Free The First American Army by Bruce Chadwick

convent. The two that received the most dissection were that 1) Benedict Arnold would personally lead a charge on the town to free them, and that it would come that night or the next, and 2) George Washington, furious that they had been held in prison, had assembled an army of two thousand of his best soldiers and had sent it to Quebec weeks before; it would be arriving to storm the city at any moment.
    The days dragged on. Every few days someone would be put in irons for offenses such as trying to talk to a sentry or discussing escape. Every few nights an alarm would be sounded and a cannon would be rolled into place in front of Greenman’s cell to prevent an escape if an attack from outside the walls commenced. “They are afraid of us,” he wrote proudly.
    The soldiers were moved again on March 13, forty-three days after their capture, to a secure army barracks they nicknamed the Dauphin Jail, because the British, hearing the same rumors as the prisoners, were certain that Arnold would lead an attack on March 15.
    There were so many prisoners in each room at the overcrowded barracks that they had to sign a sheet that was nailed to the door to identify them. Greenman joked that at least the new jail was so strong, with its high ceiling and thick stone walls, that it was “bomb proof ” and they would be safe from cannon fired by either side.
    The new jail had windows that no one bothered to board this time and the men had an ample view of the city and, beyond it, if they stood on their toes, they could see the colors flying over the tops of the tents of the American forces. The enlisted men confined with Greenman began to think that they might be able to escape from the jail, which was not as secure as the convent. “Most of the prisoners thought best to get out then,” Greenman said.
    The larger problem was to escape from the walled-in city with its enormous gates. An escape from the barracks would be noticed and the men would have little time to make it to the walls and scramble over them to freedom. There were British soldiers everywhere, in addition to the jail guards and sentries on the walls, and the Americans would be shot.
    The planning of the escape took days, and as the men talked they came up with an ingenious scheme to not only escape from the confines of the Dauphin Jail, but seize Quebec itself. The plan, as Greenman outlined it often in later years for eager listeners, went like this: all of the prisoners would quietly leave through the main door of the barracks, which they were certain could be jimmied open. One group of escaping soldiers would subdue the Redcoats guarding the perimeter of the Dauphin Jail and everyone else would follow them out. One group of prisoners, containing artillerists, would race to the cannon on the ramparts, running up the narrow stone stairways, disabling soldiers in their way, turn several cannon around, and then shoot at any building in the town in order to set it on fire. At the same time, anticipating the confusion the artillery would cause, another group of men would storm St. John’s Gate, the main entrance to the city, kill or knock out any guards there, and quickly open it. Anyone who subdued a British soldier would grab his musket and fire at other soldiers, or fire anywhere, to make noise.
    Their comrades outside the city, spotting the fires and hearing the cannon and muskets, and seeing the gate raised, would then surely attack the town. The ensuing battle that Greenman and the other escapees envisioned would not only result in their freedom, but the capture of Quebec.
    And the complicated and daring plan might have worked, too, except for one, tiny, unforeseen problem: ice. The main barracks door was continually stuck shut by ice that formed on the floor within the jail every day. Two teenaged soldiers were assigned to discreetly chip away at the ice, to allow the door to swing open when necessary, but they were spotted by guards. The two teenagers were grabbed