Benedict Arnold. A biography/4
CHAPTER IV.
GOING AGAINST QUEBEC.
ARNOLD took forty Norridgewock Indians along with him under Natalis, and hastened forward from these peaceful French settlements in the direction of Quebec, the object of all his hopes and ambition. In ten days he reached Point Levi, over opposite that city. Here he waited for his little army to come up. By the 13th day of November they were all with him again. Eneas, the rascally Indian, had previously given up the letters he entrusted to him into the hands of the enemy, and by this means they were apprised of Arnold's approach. Eneas said himself that he had been taken prisoner, but the probability is that he told an out-right lie about it.
There were no boats, therefore, on the southern side of the St. Lawrence river, the British having removed them all, lest the American party, of whose approach they had heard, should use them for crossing. But Arnold contrived, through the aid of his Indian allies, to get together some thirty or forty bircli canoes, with which he set out to cross on the evening of the same day, at nine o'clock. They paddled across as silently as possible in the dark, managing to pass the frigate Lizard and a sloop-of-war that lay anchored in the river, which had been ordered there for the very purpose of preventing their approach. Three several times did these frail boats carry their freights of armed men, and by early dawn five hundred troops were transported to Wolfe's Cove and nearly ready to begin offensive operations. They had just landed the third party, leaving a hundred and fifty yet to be sent for, when some sentries in one of the enemy's boats detected their movements. The American party on the instant fired into the boat, and three men fell over the sides into the water, dead. Of course to think of going across, after that, for the remaining hundred and fifty, would have been the height of fool hardiness.
Upon this sudden and most unfortunate alarm, Arnold saw that he must make haste or it would soon be over with him. If the garrison was aroused, all would be lost. It was now a little past four o'clock in the morning. He put himself at the head of his five hundred men, and led them up the sides of the frowning precipice on whose summit lay the immortal Plains of Abraham. The young and heroic General Wolfe had led an army up those same heights sixteen years before, and died just as the cheering sounds of victory rang in his ears. The ascent was rugged and extremely toilsome, but they had an Arnold to lead them on, and there was no faltering with him. Up, up, up they climbed, until at last their eyes rested on the sight they had so long coveted. There was Quebec before them, its roofs and spires pencilled dimly against the gray sky of the early morning. From the day on which they marched out of camp at Cambridge with the good wishes of the whole army following them, all along through their solitary and painful pilgrimage in the wilderness, wading and paddling and pushing their boats up the lakes and rivers, this single view had danced like a dream of delight before their eyes; and now, on this cold and dreary morning of November, it was realized.
There was the city, and here were not many more than five hundred men, worn and weary and dispirited, with. whom to take it. Was ever any enterprise so foolish on the very face of it? Did it look as if the leader in this fearful expedition had first sat down and counted the cost? They were without artillery, and almost half of their muskets had been spoiled on their march. The garrison within the massive walls of the castle and fort had been strengthened by fresh accessions of troops from Sorel and Newfoundland, and was now quite eighteen hundred strong. These were made up of regulars, militia, and marines. Many have wondered that so superior a force did not at once saUy out and destroy the weaker one; but it is to be remembered that a majority of the militia were ready to desert to the Americans, in case an opportunity was offered them, and it was not deemed safe to run the risk of giving them the opportunity.
Arnold, however, still placed great reliance upon the friendly feelings of the inhabitants of the city, as well as of the militia composing the garrison, and who were supposed to be at least two-thirds of the whole. He wished to be perfectly well satisfied of this friendship, and so resorted to an expedient which he thought would decide the matter at once. Drawing up his little band before the walls, and within eight hundred yards of the same, he ordered them to give three rousing cheers; by this means he was in hope to bring out the regulars on the open plain, when the militia, together with the people of the town, would throw wide open the gates and permit them to enter without opposition. The men gave the cheers as directed, but the only substantial answers they got were sent them from the mouths of the cannon that were fired in return from the walls. To be sure, the parapets of the walls were dark with clustering people, and they huzzaed in return; but Cramahd, the Lieut. Governor, knew better than to trust too much to the loyalty of the population. The disaffection was very widely spread, the old animosity between the English and French races continuing as deep and strong as ever. The English were dissatisfied with the French laws, and the French had no objection to seeing their ancient enemy humiliated.
Failing in this artifice, Arnold tried another; and this seems to have been even more shallow and foolish than the first He sent a flag to the commandant of the garrison, summoning him, with all the pomp of inflated language, to surrender without further delay. Inasmuch as the garrison were more than two to Arnold's one, this looks to us a little preposterous. The commandant not only treated the approach of the flag with contempt, but fired upon it as soon as it came within range. Some of those who were there with the Americans at the time, thought Arnold did this more for display than anything else, and to gratify his excessive vanity. He was once in the habit of buying horses of certain persons in Quebec, which he shipped from New Haven to the West Indies, in the way of his trade; and among these persons he was still known by the name of the "horsejockey." He was therefore quite anxious to impress upon these persons a new idea of his importance, bearing, as he did, the honorable military title of Colonel. This second stratagem is chargeable almost entirely, therefore, to his vanity, and his disposition to establish of a sudden a great name among those who never saw any special greatness in him before.
Arnold went through all the military forms and ceremonies in the matter, however. The summons to surrender which he entrusted to the flag, to be placed in the hands of Lieut. Governor Cramahe, was made up of high sounding phrases, invoking him in the name and authority of the Congress of America to yield up his position, and throwing out the most terrific threats in case he should either refuse or delay obedience to his demand. As before stated, the very idea of receiving a flag with a message from so inconsiderable an enemy, was hooted down with disdain, and the bearer was fired upon from the walls and compelled to make good his retreat. The British were safely and snugly entrenched within a strongly walled town, with an abundance both of defences and provisions; while the little American force were shivering and half starved upon an elevated plain, with the wintry winds howling around them from every quarter, and the sullen skies promising them no more welcome visitants than the icy sleets and snows that were to blow out of them.
Yet this same scanty, ill-fed, and freezing body of men struck a sort of terror into the hearts of the Canadians, too, and it was a terror mixed somewhat with admiration. They believed it was only by the aid of some great miracle that an army could have emerged from the depths of a gloomy forest at such a time of the year; indeed, it was a wonder to them how they had threaded this wilderness at all, with its streams, and swamps, and mountains, and rocks. Besides this, they gave credence to the stories about the vast numbers of the strangers, and were ready to believe that the entire wilderness was swarming with them. Morgan's company of riflemen, who led the van, wore linen frocks, which was the usual uniform at the time for troops of that character; and the inhabitants soon got the story going around that they were cased in iron, and that their courage and physical strength corresponded to such a massive style of defensive uniform.
It was just then that Arnold received the news that Governor Carleton, who had managed to make his escape from the British fleet that was stopped at Sorel by the American batteries, had suddenly started on for Quebec, and would soon be there. Arnold stopped short, therefore, where he was, and examined into the condition of his force. He was astounded to learn that a great number of his men were invalids, that more were entirely destitute of needed clothing, that nearly a hundred of their muskets were good for nothing as weapons to fight with, and that nearly all the cartridges for the balance of the guns were spoiled by the water, there being not more than five rounds left to each man. Right upon this followed the intelligence that the enemy were getting ready to sally out into the plain from the city, and give them battle. It would have been foolhardy to expose his crippled and diminished force to such superior numbers, and he therefore prudently resolved on a retreat. Point aux Trembles was some twenty miles above, and thither he set out on the instant At that place he intended to await the approach of the troops under General Montgomery, from Montreal.
Arnold reached Aux Trembles with a few more men than half the number he led out across the wilderness from Cambridge. They numbered in all six hundred and seventy-five. He arrived only to learn that Carleton had just left the place before him, and even then he could distinctly hear the sound of the cannon that were firing at Quebec in honor of his arrival at that city. Arnold did not delay an hour in sending to Montreal to General Montgomery and informing him of the sad condition of his troops. Clothing and provisions were very soon sent down to them in response to Arnold's statement, and thus they were made more comfortable.
Above Quebec, all Canada was in possession, at the time, of the Americans; they had control of the river St. Lawrence, and of every post of any importance; nothing remained for them to take but the powerful capital itself, and that was the sole object of this expedition. In order to accomplish this purpose, therefore, it was necessary for Montgomery to join Arnold with his forces as soon as he could.
He left only a weak garrison at Montreal at best, and hurried away with three hundred men, three mortars, and artillery; these he placed on board the vessels that were captured from the enemy at Sorel, and all set sail down the river together. On the first day of December, he landed at Point aux Trembles, and at once took command of both forces, numbering in all only nine hundred fighting men. It was with such an army that he was to undertake to reduce a fortified town with a garrison just twice as numerous. On the next day they set off from this point for Quebec again. A furious storm of snow was driving into their faces at the time, at first almost blinding them as they marched. It soon began to pile in the roads, and to blow and drift so much as to seriously obstruct their progress. They moved forward, therefore, but slowly, wading as they went, and finally came in sight of Quebec on the fifth of December. The houses where the two commanders took up their quarters are still shown to travellers. The body of the Americans were encamped in a suburb of the city, called St. Roche.
They did not happen to know inside the walls how great was the disparity between the two forces, or the besiegers might not have been left unmolested as long as they were. Arnold wrote on to Washington, while at Point aux Trembles, that it would take fully twenty-five hundred men to storm Quebec with any hope of success; and still they found it necessary to advance to their perilous work with but a trifle more than a third of that number. Montgomery's first device was, what Arnold had vainly tried before, to send a summons to Carleton to surrender; but the Governor refused to allow a flag to come within shot range of the walls of the city. But a letter was finally sent to Carleton from Montgomery through a citizen, in which he demanded of him to give up the town without delay, or he would make an assault for whose results he could not become responsible. He likewise tried to make Carleton think he had a great many more men than he had. But the Governor was not so easily frightened. No doubt he believed the assailing force of Americans was stronger than it was, yet he chose to take his own course.
It still continued to be a favorite idea of Montgomery and Arnold that the inhabitants of the city felt friendly towards them, and would turn out in their support as soon as a good chance offered; but they were afraid of the troops that composed the garrison; it was this alone that held them in check. For three weeks almost, they remained in their present position, trying in every way to effect an entrance into the city. It was a curious, and a wretched picture; and yet it compelled admiration for the courage and pluck that were displayed on every side. Here was a poorly fed, poorly clad, and poorly supplied army, the mere remnant of what it was when it set out on this formidable winter expedition; they had no heavier ordnance than three mortars and a few light pieces of artillery; the snow was falling on their little half-protected encampment almost incessantly; their limbs were bitten with the severe frosts almost every night they lay down to their broken slumbers; the leader himself was nearly ready to despair, in the face of so many obstacles both of man and of nature; and a gradual feeling of disappointment and depression seemed likely to take possession of the sinking hearts of the whole.
Nothing less than the lofty courage of such a nature as Montgomery's could have kept alive the spirits of the troops as long as it did; though a native of Ireland himself, and still a young man, he nevertheless loved his adopted country with all the ardor of a son. Orators like Chatham, Burke, and and Barrè thought his name worthy of their splendid eulogies on the floor of the British Parliament; and even Lord North, the Prime Minister of King George in the Revolution, exclaimed in regard to him, after conceding his worth and manliness,--"Curses on his virtues,--they have undone his country! He had taken the general command in consequence of the illness of Schuyler, and received the commission of a major-general just before reaching Quebec, and while on his way to assail that town. But alas for the land of his adoption! it was to be but a very brief time that he would wear the honors with which she sought to reward him.
This brave young officer could not help reflecting what a blow it would be to the hopes of the patriots of America, if he should retreat or even falter now; and he therefore nerved himself to make the greater effort where they were. He thought that outright death was easier to be contemplated than retreat. As long as the Governor refused to treat with him, he determined to treat with the Governor; and so he began to throw bombs from the mortars over the walls among the houses of the city. This he found produced no such effect as he had reckoned on; it did not seem to harass the enemy in the least. Accordingly it occurred to him to try another plan, and make a more forcible demonstration.
The men set to work with earnestness, and soon collected heaps of snow and ice at a point within seven hundred yards of the walls, upon which he mounted a battery of six guns; and then he opened with all his force against the entrenched enemy. But he might as well have played against the walls with pop-guns. He made no impression whatever. Next, the two armies had skirmishes with each other in the suburbs of the city; in which there were a few men killed, and some houses were burned.
Thus three weeks spoken of slipped away, and nothing was effected. The term for which many of the companies had enlisted was now expiring, and they began to think longingly of the quiet and secure comforts of home. Mutiny likewise began to show itself in various forms. That terrible visitor in the camp, the small-pox, also made its appearance among the troops, and the prospect was, certainly, of the entire dissolution and ruin of the army. The mutinous disposition was brought on by the breaking out of a fierce quarrel between Arnold and one of his captains; the captains of two other companies took sides against Arnold, and for a time the danger of a general breaking up was imminent. But it was soon laid at rest by the discrimination and firmness of Montgomery, who ascertained where the trouble arose, and took speedy and decided means to reduce the rebellious troops to subordination again.
The quarrel, it appears, grew out of an old difficulty between Arnold and a Major Brown at Ticonderoga; Brown improved the occasion to widen the breach between Arnold and his captain, and managed to draw still other companies into it, so that he might get them detached from Col. Arnold's command, and joined to his own. The matter had gone so far that they refused to serve unless they could be so transferred, according to Major Brown's purposes.
In the midst of thickening dangers like these, with foes within as well as without, a council of war was called in order to determine what was best to be done. It was resolved to make a decided movement at once and try and carry the works by assault. The town was to be attacked at different points at the same time, it being calculated that by thus dividing the effective garrison, success would be more sure. The army was divided into two bodies; Arnold was to lead his around by the way of the suburb named St. Roche, and Montgomery was to follow the bank of the river with his, and pass around by the base of Cape Diamond.
The troops were ordered to parade at two o'clock on the morning of the last day in the year. They were all promptly on the ground. The real plan was then made known. The first and second divisions were to attack the lower town on opposite sides at the same time; while a third was to make a feigned attack upon the upper town from the Plains of Abraham.
Montgomery led his men down from these plains to Wolfe's Cove, to the south of the city, and at once began a march towards the lower town, by the road that ran along the margin of the river, and under the frowning front of Cape Diamond. Arnold led on his division towards the north side of the town, and both parties were at length to meet, and force Prescott Gate.
It was snowing furiously at the time they set out, and it was so dark as to render it difficult for them to find their way. At the foot of the high precipice called Cape Diamond, was a strong block-house, forty or fifty feet square, which only left a cart-path, on each side, for the travel along the road; and within this block-house was mounted a battery of three-pounders, charged with grape and canister shot, which raked the entire avenue. In the face of this appalling obstacle went Montgomery with his division, the precipice on the one side, and the river on the other. He stopped within fifty yards of the block-house to look about him. He listened intently. All was profound silence. Not a sound was to be heard within the building, and they concluded that the men who served the guns must have fallen asleep on their watch. Montgomery stepped forth in the gray of this winter's morning, with the snow sifting down all around them, and cried out, in a loud voice, "Men of New York ! you will not fear to follow where your General leads! march on !" and at once rushed forward to charge the battery.
But they had sadly miscalculated. The artillerymen were at their posts all the while, with lighted matches in their hands; and, being able to distinguish the movements of the Americans, by the dim morning light, applied the matches as soon as they came within forty paces. The effect was terrible. General Montgomery fell dead at the first fire, and both of his aids and several soldiers were slain with him.
The men saw they had lost their leader, and a panic instantly seized them; they turned and fled at the top of their speed. But the cannon kept up their thunderous roar in the gorge, and the grape and cannister rattled like hail all up and down the deserted road. And this aimless fire was continued for the space of ten minutes, with no enemy to slaughter. After Montgomery fell, his whole division retreated to Wolfe's Cove, where they rested, without any further disposition to fight an enerny so strongly entrenched. No more attempts were made to join Col. Arnold on the other side of the town, but they left him to fight his own way through as well as he could. He was even then advancing, at the top of his energy. The fallen snow had drifted and banked up on his route along the St. Charles, much more formidably than it had where Montgomery led his division, by the banks of the St. Lawrence. At length, after pushing through the drifts till their strength was well nigh spent, they came to a narrow street named Sault au Matelot, where was a battery of two guns, mounted just under a high rock that jutted over the way. Arnold here displayed his customary intrepidity. It was never in him to hesitate or be behind the rest; he took the lead in an instant, and shouted to his men to come on. He put himself at the head of Lamb's artillery, and advanced to the barrier, charging upon it with great impetuosity. The guns of the battery belched forth their fire, and the musketry mingled in their sharp report with the deeper roar of the cannon. A ball struck Arnold in the leg below the knee, and shattered the limb. He was taken up by his comrades and carried off to the general hospital, where he learned for the first time of the death of his commander, General Montgomery, which filled him with dismay.
Daniel Morgan, the famous rifleman, then took the command, and held the men hard at the fight amid the rain of balls and shot, for a full hour; and they finally carried this defence by their persistency, and the unerring aim of the body of riflemen. Nothing could stand against the deadly skill of their marksmanship. Having carried this, they rushed on to the second barrier, which commanded two streets at once; and here they fought with an unsurpassed courage, that amounted even to ferocity, for the space of three hours. Numbers were killed, on both sides, and more were wounded. The American party were forced to take shelter in the houses on each side of the street. They were still exposed, however, to the enemy in houses near by, as well as from the city walls above their heads. Capt. Lamb, of the artillery, had his jaw partially carried away by a grape-shot, and was removed from the field soon after.
The assailants took the barrier at last, and were on the point of making a final desperate charge on the town, when Gov. Carleton sent out a force through Palace Gate, to attack them in the rear. The news of Montgomery's death had been carried to him, and he took fresh courage. Capt. Dearborne had already been stationed near Palace Gate, to guard against surprises; and suddenly the two ponderous halves of it flew open, and out poured a detachment of troops, in full force, upon him. He was so taken by surprise that he could not make any defence, and his party were obliged to surrender at discretion. Morgan was driving on, in another direction, into the town, at the moment he got the news of the death of Montgomery, the capture of Dearborne's party, and the movement to his rear. He was thunderstruck. Thus he found himself almost entirely surrounded, with no resources at his call, and no place of safety to fall back upon. There was nothing left them but to surrender, and that unpleasant step was instantly taken. In all their prisoners, they counted four hundred and fifty-six. They were confined in a seminary within the city walls. A part of the division, however, had retreated, leaving a field-piece and some mortars behind them. The killed and wounded of the Americans numbered one hundred and sixty; the loss of the British was only about twenty. Gov. Carleton treated his prisoners with a kindness of which they ever afterwards spoke with gratitude. Major Meigs was sent out into the American camp to procure the clothing and baggage of the prisoners, which was furnished them for their comfort.
Search was made for the bodies of those who fell fighting with Montgomery, as soon as the battles were over; and, deeply buried in the snow, were found thirteen men, including the body of Montgomery himself. Carleton for a long time refused to believe that Montgomery had fallen; but his corpse was recognized by a captured field-officer, who stood there in the guard-house in the presence of all, and, with tears running down his cheeks, delivered a pathetic funeral oration over his cold remains. The lieutenant governor, Cramahs, took charge of the body, and had it buried within a wall that enclosed a powder magazine, the better for its safety. General Montgomery had a watch in his pocket which his wife wanted exceedingly; she sent word to that effect to Arnold, and he offered Governor Carleton almost any sum he chose to ask for it; Carleton at once sent the watch to Arnold, refusing to receive anything in return. The body of Montgomery was disinterred in June, 1818, and buried at the foot of the monument erected to the hero's memory in St. Paul's churchyard, New York, by direction of Congress.
After his first burial in Quebec, one of the English officers wore his sword in his own belt; but the American prisoners were so affected at the sight of it, that he instantly laid it aside. It was the same officer who identified the general's remains, when they were removed in 1818. When Montgomery was ready to set out and join Schuyler on this northern expedition, he was living at Rhinebeck, on the Hudson; his brother-in-law was walking over the grounds with him a day or two before he left home, and the young patriot suddenly stopped and stuck a willow twig into the ground, saying, as he did so, "Peter, let that grow to remember me by." It is now a noble tree, growing in the spot where he stuck the twig, with a trunk fully ten feet in circumference.
Arnold at once took command of the remnant of the little army, which now numbered only eight hundred men. The moment Congress heard the news of this gallant storming of Quebec, they made Arnold a brigadier-general, as a token of their appreciation of his skill and bravery. He had well earned so significant a compliment. They likewise reinforced him with more troops, taken from New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts; and these new troops reached Quebec only by walking on snow-shoes and carrying their own provisions.
Arnold retired about three miles from the town, and began to entrench himself, as if he were seriously blockading the city. He certainly did cut off supplies from the garrison and the inhabitants, but Carleton was sure of receiving reinforcements from England as soon as the ice started out of the St. Lawrence in the Spring, and so waited quietly for that time to come round. General Wooster, who was a townsman of Arnold in New Haven, was his superior officer, and had command in Montreal; on the first of April he moved down to Arnold's position and superseded him altogether. What with the added force of Wooster and the new troops from New England, the entire army now counted some twenty-eight hundred men; of whom eight hundred were down with that loathsome and contagious disease, the small-pox.
Wooster began to get ready to beleaguer the city without delay. He erected one battery on the Plains of Abraham, and another at Point Levi, and opened a brisk cannonade; but it did no good whatever. Arnold's horse fell with him at this time, throwing himself upon his rider's wounded leg,--the same that had been twice wounded before; Arnold was totally disabled for active service for a time, and procured leave from Gen. Wooster to retire to Montreal. There was no good feeling wasted between these officers, and each was glad to turn his back on the other. It is naturally supposed that as Arnold generally managed to have a good number of quarrels on his hands while living in New Haven, he may have been in trouble with Wooster along with the rest.