Early in 1775 the Continental Congress undertook the conquest of Canada, or, as it was more diplomatically phrased, the relief of its inhabitants from British tyranny. Richard Montgomery led an expedition over the old route by Lake Champlain and the Richelieu, along which French and Indian raiding parties used to pass years before, and Benedict Arnold made a daring and difficult march up the Kennebec and down the Chaudiere to Quebec. Montreal fell to Montgomery; and Carleton himself escaped capture only by the audacity of some French-Canadian voyageurs, who, under cover of darkness, rowed his whaleboat or paddled it with their hands silently past the American sentinels on the shore. Once down the river and in Quebec, Carleton threw himself with vigor and skill into the defense of his capital. His generalship and the natural strength of the position proved more than a match for Montgomery and Arnold. Montgomery was killed and Arnold wounded in a vain attempt to carry the city by storm on the last night of 1775. At Montreal a delegation from Congress, composed of Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, accompanied by Carroll's brother, a Jesuit priest and a future archbishop, failed to achieve-more by diplomacy than their generals had done by the sword. The Canadians seemed, content enough to wear the British yoke. In the spring, when a British fleet arrived with reenforcements, the American troops retired in haste and, before the Declaration of Independence had been proclaimed, Canada was free from the last of its ten thousand invaders.