The town had served as the capital of American Canada for six months, but with British troops reportedly only a dozen miles distant, it would be abandoned without a fight. Across the St. Lawrence, Arnold torched his boats, then led his men through mud “half a leg deep” to La Prairie and on toward St. Johns, burning bridges and felling trees across the road behind them as they fled. Three other corps—two British and one American—were now heaving toward the same destination.
