To crown the difficulty of the commissioners, the news of the Quebec disaster and flight reached their ears on the 9th of May. “Every military plan and hope staggered under the shock. Montreal became a stormy sea.” Dreading that one of the British frigates, which were ascending the river but with an unfavourable wind, would run up and cut them off, the commissioners began to prepare to leave the city. The state of Montreal after the news of Quebec, is well described by Justin H. Smith in “Our Fight for the Fourteenth Colony,” (Vol. II, page 374): “Montreal is listening eagerly for his drum (Captain Young’s of St. Anne’s Fort).” Hazen had declared a month before, “There is nothing but plotting and preparations making against us throughout the whole district.” When it was proposed to abandon the town after the news of the flight from Quebec arrived, Arnold feared the people would attack his departing troops. On all sides the tories whom Ripley had found very plenty in March but mostly living like woodchucks underground, were now showing noses and even feet. The commissioners, getting daily intimations of plots hatching and insurrections intended, had abandoned perforce the rôle of dispensing pure liberty, filled the jails with malcontents and sent others into the exile they had lately protested against, but these measures did not reach the seat of the trouble. Night after night a rising was talked of and expected; Lieutenant Colonel Vose would go round the barrack, waken the men coming down with smallpox and make them dress themselves and load their guns. “If they do take us it shall not be for nothing,” he quietly said. On the morning of May 17th Benjamin Franklin left, accompanied by Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Price.[4] Next day he was joined by Father Carroll and the party ascended Lake Champlain for New York. Walker joined them later and both were left at Albany, “civilly but coldly.” So he passes out of the history of Montreal. The other commissioners, Carroll and Chase, left Montreal on May 29th for Chambly for a council of war; on the 31st they left St. John’s; on the 2d of June they left for Crown Point, a distance of 106 miles. Thus ended their unsuccessful mission. How finally the congress troops were driven out of the country, how the additional reinforcements arrived at Quebec on June 1st under Burgoyne, is Canadian history beyond that of Montreal. Suffice it to say that by June 17th things had become so hot in Montreal for Arnold who saw that the junction of the Canadas with the colonies was now at an end, that the evacuation commenced on this day. In two hours, the sick, the baggage and the garrison, reduced by this time to 300 men, embarked on eleven bateaux and in two hours more a procession of carts, escorted by the troops, set out from Longueuil for La Prairie.[5]