THE SIEGE THAT SAVED QUEBEC
Commander Major Charles Preston defended St. John's for 45 days in 1775

The failure of the rebellious colonists to capture the fortress of Quebec during their invasion of Canada in 1775 had many causes; ironically, a major cause was the colonial force’s victory at St. John’s (the original French, and present, name is Fort Saint Jean).

Guy Carleton, the British governor of Canada, had been watching the colonists’ movements since the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in May of 1775. Raids further north convinced Carleton to fortify St. John’s on the west bank of the Richelieu River. He sent the bulk of the British regulars in Canada to the town and ordered them to build strong defenses in anticipation of American attacks toward the St. Lawrence River and Montreal.

Our redoubts were at this time (if not finished) at least in a very defensible state; the insides of the parapet and the embrasures were sodded. The ditch was frais'd and guns mounted - there it is true on very bad platforms. We had two eight-inch Howitzers and 8 Royal or Cohorn Mortars, about 30 pieces of cannon among which were two light brass 24 lbs and 6 iron 9 lb (the rest were of smaller calibre, and chiefly brass), a schooner which before the redoubts carried 12 Guns and was finished, and a row galley which was launch'd soon after and carried one brass 24 lb.

                 

The Garrison
7th Regt.	239
26th Regt.	198
Royal Highland Emigrants	18
Volunteers	71
Royal Artillery	31
Total	557

Montgomery and Major-General Schuyler sailed down the Richelieu River intending to attack Fort Saint-Jean. After landing on the west bank of the Richelieu, approximately 1.6 km from Fort Saint-Jean, the invasion force was fired upon by a patrol of approximately 100 Aboriginal warriors, many of them Mohawk, led by Grand Chief Solsienhooane and captains Gilbert Tice and Guillaume de Lorimier. During the battle, eight Americans were killed and nine were wounded while the patrol of Tice and Lorimier suffered four dead and five wounded, including Captain Tice. The Americans were forced to retreat to Île-aux-Noix. On the night of September 10, Montgomery led 1000 men out again, returning to the first landing site by boat. In the confusion of the darkness and the swamp, some of the troops were separated from the rest. When they encountered one another again, there was panic, as the each mistook the other for the enemy. After just 30 minutes in the swamp, they returned to the landing. Montgomery, who had stayed with the boats, sent the troops out again. This time, the vanguard encountered a few Indians and habitants, and again panicked. Two of the "enemy" were killed, but the troops again made a disorderly retreat to the landing. While the command staff met to discuss the next move, word came in that the British warship Royal Savage was approaching. This started a disorganized retreat up the river back to Île-aux-Noix, in which the command staff was nearly left behind.

A third attempt was planned for September 13; bad weather delayed attempts until September 16. However, General Schuyler was by this time so ill that he thought it necessary to withdraw to Ticonderoga. He left that day, turning full command of the invasion over to Montgomery. Schuyler was not the only one falling ill; the bad weather, and the swampy, malaria-infested terrain of Île-aux-Noix was also taking a toll on the troops, as more of them became ill as well. The bad news was tempered by good; an additional 250 troops, in the form of a company of Green Mountain Boys under Seth Warner, and another company of New Hampshire men under Colonel Timothy Bedel, arrived at Île-aux-Noix.

On September 17, Montgomery's army disembarked from their makeshift fleet just south of St. Jean, and sent out John Brown with a detachment to block the road going north from the fort to Montreal. A small flotilla of armed boats guarded the river against the possibility of Royal Savage attacking the army as it landed.

Brown and his men made their first interdiction that day, capturing a wagon-train of supplies destined for the fort. Preston, seeing that this had happened, sent out a sortie to recover the goods. Brown's men, who had had time to hide the supplies in the woods, retreated until the sounds of the conflict reached the main body of the army. Montgomery, along with Bedel and his company, rushed to Brown's aid, and succeeded in driving the British back into the fort without recovering the supplies. During this encounter, Moses Hazen was first captured and questioned by Brown, and then arrested again by the British, and brought into the fort. That night, Hazen and Lorimier, the Indian agent, sneaked out of the fort and went to Montreal, to report the situation to Carleton.

Montgomery began entrenching his troops around the fort on September 18, and constructing a mortar battery south of the fort. Ethan Allen with a small company of Americans went to capture Montreal. Allen, who had taken Fort Ticonderoga (garrisoned by around 50 British invalids) from the British before war was declared. In the Battle of Longue-Pointe, this effort failed, with Allen and a number of men captured by the British.

The conditions for the Americans constructing the siege works were difficult. The ground was swampy, and the trenches quickly became filled knee-deep in water. Montgomery described his army as "half-drowned rats crawling through a swamp". To make matters even worse, food and ammunition supplies were running out, and the British under Major Charles Preston showed no sign of giving in despite the American bombardment. Disease also worked to reduce the effectiveness of the Americans; by mid-October more than 900 men had been sent back to Ticonderoga due to illness. In the early days of the siege, the fort's defenders took advantage of the land they had cleared around the fort to make life as difficult as possible for the besiegers erecting batteries. Major Preston wrote in his journal on September 23 that "a deserter [tells us where] the enemy are erecting their battery and we distress them as much as we can with shells."

On October 6, heavy artillery arrived from Ticonderoga. Put in position the next day, it started lobbing shells at the fort. Montgomery then began planning the placement of a second battery. While he first wanted to place one to the northwest of the fort, his staff convinced him instead to place on the eastern shore of the Richelieu, where it would command the shipyard and Royal Savage. This battery, whose construction was complicated by an armed row galley sent from the fort to oppose the works, was completed on October 13, and opened fire the next day.

In Montreal, Carleton was finally prodded to move. Under constant criticism for failure to act sooner, and mistrustful of his militia forces, he developed a plan of attack. He sent word to Colonel Allan Maclean at Quebec to bring more of his Royal Highland Emigrants and some militia forces to Sorel, from where they would move up the Richelieu toward St. Jean, while Carleton would lead a force across the Saint Lawrence at Longueuil.

Maclean raised a force of about 180 Emigrants, and a number of militia. By the time he reached Sorel on October 14, he had raised, in addition to the Emigrants, about 400 militia men, sometimes using threatening tactics to gain recruits. His and Carleton's hopes were dashed on October 30, when Carleton's attempted landing at Longueuil of a force numbering about 1,000 (mostly militia, with some Emigrants and Indian support) was repulsed by the Americans.

In late October, the American troop strength surged again with the arrival of 500 men from New York and Connecticut, including Brigadier General David Wooster. This news, combined with the new battery trained on the fort, news of the failed relief expedition, and dwindling supplies, made the situation in the fort quite grim.

On November 1, Montgomery sent a truce flag, carried by a prisoner captured during Carleton's aborted relief attempt, into the fort. The man delivered a letter, in which Montgomery, pointing out that relief was unlikely to come, offered to negotiate a surrender. Preston, not entirely trusting the man's report, sent out one of his captains to confer with Montgomery. The counter-offer, which Montgomery rejected owing to the lateness of the season, was to hold a truce for four days, after which the garrison would surrender if no relief came. Montgomery let the captain examine another prisoner from Carleton's expedition, who confirmed what the first one had reported. Montgomery then repeated his demand for an immediate surrender, terms for which were drawn up the next day.

Preston's troops marched out of the fort and surrendered their weapons on November 3, with the regulars in full dress uniform. He surrendered 536 officers and soldiers, 79 Canadiens and 8 English volunteers.

Following the news of St. Jean's surrender, Carleton immediately began preparing to leave Montreal. He left Montreal on November 11, two days before American troops entered the city without opposition. Narrowly escaping capture when his fleet was forced to surrender after being threatened by batteries at Sorel, he made his way to Quebec to prepare that city's defenses.

Casualties on both sides during the siege were relatively light, but the Continental Army suffered a significant reduction in force due to illness throughout the siege. Furthermore, the long siege meant that the Continental Army had to move on Quebec City with winter setting in, and with many enlistments nearing expiration at year's end. Richard Montgomery was promoted to Major General on December 9, 1775, as a result of his successful capture of Saint Jean and Montreal. He never found out; the news did not reach the American camp outside Quebec before he died in the December 31 Battle of Quebec.

The siege of Fort Saint-Jean lasted for 45 days from September 13th to until the fort capitulated November 3rd, 1775. The American invasion of Canada continued into the year 1776 until the arrival of British reinforcements helped to successfully drive the invasion force back across the border.