John Trumbull's 1786 oil painting 'The The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775.'John Trumbull/Yale University Ar/John Trumbull/Yale University Art Gallery

Madelaine Drohan is the author of He Did Not Conquer: Benjamin Franklin’s Failure to Annex Canada, and a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School for Public and International Affairs.

Canada would not exist today if American invaders had captured and held Quebec City on Dec. 31, 1775.

The newly formed Continental Army had already taken Montreal and Trois-Rivières, the other main population centres in the British colony known as Canada or the province of Quebec. All that stood between the 1,200 attackers and the conquest of Canada was a defence force of 1,800 British soldiers, sailors and artillery men, and French-Canadian and English militia.

The decisive defeat of the Americans that night broke the back of an invasion that started the previous September. Their general, Richard Montgomery, was felled by a blast of grapeshot. His second-in-command, Benedict Arnold, was wounded. About 400 Continental soldiers surrendered, some still sporting “Liberty or Death” badges on their hats. The siege limped on until early May, when the sight of British warships sailing up the St. Lawrence River sent the remnants of the Continental........

© The Globe and Mail