was over.  Walker had no military qualities whatever.  So Allen and Brown were left to their own disunited devices.  Montreal seemed an easy prey.  It had plenty of rebel sympathizers.  Nearly all the surrounding habitants were either neutrals or inclined to side with the Americans, though not as fighting men.  Carleton’s order to bring in all the ladders, so as to prevent an escalade of the walls, had met with general opposition and evasion.  Nothing seemed wanting but a good working plan.

Brown, or possibly Allen himself, then hit upon the idea of treating Montreal very much as Allen had treated Ticonderoga.  In any case Allen jumped at it.  He jumped so far, indeed, that he forestalled Brown, who failed to appear at the critical moment.  Thus, on the 24th of September, Allen found himself alone at Long Point with a hundred and twenty men in face of three times as many under the redoubtable Major Carden, a skilled veteran who had won Wolfe’s admiration years before.  Carden’s force included thirty regulars, two hundred and forty militiamen, and some Indians, probably not over a hundred strong.  The militia were mostly of the seigneurial class with a following of habitants and townsmen of both French and British blood.  Carden broke Allen’s flanks rounded up his centre, and won the little action easily, though at the expense of his own most useful life.  Allen was very indignant at being handcuffed and marched off like a common prisoner after having made himself a colonel twice over.  But Carleton had no respect for self-commissioned officers and had no soldiers to spare for guarding dangerous rebels.  So he shipped Allen off to England, where that eccentric warrior was confined in Pendennis Castle near Falmouth in Cornwall.

This affair, small as it was, revived British hopes in Montreal and induced a few more militiamen and Indians to come forward.  But within a month more was lost at Chambly than had been gained at Montreal.  On the 18th of October a small American detachment attacked Chambly with two little field-guns and induced it to surrender on the 20th.  If ever an officer deserved to be shot it was Major Stopford, who tamely surrendered his well-armed and well-provided fort to an insignificant force, after a flimsy resistance of only thirty-six hours, without even taking the trouble to throw his stores into the river that flowed beside his strong stone walls.  The news of this disgraceful surrender, diligently spread by rebel sympathizers, frightened the Indians away from St Johns, thus depriving Major Preston, the commandant, of his best couriers at the very worst time.  But the evil did not stop there; for nearly all the few French-Canadian militiamen whom the more distant seigneurs had been able to get under arms deserted en masse, with many threats against any one who should try to turn them out again.