University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.
THE ASSAULT.

The morning of the thirty-first of December,
seventeen hundred and seventy-five, was ushered
in with a tempest of snow, highly favourable to the
storming parties, which, in four divisions, moved
steadily and silently to the assault. The troops,
on being drawn up at break of day and informed
of the projected attack, were unanimous in desiring
to be immediately led on; and General Montgomery,
taking advantage of their high spirits, gave
the signal for advancing nearly half an hour earlier
than he had previously intended.

Placing himself with his aids at the head of his
brave New-York troops, he marched along the St.
Lawrence, by the way of Aunce de Mere, under
Cape Diamond, and in the direction of a barrier
which he knew to be defended by a few pieces of
artillery mounted on a bastion, in advance of which,
about two hundred yards, stood a blockhouse protected
by a picket. This, from his own observation
and the information of Burton, he considered
the most advantageous point of attack, and therefore
led, in person, the best part of his force against it.

His route lay round the base of the precipitous
cliff upon which the citadel was built, and along a
narrow path or beach between the face of the rock
and the river, which flowed so near it as to leave
passage only for a single column of three, and often
but two men abreast. To add to the difficulties of
the march of this adventurous party, enormous

masses of ice, as rugged and massive as if they
were fragments torn from the cliffs above their
heads, were piled in wild confusion upon each other
in their path, their perpendicular sides presenting
almost impassable barriers to their farther progress.
But with an indomitable spirit of perseverance, and
a firmness of purpose that characterized the American
soldiers throughout the revolutionary war, they
surmounted obstacles that appeared to defy human
energies. Now clambering over precipices, now
sliding down inclined planes of ice, and now creeping
under overhanging rocks, they continued to
press forward until they came suddenly upon the
picket protecting the blockhouse, which was indistinctly
seen through the falling snow a few yards
in its rear.

“Here, my fine fellows,” said Montgomery, who,
during their march, was at one moment in the
rear, encouraging the slow to persevere, at another
in the van, animating them all by his example,
“here is the way to victory. Pass this picket
and yonder blockhouse, and the battery is ours.
Here, my man! I will take that axe. Look to the
condition of your musket;” and, taking an axe
from a Herculean soldier who was about to assail
the palisades, with a strong arm and heavy blows
he cut a passage for his men through the picket.
The sound of his axe was the first intimation the
defenders of the blockhouse received of the presence
of the storming-party; and, giving a scattering
and harmless fire, they threw their arms over
the breastwork, and with loud cries of “The enemy!
the enemy!” fled in dismay and confusion for
protection under the guns of the battery.

“The day is ours! On, my brave soldiers, on!”
shouted the gallant Montgomery.

Waving his sword, he leaped through the breach

he had made, which was now much enlarged by the
labour of several soldiers and the active co-operation
of Burton, who, unless when sent to the rear
on duty, had constantly marched by his side, sharing
and relieving him of many of his most arduous duties,
and now, simultaneously with him, bounded
over the picket.

“What, not twenty men by my side?” exclaimed
Montgomery, in a voice of intense mortification, on
looking back and finding but a few had yet gained
the picket, while, as far as he could see through the
thick atmosphere of snow, he beheld the remainder,
in a lengthened line, slowly but perseveringly, in
files and pairs, toiling towards the point of attack.

“Halt, my men,” he said, in despair, to the few
around him. “Haste, Major Burton, haste, and
urge them forward! 'Twere madness to storm
with this handful. Forward, my brave fellows,
forward! Never mind your musket, my good fellow!
Seize a picket,” he cried to a soldier who
had dropped his gun in the snow, and was stooping
for it; “cool heads and brave hearts are all we
want. Oh God! that the day should be lost now,
when victory is in our very grasp. Forward, run!
On, soldiers, on!” he shouted. “Nobly, nobly
done, Major Burton. Forward, men! you follow
a brave young leader. Ha, Horsford, are you
there?” he exclaimed, seeing his sergeant join him
with a score of men at his back; “now charge all
of ye in the name of God and our country!” and,
waving his sword, he placed himself at the head of
about two hundred men, whom his voice had gathered
around him, and advanced boldly to force the
barrier.

“We are not too late, Major Burton,” he said to
the young officer who was by his side, while his
eye kindled as he glanced round upon the brave

band which he led against the bastion; “I would
not exchange this day's laurels for imperial Cæsar's.
Press forward, ladders! Another moment, my
brave men, and our standard shall float on that bastion,”
pointing forward with his sword as he spoke,
and almost running towards the wall. “Nobly
done, M`Pherson; gallant Cheesman, you are ever
foremost. Nay, Major Burton, not before me!”

He had scarcely uttered these words, when a
terrible glare illumined the battery, and the gallant
chief, arrested in the animated attitude in which he
was advancing, and with the battle-cry still lingering
on his lips, fell backward, with his face to the
citadel, and was caught in the arms of Burton.
“On, on!” he faintly shouted, as the hurricane of
death checked the rush of his troops; “heed me
not!”

Ere the smoke of the cannon, which for a moment
enveloped him like a pall, had rolled away,
he breathed out his gallant spirit, and died, as a
brave soldier should die, in his armour.

The spirits of the intrepid and chivalrous M`Pherson,
of the brave Cheesman, of the honest and resolute
Horsford, also accompanied that of their gallant
leader; in death united with one they so honoured
in life.

Burton, the only surviving aid of the brave and
unfortunate chief, gently laid his noble form on the
ground, and hastily wrapped it in his own cloak;
then, with a full heart, hastily dropping a tear to his
memory, he shouted, with a voice that rung like a
trumpet,

“Charge, men! Avenge your chief, or die with
him!”

The soldiers, whose onward career had been so
fatally checked, and who began to gather round
their fallen leader, not like men who fear to advance,

but like brave soldiers lamenting the fall of a gallant
general, inspired by the thrilling voice of the
young officer, sternly grasped their weapons, and
with a loud cry rallied around him. He himself
was already at the foot of the bastion, ascending
a scaling ladder which had been planted against
it by Zacharie, who, like his shadow, kept by his
side. At this moment Colonel Campbell, on whom
the command of the forlorn hope now devolved,
cried out,

“Halt! Major Burton! It is useless to pursue
an enterpreese that has terminated sae fatally.”

He ordered a retreat as he spoke, and the division
precipitately retired from before the battery, a
few brave fellows who reluctantly obeyed the disgraceful
order bearing the body of their chief in
their midst.

Burton, execrating the apathy of the man who
could thus desert an enterprise more than half
achieved, slowly descended to the ground and retreated
from the barrier, accompanied by his youthful
esquire, who, before removing the ladder, had
mounted to the highest round, from which he looked
over the parapet, and satisfied himself, as he afterward
asserted, that not a soul was in sight through
out the whole range of his vision.

“With my old dame,” he said, deliberately descending
and following his master, “and another
old woman, her match, I could capture that battery,
wheel the guns round, point them against the town,
and take it.”

Burton heard him not; his mind was agitated by
the death of his magnanimous friend and chief,
and the shameful retreat of his party.

As he walked thoughtfully along, the firing of
musketry in the direction of the Saut de Matelots
roused him to a recollection of the great object in

which he was embarked. Hoping that the other
division might accomplish what his own had failed
in achieving, he assembled several soldiers of his
detachment who had lingered behind, when they
saw he made no haste to retreat, and, followed by
them, advanced rapidly towards the barrier attacked
by Colonel Arnold, who was now, by the fall of
General Montgomery, commander of the forces.

The detachment led by Colonel Arnold had moved
forward at the signal for storming simultaneously
with the party commanded by the unfortunate
Montgomery. It pursued its march towards the
Saut de Matelots against a barrier constructed at
that point, and defended by a small battery hastily
thrown up, mounting two twelve-pounders. This
division consisted of a company of artillery, with
a single brass fieldpiece lashed on a sledge and
drawn by the soldiers; and in the rear, and behind
Morgan's company of riflemen, the main body,
composed of the Canadian volunteers and colonial
militia.

This party was also distressed in its march by
the difficulties it encountered at every step. The
path through which it advanced along the skirt
of St. Roques was rugged and narrow, and, by
leading directly into the face of the battery, was
exposed for a long distance to a raking fire from
the twelve-pounders, which commanded the whole
breadth of its column; while its right flank, when
its approach should be discovered, was open to a
galling fire of musketry from the walls and other
defences of the besieged.

Silently and swiftly, their march concealed by
the darkness of the morning, which was increased
by the thickly-falling snow, this intrepid band
moved to the assault with that steady courage
which an enterprise so dangerous and so important

called for at such a moment. One impulse
and one spirit seemed to invigorate them all.
The barrier was at length visible through the
dense atmosphere, and with a shout they rushed
forward to the attack. The besieged echoed the
cry with a loud note of alarm, and, flying to the
walls, poured a volley of musketry upon the flank
of the storming party, which, like a troop of spectres
rising from the earth, had so suddenly appeared
before them from the cloud of mist.

“Now, colonel, scale that barrier, and the city is
ours!” said a tall dark man in an antiquated uniform,
half French, half colonial, and with a foreign
air and accent, who had marched side by side with
the leader during the advance, occasionally pointing
out easier paths, as if familiar with the ground.

“Forward!” cried Colonel Arnold, looking back,
and anxious to save his flank from the distressing
fire on their right; “forward! and not loiter there,
to be shot down like beeves.”

The men, animated by the voice of the stranger,
and encouraged by their leader, pressed on. Colonel
Arnold was in the act of springing first upon
the barrier, when the besieged discharged a heavy
volley of musketry from the ramparts almost above
his head, which killed and wounded many of his
men, who dropped on every side. He himself uttered
a sharp cry of pain, and fell severely wounded
into the arms of his orderly sergeant.

“By the mass! my colonel, thou hast received
a soldier's welcome before thy foeman's gates,”
said the stranger.

“If it had been behind them 'twould have been
better welcome. Forward! Lead on the men,
sir,” he said, writhing with pain from his shattered
limb as he was borne bleeding from the field.

“To the barrier! to the barrier!” shouted the
stranger, rushing onward, followed by a few platoons
of artillerymen, who, animated by the spirit
of their new leader, deserted the useless fieldpiece,
and, drawing their swords, emulously strove to be
first at scaling the barricade.

“Storm it, my brave fellows!” shouted Morgan,
pressing forward at the head of his riflemen.

Clambering up the face of the battery, he was
aiding his ascent by clinging round one of the
twelve-pounders, when it was discharged by the
lighted wadding of a gun accidentally falling upon
and igniting the priming. Although heavily charged
with grape, it killed only a single man, who, recklessly
climbing across the muzzle at the instant,
was blown to atoms over the heads of his comrades
below.

The rampart was immediately carried, and the
battery, without the discharge of another gun, was
in another moment in the possession of the gallant
storming-party.

“Give quarter! Disarm and make prisoners,”
cried a loud voice, in a commanding tone, to the
soldiers, who, in the first excitement of success, began
to beat down all who opposed them. “Stain
not your victory with butchery;” and, at the same
instant, Burton leaped, sword in hand, from the gun
into the barrier.

“Ha, my gallant cavalier, art thou there?” cried
the stranger, who had mounted the battery with
Morgan, striking, while he spoke, the pistol from
the hands of the captain of the guard, and making
him prisoner. “Thou art rather late, but there is
something yet to do to keep thy young blood from
cooling.”

“Chevalier,” said the youth, hurriedly pressing

his hand, “I am glad to see you here. Brave men
are welcome at this hour, when so many brave leaders
bite the dust. Forward, and carry the second
barrier!”

“Bless me, sir,” said Morgan, as he caught sight
of Burton, “are you here, Major Burton? How
has Montgomery succeeded?”

“Lost, all lost!” he replied, in a low tone. “But,
thank God, he cannot feel our disgrace!”

“What, not—”

“Dead!”

“Dead! My God! there fled a brave spirit,”
said the captain, with deep feeling. “But what of
the division?”

“Retreated when a sudden charge would have
ensured our success. I see you have carried the
barricade, and the fortune of the day may yet be in
our hands.”

“I will draw up my troops in the street within
the defences, and instantly attack the second barrier.”

“Do so, and let activity and courage redeem the
fate of the other division.”

“Who in the devil, Major Burton, is this tall,
French-looking officer?” he inquired, as he was
leaving him. “You seem to know him. By the
sword of King Solomon, he fights as if he had served
a trade at it. He wields that two-handed claymore,
and lays on his blows with such right down good-will,
that one would swear he was fighting for the
love of it.”

“A brave old French soldier, whom you may depend
on as a faithful ally. See! your men have
taken more prisoners than they can manage,” added
Burton, pointing down into the street, where the
troops were disarming and taking into custody a
score of Canadian burghers, armed artificers, and

several English citizens. “Turn them loose outside
the barrier, or lock the most unmanageable of
them up in this stone house under a small guard.”

“I will lock them all up,” said Morgan, descending
into the street, followed by Burton and the chevalier.

The latter immediately called out in Canadian
French for the Canadian volunteers to rally around
him. He was soon at the head of twenty men,
whom he drew up near the barrier and awaited the
signal to rush forward. This, however, Morgan,
on whom the command now devolved, was not
prepared to give. The party which had carried
the barriers consisted only of his own body of
riflemen and the corps of artillery, and did not
amount in all to one hundred men. The main body
of his forces had not yet reached the battery. He
was under the necessity, therefore, of hastily forming
his little force on the street within the barricade;
and, perceiving that he could effect nothing without
additional support, in this embarrassing and critical
situation he was compelled to await the arrival of
re-enforcements.

The dawn had not fully appeared, and objects
around were rendered still more obscure by the
storm, which still raged violently. His native intrepidity,
nevertheless, might have carried him onward,
but, unfortunately, he was without the slightest
acquaintance with the situation of that part of
the city; without a guide in whom he could repose
confidence; totally ignorant of the streets through
which he was to lead his troops, and wholly unacquainted
with the nature and strength of the barriers
to be forced before he could penetrate to the
opposite extremity of the town.

“My dear major,” he cried, in despair, to Burton,
who shared his impatience, “for God's sake return

over the barrier and quicken the steps of those laggards,
or we shall lose the advantage we have
gained.”

Burton leaped the parapet, and fearlessly run the
gauntlet along the line of musketry, which, on his
approach, recommenced its firing from the walls.
Gaining the head of the main body, which was
approaching slowly but in good order, he infused
some of his own energy into the soldiers, whose
blood had not yet been stirred by actual contact
with the enemy. They shouted to be led on, and
several companies rushed forward with their officers;
but, breaking into fragments before they
gained the barrier, not more than a hundred intrepid
fellows scaled it, with Burton and Captain Germaine
at their head, and, with trifling loss, joined
the detachment drawn up on the inside under Morgan,
whose little party welcomed this addition to
its number with loud shouts.

This re-enforcement was rapidly imbodied with
Morgan's force; and the whole party, feeling confidence
in their numbers and elated by the success
already achieved, demanded to be led against the
second barrier.

“Do you know the distance to it?” inquired
Morgan of Burton, who again had taken his place
by his side.

“No; but it cannot be far.”

“'Tis not forty paces, for I paced it nimbly last
night ere I scaled the wall,” said Zacharie, who,
with a horsepistol in one hand and a dirk in the
other, walked behind his master.

“Art thou there, my young kite?” cried Captain
Morgan. “Then lead on, in the name of thy manhood;
for we are taught that great things may be
done by babes and sucklings.”

“If I lead the battle I'll wear the honours,” replied

the lad, who did not hear the last part of this
speech, or doubtless it would not have passed unnoticed.
“See, now, what a dust I will kick up.”

Fearlessly running forward as he spoke, he
stopped at the angle of the next street, about
twenty yards ahead of the attacking column, and
discharged his pistol towards an object concealed
from the view of the advancing party. He alertly
sprung aside as he fired, and had scarcely regained
the protection of the angle, when a shower of bullets,
following the discharge of a heavy volley of
musketry, whizzed harmlessly past him, at once
betraying the position and presence of the enemy,
and their readiness to repel an attack.

“Gallantly done, my brave boy,” exclaimed Morgan;
“thou hast spared us twenty lives.”

“Forward, men, before they reload,” shouted
Burton, as they gained the head of the pass, across
which the besieged had constructed a strong battery;
“plant your ladders firmly.”

“Give them a volley, and sweep the barrier,”
shouted Morgan.

Wheeling round the angle upon the run, the
storming party rushed against the barrier under a
tremendous and incessant fire from the battery in
their front, and applied their ladders to the works.
But the courage and reckless intrepidity of the besiegers
could not avail against superiority of numbers,
and the disadvantages of the position into
which the besieged had drawn them. The street
where they were crowded together, rather than
drawn up with military precision, was narrow, and,
besides the battery in front, was lined on both sides
with stone houses, from the windows of which they
were galled by a spirited discharge of firearms.

“Hola! my brave habitans,” cried the Chevalier
de Levi, seeing one after another of the besiegers

picked from the ladders, in attempting to carry the
barrier, by marksmen concealed in one of these
dwellings, “who will follow me to clear this house
of its heretical horde.”

Seizing a ladder as he spoke, he rushed forward
to the windows, and was instantly followed by a
dozen men also with ladders. They first discharged
their pieces at the inmates, but with trifling success,
as their exposure to the storm had unfitted nine in
ten of their firearms for use, and then gallantly
mounted at several windows. After a short contest,
they took possession of the building, from which,
as their numbers were increased, they poured, with
the few serviceable muskets they could command,
a well-directed fire upon the barrier.

The fire from the battery at length became so
incessant and fatal, that, finding it impossible to
force the barrier, in attempting which, at the head
of a few gallant soldiers, he had been repeatedly
beaten back, although fighting with the cool courage
of a veteran, Burton determined to throw himself
into the houses bordering the scene of contest,
both for protection from the fire of the besieged and
the violence of the storm, which bewildered the
troops and rendered their arms unserviceable.

The besiegers, now increased to four hundred
men by the re-enforcement of the main body, immediately
took possession of these defences, leaving
the narrow street covered with dead and
wounded, and in a few minutes the firing from the
battery ceased.

“Now, by the mass!” shouted the chevalier to
Burton who now had returned to the shelter of the
house of which he had first taken possession, “I will
strike one blow more for old Canada and old scores,
and charge the barrier while its defenders are refreshing.
If I carry it you will support me, and

Canada will be free. If I fail I can only be slain,
and fall like a warrior in my harness, which I desire
to do. If this enterprise does not succeed,” he
added, sadly, “I wish no longer to live.”

Elevating his voice, he cried, “Who will follow
me to victory or death? for here we are as surely
prisoners as if already in Carleton's dungeons. I
will strike once more for my country if it be my
last blow,” he said, enthusiastically; and, rushing
out, he was followed by a dozen men, both Canadians
and Americans, who had caught his enthusiasm.

This little band sallied with intrepidity from the
house towards the barrier. Before its defenders,
who supposed the besiegers had given up their attempt
to storm the works, could recover from their
surprise and repel them, they had planted and
mounted the ladders, and the chevalier, with two
men, already stood upon the top of the battery,
striking off, as he gained it, the arm of a soldier
about to apply a match to one of the guns.

Burton, beholding the result of this rash adventure,
which he had at first warned the chevalier it
was madness to attempt, leaped from the window
shouting for followers, and found himself in a moment
at the head of twenty men. In the midst of
a sharp fire, which, as the houses were now in the
possession of the besiegers, came only from the
front, and, therefore, was not so annoying as it had
been, and covered by a spirited discharge of musketry
from their own party, they rushed forward.

The besieged now assembled in force to the defence
of their post. With the loss of half his men,
Burton reached the ladders, by which he actively
mounted the battery, closely followed by Zacharie
and one or two soldiers, and gained the top of the
works in time to support the chevalier, who, covered

with wounds, with his back against the gun
he had captured, was defending his life against two
Canadians, one of whom, a stout dark peasant, was
attacking him with a short dagger and the butt of
a pistol. One of these Burton shot as he mounted
the barrier; but, before he could gain his feet
to second him with his sword, the chevalier received
a ball in his breast, and fell dead across the
cannon.

The peasant instantly turned upon Burton, and
had raised his dagger to bury it in his bosom, when
Zacharie, who was yet on his knees climbing over
the verge of the parapet, close to the back of his
leader, caught the Canadian by one of his feet as
he drew back to give the blow, and, with a violent
exertion of his strength, destroyed his equilibrium,
and pitched him, with great danger to himself, head-long
into the street among the bodies of his foes.

“Lie thou there, Luc Giles, where many a better
man hath made his bed before thee,” he quietly
said, as he looked after him. “Thou hast cheated
the gallows at last, for which thou mayst thank
Zacharie Nicolet.”

He had hardly performed this feat when he was
caught in the arms of a stout soldier and thrown
back within the barrier. Burton, who in vain
called on the soldiers below to mount and second
him, was in the act of leaping back into the street
again, when he was seized and disarmed by half a
score of burghers.

The force of the enemy now momently increased
on the barrier. A formidable detachment, composed
of burghers, artificers, peasants, and a few regulars,
despatched from the quarter originally attacked by
Montgomery, marched to the head of the defile or
street on the failure of this last attempt to scale
the barrier, and completely blockaded the besiegers

in the houses of which they had taken possession.

“Would that Montgomery had lived another
hour, or Campbell had pressed on,” said Captain
Germaine to an officer who lay wounded on the
floor of the house nearest the barrier.

“In that case,” said Morgan, with animation,
“they would have crossed the town and formed a
junction with us; but now, God knows, we have
no alternative but to collect our broken forces and
cut our way through that band of burghers who are
drawn up to intercept our retreat.”

This daring proposition, originating from a determined
spirit, was at first generally approved of by
the officers who had collected near him; but the
great increase of the enemy's forces, which rapidly
assembled and now surrounded them in great numbers,
plainly rendered its achievement altogether
impossible.

“Well, gentlemen,” observed Captain Morgan,
“I see our destinies are no longer in our own
hands. We must make what terms we can with
the enemy.”

It was at length decided that there was no other
alternative left than to surrender themselves prisoners
of war.

“When my poor Mary tied the knot of this cravat
the morning I left home,” said Morgan, with
a feeling which he attempted to disguise under a
careless tone, while he secured his white cravat
to his sword, “she never dreamed that it would be
waved from a window in token of a gallant army's
surrender. But such is the fate of soldiers!”

He advanced to the window with the necker-chief;
and, although the slight exposure of his person
was at first hailed with one or two single musket
shots, these were soon followed by a loud shout

when he extended his muffled sword, and waved
the white flag it bore in token of surrender.

Thus ended one of the boldest enterprises of
modern times, conceived by an active and intrepid
soldier, with a display of skill and judgment evincing
military talents of the highest rank. The
loss of the besieged was trifling when compared
with that of the Americans, which amounted in all
to four hundred men, sixty of whom, including three
officers, were slain, while the remainder, three hundred
and forty in number, surrendered themselves
prisoners of war. Several officers were wounded,
and the clothes of those who surrendered were perforated
with balls, and burned by the powder from
the muzzles of the enemy's guns; striking proofs
of the severity and obstinacy with which the assault
was maintained. But even the possession of the
city by this detachment without the loss of a single
man would have been a victory dearly purchased
by the fall of Montgomery. His death cast a
cloud of gloom over the American army, and was
universally deplored by his country, which has
expressed its gratitude for his services, and cherished
his memory by erecting a monument in commemoration
of its high sense of his virtues as a
man, a citizen, and a soldier.