Government, and to the utter
Dismay of the abettors of Sedition and Rebellion, General
Carleton arrived in the _Fell_, arm'd ship, accompanied
by an arm'd schooner. We saw our Salvation in his Presence.'

CHAPTER V

BELEAGUERMENT
1775-1776

When Carleton finally turned at bay within the walls of
Quebec the British flag waved over less than a single
one out of the more than a million square miles that had
so recently been included within the boundaries of Canada.
The landward walls cut off the last half-mile of the
tilted promontory which rises three hundred feet above
the St Lawrence but only one hundred above the valley of
the St Charles. This promontory is just a thousand yards
wide where the landward walls run across it, and not much
wider across the world-famous Heights and Plains of
Abraham, which then covered the first two miles beyond.
The whole position makes one of Nature's strongholds when
the enemy can be kept at arm's length. But Carleton had
no men to spare for more than the actual walls and the
narrow little strip of the Lower Town between the base
of the cliff and the St Lawrence. So the enemy closed in
along the Heights' and among the suburbs, besides occupying
any point of vantage they chose across the St Lawrence
or St Charles.

The walls were by no means fit to stand a siege, a fact
which Carleton had frequently reported. But, as the
Americans had neither the men nor the material for a
regular siege, they were obliged to confine themselves
to a mere beleaguerment, with the chance of taking Quebec
by assault. One of Carleton's first acts was to proclaim
that every able-bodied man refusing to bear arms was to
leave the town within four days. But, though this had
the desired effect of clearing out nearly all the dangerous
rebels, the Americans still believed they had enough
sympathizers inside to turn the scale of victory if they
could only manage to take the Lower Town, with all its
commercial property and shipping, or gain a footing
anywhere within the walls.

There were five thousand souls left in Quebec, which was
well provisioned for the winter. The women, children,
and men unfit to bear arms numbered three thousand. The
'exempts' amounted to a hundred and eighty. As there was
a growing suspicion about many of these last, Carleton
paraded them for medical examination at the beginning of
March, when, a good deal more than half were found quite
fit for duty. These men had been mal