Читать книгу Canada and its Provinces - Adam Shortt - Страница 29
ОглавлениеAmerican Victories
On April 19, 1775, the first shot of the war was fired at Lexington. The same month the 'Green Mountain Boys' held a meeting to proclaim their independence of New York, the governor of which had outlawed their filibustering leader, Ethan Allen. Allen and his followers now saw that there was a good opportunity to damage the British cause and secure the favour of their own new Congress by taking the famous forts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Nothing was easier. Ticonderoga had an unsuspecting garrison of only fifty men. The only hitch was when Benedict Arnold appeared with a Massachusetts commission as colonel of the 400 men he was to raise for the capture of the forts. But Arnold had come without the 400 men, while Allen had 230 followers, and had just made himself a colonel to command them. A compromise was therefore effected, and Allen crossed Lake Champlain at daylight on May 10. The solitary sentry snapped his musket, which missed fire, and Allen's men simply walked in and summoned Captain de la Place to surrender. This officer appeared at his bedroom door to ask by whose authority the summons was made; whereupon Ethan Allen, who had already harangued his men in anticipation of this victory, answered, 'In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.' A third new colonel, Seth Warner, now came up with the rearguard and was sent on to Crown Point, where a second victory was gained, this time over one sergeant and twelve men. Arnold had his turn next; he sailed up to St Johns, seized a sloop there, captured another sergeant and another dozen men, and sailed back with his prize. The two commanders-in-chief met again at Ticonderoga, where they saluted each other with a general discharge of all the firearms of their respective armies. So far the invasion of Canada was a mere burlesque, the absurdly somnolent British making an excellent stage foil to the absurdly bombastic Americans. But sterner work was soon to follow.
The Congress authorized Major-General Schuyler to organize an army at Ticonderoga in July and 'immediately take possession of St Johns, Montreal, and any other parts of the country, and pursue any other measures in Canada which may have a tendency to promote the peace and security of these colonies.' In August Brigadier-General Richard Montgomery arrived in camp as second-in-command, and at once set to work to get the expedition ready. He was a brother of the Captain Montgomery who had butchered the Canadian prisoners at Château Richer during Wolfe's siege of Quebec. But he was himself a man of nobler character. He was Irish by birth, had served in the British army, sold his commission, married a Livingston of New York, and settled down on the estate he had bought beside the Hudson. While preparations were still in progress Schuyler, who was now at his base at Albany, got word from Washington that a concurrent expedition under Arnold was being planned against Quebec, by way of the Kennebec River. Meanwhile Montgomery was already in motion with one thousand men, and Schuyler was just in time to overtake him at the top of the lake. Before his advanced guard had reached St Johns, however, some Indians gallantly attacked and drove back the much superior force of Americans, who made a fortified camp at Isle-aux-Noix and threw a boom across the Richelieu to prevent the British sloop-of-war from entering Lake Champlain. Schuyler's health then broke down, and as soon as he left camp Montgomery advanced and besieged St Johns, with men whom he described in a letter to his wife as 'a set of pusillanimous wretches.'
The siege dragged on for a couple of months. The British commandant was Major Preston, a capable officer with 500 regulars and over 100 Canadians. He had nothing to fear but ultimate starvation: he knew Chambly was well munitioned, though not strongly garrisoned; and he heard cheering news from Montreal. Ethan Allen and a Major Brown had been sent 'preaching politics' among the Canadians, and had met with such apparent success that Allen thought he could take Montreal as easily as Ticonderoga. But a party of regulars, civilians and Indians, 250 in all, sallied out to meet him. Brown failed to co-operate. The wings of Allen's own force fled the field, and he surrendered after losing a dozen men. He was sent to England as a common prisoner, much to his disgust, after his self-appointment to a colonelcy. Finally he returned home, not to fight again, but to write a book which has made him the hero of too perfervid Yankee patriots ever since.
His raid, however, brought things to a crisis in Montreal, where Montgomery's brother-in-law, James Livingston, gathered nearly four hundred sympathizers and hurried off to join the American army. Montgomery was still ineffectively trying to reduce St Johns without any proper siege material. But on October 20 Major Stopford surrendered Chambly and all its stores to a mere detachment, after a feeble resistance of only two days. Stopford had a comparatively strong fort, but only eighty men. The wisest course would have been for him and Preston to have concentrated in one place if they could not hold both. Failing this, and finding himself attacked, he ought certainly to have either fought to the last extremity or else destroyed his stores at once. Montgomery now had all the munitions he wanted and a reinforced army. Preston's position became desperate. Carleton made an effort to raise the siege by advancing from Montreal. But the miscellaneous militia did not like being called out for service after fifteen years of complete inaction. They deserted right and left. The Indians had been too discouraged from intervening in Carleton's white man's war. The civilians were too undisciplined; the regulars too hopelessly few. On October 30 Carleton was beaten back; and on November 2 Preston surrendered St Johns after a brave defence.
Carleton's Escape from Montreal
Montreal at once became untenable, and the little British posts from there west to the Great Lakes were completely cut off. So Carleton took the hundred regulars and whatever stores he could carry away, and embarked for Quebec on November 11, after destroying all the government property that could only be of use to the enemy. A desperate race for Quebec, and, with it, the possession of all Canada, now began. Arnold was closing in on it from the south, being already at Point Lévis, opposite the city, with 700 men, and Montgomery's victorious and reinforced army was beginning to head down the St Lawrence. Quebec itself was weakly held, but it could still keep Arnold out. Colonel Maclean, who had come up to help Carleton, was sailing back, as he had heard the news of the fall of St Johns. He arrived on the 12th. Arnold crossed over on the 13th, and appeared on the Plains of Abraham on the 14th.
Meanwhile Carleton was racing Montgomery's advance guard, which was trying to cut him off on the south shore. Just above the mouth of the Richelieu one of his vessels grounded. Then the wind veered round and blew up stream against him. For three days his tiny flotilla never gained an inch. The Americans overtook him along the shore, planted batteries on his flank, and summoned him to surrender. It was the night of the 16th. He had been five days out from Montreal, and the whole force of the enemy would be upon him within the next few hours. With infinite precaution a whale-boat was brought alongside. He stepped in, and she at once began to drop down stream with muffled oars. At one point she had to pass the enemy so close that the oars were brought inboard, while the crew paddled cautiously with the palms of their hands. The batteries once cleared, the boat began to gather way and reached Three Rivers next morning. But the rest of the flotilla surrendered; the Americans went on in hot pursuit; Carleton just found a British vessel in the nick of time; and altogether there was many a narrow escape before the chief diarist of the siege—Thomas Ainslie, collector of customs and captain of militia—could make the following welcome entry:
'On the 19th (a happy day for Quebec), to the unspeakable joy of the friends of the government, and to the utter dismay of the abettors of sedition and rebellion, Gen. Carleton arrived in the Fell, arm'd ship, accompanied by an arm'd schooner. We saw our salvation in his presence.'
