Canada Under Attack

by Jennifer Crump

  The “straight line of two hundred and ten miles” was actually more than twice that length and passed through a rough tangle of woods and swamps that forced the troops to travel a winding route. The falls and carrying places they encountered were neither small nor short. Worse than the hardships offered by nature was the fact that the area was still a virtual no man’s land, unsettled and unmapped. There would be no villages or settlements where the soldiers could regroup and replenish their supplies. Arnold and his 1,500 men had no idea what they would face when they set out from Boston with their heavy canoes laden with supplies. The plan had called for Arnold’s force to move through the Kennebec Valley to the Chaudière River and then on to the St. Lawrence. But the Kennebec River was a virtually unnavigable morass of rocks and rapids, and the tributary they were to follow, known as the Dead River, was even worse. The aptly named Chaudière (boiler) was equally unfit for navigation. The soldiers were frequently forced to carry their canoes overland and on many days they could only cover a mere five kilometres.6 “Our march has been attended with an amazing deal of fatigue … I have been deceived in every account of our route, which is longer and has been attended with a thousand difficulties I never apprehended,”7 Arnold wrote.

  Arnold and his men struggled to control their canoes in the churning water. At one point a flash flood destroyed many of their supplies and canoes. By the time they reached the Chaudière a full third of their number had turned back and many of their canoes had been lost or abandoned in the thick swamp and bush of their latest portage. An attempt to float their supplies down the Chaudière on rafts had resulted in the loss of both provisions and ammunition, and the soldiers were forced to eat their shoe leather and the few dogs that had accompanied them, in order to survive.

  “We had all along aided our weaker brethren,” Private George Morison recorded in his journal, “but the dreadful moment had now arrived when these friendly offices could no longer be performed. Many of the men began to fall behind, and those in any condition to march were scarcely able to support themselves, so that it was impossible to bring them along; if we tarried with them we must all have perished.”8

  By the time Arnold and his men appeared on the Plains of Abraham on November 14, their numbers had dwindled to a little over 700. The remaining men were starved and sickened by the arduous journey. The fact that they had persisted in the face of such adversity and such horrific conditions hardened their resolve. Arnold himself was still determined to take Quebec, and with typical bravado sent a white flag of truce into the city to demand its immediate surrender.

  With Carleton still not yet arrived from Montreal, command of the Quebec garrison was in the hands of Lieutenant-Colonel Allan MacLean, who had arrived a mere two days ahead of Arnold and was greeted by a city full of fear and pessimism. The lieutenant-governor, Hector Cramahé, was terrified by the sight of Arnold’s force. There was talk of immediately lowering the flag even before Arnold sent his demand for the city’s surrender. MacLean, a gruff Scotsman, angrily took control and refused to open the gates to admit the flag of truce. There would be no more talk of defeat.

  With no cannon or heavy guns, Arnold was in no position to force the issue and MacLean kept his men well within the protections of the city walls. After waiting for a few days, Arnold withdrew his men to Pointe-aux-Trembles to wait for reinforcements from Montgomery. Montgomery finally arrived on December 2, with 500 troops and supplies. Three days later the combined forces once more stood on the Plains of Abraham. As Wolfe’s right-hand man, Carleton knew first-hand the dangers in leaving the safety of the walls of the city to engage the enemy; he had no intention of repeating Montcalm’s mistake. For almost 30 days the Americans laid siege to the city. When it finally became clear that the Canadians would not venture from the city to lift the siege, Montgomery and Arnold decided to lift it themselves.

  As had happened to Wolfe during his siege, winter was approaching and the Americans were ill-prepared to survive a lengthy wait in the midst of a cruel Canadian winter. They had another incentive though: over half of Montgomery and Arnold’s men were due to be released from their service on January 1. It was unlikely they would agree to stay. Morale was low, conditions were horrible, and it was believed that few would voluntarily stay to fight a war on foreign soil. An American deserter came to Quebec and told James Bain, captain of the British militia, about the dispirited state of the attacking army. The man claimed that all the people from the old country wished to be at home and that they had no wish to attack the town. Their leaders were eager to act before more men deserted.

  On December 31, in the midst of one of the raging snowstorms that Quebec City is famous for, the Americans launched their attack. Two regiments launched feint attacks on the Plains of Abraham with the goal of distracting Carleton’s men from the real invasions being lead separately by Montgomery and Arnold. Arnold’s role was to advance along between St. Charles and the Plains in order to storm the Lower Town. From there he and his men would make their way through the mazes of houses, wharves, and storehouses toward the gate that lead into the more heavily fortified Upper Town. They believed that if they could reach the gate they could easily breach its defences. Montgomery’s role was to take the higher route into Lower Town, which would take his troops between the cliffs of Cape Diamond and the St. Lawrence.

  Attack on Quebec by General Montgomery, Morning of 31st December, 1775.

  Observing the assault from behind the walls of Upper Town, Carleton dispatched a troop of 400 men, under MacLean, to attack the rear of Arnold’s troops. Arnold’s men waded through knee-deep snow, many of them wearing tiny slips of paper pinned to their hats that read “Liberty or Death.” They took the first battery they encountered but Arnold was wounded in the effort and carried out of the battle. His men were quickly stalled at the second battery where they also faced a deep trench dug to prevent their forces from entering Upper Town. Then the boom of cannon and musket fire sounded behind them. MacLean had arrived.

  The Death of Montgomery at Quebec, December 31, 1775.

  The Americans began to fall like toy soldiers as their enemies fired at them from ahead and behind. There was nowhere for them to go. By the time the barrage lessened enough for them to surrender, nearly 100 Americans had been killed or wounded by enemy fire and dozens of others had drowned while trying to flee across the lightly frozen river. Another 400 American troops were taken prisoner, nearly every remaining member of Arnold’s regiment.

  Montgomery had his own problems. Several entrenchments had been layered between the cliffs and the St. Lawrence River. In the midst of the fog of musket and cannon fire, Montgomery and his men were unable to see that the enemy entrenchments were only lightly defended by the handful of troops that Carleton thought he could spare. Like Arnold, Montgomery breached the first with relative ease. But in leading the charge to the second, Montgomery and many of his senior officers were killed. The remainder of the soldiers panicked and fled. Carleton, who reported a mere six of him men killed and barely a score wounded, wisely refused to pursue the retreating Americans, choosing instead to stay behind his walls and wait for the anticipated reinforcements he expected to arrive in the spring.

  Despite these humiliating defeats, Arnold steadfastly refused to lift the siege and began to prepare to spend the winter outside the walls of Quebec. Plagued by near continual desertions, he sent to Congress for reinforcements hoping they would arrive before expected reinforcements arrived from Britain. In the interim, both sides made occasional forays against each other as pockets of militia stationed outside the fort from both sides engaged. But these skirmishes had little effect on the siege.

  Congress did not want to give up their pursuit of the 14th colony any more than Arnold did. In a third open letter to the inhabitants of Quebec, published on January 25, 1776, they assured the Canadians that, “We will never abandon you to the unrelenting fury of your and our enemies; two Battalions have already received orders to march to Canada.”9 Reinforce
ments did arrive, although among the Americans they were greatly reduced by a smallpox epidemic that was rapidly sweeping through the ranks. Arnold, still wounded, was sent to Montreal where he found growing resentment toward the American presence.

  Montgomery had left Montreal in the command of Brigadier-General David Wooster. At first, the general had established good relations with the population, but the relationship slowly eroded as Wooster arrested Loyalists and threatened the arrest of those with Loyalist leanings. He imprisoned a number of local militia who had refused to give up their commissions, and completely disarmed several communities who he suspected of being potentially disloyal. Faced with this growing resentment and the very real possibility of an insurrection, the Americans sent Wooster to Quebec City and replaced him with Arnold. They also sent a delegation to Quebec City, consisting of a Catholic priest and a French printer from Philadelphia, who would be transported to Canada and given monies to re-establish himself, his family, and business there. In exchange, the printer would use his print shop to help promote American interests in Canada. Three members of congress, including Benjamin Franklin, rounded out the delegation. Their mission was primarily one of public relations, to extend the message of common ground to the French Canadians and to assure them that their rights would be protected.

  The delegation was also granted the funds to raise several regiments from among the French Canadians, who they expected would embrace their cause. Unfortunately, most of their money was paper — Continental Money — which the French Canadians were rejecting from the American Army; the French preferred gold.

  What Franklin and his fellow commissioners discovered in Quebec dismayed them. He informed Congress that it was

  impossible to give you a just idea of the lowness of the Continental credit here from the want of hard money and the prejudice it is to our affairs … The Tories will not trust us a farthing … Our enemies take advantage of this distress to make us look contemptible in the eyes of Canadians who have been provoked by the violence of our military in exacting provisions and services from them without pay and conduct towards a people who suffered us to enter their country as friends that the most urgent necessity can scarce excuse since it contributed much to the change of their good dispositions towards us into enmity and makes them wish our departure.10

  Franklin and his fellow commissioners were pestered with demands for reimbursement so that it was impossible for them to deliver their intended message. In a final and ominous report to Congress they were blunt in their assessment of the situation in Quebec. If Congress could not find the cash to support the army in Quebec, they had better withdraw it before the “inhabitants are become our enemies.” 11 Franklin’s was not the only voice pleading for help. Schuyler entreated congress to send his suffering armies in Quebec “powder and pork”12 and both he and Franklin warned Congress that necessity was forcing the armies to go into debt, a debt that had climbed to well over $10,000.

  Reproduction of a 1761 map: “An Accurate Map of Canada with the Adjacent Countries.”

  There was worse news for the American delegation. Despite the support of the priest who accompanied them, the influential Catholic clergy refused to support their cause, pointing out that the Quebec Act had already given them what they wanted. The French printer had not yet been able to print anything that could be used to sway the populace. Then came the devastating news that the American Army at Quebec City was in a panicked retreat. British ships had been sighted coming up the St. Lawrence, bringing thousands of reinforceReproduction ments. After 11 days in Montreal, the venerable Ben Franklin, who had never before shied from controversy or hardship, decided that the problems in Quebec were too many and too complicated for his mission to fix and returned to New York.

  In the meantime, Carleton hastily gathered his reinforcements to chase down the retreating Americans. There were several pitched battles at Les Cèdres, Quinze-Chênes, and Trois-Rivières, which all ended with American losses.

  On May 6, 1776, a large contingent of British reinforcements arrived at Trois-Rivières, undetected by the Americans who occupied Sorel, a few kilometres upriver. The Americans, believing that Trois-Rivières was being held by only a small contingent of British soldiers, raided the settlement. Not only were they unaware of the strength of the British garrison there, they were also wholly ignorant of the terrain. After slogging through a thick swamp, the American troops emerged to face a huge force of British regulars. The Americans scattered back into the swamp. Two hundred American soldiers, including most of the senior officers, were captured. Carleton refused to press his advantage and did not take his troops up the St. Lawrence to make a play for Quebec until the middle of June. He found Sorel abandoned.

  Even Arnold was ready to give up. “Let us quit and secure our own country before it is too late,”13 he wrote. On May 15, he and the American Army, which numbered more than 5,000 in and around Montreal, first attempted to burn down the city then abandoned it and began their retreat back through the Richelieu River to Lake Champlain. They took refuge at Île-aux-Noix but were promptly ousted by the British. At Fort St.-Jean they managed to get away only moments before the British forces arrived. Throughout the summer and into the fall of 1776, Arnold managed to hold the British at bay with a fleet he had built up after his initial taking of Crown Point in 1775, but was finally defeated on October 11, and forced to withdraw from that fort to Ticonderoga. Carleton decided that the Americans were too strong to oust and he contented himself to wait at Crown Point. Finally, on November 2, he pulled his troops from Crown Point and withdrew to spend the winter in Quebec.

  The campaign to capture Quebec was an unmitigated disaster for the Americans. Not only had they failed in their attempt to take Canada by force, but they had also failed to convince the Canadians that their future could be secured by uniting with their rebellious neighbours to the south. It would be many years before relationships along the border were sufficiently repaired. The only saving grace for the Americans was that Arnold’s tiny naval fleet had held off the British long enough that it had discouraged a full-scale British invasion along Chesapeake Bay, which might have ended the entire revolution. The Americans made one last attempt to secure Quebec at the Paris Peace Conference, which created the United States of America. American negotiator Ben Franklin suggested that all of Quebec be ceded to the Americans, but in the end they received only the Ohio territory.

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  THE NOOTKA CRISIS

  Canada’s eastern colonies were not the only ones to capture the attention of foreign armies. By the late 1700s five nations had turned their attention to the westernmost end of Canada, led in part by a desire to exploit the rich store of furs there and by a desire to locate the infamous Northwest Passage. The American interest was still muted by the effort and expense they were already expending on settling their own West. Still, John Jacob Astor and others were making plans to establish trading posts along the Columbia River, and American ships were frequenting the Canadian west coast.

  Russia’s interest in Canada’s west coast was primarily incidental and far less acquisitive than the other nations believed it to be. They made frequent forays into what is now known as the province of British Columbia, but their interests were primarily trade related. On the other hand, the Spanish had made their intentions quite clear. The entire North American Pacific coast, including the island of Vancouver, belonged to them. The British were more recent converts to the practice of exerting their territorial rights over the Pacific coastal regions of Canada, but they were enthusiastic. They had seen the rich stores of fur that could be found in the region and with a new market for furs opening in China, they were eager to exploit the Pacific area. Finally, there were the Nootka1 , who had been there all along and watched the struggles for their territory with interest while they traded with each of the rival nations. The Nootka were well practised in the art of war so it is unlikely that they were perturbed by the arrival of so many foreigners on their shor
es.

  The area at the centre of all of these claims was a series of inlets along the rugged western edge of Vancouver Island, known as Nootka Sound. An early resident of the area captured its rugged, dangerous beauty:

  On the ocean coast outside, between the entrances to the great inlets the line of the shore there is broken by low headlands which project from the seaboard, and appear, with their shapeless, outlying rocks, not unlike the shattered angles of a fortified work; between these capes are narrow beaches, backed by a curtain of rock, over which hill upon hill appears, woody and ragged. As the coast lies exposed to the uninterrupted western swell of the North Pacific, the waves are generally large, and even in calm weather they break with noise on the shore and roar among the caverns. 2

  Friendly Cove was a natural harbour within the Sound, one of very few along the uninviting shoreline. It served as the perfect vantage point for anyone wanting to make forays into the Pacific west coast of Canada and offered immediate access to the Pacific Ocean and the rich developing markets of the Far East.

  The Spanish claim to the Pacific Northwest was initiated in the 15th century with a papal bull that had divided the western hemisphere between the Spanish and Portuguese and gave the entire New World to the Spanish. The Spanish bolstered their claim to the region by pointing out that Vasco Núñez de Balboa had laid claim to all the shores touched by the Pacific Ocean when he had crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513. Subsequent explorations by other Spanish explorers were used to cement the Spanish claim to the Pacific Northwest.