by Oliver North
December 16th, Dr. Senter records, “Pvt. Morton of 1st Infantry Battalion died from a grapeshot wound and widow Jemima Warner expired this morning after being struck by a shot from the city on December 11th.” He added the following note: “When her husband, Pvt. James Warner, depleted by illness, fatigue, and hunger, died in the swamp below Lake Mégantic, she picked up his musket and marched with us to Quebec. She was as brave as any of the men.”
We discover rather quickly the artillery General Montgomery brought with him has little effectiveness against the thick walls of the city. The enemy’s larger caliber pieces being used by the garrison have greater range and effectiveness. To get our cannons close enough to lob rounds into the enemy makes them easy targets for the British.
Endnote
1.An example of ex post facto [or, “after-the-fact”] knowledge: In Journal #15, my contemporaneous entry for Thursday, November 9th states “. . . we ended our eight-week, 380-mile march. . . .” That’s what I knew and believed at the time.
But “after-the fact” knowledge, gleaned later from other reports and measurements made on accurate maps of the portages and back-tracking yields a more precise figure for the distance most members of the Expedition covered: “about 300 miles.”
2.Psalm 23 King James Version (KJV)
1The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
3.Though Colonel Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen had a lifelong dispute over who should be credited with seizing Fort Ticonderoga on 10 May 1775, there is no debate it was Col. Arnold who compiled the inventory of weapons, ammunition, and military stores captured at Ticonderoga. There is also no doubt Arnold discussed removing the military hardware—particularly the heavy artillery—for use by Patriot forces with Generals Montgomery, Schuyler, and Washington.
Every history of the American Revolution credits the remarkable feat Henry Knox achieved in bringing the heavy weaponry from Ticonderoga to Boston during the winter of 1775–76. Knox, using the “Arnold Inventory,” selected sixty cannons, howitzers, and mortars to be transported by leaky barges, teams of draft horses, even crude ox-drawn sleds, on a ten-week, three-hundred-mile trek. The saga of how Knox and his men braved heavy snow and freezing cold while dragging weapons weighing as much as 6,000 pounds [the weight of a “24-pounder” cannon and carriage] across frozen rivers, through swamps, forests, and ascending and descending the Berkshire Mountains on the way to break the Boston stalemate in March of ’76 is the stuff of legend.
Yet, the first time Patriot forces actually used Ticonderoga’s heavy weapons in combat took place in September–October 1775 under the command of Brigadier General Richard Montgomery during the siege to capture Fort St. Johns. He used Ticonderoga weapons again to coerce the British surrender at Montreal and ultimately at Quebec.
4.Better known as “The Plains of Abraham.”
5.Captain Morgan was off by a few minutes. His conversation with Colonel Arnold took place at 3:45 a.m. Sunrise in Quebec on the 14th of November was at 6:29 a.m.
Chapter Fourteen
1775–1776: Quebec—
The Forlorn Hope
Forlorn Hope: A body of combatants chosen to lead an assault against an enemy-held position where the risk of casualties is highest.
North Wall of Quebec City, Canada
Saturday, December 23rd, 1775
Our attacks on the city walls and Palace Gates area from the St. Charles River are having little effect. On the rare occasions the enemy show themselves, our Riflemen dispatch them, but we sustain losses as well from their cannons and volleys from the walls.
Resistance from the Redcoats inside Quebec is stalwart. Patriot artillery cannot be properly entrenched, inflicts little damage on the city, and is outgunned by superior British artillery pieces and placement.
The severity of our condition is measured with increased cold, infirmity, and death. Then, a smallpox outbreak among Montgomery’s New York troops further depletes our numbers. Every officer is aware that the term of service for nearly all of Arnold’s troops expires at midnight, December 31st.
The Quebec Garrison remains on high alert and seemingly perpetual vigilance. The west wall cannot be penetrated by our small artillery nor scaled with enough troops to overwhelm the enemy. The final challenges to an assault are the narrow approaches around the western fortifications and high vantage points manned by the Redcoats and Canadian militia. There is no choice but to await another major snowstorm to cover our movement around the city. Since our return from Pointe-aux-Trembles, the weather has been clear though bone chillingly cold.
The Estate of Major Henry Caldwell/
General Montgomery’s Headquarters
Monday, December 25th, 1775
General Montgomery has called a Council of War for his commanders to lay out his plan of attack to capture Quebec and fulfill Congressional directives to go on the offense. As is our habit, Col. Morgan, Lt. Humphrey, and I arrive before the other commanders and their staffs. Major Febiger met us at the door and ushered us into the parlor to join General Montgomery, Col. Arnold, Aaron Burr, and others from the general’s staff.
General Montgomery presented the plan he and Colonel Arnold composed using the latest intelligence and advice from Mr. Halsted. Mr. Halsted has been most influential in the decision to circle the city from north and south and attack through Lower Town where much of the populations’ stores are warehoused. Colonel Arnold’s so-called “Kennebec Corps,” now down to fewer than 500 battle-ready men including sixty Canadian and Indian volunteers, and forty men from Captain Lamb’s artillery company will move to the north and east through the St. Roche suburb and along the St. Charles River. One small cannon lashed to a sled is to be brought with Lamb’s men.
Col. Arnold and twenty-five volunteers will form our Forlorn Hope, those taking the highest risk of initial engagement with the enemy. Our Riflemen and Capt. Lamb’s artillery detachment with a sled-mounted cannon are to follow closely behind them with scaling ladders. We will be armed with spontoons in addition to our rifles. Captain Lamb’s artillery company and their sled-mounted cannon will follow us. Bringing up the rear of this assault force will be Col. Greene and Major Meigs leading the second New England battalion.
In an effort to create a diversion, two faux attacks against Upper Town are to be conducted. Captain Jacob Brown, leading a detachment of Massachusetts troops using scaling ladders and much noise, will strike at the wall near Cape Diamond. The other, a company of about 200 recently recruited Canadians led by Colonel Livingston will make a similar attack at St. John’s Gate. To further distract and confuse our enemy, Lieutenant Wool’s battery of five mortars in St. Roche, detached from Captain Lamb’s Independent New York Artillery Company, will start lobbing bombs into the city as the two assault forces advance toward their objectives.
Because much of the clothing our men are wearing came from the British supply ships captured outside Sorel, everyone is instructed to pin patches of white cloth to their hats with the words, “Liberty or Death” written on them. Killing our own in the chaos of urban battle is always a threat, even when we all wear the same uniforms.
For the final part of the plan, General Montgomery said he will form on the Plains of Abraham near the St. Lawrence with four battalions of New York troops and move along the river road to the east and north
past Diamond Bastion and link-up with Colonel Arnold in Lower Town. Once the two forces are joined, they will move west together to take the Upper Town and secure the city. Another small gun on a sled will go with Montgomery.
If all goes as we hope, this is still a very complicated and extremely dangerous assault. And the storm we need to cover our movements will slow us and make communications among and even within units, very challenging at best.
As General Montgomery prepared to dismiss us, Col. Arnold leaned into the general’s ear after which he asked Reverend Spring to pray. Our chaplain jumped to his feet, we all bowed our heads and he intoned:
Our sovereign God who loves us and ever purposes for our good, we seek Your Providence in these terrible efforts we are about to undertake for our cause of liberty. We know we shall not all live through this battle, so we now commit our lives to Your keeping in life and death. May we ask You to grant the least loss of life possible on both sides of this conflict in accomplishing our mission. This we pray in the name of the risen Savior. Amen.
The attending “amens” were low and solemn, but firm. I may be off on a word or two in recalling this prayer, but I shall never forget it.
St. Roche, Quebec, Canada
Sunday, December 31st, 1775
On Saturday evening, December 30th, the weather finally turned in our favor. The sky was devoid of stars and an increasingly powerful wind from the northeast started mounting in the afternoon. By dark it was snowing so hard we could barely see five yards in any direction. At 6:00 p.m. General Montgomery held a brief council of war and announced to all: “If this weather holds, we attack tonight.”
Our long and brutal campaign is nearly over. Since departing Cambridge on September 11th, we have endured more than we thought humanly possible. In a few hours, more than three months after passing in review for General Washington we will assemble in a different place and formations to carry out the mission he gave us.
At 2:00 a.m. Col. Arnold and his twenty-five-man Forlorn Hope are leaning into the howling wind and snow, stomping their feet to keep blood flowing in the sub-freezing temperature. They—and all the rest of us—see the signal to launch the attack—five flares launched into the sky by Massachusetts Captain Brown, posted in defilade on the Plains of Abraham, not far from General Montgomery.
Seconds later, Colonel Arnold waves to those of us behind him, and says, “Pass the word back. Follow me?”1
Since the moment we launched the assault—and in its aftermath—we have learned many things we didn’t know at the time were already working against us.
First, the storm we needed to conceal our movement was also a warning to Gov. Carleton and his second in command, Allan Maclean. As the snow started, Maclean predicted, “The rebels will come tonight.” Hours before Capt. Brown fired the five flares, the garrison was preparing for us.
The British knew our artillery was unable to breach their west walls, so they left them lightly defended and positioned most of their garrison to the north and south sides of the city in anticipation of the very kind of double envelopment attack we have planned. So, when Captain Brown and Colonel Livingston launched their feints at Diamond Bastion and St. John’s Gate, the intended distractions were totally ineffective.
We might still have succeeded, had General Montgomery’s attack from the south prevailed. His long column was first held up just past Cape Diamond by two rows of heavy abatis that took far longer for the pioneers to chop through than expected.
At 7:00 a.m., the general and a handful of his men finally made their way through a narrow gap hacked through the abatis. But then—despite heavy, blowing snow—they see a fortified house about fifty yards ahead with apertures for muskets and cannons.
No smoke or sound issued from the place, no sign of footprints in the snow—getting deeper by the minute. The general assembled a handful of his officers and men, and a dozen or so slowly crept forward—a forlorn hope led by a general officer.
Unbeknownst to Montgomery and his New Yorkers, there were thirty armed British and Canadian militiamen and a handful of Royal Navy sailors with four light artillery pieces loaded with grapeshot inside. These inexperienced British defenders silently watched until Montgomery and his advance party were less than twenty yards away. Only then did the militia captain inside the structure yell, “Fire!”
The devastating salvo of grapeshot and musket balls immediately killed General Montgomery, three other officers, and nine New York soldiers. The next field grade officer to come upon the gruesome scene was Lieutenant Colonel Campbell, the division’s quartermaster who was not equipped for battlefield leadership.
Within minutes of the carnage, Campbell ordered a retreat. Diminutive Aaron Burr more than a foot shorter than the general tried to carry his commander off the field but collapsed under the general’s weight and was forced to withdraw. It was from Mr. Burr I got this account.
Col. Arnold and his northern attackers were totally unaware of the catastrophe that just occurred a half mile to their south.
Arnold’s column initially moved slowly and unobserved from St. Roche but soon came under heavy musket fire from the city walls to their right.
We were about 100 yards behind his Forlorn Hope party when he sent a messenger back telling us to “close up” on his position. We did so and found them stopped by heavy fire coming from the bluff above their position near the water. Col. Arnold was struck in the leg by a musket ball and though he tried moving to press the attack, his leg wound soon had him unable to walk. Reverend Spring and a Riflemen, one under each arm, assisted their commander all the way back to Dr. Senter’s hospital.
When Colonel Arnold was wounded, Lt. Col. Green, Majors Bigelow and Meigs were about 200 yards behind us. The lead element of our column had already made a “right turn” on Rue du Sault-au-Matelot.1 Captain Morgan, not wanting to lose momentum in the attack by waiting for the New Englanders to “close up,” used his thunderous battlefield voice to rally the Americans around him and led us forward.
We immediately encountered a tall and strong barricade blocking our entrance into the city. Captain Morgan’s Riflemen and Lamb’s detachment were the only members of Arnold’s force in the Lower Town to have brought scaling ladders with them. He wasted no time attacking the barrier by firing through its gun loopholes and throwing up the scaling ladders to get our men over the wall.
When a soldier hesitated in mounting a scaling ladder, Morgan pushed him aside, quickly ascended, and leaped over the wall and fell on a cannon, landing on his back—causing terrible pain. In fact, the fall atop the cannon may well have saved his life for he was able to use the gun and its carriage to avoid thrusting bayonets until the rest of us got over the wall.
It would have helped to have had Captain Lamb’s cannon to breach the wall, but the sled to which it was attached became hopelessly stuck in the ice near the water and they could not retrieve it in the open under fire.
After getting our company over the rampart, we found the defenders less than enthusiastic about any further contest with us. They surrendered and were removed from the site by a few of Captain Lamb’s men.
As the prisoners were being moved north down the narrow Rue du Sault-au-Matelot, Lieutenant Colonel Greene’s New England battalion arrived. We quickly moved ahead, only to run into a second large barricade, this one even taller and thicker than the last.
Using the same tactics as before, we placed scaling ladders against the wall, but our initial assault was repelled by British regulars positioned about 100 feet behind the barricade with bayonets affixed. As soon as a Patriot head emerged above the wall, it was hit with a volley of musket fire.
At this point in the fight, Lieutenant Colonel Greene intervened and urged Captain Morgan to hold off on another effort to get over the top of the second barrier until General Montgomery arrived with reinforcements.
Like so much else in war, we didn’t kn
ow what we didn’t know. By 7:30 a.m. as Captain Morgan was organizing a second Forlorn Hope to follow him over the second barricade, we didn’t know General Montgomery was already dead.
Nor were we aware the British had reinforced the other side of the barricade with more than 400 troops composed of Regulars, sailors, Canadian militia, and Royal Highland Emigrants, many with fixed bayonets. Two light artillery pieces were also placed on a platform ten yards behind the barrier to fire grapeshot across the top of the rampart. It was a grapeshot from one of these guns that hit the brave Capt. Lamb in the face.
And while the sky had brightened somewhat, the howling blizzard was unabated, reducing visibility to ten yards or so.
The tight quarters on the street, the short distance between attackers and defenders and the reduced visibility of the howling storm eliminated any advantage for our rifles. We not only had no bayonets, but it also took us longer to re-charge our firearms than the musketeers.
As we were positioning four ladders for Captain Morgan’s Forlorn Hope, none of us can see the defenders on the other side of the second barrier breaking down doors and clamoring up to the second-story windows to engage any of us who manage to make our way to the top of the barricade.
Captain Morgan shouted, “Follow me, men, Quebec is ours!” and scrambled up the ladder. As he and the first five or six of our Riflemen appeared over the top of the barricade, the defenders’ cannons and muskets erupted, killing all but Captain Morgan who miraculously fell over backward, landing at our feet with new holes in his hat and hunting shirt. Lt. Humphrey and I bent to help him to his feet.
Suddenly, as our Forlorn Hope party is reloading our rifles, a dozen enemy troops rush through a sally port2 with muskets at the ready, bayonets fixed. An officer, holding a pistol demands, “Drop your weapons! Surrender or die.”