pass years before, and Benedict Arnold made a daring and
difficult march up the Kennebec and down the Chaudiere to Quebec.
Montreal fell to Montgomery; and Carleton himself escaped capture
only by the audacity of some French-Canadian voyageurs, who,
under cover of darkness, rowed his whaleboat or paddled it with
their hands silently past the American sentinels on the shore.
Once down the river and in Quebec, Carleton threw himself with
vigor and skill into the defense of his capital. His generalship
and the natural strength of the position proved more than a match
for Montgomery and Arnold. Montgomery was killed and Arnold
wounded in a vain attempt to carry the city by storm on the last
night of 1775. At Montreal a delegation from Congress, composed
of Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll of
Carrollton, accompanied by Carroll's brother, a Jesuit priest and
a future archbishop, failed to achieve-more by diplomacy than
their generals had done by the sword. The Canadians seemed,
content enough to wear the British yoke. In the spring, when a
British fleet arrived with reenforcements, the American troops
retired in haste and, before the Declaration of Independence had
been proclaimed, Canada was free from the last of its ten
thousand invaders.

The expedition had put Carleton's policy to the test. On the
whole it stood the strain. The seigneurs had rallied to the
Government which had restored their rights, and the clergy had
called on the people to stand fast by the King. So far all went
as Carleton had hoped: "The Noblesse, Clergy, and greater part of
the Bourgeoisie," he wrote, "have given Government every
Assistance in their Power." But the habitants refused to follow
their appointed leaders with the old docility, and some even