The siege of Fort St. Jean (September 17 – November 3, 1775 French: Siège du Fort Saint-Jean) was conducted by American Brigadier General Richard Montgomery on the town and fort of Saint-Jean, also called St. John, St. Johns, or St. John's, in the British province of Quebec during the American Revolutionary War. The siege lasted from September 17 to November 3, 1775.
After several false starts in early September, the Continental Army established a siege around Fort St. Jean. Beset by illness, bad weather, and logistical problems, they established mortar batteries that were able to penetrate into the interior of the fort, but the defenders, who were well-supplied with munitions, but not food and other supplies, persisted in their defence, believing the siege would be broken by forces from Montreal under General Guy Carleton. On October 18, the nearby Fort Chambly fell, and on October 30, an attempt at relief by Carleton was thwarted. When word of this made its way to St. Jean's defenders, combined with a new battery opening fire on the fort, the fort's defenders capitulated, surrendering on November 3.
The fall of Fort St. Jean opened the way for the American army to march on Montreal, which fell without battle on November 13. General Carleton escaped from Montreal, and made his way to Quebec City to prepare its defences against an anticipated attack.
Background
Fort Saint-Jean guarded the entry to the province of Quebec on the Richelieu River at the northern end of Lake Champlain. When Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen captured Fort Ticonderoga and raided Fort St. Jean in May 1775, Quebec was garrisoned by about 600 regular troops, some of which were widely distributed throughout Quebec's large territory.
Continental Army preparations
The invasion of Quebec began when about 1500 men, then under the command of General Philip Schuyler, arrived at the undefended Île-aux-Noix in the Richelieu River on September 4, 1775. On September 6, the Americans began making forays toward Fort St. Jean, only 10 mi (16 km) away. The army was initially composed of militia forces from New York and Connecticut, with most of its operation directed by Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, who took over complete command from Schuyler on September 16, when Schuyler became too ill to continue leading the invasion.
British defensive preparations
Fort St. Jean had been under preparations for an attack from the south ever since Arnold's raid on Fort St. Jean on May 18, in which he captured its small garrison and Lake Champlain's only large military ship. When news of that raid reached Montreal, 140 men under the command of Major Charles Preston were immediately dispatched to hold the fort. Another 50 Canadian militia were raised in Montreal on May 19, and were also sent to the fort.
When Moses Hazen, the messenger bearing news of Arnold's raid, reached Quebec City and notified British Governor and General Guy Carleton of the raid, Carleton immediately dispatched additional troops from there and Trois-Rivières to St. Jean. Carleton himself went to Montreal on May 26 to oversee arrangements for the defense of the province, which he decided to concentrate on St. Jean, as it was the most likely invasion route.
By the time the Americans arrived at Île-aux-Noix, Fort St. Jean was defended by about 750 men under the command of Major Charles Preston. Most were regular troops from the 7th and 26th Regiments of Foot and the Royal Artillery. There were 90 locally raised militia, and 20 members of Colonel Allen Maclean's Royal Highland Emigrants, veterans of the French and Indian War. A detachment of Indians (probably Caughnawaga from a nearby village) patrolled outside the fort under the direction of Claude de Lorimier and Gilbert Tice. The Richelieu River was patrolled by an armed schooner, Royal Savage, under the command of Lieutenant William Hunter, with other boats under construction.
The fort, sited on the west bank of the Richelieu River, consisted of two earthen redoubts about 600 ft (180 m) apart, surrounded by a ditch 7 ft (2.1 m) wide and 8 ft (2.4 m) deep lined with chevaux de frise. The southern redoubt was roughly 250 by 200 feet (80 by 65 metres), and contained 6 buildings, including a bake house, the fort's magazine, and storage houses. The northern redoubt was slightly larger, enclosing a two-storey stone house used as a barracks. The defenders had cleared brush for several hundred yards around the fort to ensure a clear field of fire. They had erected a wooden palisade west of the redoubts and dug a trench connecting the two redoubts for ease of communications. The eastern side of the fort faced the river, where there was a shipyard and anchorage for Royal Savage.
First approach
Skirmish with Indians
On September 6, Generals Schuyler and Montgomery led a force of men in bateaux to a landing point about 1 mi (1.6 km) upriver from Fort St. Jean. Schuyler remained with the boats while Montgomery led some men into the swampy lands above the fort. There they were surprised by about 100 Indians led by Tice and Lorimier. In the ensuing skirmish, the Americans suffered 8 dead and 9 wounded, while the Indians suffered 4 dead and 5 wounded, with Tice among the wounded. The American troops, which were relatively untried militia forces, retreated to the boats, where they erected a breastwork for protection. The fort's defenders, seeing this, fired their cannon at the breastwork, prompting the Americans to retreat about 1 mi (1.6 km) upriver, where they set up a second breastwork and camped for the night. The Indians, resentful that neither the British forces in the fort nor the habitants had come to their aid in the engagement, returned to their homes.
At this camp, Schuyler was visited by a local man, believed by some historians to be Moses Hazen. Hazen, a Massachusetts-born retired officer who lived near the fort, painted a bleak portrait of the American situation. He said that the fort was defended by the entire 26th regiment and 100 Indians, that it was well-stocked and ready for a siege. He also said that the habitants, while friendly to the American cause, were unlikely to help the Americans unless the prospects for victory looked good. Schuyler held a war council on September 7, in which the command decided to retreat back to Île-aux-Noix. However, on September 8, reinforcements arrived: another 800 men including Connecticut militia under David Wooster and New Yorkers with artillery, joined them. Heartened by this arrival, they decided instead to proceed with a nighttime attempt on the fort. Schuyler, whose illness was getting more severe (he was so ill "as not to be able to hold the pen"), turned command of the army over to Montgomery.
Reports of this first contact between opposing forces outside St. Jean were often wildly exaggerated, with many local reports claiming it as some kind of victory. The Quebec Gazette, for example, reported that 60 Indians had driven off 1,500 Americans, killing 30 and wounding 40. Following this news, General Carleton issued orders for all of the nearby parishes to call up ten percent of their militia. Officers of the militia reported to Montreal, but many militia men stayed home. By September 7, a troop of about 120 men was raised, which was sent to Fort St. Jean.
Propaganda and recruiting
On September 8, Schuyler sent Ethan Allen (acting as a volunteer since he had been deposed as head of the Green Mountain Boys by Seth Warner) and John Brown to circulate a proclamation announcing the Americans' arrival, and their desire to free the Canadians from the bondage of British rule. Allen and Brown traveled through the parishes between St. Jean and Montreal, where they were well-received, and even provided with local guards. James Livingston, a local grain merchant (and a relative of Montgomery's wife), began raising a local militia near Chambly, eventually gathering nearly 300 men.
Allen also visited the village of the Caughnawaga, from whom he received assurances of their neutrality. The Caughnawaga had been the subject of a propaganda war, with Guy Johnson, the British Indian agent, trying to convince them (as well as other tribes of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy) to take up arms against the Americans. However, Schuyler had successfully negotiated an agreement in August with most of the Haudenosaunee to remain neutral. Word of this agreement reached the Caughnawaga on September 10; when Carleton and Johnson learned of it, Johnson sent Daniel Claus and Joseph Brant in an attempt to change the minds of the Caughnawaga; their entreaties were refused.
Second approach
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, panic ensued as both groups 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, which their commander, Colonel Rudolphus Ritzema, was apparently unable to stop.
While the command staff met to discuss the next move, word came that the British warship Royal Savage was approaching. This started a disorganized retreat upriver back to Île-aux-Noix, during 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 that time so ill he thought a withdrawal to Ticonderoga necessary. Leaving that day, he turned full command of the invasion over to Montgomery. Bad weather and the swampy, malaria-infested terrain of Île-aux-Noix wore down the troops, who also increasingly took ill. 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.
Siege begins
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. Seeing this, Preston sent 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, 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, constructing a mortar battery to its south. He ordered Brown to establish a position at La Prairie, one of the sites with a crossing of the Saint Lawrence River to Montreal. Ethan Allen went with a small company of Americans to collect Canadiens that Livingston had been recruiting, and take them to monitor Longueuil, the other major crossing. Livingston had established a base at Point-Olivier, below Fort Chambly, another aging fort at the base of some rapids in the Richelieu River, and urged his compatriots join him there. Some Loyalists attempted to dissuade others from joining with Livingston; Livingston's supporters sometimes violently opposed attempts by Loyalists to organize, and Carleton did nothing at the time to assist the Loyalists outside the city.
Allen, renowned for bravado in the action at Fort Ticonderoga, decided when he reached Longueuil on September 24 to capture Montreal. His efforts failed the next day at the Battle of Longue-Pointe, with Allen and some of his men captured by the British. The alarm raised by Allen's proximity to Montreal resulted in the mustering of about 1,200 men from rural districts outside Montreal. Carleton failed to capitalize on this upwelling of Loyalist support by using them for a relief expedition against the besieging Americans. After several weeks of inaction by Carleton, the rural men drifted away, called by the demands of home and harvest. (Carleton did take advantage of the moment to order the arrest of Thomas Walker, a Montreal merchant who was openly pro-American and had been reporting to the Americans.)