Today in 1775, the icy gray ramparts of Quebec trembled to the sound of Connectican-commanded  guns. From a frozen patch of ground within musket-shot of the city’s St. John’s Gate, Norwich-born Colonel Benedict Arnold— who only seven months before had captured Fort Ticonderoga and its guns from the British with another Connect-born leader –  Ethan Allan—ordered the six fieldpieces he had installed before the French-speaking ,  British-controlled city – to open fire.

This was no random burst of Revolutionary bravado. Arnold and his exhausted little army, joined by General Richard Montgomery’s newly arrived American forces from Montreal, were staging a deliberate demonstration meant to “soften up” the defenders and convince Quebec’s British military governor, Sir Guy Carleton, that surrender to the Americans was his only viable alternative. The snow-crusted guns were well defended by Connecticut men—including Captain Oliver Hanchett’s Company from Suffield ––   and their battered New England comrades who had survived a horrific march through Maine’s wilderness. Their powder was damp, their shoes long gone, and many of their fingers black with frostbite, but on this day they had orders, and spirit, to spare.

After  the smoke from the cannonade cleared, and its implications allowed to sink in, an American messenger bearing a white flag trudged toward the city walls, carrying Arnold’s formal demand that Quebec yield “in the name of the Continental Congress.” Carleton, as it turned out, was not intimidated at all. His  answer was immediate and unmistakable: the messenger was refused admittance,   turned back even before he reached the city gates. To further the insult, Carleton ordered British muskets to fire at his heels, as the  message bearer scurried to safety,

It was a diplomatic reply in gunpowder—an unmistakable signal that Carleton had no intention of surrendering to what he regarded as a half-starved, and all but unprovisioned rabble. Within the American camp, the insult only stiffened resolve, even as rations and hope froze solid. “We shall have to storm the place,” one Connecticut sergeant muttered grimly.

Two weeks later, in the predawn blizzard of December 31, Arnold and Montgomery would try to do just that.

But that’s another revolutionary  story.

This first American effort to bring Canada into the Union – led by a Connecticut commander who spoke with a booming voice –  met with a most chilly reception—Today in Connecticut History.