Page images
PDF
EPUB

pressed people, compelled to choose between liberty and slavery, must be obeyed."

On the sixth of August, from Albany, he advised that Tryon should be conducted out of the way of mischief to Hartford. He reasoned in favor of the occupation of Canada, as the means of guarding against Indian hostilities, and displaying to the world the strength of the confederated colonies; it was enlarging the sphere of operations, but a failure would not impair the means of keeping the command of Lake Champlain. Summoned by Schuyler to Ticonderoga, he was attended as far as Saratoga by his wife, whose gloomy forebodings he soothed by cheerfulness and good humor. His last words to her at parting were: "You will never have cause to blush for your Montgomery."

When, on the seventeenth of August, he arrived at Ticonderoga, Schuyler departed for Saratoga, promising to return on the twentieth. That day passed, and others; and still he did not come. On the twenty-fifth, Montgomery wrote to him entreatingly to join the army with all expedition, as the way to give it confidence in his spirit and activity. On the evening of the twenty-sixth, Schuyler, at Albany, received an express from Washington, urging the acquisition of Canada, and promising an auxiliary enterprise by way of the Kennebec. "I am sure," wrote the chief, "you will not let any difficulties, not insuperable, damp your ardor; perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages. You will therefore, by the return of this messenger, inform me of your ultimate resolution; not a moment's time is to be lost." In obedience to this letter, Schuyler set off for his army.

Montgomery, wherever he came, looked to see what could be done, and to devise the means of doing it; he had informed Schuyler that he should probably reach St. John's on the first day of September. Schuyler sent back no reply. "Moving without your orders," pursued Montgomery, "I do not like; but the prevention of the enemy is of the utmost consequence; for, if he gets his vessels into the lake, it is over with us for the present summer;" and he went forward with a thousand or twelve hundred men. On the fourth of September he was joined at Isle La Motte by Schuyler, and they proceeded to

Isle-aux-Noix. The next day a declaration of friendship was dispersed among the inhabitants. On the sixth, Schuyler, with forces not exceeding a thousand, marched toward St. John's. In crossing a creek, the left of the advanced line was attacked by a party of Indians; but, being promptly supported by Montgomery, it beat off the assailants, yet with a loss of nine subalterns and privates. The next day, acting on false information, Schuyler led back the troops unmolested to the Isle-aux-Noix. From that station he wrote to congress that he should retire, unless he should "receive their orders to the contrary." He further announced to them that in health he was so low as not to be able to hold the pen;" and, being put to bed in a covered boat, he withdrew from the conduct of the campaign.

[ocr errors]

His letter was the occasion of "a large controversy" in congress; the proposal to abandon Isle-aux-Noix was severely disapproved, and it was resolved to spare neither men nor money for his army. If the Canadians would remain neuter, no doubt was entertained of the acquisition of Canada. Schuyler was encouraged to attend to his health, and thus the command of the invading army fell to Montgomery.

The gallant Irishman, on the day after Schuyler left Isleaux-Noix, began the investment of the well-provisioned citadel of St. John's. The Indians kept quiet, and the zealous efforts of the governor, the clergy, and the French nobility had hardly added a hundred men to the garrison. Carleton thought himself abandoned by all the earth, and wrote to the British commander-in-chief at Boston: "I had hopes of holding out for this year, had the savages remained firm; but now we are on the eve of being overrun and subdued."

On the morning after Montgomery's arrival near St. John's he marched five hundred men to the north of the fortress, where he stationed them to cut off its connections. A sally from the fortress was beaten off, and the American detachment was successfully established at the divergence of the roads to Chambly and Montreal. Additions to his force and supplies of food were continually arriving through the indefatigable attention of Schuyler; and, though the siege flagged for the want of powder, the investment was soon made so close that the retreat of the garrison was impossible.

Ethan Allen had been sent to Chambly to raise a corps of Canadians. They gathered round him with spirit, and his officers advised him to lead them without delay to the army; but, with boundless rashness, he indulged himself in a vision of surprising Montreal as he had surprised Ticonderoga. In the night preceding the twenty-fifth of September he passed over from Longueil to Long Point with about eighty Canadians and thirty Americans, though he had so few canoes that but a third of his party could embark at once. About two hours after sunrise he was attacked by a mixed party of regulars, English residents of Montreal, Canadians, and Indians, in all about five hundred men, and, after a defence of an hour and three quarters, he surrendered himself and thirty-eight men; the rest fled to the woods. The wounded prisoners, seven in number, entered the hospital; the rest were shackled together in pairs, and distributed among different transports in the river. Allen, the captor of Ticonderoga, was chained with heavy leg-irons and shipped to England, where he was imprisoned in Pendennis-castle.

The issue of this adventure daunted the Canadians for a moment; but difficulties only brought out the resources of Montgomery. Of the field officers, he esteemed Brown above others for his ability; Macpherson, his aide-de-camp, a very young man, of good sense and rare endowments, was universally beloved; in John Lamb, captain of a New York company of artillery, he found "a restless genius, brave, active, and intelligent, but very turbulent and troublesome." "The troops carried the spirit of freedom into the field, and thought for themselves." He wrote home: "The master of Hindostan could not recompense me for this summer's work, where no credit can be obtained. O fortunate husbandmen, would I were at my plough again!" Yet, amid all his vexations, he so won the affection of his army that every sick soldier, officer, or deserter, that passed home, agreed in praising him wherever they stopped, so that his reputation rose throughout the country.

Anxious to relieve St. John's, Carleton, after the capture of Allen, succeeded in assembling about nine hundred Canadians at Montreal; but the inhabitants generally favored the

American cause, and they disappeared by desertions, thirty or forty of a night, till he was left almost as forlorn as before. The Indians "were easily dejected and chose to be of the strongest side, so that when they were most wanted they vanished."

In this state of mutual weakness the inhabitants of the parishes of Chambly turned the scale. Ranging themselves under James Livingston of New York, then a resident in Canada, and assisted by Major Brown, with a small detachment from Montgomery, they sat down before the fort in Chambly, which, on the eighteenth of October, after a siege of a day and a half, was ingloriously surrendered by the English commandant. The colors of the seventh regiment were transmitted to congress; the prisoners, one hundred and sixty-eight in number, were marched to Connecticut; but the great gain to the Americans was seventeen cannon and six tons of powder.

The army of Montgomery yielded more readily to his guidance; Wooster of Connecticut had arrived, and set an example of cheerful obedience to his orders. At the north-west a battery was constructed on an eminence within two hundred and fifty yards of the fort; and by the thirtieth it was in full action. To raise the siege, Carleton, having by desperate exertions brought together about eight hundred Indians, Canadians, and regulars, on the last day of October attempted to take them across the St. Lawrence; but, as they drew near the southern bank, Warner, with three hundred Green Mountain Boys and men of the second New York regiment, poured on them so destructive a fire that they retired with loss and in disorder.

At the news of Carleton's defeat, Maclean, the commandant of St. John's, deserted by the Canadians and losing all hope of support, retired to Quebec, while the besiegers pushed on their work with unceasing diligence, keeping up a welldirected fire by day and night. On the third of November, after a siege of fifty days, the fort of St. John's surrendered; and its garrison, consisting of five hundred regulars and one hundred Canadians, many of whom were of the French gentry, marched out with the honors of war.

On the twelfth, unopposed, Montgomery took possession of Montreal. He came to give the Canadians the opportu

nity of establishing their freedom and reforming their laws; and he requested them to choose, as soon as possible, "faithful representatives to sit in the continental congress, and make a part of that union." He earnestly urged Schuyler to pass the winter in the chief town of upper Canada. "I have courted fortune," he wrote to his brother-in-law, "and found her kind. I have one more favor to solicit, and then I have done." Men, money, and artillery were wanting; in the face of a Canadian winter, he nevertheless resolved to form a junction with the regiments sent through the wilderness by Washington, and attempt the liberation of the lower part of the province through the co-operation alike of its French and English inhabitants. The attempt must be made before the breaking up of the ice in the river, when the arrival of British reinforcements from Europe would render success impossible.

The invasion of Canada by the Americans was the natural result of the capture of Ticonderoga. It was not in its origin the deliberate purpose of congress. An attack on the northern border of New York was formally threatened from Canada, and the opinion prevailed that it could be best resisted by meeting it in the land of the enemy. Washington had put aside every private suggestion to divide his strength; nor could he be tempted even to take part in an expedition against Nova But as war raged on the St. Lawrence, his duty as commander-in-chief required that he should promote its success; and, being informed of the possibility of reaching Quebec by land, he was led to take the chances of surprising its citadel by the aid of the Canadians themselves. In this wise it came about that he organized an expedition to the lower St. Lawrence. For its chief officer he selected Benedict Arnold, who had taken part in the surprise of Ticonderoga, and who in former days as a trader had visited Quebec, where he still kept up a correspondence.

The detachment from the army round Boston consisted of ten companies of New England infantry, one of riflemen from Virginia, and two from Pennsylvania: in all, two battalions of about eleven hundred men.

The lieutenant-colonels were Roger Enos and the brave Christopher Greene of Rhode Island. The majors were Re

« PreviousContinue »