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am now so low Should we not

CHAP. he wrote to congress: "I have not enjoyed a moment's health since I left Fort George; and 1775. as not to be able to hold the pen. Sept. be able to do any thing decisively in Canada, I shall judge it best to move from this place, which is a very wet and unhealthy part of the country, unless I receive your orders to the contrary."

This letter was the occasion of "a large controversy" in congress; his proposal to abandon Isle aux Noix was severely disapproved; it was resolved to spare neither men nor money for his army, and if the Canadians would remain neuter, no doubt was entertained of the acquisition of Canada. He himself was encouraged to attend to his own health, and this advice implied a consent that the command of the invading forces should rest with Montgomery.

Meantime Schuyler, though confined to his bed, sent out on the tenth a party of five hundred ; they returned on the eleventh, disgraced by "unbecoming behavior." Upon this Montgomery, having discerned in the men a rising spirit more consonant with his own, entreated permission to retrieve the late disasters; and Schuyler, who was put into a covered boat for Ticonderoga, turned his back on the scene with regret, but not with envy, and relinquished to the gallant Irishman the conduct, the danger, and the glory of the campaign.

The day after Schuyler left Isle aux Noix, Montgomery began the investment of St. John's. The Indians kept at peace, and the zealous efforts of the governor, the clergy, and the French nobility, had hardly added a hundred men to the garrison. Carleton thought himself abandoned by all the earth, and

wrote to the commander in chief at Boston: "I had CHAP.

LII.

hopes of holding out for this had the savages year, remained firm; but now we are on the eve of being 1775. Sept. overrun and subdued."

On the morning after Montgomery's arrival near St. John's, he marched five hundred men to its north side. A party which sallied from the fort was beaten off, and the detachment was stationed at the junction of the roads to Chambly and Montreal. Additions to his force and supplies of food were continually arriving, through the indefatigable attention of Schuyler; and though the siege flagged for the want of powder, the investment was soon made so close that the retreat of the garrison was impossible.

The want of subordination delayed success. Ethan Allen had been sent to Chambly to raise a corps of Canadians. They gathered round him with spirit, and his officers advised him to lead them without delay to the army; but dazzled by vanity and rash ambition, he attempted to surprise Montreal. Dressed as was his custom when on a recruiting tour, in “a short fawn skin, double breasted jacket, a vest and breeches of woollen serge, and a red worsted cap," he passed over from Longeuil to Long Point, in the night preceding the twenty fifth of September, with about eighty Canadians and thirty Americans, though he had so few canoes, that but a third of his party could embark at once. On the next day he discovered that Brown, whom he had hoped to find with two hundred men on the south side of the town, had not crossed the river. Retreat from the island was impossible; about two hours after sunrise he was attacked by a motley party of regulars, English residents of Mon

Sept.

CHAP. treal, Canadians, and Indians, in all about five hunLII. dred men, and after a defence of an hour and three 1775. quarters, he, with thirty eight men, was obliged to surrender; the rest fled to the woods. At the barrack yard in Montreal, Prescott, a British brigadier, asked the prisoner: "Are you that Allen who took Ticonderoga?" "I am the very man," quoth Allen. Then Prescott, in a great rage, called him a rebel and other hard names, and raised his cane. At this Allen shook his fist, telling him: "This is the beetle of mortality for you, if you offer to strike." "You shall grace a halter at Tyburn," cried Prescott, with an oath.

Oct.

The wounded, seven in number, entered the hospital; the rest were shackled together in pairs, and distributed among different transports in the river. But Allen, as the chief offender, was chained with leg irons weighing about thirty pounds; their heavy substantial bar was eight feet long; the shackles, which encompassed his ancles, were so very tight and close that he could not lie down exeept on his back; and in this plight, thrust into the lowest part of a vessel, the captor of Ticonderoga was dragged to England, where imprisonment in Pendennis Castle could not abate his courage or his hope.

The issue of this rash adventure daunted the Canadians for a moment, but difficulties only brought out the resources of Montgomery. He was obliged to act entirely from his own mind; for there was no one about him competent to give advice. Of the field officers, he esteemed Brown alone for his ability; though McPherson, his aide-de-camp, a very young man, universally beloved, of good sense, and rare endowments, gave promise of high capacity for war.

LII.

Oct.

But his chief difficulties grew out of the badness of CHAP. the troops. Schuyler also complained of the Connec ticut soldiers, announcing even to congress: "If Job 1775. had been a general in my situation, his memory had not been so famous for patience." "The New Englanders," wrote Montgomery, "are the worst stuff imaginable for soldiers. They are homesick; their regiments are melted away, and yet not a man dead of any distemper. There is such an equality among them, that the officers have no authority, and there are very few among them in whose spirit I have confidence; the privates are all generals, but not soldiers; and so jealous that it is impossible, though a man risk his person, to escape the imputation of treachery."

Of the first regiment of Yorkers, he gave a far worse account; adding: "The master of Hindostan could not recompense me for this summer's work; I have envied every wounded man who has had so good an apology for retiring from a scene where no credit can be obtained. O fortunate husbandmen; would I were at my plough again!" Yet, amidst all his vexations, his reputation steadily rose throughout the country, and he won the affection of his army, so that every sick soldier, officer, or deserter, that passed home, agreed in praising him wherever they stopped.

The wearisomeness of delay, occasioned by the want of munitions of war, increased the anxiety of Montgomery. There was no hope of his reducing the garrison from their want of provisions. The ground on which he was encamped was very wet; the weather cold and rainy, so that the troops suffered exceedingly from sickness. Insubordination heightened his distress. Seeing that the battery was ill

CHAP. placed, he would have erected one at the distance LII. of four hundred yards from the north side of the 1775. fort; but the judgment of the army was against Oct. him. "I did not consider," said he, "I was at the

head of troops who carried the spirit of freedom into the field and think for themselves;" and saving appearances by consulting a council of war, he acquiesced in their reversing his opinion. In John Lamb, the captain of a New York company of artillery, he found "a restless genius, brave, active, and intelligent, but very turbulent and troublesome."

Anxious to relieve St. John's, Carleton, after the capture of Allen, succeeded in assembling about nine hundred Canadians at Montreal; but a want of mutual confidence and the certainty that the inhabitants generally favored the Americans, dispirited them, and they disappeared by desertions, thirty or forty of a night, till he was left almost as forlorn as before. The Indians, too, he found of little service; "they were easily dejected, and chose to be of the strongest side, so that when they were most wanted they vanished." But history must preserve the fact that, though often urged to let them loose on the rebel provinces, in his detestation of cruelty, he would not suffer a savage to pass the frontier.

In this state of mutual weakness, the inhabitants of the parishes of Chambly turned the scale. Ranging themselves under James Livingston of New York, then a resident in Canada, and assisted by Major Brown, with a small detachment from Montgomery, they sat down before the fort in Chambly, which, on the eighteenth of October, after a siege of a day and a half was ingloriously surrendered by the Eng