The spring and summer had been anxious times enough in Quebec.  But the autumn was a great deal worse.  Bad news kept coming down from Montreal.  The disaffected got more and more restless and began ’to act as though no opposition might be shown the rebel forces.’  And in October it did seem as if nothing could be done to stop the invaders.  There were only a few hundred militiamen that could be depended on.  The regulars, under Colonel Maclean, had gone up to help Carleton on the Montreal frontier.  The fortifications were in no state to stand a siege.  But Cramahe was full of steadfast energy.  He had mustered the French-Canadian militia on September 11, the very day Arnold was leaving Cambridge in Massachusetts for his daring march against Quebec.  These men had answered the call far better in the city of Quebec than anywhere else.  There was also a larger proportion of English-speaking loyalists here than in Montreal.  But no transports brought troops up the St Lawrence from Boston or the mother country, and no vessel brought Carleton down.  The loyalists were, however, encouraged by the presence of two small men-of-war, one of which, the Hunter, had been the guide-ship for Wolfe’s boat the night before the Battle of the Plains.  Some minor reinforcements also kept arriving:  veterans from the border settlements and a hundred and fifty men from Newfoundland.  On the 3rd of November, the day St Johns surrendered to Montgomery, an intercepted dispatch had warned Cramahe of Arnold’s approach and led him to seize all the boats on the south shore opposite Quebec.  This was by no means his first precaution.  He had sent some men forty miles up the Chaudiere as soon as the news of the raids on Lake Champlain and St Johns had arrived at the end of May.  Thus, though neither of them had anticipated such a bolt from the blue, both Carleton and Cramahe had taken all the reasonable means within their most restricted power to provide against unforeseen contingencies.

Arnold’s chance of surprising Quebec had been lost ten days before he was able to cross the St Lawrence; and when the habitants on the south shore were helping his men to make scaling-ladders the British garrison on the north had already become too strong for him.  But he was indefatigable in collecting boats and canoes at the mouth of the Chaudiere, and at other points higher up than Cramahe’s men had reached when on their mission of destruction or removal, and he was as capable as ever when, on the pitch-black night of the 13th, he led his little flotilla through the gap between the two British men-of-war, the Hunter and the Lizard.  The next day he marched across the Plains of Abraham and saluted Quebec with three cheers.  But meanwhile Colonel Maclean, who had set out to help Carleton at Montreal and turned back on hearing the news of St Johns, had slipped into Quebec on the 12th.  So Arnold found himself with less than seven hundred effectives against the eleven hundred British who were now behind the walls.  After vainly summoning the city to surrender he retired to Pointe-aux-Trembles, more than twenty miles up the north shore of the St Lawrence, there to await the arrival of the victorious Montgomery.