 CHAPTER V When Carleton finally turned at bay within the walls of Quebec, the British flag waved over less than a single one out of the more than a million square miles that had so recently been included within the boundaries of Canada. The landward walls cut off the last half mile of the tilted promontory which rises three hundred feet above the St. Lawrence, but only one hundred above the valley of the St. Charles. This promontory is just a thousand yards wide where the landward walls run across it, and not much wider across the world famous heights and plains of Abraham which then covered the first two miles beyond. The whole position makes one of nature's strongholds when the enemy can be put at arm's length, but Carleton had no men to spare for more than the actual walls and the narrow little strip of the lower town between the base of the cliff and the St. Lawrence, so the enemy closed in along the heights and among the suburbs besides occupying any point of vantage they chose across the St. Lawrence or St. Charles. The walls were by no means fit to stand a siege, a fact which Carleton had frequently reported, but as the Americans had neither the men nor the material for a regular siege they were obliged to confine themselves to a mere beleaguement with the chance of taking Quebec by assault. One of Carleton's first acts was to proclaim that every able-bodied man refusing to bear arms was to leave town within four days. But, though this had the desired effect of clearing out nearly all the dangerous rebels, the Americans still believed they had enough sympathizers inside to turn the scale of victory if they could only manage to take the lower town with all its commercial property and shipping or gain a footing anywhere within the walls. There were five thousand souls left in Quebec which was well provisioned for the winter. The women, children and men unfit to bear arms numbered three thousand. The exempts amounted to a hundred and eighty. As there was a growing suspicion about many of these last, Carleton paraded them for medical examination at the beginning of March when a good deal more than half were found quite fit for duty. These men had been malingering all winter in order to skulk out of danger, so he treated them with extreme leniency in only putting them on duty as a company of invalids. But the slurs stuck fast. The only other exceptions to the general efficiency were a very few instances of cowardice and many more of slackness. The militia order-books have repeated entries about men who turned up late for even important duties as well as about others whose authorized substitutes were no better than themselves. But it should be remembered that as a whole the garrison did exceedingly good service, and that all the malingerers and serious delinquents together did not amount to more than a tenth of its total, which is a small proportion for such a mixed body. The effective strength at the beginning of the siege was eighteen-hundred of all ranks. Only one hundred of these belonged to the regular British garrison in Canada, a few staff officers, twenty-two men of the royal artillery, and seventy men of the seventh royal fusiliers, a regiment which was to be commanded in Quebec sixteen years later by Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent. The fusiliers and two hundred and thirty royal emigrants were formed into a little battalion under Colonel McClane, a first-rate officer and Carleton's right-hand man in action. His Majesty's Royal Highland Regiment of Emigrants, which subsequently became the eighty-fourth foot, now known as the Second York and Lancaster, was hastily raised in seventeen seventy-five from the Highland veterans who had settled in the American colonies after the peace of seventeen sixty-three. McClane's two hundred and thirty were the first men he could get together in time to reach Quebec. The only other professional fighters were four hundred blue jackets and thirty-five marines of H.M.S.S. Lizard and Hunter, who were formed into a naval battalion under their own officers Captain Hamilton and Mackenzie. Hamilton being made a Lieutenant Colonel and Mackenzie, a major while doing duty ashore. Fifty masters and mates of trading vessels were enrolled in the same battalion. The whole of the shipping was laid up for the winter in the cul-de-sac, which alone made the lower town a prize worth taking. The British militia mustered three hundred and thirty, the Canadian militia five hundred and forty-three. These two corps included practically all the official and business classes in Quebec and formed nearly half the total combatants. Some of them took no pay and were not bound to service beyond the neighbourhood of Quebec, thus being very much like the home guards raised all over Canada and the rest of the empire during the Great World War of nineteen-fourteen. All the militia were dark green coats with buff waistcoats and breeches. The total of eighteen hundred was completed by a hundred and twenty artificers, that is, men who would now belong to the engineers, ordinance and army service corps. As the composition of this garrison has been so often misrepresented, it may be as well to state distinctly that the past or present regulars of all kinds, soldiers and sailors together, numbered eight hundred, and the militia and other non-regulars a thousand. The French Canadians, very few of whom were or had been regulars, formed less than a third of the whole. Mont-Gummery and Arnold had about the same total number of men. Sometimes there were more, sometimes less. But what made the real difference and what really turned the scale was that the Americans had hardly any regulars and that their effectives rarely averaged three-quarters of their total strength. The balance was also against them in the matter of armament. For, though Morgan's Virginians had more rifles than were to be found among the British, the Americans in general were not so well off for bayonets and not so well able to use those they had, while the artillery odds were still more against them. Carlton's artillery was not of the best, but it was better than that of the Americans. He decidedly overmatched them in the combined strength of all kinds of ordnance, cannons, caronades, howitzers, mortars, and swivels. Canons and howitzers fired shot and shell at any range up to the limit then reached, between two and three miles. Caronades were on the principle of a gigantic shotgun, firing masses of bullets with great effect at very short ranges, less than that of a long musket-shot, then reckoned at two hundred yards. The biggest mortars threw thirteen-inch, two hundred and twenty-four pound shells to a great distance. But their main use was for high-angle fire, such as that from the suburb of St. Roche under the walls of Quebec. Swivels were the smallest kind of ordnance firing one, two, or three-pound balls at short or medium ranges. They were used at convenient points to stop rushes, much like modern machine guns. Thanks chiefly to Cremat the defences were not nearly so ruinous as Arnold at first had thought them. The walls, however useless against the best siege artillery, were formidable enough against irregular troops and makeshift batteries, while the warehouses and shipping in the lower town were protected by two stockades, one straight undercaped diamond, the other at the corner where the lower town turns into the valley of the St. Charles. The first was called the Presse de Ville, the second the Sue au Métalot. The shipping was open to bombardment from the levee's shore, but the Americans had no guns to spare for this till April. Montgomerie's advance was greatly aided by the little flotilla which Easton had captured at Sorel. Montgomerie met Arnold at Pointeau-Tremble, twenty miles above Quebec, on the second of December, and supplied his little half-clad force with the British uniforms taken at St. John's in Chambley. He was greatly pleased with the magnificent physique of Arnold's men, the fittest of an originally well-picked lot. He still had some pusillanimous wretches among his own New Yorkers, who resented the air of superiority affected by Arnold's New Englanders and Morgan's Virginians. He felt a well-deserved confidence in Livingston and some of the English-speaking Canadian patriots whom Livingston had brought into his camp before St. John's in September. But he began to feel more and more doubtful about the French Canadians, most of whom began to feel more and more doubtful about themselves. On the sixth he arrived before Quebec and took up his quarters in Holland House, two miles beyond the walls, at the far end of the plains of Abraham. The same day he sent to Carleton the following summons. Sir, notwithstanding the personal ill-treatment I have received at your hands, notwithstanding your cruelty to the unhappy prisoners you have taken, the feelings of humanity induce me to have recourse to this expedient to save you from the destruction which hangs over you. Give me leave, sir, to assure you that I am well acquainted with your situation, a great extent of works in their nature incapable of defence, manned with a motley crew of sailors, the greatest part our friends, of citizens who wish to see us within their walls, and a few of the worst troops who ever stilled themselves soldiers. The impossibility of relief and the certain prospect of wanting every necessary of life should your opponents confine their operations to a simple blockade, point out the absurdity of resistance. Such is your situation. I am at the head of troops accustomed to success, confident of the righteousness of the cause they are engaged in, enured to danger, and so highly incensed at your inhumanity, illiberal abuse, and the ungenerous means employed to prejudice them in the mind of the Canadians, that it is with difficulty I restrain them till my batteries are ready from assaulting your works, which afford them a fair opportunity of ample vengeance and just retaliation. Firing upon a flag of truce hitherto unprecedented, even among savages, prevents my taking the ordinary mode of communicating my sentiments. However, I will at any rate acquit my conscience. Should you persist in any unwarrantable defence, the consequences be upon your own head. Beware of destroying stores of any kind, public or private, as you have done at Montreal and in three rivers. If you do, by heaven, there will be no mercy shown. Though Montgomery wrote Bunkin, like the common politician of that and many a later age, he was really a brave soldier. What galled him into fury was Grave Carlton's quiet refusal to recognize either him or any other rebel commander as the accredited leader of a hostile army. It certainly must have been exasperating for the general of the Continental Congress to be reduced to such expedience as tying a grand eloquent ultimatum to an arrow and shooting it into the beleaguered town. The charge of firing on flags of truth was another instance of talking for Bunkom. Carlton never fired on any white flag, but he always sent the same answer, that he could hold no communication with any rebels unless they came to implore the king's pardon. This, of course, was an aggravation of his offensive calmness in the face of so much revolutionary rage. Two individual rebels of all sorts he was, if anything, overindulgent. He would not burn the suburbs of Quebec till the enemy forced him to it, though many of the houses that gave the Americans the best cover belonged to rebel Canadians. He went out of his way to be kind to all prisoners, especially if sick or wounded, and it was entirely owing to his restraining influence that the friendly Indians had not raided the border settlements of New England during the summer. Nor was he animated only by the very natural desire of bringing back rebellious subjects to what he thought their true allegiance, as his subsequent actions amply proved. He simply acted with the calm dignity and impartial justice which his position required. Three days before Christmas the bombardment began in earnest. The non-combatants soon found to their equal amazement and delight that a good many shells did very little damage if fired about at random. But news intended to make their flesh creep came in at the same time and probably had more effect than the shells on the weak-need members of the community. Seven hundred scaling ladders, no quarter if Carlton persisted in holding out, and a prophecy attributed to Montgomery that he would eat his Christmas dinner either in Quebec or in hell. These were some of the blood curdling items that came in by petticoat or aeropost. One of the most active purveyors of all this bombast was Jerry Duggan, a Canadian patriot barber, now become a continental major. But there was a serious side. Deserters and prisoners as well as British adherents who had escaped all began to tell the same tale, though with many variations. Montgomery was evidently bent on storming the walls the first dark night. His orders showed it. Headquarters, Holland House, near Quebec, 15 December, 1755. The General, having in vain offered the most favourable terms of accommodation to the Governor of Quebec and having taken every possible step to prevail on the inhabitants to desist from seconding him in the wild scheme of defending the town, for the speedy reduction of the only hold possessed by the ministerial troops in this province, the soldiers flushed with continual success, confident of the justice of their cause, and relying on that providence which has uniformly protected them, will advance with alacrity to the attack of works incapable of being defended by the wretched garrison posted behind them, consisting of sailors unacquainted with the use of arms, of citizens incapable of soldiers' duty, and of a few miserable emigrants. The General is confident that a vigorous and spirited attack must be attended with success. The troops shall have the effects of the Governor, garrison, and of such as have been active in misleading the inhabitants and distressing the friends of liberty, equally divided among them, except the one hundredth share, out of the hall which shall be at the disposal of the General to be given to such soldiers as distinguished themselves by their activity and bravery to be sold at public auction. The hall to be conducted as soon as the city is in our hands and the inhabitants disarmed. It was a week after these orders had been written before the first positive news of the threatened assault was brought into town by an escaped British prisoner who strangely enough bore the name of Wolf. Wolf's escape naturally caused a postponement of Montgomery's design and a further council of war. Unlike most councils of war, this one was full of fight. Three feints were to be made at different points while the real attack was to be driven home at Cape Diamond. But just after this decision had been reached two rebel Montrealers came down and in another debate carried the day for another plan. These men, Antel and Price, were really responsible for the final plan, which, like its predecessor, did not meet with Montgomery's approval. Montgomery wanted to make a breach before trying the walls. But he was no more than the chairman of a committee and this egregious committee first decided to storm the unbroken walls and then charge to an attack on the lower town only. Antel was Montgomery's engineer. Price was a red-hot agitator. Both were better at politics than soldiering. Their argument was that if the lower town could be taken, the Quebec militia would force Carlton to surrender in order to save the warehouses, shipping, and other valuable property along the waterfront, and that even if Carlton held out in debate he would soon be brought to his knees by the Americans who would march through the gates which were to be opened by the Patriots inside. Another week passed and Montgomery had not eaten his Christmas dinner either in Quebec or in the other place, but both sides knew the crisis must be fast approaching for the New Yorkers had sworn that they would not stay a minute than the end of the year, when their term of enlistment was up. Thus every day that passed made an immediate assault more likely as Montgomery had to strike before his own men left him. Yet New Year's Eve itself began without the sign of an alarm. Carlton had been sleeping in his clothes at the recollects night after night so that he might be first on parade at the general rendezvous on the plus to arms which stood near the top of Mountain Hill, the only road between the upper and the lower town. Officers and men off duty had been following his example and every one was ready to turn out at a moment's notice. A northeasterly snowstorm was blowing furiously straight up the St. Lawrence making Quebec a partly seen blur to the nearest American patrols and the heights of Abraham a wild sea of whirling drifts to the nearest British centuries. One o'clock passed and nothing stirred, but when two o'clock struck at Holland House, Montgomery rose and began to put the council's plan in operation. The lower town was to be attacked at both ends. The press-de-ville barricade was to be carried by Montgomery and the Sioux au Mette-Lotte by Arnold. While Livingston was to distract Carlton's attention, as much as possible, by making a faint against the landward walls, where the British still expected the real attack. Livingston's Canadian fighting patriots waded through the drifts against the storm across the plains and took post close in on the far side of Cape Diamond, only eighty yards from the same walls that were to have been stormed some days before. Jerry Dugan's parasitic Canadian Patriots took post in the suburb of St. John and thence round to Palace Gate. Montgomery led his own column straight into Wolfe's Cove, whence he marched in along the narrow path between the cliff and the St. Lawrence till he reached the spot at the foot of Cape Diamond, just under the right of Livingston's line. Arnold, whose quarters were in the valley of the St. Charles, took post in St. Roche, with a mortar battery to fire against the walls and a column of men to storm the Sioux Omette lot. Livingston's and Jerry Dugan's whole command numbered about four hundred men, Montgomery's five hundred, Arnold's six. The opposing totals were fifteen hundred Americans against seventeen hundred British. There was considerable risk of confusion between friend and foe, as most of the Americans, especially Arnold's men, wore captured British uniforms with nothing to distinguish them but odds and ends of their former kits and a sort of paper hat-band bearing the inscription liberty or death. A little after four the centuries on the wall at Cape Diamond saw lights flashing about in front of them and were just going to call a guard when Captain Malcolm Fraser of the Royal Immigrants came by on his rounds and saw other lights being set out in regular order like lamps in a street. He instantly turned up the guards and pickets. The drums beat to arms. Every church bell in the city peeled forth its alarm into that wild night. The bugles blew. The men off duty swarmed onto the plaster arms where Carlton, calm and intrepid as ever, took post with the General Reserve and waited. There was nothing for him to do just yet. Everything that could have been foreseen had already been amply provided for and in his quiet confidence his followers found their own. Towards five o'clock two green rockets shot up from Montgomery's position beside the Ants de Mer under Cape Diamond. This was the signal for attack. Montgomery's column immediately struggled on again along the path leading round the foot of the Cape towards the Prestaville barricade. Livingston's serious patriots on top of the Cape changed their dropping shots into a hot fire against the walls, while Jerry Duggan's little mob of would-be looters shouted and blazed away from safer cover in the suburbs of St. John and St. Rush. Arnold's mortars pitched shells all over the town, while his storming party advanced towards the Sue au Matalot barricade. Carlton, naturally anxious about the landward walls, sent some of the British militia to reinforce the man at Cape Diamond, which, as he knew, Montgomery considered the best point of attack. The walls lower down did not seem to be in any danger from Jerry Duggan's patriots, whose noisy demonstration was at once understood to be nothing but an empty faint. The walls facing the St. Charles were well manned and well gunned by the naval battalion. Those facing the St. Lawrence, though weakened themselves, were practically impregnable, as the cliffs could not be skilled by any formed body. The lower town, however, was by no means so safe, in spite of its two barricades. The general uproar was now so great that Carlton could not distinguish the firing there from what was going on elsewhere. But it was at these two points that the real attack was rapidly developing. The first decisive action took place at Prestaville. The guard there consisted of fifty men, John Coffin, who was a merchant of Quebec, Sergeant Hugh McCorders of the Royal Artillery, Captain Barnsfair, a merchant skipper, with fifteen mates and skippers like himself, and thirty French Canadians under Captain Cabot and Lieutenant Picard. These fifty men had to guard a front of only as many feet. On their right Cape Diamond rose almost sheer. On their left raged the stormy St. Lawrence. They had a tiny blockhouse next to the cliff, and four small guns on the barricade, all double-charged with canister and grape. They had heard the dropping shots on the top of the Cape for nearly an hour and had been quick to notice the change to a regular hot-fire. But they had no idea whether their own post was to be attacked or not till they suddenly saw the head of Montgomery's column halting within fifty paces of them. A man came forward cautiously and looked at the barricade. The storm was in his face. The defences were wreathed in whirling snow. And the men inside kept silent as the grave. When he went back a little group stood for a couple of minutes in hurried consultation. Then Montgomery waved his sword, called out, come on brave boys, Quebec is ours, and led the charge. The defenders let the Americans get about half way before Barns Fair shouted, fire. Then the guns and muskets volleyed together, cutting down the whole front of the densely massed column. Montgomery, his two staff officers and his ten leading men were instantly killed. Some more further back were wounded, and just as the fifty British fired their second round, the rest of the five hundred Americans turned and ran in wild confusion. A few minutes later a man whose identity was never established came running from the lower town to say that Arnold's men had taken the Sioux omette lot barricade. If this was true it meant that the Prestaville fifty would be caught between two fires. Some of them made as if to run back and reach Mountain Hill before the Americans could cut them off. But Coffin at once threatened to kill the first man to move, and by the time an artillery officer had arrived with reinforcements perfect order had been restored. This officer, finding he was not wanted there, sent back to know where else he was to go, and received an answer telling him to hurry to the Sioux omette lot. When he arrived there, less than half a mile off, he found that desperate street fighting had been going on for over an hour. Arnold's advance had begun at the same time as Livingston's demonstration and Montgomery's attack. But this task was very different, and the time required much longer. There were three obstacles to be overcome. First his men had to run the gauntlet of fire from the blue jackets, ranged along the grand battery which faced the St. Charles, at its mouth and overlooked the narrow little street of Sioux Le Cap, at a height of fifty or sixty feet. Then they had to take the small advanced barricade which stood a hundred yards on the St. Charles side of the actual Sioux omette lot on Sailor's Leap, which is the northeasterly point of the Quebec promontory, and nearly a hundred feet high. Finally they had to round this point and attack the regular Sioux omette lot barricade. This second barricade was about a hundred yards long, from the rock to the river. It crossed Sioux omette lot Street and St. Peter Street, which were the same then as now. But it ended on a wharf halfway down the modern St. James Street, as the outer half of this street was then a natural strand completely covered at high tide. It was much closer than the Prestaville barricade was to Mountain Hill. At the top of which Carlton held his General Reserve ready in the plaster arms, and it was fairly strong in material and armament. But it was at first defended by only a hundred men. The American, forlorn hope, under Captain Oswald, got past most of the Grand Battery unscathed. But by the time the main body was following under Morgan the British blue jackets were firing down from the walls at less than point-blank range. The driving snow, the clumps of bushes on the cliff, and the little houses in the street below, all gave the Americans some welcome cover. But many of them were hit, while the gun they were towing through the drifts on a sleigh stuck fast and had to be abandoned. Captain Dearborn, the future Commander-in-Chief of the American Army in the War of 1812, noted in his diary that he met the wounded man very thick, as he was bringing up the rear. When the forlorn hope reached the advance barricade, Arnold halted till the supports had come up. The loss of the gun and the worrying his main body was receiving from the sailors along the Grand Battery spoiled his original plan of smashing in the barricade by shell-fire while Morgan circled round its outer flank on the ice of the tidal flats and took it in rear. So he decided on a frontal attack. When he thought he had a fair chance he stepped to the front and shouted, Now, boys, altogether, rush! But before he could climb the barricade he was shot through the leg. For some time he propped himself up against a house, and, leaning on his rifle, continued encouraging his men, who were soon firing through the portholes as well as over the top. But presently growing faint from loss of blood he had to be carried off the field to the General Hospital on the banks of the St. Charles. The men now called out for a lead from Morgan, who climbed a ladder, leaped the top, and fell under a gun inside. In another minute the whole forlorn hope had followed him while the main body came close behind. The guard not strong in numbers and weak in being composed of young militia men, gave way but kept on firing. Down with your arms if you want quarter, yelled Morgan, whose men were in overwhelming strength and the guards surrendered. A little way beyond, just under the bluff of the Sueau Matalotte, the British supporters, many of whom were seminary students, also surrendered to Morgan, who at once pressed on, round the corner of the Sueau Matalotte, and halted in sight of the second or regular barricade. What was to be done now? Where was Montgomery? How strong was the barricade, and had it been reinforced? It could not be turned because the cliff rose sheer on one flank while the icy St. Lawrence lashed the other. Had Morgan known that there were only a hundred men behind it when he attacked its advanced barricade, he might have pressed on at all costs and carried it by assault. But it looked strong, there were guns on its platforms, and it ran across two streets. His hurried counsel of war overruled him, as Montgomery's counsel had overruled the original plan of storming the walls. And so his men began a desultory fight in the streets and from the houses. This was fatal to the American success. The original British hundred were rapidly reinforced. The artillery officer, who had found that he was not needed at the Prestaville, after Montgomery's defeat, and who had hurried across the intervening half-mile, now occupied the corner houses, enlarged the embouchures, and trained its guns on the houses occupied by the enemy. Detachments of fusilliers and royal emigrants also arrived, as did the thirty-five masters and mates of merchant vessels who were not on guard with Barnsfair at the Prestaville. Thus, what with soldiers, sailors, and militiamen of both races, the main, Sue-O-Maitelot barricade was made secure against being rushed like the outer one. But there was plenty of fighting, with some confusion at close quarters caused by the British uniforms which both sides were wearing. A Herculean sailor seized the first ladder the Americans set against the barricade, hauled it up and set it against the window of a house, out of the far end, of which the enemy were firing. Major Nairn and Lieutenant Dumburgs of the royal emigrants at once climbed in at the head of a storming party and wild work followed with the bayonet. All the Americans inside were either killed or captured. Meanwhile a vigorous British nine-pounder had been turned on another house they occupied. This house was likewise battered in, so that its surviving occupants had to run into the street, where they were well plied with musketry by the regulars and militiamen. The chance for a sortee then seeming favourable, Lieutenant Anderson of the navy, headed his thirty-five merchant mates and skippers in a long rush along Su-Ometallot Street. But his effort was premature, Morgan shot him dead, and Morgan's Virginians drove the seamen back inside the barricade. Carlton had, of course, kept in perfect touch with every phase of the attack and defence, and now, fearing no surprise against the walls in the growing daylight, he decided on taking Arnold's men in the rear. To do this he sent Captain Laws of the Royal Engineers and Captain McDougal of the royal emigrants with a hundred and twenty men out through Palace Gate. This detachment had hardly reached the advanced barricade, before they fell in with the enemy's rear-guard, which they took by complete surprise and captured to a man. Leaving McDougal to secure these prisoners before following on, Laws pushed eagerly forward round the corner of the Su-Ometallot Cliff, and running in with the Americans, facing the main barricade called out, You are all my prisoners. No, we're not, you're ours, they answered, No, no, replied Laws, as coolly as if one on parade, Don't mistake yourselves, I vow to God, you are mine. But where are your men? asked the astonish Americans, and then Laws suddenly found that he was utterly alone. The roar of the storm and the work of securing the prisoners on the far side of the advanced barricade had prevented the men who should have followed him from understanding that only a few were needed with McDougal. But Laws put a bold face on it and answered, Oh, oh, make yourselves easy, my men are all around here, and they'll be with you in a twinkling. He was then seized and disarmed. Some of the Americans called out, Kill him, kill him. But a major mages protected him. The whole parlay lasted about ten minutes when McDougal came running up with the missing men, released Laws, and made prisoners of the nearest Americans. Laws at once stepped forward and called on the rest to surrender. Morgan was for cutting his way through. A few men ran round by the wharf and escaped on the tidal flats of the St. Charles. But after a hurried consultation, the main body, including Morgan, laid down their arms. This was decisive, the British had won the fight. The complete British Laws, in killed and wounded, was wonderfully small, only thirty, just one-tenth of the corresponding American Laws, which was large out of all proportion. Nearly half of the fifteen hundred Americans had gone, over four hundred prisoners, and about three hundred killed and wounded. Nor were the mere numbers the most telling point about it. For the worst half escaped, Livingston's Montreal Patriots, many of whom had done very little fighting, Montgomery's time-expired New Yorkers, most of whom wanted to go home, and Jerry Dugan's miscellaneous rabble, all of whom wanted a maximum of plunder with a minimum of whore. The British victory was as nearly perfect as could have been desired. It marked the turn of the tide in a desperate campaign which might have resulted in the total loss of Canada. And it was of the greatest significance and happiest augury, because all the racial elements of this new and vast dominion had here united for the first time in defence of that which was to be their common heritage. In Carleton's little garrison of regulars and militia, of blue jackets, marines, and merchant seamen, there were Frenchmen and French Canadians, there were Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Welshmen, Orcadians, and Channel Islanders. There were a few Newfoundlanders, and there were a good many of those steadfast royal emigrants who may be fitly called the forerunners of the United Empire loyalists. Yet, in spite of this remarkable significance, no public memorial of Carleton has ever been set up, and it was only in the twentieth century that the dominion first thought of commemorating his most pregnant victory by placing tablets to mark the sites of the two famous barricades. As soon as things had quieted it down within the walls, Carleton sent out search parties to bring in the dead for decent burial, and to see if any of the wounded have been overlooked. James Thompson, the assistant engineer, saw a frozen hand protruding from a snow-draft at Prestaville. It was Montgomery's. The thirteen bodies were dug out, and Thompson was ordered to have a gentile coffin made for Mr. Montgomery, who was buried in the wall just above St. Louis' gate by the Anglican chaplain. Thomas kept Montgomery's sword, which was given to the Livingston family more than a century later. The beleaguement continued in a half-hearted way till the spring. The Americans received various small reinforcements, which eventually brought their total up to what it had been under Montgomery's command. But there were no more assaults. Arnold's grew dissatisfied and finally went to Montreal, while Wooster, the new general who had arrived on the first of April, was himself succeeded by Thomas, an ex apothecary, on the first of May. The suburb of St. Roche was burnt down after the victory, so the American snipers were bereft of some very favorite cover, and this, with other causes, kept the bulk of the besiegers at an ineffective distance from the walls. The British garrison had certain little troubles of its own, for discipline always tends to become irksome after a great effort. Carleton was obliged to stop the retailing of spirits for fear the slacker men would be getting out of hand. The guards and duties were made as easy as possible, especially for the militia. But the snow-shovel parade was an imperative necessity. The winter was very stormy and the drifts would have frequently covered the walls and even the guns if they had not promptly been dug out. The cold was also unusually severe. One early morning in January an angry officer was asking a sentry why he hadn't challenged him when the sentry said, God bless your honour, and I am glad your come, for I am blind. Then it was found that his eyelids were frozen fast together. News came in occasionally from the outside world. There was intense indignation among the garrison when they learned that the American commanders in Montreal were imprisoning every Canadian officer who would not surrender his commission. Such an unheard of outrage was worthy of Walker. But others must have thought of it, for Walker was now in Philadelphia giving all the evidence he could against Prescott and the other British officers. Bad news for the rebels was naturally welcomed, especially anything about their growing failure to raise troops in Canada. On hearing of Montgomery's defeat the Continental Congress had passed a resolution addressed to the inhabitants of Canada, declaring that we will never abandon you to the unrelenting fury of your and our enemies. But there were no trained soldiers to back this up, and the Royal Militia, though often filled with zeal and courage, could do nothing to redress the increasingly adverse balance. In the middle of March the Americans sent in a summons. But Carlton refused to receive it, and the garrison put a wooden horse and a bundle of hay on the walls with a placard bearing the inscription. When this horse has eaten this bunch of hay we will surrender. Some excellent practice made with 13 inch shells sent the Americans flying from their new battery at Levis. And by the 17th of March one of the several exultant British diarists, whose anonymity must have covered an Irish name, was able to record that, this being St. Patrick's Day, the governor, who is a true hibernian, has requested the garrison to put off keeping it till the 17th of May, when he promises they shall be enabled to do it properly and with the usual solemnities. A fortnight later a plot concerted between the American prisoners and their friends outside was discovered in time. With tools supplied by traders they were to work their way out of their quarters, overpower the guard at the nearest gate, set fire to the nearest houses in three different streets, turn the nearest guns inwards on the town, and shout, Liberty forever, as an additional signal to the storming party that was to be waiting to confirm their success. Carlton seized the chance of turning this scheme against the enemy. Three safe bonfires were set ablaze. The marked guns were turned inwards and fired at the town with blank charges, and the preconcerted shout was raised with a will, but the besiegers never stirred. After this the old countrymen among the prisoners, who had taken the oath and enlisted in the garrison, were disarmed and confined, while the rest were more strictly watched. Two brave attempts were made by French Canadians to reach Quebec with reinforcements, one headed by a senior, the other by a parish priest. Carlton had sent word to matured de Beaujeu, senior of Crane Island, forty miles below Quebec, asking him to see if he could cut off the American detachment on the levee's shore. De Beaujeu raised three hundred and fifty men, but Arnold sent over reinforcements. A habitat betrayed his fellow countrymen's advance guard. A dozen French Canadians were then killed or wounded, while forty were taken prisoners, whereupon the rest dispersed to their homes. The other attempt was made by Father Bailey, whose little force of about fifty men was also betrayed, and trapped in a country house these men fought bravely till nearly half their number had been killed or wounded, and the valiant priest had been mortally hit. They then surrendered to a much stronger force which had lost more men than they. This was on the sixth of April, just before Arnold was leaving in disgust. Wooster made an effort to use his new artillery to advantage by converging the fire of these batteries, one close in on the heights of Abraham, another from across the mouth of the St. Charles, and the third from levee's. But the combination failed, the batteries were too light for the work and overmatched by the guns on the walls, the practice was bad and the effect was nil. On the third of May the new general, Thomas, an enterprising man, tried a fire ship which was meant to destroy all the shipping in the cul-de-sac. It came on under full sail, in a very threatening manner, but the crew lost their nerve at the critical moment, took to the boats too soon and forgot to lash the helm. The vessel immediately flew up into the wind, and as the tidal stream was already changing, began to drift away from the cul-de-sac just when she burst into flame. The result, as described by an enthusiastic British diarist, was that she afforded a pretty prospect while she was floating down the river, every now and then sending up sky-rackets, firing of cannon, or bursting of shells, and so continued till she disappeared in the channel. Three days later, on the sixth of May, when the beleaguement had lasted precisely five months, the sound of distant gunfire came fairly up the St. Lawrence, with the first breath of the dawn wind from the east. The centuries listened to make sure, then called the sergeants of the guards, who sent word to the officers on duty, who in their turn sent word to Carleton. By this time there could be no mistake, the breeze was freshening, the sound was gradually nearing Quebec, and there could hardly be room for doubting that it came from the vanguard of the British fleet. The drums beat to arms, the church bells rang, the news flew round to every household in Quebec, and before the tops of the surprise frigate were seen, over the point of Levy, every battery was fully manned, every battalion was standing ready on the grand parade, and every non-combatant man, woman, and child was lining the seaward wall. The regulation shot was fired across her bowels, as she neared the city, whereupon she fired three guns to leeward, hoisted the private signal, and showed the Union Jack. Then at last a cheer went up that told both friend and foe of British victory and American defeat. By a strange coincidence the parole for this triumphal day was St. George, while the parole appointed for the victorious New Year's Eve had been St. Dennis, so that the patron saints of France and England happened to be associated with the two great days on which the stronghold of Canada was saved by land and sea. The same tide brought in two other men of war, some soldiers of the twenty-ninth who were on board the surprise were immediately landed, together with the marines from all three vessels. Carleton called for volunteers from the militia to attack the Americans at once, and nearly every man, both of the French and of the English-speaking corps, stepped forward. There was joy in every heart that the day for striking back had come at last. The columns marched gaily through the gates and deployed into line at the double on the heights outside. The Americans fired a few hurried shots and then ran for dear life, leaving their dinners cooking and in some cases even their arms behind them. The planes were covered with flying enemies and strewn with every sort of impediment to flight, from a cannon to a loaf of bread. Quebec had been saved by British sea-power, and with it the whole vast dominion of which it was the key. CHAPTER VI of a chronicle of Carleton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Chronicle of Carleton by William Wood, Chapter Six, Deliverance 1776. The Continental Congress had always been anxious to have delegates from the 14th Colony. But as these never came, the Congress finally decided to send a special commission to examine the whole civil and military state of Canada and see what could be done. The news of Montgomery's death and defeat was a very unwelcome surprise, but reinforcements were being sent. The Canadians could surely be persuaded, and a congressional commission must be able to set things right. This commission was a very strong one. Benjamin Franklin was the chairman. Samuel Chase of Maryland and Charles Carroll of Carleton were the other members. Carroll's brother, the future Archbishop of Baltimore, accompanied them as a sort of ecclesiastical diplomatist. Franklin's prestige and the fact that he was to set up a free printing press in Montreal were to work wonders with the educated classes at once, and with the uneducated masses later on. Chase would appeal to all the reasonable moderates. Carroll, a great landlord and the nearest approach yet made to an American millionaire, was expected to charm the Canadian no-bless. While the fact that he and his exceedingly diplomatic brother were devout Roman Catholics was thought to be by itself a powerful argument with the clergy. When they reached St John's towards the end of April, the commissioners sent on a courier to announce their arrival and prepare for their proper reception in Montreal. But the ferryman at La Prairie positively refused to accept continental paper money at any price, and it was only when a friend of Liberty gave him a dollar in silver that he consented to cross the courier over the St Lawrence. The same hitch occurred in Montreal, where the same friend of Liberty had to pay in silver before the cab drivers consented to accept the fare either from him or from the commissioners. Even the name of Carroll of Carrollton was conjured within vain. The French Canadians remembered Bigot's bad French paper. Their worst suspicions were being confirmed about the equally bad American paper. So they demanded nothing but hard cash. However, the first great obstacle had been successfully overcome, and so on the strength of five borrowed silver dollars, the accredited commissioners of the Continental Congress of the 13 colonies made their state entry into what they still hoped to call the 14th colony. But silver dollars were scarce, and on the 1st of May the crestfallen commissioners had to send the Congress a financial report which may best be summed up in a pithy praise which soon became proverbial. Not worth a continental. On the 10th of May they heard the bad news from Quebec and increased the panic amongst their Montreal sympathisers by hastily leaving the city lest they shall be cut off by a British man of war. Franklin foresaw the end and left for Philadelphia, accompanied by the Reverend John Carroll, whose twelve days of disheartening experience with the leading French Canadian clergy had convinced him that they were impervious to any arguments or blandishments emanating from the Continental Congress. It was a sad disillusionment for the commissioners who had expected to be settling the affairs of a 14th colony instead of being obliged to leave the city from which they were to enlighten the people with a free press. In their first angry ignorance they laid the whole blame on their unfortunate army for its disgraceful flight from Quebec. A week later when Chase and Charles Carroll ought to have known better, they were still assuring the Congress that this shameful retreat was the principal cause of all the disorders in the army. And even after the whole story ought to have been understood, neither they nor the Congress gave their army its proper due. But as a matter of fact the American position had become untenable the moment the British fleet began to threaten the American line of communication with Montreal. For the rest the American volunteers, all things considered, had done very well indeed. Arnold's march was a truly magnificent feat. Morgan's men had fought with great courage at the Salto Matala, and although Montgomery's assault might well have been better planned and executed, we must remember that the good plan which had been rejected was the military one, or the bad plan which had been adopted, was concocted by mere politicians. Nor were all of this order so severely condemned by the commissioners due to the army alone. Far from it indeed, the root of all the disorders lay in the fact that a makeshift government was obliged to use makeshift levies for an invasion which required a regular army supported by a fleet. On the 19th of May another disaster happened, this time above Montreal. The Congress had not felt strong enough to attack the Western Posts, so Captain Forster of the Eighth Foot, finding that he was free to go elsewhere, had kept down from Oswegacci, the modern Ogdensburg, with a hundred whites and two hundred Indians, and made prisoners of four hundred and thirty Americans at the Cedars, about 30 miles up the St Lawrence from Montreal. Forster was a very good officer. Butterfield, the American commander, was a very bad one, and that made all the difference. After two days of feeble and misdirected defense, Butterfield surrendered 350 men. The other eighty were reinforcements who walked into the trap next day. Forster now had four American prisoners for every white soldier of his own, while Arnold was nearby, having come up from Sorel to Lachine, with a small but determined force. So Forster, carefully pointing out to his prisoners their danger if the Indians should be reinforced and run wild, offered them freedom on condition that they should be regarded as being exchanged for an equal number of British prisoners in American hands. This was agreed to and never made a matter of dispute afterwards. But the second article Butterfield accepted was a stipulation that, while the released British were to be free to fight again, the released Americans were not, that a bit of controversy raged. The British authorities maintained that all the terms were binding because they had been accepted by an officer commissioned by the Congress. The Congress maintained that the disputed article was obtained by an unfair threat of an Indian massacre, and it was so unsidered as to be good for nothing but repudiation. The affair at the Cedars thus became a sorely vexed question. In itself it would have died out amongst later and more important issues, if it had not been used as a torch to fire American public opinion, at the time when the Congress was particularly anxious to make the 13 colonies as anti-British as possible. Most of Forsters mean were Indians. He had reminded Butterfield how dangerous an increasing number of Indians might become. Butterfield was naturally anxious to prove that he had yielded only to overwhelming odds and horrifying risks. Americans in general were ready to believe anything bad about the Indians and the British. The temptation and the opportunity seemed made for each other, and so a quite imaginary Indian massacre conveniently appeared in the American news of the day, and helped to form the kind of public opinion which was ardently desired by the party of revolt. The British evidence in this and many other embittering disputes about the Indians need not be cited, since the following items of American evidence do ample justice to both sides. In the spring of 1775 the Massachusetts Provincial Congress sent Samuel Kirkland to exhort the Iroquy to wet their hatchets and be prepared to defend our liberties and lives, while Ethan Allen asked the Indians around Vermont to treat him like a brother and ambush the regulars. In 1776 the Continental Congress secretly resolved that it is highly expedient to engage the Indians in the service of the United Colisees. This was before the members knew about the affair at the Cedars. A few days later Washington was secretly authorised to raise 2000 Indians, while agents were secretly sent to engage the Six Nations in our interest on the best terms that can be procured. Within three weeks of the secret arrangement the Declaration of Independence publicly accused the King of trying to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages. Four days after this public accusation the Congress gave orders for raising Indians along the Penobscot, the St John and in Nova Scotia, and an entry to that effect was made in its secret journal. Yet before the month was out the same Congress publicly appealed to the people of Ireland in the following words, the wild and barbarous savages of the wilderness have been solicited by gifts to take up the hatchet against us and instigated to delude our settlements with the blood of defenseless women and children. The American defeats at Quebec and at the Cedars completely changed the position of the two remaining commissioners. They had expected to control a victorious advance. They found themselves the highest authority present with a disastrous retreat. Thereupon they made blunder after blunder. Public interest and parliamentary control are the very life of armies and navies in every country which enjoys the blessing of self-government, but civilian interference is death. Yet Chase and Carroll practically abolished rank in the disintegrating army by becoming an open court of appeal to every union with a grievance or a plan. There never was an occasion on which military rule was more essential in military matters. Yet though they candidly admitted that they had neither abilities or inclination to command, these wretched misrulers tried to do their duty both to Congress and the army by turning the camp into a sort of town meeting where the best orders had no chance whatever against the loudest sentiments. They had themselves found the root of all evil in the retreat from Quebec. Their army, like every impartial critic, founded in the commissioners and the smallpox, with the commissioners easily first. The smallpox had been bad enough at Quebec. It became far worse at Sorrel. There were few doctors, fewer medicines and not a single hospital. The reinforcements melted away with the army they were meant to strengthen. Famine threatened both even in May. Finally the commissioners left for home at the end of the month, but even their departure could no longer make the army's burden light enough to bear. Thomas, the ex-apothecary who did his best to stem the adverse tide of trouble, caught the smallpox, became blind and died at the beginning of June. Sullivan, the fourth commander in less than half a year, having determined that one more effort should be made, arrived at Sorrel with new battalions, after innumerable difficulties by the way. He was led to believe that Cartons reinforcements had come from Nova Scotia, not from England, and this encouraged him to push on further. He was naturally of a very sanguine temper, and Thompson, his second in command, heartily approved of the dash. The new troops cheered up and thought of taking Quebec itself, but after getting misled by their guide floundering about in bottomless bogs and losing a great deal of very precious time, they found three rivers defended by entrenchments, superior numbers, and the vanguard of the British fleet. Nevertheless, they attacked bravely on the 8th of June, but taken in front and flanked by well-drilled regulars and well-handled men-of-war, they presently broke and fled. Every avenue of escape was closed as they wandered about the woods and bogs, but Carton, who came up from Quebec after a battle, purposely opened the way to Sorrel. He had done his best to win the hearts of his prisoners at Quebec, and had succeeded so well that when they returned to Crown Point, they were kept away from the rest of the American army, lest their account of his kindness should affect its anti-British seal. Now that he was in overwhelming force, he thought he saw an even better chance of earning gratitude from the rebels and winning converts to the loyal side by a still greater act of clemency. The Battle of Three Rivers was the last action fought on Canadian soil. The American army retreated to Sorrel and up the Richelot to St Johns, where it was joined by Arnold, who had just evacuated Montreal. Most of the friends of Liberty in Canada fled, even with or before their beaten forces. So, like the ebbing of a whole river system, the main and tributary streams of fugitives grew south towards Lake Champlain. The neutral French-Canadians turned against them at once, though not to the extent of making an actual attack. The habitant cared nothing for the incomprehensible constitutionalities over which the different kinds of British foreigners were fighting their exasperating civil war, but he did know what the king's big fleet and army meant. He did begin to feel that his own ways of life were safer with the loyal than with the rebel side, and he quite understood that he'd been forced to give a good deal for nothing ever since the American commissioners had authorized their famishing army to commandeer his supplies and pay him with their worthless continentals. From St. John's the worn-out Americans crawled homeward in stray, exhausted parties, dropping fast by the way as they went. I did not look into a hut or tent, wrote a horrified observer, in which I did not find a dead or dying man. This organization became so complete that no exact returns were ever made up, but it is known that over 10,000 armed men crossed into Canada from first to last, and that not far short of half this total either found their death beyond the line or brought it back with them to Lake Champlain. It was on what long afterwards became Dominion Day the first of July that the ruined American forces reassembled at Crown Point, having abandoned all hope of making Canada the 14th colony. Three days later the disappointed 13 issued the Declaration of Independence, which virtually proclaimed that Canadians and Americans should henceforth lead a separate life. End of chapter 6. Chapter 7 of A Chronicle of Carlton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. A Chronicle of Carlton by William Wood. Chapter 7, The Counterstroke, 1776 to 1778. 6,000 British troops commanded by Burgoyne and 4,000 Germans commanded by Baron Redizel had arrived at Quebec before the Battle of Three Rivers. Quebec itself had then been left to the care of a German garrison under a German commandant, that excellent man Colonel Baum, while the great bulk of the army had marched up to St Lawrence as we have seen already. Such a force as this new one of Carlton's was expected to dismay the rebel colonies, and so to a great extent it did. With much larger force in the colonies themselves the king was confidently expected to master his unruly subjects no matter how much they proclaimed their interbendance. The loyalists were encouraged. The Trimmers prepared to join them. Only those steadfast Americans who held their cause dearer than life itself were still determined to venture all, but they formed the one party that really knew its own mind. This gave them a great advantage over the king's party which hampered at every turn by the opposition in the mother country was never quite sure whether it ought to strike hard or gently in America. On one point however everybody was agreed. The command of Lake Champlain was essential to whichever side would hold its own. The American forces at Crown Point might be too weak for the time being, but Arnold knew that even 10,000 British soldiers could not overrun the land without a naval force to help them. So he got together a fertility which had everything its own way during the time that Carlton was laboriously building a rival fertility on the Richelot with very scanty supply of shipwrights and materials. Arnold more however could devote his whole attention to the work makeshift as it had to be. While Carlton was obliged to keep moving about the province in an effort to bring it into some sort of order after the late invasion. Throughout the summer the British army held the line of the Richelot all the way south as far as Eel O'Noir very near the lake and the line. But Carlton's fertility could not set sail from St John's till October the 5th by which time the main body of his army was concentrated around Pointe-au-Fur at the northern end of the lake ninety miles north of the American camp at Crown Pointe. It was a curious situation for a civil and military governor to be hoisting his flag as a naval commander-in-chief however small the fleet might be. But it is commonly ignored that down to the present day the Governor-General of Canada is appointed Vice-Admiral of the same in his commissions from the Crown. Carlton of course carried expert naval officers with him and had enough professional seamen to work the vessels and lay the guns. But though Captain Pringle maneuvered the flotilla and Lieutenant Dacro handled the flagship Carlton, the actual command remained in Carlton's own hands. The capital ship and the only real squaring ship of this Lilliputian fleet was Pringle's inflexible which had been taken up the Richelot in sections and hauled past the portages with immense labour before reaching St John's whence there is a clear run upstream to Lake Champlain. The inflexible carried 30 guns, mostly twelve pounders, and was an overmatch for quite the half of Arnold's decidedly weaker flotilla. The Lady Maria was a sort of sister ship to the Carlton. The Little Armada was completed by a gondola with six nine pounders by 20 gun boats and four long boats each carrying a single piece and by many small craft used as transports. On the 11th of November Carlton's whole naval force was sailing south when one of Arnold's vessels was seen making for Valkul Island a few miles still further south on the same or western side of Lake Champlain. Presently the Yankee ran ashore on the southern end of the island where she was immediately attacked by some British small craft while the inflexible sailed on. Then to the intense disgust of the inflexible's crew Arnold's complete flotilla was suddenly discovered drawn up in a massly position between the mainland and the island. It was too late for the inflexible to beat back now but the rest of Carlton's flotilla turned into the attack. Arnold's flanks rested on the island and the mainland. His rear could be approached only by beating back against a bad wind all the way around the outside of Valkul Island. And even if this manoeuvre could have been performed the British attack on his rear from the north could have been made only in a piecemeal way because the channel was there at its narrowest with a bad obstruction in the middle. So for every reason a frontal attack from the south was the only way of closing with him. The fight was furious while it lasted and seemingly decisive when it ended. Arnold's best vessel the royal savage which he had taken at St John's the year before was driven ashore and captured. The others were so severely mauled that when the victorious British anchored their superior force in line across Arnold's front there seemed to be no chance for him to escape the following day. But that night he performed an even more daring and wonderful feat than Bouchet had performed the year before when paddling Carlton through the American lines among the Ireland's opposite Surreal. Using muffled sweeps with consummate skill he slipped all his remaining vessels between the mainland and the nearest British gunboat and was well on his way to Crown Point before his escape had been discovered. Next day Carlton chased south the day after he destroyed the whole of the enemy's miniature sea power as a fighting force. But the only three serviceable vessels got away while Arnold burned everything else likely to fall into British hands. So Carlton had no more than his own reduced fertility to depend on when he occupied Crown Point. A vexed question destined to form part of a momentous issue now arose should Ticonderoga be attacked at once or not? He commanded the only feasible line of March from Montreal to New York and no force from Canada could therefore attack the New Republic effectively without taking it first. But the season was late, the fort was strong, well gunned and well manned. Carlton's reconnaissance convinced him that he could have little chance of reducing it quickly, if at all with the means at hand, especially as the Americans had supplies close by at Lake George while he was now a hundred miles south of his base. A winter siege was impossible, sufficient supplies could never be bought through the dense snow encumbered bush all the way from Canada, even if the long and harassing line of communications had not been everywhere open to American attack. Moreover, Carlton's army was in no way prepared for a mid-winter campaign, even if it could have been supplied with food and war-like stores. So he very sensibly turned his back on Lake Champlain until the following year. That was the gayest winter Quebec had seen since Montcarm's first season, 20 years before. Carlton had been knighted for his services and was naturally supposed to be the chosen leader for the next campaign. The 10,000 troops gave confidence to the loyalists and promised success for the coming campaign. The clergy were getting their disillusioned parishioners back to the fold beneath the Union Jack, while Jean-Baptiste himself was feigned to admit that his own ways of life and the money he got for his goods were very much safer with Les Anglais than with the revolutionists, whom he called their bestowness because most of the trade between Quebec and the 13 colonies was carried on by vessels hauling from Boston. The seniors were delighted. They still hoped for commissions as regulars, which too few of them ever received, and they were charmed with the little vise-regal court over which Lady Maria Carlton, despite her youthful two-and-twenty summers, presided with a dignity inherited from the Premier Duke or family of England and bought to the acme of conventional perfection by her intimate experience of Versailles. On New Year's Eve, Carlton gave a public fate, a state dinner, and a ball to celebrate the anniversary of the British victory over Montgomery and Arnold. The bishop held a special Thanksgiving and made all notorious renegades to open penance. Nothing seemed wanting to bring the new year in under the happiest auspices since the British rule began. But quite unknown to Carlton, Mischief was brewing in their colonial office of that unhappy government which did so many stupid things and got the credit for so many more. In 1775, the well-meaning Earl of Dartmouth was superseded by Lord George Germain, who continued the mismanagement of colonial affairs for seven disastrous years. Few characters have abused civil and military positions more than the man who first, as a British general, disgraced the noble name of Sackville on the battlefield of Minden in 1759. And then, as a cabinet minister, disgraced throughout America, the Perbean one of Germain, which he took in 1770 with a suitable legacy attached to it. His crime at Minden was set down by the thoughtless public to share cowardice, but Sackville was no coward. He had borne himself with conspicuous gallantry at Fontanoy. He was admired before Minden by two very brave soldiers, Wolfe and the Duke of Cumberland. And he afterwards fought a famous duel with as much Sankofa as anyone would care to see. His real crime at Minden was admirably exposed by the court martial, which found him guilty of having disobeyed the orders of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, whom he was by his commission bound to obey as Commander-in-Chief, according to the rules of war. This court also found him unfit to serve his Majesty in any military capacity, whatever. And George II directed that the following remark should be added when the sentence was read out on parade into every regiment in the service. It is His Majesty's pleasure that the above sentence be given out in public orders, not only in Britain, but in America, and in every quarter of the globe where British troops happened to be, so that all officers, being convinced that neither high berth nor great employments can shelter offences of such a nature, and seeing that they are subject to censures worse than death to a man who has any sense of honour may avoid the fatal consequences arising from disobedience of orders. This seemed to mark the end of Sackville's sinister career. But when George II died and George III began to reign, with a very different set of men to help him, the bad general reappeared as an equally bad politician. Horty, contankerous, and self-apinniated to the last degree, Germaine, who had many perverse abilities fitting in for the meanest side of party politics, was appointed to the post for which he was least qualified, just when Canada and the Thirteen Colonies most needed a mastermind. Worse still, he cherished a contemptible grudge against Carlton, having refused to turn out a good officer and put in a bad one who happened to be a pampered favour. At first, however, Carlton was allowed to do his best. But in the summer of 1776, Germaine restricted Carlton's command to Canada and put Burgoyne and Junior Officer in command of the Army destined to make the counter-stroke. The ship bearing this malicious order had to put back, so it was not till the middle of May 1777 that Carlton was disillusioned by its arrival, as well as by a second and still more exasperating dispatch, accusing him of neglect of duty for not having taken Ticonderoga in November and thus prevented Washington from capturing the Hessians at Trenton. The physical impossibility of a winter siege, the 300 miles of hostile country between Trenton and Ticonderoga and the fact that the other leading British general, Howe, had 30,000 troops in the colonel while Carlton had only 10,000 with which to hold Canada that year and Actors ordered next year all went for nothing when Germaine found a chance to give a good stab in the back. On May 20, Carlton wrote a pungent reply, pointing out the utter impossibility of following up his victory on Lake Champlain by carrying out Germaine's armchair plane of operations in the middle of winter. I regard it as a particular blessing that your Lordship's dispatch did not arrive in due time. As for the disaster at Trenton, he begs to inform his Lordship that if 30,000 men had been properly used, the Hessians could never have been taken, that all the rebels from Ticonderoga had reinforced Mr. Washington's army. Moreover, I never could imagine why, if troops so far south as Howe's found it necessary to go into winter quarters, your Lordship could possibly expect troops so far north to continue their operations. A week later, Carlton wrote again and sent in his resignation, finding that I can no longer be of use under your Lordship's administration. I flatter myself, I shall obtain the King's permission to return home this fall. I shall embark with great satisfaction, still entertaining the ardent wish that after my departure the dignity of the crown in this unfortunate province may not appear beneath your Lordship's consume. Burgoyne had spent the winter in London and had arrived at Quebec about the same time as Jermaine's dispatchers. He had loyally represented Carlton's plans at headquarters, but he did not know America and he was not great enough to see the weak points in the plan which Jermaine proposed to carry out with wholly inadequate means. There was nothing wrong with the actual idea of this plan. Washington, Carlton, and every other leading man on either side saw perfectly well that the British army ought to cut the rebels in two by holding the direct line from Montreal to New York throughout the coming campaign of 1777. Given the irresistible British command of the sea, 50,000 troops were enough. The general idea was that half of these should hold the 400-mile line of the Richelot, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson, while the other half seized strategic points elsewhere and still further divided the American forces. But the troops employed were 10,000 short of the proper number. Many of them were foreign mercenaries and the generals were not the men to smash the enemy at all costs. They were ready to do their duty, but their affinities were rather with the opposition, which was against the war than with the government, which was for it. Howl was a strong wig, Burgoyne became a follower of Fox, Clinton had many wig connections, Cornwallis voted against Colonial Taxation. To make matters worse, the government itself wavered between out-and-out war and some sort of compromise both with its political opponents at home and its armed opponents in America. Under these circumstances, Carlton was in favor of a modified plan. To Condoroga had been abandoned by the Americans and occupied by the Britishist Burgoyne March South. Carlton's idea was to use it as a base of operations against New England, while Howl's main body struck at the main body of the rebels and broke them up as much as possible. Germaine, however, was all for the original plan. So Burgoyne set off for the Hudson, expecting to get in touch with Howl at Albany. But Germaine, in his haste to leave town for a holiday, forgot to sign Howl's orders at the proper time and afterwards forgot them all together. So Howl, pro-American in politics and temporizer in the field, maneuvered round his own headquarters at New York until October, when he sailed south to Philadelphia, receiving no orders from Germaine and having no initiative of his own. He had made no attempt to hold the line of the Hudson all the way north to Albany, where he could have met Burgoyne and completed the Union of the Forces, which would have cut the colonies in two. Meanwhile, Burgoyne, ignorant of Germaine's neglect and Howl's futilities, was struggling to his fate at Saratoga, north of Albany. He had been receiving constant aid from Carlton's scanty resources, though Carlton knew full well that the sending of any aid beyond the limits of the province exposed him to personal ruin in case of a reverse in Canada. But it was all in vain, and on the 17th October, Burgoyne, much more sinned against than sinning, laid down his arms. The British garrison immediately evacuated to Condoroga and retired to St. John's, thus making Carlton's position fairly safe in Canada. But Germaine, only too glad to oust him, had now notified him that Hallermand, the new Governor, was on the point of sailing for Quebec. Hallermand, to his great credit, had asked to have his own appointment cancel when he heard of Germaine's shameful attitude towards Carlton, and had only consented to go after being satisfied that Carlton really wished to come home. The exchange, however, was not to take place that year. Contrary winds blew Hallermand back, and so Canada had to remain under the best of all possible governors in spite of Germaine. Germaine had provoked Carlton beyond endurance, both by his public blunders and by his private malice. Even in 1776 there was hate on one side, contempt on the other. When Germaine had blamed Carlton for not carrying out the idiotic winter siege of Condoroga, Carlton, in his official reply, could only suppose that his lordship had acted in other places with such great wisdom, that without our assistance the rebels must immediately be compelled to lay down their arms and implore the king's mercy. After that, Germaine had to murder in his heart to the bitter end of Carlton's rule. Carlton had frequently reported the critical state of affairs in Canada. There was nothing to fear from the Canadians so long as things were in a state of prosperity, nothing to hope from them when in distress. There are some of them who are guided by sentiments of honour. The multitude is influenced by hope of gain or fear of punishment. The recent invasion had proved this up to the hill. Then welcome reaction began. The defeat of the invaders, the arrival of Burgoyne's army, and the efforts of the Seniors and the clergy had considerably brightened the prospects of the British cause in Canada. The partial mobilisation of the militia which followed Burgoyne's surrender was not indeed a great success. But it was far better than the fiasco of two years before. There was also a corresponding improvement in civil life. The judges whom Carlton had been obliged to appoint in haste all proved that led to the wisdom of his choice. And there seemed to be every chance that other nominees would be equally fit for their position because the Quebec Act, which annulled every appointment made before it came into force, opened the way for the exclusion of bad officials and the inclusion of good. But the chance of perverting this excellent intention was too much for Germain, who succeeded in foisting one worthless nominee after another on the province, just as Carlton was doing his best to heal old sores. One of the worst cases was that of Livius, a low-down, money-grubbing German Portuguese who ousted the future master of the roles Sir William Grant, a man most admirably fitted to interpret the laws of Canada with knowledge, sympathy, and absolute impartiality. Livius' chief justice was more than Carlton could stand in silence. This mongrel lawyer had picked up all the Yankee vices without acquiring any of the countervailing Yankee virtues. He was greedy of power, more greedy of gain, imperious and impetuous in his temper, but learned in the ways and eloquence of the New England provinces, and valuing himself particularly on his knowledge of how to manage governors. He had been sent by Germain to administer justice to the Canadians when he understood neither their laws, manners, customs, nor language. Other like nominees followed. Characters regardless of the public tranquility, but zealous to pay court to a powerful minister. And, provided they can obtain advantages, unconcerned should the means of obtaining them prove ruinous to the King's service. These pettifoggers so turned and twisted the law about for the sake of screwing out the maximum of fees, that Carlton, pointedly, refused to appoint Livius as a member of the Legislative Council. Livius then laid his case before the Privy Council in England, but this great court of ultimate appeal pronounced such a damning judgment on his gross pretensions that even Germain could not prevent his final dismissal from all employment under the crown. Wounded in the house of those who should have been his friends, thwarted in every measure of his self-sacrificing rule, Carlton served on devotedly through six weary months of 1778. The year in which a vindictive government of Bourbon, France, became the first of several foreign enemies who made the New America Republic an accomplished fact by taking sides in a British civil war. His burden was now far more than any man could bear, yet he closed his answer to Germain's parting shot with the words which were as noble as his deeds. I have long looked out for the arrival of a successor, happy at last to learn his near-approach. I resign the important commands with which I have been entrusted into hands less obnoxious to your lordship. Thus for the king's service as willingly I lay them down as for his service I took them up. Burgoyne's surrender marked the turning of the tide against the British arms. True, the three campaigns of purely civil war, begun in 1775, had reached no decisive result. True also that the independence declared in 1776 had no apparent chance of becoming an accomplished fact. But 1777 was the fatal year for all that. The long political strife in England, the grossed mismanagement of colonial fares under Germain and the shameful blunders that made Saratoga possible, all combined to encourage foreign powers to take the field against the king's incompetent and distracted ministry. France, Spain, and Holland joined the Americans in arms, while Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and all the German seaboard countries formed the armed neutrality of the North. This made stupendous odds, no less than ten to one. First of the ten came the political opposition at home, which in regard to the American rebellion itself was at least equal to the most powerful enemy abroad. Next came the four enemies in arms, the American rebels, France, Spain, and Holland. Finally came the five armed neutrals, all ready to use their navies on the slightest provocation. From this it may be seen that not one half, perhaps not a quarter, of all the various forces that won the Revolutionary War were purely American. Nor were the Americans and their allies together victorious over the mother country, but only over one sorely hampered party in it. Yet from the nature of the case the Americans got much more than the lion's share of the spoils, while even in their own eyes they seemed to have gained honor and glory in the same proportion. The last real campaign was fought in 1781 and ended with the British surrender at Yorktown. From that time on, peace was in the air. The unfortunate ministry, now on the eve of political defeat at home, were sick of civil war and only too anxious for a chance of uniting all parties against the foreign foes. But they had first to settle with the Americans, who had considered themselves an independent sovereign power for the last five years and who were determined to make the most of England's difficulties. No darker New Year's Day had ever dawned on any cabinet than that of 1782 on Norths. In spite of his change from repression to conciliation, and in spite of dismissing Germain to the House of Lords with an ill-earned peerage, Lord North found his majority dwindling away. At last, on the 20th of March, he resigned. Meanwhile, every real statesman in either party had felt that the crisis required the master hand of Carlton. With Germain, the empire wrecker gone, Carlton would doubtless have served under any cabinet, for no government could have done without him. But his actual commission came through the Rockingham administration on the 4th of April. After three quiet years of retirement at his country's seat in Hampshire, he was again called upon to face a situation of extreme difficulty. For once, with a wisdom rare enough in any age and almost unknown in that one, the government gave him a free hand and almost unlimited powers. The only questions over which he had no final power were those of making treaties. He was appointed General and Commander-in-Chief of all his Majesty's forces within the colonies lying in the Atlantic Ocean, from Nova Scotia to the Florida's, and Inclusive of Newfoundland and Canada should they be attacked. He was also appointed Commissioner for executing the terms of any treaty that might be made, and his instructions contained two passages which bore eloquent witness to the universal confidence proposed in him. It is impossible to judge of the precise situation at so great a distance, and his Majesty's affairs are so situated that further deliberations give way to instant decision. We are satisfied that whatever inconveniences may arise, they will be compensated by the presence of a Commander-in-Chief of whose discretion, conduct, and ability his Majesty has long entertained the highest opinion. Thus the great justifier of British rule beyond the seas arrived in New York on the 9th of May, 1782, with at least some hope of reconciling enough Americans to turn the scale before it was too late. For three months the prospect, though worse than he had anticipated, did not seem utterly hopeless. It had been considerably brightened by Rodney's great victory over the French fleet, which was on its way to attack Jamaica. But an unfortunate incident happened to be exasperating Loyalists and Revolutionists at this very time. Some Revolutionists had killed a Loyalist named Philip White, apparently out of pure hate. Some Loyalists, under Captain Lippincott, then seized and hanged Joshua Huddy, a Captain in the Congress Militia, out of sheer revenge. A paper left pinned on Huddy's breast bore the inscription, Up Goes Huddy for Philip White. Washington then demanded that Lippincott should be delivered up, and on Carlton's refusal chose a British pensioner by lot instead. The lot fell on a young Lieutenant Asgill of the Guards, whose mother appealed to the King and Queen of France and to their powerful minister, Virginia's. The American Congress wanted blood for blood, which would have led to an endless vendetta. But Virginies pointed out that Asgill, a youth of nineteen, was as much a prisoner of the King of France as of the Continental Congress. At this the Congress gnashed its teeth, but had to give way. While the Asgill Affair was still running its course, and embittered loyalists and rebels more than ever, Carlton was suddenly informed that the government had decided to grant complete independence. This was more than he could stand, and he at once asked to be recalled. He had been all four honorable reconciliation from the first. He had been particularly kind to his American prisoners in Canada and had purposely refrained from annihilating the American army after the Battle of Three Rivers. But he was not prepared for independence. Nor had he been sent out with this ostensible object in view. His official instructions were to inform the Americans that the most liberal sentiments had taken root in the nation, and that the narrow policy of monopoly was totally extinguished. Now he was called upon to surrender without having tried either his arms or his diplomacy. With British sea power beginning to reassert its age-long superiority over all possible rivals, with practically all constitutional points of dispute conceded to the revolutionists, and with a certain knowledge that by no means the majority of all Americans were absolute anti-British out-and-outters, he thought at no time to dismember the empire. His intelligence department had been busily collecting information which seemed surprising enough as we read it over today, but which was based on the solid facts of that unhappy time. One member of the Continental Congress was anxious to know what would become of the American army if reconciliation should be affected on the understanding that there would be no more imperial taxation or customs duty. Would it become part of the Imperial Army, or what? But all speculation on all such contingencies was suddenly cut short by the complete change of policy at home. The idea was to end the civil war that had divided the empire and to concentrate on the foreign war that at least united the people of Great Britain. No matter at what cost, this policy had now to be carried out, and Carlton was the only man that everyone would trust to do it. So, sacrificing his own feelings and convictions, he made the best of an exceedingly bad business. He had to safeguard the prisoners and loyals while preparing to evacuate the few remaining footholds of British power in the face of an implacable foal. At the same time he had to watch every other point in North America and keep in touch with his excellent naval colleague, Admiral Digby, lest his own rear might be attacked by the three foreign enemies of England. He was even ordered off to the West Indies in the autumn. But counter-orders fortunately arrived before he could start. Thus, surrounded by enemies in front and rear and on both flanks, he spent the seven months between August and the following March. At the end of March, 1783, news arrived that the preliminary Treaty of Peace had been signed. The final treaty was not signed till his 59th birthday, the third of the following September. The signature of the preliminaries simplified the naval and military situation. But it made the situation of the loyalists worse than ever. Compared with them, the prisoners of war had been most highly favored from the first. And yet the British prisoners had little to thank the Congress for. That they were badly fed and badly housed was not always the fault of the Americans. But that political favorites and underlings were allowed to prey on them was an inexcusable disgrace. When a prisoner complained, he was told that it was the fault of the British government which would not pay for his keep. This answer, so contrary to all the accepted usages of war, which reserved such payments till after the conclusion of peace was no empty jive. For when, sometime before the preliminaries had been signed, the British and American commissioners met to effect an exchange of prisoners, the Americans began by claiming the immediate payment of what the British prisoners had cost them. This, of course, broke up the meeting at once. In the meantime, the German prisoners in British pay were offered their freedom at eighty dollars ahead. Then farmers came forward to buy up these prisoners at this price. But the farmers found competition in the recruiting sergeants who urged the Germans with only too much truth not to become the slaves of the farmers but to follow the glorious trade of war against their employers, the British government. To their honor, be it said, these Germans kept faith with the British, much to the surprise of the Americans, who, like many modern writers, could not understand that these foreign mercenaries took a professional pride in carrying out a sworn contract, even when it would pay them better to break it. The British prisoners were not put up for sale in the same way. But money sent to them had a habit of disappearing on the road. One item mentioned by Carlton amounted to six thousand pounds. If such was the happy lot of prisoners during the war, what was the wretched lot of loiless after the treaty of peace? The words of one of the many petitions sent into Carlton will suggest the answer. If we have to encounter this inexpressible misfortune, we bed consideration for our lives, fortunes and property, and not by mere terms of treaty. What this means cannot be appreciated unless we fully realize how strong the spirit of hate and greed had grown, and why it had grown so strong. The American Revolution had not been provoked by oppression, violence, and massacre. The chains and slavery of revolutionary orators was only a figure of speech. The real causes were constitutional and personal, and the actual crux of the question was one of payment for defense. Of course, there were many other causes at work. The social, religious, and political grudges with which so many immigrants had left the mother country had not been forgotten and were now revived. Commercial restrictions, however well they agreed with the spirit of the age, were galling to such keen traitors. And the mere difference between colonies and motherland had produced a misunderstanding on both sides. But the main provocative cause was imperial taxation for local defense. The thirteen colonies could not have held their own by land or sea. Much less could they have conquered their French rivals without the imperial forces, which indeed had done by far the greater part of the fighting. How was the cost to be shared between the mother country and themselves? The colonies had not been asked to pay more than their share. The point was whether they could be taxed at all by the imperial government when they had no representation in the imperial parliament. The government said yes. The colonies and the opposition at home said no. As the colonies would not pay of their own accord, and as the government did not see why they should be parasites on the armed strength of the mother country, parliament proceeded to tax them. They then refused to pay under compulsion and a complete deadlock ensued. The personal factors in this perhaps insoluble problem were still more refractory than the constitutional. All the great questions of peace and war and other foreign relations were settled by the mother country, which was the only sovereign power in which alone possessed the force to make any British rights respected. The Americans supplied subordinate means and so became subordinate men when they and the imperial forces worked together. This, to use a homely phrase, made their leaders feel out of it. Everything that breeds trouble between militiamen and the regulars, colonials and mother countrymen fanned the flame of colonial resentment till the leaders were able to set their followers on fire. It was a leaders rebellion. There was no maddening cruelty or even oppression, such as those which have produced so many revolutions elsewhere. It was a leaders victory. There was no general feeling that death or independence were the only alternatives from the first. But as the fight went on and loyalists and revolutionists grew more and more bitter towards one another, the revolutionary followers had found the same cause for hating the loyalists as their leaders had found for hating the government. Many of the loyalists belonged to the well educated and well-to-due classes. So the envy and greed of the revolutionary followers were added to the personal and political rage of their leaders. The British government had done its best for the loyalists in the Treaty of Peace and had urged Carlton who needed no urging in such a cause to do his best as well. But the treaty was made with the Congress and the Congress had no authority over the internal affairs of the thirteen new states, each one of which could do as it liked with its own envied and detested loyalists. The revolutionists wanted some tangible spoils. The safety of peace had made the tremors equally patriotic and equally clamorous. So the confiscation of loyalist properties soon became the order of the day. It was not the custom of that age to confiscate private property simply because the owners were on the losing side, still less to confiscate it under local instead of national authority. But need, greed and resentment were stronger than any scruples. Need was the weakest, resentment the strongest of all the animating motives. The American army was in rags and its pay greatly in arrears while the British forces under Carleton were fed, clothed and paid in the regular way. But it was the passionate resentment of the revolutionists that perverted this exasperating difference into another intolerable wrong. Washington was above such meaner measures. But when he said the loyalists were fit only for suicide and when Adams, another future president, said they ought to be hanged, it is little wonder that lesser men thought the time had come for legal looting. Those loyalists who best understood the temper of their late fellow countrymen left at once. They were right. Even to be a woman was no protection against confiscation. In the case of Mary Phillips, sister-in-law to Beverly Robinson, a well-known loyalist who settled in New Brunswick after the revolution. Her case was not nearly so hard as many another. But her historic love affair makes it the most romantic. Eight and twenty years before this, General Braddock had marched to his death and defeat, beside the Manongahela with two handsome and gallant young aides to camp, Washington and Morris. Both fell in love with bewitching Mary Phillips. But while Washington left her fancy free, Morris won her heart and hand. Now that the strife was no longer against a foreign foe but between two British parties, the former aides to camp found themselves rivals in arms as well as love. For Colonel Morris was Carleton's right-hand man in all that concerned the loyalists, being the official head of the Department of Claims and Sucker. Morris, Morgan, and Carleton were the three busiest men in New York. Forty thick manuscript volumes still show Maurice Morgan's assidious work as Carleton's confidential secretary. But Morris had the more heartbreaking duty of the three. With no relief, day after sorrow laden day, from the anguishing appeals of loyalist widows, orphans, and other ruined refugees. No sooner had the dire news arrived that peace had been made with the Congress, and that each of the thirteen United States was free to show uncovenanted mercies towards its own loyalists, then the Exodus began. 5,593 loyalists sailed for Halifax in the first convoy on the 17th of April, with a strong recommendation from Carleton to Governor Parve Nova Scotia. Many of these are of the first families and born to the fairest possessions. I therefore beg that you will have them properly considered. Shipping was scarce for the hostility of the whole foreign naval world had made enormous demands on the British Navy and Mercantile Marine. So 6,000 loyalists had to march overland to join Carleton's vessels at New York, some of them from as far south as Charlottesville, Virginia. They were carefully shepherded by Colonel Allred Clark, of whom we shall hear again. Meanwhile, Carleton and Washington had exchanged the usual compliments on the conclusion of peace and had met each other on the 6th of May at Tappan, where they discussed the exchange of prisoners. By the terms of the treaty the British were to evacuate New York, their last foothold in the New Republic, with all practical dispatch. So, as summer changed into autumn, the Congress became more and more impatient to see the last of them. But Carleton would not go without the loyalists, whose many tributary streams of misery were still flowing into New York. In September, when the treaty of peace was ratified in Europe, the Congress asked Carleton point blank to name the date of his own departure. But he replied that this was impossible and that the more the loyalists were persecuted the longer he would be obliged to stay. The correspondence between him and the Congress teams with complaints and explanations. The Americans were very anxious, lest the loyalists should take away any goods and chattels not their own, particularly slaves. Carleton was disposed to consider slaves as human beings, though slavery was still the law in the British overseas dominions, and so the Americans felt uneasy lest he might discriminate between their slaves and other chattles. Reams of the Carleton papers are covered with descriptive lists of claimed and counterclaimed negroes, Julius Caesar's, Jupiter's, Venus's, Diana's, and so on, who were either stout wenches and likely fellows or incurably lazy and old wornouts. Perhaps when a slave wished to remain British and his case was nicely balanced between the claimants and the counterclaimants, Carleton was a little inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But with other forms of disputed property he was too severe to please all loyalists. A typical case of restitution in Canada will show how differently the two governments viewed the rights of private property. Mercier and Halstead, two Quebec rebels owned a wharf and the frame of a warehouse in 1775. It was Arnold's intercepted letter to Mercier that gave Carleton's lieutenant, Kramma, the first warning of danger from the south. Halstead was Major Caldwell's Miller at the time and took advantage of his position to give his employers flour to Arnold's army, in which he served as commissary throughout the siege. Just after the peace of 1783 Mercier and Halstead laid claim to their former property which they had abandoned for eight years and on which the government had meanwhile built a provision store making use of the original frame. The case was complicated by many details too long for notice here. But the British government finally gave the two rebels the original property plus 13 years rent lest the cost of government works erected in the meantime. All the documents are still in Quebec. Property was troublesome enough but people were worse and Carleton's difficulties increased as the autumn wore on. The first great harrying of the loyalists drove more than 30,000 from their homes and about 25,000 of these embarked at New York. Then there were the remnants of 20 loyalist corps to pension, settle or employ. There were also the British pensioners to receive besides 10,000 German mercenaries. Add to all this the regular garrison and the general oversight of every British interest in North America from the Florida's to Labrador remember the implacable enemy in front and we may faintly imagine what Carleton had to do before he could report that his Majesty's troops and such remaining loyalists as chose to emigrate were successfully withdrawn on the 25th of November without the smallest circumstance of irregularity. Thus ended one of the greatest acts in the drama of the British Empire, the English speaking peoples or the world and thus for the second time Carleton now in his 60th year apparently ended his own long service in America. He had left Canada after saving her from obliteration because so long as he remained her governor the War Minister at home remained her enemy. He had then returned to serve in New York and had stayed there to the bitter end because there was no other man whom the new government would trust to command the rearguard of the Empire in retreat.