Note: The newest installment of The Road to the American Revolution is now live on Substack. Follow the series on Facebook, Instagram, and X to keep up with new essays and join the conversation. An excerpt from the article appears below.

A blizzard raged in Quebec City on December 31, 1775, as the American army charged the walls and the British defenders. The Americans needed snow to disguise how few men and guns they had to attack, but the snow was so thick that their soldiers got lost in the streets beneath the fortress. General Richard Montgomery, the American commander, died from a gunshot to the head as he charged down a snowy street with his sword raised high. Elsewhere in the city, Benedict Arnold’s cannon got stuck in a snowdrift, so he ordered a frontal assault on the Canadien militia; a musket ball wounded him in the leg and ended his service for the day. British troops surrounded Daniel Morgan and his legendary riflemen; Morgan, forced to surrender, gave his sword to the Catholic priest who brought the flag of truce, rather than give it up to a British officer. The bodies of dead Americans littered the snow as the American army retreated in defeat from Quebec’s walls at the end of the day.

It should be a movie. The marketing guys will moan: The Americans lost the battle, the British lost the war, the Canadians mostly were bystanders, who will watch this? But it’s one of the great stories of American heroism—and British, Canadian—with the fate of a continent at stake. And how can you beat the backdrop of fighting in a blizzard, beneath the walls of a fortress, in the cold and awful beauty of the Canadian wilderness?

There were so many reasons the American attack failed. The Quebec Act of 1774 alienated Americans but conciliated French Canadians toward the British crown by restoring Catholicism and French law in much of their traditional territory in Quebec. The Canadiens did not love the British, but they mostly would not rebel when the American army arrived to “liberate” them from Great Britain. The American army in Canada had too few men, too few supplies, and its men were wracked by smallpox. Above all, the enlistment of much of the American army came to an end on December 31—hence the American attack that day, before the army lost any chance of victory. The British army already outnumbered the American army; Montgomery and Arnold attacked against the odds…

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