Joined by a few Canadians, the little American army now returned to invest Quebec. Again the garrison was summoned to surrender. Again the demand was treated with contempt. In fact Carleton refused to “hold any parley with rebels”; but the American leaders hoped soon to humble his pride. Throwing up batteries of ice and snow, they began to bombard the walls; but their guns were too light to make any impression on the masonry, and the besieged kept vigilant guard against surprise. On moonless nights they lighted the great ditch surrounding their ramparts by lanterns hung on poles from the bastions, and thus not even a dog could approach unobserved. [Illustration: Benedict Arnold.] Discouraged by ill-success and weakened by smallpox, the American army appeared to be in danger of melting away, but the two leaders resolved to try to capture Quebec by one bold stroke before more of the discontented troops left them. Their plan was a complicated one. Montgomery was to advance along a narrow road skirting the base of Cape Diamond, while Arnold, from the suburb of St. Roch, already in possession of the Americans, was to enter the Lower Town from the opposite side, meet Montgomery’s division at the foot of Mountain Street, and join in an attempt to force the barrier (where later was erected the Prescott Gate) which guarded the approach to the Upper Town. Meanwhile, to distract the attention of the besieged, a feint was to be made against St. John’s Gate. [Illustration: General Montgomery.] The time fixed for the attempt was the early hours of the thirty-first day of December. The weather was wild and blustering, promising that the planned surprise would be complete, and two hours after midnight Montgomery marched his troops down to Wolfe’s Cove, and thence along the narrow drifted path below the cliff, now known as Champlain Street. [Illustration: QUEBEC FROM POINT LÉVIS. From a drawing by R. Short, 1759.] [Illustration: Sous le Cap.] That they might know each other in the darkness, his soldiers wore in their caps slips of white paper, on which they had written as a watchword, “Liberty or death!” Through the blinding snow they pressed on till they reached a barrier of palisades below the precipitous rock now crowned by the Citadel. Forcing this, they rushed forward, with their intrepid leader at their head, to capture a battery directly in their path. They had almost reached it, when the guns suddenly blazed forth a deadly storm of grapeshot. Montgomery fell dead, with several of his followers, and the rest broke and fled precipitately along the narrow path swept by the cannon, leaving behind them their dead and dying in the snow. [Illustration: Palace Gate.]