fight on either side. What the priest and
the landowner could do to make him fight for Britain was done, but, for
all that, Sir Guy Carleton, the Governor of Canada, found recruiting
impossible.

Washington believed that the war would be won by the side which held
Canada. He saw that from Canada would be determined the attitude of the
savages dwelling in the wild spaces of the interior; he saw, too, that
Quebec as a military base in British hands would be a source of grave
danger. The easy capture of Fort Ticonderoga led him to underrate
difficulties. If Ticonderoga why not Quebec? Nova Scotia might be
occupied later, the Acadians helping. Thus it happened that, soon
after taking over the command, Washington was busy with a plan for the
conquest of Canada. Two forces were to advance into that country; one by
way of Lake Champlain under General Schuyler and the other through the
forests of Maine under Benedict Arnold.

Schuyler was obliged through illness to give up his command, and it was
an odd fortune of war that put General Richard Montgomery at the head
of the expedition going by way of Lake Champlain. Montgomery had served
with Wolfe at the taking of Louisbourg and had been an officer in the
proud British army which had received the surrender of Canada in 1760.
Not without searching of heart had Montgomery turned against his former
sovereign. He was living in America when war broke out; he had married
into an American family of position; and he had come to the view that
vital liberty was challenged by the King. Now he did his work well,
in spite of very bad material in his army. His New Englanders were, he
said, "every man a general and not one of them a soldier." They feigned
sickness, though, as far as he had learned, there was "not a man dead of
any distemper." No better were the men from New York, "the sweepings of
the streets" with morals "infamous." Of the officers, too, Montgomery
had a poor opinion. Like Washington he declared that it was necessary to
get gentlemen, men of education and integrity, as officers, or disaster
would follow. Nevertheless St. Johns, a British post on the Richelieu,
about thirty miles across country from Montreal, fell to Montgomery on
the 3d of November, after a siege of six weeks; and British regulars
under Major Preston, a brave and competent officer, yielded to a crude
volunteer army with whole regiments lacking uniforms. Montreal could
make no defense. On the 12th of November