by Gore Vidal
On the 30th, Colonel Arnold went to buy food at Sartigan, a near-by village according to the fatal map.
“We won’t see him again.” Dayton was confident we had been abandoned. Rations were exhausted. The men had already eaten their dogs; they were now chewing on belts, moccasins, bits of soap. Fortunately Matt appeared on the scene from the forward detachment, and brought with him the last of the provisions; a half-pound of pork and five pints of flour to last each of us until, presumably, Quebec fell or Colonel Arnold brought us food.
To the delight of all, supplies arrived three days later from mythical Sartigan. There was a good deal of rejoicing. Even the snow stopped falling for the occasion.
Then the bad news. An Indian guide reported that our rear detachment under Lieutenant-Colonel Enos had departed for Massachusetts, leaving us with only 500 effective troops.
Between November 7 and 13, our “army” assembled at Point Levis on the St. Lawrence River across from Quebec. We were relieved to be in civilised country; we were alarmed at our situation. Two ships of the British navy patrolled the river while within the citadel of Quebec there were more than 500 British troops, guarded by a frigate and a sloop whose combined guns numbered forty-two. Arnold’s “best” intelligence reports were about as good as his map.
On the night of November 13, the British set fire to our remaining bateaux. Astonishingly, the green wood burned.
We moved to Wolfe’s Cove below the walls of Quebec. It was here that a trapper told us how General Schuyler’s replacement General Montgomery had captured the British forts of Chambly and St. John. Montgomery was now advancing upon Montreal. Delighted, Arnold ordered Matt to go to the citadel and under a flag of truce demand the immediate surrender of Quebec.
“Tell the British commander that we shall be most generous if they obey us promptly. But unrelenting—repeat—unrelenting if they do not recognise our sovereignty in Canada.” I could hardly believe my ears. Poor Matt did as he was ordered.
We watched Matt as he approached the gates to the citadel, a small figure, carrying a dirty white shirt on a stick. To Arnold’s fury and (once we knew that Matt was safe) to my amusement, the British fired a volley of grape-shot at Matt who scurried down the heights and joined us at the cove.
“I shall teach those bastards from hell a lesson they’ll never forget!” Arnold’s dark face was black with wrath; the gray-yellow eyes shone like a cat’s. On the spot he ordered Matt to start down-river to Montreal, to find Montgomery wherever he was and to “tell him he must join us. Now! For a joint siege. Montreal is not important. Quebec is.” Matt departed within the hour.
On November 19, we moved twenty miles west of the city to Pointe aux Trembles and established a camp. The next day a British sloop arrived from Montreal; aboard was the Canadian governor Sir Guy Carleton. Montreal had fallen to Montgomery! Our spirits soared.
“We would have been better off serving with Montgomery.” Dayton was sour. Like most of the young officers he tended to blame Arnold for our situation. In retrospect, Arnold’s plan to take Canada was good. It was the sort of bold stroke that Bonaparte excelled in. Arnold was hardly Bonaparte but he was an imaginative and daring general. Unfortunately, he did not possess the sine qua non of the truly great general, luck. He had also, as I have mentioned, not taken into account the peculiar savagery of the Canadian winter.
On the morning of November 30, having heard nothing from Montreal, Arnold presented me with a letter to General Montgomery and ordered me out onto the river. I was delighted.
With an Indian guide, I departed Pointe aux Trembles in a canoe. The British ship Horney fired a careless musket or two in our direction but otherwise we were unmolested as we paddled against the current past the high rocky cliff on which sits Quebec City. Even the cold was delightful on that white morning, no sound but that of water softly lapping against the birch-bark hull.
I should note here that I did not ever disguise myself as a French priest in order to pass through the country-side unremarked. For one thing, any Frenchman would have remarked on my crude disguise. I have no idea where this story came from but like so many other absurdities it has been duly published. Nor did I conduct a tragic love affair with an Indian princess supposedly encountered at Fort Western and loyally my concubine until she was struck down trying to save my life in the assault upon Quebec. It has been my fate to be the centre of a thousand inventions, mostly of a disagreeable nature. I never deny these stories. People believe what they want to believe. Yet I do think that my name has in some mysterious way been filched from me and used to describe a character in some interminable three-volume novel of fantastic adventure, the work of a deranged author whose imagination never sleeps—although this reader does when he reads for the thousandth time how the hellish Aaron Burr meant single-handedly to disband the United States when a voyage to the moon would have been simpler to achieve, and a good deal more interesting.
We had not been three hours from Pointe aux Trembles when we saw on the horizon the American flotilla coming from the west. By sunset I had delivered to Richard Montgomery himself the message from Benedict Arnold in which I was introduced (as always in those days) as the son of the late president of New Jersey College.
“I’ve already sent Colonel Arnold supplies. They should have arrived.” Montgomery was a tall noble figure with a handsome somewhat stupid-looking face due to a low brow that sloped back from his nose like one of those English dogs who, bred for speed, lose in the process the usual canine complement of intelligence. Although I did not know Montgomery long enough to be able to form a proper estimate of his intelligence, there was no doubting his charm and courage, and we got on famously. In fact, he made me, on the spot, a captain attached to his staff. It was my first promotion.
After Montgomery’s arrival with 300 men, we had, all told, perhaps 800 effectives with which to take the most elaborate fortress in North America.
During the month of December, I was able to convince General Montgomery that our best hope was to wait for a snow-storm (every third day, it seemed, snow fell) and then scale with ladders Cap Diamond, the highest portion of the citadel and so the least guarded. Simultaneously, three other detachments would attack the fort, distracting the guards. Once atop Cap Diamond, we would then be able to penetrate the citadel and open the gates.
For two weeks I was allowed to train fifty men (and myself) in the art of scaling a high wall. Unfortunately, General Montgomery’s mind was changed by two friendly Canadians who assured him that if he seized the Lower Town with its warehouses on the river, the merchant families that own Quebec would force Sir Guy to capitulate rather than run the risk of losing their warehouses, supplies, ships. I never thought this a good plan; and it was not.
Montgomery fixed the last day of the year for the attack. He had no choice. On the next day several hundred New Yorkers planned to leave for home, their period of enlistment at an end.
Arnold was to attack from the east; Montgomery from the west. Their two divisions would then unite in the Lower Town, and move on to the citadel. At first, all things favoured us. A full moon. A drunken British garrison celebrating the New Year. But just as we began our advance, out of the north swept a snow-storm hiding the citadel, shrouding with white the Plains of Abraham. Since it was too late to turn back, we went on with the consoling thought that though we could no longer see the enemy he could not see us either.
I was at Montgomery’s side as we slowly moved along the river’s edge. We could not see more than a few feet ahead of us. Snow stung our eyes. We came to the first row of wooden pickets. We broke through. Then the second. We broke through; and saw in front of us the first blockhouse, occupied by sailors who fled at our approach, abandoning a twelve-pound gun.
We were now in the deep ravine leading to the Lower Town.
Montgomery was delighted. “The snow is our ally,” he whispered to me; and came to a full halt. He had walked into the first of a number of blocks of ice recently deposited by t
he river.
“Push them aside,” Montgomery commanded; and himself worked alongside us, wrenching the ice from our way, clearing a path. Then 200 men formed a column behind Montgomery, myself and a French guide. “Push on, brave boys!” Montgomery shouted. “Quebec is ours!”
Tall and dark against the fatal whiteness, Montgomery turned to me, excitedly, and said, “We shall be inside the fort in two minutes.”
I remember thinking that one ought not to tempt fate. As I started to answer, I was abruptly lifted off my feet and flung into a snow-drift. Just as I struck the hard snow, I heard the delayed thunder of the twelve-pounder: one of the sailors who had fled the blockhouse had returned to see what was happening; observing our shadows up ahead, he fired the cannon.
When I got back my breath, I stood up, wondering if I had been wounded, wondering whether or not I would be able to recognise blood in that mono-chromatic landscape. Finding myself apparently intact, I hurried forward to where General Montgomery lay in the snow, head shattered. I tried to pick him up but he was dead-weight, and dead. Close-by, two aides and an orderly sergeant were also dead. The French guide had vanished. I turned back to the column.
“Attack!” I shouted. “The city’s ours!” But at that interesting moment a certain officer named Campbell insisted on holding one of those caucuses so dear to the American soldier—and why not? When consulted in a democratic way, the American soldier invariably chooses retreat.
Despite my pleas, curses, threats, I was left alone in the ravine, beside the 200-pound body of my commander whose blood looked to be black as it stained the snow. Furiously, irrationally, I decided to return Montgomery’s remains to our side; no doubt hoping, in my madness, to thaw him out, revive him. But I had not dragged the corpse a dozen yards when I was fired on from the blockhouse.
I abandoned the body to the enemy (who not long ago returned it to New York for a pompous re-interment to which I was not invited). Incidentally, Trumbull’s recent and deservedly popular painting memorializing the death of General Montgomery omits me entirely while adding to the poignant scene several officers who at the time were nowhere in the vicinity but who are now, so to speak, everywhere.
Had the men followed me and met with Arnold’s troops (waiting for us in the Lower Town), Canada would today be a part of the United States (happy fate, oh Canada!). But due to the untimely death of Montgomery, the cowardice of Campbell, the defection of Enos, we failed. In 1812 we again tried to conquer Canada; and again failed. This time we were defeated not by the winter but by our own commander James Wilkinson. Poor Jamie was worth a dozen snow-storms to the Canadians.
Two hundred of our men died in that disastrous assault while 300 were captured. Most of the others sustained wounds, among them Colonel Arnold whose foot was badly hurt.
I was promoted to brigade-major and my exploits were reported all over the colonies. I was even mentioned in the Congress while Matt Ogden saw fit to praise me personally to General Washington who, impressed by my precocity, offered me a place on his staff.
I was a hero, and still not twenty-one. Crude wood-block engravings of young Aaron Burr carrying General Montgomery through a snow-storm once edified and inspired an entire generation of American schoolchildren. Had I died at Quebec, would I still be remembered today? Probably not.
Six
WHEN I MENTION to Colonel Burr how much I enjoyed his account of the invasion of Canada, he looks at me as though not knowing to what I refer; pokes the coals in the grate (yes, in midsummer he often has a fire). “I am always cold,” he likes to say. “It is the fault of General Washington.” When Burr smiles he looks like the bust of Voltaire in Leggett’s office. “He disliked me and saw to it that I was always assigned to swampy and malignant places.”
Finally, “Oh, yes. My scribbling about those days. I still make notes from time to time. Pointless activity, I suppose. No one likes truth. For instance, we are now told that Benedict Arnold was a bad general because he was a bad man. But of course he was one of our best commanders. Superior certainly to Washington.”
“That’s not the impression one gets from your account.”
Burr is surprised. “But Arnold was splendid! It was Montgomery who made the fatal error at Quebec. Arnold favoured my strategy, which I think was sound. Certainly Montgomery’s plan to attack the Lower Town was not. Arnold’s judgement in the field was excellent.”
Nelson Chase interrupts us with a message from Madame. The Colonel takes it and frowns. He is much distracted these days. Things go badly at the mansion. He has promised to show me his notes on Washington, but every time I ask for them he says he cannot remember where he last put them.
Seven
I HAVE GROWN lazy in the heat. August is nearly over. Colonel Burr is absent for days at a time. Sometimes he is at the mansion. Other times in Jersey City. I think he may have gone at least once to his old school Princeton College (his father was its president when it was called New Jersey College).
Although he is more than usually secretive, I gather that the Texas land leases may be invalid, and if they are, he has lost his (Madame’s) entire investment.
Nelson Chase tells me that “There are terrible rows up there on the Heights!” Chase has also taken to questioning me about the Colonel’s private life, an unbecoming subject considering how recently the Colonel married Chase’s aunt or whatever she is to him. I say nothing. After all, I know nothing except that I have posted a number of letters from Burr to a certain Jane McManus in Jersey City. But honi soit qui mal y pense.
Yesterday Burr spent all afternoon with a Mrs. Tompkins and a five-year-old girl who was plainly his daughter though not, I should think, by the elderly Mrs. Tompkins.
Burr is marvellously patient with all children. Talks to them as though they were adult. Teaches them. Plays with them by the hour. Particularly with little girls, for “Women have souls, Charlie! They really do.”
This evening, at five o’clock, I finally receive the Colonel’s notes on George Washington. “It is a continuation of what you have already read. With some new marginal notes. It is a nice portrait, I think, but I am sure you will find it unrecognisable.”
Burr looks pale and fragile today. This morning in court the judge saw fit to harangue for an hour the murderer of Alexander Hamilton. When at last the judge gave out of breath, the Colonel said with great mildness, “I am sorry that Your Honour is not feeling well today.”
George Washington
IN THE EARLY SPRING of 1776, I decided that Colonel Arnold was mad. For days on end, he would march our shattered contingent back and forth before the walls of Quebec. Periodically, he would amuse the British with a demand for surrender. Asked to deliver one of these documents, I refused point-blank.
When it came time for me to go, Arnold forbade it. I told him that he could keep me only by force. He did not try to do that.
The middle of June, I arrived at General Washington’s headquarters in the Mortier mansion at Richmond Hill, some two miles north of New York City.
I had never seen a house so fine. It commanded a superb view of the Hudson River. Gardens, pavilions, ponds, a stream (the Minetta which I was later to dam and make a small lake of). A perfect paradise, I thought, as I rode up to the front porch where a dozen officers stood, waiting for admittance.
Above the main door, on the second balcony, the Lady Washington sat with her needlework. She had a benign if somewhat wintry smile and a quiet manner. The face was ordinary—what you could see of it because she was addicted to large hats, usually some years out of fashion. She had been the richest widow in Virginia when the poor but ambitious squire Washington married her.
As I entered the high-ceilinged main hall, I never dreamed—well, perhaps imagined for an instant—that I would one day own Richmond Hill.
I was shown by a staff captain into the side parlour where a half-dozen officers were waiting to see the General, who daily held court in an upstairs bedroom (which I was to make into a library, exorcizi
ng, as best I could, that stern mediocre ghost).
Among the officers unknown to me in the parlour was Captain Alexander Hamilton of the New York artillery. We did not actually meet, however, until the end of June. “But I knew right away it was you,” he told me later. “We all did. And I was filled with envy!” When Hamilton chose, his manner could be enormously charming. “There you were, the hero of Quebec, looking like a child while I was just another officer!” As a youth, Hamilton was physically most attractive with red-gold hair, bright if somewhat watery blue eyes and a small but strong body. It was our peculiar tragedy—or glory—to be of an age and quality at a time and place certain to make rivals of us. Yet from the beginning we had a personal liking for one another. We were like brothers (yes, Cain and Abel come to mind with the difference that each was part-Cain, part-Abel). At first meeting I knew Hamilton straight through. I suspect that he knew me as well, and could not endure the knowledge that of the two of us I alone had the means and talent to be what he most wanted to be, the president. He came to hate not only my capacity but my opportunity. Yet I wonder if he knew all along that I would fail, saw the flaw in me as I saw the one in him? Speculation is idle now. Like brothers, yes; but unlike, too. He was envious. I am not. Thwarted ambition never turned me sour as it did Hamilton, who at the end could not endure the American world I was helping to make and so, quite irrationally, made me out to be that hideous reality incarnate. Curious to think that we would almost certainly have been friends had we not been two young “heroes” at the beginning of a new nation, each aware that at the summit there is a place for only one. As it turned out, neither of us was to reach the highest place. I hurled Hamilton from the mountain-side, and myself fell.