The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (9 page)

As it turned out, the French colonials liked us rather less than they liked the English, whom they actually preferred to their own corrupt French governors. More important, they were quite aware of the hatred Americans have for their church. On reflection, it is very odd that Washington could ever have hoped to appeal to the French Canadians when hardly a day passed that in our press or in the Congress there was not some attack on the Roman Catholic Church and its diabolic plots to overthrow our pure Protestantism in order to make bright a hundred village greens with the burning of martyrs. This insensitivity to other people’s religion and customs has been a constant in the affairs of the republic and the author of much trouble, as Jefferson was to discover when he blithely and illegally annexed Louisiana with its Catholic population.

At Gardinierstown the famed bateaux were waiting. Made of green pine in great haste, they sank like stones when loaded with cargo. With considerable effort, we made a sufficient number river-worthy. Then on a bright September morning, we set out to conquer Canada.

Like Napoleon Bonaparte, Benedict Arnold was too great a man to notice weather. Neither understood that autumn is invariably followed by winter and that in such northern latitudes as Russia and Canada winter is invincible. But then none of us anticipated what was ahead—like the grasshopper in the parable we enjoyed the warm September days, and dreamed of glory amongst the northern lights.

It soon developed that Arnold’s map was inaccurate. The Kennebec River was wilder and swifter then we had been led to believe. Some thirty times we were forced out of the river and into the forest, carrying those infernal bateaux on our backs. Spirits plummeted. Nights were cold. Wolves howled. We saw few people, except at Fort Western, a small depressing outpost (now known as Augusta in the state of Maine).

A huge bear was chained outside the stockade at Fort Western. There were sores on his legs where the chains chafed. That sight stays in my memory. Also, damp odour of pine needles and dark earth. The flash of mica in gray rock. The cursing of men trying to keep their horns of powder from getting wet as we forded streams, took shelter from the cold rain.

On land I usually travelled with young Jonathan Dayton (a future speaker of the house and New Jersey senator); we shared the same rations; slept at night beside the same fire. Matt was with the forward company.

When we went by water, Colonel Arnold would travel in state aboard his own dug-out, manned by two Indians. At first there were good-natured jokes about our commander’s unerring ability to find a settler’s cabin for the night, denying himself the pleasure of sleeping like us
al fresco
.
But when disaster struck, the jokes turned to curses and only the power of his formidable personality kept the men from open mutiny.

On October 8, we reached the head-water of the Kennebec River. We were exhausted but knew that we must hurry on into settled territory for the fire-red, sun-yellow leaves were turning brown, were falling, and there was a smell of snow on the north wind. Grasshopper weather was over.

It took us eight days to move over-land to the well-named Dead River. Sullen, swift deep black water twisting through a pristine forest that must have looked the same at the world’s beginning. So deep was the water that we could not pole the bateaux and so had to pull them along with ropes, men doing the usual work of horses. Already the New Yorkers were talking about the beginning of the new year in ten weeks’ time, and the end of their enlistment.

On the night of October 24, the Dead River flooded. We lost half our provisions and bateaux and most of our confidence. I spent the night with Jonathan Dayton in a tree. At dawn we looked with wonder at a vast lake stretching in every direction through the dark coniferous forest. As the waters began to recede into the earth, we assembled in the mud and tried to make sense of the disaster.

Just as Colonel Arnold joined us, snow began to fall. He promptly held a council beneath the trees. “I leave it to you,” he said to the men, “whether we go on or turn back.”

There was much debate despite the swirling snow which made it hard for us to see one another in that awful whiteness. But Arnold cleverly led the discussion, forcing those who wanted to turn back to admit that it was most unlikely that any of us could survive the journey with half our provisions gone, most of the bateaux scattered throughout the forest and the snow mounting even as we spoke. It was decided to press on.

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 Carle-ton. 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 countryside 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 The College of New Jersey.

“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 snowstorm 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 the 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 recognize blood in that monochromatic 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.