Using this as a propitious moment Carleton issued another levy of men from the militia around Montreal. That October he was so encouraged that he assembled on St. Helen’s island, facing Montreal, seven or eight hundred men, counting Indians, and later on the afternoon of October 30th pushed off, accompanied by Luc la Corne and Lorimier with thirty-five or forty boats for the shore of Longueuil to bear relief to the invested fort of St. John’s. Alan Maclean was to go from Quebec to meet Carleton at St. John’s. But as they approached the harbour they were met with such havoc by a force under Seth Warner that had been making use of Longueuil Castle and who had a four-pounder emptying grape and a goodly backing of musketry at the landing, and quickly playing upon the astonished flotilla, so that it turned around, bearing some forty or fifty dead and as many wounded. No American received a scratch. The grand stroke had failed. Maclean’s force heard the bad news and many began to desert. It was a game of battledore and shuttlecock for the French Canadian peasantry. It was not that their want of loyalty was to be blamed as the practical politics of the affair. It was a war of Englishmen again Englishmen, and they were for the winners. The loss of Chambly was the turning point in the siege of St. John’s which had been going on since September 18th. Chambly had been surrendered by Major Stafford after a siege of one day and a half, on October 17th, a sorry event, for it was well supplied with winter provisions and ammunition. The rebels, with the aid of others, were able for six weeks to reinforce Montgomery at St. John’s, when he would have been forced by the approach of winter to retire. Thus on the morning of the 3d of November, at 10 o’clock, the surrender of St. John’s was made by Colonel Preston to Montgomery.