Before dawn on 31 December 1775, in a raging snowstorm, two small American columns attacked the Lower Town of Quebec, the last British stronghold in Canada. Brigadier General Richard Montgomery was killed by the first volley at Près-de-Ville, Colonel Benedict Arnold was wounded at Sault-au-Matelot, and his men, cut off in the narrow streets, surrendered to the garrison of Governor Guy Carleton. The defeat ended the American hope of bringing Canada into the Revolution.
The invasion of Canada
In the summer of 1775 the Continental Congress ordered an invasion of the province of Quebec. Montgomery took the fort of Saint-Jean in early November, and Montreal was occupied on 13 November, leaving Quebec as the only real center of British resistance. A second American force under Arnold had marched from Massachusetts up the Kennebec River and over the wilderness to the St. Lawrence, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography writes that only about 600 of its 1,100 men reached the river opposite Quebec. Montgomery joined Arnold before the city in December.1
With his men's enlistments about to expire and no hope of quick reinforcements, Montgomery decided to attack rather than wait for spring, and to do it on the first dark night. The American Battlefield Trust puts the attackers at about 1,200 men, and both sources give the garrison of regulars, militia and seamen as about 1,800.2
Two columns in the storm
The dark night came on 30 to 31 December. At about 5 a.m., in a blizzard, Montgomery with about 200 men moved along the river bank toward Près-de-Ville, while Arnold's 600 advanced from the suburb of Saint-Roch toward Sault-au-Matelot, to meet Montgomery in the Lower Town. Deserters had warned the defenders. At Près-de-Ville British seamen and Canadian militia waited unseen until Montgomery and a few others came forward, then fired a volley that cut them down, and the rest of his column fell back.3
On the other side Arnold was shot in the leg and carried to the rear, but his men, with Daniel Morgan among their leaders, overran a barricade at Sault-au-Matelot before regulars and militia stopped them. Carleton, learning that Montgomery's attack had failed, sent troops around them, and they surrendered at about 8 a.m.4
The cost and the retreat
The figures differ. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography gives 60 to 100 Americans killed or wounded and about 400 captured, for the loss of fewer than 20 British and Canadians. The American Battlefield Trust lists 51 Americans killed, 36 wounded and 387 missing or captured, and 5 British killed and 13 wounded. Montgomery's frozen body was found under the snow the next morning and buried at the expense of the lieutenant governor, Hector Cramahé; in 1818 it was returned to the United States.5
The Americans kept up a weak blockade of Quebec through the winter, worn down by smallpox and expiring enlistments. On 6 May 1776 British ships arrived with troops, Carleton sallied out, and the Americans retreated in confusion. Arnold went on to the battles that made his name; see the Battle of Saratoga and our biography of Benedict Arnold.6
Also on this day
- 1942: Battle of the Barents Sea. German warships attacked British ships escorting Arctic convoy JW 51B to the Soviet Union in the Barents Sea, north of Norway's North Cape, in the Second World War.
