Meanwhile where was Montgomery, whom Burr, disguised as a priest, and speaking French or Latin as required, was seeking up the river? He had got possession of Montreal without a blow, and sending Colonel Easton down to the mouth of the Sorel, that officer intercepted the little flotilla with which Carleton was trying to reach Quebec, and captured all of the fugitives except Carleton himself, who escaped in a disguise by night. The news of Arnold, which Burr at last brought to Montgomery, made that general more anxious than ever to push on to Quebec, but the expiration of the enlistments of some of his men much perplexed him, and he was obliged to make many promises to hold his army together. Before Montgomery could reach him, Arnold had in the night taken about 550 men across the river, and ascending at Wolfe's Cove, he had paraded them before the walls and demanded a surrender. The garrison was small, and in part doubtful, and the inhabitants were more than doubtful, but the lieutenant-governor, Cramahé, with his stanchest troops, the Royal Scotch, overawed the rest, and kept the gates closed. The vaporing Arnold had been known in the past within the town as a horse-jockey, and his promise as a general, with his shivering crowd, did not greatly impress those whom he had somewhat farcically beleaguered. In a day or two Arnold became frightened and drew off his men, strengthened now a little by others who had crossed the river. Unmolested he went up the river, to keep within reach of Montgomery, perceiving as he went up the banks the succor for Quebec which Carleton, having picked up men here and there, was bringing down by water.
From the _Political Mag._, iii. 351. Cf. Jones's _Campaign for the Conquest of Canada_, p. 112; _Mag. of Amer. Hist._, June, 1883, p. 409; Moore's _Diary of the Revolution_, p. 454; B. Sulte's _Hist. des Canadiens français_ (as Lord Dorchester, to which rank Carleton was subsequently raised).]
By the 1st of December, Montgomery, with three armed schooners and only 300 men, reached Arnold at Point-aux-Trembles. The united forces now turned their faces towards Quebec, less than a thousand in all, with a body of two hundred Canadians, under Colonel James Livingston, acting in conjunction; and on the 5th were before the town. Carleton haughtily scorned all advances of Montgomery to communicate with him, and devoted himself to overawing the town, quite content that the rigors of winter should alone attack the invaders. While the Americans were making some show of planting siege-batteries, plans for assault were in reality maturing, and a stormy night was awaited to carry them out. It came on the night before the last day of the year. While two feints were to be made on the upper plain, the main assaults were to be along the banks of the St. Charles and the St. Lawrence, from opposite sides, with a view to joining and gaining the upper town from the lower. Montgomery led the attack beneath Cape Diamond on the St. Lawrence side, and while in advance with a small vanguard, and unsuspecting that his approach was discovered, he was opened upon with grape, and fell, with others about him.[486] His death was the end of the assault on that side. Arnold was at first successful in carrying the barriers opposed to him, but was soon severely wounded and taken to the rear. Morgan, who succeeded to the command, was pressing their advantage, when Carleton, relieved by Montgomery's failure, and by the discovery that the other attacks meant nothing, sent out a force, which so hemmed Morgan in, that, having already learned of Montgomery's failure, he found it prudent to surrender with the few hundred men still clinging to him. The Americans elsewhere in the field hastily withdrew to their camp, and Carleton was too suspicious of the townspeople to dare to take any further advantage of his success.