunction; and on the 5th were before the town. Carleton haughtily scorned all advances of Montgomery to communicate with him, and devoted himself to overawing the town, quite content that the rigors of winter should alone attack the invaders. While the Americans were making some show of planting siege-batteries, plans for assault were in reality maturing, and a stormy night was awaited to carry them out. It came on the night before the last day of the year. While two feints were to be made on the upper plain, the main assaults were to be along the banks of the St. Charles and the St. Lawrence, from opposite sides, with a view to joining and gaining the upper town from the lower. Montgomery led the attack beneath Cape Diamond on the St. Lawrence side, and while in advance with a small vanguard, and unsuspecting that his approach was discovered, he was opened upon with grape, and fell, with others about him.[486] His death was the end of the assault on that side. Arnold was at first successful in carrying the barriers opposed to him, but was soon severely wounded and taken to the rear. Morgan, who succeeded to the command, was pressing their advantage, when Carleton, relieved by Montgomery's failure, and by the discovery that the other attacks meant nothing, sent out a force, which so hemmed Morgan in, that, having already learned of Montgomery's failure, he found it prudent to surrender with the few hundred men still clinging to him. The Americans elsewhere in the field hastily withdrew to their camp, and Carleton was too suspicious of the townspeople to dare to take any further advantage of his success.
The command of the Americans now devolved on Lieutenant-Colonel Donald Campbell, who sent an express to Wooster at Montreal, urging him to come and take the control. That general thought it more prudent to hold Montreal as a base,[487] and remained where he was, while he forwarded the dismal news to his superior, Schuyler, at Albany, who had quite enough on his hands to overawe Sir John Johnson and the Tories up the Mohawk. The succession of Wooster to the command in Canada boded no good to the New York general, and led to such crimination and recrimination between the two that Congress, towards spring (1776), took steps to relieve Schuyler of the general charge of the campaign. Thomas, who had rendered himself conspicuous in driving the British from Boston, was made a major-general (March 6), and was ordered to take the active command in Canada. A New England general for troops in the main from those colonies seemed desirable, and Thomas was certainly the best of those furnished by Massachusetts during the early days of the war.
Meanwhile Arnold, amid the snows, was audaciously seeming to keep up the siege of Quebec in his little camp, three miles from the town. Small-pox was beginning to make inroads on his little army, scarce at some periods exceeding five hundred effective men. Wooster finally came from Montreal on the first of April, and assumed command. For the influence intended to soothe and gain the Canadians to pass from the courtly Montgomery to the rigid and puritanical Wooster was a great loss, and it soon became manifest in the growing hostility of the people of the neighboring country. It was by such a pitiful force that Carleton allowed himself to be shut up in Quebec for five months.
This was the condition of affairs when a commission, consisting of Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll, was sent by Congress, with delegated powers, to act with prompter decision on the spot.[488] They reached Albany early in April, and found Thomas, from Boston, already there. So the two generals, Schuyler and Thomas, pushed on ahead of the commissioners, and, with the reinforcements now setting towards Canada, before and behind them, it seemed as if a new vigor might be exerted upon the so far disastrous Northern campaign. Thomas directed his course to Quebec, while the commissioners went to Montreal, where they found the most gloomy apprehensions existing, and were soon convinced that, without hard money and troops, Canada must be relinquished. Franklin returned to Philadelphia to impress this upon Congress, while Schuyler was at his wits' ends to find men, provisions, and money to send forward, till Congress should act.
Washington, by this time in New York with the troops which had forced the evacuation of Boston, yielded to the orders of Congress, and sent Sullivan of New Hampshire with a brigade, carrying money and provisions, to reinforce the wretched army in Canada, thereby diminishing, with great risk, his own force to less than 5,000 men. Thomas had at this time reached Quebec (May 1), where he found, out of the 1,900 men constituting the beleaguering army, only about a thousand not in hospital, and scarcely five hundred of these were effective troops. It was necessary to do something at once, for the breaking ice told the American general that a passage was preparing for a British fleet, which was known to be below. Plans for an assault on the town miscarried, and while Thomas was beginning to remove his sick preparatory to a retreat, three British men-of-war appeared in the basin. They landed troops, and gave Carleton an opportunity to hang upon the rear of the retreating invaders, and pick up prisoners and cannon. He did not pursue them far.[489]
Near the same time a force of British and Tories, coming down the river from Ontario, had fallen upon Arnold's outpost at Cedar Rapids, above Montreal, and had captured its garrison. Thus disaster struck both ends of the American line of occupation. The force under Thomas was withdrawing to the Sorel, when Burgoyne, with large reinforcements, landed at Quebec. Up the Sorel the Americans retreated, joined now by the troops under Thompson, which Washington had earlier sent from New York. Thomas[490] soon died (June 2) of small-pox at Chamblée; and Wooster being recalled, Sullivan, who now met the army, took the command, and pushing forward to the mouth of the Sorel, prepared to make a stand. He soon sent a force under Thompson towards Three Rivers, to oppose the approaching British, now reaching 13,000 in number, either at Quebec or advancing from it,—a number to confront, of which apparently Sullivan had no conception. This general himself possessed hardly more than 2,500 men, for Arnold, instead of reinforcing him, as directed, had left Montreal for Chamblée. The action at Three Rivers, of which the cannonading had been heard at the Sorel, proved a disastrous defeat. It was followed by the British vessels pushing up the river, and as soon as they came in sight Sullivan broke camp and also retreated to Chamblée, followed languidly by Burgoyne. Here Sullivan joined Arnold, and the united fugitives, of whom a large part were weakened by inoculation, continued the retreat to the Isle-aux-Noix, thence on to Crown Point, where early in July the poor fragmentary army found a little rest,—five thousand in all, and of these at least one half were in hospital.[491]
DUNMORE'S SEAL.