The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [51]
Robbins’s regiment soon arrived at Chambly, a small village in Canada, a Catholic country that Robbins referred to as “the dwelling place of Satan.” The minister, who loathed Roman Catholics, visited a Catholic church there and was appalled by what he saw: three crucifixes, a holy water font, and an altar. As he looked around, a young man walked down the center aisle, knelt in front of the altar, and began to pray. Robbins was indignant. “Oh, when shall Satan be found and the Anti-Christ meet a final overthrow?” he wrote of the visit to the church.
Just three days later, he and the soldiers sailed up the Richelieu River past the village of St. Dennis. A strong wind carried them at a rapid rate down the river. The Protestant minister was irked to see a long string of small homes with crucifixes on their roofs and a Roman Catholic church. In a macabre scene, a group of curious nuns in their black and white habits emerged from the church and stared at the American army, looking directly at Rev. Robbins, as their flotilla of vessels moved past them and headed toward the war.
On Tuesday, May 7, Robbins and the soldiers in his regiment met dozens of men who were returning from Quebec by land; part of the general route that had commenced the day before when British reinforcements had arrived at Quebec. Some of the soldiers had been wounded and bled through their clothes as they half walked, half limped southward, trying to bear up under the hot sun. Many, trembling as they appeared, were badly infected with smallpox and other diseases and the men with Robbins all feared the disease would spread throughout the boat.
Shortly after the arrival of the infected soldiers, a flotilla of British ships suddenly appeared. The warships sailed ever closer and began to shell the Americans when their cannon were in range. The U.S. boats and the hundreds of soldiers that had been walking along the river were both targets of the British cannon that raked the water and the shoreline. Some of the smallpox victims had managed to scramble on board Robbins’s gondola and other vessels, and stayed there, overcrowding the open decks of the ships, but dozens of others, still on land, were hailing the vessels with their arms and yelling for help. Left behind, they were taken prisoners as the army tried to outrun the British ships and head south to Sorel.
General Thomas had sent out orders that all of the Americans fleeing the Quebec area, and those headed north, such as Robbins’s regiment, were to rendezvous at Sorel, a busy fur-trapping community, and await further orders. Robbins and the men in his boat raised their sail and helped pick up speed by manning the oars, too, as the shelling continued and numerous cannonballs crashed near the hull in the water, creating huge splashes of water close enough to soak the men on the boats. Robbins was frightened, his head swiveling from side to side as he watched shells hit in the water and explode on land, knocking down trees, sending tons of dirt soaring into the air, destroying huge clumps of bushes and leaving craters in the ground.
He wrote, “Three [British] ships came near us, firing as they came, and our boats and people in a scattered condition. Distress and anxiety in every countenance, the smallpox thick among us. This is the most terrible day I ever saw. God of armies, help us.”
A Doctor Far from Home
Robbins and the men in flight with him reached Sorel, forty miles away, five days later, the day after Doctor Lewis Beebe had arrived there. He knew from information they received on the passage north that many American troops had been killed in Quebec and three