BATTLE OF QUEBEC: The British take 426 Continental prisoners, including Daniel Morgan. Benedict Arnold has been carried from the field, too seriously wounded to mount another attack. Most critically of all, Richard Montgomery has been killed.

SAULT-AU-MATELOT, QUEBEC LOWER TOWN: After they have been unable to pass the barricade at the far end of the Sault-au-Matelot, Daniel Morgan’s column find their fate sealed when five hundred of the city’s defenders retake the barricade at the near end, trapping them in.

ST. ROCHE, QUEBEC: Captain Henry Dearborn’s company is late to the assault on Quebec, because the sergeant major who was supposed to take him word of it was unable to cross the river to Dearborn’s camp. As they are finally arriving, they meet the wounded Benedict Arnold:

SAULT-AU-MATELOT, QUEBEC LOWER TOWN: Daniel Morgan exhorts his men to continue forward & take the barricade at the street’s far end, but they will not. Afraid of being overwhelmed by their prisoners, they insist on awaiting reinforcements.

MONTGOMERY’S COLUMN, QUEBEC LOWER TOWN: According to tradition, Aaron Burr makes an attempt to retrieve General Montgomery’s body: “Burr returned back alone & attempted, amidst a shower of musquetry, to bring on his shoulder, the body of Montgomery—

MONTGOMERY’S COLUMN, QUEBEC LOWER TOWN: Among the thirteen Continentals killed by the defenders at the blockhouse is General Montgomery himself, captor of Montreal and commander of the Continental invasion of Canada.

SAULT-AU-MATELOT, QUEBEC: Charging into the Lower Town to escape musket fire from the upper-story windows of the Hôtel de Dieu, Arnold’s men become lost in the narrow, winding streets. They come to the Sault-au-Matelot, a key narrow street with barricades & cannon at both ends.

WESTERN ENTRANCE TO THE LOWER TOWN: As Benedict Arnold leads a sneak attack into Quebec from the north, Richard Montgomery, commander of the Continental Army in Canada, leads another from the west.

ST. ROCHE, QUEBEC: Benedict Arnold leads the Continental Army column charged with sneaking into the northern end of the Quebec Lower Town. His men slip and slide on the icy path, some of them carrying scaling ladders. The advance party drags a brass cannon on a sled.

31 DECEMBER 1775, ST. JOHN’S GATE, QUEBEC: In the midst of a blizzard, gunners manning the ramparts fire flaming shot to try to illuminate the approaches to the city walls. They see Continental soldiers running toward them.

31 DECEMBER 1775, QUEBEC: Loyalist Scottish officer Malcolm Fraser raises the alarm at 4 a.m., when he learns the sentries on the city walls have seen the glint of distant lantern lights in motion all night long. Drums beat, bells ring out and two flares are fired into the air.

30 DECEMBER 1775, NORFOLK, VIRGINIA: Henry Bellew, captain of the Liverpool, most powerful of the ships in Lord Dunmore’s small Loyalist fleet, issues a warning to Robert Howe, commanding the Patriot troops occupying the town of Norfolk:

30 DECEMBER 1775, MOUNT VERNON, VIRGINIA: George Washington’s steward & cousin Lund Washington has little sympathy for Northern Virginia tenant farmers who wish to use the lack of market for their crops, due to the war, as an excuse not to pay rent: founders.archives.gov/documents/Wa...

30 DECEMBER 1775, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS: “—some days we have a number of cannon and shells from Boston and Bunkers Hill, but it does not seem to surprise any one but me,” Martha Washington writes three weeks after her arrival at Continental Army headquarters.

30 DECEMBER 1775, BOSTON: William Howe’s deputy adjutant general (essentially, chief of staff), the American Stephen Kemble, records “A Portrait of the American Leaders taken from facts”:

30 DECEMBER 1775, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS: Washington relents and allows the enlistment of black soldiers in the Continental Army: “As the General is informed, that Numbers of Free Negroes are desirous of inlisting, he gives leave to the recruiting Officers, to entertain them,

30 DECEMBER 1775, TYLNEY HALL, HAMPSHIRE: Massachusetts Loyalist Thomas Hutchinson is a houseguest of the politician Welbore Ellis: “Finding among Mr Ellis’s books Kempfer’s History of Japan, which I had never met with before, spent what time the family rules admit of in reading;

29 DECEMBER 1775, NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND: “If the slave trade be altogether unjust, is it not equally unjust to hold those in slavery, who by this trade have been reduced to this unhappy state?” Congregationalist theologian Samuel Hopkins writes to Thomas Cushing.

29 DECEMBER 1775, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS: The Continental Army hasn’t been paid for three months; Washington’s daily orders tell the soldiers that he had hoped to pay them all their back wages this month, but he has received only enough to pay them for one month.

29 DECEMBER 1775, HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA: “Canada in the hands of the Rebels & I fear the army will be burnt out of Boston if so they must come here”: commercial agent John Butler writes a despondent letter to his London client Joshua Mauger, a Member of Parliament.

29 DECEMBER 1775, DUNKIRK: British consul Andrew Frazer does not know that the Irish ship Charming Peggy is planning to smuggle gunpowder from France to the Continental Army, but he knows she took the gunpowder aboard in the dead of night without formal customs clearance.

28 DECEMBER 1775, PHILADELPHIA: The Continental Congress votes to adopt six of Virginia’s regiments into the Continental Army. This is fewer than Virginia wants; the colony has raised nine regiments, but cannot support the expense of maintaining them.

28 DECEMBER 1775, FORT GEORGE, LAKE CHAMPLAIN: The merchant who was to provide Henry Knox with sleds to transport the Ticonderoga artillery to Boston withdraws his offer after General Philip Schuyler complains that he’s charging too much for the sleds.

28 DECEMBER 1775, PHILADELPHIA: Achard de Bonvouloir dates his report to the French foreign minister, Vergennes, on his meetings with representatives of the Continental Congress: “As I expected I found this country in an incredible turmoil”: founders.archives.gov/documents/Fr...

27 DECEMBER 1775, SIEGE OF QUEBEC: General Richard Montgomery plans to use the cover of a snowstorm to attack the city but cancels his plans when a Rhode Island soldier deserts to the redcoat garrison.

27 DECEMBER 1775, PHILADELPHIA: The last of three meetings between Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and French secret representative Achard de Bonvouloir.

26 DECEMBER 1775, PRESENT-DAY RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: A Spanish expedition led by Juan Bautista de Anza records an earthquake in multiple shocks between Coyote Canyon and the Cahuilla Valley, probably between four and five on the Richter scale.

26 DECEMBER 1775, PHILADELPHIA: The Continental Congress pledges the thirteen individual colonies to be responsible for the enormous debts that war will, by its nature, create, and sets a schedule to begin repaying the debts of May 1775 to June 1776 in 1783.

26 DECEMBER 1775, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS: “If … that Man is not crushed before Spring, he will become the most formidable Enemy America has,” George Washington writes of Virginia’s royal governor, the Earl of Dunmore, who offered freedom to slaves who fight for the Crown.

25 DECEMBER 1775, OFF NORFOLK, VIRGINIA: The Earl of Dunmore’s fleet holds not just his mixture of redcoats and Loyalist troops, but also civilian refugees. Today a “Gentleman” aboard his flagship, the William, writes:

25 DECEMBER 1775, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS: George Washington describes the evolution of the fortifications that have been erected on Lechmere Point, facing Boston across Back Bay: founders.archives.gov/documents/Wa...

25 DECEMBER 1775, MACHIAS, MASSACHUSETTS (Maine): “I know of fitter persons, than myself in many respects, but they are strangers to the Province & people”: James Lyon writes to George Washington, nominating himself to lead an invasion of Nova Scotia. founders.archives.gov/documents/Wa...

25 DECEMBER 1775, LONDON: Massachusetts refugee Samuel Curwen pays a shilling to attend the same Christmas service as George III and Queen Charlotte: the chapel “’tis about the bigness of our assembly room at Salem,

24 DECEMBER 1775, WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA: Edmund Pendleton is sure to stress Patrick Henry’s great services to the Patriots as an orator, but it’s clear he feels Henry’s appointment as colonel of the 1st Regiment of the Virginia militia has been a disaster:

24 DECEMBER 1775, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS: The Continental Army’s daily orders detail the rations the soldiers can expect for the foreseeable future:

24 DECEMBER 1775, BOSTON SIEGE LINES: The harsh winter weather does not halt the Continental Army’s efforts to erect fortifications: “a very Snowy cold Day. Cut down the orchard at Leachmor point, & laid the trees round the fort had 4 oxen Drowned coming of ye point.”

24 DECEMBER 1775, LONDON: Lord Robert Bertie, colonel of the regiment that was garrisoning the Canadian fort of Chambly (recently surrendered to the Continental Army), tells Thomas Hutchinson that a turn of phrase in the articles of surrender almost ended the negotiations:

23 DECEMBER 1775, PHILADELPHIA: Continental Congress delegate John Jay recommends to Alexander McDougall that the New York provincial congress begin collecting taxes, “rather with a View to Precedent than Profit.” founders.archives.gov/documents/Ja...

23 DECEMBER 1775, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT: Loyalist Anglican clergyman Samuel Seabury is released, a month after having been kidnapped by Patriots in Westchester, New York. When he returns to Westchester, he will find his school vandalized and his students gone.

23 DECEMBER 1775, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS: “Our Soldiers are in great distress”: George Washington notifies the New England provincial governments that, in the midst of winter, the Continental Army are suffering a severe shortage of blankets:

23 DECEMBER 1775, POTSDAM, NEAR BERLIN: The French ambassador, returning to the Prussian court after a leave of absence, is struck by the visible decline in the King of Prussia, Frederick the Great: pale, skinny, gout-ridden, he is described as closer to dead than alive.

22 DECEMBER 1775, PHILADELPHIA: The Second Continental Congress authorizes George Washington (if his council of war agrees) to attack the redcoats in Boston “in any manner he may think expedient,” even if “the town and property in it may thereby be destroyed.”

22 DECEMBER 1775, LONDON: Virginian lawyer Arthur Lee, with two brothers in the Continental Congress, writes to Lord George Germain to demand the American Department return letters for him which they intercepted at the Post Office and never returned:

22 DECEMBER 1775, LONDON: King George III grants royal assent to the Prohibitory Act, outlawing all trade with the Thirteen Colonies, denying them trade with any other partner, and making any ship attempting to trade with the Colonies a legitimate prize of war.

22 DECEMBER 1775, PARIS: The Conseil d’État rules in an appeal from a legal case in Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti). The original issue was whether an enslaver can free slaves in his will, or if only the inheritor can grant freedom; the conseil’s ruling is that neither can do so.

21 DECEMBER 1775, NORFOLK, VIRGINIA: The small Loyalist and Royal Navy fleet anchored offshore is significantly strengthened by the arrival of the twenty-eight-gun frigate Liverpool and the stores ship Maria.

21 DECEMBER 1775, BOSTON: William Howe replies to George Washington’s letter asking whether it’s true that prisoner of war Ethan Allen has been treated as a criminal instead of a captured enemy officer, but his answer is unlikely to satisfy Washington: founders.archives.gov/documents/Wa...

21 DECEMBER 1775, LONDON: Thomas Hutchinson receives a visit from a man who was appointed provincial secretary for Georgia, but who has now received a letter from the American Department “acquainting him that the King had no further occasion for his service,

21 DECEMBER 1775, LONDON: The St. James’s Chronicle denounces the burning of Falmouth, Massachusetts, by the Royal Navy, shortly after news of it arrives: “Coercive and sanguinary Measures pursued against the Americans … will produce nothing but the bitter Fruit of Ruin, Misery, and Devastation.”