WHEN THE Americans had entered Canada that autumn, the Governor, Sir Guy Carleton, escaped down the St Lawrence River from Montreal in a dug-out canoe, by night, and with difficulty reached Quebec. Our pilot described him as ‘a man of ten thousand eyes, very courageous’. He was evidently prudent besides, for he had immediately expelled from Quebec, together with their families, all persons of military age who refused to take up arms for the King. On December 1st General Montgomery joined Colonel Benedict Arnold before the city and mounted his cannon for a siege. By a perfect novelty in military science he placed them on platforms of snow and water congealed into solid ice. The shot, however, was too light to make any great impression on the defence; whereupon, after consulting with his officers, General Montgomery determined on a general assault to be delivered simultaneously in two quarters, for the night of December 23rd. He boasted that he would eat his Christmas dinner in Quebec or Hell. Yet he was forced to go back on this undertaking because of the clearness of the weather: since, for a successful assault, he needed the cloak of a snowstorm. Difficult as the situation of the defenders was, with great scarcity of fuel, short rations, a wide circuit of walls to defend and a restless alien citizenry to keep in check, that of the besiegers was far worse. No unanimity existed among these troops, composed of contingents from several colonies, of whom only the Virginian riflemen, being better shod than the rest, did not now have their enthusiasm frozen to death. The temperature had fallen so low that it was found impossible to touch metal with the naked hand lest it should strip off the skin. Even in the city it was sufficient employment for the soldiers to keep their noses from the frost-bite, and several sentries lost the sight of their eyes from the extreme cold.
How any at all of the Americans managed to survive, I do not know. The Virginians wore white linen smocks, which were so obviously unfitted for use in winter that a legend arose among the French peasantry that they were impervious to cold. In the accounts that spread of their exploits the word toile, which means ‘linen’ in the French language, became changed to tôle, which is ‘sheet-iron’, and a legend will doubtless go down to posterity of ogres clad in white, frost-proof, iron armour, who sought to invade the country. To add to their discomforts, a severe epidemic of smallpox raged in the enemy camp. Desertions from the New England companies were frequent, and many men avoided duty by feigning sick; for which crime they had halters put around their necks and were paraded in derision before their comrades, and then lashed. What made matters yet worse was that sufficient pay in hard money for these troops was wanting. The injunction of the American Congress against alienating the Canadians’ affections was so strict, that necessary supplies of food and clothing might not be seized from the country people, nor could they be compelled by any means to accept the new American paper money, termed ‘Continental currency’.
General Montgomery had no alternative but either to attack or to retire, for he failed in all attempts to seduce the French population of Quebec to revolt. Messages to that purpose had been shot over the walls tied to arrows, and one emissary, a woman, had somehow contrived to gain admittance: she was seized, tried, jailed, and then drummed out with ignominy.
The distinguishing badge adopted by the Americans, who had no common uniform, was hemlock worn in the hat; but General Montgomery, now deciding on an assault for New Year’s Eve, replaced these withered sprigs with a paper badge on which was inscribed, in each soldier’s own handwriting: ‘Liberty or Death!’
In the words of our French pilot, who appeared greatly tickled by the circumstance – ‘By Gar, ze General he oblige to try zat day – last day possible.’
‘How the last day possible?’ we had asked.
‘Ze New England militia, zey finish, at finish of year; zey go home goddam quick, finish of year, by Gar.’
The assault was delivered at about five o’clock in the morning of the New Year of 1776 with the aid of a blinding blizzard. The garrison, though warned beforehand that an attack was expected, were distracted by two feints at an escalade made at distant points of the defences, which were no less than three miles in circumference. Many of our men were also incapacitated by having drunk too deeply the health of the New Year. With little opposition the Virginian riflemen, under their gigantic commander Colonel Dan Morgan, forced their way into the Lower Town, which was a large suburb of wooden houses contiguous to the River, and there penetrated to the foot of Mountain Street, which zigzagged upwards to the Upper Town. Here they found the sally port of the lower barrier open, by mistake; and the French levies soon came running down past our well-placed batteries there in whole platoons, to give themselves up as prisoners. This barrier was captured at the first rush. But, instead of pressing on, the Virginians loyally waited: this was their agreed rendezvous with General Montgomery’s column, whose attack was being made at some little distance away. They waited in vain, for he was dead, shot through both thighs and the head by a sudden discharge of grape in the moment of assault.
Colonel Benedict Arnold, under whom the Virginians were serving, was adjudged to be the boldest and most skilful soldier in the whole American Army. If he had not had the misfortune, a few minutes before, that his leg was shattered by a musket ball, he would never have permitted the delay and Quebec would doubtless have fallen, for the upper barrier of Mountain Street was only weakly held. But, by the time that the Virginians came to know that they could only count upon their own exertions, the British had rallied and were strongly placed behind the upper barrier. The chance had slipped. The American plan had been to fire the Lower Town, in order to provide a screen of smoke for the storming of the Mountain Street barriers, but this was not effected, and, when morning came, such of the Americans as had not already retreated were surrounded and captured. The enemy lost between six and seven hundred men and officers, more than half their force, in killed, wounded, and prisoners: the British losses were less than twenty. Yet Colonel Arnold had the temerity to encamp within three miles of the city, where smallpox and misery continued to diminish the numbers of his men. Even so, General Carleton was not to be tempted to attack: he lay close in the Upper Town. In April the Americans were reinforced, so that they numbered about two thousand men: but these were insufficient for a renewed assault. On May 3rd three British warships forced their way through the floating ice, to the great encouragement of the garrison. The Americans then broke camp and retired hastily up the River St Lawrence.
Let me conjure up a picture of Quebec as I saw it from mid-stream of the river, on the morning of May 28th 1776. At the water’s edge was a cluster of warehouses and dwellings, the Lower Town, and behind them rose a cliff consisting of slate and marble, upon which, behind batteries and palisades, stands the Upper Town. In the middle of the cliff ran a serpentine road, Mountain Street, and a zigzag footpath with a hand-rail led up past the great grey palace of the Roman Catholic bishop; and, on the left, a little above it, stood Castle St Louis, the residence of the Governor, a long, irregularly constructed, yellow building of two storeys. The Castle was thought to be out of range of guns, because of its elevation, but this proved an error: for one evening of the siege a shot passed through a room next to that where General Carleton sat at cards with his family. Beyond were seen the slate-covered spire of the Cathedral surrounded by the spires of other religious buildings, namely, those of the Jesuits, the Franciscan Recollects, the Ursulines, and the Hotel Dieu, and by many tall and beautiful trees. To the left of Castle St Louis was a rounded pinnacle of dark slate, known as Cape Diamond where was a square fort, the Citadel of Quebec; and on the highest point of the pinnacle a look-out box, an iron cage formerly used to house the bodies of felons. Cape Diamond stood upwards of one thousand feet above the level of the water.
Such a sight was beautiful in the extreme and improved by the numerous ships anchored in the intervening waters; but from a close view, when I went ashore for the Guard, many imperfections appeared. The fortifications, though extensive, wanted much in regularity and solidity, and, the parapet being broken down in many places, the ways of communication between the works proved rugged in the extreme. A number of houses, moreover, had been destroyed for fuel by the besieged inhabitants; shot and shells had continually defaced and burned the remainder; and the pavement of Mountain Street had been purposely torn up – in order that the shells might bury themselves in the ground before they burst and so spread less of death – and not yet replaced. Besides this, the streets were very narrow and dirty, and the buildings in general were small, ugly, and inconvenient. But I was delighted with the Canadian women whom I saw as I passed through the town; they were not beautiful but had something to set off this defect, a charm of behaviour and a lively neatness which is more difficult to forget than to describe. I was amused, too, by a curiosity, namely a great number of broad-shouldered, short-legged dogs yoked in little carts bringing country produce to the market.
The Guard of which I was the Sergeant, under a good-humoured young lieutenant named Kemmis, was a double one: over the St John’s Gate, at the south-east of the city looking across the Charles River, and over the American captives in the solidly built jail near by. General Arnold’s attack, which was made at this point, must have been the maddest possible, for the gate and the walls adjoining were stupendous and not to be attempted without heavy artillery.
I was shocked at the appearance of the captives: they had suffered terribly during the siege, though General Carleton had showed them as much humanity and consideration as he could afford. Their living had been salt pork and salt fish, biscuit, rice, and a little butter, but there was no means of providing them with remedies against the scurvy, which many of them, already weakened by the smallpox, took very badly, so that their teeth had loosened and dropped out and their flesh seemed to be rotting on their bones. Their clothing was ragged and verminous, and all their laughter had long forsaken them, giving place to a fixed melancholy. An attempt had been made by them to escape on April 1st, with which was connected a plan for seizing St John’s Gate and admitting Colonel Arnold’s forces into the city; but it miscarried. The cause of this failure was that common to almost all American war-like enterprises’ the refusal of inexperienced participants to subordinate themselves to the experienced. Towards the completion of their plan only one obstacle still remained to be surmounted: which was the removal of a block of ice that prevented their prison door from opening outwards. Two good men were chosen to creep out and whittle this obstruction silently away with the long knives of which they were possessed; but a pair of meddling know-alls anticipated them by chipping at it with axes – which noise the guards overheard. All was discovered, and the conspirators were thereupon manacled and put in foot-irons. This hindrance to their taking exercise in the prison parade depressed their health further and aided the scurvy, of which many scores of them perished. Governor Carleton, however, had allowed them fresh beef about the middle of April and relieved them of their fetters, soon as the city was relieved. He had also distributed clothing to the naked. Thus I did not see them at their worst, though what I saw was shocking enough.
When I called out one of them, by name James Melville, or perhaps it was Mellon – I disremember – to discourse with me, what he disclosed rang so piercingly in my ears that I could never afterwards forget it. He said: ‘If ever I am released from this jail and get home to our people, and fight again – before God I swear that I will never again suffer myself to be taken prisoner in my versal life. I have lost the half of my soul here, seared away by those cold irons. Look at me – you English soldier – I was as hale and stout a man as you in September last when I marched with the rest from Cambridge in Captain Dearborn’s company. Nor was it the Kennebec River that did this for me, despite the hideous woods and mountains, and the tarnal hunger and heavy loads; nor the Height of Land where I wore the flesh from my shoulders at the Terrible Carry. Nor was it the Chaudière River, where we waded knee-deep for miles in the icy alder swamps, the abode only of herons and adders, and fed upon raw dog-meat and the bark of trees, and I roasted my leather shot-pouch and ate it; and also had the flux, nation bad upon me. Nor was it the complicated distresses of the campaign before this city, in the coldest winter but one that the oldest man can recall, and in rags of uniform. It was these solid prison walls, and the foot-irons.’
He added that, while he could complain of no unkindness on the part of the British, the Canadian militia had taunted these Americans often and threatened torture and death, though in effect doing nothing. ‘But our worst enemy proved he who should have been our friend, a villain named Dewey, chosen from among us to be our quartermaster sergeant. He defrauded us of a great part of our provision, so that we had not above three ounces of pork and not half a pint of rice and two biscuits a day. Yet the Lord of Hosts delivered us out of his hands. The villain took the smallpox, which soon swept him off the face of the earth.’
I asked this soldier, the first native-born American with whom I ever conversed, a variety of questions. He told me that he had used his musket at Lexington in April 1775, marching with his neighbours from Hubbardston in Massachusetts, and that his enthusiasm for the cause of Liberty had first been fired by a Methodist preacher, lately arrived from Ireland, a most persuasive speaker. This preacher had taken his text from Nehemiah iv. 14: Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord who is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your houses. ‘He had a face the colour of a biscuit and a black, wet lock hanging over his eyes. His words were like swords,’ this man Melville said.
I asked him, what quarrel he could possibly have with King George. He replied that this preacher, along with the rest, had assured him that the King, not content with forcing him to drink that noxious weed tea, plotted to establish Popery in New England.
‘But the King at his Coronation abjured Popery in the most solemn fashion,’ said I, smiling. ‘He is no more a Papist than you are.’
‘Ah,’ said he earnestly, ‘so you may believe. But I dare swear that he is not the first great person to forswear himself when it was to his convenience. What of the Quebec Act of two years ago? Was that the Act of a Protestant Monarch? It established Popery in Canada as the State Religion, tithes and all. Now missionaries will breed here under the royal protection and spread like flies over our border and seduce all our young people.’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘I see no great harm in granting the French-Canadians permission to continue worshipping God as freely in their ancestral manner as do your allies, the Papists of Maryland; indeed, I consider it a necessary and humane measure. It pleases me to know that on a Sunday, after the Romish service is over, General Carleton with his officers and soldiers resort to the Cathedral for their own worship; and neither party demands the reconsecration of the edifice between whiles.’ I would gladly have said much more on this issue, remembering with shame my wretched fellow-countrymen at Timolin, and all along the road from Dublin to Waterford, wishing for humanity’s sake that a Quebec Act could be passed by the Irish Parliament, so that the tithes sweated from these poor wretches could at least be paid to priests of their own faith, for the spiritual comfort that would accrue. But I did not wish to make a gratuitous parade or confession before this American of the ills from which Ireland suffered; and kept strictly to the matter in hand.
I am of an inquiring turn of mind and had already been at pains to find out as much as possible about the conditions obtaining in Canada. I was therefore able to tell him: ‘As for the other main provision of the Act, against which your Congress has protested as fastening fetters upon the Habitants of Canada – namely, that of re-establishing the French Civil Law except in criminal cases – I am informed that the English-speaking settlers, who are outnumbered as two hundred to one by the French-speaking, have been the only persons to complain. Indeed, I hear that we have forced on the French of this province a greater measure of liberty than they can well digest: they are said to abominate trial by jury, deeming their Seigneurial judges as more likely to give them justice than a parcel of tradesmen crowded together in the jury box.’
At that very moment, as we talked together in the main doorway, a tinkle of a bell was heard up the street; and we saw how the people prostrated themselves before the Host conveyed by a robed priest to a dying man in a house near by. Acolytes carried lighted candles before the sacred wafer, which was enclosed in a gilt box laid upon a purple embroidered cushion, and handsome young nuns of the Ursulines walked behind, with their eyes fixed upon the ground. A number of soldiers were in the street, including Highlanders of the Royal Emigrant Regiment and German mercenaries from Brunswick who had sailed in the convoy that had arrived just ahead of us. But one and all obeyed the Governor’s orders and doffed feather bonnet, cocked hat, or grenadier’s cap as the procession passed; and, as required, the sentry at the gate presented arms.
‘Faugh,’ exclaimed this Melville, when they had passed, ‘if that is not the dissemination of Scarlet Popery, what tarnal other name would you give it?’
‘Good manners,’ said I, ‘which I am always pleased to witness. I wish we had more of them back in my own country.’
‘I watched that same crew perform over a Frenchman in the hospital a month or two ago,’ he remarked in a hollow voice. ‘The nuns came and read over him, and then the priest entered and they fetched in a table covered with a white cloth, and lighted two wax candles about three feet long and set them on the table. The priest had on his white robe, and the nuns kneeled down, and he stood and read a sentence, and then the nuns a sentence, and so they went on for some time. Then the priest prayed by himself, then the nuns by themselves, and then the priest again. Then all together they read a spell, and finally the priest alone. Then the priest stroked the man’s face; then they took away their candles and table. But the man died for all that, I should nation well reckon.’
He described Colonel Benedict Arnold as the most terrible man in America, and said that it was a pity that he was so much of a gentleman.
I pretended not to pay much attention to this, so that his tongue might run on unchecked. ‘There was Colonel Easton of Connecticut who disputed the command with Colonel Arnold at Crown Point last year; Colonel Arnold made it a matter of honour and called on him to draw. Colonel Easton pacifically refused, though he had a hanger and a case of pistols on him; so Colonel Arnold kicked his posterior tarnal heartily, which Colonel Easton could not forgive him.’
‘You don’t like gentlemen, then, in New England?’
‘Law for me, no! They are Tories and enemies of Liberty. But a few are well disposed to us and have military talents, so we employ them. General Montgomery was one such, and a good man in his way. General Philip Schuyler is another, but he gives himself aristocratic airs and was once mighty surly to an honest blacksmith who came uninvited to visit him in his mansion at Stillwater. But General George Washington is a nation worse than all, and if he had his will would put only gentlemen in command of us; we hold him in great suspicion. He is tarnal friendly with Colonel Arnold.’
‘I am informed that Colonel Arnold is a druggist and bookseller. How comes he then to rank as a gentleman?’
‘Why, he married the High Sheriff’s daughter in his town, commanded two companies of the Governor’s Guards, and is a pretty considerable merchant. He boasts of his descent from a former Governor of Rhode Island, and he dresses tarnal proud. Well, he took a pet against Colonel Easton, as I have said; and he quarrelled with Colonel Enos, whose three companies later hooked it off from us at the Kennebec River; and with Major Brown, whom he named a damned thief for taking more than his share of the plunder captured at Sorel; and with Colonel Campbell, whom he accused of cowardice; and with Captain Handchett, whom he threatened to arrest for the same thing. Now, I hear he has retired to Montreal because General Wooster, who came up with the reinforcements in April, would not consult his advice.’
‘Tell me,’ said I. ‘Who appoints your officers? Is it General Washington?’
He spat upon the ground. ‘Law for me – no, no! We would accept none of his appointment. We want safe men, not men of quality, nary one of ’em.’
I could not resist interjecting sarcastically that quality was sometimes no bad thing, especially when compared with mere quantity. But he did not heed me and continued: ‘The Continental Congress appoints generals and colonels and such, and we appoint the rest, from captains down.’
‘Whom do you intend by “we”?’ I asked in some bewilderment.
‘The soldiers who are to serve under him. Our captains and lieutenants are voted for by a show of hands. They are pretty respectable tradesmen – such as hatters, butchers, tanners, shoemakers – and many of them worth several thousand dollars. But, let me tell you, that for all they are very warm men, they resemble our ministers in this – if they do not please us we do not obey, but we bid them hook it off in nation quick time.’
This raised such a ludicrous picture in my mind that I heartily laughed, which offended him. He told me: ‘Scoffers will also have their portion in the hell that is prepared for the unrighteous.’
‘Who told you that?’ I asked, still laughing a little.
‘The same preacher of whom I spoke – the Reverend John Martin was his name.’
‘The Devil!’ I exclaimed involuntarily, at the coincidence of two Irish priests of the name of John Martin, both with sallow faces and a black fore-lock, the one a Papist and the other a shouting Methodist. With that I dismissed the American; but before the Guard was relieved and we returned to the Friendship I gave him an old shirt and a pair of stockings, for which he wrung my hand gratefully.
General Carleton came to inspect us that same afternoon and complimented Lieutenant Kemmis upon our appearance and bearing, which gave us no little satisfaction. Let me describe this famous man who saved Canada for the Crown – not only by his activity and gallantry in this war but by his considerate framing of the Quebec Act mentioned above, which consolidated the loyalty of the French. He was tall, raw-faced, with a very large nose and a great diffidence in conversation; the best military instructor of his day and the most generous man alive. General Carleton had a quaint humour: when, two months before Quebec was relieved, the Americans had sent him a message warning him that the townspeople would revolt unless he surrendered, he gave no reply, but ordered a great wooden horse to be placed upon the walls, close to this Gate of St John. This was to signify that the treachery of the wooden horse of Troy would not be repeated by American emissaries in Quebec. When his staff reproached him for ‘shooting too high for the Americans’, who were not well read in classical legends and would be nonplussed by the horse, ‘O, by God,’ he said, ‘I’ll soon remedy that. Put a bundle of hay before the beast and write in bold letters on the wall, using tar: “When this horse has ate his hay, we surrender.”’
After the relief of the city his good nature was such that he issued the following proclamation:
Whereas I am informed that many of His Majesty’s deluded subjects, of the neighbouring provinces, labouring under wounds and divers disorders, are dispersed in the adjacent woods and parishes and in great danger of perishing for want of proper assistance, all captains and other officers of militia are hereby commanded to make diligent search for all such distressed persons, and afford them all necessary relief, and convey them to the general hospital, where proper care shall be taken of them: all reasonable expenses which may be incurred in complying with this order shall be paid by the Receiver-General.
And lest a consciousness of past offences should deter such miserable wretches from receiving that assistance which their distressed situation may require: I hereby make known to them that as soon as their health is restored they shall have free liberty to return to their respective provinces.
General Carleton also fed and clothed the sick whom the Americans, when they broke the siege, had abandoned in their hospitals. I heard from one of our men who happened to remain in Quebec during the week following our departure, that General Carleton visited the prison and spoke to the captives there in a very affable and familiar tone.
He asked: ‘My lads, why did you come to disturb an honest man in his government, that never did any harm to you in his life? I never invaded your property, nor sent a single soldier to distress you. Come, my boys, you are in a very distressing situation, I see, and not able to go home with any comfort. I must provide you with shoes, stockings, and good warm waistcoats. I must give you some good victuals to carry you home. Take care, my lads, that you do not come here again, lest I should not treat you so kindly.’
He was as good as his word, though owing to the war, and one thing and another, James Melville and his comrades did not sail home until August; they had all voluntarily signed papers promising on their honour never to take up arms again against His Majesty. They sailed in five transports, and the General presented to the officers of each transport a cask of wine and five sheep as ship’s stores. Mgr Briand, the Bishop of Quebec shamed them with a gift of two casks of wine, eight sugar-loaves and a number of pounds of green tea. The tea offended their political consciences and they respectfully refused it; then the good Bishop, to prove that he had not acted with malice, gave them an equal amount of the best coffee in exchange. This set animosity against tea was most violent in the early years of the war. The same James Melville, or Mellon, informed me that his comrade Sergeant Dixon, who lost a leg below the knee with a thirty-six-pounder ball before Quebec, was advised by a surgeon, who had amputated the limb, to drink some tea in default of brandy: for this would stimulate the desired reaction. The lady of the house where he had been brought made a dish of the beverage, which Dixon put away from him with detestation exclaiming: ‘No, madam: it is the ruin of my country.’ Nor could he be prevailed upon to forgo his resolution and touch this ‘nauseous draught of slavery’; but, lock-jaw ensuing, he died.
The Reverend Samuel Seabury, who was to become the first bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, had recently written a humorous refutation of Congress’s commercial policy: they recommended, in retaliation of the tea duty, an agreement against exporting all goods to Great Britain and Ireland. He was a farmer of his own glebe land in Westchester County, near New York, and did not wish to lose his Northern Irish market for flax-seed, of which he had in the previous year threshed and cleaned eleven bushels. He put it thus:
The common price now is at least ten shillings. My seed, then, will fetch me five pounds ten shillings. But I will throw in the ten shillings for expenses. There remain five pounds. In five pounds are four hundred three-pences. Four hundred three-pences, currency, will pay the duty upon two hundred pounds of tea – even reckoning the exchange with London at two hundred per centum. I use in my family about six pounds of tea. Few farmers in my neighbourhood use so much; but I hate to stint my wife and daughters, or my friendly neighbours when they come to see me. Besides, I like a dish of tea too, especially after a little more than ordinary fatigue in hot weather. Now, two hundred pounds of tea, at six pounds a year, will just last thirty-three years and four months; so that, in order to pay this monstrous duty on tea, which has raised all this confounded combustion in the country, I have only to sell the produce of a bushel of flax-seed once in thirty-three years.
But the Reverend Samuel Seabury, as a minister of religion, should have known better than to play the rationalist, confusing substance with symbol. As the elements of the Lord’s Supper are held to suffer a divine transformation in the hands of the priest: so Pekoe and Hyson were believed by the Americans to suffer a diabolical transformation when handled by the excise-man.