Carleton opened the melancholy little session of the new
Legislative Council at Quebec on the very day Montgomery
arrived at Ticonderoga--the 17th of August. When he closed
it, to take up the defence of Canada, the prospect was
already black enough, though it grew blacker still as
time went on. Immediately on hearing the news of
Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and St Johns at the end of May
he had sent every available man from Quebec to Montreal,
whence Colonel Templer had already sent off a hundred
and forty men to St Johns, while calling for volunteers
to follow. The seigneurial class came forward at once.
But all attempts to turn out the militia en masse_ proved
utterly futile. Fourteen years of kindly British rule
had loosened the old French bonds of government and the
habitants were no longer united as part of one people
with the seigneurs and the clergy. The rebels had been
busy spreading insidious perversions of the belated Quebec
Act, poisoning the minds of the habitants against the
British government, and filling their imaginations with
all sorts of terrifying doubts. The habitants were
ignorant, credulous, and suspicious to the last degree.
The most absurd stories obtained ready credence and ran
like wildfire through the province. Seven thousand Russians
were said to be coming up the St Lawrence--whether as
friends or foes mattered nothing compared with the awful
fact that they were all outlandish bogeys. Carleton was
said to have a plan for burning alive every habitant he
could lay his hands on. Montgomery's thousand were said
to be five thousand, with many more to follow. And later
on, when Arnold's men came up the Kennebec, it was