I am at the
head of troops accustomed to Success, confident of
the righteousness of the cause they are engaged in,
inured to danger, & so highly incensed at your
inhumanity, illiberal abuse, and the ungenerous means
employed to prejudice them in the mind of the Canadians
that it is with difficulty I restrain them till my
Batteries are ready from assaulting your works, which
afford them a fair opportunity of ample vengeance and
just retaliation. Firing upon a flag of truce, hitherto
unprecedented, even among savages, prevents my taking
the ordinary mode of communicating my sentiments.
However, I will at any rate acquit my conscience.
Should you persist in an unwarrantable defence, the
consequences be upon your own head. Beware of destroying
stores of any kind, Publick or Private, as you have
done at Montreal and in Three Rivers--If you do, by
Heaven, there will be no mercy shown.

Though Montgomery wrote bunkum like the common politician
of that and many a later age, he was really a brave
soldier. What galled him into fury was 'grave Carleton's'
quiet refusal to recognize either him or any other rebel
commander as the accredited leader of a hostile army. It
certainly must have been exasperating for the general of
the Continental Congress to be reduced to such expedients
as tying a grandiloquent ultimatum to an arrow and shooting
it into the beleaguered town. The charge of firing on
flags of truce was another instance of 'talking for
Buncombe.' Carleton never fired on any white flag. But
he always sent the same answer: that he could hold no
communication with any rebels unless they came to implore
the king's pardon. This, of course, was an aggravation
of his offensive calmness in the face of so much
revolutionary rage. To individual rebels of all sorts he
was, if anything, over-indulgent. He would not burn the
suburbs of Quebec till the enemy forced him to it, though
many of the houses that gave the Americans the best cover
belonged to rebel Canadians. He went out of his way to
be kind to all prisoners, especially if sick or wounded.
And it was entirely owing to his restraining influence
that the friendly Indians had not raided the border
settlements of New England during the summer. Nor was he
animated only by the very natural desire of bringing back
rebellious subjects to what he thought their true
allegiance, as his subsequent actions amply proved. He
simply a