Arnold also brought some of his misery upon himself. In mid-October, when his force was 160 miles from Québec, he sent a letter ahead to friends in the Canadian city in a legitimate, if somewhat risky, attempt to gain information on the British disposition. He entrusted the letter to an Indian who had joined the expedition around Norridgewock and who immediately turned the note over to the British. While Arnold could be faulted for being reckless, he was in dire need of the intelligence and had no other means to obtain it. In his position, it was probably a chance worth taking, but he was not completely injudicious. In his letter, he claimed he was leading ‘about 2,000 men.’ If the letter did reach the British, they would have a rather nasty nugget to chew on.

Somehow, though, Arnold’s leadership kept his troops’ morale high, and spirits remained generally excellent among the survivors–until October 25, when Colonel Roger Enos, commanding the rearmost division, turned back with some 350 men. Despite the difficulties, the remainder plodded on, held together only by Arnold’s vigorous generalship. The bateaux foundered constantly, losing precious supplies overboard. As the troops waded through frozen swamps, Suzannah Grier tucked her skirts up around her waistband and carried her husband’s equipment over her head, while Captain Hendricks admonished the men to avert their eyes and make no lewd remarks. Rations became so scarce that the men were forced to consume pet dogs and make gruel out of wax candles.

On November 8, just five days before Montgomery took Montréal, Arnold arrived at Point Levis, opposite Québec on the St. Lawrence, with barely 600 frozen, starving men. The trek had taken six weeks, twice what he had estimated.

But now that Arnold was here, what could he do? His ‘army’ was too weak to take the objective. Had Arnold’s ill-fated letter served its purpose, he would have known that only a handful of soldiers garrisoned Québec, and if he could have crossed the St. Lawrence, the city might have fallen more easily than he thought possible. Instead, there seemed to be little he could do but sit back and wait for Montgomery.

After the fall of Montréal to Montgomery, the initiative shifted somewhat to the British. Caught between the two cities was a 200-man reinforcement column of Canadian volunteers heading east under Lt. Col. Allen Maclean, and behind him was Sir Guy Carleton, the British governor general of Canada. Carleton, dressed as a farmer, took a rowboat and narrowly avoided Montgomery’s troops. While he made his way to Québec, its garrison was already preparing a stout defense.

Arnold’s next step was to get his army across the St. Lawrence. The bateaux had been left some 100 miles behind, leaving canoes as the only conveyances available to the expedition. Arnold began shuttling his men across the river in them the first chance he got–but due to high winds and rough water that opportunity did not arrive until November 13. He had ferried about 500 men across the river when a patrolling British barge came upon the American army, and after a brief exchange of shots, Arnold ended the effort, leaving his army temporarily split.

Silently leading the men he had to King’s Road and heading eastward across the Plains of Abraham, Arnold brought his column up to the edge of the woods about a mile from St. Louis Gate. By dawn his men had occupied some local dwellings, and Arnold had established his headquarters at the country estate of Colonel Henry Caldwell. Once the area was secure, most of the exhausted Americans fell asleep, but Arnold remained awake. Although exhilarated by his success thus far, he was sure the British knew all about him and his men and decided that a surprise attack on the city was now out of the question. In fact, the patrol boat’s crew failed to report their findings for several hours. Later, when the British finally were aware of Arnold’s presence, they sent out a land patrol that captured one of Daniel Morgan’s men, Private George Merchant, who had been ordered to watch St. Johns’ Gate but had fallen asleep at his post.

Arnold was certain the enemy would sally out from the city, and he prepared to meet them. On the 14th, he even had the audacity to send a rather blustery letter to Hector Cramahé, the lieutenant governor of Québec, demanding the city’s immediate surrender ‘in the name of the United Colonies.’ When Matthias Ogden, accompanied by a drummer, tried to deliver the message, he received Cramahé’s reply in advance–in the form of a cannon shot that sent him scurrying back to rebel lines. The New Jersey?born rebel tried again the next day, carrying both the ultimatum and a message from Arnold stating that Cramahé’s behavior the previous evening was unworthy of his ‘honor and valor’ and represented ‘an insult I could not have expected from a private soldier.’ Cramahé’s response was no different but more accurate–his salvo almost killed Ogden.

The British forces in Québec, still under Maclean, were far weaker than Arnold realized. Although the city had ample provisions, cannons and ammunition, there were only 1,200 troops in the garrison, and half were civilian militiamen who the British felt were no more reliable than their American rebel counterparts. Only 70 were Regular troops, while the balance were sailors drawn from ships in Québec Harbor and Maclean’s own Canadian volunteers. Given that situation, Maclean was not about to repeat the error made on September 13, 1759 by French General Louis Joseph de St. Véran, marquis de Montcalm (ironically, Montgomery had served under Maj. Gen. James Wolfe during that earlier fight for Québec, in which both Wolfe and Montcalm lost their lives). Rather than risk battle on the Plains of Abraham, the British sat back in the city and waited for the Americans to come to them. No amount of American demonstrating outside the city could persuade the defenders to come out.

Arnold then laid siege to the city, which was so ineffectual that he withdrew some 20 miles west to Pointe-Aux-Trembles. As he left the area of Québec, his men were disheartened by the boisterous welcome being given Governor Carleton as he entered the city on November 19. Shortly after arriving at Point-Aux-Trembles, however, Arnold learned that Montréal had fallen and that Carleton’s arrival in Québec was more escape than anything else. Better yet was the news that Montgomery was on his way with reinforcements.

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