Quebec did not fall.All through the winter the Americans held on before the place.They shivered from cold.They suffered from the dread disease smallpox.They had difficulty in getting food.The Canadians were insistent on having good money for what they offered and since good money was not always in the treasury the invading army sometimes used violence.Then the Canadians became more reserved and chilling than ever.In hope of mending matters Congress sent a commission to Montreal in the spring of 1776.Its chairman was Benjamin Franklin and, with him, were two leading Roman Catholics, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a great landowner of Maryland, and his brother John, a priest, afterwards Archbishop of Baltimore.It was not easy to represent as the liberator of the Catholic Canadians the Congress which had denounced in scathing terms the concessions in the Quebec Act to the Catholic Church.Franklin was a master of conciliation, but before he achieved anything a dramatic event happened.On the 6th of May, British ships arrived at Quebec.The inhabitants rushed to the ramparts.Cries of joy passed from street to street and they reached the little American army, now under General Thomas, encamped on the Plains of Abraham.Panic seized the small force which had held on so long.On the ships were ten thousand fresh British troops.The one thing for the Americans to do was to get away; and they fled, leaving behind guns, supplies, even clothing and private papers.Five days later Franklin, at Montreal, was dismayed by the distressing news of disaster.
Congress sent six regiments to reinforce the army which had fled from Quebec.It was a desperate venture.Washington's orders were that the Americans should fight the new British army as near Quebec as possible.The decisive struggle took place on the 8th of June.An American force under the command of General Thompson attacked Three Rivers, a town on the St.Lawrence, half way between Quebec and Montreal.They were repulsed and the general was taken prisoner.The wonder is indeed that the army was not annihilated.Then followed a disastrous retreat.Short of supplies, ravaged by smallpox, and in bad weather, the invaders tried to make their way back to Lake Champlain.They evacuated Montreal.It is hard enough in the day of success to hold together an untrained army.In the day of defeat such a force is apt to become a mere rabble.Some of the American regiments preserved discipline.Others fell into complete disorder as, weak and discouraged, they retired to Lake Champlain.Many soldiers perished of disease."I did not look into a hut or a tent," says an observer, "in which I did not find a dead or dying man." Those who had huts were fortunate.The fate of some was to die without medical care and without cover.By the end of June what was left.
of the force had reached Crown Point on Lake Champlain.
Benedict Arnold, who had been wounded at Quebec, was now at Crown Point.Competent critics of the war have held that what Arnold now did saved the Revolution.In another scene, before the summer ended, the British had taken New York and made themselves masters of the lower Hudson.Had they reached in the same season the upper Hudson by way of Lake Champlain they would have struck blows doubly staggering.This Arnold saw, and his object was to delay, if he could not defeat, the British advance.There was no road through the dense forest by the shores of Lake Champlain and Lake George to the upper Hudson.The British must go down the lake in boats.This General Carleton had foreseen and he had urged that with the fleet sent to Quebec should be sent from England, in sections, boats which could be quickly carried past the rapids of the Richelieu River and launched on Lake Champlain.
They had not come and the only thing for Carleton to do was to build a flotilla which could carry an army up the lake and attack Crown Point.The thing was done but skilled workmen were few and not until the 6th of October were the little ships afloat on Lake Champlain.Arnold, too, spent the summer in building boats to meet the attack and it was a strange turn in warfare which now made him commander in a naval fight.There was a brisk struggle on Lake Champlain.Carleton had a score or so of vessels; Arnold not so many.But he delayed Carleton.When he was beaten on the water he burned the ships not captured and took to the land.When he could no longer hold Crown Point he burned that place and retreated to Ticonderoga.
By this time it was late autumn.The British were far from their base and the Americans were retreating into a friendly country.
There is little doubt that Carleton could have taken Fort Ticonderoga.It fell quite easily less than a year later.Some of his officers urged him to press on and do it.But the leaves had already fallen, the bleak winter was near, and Carleton pictured to himself an army buried deeply in an enemy country and separated from its base by many scores of miles of lake and forest.He withdrew to Canada and left Lake Champlain to the Americans.
