Canada: the Empire of the North Part 23

He seemed to think that peace, peace at any price, was the object, whereas peace that is not a victory is worthless with the Indian.

Deputies met him on the 12th of August near Presqu' Isle, Lake Erie.

{288} They carried no wampum belts and were really spies. Without demanding reparation, without a word as to restoring harried captives, without hostages for good conduct, Bradstreet entered into a fool's peace with his foes, proceeded up to Detroit, and was back at Niagara by winter; though he must have realized the worthlessness of the campaign when his messengers sent to the Illinois were ambushed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOUQUET]

When Bouquet heard of the sham peace he was furious and repudiated Bradstreet's treaty in toto. Bouquet was a veteran of the great war, and knew bushfighting from seven years' experience on Pennsylvania frontiers. Slowly, with his fifteen hundred rangers and five hundred Highlanders, express riders keeping the trail open from fort to fort, scouts to fore, Bouquet moved along the old army trail used by Forbes to reach Fort Pitt. Friendly Indians had been warned to keep green branches as signals in the muzzles of their guns. All others were to be shot without mercy. Indians vanished before his march like mist before the sun. August 5 found Bouquet south of Fort Pitt at a place known as Bushy Run. The scouts had gone ahead to prepare nooning for the army at the Run. In seven hours the men had marched seventeen miles spite of sweltering heat; but at one, just as the thirsty columns were nearing the rest place, the crack--crack--crack of rifle shots to the fore set every man's blood jumping. From quick march they broke to a run, priming guns, ball in mouth as they ran. A moment later the old trick of Braddock's ambush was being repeated, but this time the Indians were dealing with a seasoned man. Bouquet swung his fighters in a circle round the stampeding horses and provision wagons. The heat was terrific, the men almost mad with thirst, the horses neighing and plunging and breaking away to the woods; and the army stood, a red-coated, tartan-plaid target for invisible foes! By this time the men were fighting as Indians fight--breaking ranks, jumping from tree to tree. It is n't easy to keep men standing as targets when they can't get at the foe; but Bouquet, riding from place to place, kept his men in hand till darkness screened them. Sixty had fallen. A circular barricade {289} was built of flour bags. Inside this the wounded were laid, and the army camped without water. The agonies of that night need not be told. Here the neighing of horses would bring down a clatter of bullets aimed in the dark; and the groans of the wounded, trampled by the stampeding cavalcade, would mingle with the screams of terror from the horses. The night continued hot almost as day in the sultry forest, and the thirst with both man and beast became anguish.

Another such day and another such night, and Bouquet could foresee his fate would be worse than Braddock's. Pa.s.sing from man to man, he gave the army their instructions for the next day. They would form in three platoons, with the center battalion advanced to the fore, as if to lead attack. Suddenly the center was to feign defeat and turn as if in panic flight. It was to be guessed that the Indians would pursue headlong. Instantly the flank battalions were to sweep through the woods in wide circle and close in on the rear of the savages. Then the fleeing center was to turn. The savages would be surrounded. Daybreak came with a cracking of shots from ambush. Officers and men carried out instructions exactly as Bouquet had planned. At ten o'clock the center column broke ranks, wavered, turned, . . . fled in wild panic!

With the whooping of a wolf pack in full cry, the savages burst from ambush in pursuit. The sides deployed. A moment later the center had turned to fight the pursuer, {290} and the Highlanders broke from the woods, yelling their slogan, with broadswords cutting a terrible hand-to-hand swath. Sixty Indians were slashed to death in as many seconds. Though the British lost one hundred and fifteen, killed and wounded, the Indians were in full flight, blind terror at their heels.

The way was now open to Port Pitt, but Bouquet did not dally inside the palisades. On down the Ohio he pursued the panic-stricken savages, pausing neither for deputies nor reenforcements. At Muskingum Creek the Indians sent back the old men to sue, sue abjectedly, for peace at any cost.

Bouquet met them with the stern front that never fails to win respect.

They need not palm off their lie that the fault lay with the foolish young warriors. If the old chiefs would not control the young braves, then the whole tribe, the whole Indian race, must pay the penalty. In terror the deputies hung their heads. He would not even discuss the terms of peace, Bouquet declared, till the Indians restored every captive,--man, woman, and child, even the child of Indian parentage born in captivity. The captives must be given suitable clothing, horses, and presents. Twelve days only would he permit them to gather the captives. If man, woman, or child were lacking on the twelfth day, he would pursue them and punish them to the uttermost ends of earth.

The Indians were dumfounded. These were not soft words. Not thus had the French spoken, with the giving of manifold presents. But powder was exhausted. No more was coming from the French traders of the Mississippi. Winter was approaching, and the Indians must hunt or starve. Again the coureurs are sent spurring the woods from tribe to tribe with wampum belts, but this time the belts are the white bands of peace. While Bouquet waits he sends back over the trail for hospital nurses to receive the captives, and the army is set knocking up rude barracks of log and thatch in the wilderness. Then the captives begin to come. It is a scene for the brush of artist, for all frontiersmen who have lost friends have rallied to Bouquet's camp, hoping against hope and afraid to hope. There is the mother, whose infant child has been s.n.a.t.c.hed from her arms in {291} some frontier attack, now scanning the lines as they come in, mad with hope and fear. There is the husband, whose wife has been torn away to some savage's tepee, searching, searching, searching among the sad, wild-eyed, ill-clad rabble for one with some resemblance to the wife he loved. There is the father seeking lost daughters and afraid of what he may find; and there are the captives themselves, some of the women demented from the abuse they have received. England may have spent her millions to protect her colonies, but she never spent in anguish what these rude frontiersmen suffered at Bouquet's camp.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RETURN OF THE ENGLISH CAPTIVES (From a contemporary print)]

So ended what is known as the Pontiac War. Up at Detroit in 1765 Pontiac, in council with the whites, explains that he has listened to bad advice, but now his heart is right. "Father, you have stopped the rum barrel while we talked," he says grimly; "as our business is finished, we request that you open the barrel, that we may drink and be merry."

Not a very heroic curtain fall to a dramatic life. But pause a bit: the Pontiac War was the last united stand of a doomed race against the advance of the conquering alien; and the Indian is defeated, and he knows it, and he acknowledges it, and he {292} drowns his despair in a vice, and so he pa.s.ses down the Long Trail of time with his face to the west, doomed, hopeless, pushed westward and ever west.

Pontiac goes down the Mississippi to his friends, the French fur traders of St. Louis. One morning in 1767, after a drinking bout, he is found across the river, lying in camp, with his skull split to the neck. By the sword he had lived, by the sword he perished. Was the murder the result of a drunken quarrel, or did some frenzied frontiersman with deathless woes bribe the hand of the a.s.sa.s.sin? The truth of the matter is unknown, and Pontiac's death remains a theme for fiction.

What with struggles for power and Indian wars, one might think that the few hundred English colonists of Quebec and Montreal had all they could do. Not so: their quarrels with the French Catholics and fights with the Indians are merely incidental to the main aim of their lives, to the one object that has brought them stampeding to Canada as to a new gold field, namely, quick way to wealth; and the only quick way to wealth was by the fur trade. In the wilderness of the Up Country wander some two or three thousand cast-off wood rovers of the old French fur trade. As the prodigals come down the Ottawa, down the Detroit, down the St. Lawrence, the English and Scotch merchants of Montreal and Quebec meet them. Mighty names those merchants have in history now,--McGillivrays and MacKenzies and McGills and Henrys and MacLeods and MacGregors and Ogilvies and MacTavishes and Camerons,--but at this period of the game the most of them were what we to-day would call petty merchants or peddlers. In their storehouses--small, one-story, frame affairs--were packed goods for trade. With these goods they quickly outfitted the French bushrover--$3000 worth to a canoe--and packed the fellow back to the wilderness to trade on shares before any rival firm could hire him. Within five years of Wolfe's victory in 1759 all the French bushrovers of the Up Country had been reengaged by merchants of Montreal and Quebec.

{293}

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONTREAL (From a contemporary print)]

Then imperceptible changes came,--the changes that work so silently they are like destiny. Because it is unsafe to let the rascal bushrovers and voyageurs go off by themselves with $3000 worth to the canoe load, the merchants began to accompany them westward.

"Bourgeois," the voyageurs call their outfitters. Then, because success in fur trade must be kept secret, the merchants cease to have their men come down to Montreal. They meet them with the goods halfway, at La Verendrye's old stamping ground on Lake Superior, first at the place called Grand Portage, then, when the United States boundary is changed in 1783, at Kaministiquia, or modern Fort William, named after William McGillivray. Pontiac's War puts a stop to the new trade, but by 1766 the merchants are west again. Henry goes up the Saskatchewan to the Forks, and comes back with such wealth of furs he retires a rich magnate of Montreal. The Frobisher brothers strike for new hunting ground. So do Peter Pond and Bostonnais Pangman, and the MacKenzies, Alexander {294} and Roderick. Instead of following up the Saskatchewan, they strike from Lake Winnipeg northward for Churchill River and Athabasca, and they bring out furs that transform those peddlers into merchant princes. A little later the chief buyer of the Montreal furs is one John Jacob Astor of New York. Then another change. Rivalry hurts fur trade. Especially do different prices demoralize the Indians. The Montreal merchants pool their capital and become known as the Northwest Fur Company. They now hire their voyageurs outright on a salary. No man is paid less than what would be $500 in modern money, with board; and any man may rise to be clerk, trader, wintering partner, with shares worth 800 pounds ($4000), that bring dividends of two and three hundred per cent. The petty merchants whom Murray and Carleton despised became in twenty years the opulent aristocracy of Montreal, holding the most of the public offices, dominating the government, filling the judges.h.i.+ps, and entertaining with a lavish hospitality that put vice-regal splendor in the shade.

The Beaver Club is the great rendezvous of the Montreal partners.

"Fort.i.tude in Distress" is the motto and lords of the ascendant is their practice. No man, neither governor nor judge, may ignore these Nor'westers, and it may be added they are a law unto themselves. One example will suffice. A French merchant of Montreal took it into his head to have a share of this wealth-giving trade. He was advised to pool his interests with the Nor'westers, and he foolishly ignored the advice. In camp at Grand Portage on Lake Superior he is told all the country hereabout belongs to the Nor'westers, and _he_ must decamp.

"Show me proofs this country is yours," he answers. "Show me the t.i.tle deed and I shall decamp."

Next night a band of Nor'westers, voyageurs well plied with rum, came down the strand to the intruder's tents. They cut his tents to ribbons, scatter his goods to the four winds, and beat his voyageurs into insensibility.

"Voila! there are our proofs," they say.

The French merchant hastens down to Montreal to bring lawsuit, but the judges, you must remember, are shareholders in the {295} Northwest Company, and many of the Legislative Council are Nor'westers. What with real delays and sham delays and put-offs and legal fees, justice is a bit tardy. While the case is pending the French merchant tries again. This time he is not molested at Fort William. They let him proceed on his way up the old trail to Lake of the Woods, the trail found by La Verendrye; and halfway through the wilderness, where the cataract offers only one path for portage, the Frenchman finds Nor'-westers building a barricade; he tears it down. They build another; he tears that down. They build a third; fast as he tears down, they build up. He must either go back baffled by these suave, smiling, lawless rivals, or fight on the spot to the death; but there is neither glory nor wealth being killed in the wilderness, where not so much as the sands of the sh.o.r.e will tell the true story of the crime. So the French merchant compromises, sells out to the Nor'westers at cost plus carriage, and retires to the St. Lawrence cursing British justice.

It may be guessed that the sudden eruption of "the peddlers," these bush banditti, these Scotch soldiers of fortune with French bullies for fighters, roused the ancient and honorable Hudson's Bay Company from its half-century slumber of peace. Anthony Hendry, who had gone up the Saskatchewan far as the Blackfoot country of the foothills, they had dismissed as a liar in the fifties because he had reported that he had seen _Indians on horseback_, whereas the sleepy factors of the bay ports knew very well they never saw any kind of Indians except Indians in canoes; but now in the sixties it is noted by the company that not so many furs are coming down from the Up Country. It is voted "the French Canadian peddlers of Montreal" be notified of the company's exclusive monopoly to the trade of these regions. One Findley is sent to Quebec to look after the Hudson's Bay Company's rights; but while the English company _talks_ about its rights, the Nor'westers go in the field and _take_ them.

The English company rubs its eyes and sits up and scratches its heavy head, and pa.s.ses an order that Mr. Moses Norton, chief {296} factor of Churchill, send Mr. Samuel Hearne to explore the Up Country. Hearne has heard of Far-Away-Metal River, far enough away in all conscience from the Canadian peddlers; and thither in December, 1770, he finds his way, after two futile attempts to set out. Matonabbee, great chief of the Chippewyans, is his guide,--Matonabbee, who brings furs from the Athabasca, and is now accompanied by a regiment of wives to act as beasts of burden in the sledge traces, camp servants, and cooks.

Hearne sets out in midwinter in order to reach the Coppermine River in summer, by which he can descend to the Arctic in canoes. Storm or cold, bog or rock, Matonabbee keeps fast pace, so fast he reaches the great caribou traverse before provisions have dwindled and in time for the spring hunt. Here all the Indian hunters of the north gather twice a year to hunt the vast herds of caribou going to the seash.o.r.e for summer, back to the Up Country for the winter, herds in countless thousands upon thousands, such mult.i.tudes the clicking of the horns sounds like wind in a leafless forest, the tramp of the hoofs like galloping cavalry. Store of meat is laid up for Hearne's voyage by Matonabbee's Indians; and a band of warriors joins the expedition to go down Coppermine River. If Hearne had known Indian customs as well as he knew the fur trade, he would have known that it boded no good when Matonabbee ordered the women to wait for his return in the Athabasca country of the west. Absence of women on the march meant only one of two things, a war raid or hunt, and which it was soon enough Hearne learned. They had come at last, on July 12, 1771, on Coppermine River, a mean little stream flowing over rocky bed in the Barren Lands of the Little Sticks (Trees), when Hearne noticed, just above a cataract, the domed tepee tops of an Eskimo camp. It was night, but as bright as day in the long light of the North. Instantly, before Hearne could stop them, his Indians had stripped as for war, and fell upon the sleeping Eskimo in ruthless ma.s.sacre. Men were brained as they dashed from the domed tents, women speared as they slept, children dispatched with less thought than the white man would give to the killing of a fly. In vain Hearne, {297} with tears in his eyes, begged the Indians to stop. They laughed him to scorn, and doubtless wondered where he thought they yearly got the ten thousand beaver pelts brought to Churchill. A few days later, July 17, 1771, Hearne stood on the sh.o.r.es of the Arctic, heaving to the tide and afloat with ice; but the horrors of the ma.s.sacre had robbed him of an explorer's exultation, though he was first of pathfinders to reach the Arctic overland. Matonabbee led Hearne back to Churchill in June of 1772 by a wide westward circle through the Athabasca Bear Lake Country, which the Hudson's Bay people thus discovered only a few years before the Nor'westers came.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL HEARNE]

No longer dare the Hudson's Bay Company ignore the Up Country. Hearne is sent to the Saskatchewan to build Fort c.u.mberland, and Matthew c.o.c.king is dispatched to the country of the Blackfeet, modern Alberta, to beat up trade, where his French voyageur, Louis Primeau, deserts him bag and baggage, to carry the Hudson's Bay furs off to the Nor'westers.

No longer does the English company slumber on the sh.o.r.es of its frozen sea. Yearly are voyageurs sent inland,--"patroons of the woods," given bounty to stay in the wilds, luring any trade from the Nor'westers.

The Quebec Act, guaranteeing the rights of the French Canadians, had barely been put in force before the Congress of the {298} revolting English colonies sent up proclamations to be posted on the church doors of the parishes, calling on the French to throw off the British yoke, to join the American colonies, "to seize the opportunity to be free."

Unfortunately for this alluring invitation, Congress had but a few weeks previously put on record its unsparing condemnation of the Quebec Act. Inspired by those New Englanders who, for a century, had suffered from French raids, Congress had expressed its verdict on the privileges granted to Quebec in these words: "_Nor can we supress our astonishment that a British Parliament should establish a religion that has drenched your island_ [England] _in blood_." This declaration was the cardinal blunder of Congress as far as Canada was concerned. Of the merits of the quarrel the simple French habitant knew nothing. He did what his cure told him to do; and the Catholic Church would not risk casting in its lot with a Congress that declared its religion had drenched England in blood. English inhabitants of Montreal and Quebec, who had flocked to Canada from the New England colonies, were far readier to listen to the invitation of Congress than were the French.

Governor Carleton had fewer than 800 troops, and naturally the French did not rally as volunteers in the impending war between England and her English colonies. Should the Congress troops invade Canada? The question was hanging fire when Ethan Allen, with his two hundred Green Mountain boys of Vermont, marched across to Lake Champlain in May of 1775, hobn.o.bbed with the guards of Ticonderoga, who drank not wisely but too well, then rowed by night across the narrows and knocked at the wicket beside the main gate. The sleepy guards, not yet sober from the night's carouse, admitted the Vermonters as friends. In rushed the whole two hundred. In a trice the Canadian garrison of forty-four were all captured and Allen was thundering on the chamber door of La Place, the commandant. It was five in the morning. La Place sprang up in his nights.h.i.+rt and demanded in whose name he was ordered to surrender.

Ethan Allen answered in words that have gone {299} down to history, "_In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress_."

Later fell Crown Point. So began the war with Canada in the great Revolution.

And now, from May to September, Arnold's Green Mountain boys sweep from Lake Champlain down the Richelieu to the St. Lawrence, as Iberville's bold bushrovers long ago swept through these woods. However, the American rovers take no permanent occupation of the different forts on the falls of the Richelieu River, preferring rather to overrun the parishes, dispatching secret spies and waiting for the habitants to rally. And they came once too often, once too far, these bold banditti of the wilderness, clad in buckskin, musket over shoulder, c.o.o.nskin cap! Montreal is so full of spies, so full of friendlies, so full of Bostonnais in sympathy with the revolutionists, that Allen feels safe in paddling across the St. Lawrence one September morning to the Montreal side with only one hundred and fifty men. Montreal has grown in these ten years to a city of some twelve thousand, but the gates are fast shut against the American scouts; and while Allen waits in some barns of the suburbs, presto! out sallies Major Garden with twice as many men armed to the teeth, who a.s.sault the barns at a rush. Five Americans drop at the first crack of the rifles. The Canadians are preparing to set fire to the barns. Allen's men will be picked off as they rush from the smoke. Wisely, he saves his Green Mountain boys by surrender. Thirty-five capitulate. The rest have escaped through the woods. Carleton refuses to acknowledge the captives as prisoners of war. He claps irons on their hands and irons on their feet and places them on a vessel bound for England to be treated as rebels to the crown. It is said those of Allen's men who deserted were French Canadians in disguise--which may explain why Carleton made such severe example of his captives and at once purged Montreal of the disaffected by compelling all who would not take arms to leave.

Carleton's position was chancy enough in all conscience. The habitants were wavering. They refused point-blank to serve as volunteers. They supplied the invaders with provisions. Spies were everywhere.

Practically no help could come from {300} England till spring, and scouts brought word that two American armies were now marching in force on Canada,--one by way of the Richelieu, twelve hundred strong, led by Richard Montgomery of New York, directed against Montreal; the other by way of the Kennebec, with fifteen hundred men under Benedict Arnold, to attack Quebec. Carleton is at Montreal. He rushes his troops, six hundred and ninety out of eight hundred men, up the Richelieu to hold the forts at Chambly and St. John's against Montgomery's advance.

Half September and all October Montgomery camps on the plains before Fort St. John's, his rough soldiers clad for the most part in their s.h.i.+rt sleeves, trousers, and c.o.o.n cap, with badges of "Liberty or Death" worked in the cap bands, or sprigs of green put in their hats, in lieu of soldier's uniform. Inside the fort, Major Preston, the English commander, has almost seven hundred men, with ample powder. It is plain to Montgomery that he can win the fort in only one of two ways,--shut off provisions and starve the garrison out, or get possession of heavy artillery to batter down the walls. It is said that fortune favors the dauntless. So it was with Montgomery, for he was enabled to besiege the fort in both ways. Carleton had rushed a Colonel McLean to the relief of St. John's with a force of French volunteers, but the French deserted en ma.s.se. McLean was left without any soldiers. This cut off St. John's from supply of provisions. At Chambly Fort was a Major Stopford with eighty men and a supply of heavy artillery. Montgomery sent a detachment to capture Chambly for the sake of its artillery. Stopford surrendered to the Americans without a blow, and the heavy cannon were forthwith trundled along the river to Montgomery at St. John's. Preston sends frantic appeal to Carleton for help. He has reduced his garrison to half rations, to quarter rations, to very nearly no rations at all! Carleton sends back secret express.

He can send no help. He has no more men. Montgomery tactfully lets the message pa.s.s in. After siege of forty-five days, Preston surrenders with all the honors of war, his six hundred and eighty-eight men marching {301} out, arms reversed, and going aboard Montgomery's s.h.i.+ps to proceed as prisoners up Lake Champlain.

The way is now open to Montreal. Benedict Arnold, meanwhile, with the army directed against Quebec, has crossed from the Kennebec to the Chaudiere, paddled across St. Lawrence River, and on the very day that Montgomery's troops take possession of Montreal, November 13, Arnold's army has camped on the Plains of Abraham behind Quebec walls, whence he scatters his foragers, ravaging the countryside far west as Three Rivers for provisions. The trials of his canoe voyage from Maine to the St. Lawrence at swift pace have been terrific. More than half his men have fallen away either from illness or open desertion. Arnold has fewer than seven hundred men as he waits for Montgomery at Quebec.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL RICHARD MONTGOMERY]

What of Guy Carleton, the English governor, now? Canada's case seemed hopeless. The flower of her army had been taken prisoners, and no help could come before May. Desperate circ.u.mstances either make or break a man, prove or undo him. As reverses closed in on Carleton, like the wrestlers of old he but took tighter grip of his resolutions.

On November 11, two days before Preston's men surrendered, Carleton, with two or three military officers disguised as peasants, boarded one of three armed vessels to go down from Montreal to Quebec. All the cannon at Montreal had been dismounted and spiked. What powder could not be carried {302} away was buried or thrown into the river. Amid funereal silence, shaking hands sadly with the Montreal friends who had gathered at the wharf to say farewell, the English Governor left Montreal. That night the wind failed, and the three vessels lay to with limp sails. At Sorel, at Three Rivers, at every hamlet on both sides of the St. Lawrence, lay American scouts to capture the English Governor. All next day the vessels lay wind-bound. Desperate for the fate of Quebec, Carleton embarked on a river barge propelled by sweeps.

Pa.s.sing Sorel at night Carleton and his disguised officers could see the camp fires of the American army. Here oars were laid aside and the raft steadied down the tide by the rowers paddling with the palms of their hands. Three Rivers was found in possession of the Americans, and a story is told of Carleton, foredone from lack of sleep, dozing in an eating house or tavern with his head sunk forward upon his hands, when two or three American scouts broke into the room. Not a sign did the English party in peasant disguise give of alarm or uneasiness, which might have betrayed the Governor. "Come, come," said one of the English officers in French, slapping Sir Guy Carleton carelessly on the back, "we must be going"; and the Governor escaped unsuspected.

November 19, to the inexpressible relief of Quebec Carleton reached the capital city.

Quebec now had a population of some five thousand. All able-bodied men who would not fight were expelled from the city. What with the small garrison, some marines who happened to be in port, and the citizens themselves, eighteen hundred defenders were mustered. On the walls were a hundred and fifty heavy cannon, and all the streets leading from Lower to Upper Town had been barricaded with cannon mounted above. At each of the city gates were posted battalions. Sentries never left the walls, and the whole army literally slept in its boots. It will be remembered that the natural position of Quebec was worth an army in itself. On all sides there was access only by steepest climb. In front, where the modern visitor ascends from the wharf to Upper Town by Mountain Street {303} steep as a stair, barricades had been built. To the right, where flows St. Charles River past Lower Town, platforms mounted with cannon guarded approach. To the rear was the wall behind which camped Arnold; to the left sheer precipice, above which the defenders had suspended swinging lanterns that lighted up every movement on the path below along the St. Lawrence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF QUEBEC DURING SIEGE OF CONGRESS TROOPS]

Early in December comes Montgomery himself to Quebec, on the very s.h.i.+ps which Carleton had abandoned. Carleton refuses even the letter demanding surrender. Montgomery is {304} warned that forthwith any messenger sent to the walls will come at peril of being shot as rebel.

Henceforth what communication Montgomery has with the inhabitants must be by throwing proclamations inside or bribing old habitant women as carriers,--for the habitants continue to pa.s.s in and out of the city with provisions; and a deserter presently brings word that Montgomery has declared he will "_eat his Christmas dinner in Quebec or in h.e.l.l_!"

Whereupon Carleton retorts, "He may choose his own place, but he shan't eat it in Quebec."

Montgomery was now in the same position as Wolfe at the great siege.

His troops daily grew more ragged; many were without shoes, and smallpox was raging in camp. He could not tempt his foe to come out and fight; therefore he must a.s.sault the foe in its own stronghold. It will be remembered, Wolfe had feigned attack to the fore, and made the real attack to the rear. Montgomery reversed the process. He feigned attack to the rear gates of St. John and St. Louis, and made the real attack to the fore from the St. Charles and the St. Lawrence. While a few soldiers were to create noisy hubbub at St. John and St. Louis gates from the back of the city, Arnold was to march through Lower Town from the Charles River side, Montgomery along the narrow cliff below the Citadel, through Lower Town, to that steep Mountain Street which tourists to-day ascend directly from the wharves of the St. Lawrence.

On the squares of Upper Town the two armies were to unite and fight Carleton. The plan of attack practically encompa.s.sed the city from every side. Spies had brought rumors to Carleton that the signal for a.s.sault for the American troops was to be the first dark stormy night.

Christmas pa.s.sed quietly enough without Montgomery carrying out his threat, and on the night before New Year's all was quiet. Congress soldiers had dispersed among the taverns outside the walls, and Carleton felt so secure he had gone comfortably to bed. For a month, sh.e.l.ls from the American guns had been whizzing over Upper Town, with such small damage that citizens had continued to go about as usual. On the walls was a constant popping from the sharpshooters of both sides, and occasionally {305} an English sentry, parading the walls at imminent risk of being a target, would toss down a cheery "Good morrow, gentlemen," to a Congress trooper below. Then, quick as a flash, both men would lift and fire; but the results were small credit to the aim of either shooter, for the sentry would duck off the wall untouched, just as the American dashed for hiding behind barricade or house of Lower Town. Some of the Americans wanted to know what were the lanterns and lookouts which the English had constructed above the precipice of Cape Diamond. Some wag of a habitant answered these were the sign of a wooden horse with hay in front of it, and that the English general, Carleton, had said he would not surrender the town till the horse had caught up to the hay. Skulking riflemen of the Congress troops had taken refuge in the mansion of Bigot's former magnificence, the Intendant's Palace, and Carleton had ordered the cannoneers on his walls to knock the house down. So fell the house of Bigot's infamy.

Towards 2 A.M. of December 31 the wind began to blow a hurricane. The bright moonlight became obscured by flying clouds, and earth and air were wrapped in a driving storm of sleet. Instantly the Congress troops rallied to their headquarters behind the city. Montgomery at quick march swept down the steep cliff of the river to the sh.o.r.e road, and in the teeth of a raging wind led his men round under the heights of Cape Diamond to the harbor front. Heads lowered against the wind, c.o.o.nskin caps pulled low over eyes, ash-colored flannel s.h.i.+rts b.u.t.toned tight to necks, gun casings and sacks wrapped loosely round loaded muskets to keep out the damp, the marchers tramped silently through the storm. Overhead was the obscured glare where the lanterns hung out in a blare of snow above Cape Diamond. Here rockets were sent up as a signal to Arnold on St. Charles River. Then Montgomery's men were among the houses of Lower Town, noting well that every window had been barricaded and darkened from cellar to attic. Somewhere along the narrow path in front of the town Montgomery knew that barricades had been built with cannon behind, but he trusted to the storm concealing his approach till his men could capture them at a rush. At Pres {306} de Ville, just where the traveler approaching harbor front may to-day see a tablet erected in memory of the invasion, was a barricade.

Montgomery halted his men. Scouts returned with word that all was quiet and in darkness--the English evidently asleep; and uncovering muskets, the Congress fighters dashed forward at a run. But it was the silence that precedes the thunderclap. The English had known that the storm was to signal attack, and guessing that the rockets foretokened the a.s.sailants' approach, they had put out all lights behind the barricade. Until Montgomery's men were within a few feet of the log, there was utter quiet; then a voice shrieked out, "Fire!--fire!"

Instantly a flash of flame met the runners like a wall. Groans and screams split through the m.u.f.fling storm. Montgomery and a dozen others fell dead. The rest had broken away in retreat,--a rabble without a commander,--carrying the wounded. Behind the barricade was almost as great confusion among the English, for Quebec's defenders were made up of boys of fifteen and old men of seventy, and the first crash of battle had been followed by a panic, when half the guards would have thrown down their arms if one John Coffin, an expelled royalist from Boston, had not shouted out that he would throw the first man who attempted to desert into the river.

Meantime, how had it gone with Arnold?