Qualla: Siege of Fort St. Jean

Siege of Fort St. Jean: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mickael Pollard, CC BY-SA 2.0. Richard Montgomery described his soldiers as "half-drowned rats crawling through a swamp." For seven weeks in the fall of 1775, that was precisely what they were -- Continental Army troops knee-deep in waterlogged trenches, laying siege to a British fort on the Richelieu River while disease, desertion, and dwindling supplies threatened to end the American invasion of Canada before it reached Montreal. The siege of Fort St. Jean lasted from September 17 to November 3, 1775, and while the Americans ultimately took the fort, the time it consumed may have cost them the entire campaign.

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Image: Mickael Pollard | CC BY-SA 2.0

Siege of Fort St. Jean: The Cork in the Bottle

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Ghislain Fortin assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Fort Saint-Jean guarded the entry to the province of Quebec on the Richelieu River, at the northern end of Lake Champlain. Any army marching north from the American colonies had to pass this way, and the British knew it. After Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen captured Fort Ticonde...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Ghislain Fortin assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Siege of Fort St. Jean: False Starts in the Swamp

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mirror-image copy of a portrait of Philip Schuyler. Painted by Jacob H. Lazarus (1822-91) from a miniature painted by John Trumbull, Public domain. The Continental Army's first attempts to approach Fort St. Jean were disasters of inexperience. On September 6, General Philip Schuyler led 1,500 men in bateaux toward the fort, only to have them ambushed by a hundred Indigenous fighters led by Tice and Lorimier. The untested mil...

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Image: Mirror-image copy of a portrait of Philip Schuyler. Painted by Jacob H. Lazarus (1822-91) from a miniature painted by John Trumbull | Public domain

Siege of Fort St. Jean: Rats in the Trenches

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Peachey (d. 1797), Public domain. The formal siege began on September 17, when Montgomery's army landed south of the fort and sent John Brown with a detachment to cut the road to Montreal. Conditions were miserable from the start. The ground around the fort was marshy, and trenches filled with water as fast as so...

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Image: James Peachey (d. 1797) | Public domain

Siege of Fort St. Jean: Chambly Falls, and Hope With It

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Petersent, Public domain. The break the Americans needed came not at St. Jean but at nearby Fort Chambly. James Livingston, a local grain merchant who had raised nearly 300 Canadian militia sympathetic to the American cause, proposed taking the lightly defended post. On October 18, after just two days of ...

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Image: Petersent | Public domain

Siege of Fort St. Jean: The General Who Never Learned

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Minoumi, Public domain. On November 3, 1775, Preston's troops marched out of Fort St. Jean and surrendered their weapons, the regulars in full dress uniform. He gave up 536 officers and soldiers, 79 Canadian volunteers, and eight English volunteers. The way to Montreal was open, and American troops ente...

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Image: Minoumi | Public domain