The Siege of Quebec Part II

Last time, we discussed the logistic absurdities of Grant's army advancing 70 miles in the dead of winter (or 160 miles in Van Renesslaer's case) to the British lines at Quebec. This miraculous feat of logistics takes place with precisely zero trouble for the Union, and every effort of the British inexplicably fails.

The Union arrives in front of Pt. Levis across the river from Quebec on January 18th however (and if you think that date is coincidental I have some swampland in Ontario for you to buy). They immediately begin siege operations:

After the unsuccessful attack January 22nd by Brown’s British division as Wright’s division crossed the Chaudière, the work of the regular siege began. Sherman’s troops occupied the right, starting from the river at Savage’s Cove, Ord the center, and Thomas Sherman’s the left on the Chaudiere, holding the road south to Saint Apollinaire. The XV Corps headquarters were at Ville-Guay, with divisions under Sheridan, Reynolds, and Crocker; those of the VIII Corps (VanRensselaer, Morris, and Totten) at St. Henry; and the X Corps (Wright, Brannan, Sturgis) at Charny. Wood’s cavalry corps, with divisions under Buford and Ruff, operated up the railroad toward Riviere du Loup and then into the backcountry; McCook’s XII Corps (Negley, Ammen, Turchin) held the south side of the river.

 The roads had been cleared from the railroad, which was being double-tracked, to the line, which enabled us to bring up supplies of food and ammunition; ground had been selected and cleared on which the troops were to be encamped, with cabins and huts to provide shelter from the weather. Buell was ordered to send forward every man that could be spared, which yielded much of Brigadier General Joshua Hall Bates' division; they took position across the St. Maurice from Three Rivers, relieving the last elements of the XII Corps for active service. The Canadians came forward in great numbers, with inspiration from the Provisional Government, including calls by Papineau, Dorion, and de Joinville. Memories of ’38 were strong, and all could see this effort by our Army would force a decision.

True to form the author has an unsuccessful British assault on the 22nd take place, rather than the costly and ineffective assaults Grant historically carried out against Vicksburg on May 22, which the story here cribs heavily from (with a bit of Petersburg for good measure), and has the British make every mistake. Grant also has exactly 220 heavy guns, just like at Vicksburg funnily enough.

The similarities with Vicksburg, are legion, all of them that is, except the mistakes. Indeed the opening narration of this chapter comes directly from Grant's own memoirs, but merely devoid of context, for he says:

I now determined upon a regular siege--to “out-camp the enemy,” as it were, and to incur no more losses. The experience of the army’s drive to the northeast, from the initial fighting at Arthabaska through to the actions on the Chaudière and Etchemin, made it clear to all this was our best direction

Of course this is devoid of the context that gave it meaning at Vicksburg, in the bloody and futile assaults on Pemberton's entrenchments around the city. That Grant, who historically was all attack, would stall after the enemy has failed to stop his advance to "out-camp" the enemy, is a tad unrealistic.  Unless he were working with the assumption these lines could not be stormed.

Meanwhile let us look at troop numbers:

In total, the British forces in Lower Canada numbered perhaps 50,000, although not all were in the defenses of Quebec proper; our own forces, bolstered by the Navy and the Canadian volunteers and militia, were more than 100,000. Our forces consisted of regiments and batteries raised in the mobilization of 1861, and so had almost two years of active service in the field, from Kentucky and Tennessee to Upper and Lower Canada. The brigades and divisions of McCook’s XII and Sherman’s XV Corps had been organized in 1861, while those of Ord’s VIII Corps and T.W. Sherman’s X Corps had seen action in Virginia before being brought north to provide the edge we needed to overwhelm the British. The units of all four, and the cavalry corps, had been refilled and reinforced by the volunteers of 1862 and the Canadians who had joined our cause, bringing them back up to strength for the winter campaign. General Mansfield appreciated the situation and, without being asked, forwarded reinforcements and replacements through General Buell’s command and directly from the east, drawing from General Wool’s and General Cadwalader’s departments, with all possible dispatch.

And later:

My line was more than 17 miles long; the line of the enemy, not including the detachment at Three Rivers, was about nine. General Williams remained in the city as the overall commander in Canada; the British army, however, was commanded by Lt. Gen. William Paulet. Paulet’s force was limited; he had four divisions comparable to our own, the 1st, under Brooke Taylor; the battered 2nd, under Norcott; the 3rd, under Brown; and the 4th, under Russell, probably the most experienced of the British officers in the Canadas. Their cavalry was led by Paget, and they had various fortress and garrison troops, including local volunteers and militia. Their troops were split between Russell’s force on the north side of the river, the city’s garrison itself, and the majority of the British army in the Levis lines, south of Quebec City.

Here we see the number of British troops involved, something like 40,000 inside the siege lines (with probably nothing more than a few brigades worth outside the lines going by the author's usual disdain for the Anglo-Canadian forces) and over 100,000 Americans. Though curiously, while the Union navy is represented, the Royal Navy is not. Probably the author overlooking that in order to make the Vicksburg parallel run smoother.

What is odd is that the Americans do not invest Quebec City itself on the northern side of the river, potentially leaving the Citadel, the militia, and Russell's division, in play. In fact Russell's troops could easily be moved to reinforce the British line, or be put to use raiding the American rear. The river is frozen, not impassable, and snow shoe armed raiders would be a serious threat to the only means Grant has of keeping his forces supplied. That they are watched over by a single Union division at Three Rivers is hardly an excuse for this since Russell's troops could fall back on the city itself, not to mention the militia and Volunteers who are simply glossed over. This is all ignored of course.

Curiously the author claims at one point that from their position near Levis that:

In addition, we had batteries close enough to the southern bank of the river that not only could we bombard their troops in the lines around Levis, we could begin throwing shells into the lower city of Quebec itself.

A cursory glance at a map of Quebec City from the period (well, 1875) shows otherwise. The high ground where the Citadel is built faces south, but the suburbs and densely populated portions of Quebec, all face north, well behind the impressive rocky heights which shield the south side of the river from attackers fire, hence the necessity of forces on the north side of the river to invest the actual city. Heck, a simple look at Google maps would confirm this, but only if one bothered to research precisely how the city of Quebec would have looked circa 1863, which the author clearly has not.

Geographically there are a further oddities. An examination of the ground makes readily apparent that the British control the high ground on both sides of the river (Quebec of course having been built on the high bluffs on the north bank of the St. Lawrence by the ancien regime) and the British line extending across the south end of the river, supported by guns on the high ground. One can see even clearer that geographically this makes little sense for a siege of Quebec City proper, given that the Citadel itself is on higher ground above the American lines, and could probably shell the Union forces with relative impunity. Geographically the British are just in a much stronger position.

The author is much too wedded to his Vicksburg parallels to actually take local geography into account it seems, which make this style of attack impractical at best.

The British have of course, refilled their units with drafts (mind bogglingly only from North America) but curiously, so have the Americans. Now this is utterly ahistorical as the Union army simply used up its regiments until they were incapable of combat, then replaced them with a new regiment. Here however, they seem to have adopted the British regimental and depot system to refill their troops, which is absolutely impossible. Only one state in the whole Union (Wisconsin) adopted such a system, the rest of them simply used up and replaced the regiments as needed.

However, now we see that the Union believes time is of the essence:

I knew that spring was coming, and when the ice broke, it was quite possible the British Navy could send a relief expedition up the river. We needed to force the issue before mid-April at the latest, and so redoubled our efforts.

So now narratively strategically the Union must work fast since a relief effort could be mounted from Britain. Of course, since the British have an extra 46 battalions doing nothing in Great Britain itself, this is a very believable threat. The author of course cannot have it look as though the British might pull off a win and so has this army "redouble its efforts" whatever that means.

Here now they establish lines and begin the siege operations:

The first thing to do was to get the artillery in batteries where they would occupy commanding positions; then establish the camps, under cover from the fire of the enemy and to shelter the troops from the winter, but as near up as possible; and then construct rifle-pits and covered ways, to connect the entire command by the shortest route. The enemy harassed us much while we were constructing our batteries, firing off their artillery with profligacy, but we persevered and got our own guns into action. Both sides’ sharpshooters were much in evidence, always on the alert and ready to fire at a head whenever it showed itself above their enemy's works. These included a battalion of the 14th Missouri, or Birge’s Sharpshooters, under Major Patrick Burke of the regulars, equipped with a mix of Sharps breechloaders and the Plains rifles they had originally mustered in with; they, along with picked marksmen from the infantry regiments, were quite capable of holding their own with the best of the British riflemen. 

In no place were our lines more than six hundred yards from the enemy. It was necessary, therefore, to cover our men by something more than the ordinary parapet. To give additional protection sand bags, bullet-proof, were placed along the tops of the parapets far enough apart to make loop-holes for musketry. On top of these, logs were put. By these means the men were enabled to walk about erect when off duty, without fear of annoyance from sharpshooters. The labor of building the batteries and entrenching was largely done by details from the army, the Canadians, and even some of newly-recruited colored troops, serving as pioneers.

The work was pushed forward as rapidly as possible, and when an advanced position was secured and covered from the fire of the enemy the batteries were advanced. By the 28th of February there were two hundred and twenty guns in position, a mix of field-pieces, heavy artillery, and several batteries of heavy guns belonging to, manned and commanded by the Navy. Observation was provided by Lowe’s aeronauts, who were willing to lift off in all but the worst weather; their ability to correct our heavy artillery fire by telegraphy from their balloon’s baskets made our bombardments far deadlier than anything seen before, although the cost – including the gallant Captain Lowe – was high.
We were now as strong for defense against the garrison of Quebec as they were against us

The reader will note the elaborate and extensive preparations carried out to defend the men. These, while somewhat historical at Vicksburg and Petersburg, seem a tad elaborate for the time. The reader will also note, that unlike at Vicksburg and Petersburg, no costly and ineffective assaults are carried out on the British lines (very contrary to Grant's modus operandi historically) and instead opts for a dig and push operation, which diverges significantly from his methods of siege OTL.

Now one could try and argue that Grant's experiences against Fort Henry (Ontario) in this TL prepare him for that. However, that siege lasts only a month or two at the most and so doesn't really count compared to a major siege operation being depicted here.

Indeed apparently the Union is so successful with its own artillery efforts they manage to move forward with impunity. How this happens though is something of a mystery. For instance there is mention of "8-inch and 10-inch Columbiad and Parrott rifles". Now the Columbiad's are plausible, but having 10-inch or even a great number of 8-inch Parrott rifles is simply impossible. The 10-inch Parrot hasn't even reached service yet, and Parrott himself has been a tad busy to be designing his type of gun. Never mind that the British field guns shoot twice the range of their counterparts, and the 110 pound Armstrong guns in the Citadel have a range of over 3,000 yards and on the Citadel they dominate the surrounding ground!

So instead of the unsuccessful attacks carried out historically, what does Grant do? Why he hits upon a super effective and winning strategy immediately!:

All through the weeks of the siege the work of fortifying and pushing forward our position nearer to the enemy had been steadily progressing. At three points, a sap was run up to the enemy's parapet via hard digging in the solid ground (our engineers said it was more like cutting ice blocks than digging, at least close to the surface), and by the 5th of March we had it undermined and the mine charged. The enemy had countermined, but did not succeed in reaching our mine. At this particular point the hill on which the British works stood rose abruptly. Our sap ran close up to the outside of the enemy's parapet. In fact this parapet was also our protection. The soldiers of the two sides occasionally conversed pleasantly across this barrier; sometimes they exchanged tobacco or other sundries; at other times the enemy threw over hand-grenades, and often our men, catching them in their hands, returned them.

Now here's the thing, this is directly copying from the plan at Petersburg to make a mine. However, at Petersburg, neither Grant nor Meade felt than the mine would be useful, and they only adopted it after a series of unsuccessful landward assaults.

How far the works are pushed forward, or how much the Americans are able to actively accomplish is not addressed in any detail, making it impossible to form an idea of when and where this work is pushed up, other than vague mentions of a hill at some point in the British lines. However, there's two important things to point out about the dispositions of the crater here and at Petersburg.

The first is that at Petersburg the mine was dug over 500 feet, but here the author tells us that the Union lines are 600 yards back from the British lines. Now that doesn't sound very difficult, but yards are approximately three times the length of a foot. So either the Union are pushing their lines to within 160 yards of the British early on, or they're digging 1500 feet in the middle of winter.

This is never clarified I should add, other than apparently there are places where the Union trenches reach within 100 yards of the British line, but it is never specified that this is the case here.

The other point is that unlike the mine which was dug over the course of a month in the middle of summer at Petersburg, the mine here is dug in the middle of winter in frozen ground. Now this would presumably take at least twice as long to dig as the mine at Petersburg, but due to the vagueness of the text we cannot be sure. Our only surety is that after this the Union also dig three other mines, whether in the space of a month or less or not, we are left in the dark.

Geographically this is particularly egregious, as unlike at Petersburg, which had nice sedimentary coastal plain to take advantage of, the ground around Levis and Quebec is rocky and around Levis there are considerable wetlands. Essentially, the material around Quebec is hard rock with frozen earth on top of it (and by definition the underlying material of a sharp hill like the British are apparently on is hard rock), while what was dug at Petersburg was much more earthy and relatively easier to excavate. So not only would this be an awful position to be digging mines, it's a position which lacks any sense geologically.

The attack though, proceeds as planned:

On the 5th of March at three o'clock, all being ready, the mine was exploded. A heavy artillery fire all along the line had been ordered to open with the explosion. The effect was to blow the top of the hill off and make a crater where it stood. The breach was not sufficient to enable us to pass a column of attack through. In fact, the enemy having failed to reach our mine had thrown up a line farther back, where most of the men guarding that point were placed. There were a few men, however, left at the advance line, and others working in the countermine, which was still being pushed to find ours. All that were there were thrown into the air, some of them coming down on our side, still alive.

As soon as the explosion took place the crater was seized by two brigades of our Brigadier General Morris’ 2nd Division, VIII Corps; these included Gen. Scammon’s 1st Brigade and Col. Crook’s 3rd Brigade, who were nearby, under cover, where they had been placed for the express purpose. Morris, an 1834 graduate of the academy, Scammon, 1837, and Crook, 1852, were all distinguished soldiers who led their men well; the enemy made a desperate effort to expel them, but failed, and soon retired behind the new line. Among the units in the attack was the 30th Ohio, of Scammon’s brigade, led by Col. Hugh B. Ewing, General Sherman’s brother-in-law, who had been trained at West Point but left before graduation in 1848. The 30th got through the crater and into the British lines, but was stopped by a counterattack by British; Colonel Ewing was slain at the head of his regiment. Also killed was Lt. Col. Hayes of the 23rd Ohio.

Anyone with knowledge of how the historical Battle of the Crater proceeded, should immediately see that the Union assault should be doomed.

For starters, the Union forces are explicitly described as seizing the crater itself. Rather than say, going around this enormous hole in the defences like the plan was designed to do originally and capitalize on the stunned defenders inability to respond. Instead they do exactly what the Union troops do here and went into the crater. Predictably, they were slaughtered and forced back with heavy losses.

Of course, the author has not apparently read why this battle went wrong historically. Instead, he has the Union troops make the exact same mistake which lead to their defeat originally, and they miraculously pull off a win despite doing exactly what lost them the battle in our own history. Realistically attempting such a feat should have seen a bloody repulse, but instead it is a great victory by pure authorial fiat which ignores both the lessons of history, and sound military logic.

Naturally, Grant begins digging more mines to do the exact same thing.

This of course causes the British to consider surrender. Now here the author simply cuts and pastes from the surrender of Vicksburg OTL (and Grant's own memoirs and the work of Shelby Foote it seems). Why the British just surrender, is something of an uncertainty, considering that the two sieges are not even remotely similar. For one thing there's no clear indication that Grant has come any closer to his goal or getting guns into Point Levis (for all the good it would do him), and the British line remains intact while Grant merely owns a crater of dubious military value.

The author's leaps in logic do not translate into strategic advantage.

So as things stand on March 30th, Grant is about to undertake a series of attacks which have only succeeded by authorial fiat, will not drive the British into the river (its still frozen) and won't put the Union in any meaningful way capable of seizing the city itself, much less the Citadel, which would really be all the British need to defend.

Now here is the detailed bit from the TL:

On the night of March 29th, seeing no hope of outside relief, Lt. Gen. Paulet addressed the following letter to each of his five division commanders: 

“Unless the siege of Quebec is raised, or supplies are brought in, it will become necessary very shortly to evacuate the city. I see no prospect of the former, and there are many great, if not insuperable obstacles in the way of the latter. You are, therefore, requested to inform me with as little delay as possible, as to the condition of your troops and their ability to make the marches and undergo the fatigues necessary to accomplish a successful evacuation.” 

Two of his generals suggested surrender, and two others practically did the same. They expressed the opinion that an attempt to evacuate would fail; only the cavalryman, Paget, unreservedly argued for an attempt to break the siege. Paulet had previously suggested to Williams that he should try to negotiate with me for a release of the garrison with their arms. Williams replied that as captain-general it would be a confession of weakness for him to do so; but he authorized Paulet to use his name in making such an arrangement.

Again this is just blatant copy paste from Vicksburg. We know a sortie by the Royal Navy is likely, and that Grant's tactics have only succeeded by author fiat. The fact is that by all means Quebec should have the provisions to sustain itself (why it does not is never mentioned) and there is an entire British division on the other side of the river able to menace Grant's supply lines, Quebec City is not invested on the northern bank, and come spring the Royal Navy will be capable of sustaining an assault up the river, probably with fresh divisions from Britain itself.

The question thus becomes why do they even consider surrender?

The answer dear readers is simple. The author knows that without a prompt surrender on his timetable the Union will be forced to abandon the siege, with all the terrible consequences thereof. So it is then necessary to move heaven and earth so the city can fall before spring, lest the disaster that befell Benedict Arnold befall Grant. To do so of course, he has to ignore the failures the real Grant struggled with to capture Vicksburg and Petersburg, and he ensures that all the mistakes are only made by the British and that even tactics that were utter failures in real life miraculously work in his story.

And so, in spite of all logical conclusions, the Union wins the siege of Quebec, and essentially the war in Canada.