Attack on Quebec
“We shall certainly be attack’d the first dark night”, wrote Thomas Ainslie, a British customs official in the city of Quebec. The British had been warned by deserters that the American army was planning to attack, and they were on the alert.
American forces under General Richard Montgomery and Colonel Benedict Arnold, joined by some Canadians, had besieged the city since early December, 1775. But General Montgomery knew that a siege was not likely to work; the town was too well fortified and had enough food and supplies to last for a long time. So he turned to the only other real option: a surprise attack.
Their only hope of taking the British by surprise was to attack on a dark, stormy night. The weather turned right for them on the evening of December 31, and early in the morning of January 1, 1776, they attacked.
One group attacked on the east side of the town, but this was just meant to distract the British. Meanwhile, General Montgomery led several hundred men along a narrow trail on the steep bank of the St. Lawrence River and attacked at the south end of “Lower Town” (which was the name for the part of town that was on the low ground near the river), and Colonel Arnold made a similar attack at the north end of Lower Town. John Joseph Henry, one of Arnold’s men, described their attack:
When we came to Craig’s house, near palace gate, a horrible roar of cannon took place, and a ringing of all the bells of the city, which are very numerous, and of all sizes. Arnold, heading the forlorn hope, advanced, perhaps, one hundred yards before the main body. After these, followed Lamb’s artillerists. Morgan’s company led in the secondary part of the column of infantry, Smith’s followed, headed by Steele, the captain, from particular causes, being absent. Hendrick’s company succeeded, and the eastern men, so far as known to me, followed in due order. The snow was deeper than in the fields, because of the nature of the ground. The path made by Arnold, Lamb and Morgan, was almost imperceptible, because of the falling snow; covering the locks of our guns with the lappets of our coats, holding down our heads (for it was impossible to bear up our faces against the imperious storm of wind and snow), we ran along the foot of the hill in single file. Along the first of our run, from palace gate, for several hundred paces, there stood a range of insulated buildings, which seemed to be store-houses; we passed these quickly in single file, pretty wide apart. The interstices [i.e., the spaces between the houses] were from thirty to fifty yards. In these intervals we received a tremendous fire of musketry from the ramparts above us. Here we lost some brave men, when powerless to return the salutes [i.e., the musket fire] we received, as the enemy was covered by his impregnable defences. They were even sightless to us, we could see nothing but the blaze from the muzzles of their muskets.
Unfortunately for the Americans, Montgomery was killed very early in the attack, and his men retreated, so the British only had Arnold’s men to worry about. Arnold himself was wounded in the leg early in the attack and had to be carried to the rear. His men were eventually surrounded, and although they held on for a few hours, they finally had to surrender. The British took more than 400 prisoners.
It was a disaster for the Americans, but they didn’t give up. They didn’t try to attack the city again, but they kept it under siege for another five months — at which point some British warships showed up and turned the tables on them.
Meanwhile, far to the south, a different sort of battle was going on.
Burning of Norfolk
“The detested town of Norfolk is no more!” wrote a British midshipman on January 9, 1776. Almost a month earlier, British troops and Loyalist Americans had been forced to evacuate the town of Norfolk, Virginia, and had taken refuge on board the ships of the Royal Navy, where they were relatively safe from the rebel forces who had occupied the town.
But the rebels, led by Colonels Robert Howe and William Woodford, wouldn’t let the British come on shore to get water or food. Life was certainly not comfortable on board the ships, especially with all of those extra passengers. It’s easy to see why some of the British detested the town.
This standoff continued until January 1. The same British midshipman wrote:
About four o’clock in the afternoon the signal was given from the Liverpool, when a dreadful cannonading began from the three ships, which lasted till it was too hot for the rebels to stand on their wharves. Our boats now landed, and set fire to the town in several places. It burned fiercely all night, and the next day; nor are the flames yet extinguished; but no more of Norfolk remains than about twelve houses, which have escaped the flames.
Only a handful of men were wounded on either side, and only one of the British was killed. There were still people living in the town when the bombardment started, and the Americans thought that a couple of women and children might have been killed.
But even though few people were injured, a lot of people lost their homes, businesses, and belongings. “Does it not call for vengeance from God and man?” asked Colonel Woodford. It seems to me that destroying people’s homes is a very good way of getting them to hate you, and there were probably some people from Norfolk who hadn’t been very enthusiastic about the war before, but who became red-hot rebels after watching their town burn to the ground.
Sources
Seventh Series of Historical Documents, 1905, published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, p. 28.
City & environs of Quebec (siege & blockade), December 1775 – May 1776; in Atlas of the Battles of the American Revolution. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701sm.gar00004/?sp=5
Account of Arnold’s Campaign Against Quebec, by John Joseph Henry, pp. 107-08.
Battles of the United States, 1:126-27 – Extract from a Letter Written by a Midshipman on His Majesty’s Ship the Otter, Jan. 9, 1776.
Naval Documents of the American Revolution, 3:580 – Colonel Robert Howe to the President of the Virginia Convention; Norfolk, January 2.