and informed him that the arms and equipment for the first three thousand were already on the way to Canada!  Seven years earlier it might still have been possible to raise French-Canadian counterparts of those Highland regiments which Wolfe had recommended and Pitt had so cordially approved.  Carleton himself had recommended this excellent scheme at the proper time.  But, though the home government even then agreed with him, they thought such a measure would raise more parliamentary and public clamour than they could safely face.  The chance once lost was lost for ever.

Carleton had done what he could to keep the enemy at arm’s length from Montreal by putting every available man into Chambly and St Johns.  He knew nothing of Arnold’s force till it actually reached Quebec in November.  Quebec was thought secure for the time being, and so was left with a handful of men under Cramahe.  Montreal had a few regulars and a hundred ‘Royal Emigrants,’ mostly old Highlanders who had settled along the New York frontier after the Conquest.  For the rest, it had many American and a few British sympathizers ready to fly at each others’ throats and a good many neutrals ready to curry favour with the winners.  Sorel was a mere post without any effective garrison.  Chambly was held by only eighty men under Major Stopford.  But its strong stone fort was well armed and quite proof against anything except siege artillery; while its little garrison consisted of good regulars who were well provisioned for a siege.  The mass of Carleton’s little force was at St Johns under Major Preston, who had 500 men of the 7th and 26th (Royal Fusiliers and Cameronians), 80 gunners, and 120 volunteers, mostly French-Canadian gentlemen.  Preston was an excellent officer, and his seven hundred men were able to give a very good account of themselves as soldiers.  But the fort was not nearly so strong as the one at Chambly; it had no natural advantages of position; and it was short of both stores and provisions.

The three successive steps for Montgomery to take were St Johns, Chambly, and Montreal.  But the natural order of events was completely upset by that headstrong Yankee, Ethan Allen, who would have his private war at Montreal, and by that contemptible British officer, Major Stopford, who would not defend Chambly.  Montgomery laid siege to St Johns on the 18th of September, but made no substantial progress for more than a month.  He probably had no use for Allen at anything like a regular siege.  So Allen and a Major Brown went on to ‘preach politicks’ and concert a rising with men like Livingston and Walker.  Livingston, as we have seen already, belonged to a leading New York family which was very active in the rebel cause; and Livingston, Walker, Allen, and Brown would have made a dangerous anti-British combination if they could only have worked together.  But they could not.  Livingston hurried off to join Montgomery with four hundred ‘patriots’ who served their cause fairly well till the invasion