In this episode, we continue our exploration of the Napoleoleonic Wars with a look at the role of the French and Indian War in the American Revolution. This episode focuses primarily on the events surrounding the conflict between the Articles of Confederation and the War for Independence.
00:04:46.000You know, they'll pay a little bit of homage to that, but very rarely do you hear about the context of, you know, Dutch involvement, Spanish involvement, all of the battles that were happening around the globe as a result of what was going on in this, essentially, what was a civil war between two factions of the British Empire.
00:05:06.900So important context in that regard that we'll get into more tonight.
00:05:12.260Right. With that all being said, there's a few key things before we jump right into this next episode that I'd like to draw people's attention to, to maybe pay attention to while we're watching this episode.
00:05:28.040The first is the importance of Catholic Quebec.
00:05:33.180Now, this is going to be explained quite a bit in this episode, but understanding that the importance.
00:05:53.780And that you cannot separate these two things, whether you like it or not, whether you're a fan of the Catholic Church or not, whether you are a fan of the modern French or not.
00:06:23.080So you'll see more of that tonight and you'll see why it's it's important, you know, through various clips that we'll get into after we watch the main thing, the main episode.
00:06:34.660The second point that I'd like to draw your attention to as we go through this episode is that none of these factions involved are unanimous.
00:06:49.340There is no uniform consent or uniform position within any of these factions.
00:06:55.060And so the reason why I draw your attention to this is that, you know, oftentimes the way it's presented in in modernity or the way history is often presented to us, you know, decades or hundreds of years after the fact is that there's two sides.
00:07:11.680Right. There's two sides. And, you know, in this context, the Americans believe one thing and the British believe another thing or the Americans believe one thing and the French believe one thing.
00:07:23.980And that's not how it ever is. And so understanding that within each of these factions involved in these conflicts and in this historical period,
00:07:33.620that there is people who desire different things on both sides and ultimately, you know, one side wins out.
00:07:42.760But you'll see this brought up quite a bit in this episode on both sides, on how there was dissatisfaction among, you know, the Habitans in Quebec or how there was dissatisfaction among loyalists or conservatives in America,
00:07:56.500about how there was people in America, about how there was people in America, about how there was people in Britain who did not want to do this and wanted to negotiate with their American counterparts in the Continental Congress.
00:08:05.380They wanted to make concessions and others that wanted to crush them outright.
00:08:08.220Right. And so the reason I bring your attention to this is that it's an important thing to understand as we live through it in our own lives currently,
00:08:17.780that. Unanimity is very rare among the people and ultimately, you know,
00:08:27.740it's only through the lens of history and decades, if not hundreds of years that this bias of, you know,
00:08:35.620consistency of belief among an entire people, you know, manifest.
00:08:41.160So just something to keep in mind generally as we, you know, examine history.
00:08:47.480The last thing that I wanted to bring up is the.
00:08:53.100The nature of the constantly shifting allegiances that occur in European politics and how essentially is particularly in this time period,
00:09:22.360obviously with the American revolution,
00:09:24.140what you'll see is that as Britain emerges out of the seven years war or the French and Indian war as the hegemonic power in North America,
00:09:35.040there was a desire among other powers in Europe to interrupt this.
00:09:43.340And you'll see this occur again and again.
00:09:46.800And as we move forward into next episode,
00:09:49.480which is going to focus somewhat on well,
01:12:17.540And yeah, you can see there that one in particular is pretty jam packed with information. And obviously, it covers, it's pretty rapid fire accounts of the American Revolution for obvious reasons.
01:12:59.180Which is the point, I suppose, of what we're getting into here.
01:13:01.960So I hope the points that I addressed early on weren't lost on a lot of you, the importance of Catholic Quebec and, you know, documents such as the Quebec Act, and how these have ended up becoming extremely important even in modern day.
01:13:48.340In particular, the Catholic Church, it's much more likely that the Quebecois would have rebelled in this time period and joined the Americans.
01:13:59.580So, you know, that's, that's diplomacy. That's, you know, Britain's, it showcases one of the better aspects of British diplomacy. Let's put it that way.
01:14:16.080But I have a lot of clips to go through on this one. I think I have about twice as many as I did for the previous episode, just because there is a lot to unpack. There's a lot of little things that we can add some color to and some, you know, relevant information to flesh out a little bit.
01:14:34.600So I'm going to try to do this within the next hour and 45 minutes, hopefully, and then get to the super chats and whatnot.
01:14:44.080I did mark some comments there. So, you know, as we're going through here, I will try to follow the chat if you guys have anything you'd like to throw in on these clips or, you know, the relevant items being discussed, but let's get right into it.
01:14:59.820So the first is right off the bat, we'll get straight to it with the, the importance of understanding Catholicism in the context of Quebec and Quebec overall as being part of the Canadian identity, which frankly, you know, I, I, I know it's tongue in cheek and I saw quite a bit of it in the chat, but this, you know, the anti-French sentiment, I mean, it's, it obviously it's going to live on in, in Anglo-Canada forever.
01:15:26.180And, you know, it's been one of the defining conflicts in our history, but the truth is that it's of extreme significance to who we are and where we came from and why we're, um, you know, in this position that we are in. So let's, uh, start digging into it.
01:15:43.780Left without leaders, the ordinary Canadians, the Habitans, carried on as best they could, drawing strength from their religious heritage.
01:15:53.900This heritage would help them maintain their identity and resist submersion by a conqueror.
01:16:01.140This was the homeland they had built, the only homeland they knew.
01:16:05.580There was no question of returning to France as their leaders had.
01:16:09.420Now their leadership would come from the church and it would be their beacon of hope.
01:16:13.980As you can see, this is obviously the main institution that the, the Habitans or the French fell back on, you know, following the conquest of new France by the British.
01:16:29.940Um, and winning over the influence of the clergy was significant as we saw, you know, later in the episode, it will come, we'll come back to it whenever it comes up at the relevant time period, but it's not to be underestimated.
01:16:41.980And this is why, you know, a lot of people ask, I don't know if they ask themselves, but, you know, I've heard people, you know, bring it up before of, you know, why does Canada have subsidized Catholic schools?
01:16:54.020Like, why do we have religious institutions that are subsidized by the state?
01:17:00.040Um, you know, we've always had this, this particularly, um, you know, I don't know if you'd call it special, but, uh, a relationship with the Catholic church.
01:17:11.360That protects it and ensures that it will continue to exist in this country.
01:17:15.140And you can, you know, debate whether or not that's a good thing or not, but that's simply the reality of it.
01:17:22.740Um, and that's why we have the schools.
01:17:24.780That's why we have the institutions that we have.
01:17:26.740That's why we had the residential schools.
01:17:28.460It's why we had, you know, the missionary work that we had.
01:17:31.000So, um, you know, the, the Catholics were, um, ensured certain rights in this country and that, you know, is one of the foundations of, uh, both Quebec identity and Canadian identity.
01:17:43.820So, um, we'll move right along here though, to, um, you know, how this played out in the, the post, uh, French and Indian war period here.
01:17:54.380Um, and how, how the English governed again, this is, I think a masterful stroke, uh, of the English.
01:18:01.040Um, it really showcases that they had capable administrators who understood that you couldn't give into the demands of petty merchants and, uh, profiteers.
01:18:12.560And that you had to, um, govern shrewdly as opposed to, you know, with short-term aims in mind, such as profit.
01:18:22.980Hard-headed merchants from Albany, Boston, and faraway London had followed Wolf to Canada to take over the fur trade.
01:18:30.020Almost from the outset, they were in conflict with Governor Murray, seeking for themselves strong political powers at the expense of the French Canadians.
01:18:39.920They were impatient of regulations that hampered their ambitions, which extended far out to the West, to the source of the precious furs.
01:18:47.900In the West, the new Montreal merchants hoped to perpetuate the partnership that the French had created between Indian and white man.
01:19:02.500But now, British traders would be at the helm, with French voyageurs manning the canoes.
01:19:07.740To achieve their goals, the merchants demanded the creation of a legislative assembly, which they could dominate, since Catholics could not hold office.
01:19:23.160But Governor Murray refused to give them this advantage over the French Canadians.
01:19:27.480For he had come to admire greatly the French devotion to religion and the orderly life that stemmed from this.
01:19:33.640He found the ruthless ambitions of the merchants distasteful, compared with the piety, industriousness, and simple pleasures of the Habitans.
01:19:51.820Thus, under Murray, Quebec was governed not through an elected assembly, but with a small council, which the governor appointed.
01:19:59.560Yeah, so there's a few things in that clip that are relevant.
01:20:07.460The first, obviously, being that you can see a very quick shift.
01:20:11.780If you recall from last episode, a couple times they mentioned that in the eyes of the British, the only good Indian was a dead Indian.
01:20:19.440And in the eyes of the French, the only good Indian was a living one that they could trade with.
01:20:24.220Interesting how quickly that changes, isn't it?
01:20:26.860All of a sudden, the English merchants aren't so fond of dead Indians now that they control the fur trade.
01:20:32.760And you see this conflict come back later, where the merchants who had migrated north from Albany and other parts of New York and New England to Montreal, to the central hub of the fur trade.
01:20:47.480All of a sudden, they weren't so big on encroaching on Indian territory, and they wanted to preserve it.
01:20:54.240So fascinating how quickly your motivations can change when there's something to be gained.
01:21:02.300The other thing there as well that I think is interesting is this kind of aristocratic versus mercantile perspective.
01:21:14.080So you see that the merchants, again, who migrated from New York and New England,
01:21:22.720they wanted to govern through elected assemblies because Catholics wouldn't have been able to be elected to them.
01:21:31.660So basically, it would have been a form of tyranny over the French.
01:21:39.840And you can see how the aristocrats found this distasteful.
01:21:43.520They viewed this as kind of shameful, something that, you know, in contrast to the humble, kind of respectful, dignified piety of the peasant class of the French,
01:22:04.980These hand-rubbing merchants who wanted to just rip and tear into everything and make as much profit as possible was somewhat offensive to the notion of aristocratic values.
01:22:16.980And then the last thing as well from that clip that's interesting is you can see the difference between the two,
01:22:24.040the old world system and the new world system or the liberal democratic system or the republicanism,
01:22:30.860the parliamentarianism would probably be the best word for it of the English merchants versus the authoritarian governing style of,
01:22:41.760you know, what was New France, but then became the council under the British.
01:22:48.940So unlike the other colonies that had legislative assemblies, elected town councils, things like this,
01:22:55.300that didn't translate to the colony of Quebec under the British because that was not a system that the French were accustomed to.
01:23:04.660And so you can see like these, this comes back up again later in the episode,
01:23:08.380whenever the Americans try to appeal to the Quebec law on the grounds of, you know, democracy and liberal values and things like that.
01:23:16.080And they're just like, no, like it doesn't compute to them.
01:23:19.440And it's not a system that they're familiar with and they don't necessarily see why they would have more liberty under that system than the one that they're currently under.
01:23:28.460So, yeah, quite a lot to unpack in that one little clip.
01:23:33.400But obviously there was other motives as well, which we'll get into right now that Governor Murray had regarding this.
01:23:39.580And there's, you could also point out as well that this governor who was Scottish, they mentioned was Catholic.
01:23:45.920And so you could, you could see why he might be sympathetic to them.
01:23:50.880You know, if he's a devout Catholic, the idea of these, these Protestant merchants might be somewhat offensive to him, but we'll get into his other motive right now.
01:24:02.300By making sure that the members of the council were sympathetic to the French, Governor Murray further annoyed the English merchants who wanted special privileges in the fur trade.
01:24:13.180When they were denied these, they blamed French influence.
01:24:17.620Thus, from the beginning, the new Canadian partnership was an uneasy one, with the English motivated by the promise of economic gain and the French by the desire for national survival.
01:24:28.560The French were apprehensive of English exploitation and the English were impatient with a French conservatism that might obstruct progress.
01:24:36.960Each group found difficulty in understanding the other's motivations, and here was the beginning of a problem that was to be Canada's biggest burden for two centuries, right up to the present day.
01:24:49.060But at the time, if Governor Murray favored the French, it wasn't simply his admiration for their way of life.
01:24:56.680He had another motive, to keep Quebec friendly in case the British ever had to face rebellion to the south.
01:25:03.300Yeah, so again, he brings it up there, and it's funny that he uses the words exactly.
01:25:11.780The English were frustrated with French conservatism that might inhibit progress, right?
01:25:19.160So there's this immediate there, like within the Canadian identity, you know, that has its origins in the Quebecois, there is this rooted conservatism, this aversion to liberal democratic values.
01:25:34.620The other thing there as well is, well, there was a very practical reason, obviously, why the British were interested in keeping the French content with the situation.
01:25:45.760And it was because immediately following the French and Indian Wars, the situation with the Americans became very delicate.
01:25:58.260And this was because of the next clip that we'll get into, which was the measures that the British had to take to address the losses that they had suffered in fighting the Seven Years' War or, you know, the French and Indian War.
01:26:10.740So, obviously, this came in the form of the Stamp Act, T-taxes, et cetera, and we'll get into it right now.
01:26:20.200In the English colonies, the presence of many British soldiers meant taxation for the colonists, who had to pay for part of their upkeep.
01:26:31.900This taxation aroused the anger of men like Patrick Henry, who denounced it in the Virginia Assembly.
01:26:37.760Here was a tradition very different from that of Quebec, assemblies, local government, and relatively free speech.
01:26:47.120It was a tradition that went back 150 years.
01:26:50.540From the earliest days in the colonies, parliamentary notions had encouraged the questioning of authority.
01:27:02.000And there were even outbursts of defiance, like Bacon's Rebellion in 1675.
01:27:08.180There was open expression of discontent, in sharp contrast to French Canada, where unrest could find little outlet.
01:27:14.880Unlike Quebec, the English colonies were familiar with edicts, declarations, and manifestos that reflected political unrest.
01:27:23.540Yeah, so, again, drives kind of the point home that I was just getting at, which is this tradition of English parliamentarianism, which has, I won't get into the whole story, it has its roots in the English Civil War, obviously, and the establishment of parliament,
01:27:40.840which led to this idea that there would be some kind of elected body or representatural body, you know, that would discuss these matters and it wouldn't be, you know, an absolute monarchy anymore.
01:27:54.640And these systems were able to flourish in the new world with very little oversight from the noble class.
01:28:05.420So, you had these elected or legislative bodies, these councils, whatever, these, you know, representative bodies that were forming.
01:28:17.160And this allowed for open discussion in what we would call, you know, modern democratic systems.
01:28:25.420With the exception of the limitations on who could take part in it, obviously.
01:28:36.740But the other thing that's important to consider here is that often whenever we look at the American Revolution or whenever it's being conveyed, it's being produced by Americans for Americans.
01:28:48.080And so, you'll often get a pretty strong bias in their direction when it comes to things like the Stamp Act or the T-taxes or whatever it was.
01:28:58.180And that's obvious why, you know, it's their founding mythos.
01:29:05.300And so, they're going to be biased towards it and they're going to accentuate the points that are in their favor, like all people do when reviewing their own history.
01:29:13.120They look at it favorably towards themselves.
01:29:15.340But it's important to understand that the actions that the British were taking within British North America at the time were really not that tyrannical.
01:29:31.220They were trying to recoup the losses that they had suffered, again, through a series of wars.
01:29:38.220And by the way, it's not just the French and Indian wars.
01:29:41.080These are wars that England had been fighting, you know, on and off with the French in North America for 150 years.
01:29:50.040And so, now that they had achieved, you know, hegemony over North America, they were like, okay, we need to profit off of this now.
01:29:59.900We need to recoup some of what we've invested.
01:30:02.640And so, they tried to extract some wealth from the colonies to recuperate those losses, to pay for the soldiers that were being garrisoned in North America,
01:30:13.020to build the forts that were keeping them secure from Indian raids, et cetera, all of these things, right?
01:30:19.620It was a huge investment for the British.
01:30:21.620And from their perspective, they weren't asking for a lot.
01:30:24.660Now, from the American perspective, it wasn't even so much necessarily about the taxes as it was that they didn't have representation within British Parliament,
01:30:32.480which is the whole, you know, no taxation without representation kind of angle to it.
01:30:38.520From the British perspective, this was nonsense.
01:30:40.700They were colonials, they were being governed by the British Parliament, and, you know, they didn't really need representation.
01:30:48.520And, you know, that was to their detriment to not see the potential risk of ignoring these somewhat modest demands.
01:31:02.160There was something else I was going to add to that as well.
01:31:04.420Oh, the other aspect of it as well is that this is kind of an if you want to make, maybe I should play the next clip and then talk about it.
01:31:23.880But the aspect of the mercantilism or these middle class merchant or this merchant class that had emerged in the new world,
01:31:35.640which wanted all of the freedom and no restrictions while getting the security of operating within the British Empire without, you know, paying any of the price for doing so.
01:31:48.700And so there's I like when I look at this, I can see why, you know, the British would be frustrated with this,
01:31:58.260because oftentimes you had American merchants who were not operating within the realm of the law or within the realm of British law
01:32:06.880and sometimes openly in defiance of it, trading with partners that they were at war with, smuggling goods, trading goods illegally,
01:32:19.880I think they mentioned it in the last episode that that, you know, British merchants were trading with the French when they were at war with them during the Seven Years War,
01:32:28.020which was obviously extremely frustrating, you know, from the perspective of Britain.
01:32:40.540But we'll see that come up, I think, in the next clip.
01:32:43.980It was against this restless background that Patrick Henry made his passionate attack on Britain for taxing the colonists without their consent.
01:32:52.080Meanwhile, in the streets, British soldiers guarded bales of paper against an angry populace.
01:33:01.000This was expensive paper that had to be used under the Stamp Act, a law passed in 1765 that involved taxation of various documents and publications.
01:33:12.740For many colonists, this tax symbolized tyranny, and there were riots in which the hated paper was burned.
01:33:22.080The real issue was economic nationalism.
01:33:30.220Colonial commerce, symbolized by a growing Wall Street, had produced a strong middle class in cities up and down the Atlantic coast.
01:33:39.360These men had grown wealthy through trade with Africa and the West Indies.
01:33:43.760Their methods generally defied the strict trading regulations decreed by Britain,
01:33:47.860and they were strongly opposed to any tightening of controls by the mother country,
01:33:52.440of whom they were continually reminded by the presence of the Redcoats.
01:33:55.800So that's exactly what I was just talking about.
01:34:03.380You could see how this would be somewhat frustrating for the British governors looking at this problem of these merchants exacting large amounts of wealth
01:34:14.540while refusing to help pay for the cost of the empire, benefiting from all of the security that they're getting from the empire,
01:34:22.060and then straight up, in some cases, undermining the security efforts of the empire by trading with people that they weren't supposed to be trading with.
01:34:31.120So I think that's kind of understandable, even for maybe Americans who are biased here, as to why the British were frustrated.
01:34:41.000So that's more their side of the story.
01:34:46.760Yeah, Scooby-Doo says, what's the lesson?
01:34:49.960The lesson is, don't let merchants run amok.
01:34:56.940And the interesting thing about this is that while, you know, the American mythos starts with, largely, it's economic nationalism, right?
01:35:06.500It's a rejection of, you know, their imperial connections in order to, you know, have property rights and independence and, you know, not be subjected to financial, like, you know, economic tyranny.
01:35:23.960But the interesting thing about it is that as the war continues, and this might come up in some of these clips later on, you'll see it starts to become something much different.
01:35:34.000And they start to view themselves as a people.
01:35:35.960And you see this in later documents that are issued by, you know, the Continental Congress and eventually just Congress itself, where, you know, they assert, like, you know, that we are a people.
01:35:48.600You know, it makes references to, obviously, there's the Naturalization Act, 1790.
01:35:54.180Like, you start to see how they do define themselves, you know, ethnically as a people.
01:36:04.000And I think there's an argument to be made here that, you know, a lot of times in modern politics, you'll hear a lot of libertarians, a lot of conservatives today will make this economic argument for what American nationalists are.
01:36:18.600American nationalism is, completely overlooking the very real ethnic component of it that did exist.
01:36:25.840And this idea that they were a distinct people, you know, separate to the French or the Spanish or the Redskins that flanked them on all sides.
01:36:42.400The next click gets into, and this is on this, to counter some of what I was saying before, you know, about Britain's frustrations.
01:36:50.200You can see how they mismanaged the situation as well.
01:36:53.460Before long, many voices joined in denouncing Britain's interference in colonial trade.
01:36:58.000And there was violence, too, when a mob set fire to the British ship Gaspe, which had been enforcing customs regulations.
01:37:06.740Then came the famous Boston Tea Party, when colonists, disguised as Indians, hurled chests of tea into the harbor.
01:37:14.960The tea bore a tax that was particularly detested.
01:37:17.940North America in flames proclaimed a cartoon of the time.
01:37:27.020And in Britain, William Pitt, the former prime minister, warned Parliament of the dangers.
01:37:32.900But Lord North, now government leader, obstinately pursued a course destined to further enrage the colonists.
01:37:39.720Parliament itself was so embroiled in party politics that there was little time to solve colonial problems.
01:37:47.180And so, in North America, the flames of discontent grew hotter.
01:37:52.000Yeah, so, it's the last part of that clip.
01:37:58.840Obviously, the first part of that clip is more relevant to what I was talking about previously.
01:38:02.660But the last part of that clip is relevant to Britain's mismanagement of the situation by refusing to understand that, you know,
01:38:11.880perhaps the Americans were entitled to some kind of representation in these discussions,
01:38:16.340that they should have had members of Parliament or in the House of Lords to represent their specific interests.
01:38:24.500That there should have been, they should have been part of the governance of the empire and not treated as a peasant class or as a second class.
01:38:34.560You know, so you can see why their frustrations.
01:38:38.480And, you know, I don't think that's, you know, something we should overlook that, you know,
01:38:45.460party politics was plaguing the empire and British governance even then.
01:38:50.400We can see how this, the parliamentary system is ineffective often, particularly whenever they have no interest in the problems of a specific subset of their people.
01:39:01.700But now we come to something that's extremely important in this context, which is part of the, what is known as the intolerable acts.
01:39:18.880So, a lot of people, they didn't actually bring up this term, I don't think, in this episode.
01:39:24.000But it is very important in understanding what actually led to the outbreak of revolution.
01:39:31.840There was a series of, it's like five or six different acts in 1774 that the Americans coined as the intolerable acts.
01:39:42.280And the one that's most relevant to Canada is the Quebec Act.
01:39:47.100So, one of our founding documents was part of these intolerable acts.
01:39:51.540But the one that most people are probably familiar with is the Quartering Act.
01:39:56.600So, and the reason why you might be familiar with that is because this is actually enshrined in the American Bill of Rights that, you know,
01:40:04.060I forget, is it the Third Amendment or the Fourth Amendment that Americans cannot be forced to quarter men-at-arms?
01:40:14.260Because it basically required the American colonists to house British, you know, troopers if there was no suitable quarters for them in the area.
01:40:22.320And this was particularly awkward, let's say, with the temperature in the colonies at this time.
01:40:32.400And, obviously, the Quebec Act, they got into it of why this was considered intolerable to the colonies.
01:40:40.760But I'll play the clip here and we can get into it more.
01:40:44.100The Quebec Act did recognize that the province was not going to be a colony just like the others.
01:40:49.520But the new governor, Guy Carleton, had urged that Quebec's unique features be preserved,
01:40:58.100for he presumed that the reputed obedience of the French-Canadian habitant could be a bulwark against possible rebellion in the colonies to the south.
01:41:08.420Thus, the new law strengthened the powers of the landowners and clergy, but gave little to the common man.
01:41:22.220There were territorial changes, too, under the Quebec Act,
01:41:25.940with vast areas to the west making the little colony a giant again.
01:41:31.420To help govern this expanse, the old council was enlarged,
01:41:35.960with Frenchmen now sitting beside their English conquerors.
01:41:38.820Now, virtually everything the French had had before the conquest had been returned to them.
01:41:45.160But for the colonies to the south, it seemed that an old threat had been revived.
01:41:50.560Yeah, so you can see why this is considered an intolerable act to the Americans.
01:41:59.740You know, they viewed themselves as being part of the Anglo-Americans in particular.
01:42:03.480If we recall from the last episode, the Americans were part of the army that had fought the French and Indian War,
01:42:10.500and they viewed themselves as the rightful conquerors of Quebec.
01:42:14.340And this idea that they would be subjected to shared rule with the French and that they would be limited in their ability to settle certain territories
01:42:22.580or to, you know, engage in certain trade in areas was not appealing to them.
01:42:30.400And then on top of this as well, there's the inherent, let's call it anti-popery of Protestants.
01:42:37.100And so the assurances that, you know, the Catholic faith would be protected and given special standing within the colony of Quebec
01:42:46.160was frustrating to a lot of the Anglo-Americans.
01:42:52.620Lone Star Texas says the Third Amendment.
01:55:15.700It's always important to remember the scale of warfare in the context of Canada relative to other parts of the colonies is minimal because the population was spread out, minimal.
01:55:28.860And the strategic value of it was limited.
01:55:33.480Now, in this case, the strategic value of Montreal and Quebec is extremely important because we saw later that it was used to launch counter-strikes into the American territory from Canada.
01:56:09.400Disillusioned, he abandoned the city to Montgomery's Americans and fled down the river.
01:56:14.580After taking Montreal, the way was now clear for Montgomery and part of his army to proceed to Quebec and confront the city together with Benedict Arnold.
01:56:26.380Between them, they had about a thousand men, but no artillery to bombard the fortress.
01:56:32.240On December 31st, in a blinding snowstorm, the Americans launched a surprise attack.
01:56:38.020But Montgomery was killed in the attack, for the British had been ready.
01:56:54.400And by the time the battle was over, more than half the Americans were dead or captured.
01:56:59.260Yeah, so again, interesting enough, this is where the whole series starts, if you recall.
01:57:08.160That's the prologue to the entire series, is the siege at Quebec on New Year's Eve, 1774.