The British tyranny which Washington pictured in Canada was thus not very real.He underestimated, too, the antagonism between the Roman Catholics of Canada and the Protestants of the English colonies.The Congress at Philadelphia in denouncing the Quebec Act had accused the Catholic Church of bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion.This was no very tactful appeal for sympathy to the sons of that France which was still the eldest daughter of the Church and it was hardly helped by a maladroit turn suggesting that "low-minded infirmities" should not permit such differences to block union in the sacred cause of liberty.
Washington believed that two battalions of Canadians might be recruited to fight the British, and that the French Acadians of Nova Scotia, a people so remote that most of them hardly knew what the war was about, were tingling with sympathy for the American cause.In truth the Canadian was not prepared to fight on either side.What the priest and the landowner could do to make him fight for Britain was done, but, for all that, Sir Guy Carleton, the Governor of Canada, found recruiting impossible.
Washington believed that the war would be won by the side which held Canada.He saw that from Canada would be determined the attitude of the savages dwelling in the wild spaces of the interior; he saw, too, that Quebec as a military base in British hands would be a source of grave danger.The easy capture of Fort Ticonderoga led him to underrate difficulties.If Ticonderoga why not Quebec? Nova Scotia might be occupied later, the Acadians helping.Thus it happened that, soon after taking over the command, Washington was busy with a plan for the conquest of Canada.Two forces were to advance into that country; one by way of Lake Champlain under General Schuyler and the other through the forests of Maine under Benedict Arnold.
Schuyler was obliged through illness to give up his command, and it was an odd fortune of war that put General Richard Montgomery at the head of the expedition going by way of Lake Champlain.
Montgomery had served with Wolfe at the taking of Louisbourg and had been an officer in the proud British army which had received the surrender of Canada in 1760.Not without searching of heart had Montgomery turned against his former sovereign.He was living in America when war broke out; he had married into an American family of position; and he had come to the view that vital liberty was challenged by the King.Now he did his work well, in spite of very bad material in his army.His New Englanders were, he said, "every man a general and not one of them a soldier."They feigned sickness, though, as far as he had learned, there was "not a man dead of any distemper." No better were the men from New York, "the sweepings of the streets" with morals "infamous." Of the officers, too, Montgomery had a poor opinion.
Like Washington he declared that it was necessary to get gentlemen, men of education and integrity, as officers, or disaster would follow.Nevertheless St.Johns, a British post on the Richelieu, about thirty miles across country from Montreal, fell to Montgomery on the 3d of November, after a siege of six weeks; and British regulars under Major Preston, a brave and competent officer, yielded to a crude volunteer army with whole regiments lacking uniforms.Montreal could make no defense.On the 12th of November Montgomery entered Montreal and was in control of the St.Lawrence almost to the cliffs of Quebec.
Canada seemed indeed an easy conquest.
The adventurous Benedict Arnold went on an expedition more hazardous.He had persuaded Washington of the impossible, that he could advance through the wilderness from the seacoast of Maine and take Quebec by surprise.News travels even by forest pathways.Arnold made a wonderful effort.Chill autumn was upon him when, on the 25th of September, with about a thousand picked men, he began to advance up the Kennebec River and over the height of land to the upper waters of the Chaudiere, which discharges into the St.Lawrence opposite Quebec.There were heavy rains.Sometimes the men had to wade breast high in dragging heavy and leaking boats over the difficult places.Agood many men died of starvation.Others deserted and turned back.The indomitable Arnold pressed on, however, and on the 9th of November, a few days before Montgomery occupied Montreal, he stood with some six hundred worn and shivering men on the strand of the St.Lawrence opposite Quebec.He had not surprised the city and it looked grim and inaccessible as he surveyed it across the great river.In the autumn gales it was not easy to carry over his little army in small boats.But this he accomplished and then waited for Montgomery to join him.
By the 3d of December Montgomery was with Arnold before Quebec.
