Richard Montgomery

Richard Montgomery had already worn a British coat in the Seven Years' War when he chose the American side. He was born at Swords, near Dublin, on December 2, 1738. He took Montreal in November 1775 and then walked a starving column toward Quebec because the war's first year still believed Canada could be talked or stormed into the union.

On December 31, in a snowstorm, he led the lower-town assault in person. He was killed at the head of the column. The attack failed. Benedict Arnold was wounded the same morning. The invasion ended as a winter siege and then a retreat.

Congress voted him the honors of a major general and a monument. In 1818 his remains were brought from Quebec to St. Paul's Chapel in New York. This page will not turn a lost assault into a founding myth. It will say an Irish officer spent the last morning of 1775 on a street that did not open, and that the republic buried him twice because the first grave was in a city it could not keep.