The First Continental Congress, meeting in 1774,…
June 1775 CE
On receiving news of the events at Ticonderoga, Congress drafts a second letter to the inhabitants of Quebec, which is sent north in June with James Price, another sympathetic Montreal merchant.
While there is no substantive response to either letter, the second, and other communications from the New York Congress, combine with the activities of vocal American supporters, stir up the Quebec population in the summer of 1775.
News of the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and especially the raids on Fort Saint-Jean, had electrified the Quebec population.
Colonel Dudley Templer, in charge of the garrison at Montreal, had issued a call on May 19 to raise a militia for defense of the city, and requested natives living nearby to also take up arms.
Only forty men, mostly French-speaking landowning seigneurs and petty nobility, had been raised in and around Montreal, and they had been sent to Saint-Jean; no natives had come to their aid.
Templer had also prevented merchants sympathetic to the American cause from sending supplies south in response to Allen's letter.
General Carleton, notified by Hazen of the events on May 20, had immediately ordered the garrisons of Montreal and Trois-Rivières to fortify Saint-Jean.
Some troops garrisoned at Quebec had also been sent to Saint-Jean.
Most of the remaining Quebec troops have been dispatched to a variety of other points along the Saint Lawrence, as far west as Oswegatchie, to guard against potential invasion threats.
Carleton now travels to Montreal to oversee the defense of the province from there, leaving the city of Quebec in the hands of Lieutenant Governor Hector Cramahé.
Before leaving, Carleton prevails on Monsignor Jean-Olivier Briand, the Bishop of Quebec, to issue his own call to arms in support of the provincial defense, which is circulated primarily in the areas around Montreal and Trois-Rivières.
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