Primary tabs
Camp before St˙ John' s, October 22, 1775.
SIR: I have received information from different quarters that the prisoners you have made are treated with cruel and unnecessary severity, being loaded with irons, and that Colonel Allen himself meets with this shocking indignity. Your character, Sir, induces me to hope I am ill informed: nevertheless, the duty I owe the troops committed to my charge lays me under the necessity of acquainting your Excellency that if you avow this conduct, and persist in it, I shall, though with the most painful regret, execute with rigour the just and necessary law of retaliation upon the garrison of Chambly, now in my possession, and upon all
I shall, expect your Excellency' s answer in six days; should the bearer not return in that time, I must interpret your silence into a declaration of a barbarous war. I cannot pass this opportunity without lamenting the melancholy and fatal necessity which obliges the firmest friends of the Constitution to oppose one of the most respectable officers of the Crown.
I am, Sir, &c˙, RICHARD MONTGOMERY.
To Governour Carleton
General Montgomery to Governour Carleton
v3:1138
v3:1139
others who may hereafter fall into my bands. I must be understood to stipulate for those unfortunate Canadians, your prisoners, who have thrown themselves into the arms of the United Colonies for protection, whose enraged countrymen have with difficulty been restrained from acts of violence on the garrison of Chambly.