[85] This may probably have been the Major Preston referred to in Horace Walpole’s letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, December 27, 1775. ‘Adam Smith told us t’other night at Beauclerk’s, that Major Preston, one of two, but he is not sure which, would have been an excellent commander some months since, if he had seen any service.’ This and other quotations from Horace Walpole’s letters are taken from Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, Clarendon Press, 1904. [86] The general view seems to have been that Chambly might have held out longer, and that the commander, Major Stopford, was shielded by his aristocratic connexions, but the _Annual Register_ for 1776 (p. 5) says that it ‘was in no very defensible condition’, and Carleton seems to have found no fault with its surrender. See the entry on p. 110 of Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 2201, 1904, _Historical MS. Commission, Report on American manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain_, vol. i. Sir Guy Carleton to (Lord Barrington), May 21, 1777, ‘has nothing to charge either the garrison of Chamblee or St. John’s with.’ [87] The _Annual Register_ for 1776, p. 12, makes Montgomery’s advance from Montreal to Quebec a kind of repetition of Arnold’s march. ‘Their march was in winter, through bad roads, in a severe climate, beneath the fall of the first snows, and therefore made under great hardships.’ He seems, on the contrary, to have come down the river in the captured British vessels. [88] There is or was a dispute about the date. Kingsford makes it the night of December 31 to January 1, but there seems no doubt that the attack took place on the previous night, that of December 30-1. See Sir James Le Moyne’s Paper on the Assault on Quebec in 1775, in the _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada_, 1899. [89] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, June 5, 1776. [90] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, August 11, 1776. It is not clear why Horace Walpole thought poorly of Carleton’s writing. His dispatches are as clear and straightforward as could be wished. [91] Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, March 22, 1776. [92] p. 15. [93] _Parliamentary History of England_, vol. xxix, p. 379. Debate of May 6, 1791. [94] _Annual Register_ as above. [95] The letter, in which Montgomery complained of personal ill-treatment of himself by Carleton, concluded--‘Beware of destroying stores of any kind, public or private, as you have done in Montreal and in the river; if you do, by Heavens there will be no mercy shown.’ [96] _Annual Register_ for 1776; _State Papers_, p. 255. Carleton’s kindness to the American prisoners was so great that when some of them returned on parole, they were not allowed to communicate with the American troops serving at Crown Point for fear that they might cause disaffection. See Stone’s _Life of Brant_ (1838), vol. i, p. 165.