The fort was held by only forty-eight British; with the
menace from France at last ended they felt secure; discipline was
slack, for there was nothing to do. The incompetent commander
testified that he lent Allen twenty men for some rough work on
the lake. By evening Allen had them all drunk and then it was
easy, without firing a shot, to capture the fort with a rush. The
door to Canada was open. Great stores of ammunition and a hundred
and twenty guns, which in due course were used against the
British at Boston, fell into American hands.
About Canada Washington was ill-informed. He thought of the
Canadians as if they were Virginians or New Yorkers. They had
been recently conquered by Britain; their new king was a tyrant;
they would desire liberty and would welcome an American army. So
reasoned Washington, but without knowledge. The Canadians were a
conquered people, but they had found the British king no tyrant
and they had experienced the paradox of being freer under the
conqueror than they had been under their own sovereign. The last
days of French rule in Canada were disgraced by corruption and
tyranny almost unbelievable. The Canadian peasant had been
cruelly robbed and he had conceived for his French rulers a
dislike which appears still in his attitude towards the
motherland of France.
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