■^"^■^ ''"\n% IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) V A O {./ tg. , (i r'uiq hcim'H (III iiKilln.'' Sanguinet was, howi ver, at the time at Montreal, and whatever the expression may mean, he caiuiot be acrepted as an authority for what took place during the siege." Lot us now sift the foregoing evidence adduced by Dr. Kingsford. Finlay's testimony seems to us unything but conclusive as favouring Dr. Kingsford's assumption, especially when read in conjunction with the statement of Colonel Caldwell, which iminediutely i'ollows it, and which mentions five o'clock in the morning of the Slst December as the hour wlion (!aptain Fraser gave the alarm. Old Sergeant James Thomp'^on, alonomason and "overseer of the woiks," as foreman, not aa cnginoor, and who lived to bo 98, dying on [le moinb] ASSAULT ON QUEBEC IN 1775 468 the 30lh August, 1830, who left a diary which he dictated to his son^ James Thompson, Jr., on the 31st July, 1828, two years before his death, can scarcely be accepted as a sufficient authority ; the memory of nona- genarians attaining 96 years being liable to become faulty. This supposi- tion becomes a certainty on referring to another passage in his diary, dictated also on the 31st July, 1828, wherein it is said that "on the Slst December, before daylight, General Montgomery made an attempt at assault by Prds-de-Ville and Sault-au-Matelot," etc., "where he and two of his officers and a sergeant were shot dead by a single discharge," etc. Guy Carleton, commander-in-chief, in a letter to General Howe, Quebec, 12th January, 1776, relates the attack as being made on the 31st December, 1775. The evidence of Henry, a volunteer in the troops of Congress, taken prisoner on the 31st December, 1775, quoted by Kingsford, is open to suspicion, as his presumed diary or memoir, instead of being in his hand- writing, was dictated to his daughter thirty-seven years later, viz., in 1812, as appears by the following ; " The campaign against Quebec was " dictated to his daughter Ann Mary, the mother of the writer, with the " aid of casual notes and memoranda, from his (Henry's) bed of sick- " ness— his latest years. The manuscript received no revision at his " hands, for he was called away shortly after the pages were written. " His widow gave it to the press in 1812, and it was printed without " even a correction of verbal or typographical errors." ("Account of Arnold's Campaign against Quebec," published by Maunscll, Albany, 1817.) Sangninet, a member of the Montreal Bar, who left what has ejer been held a copious and reliable journal of the siege operations of 1775, and who places the assault on the morning of the 31st December, visited Quebec in May, 1776, when the particulars of the attack were fresh in everyone's mind. According to Dr. Kingsford he cannot be accepted as an authority for what took place during the siege, on account of his absence ! The doctor, however, accepts the version of the journal attributed to Badcaux, a Three Rivers notary, though Badeaux no more than San- gninet was present at Quebec on the « ny of the engagement. The doctor, however, in Badoaux's case forgot, or did not clioose to add, that on the margin of Badeaux's manuscript, in Badeaux's own handwriting, occurs the correction " 31 decembro, 1775," and that the learned Jacques Viger, the antiquary, who owned Badeaux's manuscript journal, inscribed under the correction the words " Et c'est vrai. (J. V.)," his initials. Another work highly prized for its historic value, Hawkins' "Picture of (iuobec," published in 1834, with the joint collaboration of the scholaily Dr. John Charlton Fislior, of the learned Andrew Stuart, Q.C., and tho lat-o Judge Adam Tom, fixes the date of Montgomery and Arnold's assault on Quebec on tho 3l8t December, 1775. ■■r 466 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA In 1834 these eminent men had special facilities to inform themselves of the date, as they had numbered among their contemporaries eye- witnesses of the battle, such as Sergeant J. Thompson and others. Taking into consideration the array of authorities available to the analyst of that period, it seems to me a matter of regret that such an industrious writer as Dr. Kingsford could not find the time to extend the field of his researches, and should have taken on himself, on the slender evidence he adduces, to alter the date of the assault on Quebec in 1775, as given by Bancroft and other reliable historians. NoTK.— Since the above was written, liistorinil works of undoubted merit otherwise have been published with Dr. Kingsford's erroneous date as to Mont- gomery and Arnold's as'-.iult on Quebec in 1775. There can be no doubt that the enemy, mustering at their re.spective lieadquarters very lata on tlie night of the 30th December, were marching on the slumbering city at early dawn and before on the 31st of December, 1775.