“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 troops had started invading Canada about four months earlier. They had worked their way up the St. Lawrence River, capturing Montreal and other towns, and now they had Quebec under siege. But the American commanders, General Richard Montgomery and Colonel Benedict Arnold, 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.