Allen hands over his sword

What happened

Allen's luck ran out in the north. Congress passed him over for command of the Canadian invasion, and the Green Mountain men's town elders, who hated him, had refused him an office in the new battalion. He signed on as a private, but General Montgomery put him in charge of thirty Connecticut militiamen and sent him to raise Canadian volunteers, and he raised about eighty. On September 24 he met John Brown near Longueuil. They agreed on a joint surprise attack on Montreal: Brown to cross the St. Lawrence from the north, Allen from the south. Allen crossed. Brown did not. Rothbard says the plan was brilliantly conceived, resting on guerrilla mobility and surprise, and it died there. Allen's Canadians fled when the British force sallied out of Montreal. He fought on, retreating almost a mile, until he was nearly surrounded, then offered to surrender if he were treated with honor. He wrote that he handed over his sword, with thirty-one effective men and seven wounded left. The Americans lost their greatest guerrilla fighter, put in irons and sent to England. Washington's reaction, in Rothbard's account, was near satisfaction: he hoped it would teach prudence and subordination to others.