Independence (43 page)

Seemingly by coincidence, while Bonvouloir conversed with the Committee of Secret Correspondence, two other Frenchmen arrived in Philadelphia and met with another congressional committee. Around the time that Bonvouloir had come down the gangplank in Philadelphia, Pierre Penet and Emmanuel Pliarne, who were representatives of a private firm in Nantes—but in good standing with the French government, which almost certainly had sanctioned their venture—arrived in Providence, Rhode Island, hoping to do business with the colonists. In return for whale oil and tobacco, they offered to supply “the Continent with Arms & Ammunition.” Merchants in Providence immediately escorted their French counterparts to Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The American commander in chief just as rapidly sent them to Philadelphia. Washington was so eager for them to meet with Congress that he even picked up the tab for the expenses they incurred on their journey southward from New England.
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Penet and Pliarne reached Philadelphia on December 29 and within forty-eight hours were meeting with Congress’s Committee of Correspondence, a nine-member panel created in September and entrusted with contracting for arms from abroad. But when the committee members realized that the Frenchmen were not agents of the French government, they reacted warily. Discussions had continued for three fruitless weeks when, on January 17, Congress’s session was interrupted by the arrival of a courier bearing “disagreeable Accotts [accounts] from Canada.”
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No news that reached Philadelphia after the outbreak of the war had a greater impact on Congress than the dire tidings from Canada.

The Canadian campaign had originated with Congress late in June. Expectations of success had abounded, as all signs indicated that Canada was lightly defended. Major General Philip Schuyler, a member of New York’s delegation to Congress prior to being named one of the original general officers in the Continental army—and the commander of the Northern Department—was vested with discretionary authority to advance only if he found that the Canadians welcomed the invasion and the Indians appeared likely to remain neutral. Congress was also confident that Schuyler would have sufficient men. Nearly three thousand troops were scattered throughout New York, many New Englanders were thought likely to join in, and Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys were available.
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With the formidable Canadian winter on everyone’s mind, the original plan was for Schuyler to lead his invasion force down Lake Champlain in July. In the best-case scenario, Schuyler was to take the British installation at St. Johns, advance on Montreal, and reach Quebec City long before the first snowfall. Taking Quebec was the great plum, for its conquest would be tantamount to laying hold of Canada.

Trouble surfaced immediately. Recruiting and logistical difficulties caused delays, as did Schuyler’s health. Throughout the late summer he complained of a stunning array of physical ailments that beset him with “Inflexible Severity.” First there was “a bilious Fever,” next a “Barbarous Complication of Disorders,” after which “violent rheumatic Pains” set in, followed by “a violent flux.” These myriad afflictions led him to speak of “the shattered Condition of my Constitution.” July passed, then most of August. The invasion force was still at Fort Ticonderoga. It had not taken a single step northward. As the weeks of inactivity passed, some officers grew to believe that Schuyler’s maladies were psychosomatic. Some thought him indecisive and lacking the “strong nerves” necessary for high command, and they may have been correct. Schuyler was a political appointee whose military background was in the supply service. Commanding an operation of this magnitude may have been beyond his abilities.
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With his own doubts about Schuyler increasing, General Washington intervened to get the campaign under way. On his own initiative, Washington on August 20 proposed sending a secondary force of some one thousand men through Maine to Quebec. His idea was that if the British regulars in Quebec City came after Schuyler, the men coming up from Maine could easily take the city. If the redcoats debouched to take on the Maine expedition, the way would be open for Schuyler. If the British remained at Quebec, the two American forces would unite and attack the city. With overwhelming numerical superiority, a rebel victory seemed assured.

Schuyler consented to Washington’s plan. Nearly two months to the day after Congress authorized the invasion, the army of the Northern Department at last moved northward, though Schuyler, still pleading illness, was not with his men. He remained at Fort Ticonderoga, leaving his second-in-command, Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, a sixteen-year veteran of the British army who had resigned his commission and emigrated to New York in 1771, to lead the army. Every inch the soldier, Montgomery provided excellent leadership, though by the time he and his men set out, the nights were already cold and the British had been given three months to prepare for the invasion. A couple of weeks after Montgomery’s army started north, the second force, under Colonel Benedict Arnold, whom Washington had selected to be its commander, sailed from Massachusetts for the Kennebec River in Maine. It was to advance on Quebec in newly constructed bateau and by portaging between Maine’s wild rivers.
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Every imaginable problem, and some that would have been difficult to conceive, plagued the American forces that autumn. Montgomery never had more than 1,700 men, too small a number for such a difficult undertaking. There had been little time to train them, the supply system was an inefficient work in progress, and the army launched its campaign with a piteously inadequate train of artillery—merely five field pieces and three mortars. Moreover, whereas Congress had imagined that the army might reach Quebec in September, it was November before Montgomery successfully completed a siege operation at St. Johns, and Montreal still had to be taken. Montgomery and his men finally reached Quebec during the first week in December. The city was already in the depths of winter.

Montgomery’s problems paled next to those that confronted the secondary force. Arnold’s men, many of whom lacked experience in roughing it on the frontier, faced a tortuous seven-week advance through more than two hundred miles of wilderness. Almost from the first day, bateau loaded with the expedition’s supplies overturned, dumping their precious contents to the bottom of Maine’s swirling, frigid rivers. Only a couple of weeks into the campaign the hungry soldiers were eating tree bark and candle wax, not to mention pet dogs that some of the men had unwarily brought along for companionship. There were too few blankets, especially after many wound up underwater. Habitually wet shoes disintegrated, leaving many men to proceed barefoot. Their plight was exacerbated by rain and snow, and incredibly by what appears to have been a hurricane that struck a month into the march. By mid-October some men had died and many others suffered from diarrhea, rheumatism, and arthritis. On October 25 an entire battalion of some 200 men deserted, taking with them about 150 others who were too ill to continue. Nor were they the only deserters. Upwards of 50 additional men appear to have deserted singly or in small parties. On November 9, about the time Montgomery was launching operations to take Montreal nearly 150 miles downriver, Arnold and his survivors reached Quebec City. Intelligence reported that a British force of 800 men were inside Quebec’s walls. Arnold had some 650 men, a bit more than half the force that he had started with fifty-one days earlier. He decided to await the arrival of Montgomery.

The two rebel forces united on December 2 at Pointe-aux-Trembles, twenty miles down the St. Lawrence from Quebec City. Attrition in Montgomery’s force had exceeded even that in Arnold’s. Montgomery had only 300 men when he linked up with Arnold. Some of Montgomery’s men had been lost in action; many more had died of disease; desertion had been heavy; more than 300 had to be left behind to garrison St. Johns and Montreal; and not a few soldiers had left for home when their enlistments expired in November. In command of a paltry army of about 950 men—one third of the number that had set out from New York and New England—Montgomery on December 3 ordered his troops to march through the swirling snow to the Plains of Abraham, just outside Quebec’s formidable walls. Over the next few days the American army was augmented by the arrival of about 175 Massachusetts troops as well as some 200 men who formed a Canadian regiment that had been raised after the fall of Montreal, the grand total of
habitants
who had stepped forward to fight with the rebels. By the second week in December the American army stood at some 1,300 men.
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The numerical superiority that Congress had anticipated did not exist. The defenders of Quebec City were now known to number nearly 1,800 men, as the original garrison had been augmented by the survivors of the fighting at St. Johns and Montreal. Furthermore, Quebec City’s topography offered natural defensive features. The city stood on a tall, nearly unassailable promontory above the St. Lawrence and St. Charles rivers. It was further protected by formidable man-made defenses, including a thirty-foot-tall wall buttressed by a stone foundation on the more exposed western side of the city. Lacking the manpower and artillery to conduct a siege, Montgomery tried to lure the British out of their citadel to fight on the Plains of Abraham. When that failed, the American commander had only one choice: to attack. Unable to persuade those soldiers to reenlist whose tour of duty ended on December 31, Montgomery knew that he had to attack before the end of the month.

Montgomery had to realize that the odds were heavy against success, though there was some reason for hope. The British might possess numerical superiority, but many of their men were militiamen. The British garrison also had to defend an enormous area with relatively few troops. If the Americans surprised their adversary and massed their firepower, they might succeed. Waiting patiently for stormy conditions, Montgomery plotted torching the town, hoping for a raging, wind-driven conflagration that would sow confusion among the defenders and burn at least a portion of the palisade.

Montgomery waited until the last possible moment, December 31. His plan was to open the engagement by launching feints designed to fool the defenders. While Montgomery’s deceptive actions unfolded, Arnold, with half the army, was to break through a sturdy barricade defended by redcoats on the northeast side of the city. Montgomery, with the other half of the army, was to fight his way through a similar barricade on the southwest side. When both divisions were through, they would link up and charge into the lower city, setting it afire.

Things began propitiously. A heavy snowstorm struck that day, leading the Americans to hope that the unsuspecting British would be caught by surprise. But the British were not taken unaware. And the diversionary attacks that Montgomery ordered fooled no one. That set the tone for what lay ahead. The Americans failed to achieve any of their objectives. Neither barricade was taken. Montgomery died at the very outset of his assault, nearly decapitated by a burst of fire by the British defenders. After heavy fighting, Arnold was felled with a disabling wound to his Achilles tendon.

By seven A.M. it was over. The American attack had been repulsed with staggering losses. Nearly five hundred of the rebel soldiers had been killed, wounded, or captured. In three hours more than one third of the American army in Canada had been destroyed. The British lost only eighteen men.
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More than two weeks passed before news of the disaster reached Philadelphia. It struck Congress with the force of a body blow, and the residents of Philadelphia, at least according to one delegate, reacted as if “universally struck with grief.”
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All knew that the “events of war are always uncertain,” as Franklin had written to Dumas a month earlier, but a failure of this magnitude was shocking. The dire news hit all the harder because this was the first real defeat sustained by the rebels. The drubbing inevitably raised troubling questions about the colonists’ ability to successfully conduct the war.

The Death of Montgomery
by John Trumbull. General Richard Montgomery, commander of the American army that attacked Quebec on December 31, 1775, was killed in the engagement. One third of Montgomery’s army was lost, nearly five hundred men. (Yale University Art Gallery/Art Resource, NY)

There were those, like New York’s Robert R. Livingston, who wished to pull out of Canada immediately. The place would bleed the colonies to death both in human and economic terms, he argued, adding that it was “most evident that the Canadians are not to be relied on” to bear arms. He thought it wiser to withdraw and prepare defenses along the Canadian border. There were also some congressmen who saw the debacle as a “needfull” demonstration of “our Dependence” on foreign assistance, especially as the notion was growing that this might be a protracted war, one in which America’s staying power hinged on acquiring a wide variety of military supplies from abroad.