Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North

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The Quebec Act, guaranteeing the rights of the French Canadians, had
barely been put in force before the Congress of the {298} revolting
English colonies sent up proclamations to be posted on the church doors
of the parishes, calling on the French to throw off the British yoke,
to join the American colonies, "to seize the opportunity to be free."
Unfortunately for this alluring invitation, Congress had but a few
weeks previously put on record its unsparing condemnation of the Quebec
Act. Inspired by those New Englanders who, for a century, had suffered
from French raids, Congress had expressed its verdict on the privileges
granted to Quebec in these words: "_Nor can we supress our astonishment
that a British Parliament should establish a religion that has drenched
your island_ [England] _in blood_." This declaration was the cardinal
blunder of Congress as far as Canada was concerned. Of the merits of
the quarrel the simple French habitant knew nothing. He did what his
cure told him to do; and the Catholic Church would not risk casting in
its lot with a Congress that declared its religion had drenched England
in blood. English inhabitants of Montreal and Quebec, who had flocked
to Canada from the New England colonies, were far readier to listen to
the invitation of Congress than were the French.

Governor Carleton had fewer than 800 troops, and naturally the French
did not rally as volunteers in the impending war between England and
her English colonies. Should the Congress troops invade Canada? The
question was hanging fire when Ethan Allen, with his two hundred Green
Mountain boys of Vermont, marched across to Lake Champlain in May of
1775, hobnobbed with the guards of Ticonderoga, who drank not wisely
but too well, then rowed by night across the narrows and knocked at the
wicket beside the main gate. The sleepy guards, not yet sober from the
night's carouse, admitted the Vermonters as friends. In rushed the
whole two hundred. In a trice the Canadian garrison of forty-four were
all captured and Allen was thundering on the chamber door of La Place,
the commandant. It was five in the morning. La Place sprang up in his
nightshirt and demanded in whose name he was ordered to surrender.
Ethan Allen answered in words that have gone {299} down to history,
"_In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress_."
Later fell Crown Point. So began the war with Canada in the great
Revolution.

And now, from May to September, Arnold's Green Mountain boys sweep from
Lake Champlain down the Richelieu to the St. Lawrence, as Iberville's
bold bushrovers long ago swept through these woods. However, the
American rovers take no permanent occupation of the different forts on
the falls of the Richelieu River, preferring rather to overrun the
parishes, dispatching secret spies and waiting for the habitants to
rally. And they came once too often, once too far, these bold banditti
of the wilderness, clad in buckskin, musket over shoulder, coonskin
cap! Montreal is so full of spies, so full of friendlies, so full of
Bostonnais in sympathy with the revolutionists, that Allen feels safe
in paddling across the St. Lawrence one September morning to the
Montreal side with only one hundred and fifty men. Montreal has grown
in these ten years to a city of some twelve thousand, but the gates are
fast shut against the American scouts; and while Allen waits in some
barns of the suburbs, presto! out sallies Major Garden with twice as
many men armed to the teeth, who assault the barns at a rush. Five
Americans drop at the first crack of the rifles. The Canadians are
preparing to set fire to the barns. Allen's men will be picked off as
they rush from the smoke. Wisely, he saves his Green Mountain boys by
surrender. Thirty-five capitulate. The rest have escaped through the
woods. Carleton refuses to acknowledge the captives as prisoners of
war. He claps irons on their hands and irons on their feet and places
them on a vessel bound for England to be treated as rebels to the
crown. It is said those of Allen's men who deserted were French
Canadians in disguise--which may explain why Carleton made such severe
example of his captives and at once purged Montreal of the disaffected
by compelling all who would not take arms to leave.

Carleton's position was chancy enough in all conscience. The habitants
were wavering. They refused point-blank to serve as volunteers. They
supplied the invaders with provisions. Spies were everywhere.
Practically no help could come from {300} England till spring, and
scouts brought word that two American armies were now marching in force
on Canada,--one by way of the Richelieu, twelve hundred strong, led by
Richard Montgomery of New York, directed against Montreal; the other by
way of the Kennebec, with fifteen hundred men under Benedict Arnold, to
attack Quebec. Carleton is at Montreal. He rushes his troops, six
hundred and ninety out of eight hundred men, up the Richelieu to hold
the forts at Chambly and St. John's against Montgomery's advance.

Half September and all October Montgomery camps on the plains before
Fort St. John's, his rough soldiers clad for the most part in their
shirt sleeves, trousers, and coon cap, with badges of "Liberty or
Death" worked in the cap bands, or sprigs of green put in their hats,
in lieu of soldier's uniform. Inside the fort, Major Preston, the
English commander, has almost seven hundred men, with ample powder. It
is plain to Montgomery that he can win the fort in only one of two
ways,--shut off provisions and starve the garrison out, or get
possession of heavy artillery to batter down the walls. It is said
that fortune favors the dauntless. So it was with Montgomery, for he
was enabled to besiege the fort in both ways. Carleton had rushed a
Colonel McLean to the relief of St. John's with a force of French
volunteers, but the French deserted en masse. McLean was left without
any soldiers. This cut off St. John's from supply of provisions. At
Chambly Fort was a Major Stopford with eighty men and a supply of heavy
artillery. Montgomery sent a detachment to capture Chambly for the
sake of its artillery. Stopford surrendered to the Americans without a
blow, and the heavy cannon were forthwith trundled along the river to
Montgomery at St. John's. Preston sends frantic appeal to Carleton for
help. He has reduced his garrison to half rations, to quarter rations,
to very nearly no rations at all! Carleton sends back secret express.
He can send no help. He has no more men. Montgomery tactfully lets
the message pass in. After siege of forty-five days, Preston
surrenders with all the honors of war, his six hundred and eighty-eight
men marching {301} out, arms reversed, and going aboard Montgomery's
ships to proceed as prisoners up Lake Champlain.

The way is now open to Montreal. Benedict Arnold, meanwhile, with the
army directed against Quebec, has crossed from the Kennebec to the
Chaudiere, paddled across St. Lawrence River, and on the very day that
Montgomery's troops take possession of Montreal, November 13, Arnold's
army has camped on the Plains of Abraham behind Quebec walls, whence he
scatters his foragers, ravaging the countryside far west as Three
Rivers for provisions. The trials of his canoe voyage from Maine to
the St. Lawrence at swift pace have been terrific. More than half his
men have fallen away either from illness or open desertion. Arnold has
fewer than seven hundred men as he waits for Montgomery at Quebec.

[Illustration: GENERAL RICHARD MONTGOMERY]

What of Guy Carleton, the English governor, now? Canada's case seemed
hopeless. The flower of her army had been taken prisoners, and no help
could come before May. Desperate circumstances either make or break a
man, prove or undo him. As reverses closed in on Carleton, like the
wrestlers of old he but took tighter grip of his resolutions.

On November 11, two days before Preston's men surrendered, Carleton,
with two or three military officers disguised as peasants, boarded one
of three armed vessels to go down from Montreal to Quebec. All the
cannon at Montreal had been dismounted and spiked. What powder could
not be carried {302} away was buried or thrown into the river. Amid
funereal silence, shaking hands sadly with the Montreal friends who had
gathered at the wharf to say farewell, the English Governor left
Montreal. That night the wind failed, and the three vessels lay to
with limp sails. At Sorel, at Three Rivers, at every hamlet on both
sides of the St. Lawrence, lay American scouts to capture the English
Governor. All next day the vessels lay wind-bound. Desperate for the
fate of Quebec, Carleton embarked on a river barge propelled by sweeps.
Passing Sorel at night Carleton and his disguised officers could see
the camp fires of the American army. Here oars were laid aside and the
raft steadied down the tide by the rowers paddling with the palms of
their hands. Three Rivers was found in possession of the Americans,
and a story is told of Carleton, foredone from lack of sleep, dozing in
an eating house or tavern with his head sunk forward upon his hands,
when two or three American scouts broke into the room. Not a sign did
the English party in peasant disguise give of alarm or uneasiness,
which might have betrayed the Governor. "Come, come," said one of the
English officers in French, slapping Sir Guy Carleton carelessly on the
back, "we must be going"; and the Governor escaped unsuspected.
November 19, to the inexpressible relief of Quebec Carleton reached the
capital city.

Quebec now had a population of some five thousand. All able-bodied men
who would not fight were expelled from the city. What with the small
garrison, some marines who happened to be in port, and the citizens
themselves, eighteen hundred defenders were mustered. On the walls
were a hundred and fifty heavy cannon, and all the streets leading from
Lower to Upper Town had been barricaded with cannon mounted above. At
each of the city gates were posted battalions. Sentries never left the
walls, and the whole army literally slept in its boots. It will be
remembered that the natural position of Quebec was worth an army in
itself. On all sides there was access only by steepest climb. In
front, where the modern visitor ascends from the wharf to Upper Town by
Mountain Street {303} steep as a stair, barricades had been built. To
the right, where flows St. Charles River past Lower Town, platforms
mounted with cannon guarded approach. To the rear was the wall behind
which camped Arnold; to the left sheer precipice, above which the
defenders had suspended swinging lanterns that lighted up every
movement on the path below along the St. Lawrence.

[Illustration: MAP OF QUEBEC DURING SIEGE OF CONGRESS TROOPS]

Early in December comes Montgomery himself to Quebec, on the very ships
which Carleton had abandoned. Carleton refuses even the letter
demanding surrender. Montgomery is {304} warned that forthwith any
messenger sent to the walls will come at peril of being shot as rebel.
Henceforth what communication Montgomery has with the inhabitants must
be by throwing proclamations inside or bribing old habitant women as
carriers,--for the habitants continue to pass in and out of the city
with provisions; and a deserter presently brings word that Montgomery
has declared he will "_eat his Christmas dinner in Quebec or in Hell_!"
Whereupon Carleton retorts, "He may choose his own place, but he shan't
eat it in Quebec."

Montgomery was now in the same position as Wolfe at the great siege.
His troops daily grew more ragged; many were without shoes, and
smallpox was raging in camp. He could not tempt his foe to come out
and fight; therefore he must assault the foe in its own stronghold. It
will be remembered, Wolfe had feigned attack to the fore, and made the
real attack to the rear. Montgomery reversed the process. He feigned
attack to the rear gates of St. John and St. Louis, and made the real
attack to the fore from the St. Charles and the St. Lawrence. While a
few soldiers were to create noisy hubbub at St. John and St. Louis
gates from the back of the city, Arnold was to march through Lower Town
from the Charles River side, Montgomery along the narrow cliff below
the Citadel, through Lower Town, to that steep Mountain Street which
tourists to-day ascend directly from the wharves of the St. Lawrence.
On the squares of Upper Town the two armies were to unite and fight
Carleton. The plan of attack practically encompassed the city from
every side. Spies had brought rumors to Carleton that the signal for
assault for the American troops was to be the first dark stormy night.
Christmas passed quietly enough without Montgomery carrying out his
threat, and on the night before New Year's all was quiet. Congress
soldiers had dispersed among the taverns outside the walls, and
Carleton felt so secure he had gone comfortably to bed. For a month,
shells from the American guns had been whizzing over Upper Town, with
such small damage that citizens had continued to go about as usual. On
the walls was a constant popping from the sharpshooters of both sides,
and occasionally {305} an English sentry, parading the walls at
imminent risk of being a target, would toss down a cheery "Good morrow,
gentlemen," to a Congress trooper below. Then, quick as a flash, both
men would lift and fire; but the results were small credit to the aim
of either shooter, for the sentry would duck off the wall untouched,
just as the American dashed for hiding behind barricade or house of
Lower Town. Some of the Americans wanted to know what were the
lanterns and lookouts which the English had constructed above the
precipice of Cape Diamond. Some wag of a habitant answered these were
the sign of a wooden horse with hay in front of it, and that the
English general, Carleton, had said he would not surrender the town
till the horse had caught up to the hay. Skulking riflemen of the
Congress troops had taken refuge in the mansion of Bigot's former
magnificence, the Intendant's Palace, and Carleton had ordered the
cannoneers on his walls to knock the house down. So fell the house of
Bigot's infamy.

Towards 2 A.M. of December 31 the wind began to blow a hurricane. The
bright moonlight became obscured by flying clouds, and earth and air
were wrapped in a driving storm of sleet. Instantly the Congress
troops rallied to their headquarters behind the city. Montgomery at
quick march swept down the steep cliff of the river to the shore road,
and in the teeth of a raging wind led his men round under the heights
of Cape Diamond to the harbor front. Heads lowered against the wind,
coonskin caps pulled low over eyes, ash-colored flannel shirts buttoned
tight to necks, gun casings and sacks wrapped loosely round loaded
muskets to keep out the damp, the marchers tramped silently through the
storm. Overhead was the obscured glare where the lanterns hung out in
a blare of snow above Cape Diamond. Here rockets were sent up as a
signal to Arnold on St. Charles River. Then Montgomery's men were
among the houses of Lower Town, noting well that every window had been
barricaded and darkened from cellar to attic. Somewhere along the
narrow path in front of the town Montgomery knew that barricades had
been built with cannon behind, but he trusted to the storm concealing
his approach till his men could capture them at a rush. At Pres {306}
de Ville, just where the traveler approaching harbor front may to-day
see a tablet erected in memory of the invasion, was a barricade.
Montgomery halted his men. Scouts returned with word that all was
quiet and in darkness--the English evidently asleep; and uncovering
muskets, the Congress fighters dashed forward at a run. But it was the
silence that precedes the thunderclap. The English had known that the
storm was to signal attack, and guessing that the rockets foretokened
the assailants' approach, they had put out all lights behind the
barricade. Until Montgomery's men were within a few feet of the log,
there was utter quiet; then a voice shrieked out, "Fire!--fire!"
Instantly a flash of flame met the runners like a wall. Groans and
screams split through the muffling storm. Montgomery and a dozen
others fell dead. The rest had broken away in retreat,--a rabble
without a commander,--carrying the wounded. Behind the barricade was
almost as great confusion among the English, for Quebec's defenders
were made up of boys of fifteen and old men of seventy, and the first
crash of battle had been followed by a panic, when half the guards
would have thrown down their arms if one John Coffin, an expelled
royalist from Boston, had not shouted out that he would throw the first
man who attempted to desert into the river.

Meantime, how had it gone with Arnold?

[Illustration: SIR GUY CARLETON]

An English officer was passing near St. Louis Gate when, sometime after
two o'clock, he noticed rockets go up from the river beyond Cape
Diamond. He at once sounded the alarm. Bugles called to arms, drums
rolled, and every bell in the city was set ringing. In less than ten
minutes every man of Quebec's eighteen hundred was in place. American
soldiers marching through St. Roch, Lower Town, have described how the
tolling of the bells rolling through the storm smote cold on their
hearts, for they knew their designs had been discovered, and they could
not turn back, for a juncture must be effected with Montgomery. A
moment later the sham assaults were peppering the rear gates of Quebec,
but Guy Carleton was too crafty a campaigner to be tricked by any sham.
He rightly guessed that the real attack {307} would be made on one of
the two weaker spots leading up from Lower Town. "Now is the time to
show what stuff you are made of," he called to the soldiers, as he
ordered more detachments to the place whence came crash of heaviest
firing. This was at Sault-au-Matelot Street, a narrow, steep
thoroughfare, barely twenty feet from side to side. Up this little
tunnel of a street Arnold had rushed his men, surmounting one barricade
where they exchanged their own wet muskets for the dry guns of the
English deserters, dashing into houses to get possession of windows as
vantage points, over, some accounts say, yet another obstruction, till
his whole army was cooped up in a canyon of a street directly below the
hill front on which had been erected a platform with heavy guns. It
was a gallant rush, but it was futile, for now Carleton outgeneraled
Arnold. Guessing from the distance of the shots that the attack to the
rear was sheer sham, the English general rushed his fighters downhill
by another gate to catch Arnold on the rear. Quebec houses are built
close and cramped. While these troops were stealing in behind Arnold
to close on him like a trap, it was easy trick for another English
battalion to scramble over house roofs, over back walls, and up the
very stairs of houses where Arnold's troops were guarding the windows.
Then Arnold was carried past his men badly wounded. "We are sold,"
muttered the Congress troops, "caught like rats in a trap." Still they
pressed toward in hand to hand scuffle, with shots at such close range
the Boston soldiers were {308} shouting, "Quebec men, do not fire on
your true friends!" with absurd pitching of each other by the scruff of
the neck from the windows. Daylight only served to make plainer the
desperate plight of the entrapped raiders. At ten o'clock five hundred
Congress soldiers surrendered. It must not for one moment be forgotten
that each side was fighting gallantly for what it believed to be right,
and each bore the other the respect due a good fighter and upright foe.
In fact, with the exception of two or three episodes mutually
regretted, it may be said there were fewer bitter thoughts that New
Year's morning than have arisen since from this war. The captured
Americans had barely been sent to quarters in convents and hospitals
before a Quebec merchant sent them a gift of several hogsheads of
porter. When the bodies of Montgomery and his fellow-comrades in death
were found under the snowdrifts, they were reverently removed, and
interred with the honors of war just inside St. Louis Gate.

Though the invaders were defeated, Quebec continued to be invested till
spring, the thud of exploding bombs doing little harm except in the
case of one family, during spring, when a shell fell through the roof
to a dining-room table, killing a son where he sat at dinner. As the
ice cleared from the river in spring, both sides were on the watch for
first aid. Would Congress send up more soldiers on transports; or
would English frigates be rushed to the aid of Quebec? The Americans
were now having trouble collecting food from the habitants, for the
French doubted the invaders' success, and Congress paper money would be
worthless to the holders. One beautiful clear May moonlight night a
vessel was espied between nine and ten at night coming up the river
full sail before the wind. Was she friend or foe? Carleton and his
officers gazed anxiously from the citadel. Guns were fired as signal.
No answer came from the ship. Again she was hailed, and again; yet she
failed to hang out English colors. Carleton then signaled he would
sink her, and set the rampart cannon sweeping her bows. In a second
she was ablaze, a fire ship sent by the enemy loaded with shells and
grenades and bombs that shot off like a fusillade of rockets. At the
same time a boat was seen rowing from the {309} far side of her with
terrific speed. Carleton's precaution had prevented the destruction of
the harbor fleet. Three days later, at six in the morning, the firing
of great guns announced the coming of an English frigate. At once
every man, woman, and child of Quebec poured down to the harbor front,
half-dressed, mad with joy. By midday, Guy Carleton had led eight
hundred soldiers out to the Plains of Abraham to give battle against
the Americans; but General Thomas of the Congress army did not wait.
Such swift flight was taken that artillery, stores, tents, uneaten
dinners cooked and on the table, were abandoned to Carleton's men.
General Thomas himself died of smallpox at Sorel. At Montreal all was
confusion. The city had been but marking time, pending the swing of
victory at Quebec. In the spring of 1776 Congress had sent three
commissioners to Montreal to win Canada for the new republic. One was
the famous Benjamin Franklin, another a prominent Catholic; but the
French Canadian clergy refused to forget the attack of Congress on the
Quebec Act, and remained loyal to England.

[Illustration: BENEDICT ARNOLD]

For almost a year, in desultory fashion, the campaign against Canada
dragged on, Carleton reoccupying and fortifying Montreal, Three Rivers,
St. John's, and Chamby, then pushing up Champlain Lake in October of
1776, with three large vessels and ninety small ones. Between Valcour
Island and the mainland he caught Benedict Arnold with the Congress
boats on October 11, and succeeded in battering them to pieces before
{310} Arnold could extricate them. As the boats sank, the American
crews escaped ashore; but the English went no farther south than Crown
Point this year. If Carleton had failed at Quebec, there can be no
doubt Canada would have been permanently lost to England; for the
following year France openly espoused the cause of Congress, and
proclamations were secretly smuggled all through Canada to be posted on
church doors, calling on Canadians to remain loyal to France.
Curiously enough, it was Washington, the leader of the Americans, who
checkmated this move. With a wisdom almost prophetic, he foresaw that
if France helped the United States, and then demanded Canada as her
reward, the old border warfare would be renewed with tenfold more
terror. No longer would it be bushrover pitted against frontiersmen.
It would be France against Congress, and Washington refused to give the
aid of Congress to the scheme of France embroiling America in European
wars. The story of how Clark, the American, won the Mississippi forts
for Congress is not part of Canada's history, nor are the terrible
border raids of Butler and Brant, the Mohawk, who sided with the
English, and left the Wyoming valley south of the Iroquois Confederacy
a blackened wilderness, and the homes of a thousand settlers smoking
ruins. It is this last raid which gave the poet Campbell his theme in
"Gertrude of Wyoming." By the Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, England
acknowledged the independence of the United States, and Canada's area
was shorn of her fairest territory by one fell swath. Instead of the
Ohio being the southern boundary, the middle line of the Great Lakes
divided Canada from her southern neighbor. The River Ste. Croix was to
separate Maine from New Brunswick. The sole explanation of this loss
to Canada was that the American commissioners knew their business and
the value of the ceded territory, and the English commissioners did
not. It is one of the many conspicuous examples of what loyalty has
cost Canada. England is to give up the western posts to the United
States, from Miami to Detroit and Michilimackinac and Grand Portage.
In return the United States federal government is to recommend to the
States {311} Governments that all property confiscated from Royalists
during the war be restored.

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