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| Arnold's Men marching through the Flooded Wilderness |
Where was the bold commander all this time, the man who was to lead these sturdy riflemen to easy victory? After paddling thirteen miles across Lake Megantic, Arnold performed one of those brilliant and reckless deeds for which he was noted. Perhaps no other man in the American army would have dared to do what he did. The remnant of his famishing soldiers must be saved, and the time was short.
On October 28, he started down the swollen Chaudière River with only a few men and without a guide. Sartigan, the nearest French settlement where provisions could be bought, was nearly seventy miles away. The swift current carried the frail canoes down the first twenty miles in two hours. Here through the rapids, there over hidden ledges, now escaping the driftwood and the sharp-edged rocks, Arnold and his men wrestled with the angry river.
At one place they plunged over a fall, and every canoe was capsized. Six of the men found themselves swimming in a large rock-bound basin, while the angry flood thundered thirty feet over the ledges just beyond them. The men swam ashore, thankful to escape death.
The last twenty miles was tramped through the wilderness, but such was the energy of their leader that Sartigan was reached on the evening of the second day. Long before daybreak, cattle and bags of flour were ready, and, with a relief party of French Canadians on horseback, Arnold was on his way back to the starving army.
Four days later, from the famished men in the frozen wilderness was heard far and wide the joyful cry, "Provisions!" "Provisions!"
The cry was echoed from hill to hill, and along the snow-covered banks of the great river. The grim fight for life was over. They had won. How like a pack of famished wolves did they kill, cook, and devour the cattle!
The next day, two companies dashed through the icy waters of the Du Loup River, and, shortly afterwards, greeted with cheers the first house they had seen for thirty days. Six miles beyond, was Sartigan,—a half dozen log cabins and a few Indian wigwams.
A snowstorm now set in, but the joyful men hastily built huts of pine boughs, kindled huge camp fires, and waited for the stragglers. The severe Canadian winter was well begun. It kept on snowing heavily. As Quebec might be reënforced at any moment, every captain was ordered to get his men over the remaining fifty-four miles with all possible speed.
"Quebec!" "Quebec!" was in everybody's mouth.
Five days later, on November 9, the patriots reached Point Levi, a little French village opposite Quebec. The people looked on with astonishment as they straggled out of the woods, a worn-out army of perhaps six hundred men, with faces haggard, clothing in tatters, and many barefooted and bareheaded. Over eighty had died in the wilderness, and a hundred were on the sick list. So pitiful and so ludicrous was their appearance that one man wrote in his diary that they "resembled those animals of New Spain called orang-outangs," and "unlike the children of Israel, whose clothes waxed not old in the wilderness, theirs hardly held together."
With his usual bravado, Arnold planned to capture the "Gibraltar of America" at one stroke. He little knew that, a few days before, some treacherous Indians had warned the British commander of his approach.
On the night of November 13, Arnold ferried five hundred of his men across the St. Lawrence, and climbed to the Heights of Abraham, at the very place where Wolfe had climbed to victory sixteen years before. At daybreak the walls of the city were covered with soldiers and with citizens. Within half a mile of the walls, which fairly bristled with cannon, the ragged soldiers halted and began to cheer lustily. The redcoats shouted back their defiance. Arnold wrote a letter to the governor of Quebec, demanding the surrender of the city. The bearer of the letter, although under a flag of truce, was not even allowed to come near the walls.
After six days the little army slipped away one dark night, and tramped to a village some twenty miles to the west of Quebec. Here they hoped to join forces with Montgomery, who had already captured Montreal, and then come back to renew the siege.
Ten days later, on December 1, Arnold paraded his troops in front of the village church to greet Montgomery with his army. The united forces, still less than a thousand men, now trudged their way back to Quebec. On arriving there, Montgomery boldly demanded the surrender of the town.
Meanwhile, on November 19, Sir Guy Carleton had left Montreal, and, having made his way down the river, in the disguise of a farmer, slipped into Quebec. This was the salvation of Canada.
The British general was an able soldier. He at once took energetic steps for the defense of the city. At every available point he built blockhouses, barricades, and palisades; and mounted one hundred and fifty cannon. He took five hundred sailors from the war vessels to help man the guns, and thus increased the garrison to eighteen hundred fighting men.
For two weeks the patriot army fired their little three-pounders, and threw several hundred "fire pills," as the men called them, against the granite ramparts and into the town. Even the women laughed at them, for they did no more harm than so many popguns. The redcoats kept up the bloodless contest by raking with their cannon the patriots' feeble breastworks of ice and snow.
Montgomery spoke hopefully to his men, but in his heart was despair. How could he ever go home without taking Quebec? Washington and Congress expected it, and the people at home were waiting for it. When he bade his young wife good-by at their home on the Hudson, he said, "You shall never blush for your Montgomery." What was his duty now? Should he not make at least one desperate attempt? Did not Wolfe take equally desperate chances and win deathless renown? At last it was decided to wait for a dark night, in which to attack the Lower Town.
At midnight on the last day of 1775, came the snowstorm so long awaited. The word was given, and about half past three the columns marched to the assault. Every man pinned to his hat a piece of white paper, on which was written the motto of Morgan's far-famed riflemen, "Liberty or Death!"
Arnold and Morgan, with about six hundred men, were to make the attack on one side of the town, and Montgomery, with three hundred men, on the other side.
The storm had become furious. With their heads down and their guns under their coats, the men had enough to do to keep up with Arnold as he led the attack. Presently a musket ball shattered his leg and stretched him bleeding in the snow. Morgan at once took command, and, cheering on his men, carried the batteries; then, forcing his way into the streets of the Lower Town, he waited for the promised signal from Montgomery.
Meantime, the precious moments slipped by, while the young Montgomery was forcing his way through the darkness and the huge snowdrifts, along the shores of the St. Lawrence. When the head of his column crept cautiously round a point of the steep cliff, they came face to face with the redcoats standing beside their cannon with lighted matches.
"On, boys, Quebec is ours!" shouted Montgomery, as he sprang forward.
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| The Midnight Attack on Quebec |
A storm of grape and canister swept the narrow pass, and the young general fell dead. In dismay and confusion, the column gave way. The command to retreat was hastily given and obeyed. Strange to say, so dazed were the British by the fierce attack that they, too, ran away, but soon rallied. The driving snow quickly covered the dead and the wounded in a funeral shroud.
The enemy were now free to close in upon Morgan and his riflemen, on the other side of the town. All night long, fierce hand to hand fighting went on in the narrow streets, amid the howling storm of driving