When the news of what had taken place reached England at the beginning of June, Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Sir Horace Mann. ‘The provincials have again attempted to storm Quebec and been repulsed with great loss by the conduct and bravery of Carleton, who, Mr. Conway has all along said, would prove himself a very able general.’[89] Two months later he wrote again to the same friend: ‘You have seen by the public newspapers that General Carleton has driven the provincials out of all Canada. It is well he fights better than he writes. General Conway has constantly said that he would do great service.’[90] Of Carleton’s merits as a soldier there can be no question. No one ever gauged a military situation better. No one ever displayed more firmness and courage at a time of crisis, made more of small resources, or showed more self-restraint. But he was more than a good military leader; he was also a statesman of high order, and, had he been given a free hand and supreme control of the British forces and policy in America, he might well have kept the American colonies as he kept Quebec. For Carleton was an understanding man. No Englishman in America, or who dealt with America, was of the same calibre. He knew the land: he knew the people: he had the qualities which were conspicuously wanting in other English leaders of the time, firmness, foresight, breadth of view, sound judgement as to what was possible and what was not; above all, he had a character above and beyond intrigue. Had he not been ousted by malign influence, but been given wider powers and a more extensive command, the British cause in North America might have had the one thing needful, a personality to stand in not unworthy comparison with that of Washington. [Sidenote: Benedict Arnold.] Carleton was a little over fifty years old at the time of the siege of Quebec. The two American generals who confronted him were younger men. Montgomery was just under forty years of age when he was killed; Arnold at the time was not thirty-five. It would have been well for Arnold’s reputation had he shared Montgomery’s fate. A New Englander by birth, a native of Connecticut, he seems to have been a restless, adventurous man, with no strong sense of principle. His name is clouded by his grievous treachery at West Point, but his military capacity was as great as his personal courage, and of all the American leaders in the earlier stages of the war, he was the man who dealt the hardest blows at the British cause in Canada. From the capture of the forts on Lake Champlain till the fights before Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, at almost every point on the frontier he was in evidence, leading attack, covering retreat, invaluable as a leader in border war. [Sidenote: Richard Montgomery.]