Part 3

At last, on the evening of November 13th, he embarked five hundred of his men, leaving a hundred and fifty at Point Lévis, and stole in the darkness across the river to Wolfe’s Cove. Unopposed, he climbed the heights, and before daybreak drew up his little army on the Plains of Abraham; then, with characteristic audacity, he marched almost up to the St. Louis Gate, and, with loud cheers, challenged the enemy to sally forth. They refused to give him battle, however, and scorned his summons to surrender, so he retreated some twenty miles up the river to Point aux Trembles, there to await the arrival of reinforcements under General Montgomery—an Irishman of good family who had held a commission in the British army before taking up arms for the seceding Colonies. Entering Canada by way of Lake Champlain, he had captured the Forts of St. John’s and Chambly, and had received the submission of Montreal. Thus the whole country save Quebec was at his feet.

But General Carleton had not submitted, and while Quebec held out for England he did not despair of saving the country. On the approach of the enemy he had left Montreal, which he judged indefensible, and had hastened down the river in a birch-bark canoe. He had slipped past some American vessels under cover of darkness; and Arnold, before he left the neighborhood of Quebec, had the mortification of hearing the great guns of the citadel thundering a welcome to the resolute Governor. Carleton’s arrival put new heart into the garrison, and he began instantly to take measures for a vigorous defence.

It was early in December when Montgomery reached Point aux Trembles with clothing, stores and a few hundred ill-disciplined troops, most of whom were counting the days till the term of their enlistment ended with the close of the year.

Joined by a few Canadians, the little American army now returned to invest Quebec. Again the garrison was summoned to surrender. Again the demand was treated with contempt. In fact Carleton refused to “hold any parley with rebels”; but the American leaders hoped soon to humble his pride. Throwing up batteries of ice and snow, they began to bombard the walls; but their guns were too light to make any impression on the masonry, and the besieged kept vigilant guard against surprise. On moonless nights they lighted the great ditch surrounding their ramparts by lanterns hung on poles from the bastions, and thus not even a dog could approach unobserved.

Discouraged by ill-success and weakened by smallpox, the American army appeared to be in danger of melting away, but the two leaders resolved to try to capture Quebec by one bold stroke before more of the discontented troops left them.

Their plan was a complicated one. Montgomery was to advance along a narrow road skirting the base of Cape Diamond, while Arnold, from the suburb of St. Roch, already in possession of the Americans, was to enter the Lower Town from the opposite side, meet Montgomery’s division at the foot of Mountain Street, and join in an attempt to force the barrier (where later was erected the Prescott Gate) which guarded the approach to the Upper Town. Meanwhile, to distract the attention of the besieged, a feint was to be made against St. John’s Gate.

The time fixed for the attempt was the early hours of the thirty-first day of December. The weather was wild and blustering, promising that the planned surprise would be complete, and two hours after midnight Montgomery marched his troops down to Wolfe’s Cove, and thence along the narrow drifted path below the cliff, now known as Champlain Street.

That they might know each other in the darkness, his soldiers wore in their caps slips of white paper, on which they had written as a watchword, “Liberty or death!” Through the blinding snow they pressed on till they reached a barrier of palisades below the precipitous rock now crowned by the Citadel. Forcing this, they rushed forward, with their intrepid leader at their head, to capture a battery directly in their path. They had almost reached it, when the guns suddenly blazed forth a deadly storm of grapeshot. Montgomery fell dead, with several of his followers, and the rest broke and fled precipitately along the narrow path swept by the cannon, leaving behind them their dead and dying in the snow.

Arnold, meanwhile, at the head of his column, was pressing towards the rendezvous, though when he passed Palace Gate he knew that the attack would be no surprise, for bells were ringing and drums beating the call to arms. In single file, with bent heads, and guns covered with their coats, the Americans dashed forward, stormed the first barrier at the corner of Sault-au-Matelot Street, and captured its defenders. But Arnold was severely wounded in the leg by a musket-ball, and had to drag himself back to the General Hospital, whilst his men made a gallant attempt to seize the second barrier also.

In this they failed. Many lost their lives or their liberty, and the remainder fled. Later in the day the British sallied out and set fire to the suburb of St. Roch, which had so long given shelter to the rebels. Amongst the buildings consumed was the Intendant’s Palace, where Bigot, not many years earlier, had dazzled with his shameless luxury the wretched people he was defrauding.

Again there was rejoicing in old Quebec; but Arnold, beaten, wounded, short of supplies as he was, kept up the blockade of the city till spring. Then Carleton received reinforcements from England, and sallying out of his fortifications swept the foe before him up the St. Lawrence. Thus Quebec was saved to the Empire, and with it was saved the possibility of the second British “Dominion” in North America.

Since that time—though the old city has often rung with the stir of warlike preparations—though her steep streets have echoed to the tread of regiments coming and going—though the Basin has given anchorage to privateers and their prizes—though the wharves have witnessed the struggles of many a luckless fisherlad or townsman in the clutches of the press-gang—no hostile army has ever threatened the safety of the “Queen of the North.” Even during the fierce strife of the War of 1812, thanks to the valor of the descendants of those who at the side of Montcalm so long withstood Wolfe and his disciplined veterans, the invading army came no nearer to Quebec than the field of Chateauguay, where the valiant De Salaberry and his Voltigeurs earned the undying gratitude of all lovers of their country.

GLANCING back over the pages of this brief sketch, it might seem that the memories connected with Quebec were all of war. The names of many soldier-heroes glorify the story of this City of Five Sieges, and even to-day the ancient stronghold makes a brave show, like a mediæval warrior, of being armed cap-à-pie.

The first glimpse of Quebec, whether from the River, Point Lévis, or Beauport, shows grey bastions and battlements above all other buildings, and it will be strange if further knowledge of the place does not remind you more and more of the warlike times gone by. The very notices in the shop-windows—bilingual and giving to the beginner in the Gallic tongue of our compatriots a pleasing sense of walking in the pages of a dictionary—are a reminder of the long struggle between French and English for the domination of this continent. The driver of your calèche (if you elect to make your first tour of the city in that quaint modern imitation of a quainter prototype) will take care that you miss nothing of the military flavor of the place.

He will tell you the story of “Notre Dame des Victoires”; call upon you to admire “the Golden Dog,” that strange memento of a bitter private quarrel; take you to handsome Parliament Buildings, where, in niches in the façade, you will behold statues of the warriors Frontenac, Wolfe, Montcalm, De Lévis and De Salaberry, besides one of that notable Governor-General, the Earl of Elgin, who risked his popularity by giving his assent to a measure for compensating the sufferers by the Rebellion of 1837.

Close by the Parliament House is the great Drill Hall, for the use of the present-day citizen-soldiers of Quebec; and turning back, through the modern St. Louis Gate, which has replaced the portal through which the wounded Montcalm was swept by a rush of fugitives into the city to die, one comes to the site of the surgeon’s office where he breathed his last. Not far away there stood till 1889 another humble dwelling, where Montgomery’s corpse was prepared for burial. On the same street still stands the old Kent House—now a fascinating curiosity shop—once, towards the close of the eighteenth century, the town-residence of Queen Victoria’s father, then colonel of a regiment of Fusiliers stationed at Quebec. Some miles distant there is, by the way, another Kent House, where the Duke used to spend his summers on the heights from which the Montmorency takes its impetuous leap of two hundred and fifty feet to join the St. Lawrence. Quebec has also its Kent Gate, a modern structure, to commemorate the same prince, who, if he lacked opportunity to shine as a great military genius, at least succeeded in winning for himself a reputation as the strictest of disciplinarians.

But the military suggestions of Quebec are not confined to historic associations. You have them in concrete form, from the picturesque Citadel—which, however, was not built till long after the latest siege—to the little groups of cannon-balls, piled up in odd corners like a young giant’s marbles. At any turn you may meet a red-coated soldier or a blue-jacket from some visiting iron-clad; you may chance on a long row of obsolete guns, or on an ancient mortar, now powerless for mischief, with a great gag of iron in its throat; and here, there and everywhere you will find tablets or monuments marking the spots once deeply stained with the heart’s blood of the brave.

Yet, after all, this is but one aspect of Quebec, and not the brightest. To some persons the fair old town speaks more insistently of peace than of war; for so quaint is it, so old-world, that it seems, despite all evidence to the contrary, that here life must have run on undisturbed for centuries. To one brought up in another community, the unfamiliar figures of quaintly-garbed nuns, long-robed priests, and brothers in russet gowns, suggest the long-ago. The very markets, with all their bustle and hurry of eager life, seem survivals of the past.

A charm and a glamor hangs over the generally commonplace business of buying and selling, getting gain and making provision for the humble needs of the day. The whole thing seems like a picture-book. The groups of voluble, good-humored habitant women; the queer little carts like ladders mounted on wheels; the small pink pigs, squealing their hardest as they are transferred from the crates of the vendors to the sacks of the purchasers; the background of tall, irregular buildings climbing the great cliff—these lend to the scene a color and character all its own.

Wandering from stall to stall, heaped with vegetables, home-grown tobacco, dark slabs of maple sugar, home-woven towelling curtains or carpets, firmly knit socks, elaborately plaited mats, you begin to wonder at the patience and industry of this vivacious people, and you will wonder at these qualities still more if you see the habitant at home.

Go down, for instance, to Beaupré or St. Joachim, those parishes which Wolfe once so mercilessly harried. It is a fair and fruitful land, well-watered by the “full-fed river,” and over it now seems to brood the gentle angel of peace. Amongst the low curved roofs of the villages rise the towers of great churches, like that at Beauport and the miraculous St. Anne, whither every year come pilgrims in thousands seeking health or peace of mind. Behind these villages, if you step but a little aside from the splendid waterway of the St. Lawrence, you may lose yourself on sparsely-tracked, forest-covered hills, cleft with gullies, down which foam torrents, choked at times with thousands of grinding logs. But, after all, it is only a hermit who would long bury himself amongst these hills.

The winding roads below lead past barns with thatched roofs, log cow-houses with overhanging upper-storeys, cottages with projecting “galleries” and windows shaded with wall-paper, rugged stone houses with huge chimneys, “bake-ovens” under rude shelters of planks, drinking-troughs, wayside crosses, and flowery gardens, containing little shrines, within which glimmer tiny white images of the Virgin and her Son.

Along these roads comes the oddest assortment of vehicles ever seen, I should think, in one district of the Dominion. The habitant carries home his hay in a two-wheeled cart, fitted with a rack and drawn by a rough pony or a yoke of deliberate oxen; and he rides to church or market in a springless conveyance, which is a kind of grotesque compromise between a “top-buggy” and a “buckboard.” When coming from work, however, he contents himself with a humbler vehicle, rattling down the stony slopes at a surprising pace in a little cart drawn by a lean, rough-coated, stout-limbed dog.

A little farther along the same road you may see a stray automobile, while on the other side of the fence run the electric cars of the Quebec Railway Light & Power Company, or occasionally, on the same line, a train of “steam-cars.”

All the country near Quebec is well supplied now with railroads, and the townsfolk are learning to follow the modern fashion of living in country cottages during the summer months. Quebec merchants leave the city by the evening trains to spend their leisure hours with their families at Charlesbourg, Lorette, Montmorency, or some equally interesting but till lately inaccessible place. Others take the small modern steamboats which ply up and down the shores of the St. Lawrence, or to and from the beautiful Island of Orleans, and which have to make their way carefully past great rafts of lumber, fleet “ocean greyhounds,” or quaint barges of the same pattern as those used by Wolfe in his attack upon Quebec. These newcomers into the country bring new fashions, which in course of time will have their effect upon the habitants; but their influence is as yet scarcely perceptible.

Women in broad-brimmed straw hats are still seen in the hay-fields at work beside the men, yet they find time for much labor at loom and spinning-wheel, besides keeping well scrubbed and scoured the old floors and simple furniture, which have rendered good service to their mothers and grandmothers before them.

Ask the age of some cottage heirloom—some gaunt old clock or cumbrous chair—and its owner with a smile and a shrug will assure you, vaguely, “It’s ancient, very ancient.”

You do not doubt the assertion; you only wonder how this corner of the restless New World came to have such persistent, all-pervading regard for the past. So many things are “very ancient” in Quebec; yet it is full of its own characteristic life, this once-French city, which has been British for half its three hundred years of history.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.

Some illustrations moved to facilitate page layout.

Footnote added in Foreword to identify referenced photo illustrations.

[The end of _Old Quebec, The City of Champlain_, by Emily P. Weaver.]

End of Project Gutenberg's Old Quebec, the city of Champlain, by Emily Weaver