Forlorn Hope - Chapter 3
General George Washington’s Letter of September 6th 1775, and the surrender of Montreal to General Montgomery, November 13th 1775
The Unveiling of Canadian History - Volume 2
FORLORN HOPE
Quebec and Nova Scotia, and the War for Independence, 1775 – 1785
‘The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, by John Trumbull (1786)
Chapter 3 - General George Washington’s Letter of September 6th 1775, and the surrender of Montreal to General Montgomery, November 13th 1775
On June 27th, the Continental Congress authorized Major General Philip Schuyler to put together a northern army -
“for securing to the United Colonies the command of those waters adjacent to Crown Point and Ticonderoga” and “as Governor Carleton is making preparations to invade these colonies and is instigating the Indian Nations to take up the Hatchet against them” … to “exert his utmost power to destroy or take all vessels, boats or floating batteries, preparing by said Governor or by his order, on or near the waters of the lakes”.
Congress resolved -
“that if General Schuyler finds it practicable, and that it will not be disagreeable to the Canadians, he do immediately take possession of St. Johns, Montreal, and any other parts of the country, and pursue any other measures in Canada, which may have a tendency to promote the peace and security of these Colonies”.
Earlier in June, John Adams had written to James Warren,
“Whether we should march into Canada with an army sufficient to break the power of Governor Carleton, to overawe the Indians, and to protect the French has been a great question. It seems to be the general conclusion that it is best to go, if we can be assured that the Canadians will be pleased with it, and join us.”
Schuyler arrived at Ticonderoga in mid-July to prepare his army. While waiting for reinforcements from Hinman’s Connecticut troops, Dutch troops from New York, and a regiment of Green Mountain Boys, Schuyler ordered the building of more boats for the expedition into Canada. He sent Major John Brown, accompanied by Ethan Allen, on another intelligence mission to Montreal to learn of Carleton’s plans and to learn of the sentiments of the inhabitants as well as those of the Indians. Schuyler would be ill for most of August, suffering intense pain from a severe case of rheumatic gout.
Benedict Arnold, in Massachusetts to give an account of his expenses to the Provincial Congress, was introduced to General Washington by Horatio Gates, the adjutant general of the army. Arnold met with General Washington on August 15th, and briefed him on conditions on the border with Canada. On August 20th, General Washington appointed Arnold a colonel, and endorsed a plan for Arnold to lead an attack on Quebec with a thousand men, travelling up the Kennebec river and down the Chaudiere river to the St. Lawrence river across from Quebec.
A surprise attack by Arnold on Quebec in the north, would force Carleton to draw off men from Fort St. Jean, while Schuyler attacked Fort St. Jean from the south. If it succeeded it would neutralize Canada, before any British reinforcements could be sent from Britain, and stop Canada from being used for British invasions against New England and New York. General Washington would not authorize Arnold’s mission until Arnold had cleared his account with the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, until Arnold agreed to be subordinate to General Schuyler, and until Schuyler had approved of the plan in writing. On September 6th, General Washington would also prepare a proclamation ‘To the Inhabitants of Canada’, which Arnold would take with him to distribute.
On August 22nd, a party of Indians(11) had attacked an American reconnoitring party, killing and beheading Remember Baker, one of Ethan Allen’s men. Schuyler was at Albany, meeting with the leaders of the Six Nations Indians to get their agreement(12) that “as it was a family quarrel, they would not interfere, but remain neuter”, when he received General Washington’s letter, and replied to it on August 27th, agreeing with Washington’s plan.
Brigadier General Montgomery, in command at Ticonderoga while Schuyler was away, received news from John Brown on another secret mission, that the British warships being built at St. Jean would soon be ready, and he decided to attack immediately before Schuyler could return from Albany. On August 30th, Montgomery and one thousand men (750 Connecticut troops and 250 New Yorkers) left Crown Point in their vessels down Lake Champlain.
On September 1st, Schuyler followed with 800 men (500 Connecticut men and 300 New Yorkers). By September 4th Schuyler had joined Montgomery, as they landed at Ile aux Noix at the northern end of Lake Champlain and prepared to move down the Richelieu river into Canada. On September 6th Schuyler tried a surprise attack to test the British troops that defended Fort St. Jean.
Major Preston had 474 regulars at Fort St. Jean, in addition to 90 Canadien militia under Sieur de Belestre (the former commandant at Detroit) and a party of Indians, and had 38 trained gunners of the Royal Artillery to serve the 42 cannons and 7 mortars. Preston sent out the 90 militia along with the Indians, to harass Schuyler’s troops, while firing on them with his long range cannon, forcing Schuyler to return to Ile aux Noix to build defensive positions and a boom to block passage down the river on either side of the island. Schuyler’s troops were reinforced with 400 New Yorkers and 300 more Connecticut men.
On September 16th Major General Schuyler, due to the severity of his illness, was forced to leave Ile aux Noix to return to Fort Ticonderoga, leaving Brigadier General Montgomery in charge. On the same day, 170 Green Mountain Boys and 100 New Hampshire Rangers joined Montgomery’s troops, and Montgomery began moving his troops of about 2000 men, downriver in bateaux and gunboats, to begin the encirclement and siege of Fort St. Jean – located on the west bank of the Richelieu river, where it was defended by the British 14-gun schooner, the Royal Savage. By October, only a few of the militia were left, and none of the Indians.
The siege continued, and on October 10th, a large mortar called the ‘Old Sow’, was brought up from Ticonderoga, was set up at a redoubt on the east bank of the Richelieu river, and began firing into the British fort, and also fired on and sunk the British schooner.
Montgomery had sent Major John Brown and 120 men north, later joined by Lt. Colonel Warner and the Green Mountain Boys, and Colonel Bedell and the New Hampshire Rangers, to waylay and stop any British convoys (with food, clothing and ammunition) on the road from Montreal from reaching Fort St. Jean. James Livingston, from Chambly, and Jeremy Duggan, a Quebec barber, had been raising regiments among the French and English Canadians along the lower Richelieu to join with Montgomery.(13)
Montgomery now had boats slip past Fort St. Jean in the night, to carry canon down-river to be met by Brown and Livingston and their men, who began to bombard Fort Chambly. Major Stopford, who had been sent by Carleton from Quebec with his 10 officers and 78 fusileers to Fort Chambly, surrendered the fort on October 18th, and the Americans captured 350 barrels of flour and food, as well as 6 tons of gunpowder, along with weapons and ammunition.
Ethan Allen had been sent north to Sorel, where the Richelieu river enters the St. Lawrence, to raise troops among the Canadiens. On October 24th, without awaiting orders from Montgomery, Ethan Allen, with over 100 Canadiens, crossed the St. Lawrence river from Longueuil, to Longue-Pointe, east of Montreal. Upon hearing of Allen’s arrival, Governor Carleton sent out Major John Campbell, the recently appointed Superintendant of Quebec Indians, with 20 officers of the Indian Department and a small band of Indians, along with 34 British regulars, and 200 militia. Allen sent out a detachment to try to flank the British troops, but they were forced to flee. Allen and his remaining troops tried to withdraw back toward the river, but he and 27 men were captured – Allen was imprisoned aboard ship and sent to Britain.
Carleton used the victory over Allen to raise more militia. He also ordered Colonel Allan Maclean, who had been left to defend Quebec with 120 of his Royal Highland Emigrants(14) and 60 fusiliers, to leave Quebec and sail to Sorel, to raise the militia there and move upriver to retake Fort Chambly from the Americans, and then to join with Carleton where together they would relieve Fort St. John.
On October 30th, Carleton embarked his 800 militia, 130 highlanders and fusiliers, and 80 Indians to cross the St. Lawrence from Montreal to Longueuil, where they could begin the march to Fort St. Jean. But just as they were about to land, Colonel Warner and 200 Green Mountain Boys, who were lying in wait on the other shore, fired on the incoming British, who then retreated back to Montreal. At Sorel, Maclean received word that Carleton would not be joining him, dismissed his 400 militia, and returned to Quebec.
When news reached Fort St. Jean that no assistance from Carleton would arrive, the British garrison surrendered on November 3rd, and Montgomery began marching his army towards Montreal, sending James Price and two others ahead to negotiate the terms of surrender. The articles of capitulation were signed by John Porteous, Pierre Panet, John Blake, Pierre Meziere, James Finlay, St. George Dupre, James McGill, Louis Carignan, Richard Huntly, Francois Malhiot, Edward Gray and Pierre Guy – duly elected for that purpose. On November 11th, Carleton and his remaining troops fled Montreal in eleven boats, with Thomas Walker and Moses Hazen as prisoners.
On November 12th, Montgomery crossed the St. Lawrence river and marched into Montreal the next day, where he was presented with an address of welcome by Valentin Jautard and forty other supporters of the Americans. The inhabitants of Trois Rivieres would send Jean-Baptiste Badeaux and William Morris to present a petition of surrender to Montgomery.
Montgomery had sent Colonel Easton, with Brown and Livingston, to Sorel to try to stop any British boats trying to escape from Montreal, arriving too late to stop Maclean, but arriving in time to stop Carleton, where under a flag of truce, Major John Brown advised Carleton to surrender. During the night, Carleton abandoned his fleet and escaped in a small whaleboat to Trois Rivieres. On November 19th, the British fleet surrendered without firing a shot, the Americans captured the ships’ cannons and arms and 200 pairs of (needed) shoes, and freed Thomas Walker and Moses Hazen. The ships would be used to transport Montgomery and his men down the St. Lawrence to Quebec.
Montgomery made arrangements with Christophe Pelissier, the proprietor of the Forges St. Maurice, for the manufacture of guns and ammunition, and also discussed with him the possibility of electing a Canadian assembly – which they thought couldn’t be done while Quebec was in British hands. Then, Montgomery with his 300 New York men (the Connecticut men, the Green Mountain Boys and Bedel’s Rangers had returned home), with Major John Brown and his 160 western Massachusetts men, and with Colonel James Livingston and 200 men of the 1st Canadian Regiment of Continentals, sailed to Quebec.
Brigadier General Wooster, with a garrison of 500 men, was left in charge of Montreal, where Wooster distributed the September 6th letter from General Washington ‘To the Inhabitants of Canada’. Wooster would do away with the old militia and ordered that new militia officers were to be elected and hold their commissions from Congress. Those militia officers who refused to give up their old British commissions were arrested and imprisoned in Fort Chambly.
Footnotes for Chapter 3.
(11) In July 1776, Guy Johnson, appointed Indian Superintendant after the untimely death of his uncle Sir William Johnson in 1774, had fled the Mohawk valley in upstate New York, with an escort of 220 Indians and Tories, including Daniel Claus and John Butler, to Montreal, and held a conference at Lachine with over 1600 of the Seven Nations Indians of Canada, to urge them to enter the war on the British side. In November, Guy Johnson along with Daniel Claus and Joseph Brant, would leave to go to London. John Butler would become the deputy Indian agent at Fort Niagara, trying to lure them into renouncing their neutrality.
(12) At the meeting with the Iroquois, Schuyler agreed to ask Congress to investigate disputed land claims, to reopen trade with the Indians and to recommend that Congress pay for two blacksmiths to work in Iroquoia. A delegation of four Oneida Indians travelled north to Kahnawake to urge their brother Oneidas in Canada to remain neutral.
(13) During one skirmish, in a British attempt to reopen the road from St. Jean to Montreal, Moses Hazen, who had been taken prisoner by Brown, and then abandoned by Brown when the British approached, was then made a prisoner by the British!
(14) Colonel Allan Maclean had been trying to raise a battalion from among former Scottish highland soldiers who had fought during the Seven Years’ War and had settled in Canada, Nova Scotia and upstate New York.
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For those who may wish to support my continuing work on ‘The Unveiling of Canadian History’, you may purchase my books, that are available as PDFs and Paperback (on Amazon) at the Canadian Patriot Review :
Volume 1 – The Approaching Conflict, 1753 – 1774.
Volume 2 – Forlorn Hope – Quebec and Nova Scotia, and the War for Independence, 1775 – 1785.
Volume 3 – The Storming of Hell – the War for the Territory Northwest of the Ohio, 1786 – 1796.
And hopefully,
Volume 4 – Ireland, Haiti, and Louisiana – the Idea of a Continental Republic, 1797 – 1804,
may also appear in print, in the near future, while I continue to work on :
Volume 5 – On the Trail of the Treasonous, 1804 - 1814.
[next week - chapter 4 - General George Washington’s Letter of September 6th 1775, and the siege of Quebec begun by Colonel Arnold, November 13th 1775]