Chapter V: Part 5

“Loyal? Of course I was loyal, as every one in our neighbourhood was; but most of us were true Reformers nevertheless, and not ashamed of the name, in spite of Mackenzie’s goings-on. I refused to volunteer in ’38 when the draftings began again, because all trouble in Upper Canada was over, and I could not see that I was called upon to give up important home duties; and besides that, the officers had nothing to do, and thought it would be a fine thing to get a company up and have the recompense for keeping it together. The captain only succeeded in getting a few volunteers, not twenty, and the thing was to be completed by ballot. That was a regular farce, and the ignorance of some of those who drew was ridiculous. A Scotchman, holding his slip in his hand, showed it exultantly to a friend, who did not begrudge him his luck, saying, ‘O-o-aye, ah’ve drawed a prize.’ But I met an Irishman, soon after, who had been sharper than the Scotchman, pretending that he knew the peculiar twist of a paper that was intended not to be ‘drawed.’ The Irishman was rejoicing in his own exemption, and wickedly gloating over his brother who was not up to the twisted paper trick and had ‘drawed.’ One man, now our most prominent citizen, and certainly one of the oldest, refused either to draw or volunteer, for reasons the same as mine; he had fought in ’37 on the loyalist side, and now in ’38 a warrant was out for him on the score of disloyalty! They tried to arrest him, thinking he would submit quietly, but he fought the thing on every point, and these so-called loyalists found they had no legal ground to stand on. They dare not press the matter, so my friend was let alone.”

* * * * *

“Our captain was a regular autocrat in manner and appearance, and he spoke with a thick, fast utterance of a kind better imagined than written, when he was excited. Two others, who happened to be where we were stationed, also had an impediment in their speech, and none of them were remarkable for smooth temper. X. was sitting in the tavern one day when Z. entered to get something which was lying on the back of X.’s chair. Z. stutteringly apologized for disturbing him. X. was annoyed at being mocked, and stutteringly told him he would stand no such insult. Z. wondered why it was an insult to claim his belongings on the chair, and was equally angry at being stuttered at in response to his polite speech. Stutters were bandied until mutual anger, recrimination and exasperation led to a mutual invitation to the open and an appeal to the captain’s sympathy, which was stutteringly refused, while he advised them not to be ‘such-ch f-f-fools.’”

* * * * *

“In the beginning of the winter of ’37-38, MacNab, president of our railroad, came with some of the directors into our office. He stood before the fire, with his coat-tails turned up, and seemed to have made up his mind to rival Cromwell, if not to surpass him. ‘Boys, the Rebellion has burst out and the railway has burst up. Make out your arrears of accounts due, get them verified and certified by the chief engineer and keep them safe--some day you may get the money. In the meantime we have none for you, and the banks are burst all over the country, and if we had any to give you you could not pass it. We have no further use for your services, unless you choose to enlist in the volunteer corps. In that case I can promise you lots of work at twenty-five cents a day without board, except by foraging on the enemy. I give you quarter of an hour to get your accounts verified, and then go. I want to lock up the office and put the key in my pocket by that time.’

“I don’t know what the other fellows did with themselves, but I got my $130 odd verified, and it will be just sixty years next December since that money started ‘coming’ to me. I joined the Guelph Light Infantry, under Captain Poore, and that afternoon we marched over awful roads to Ancaster. When we got there we made camp-fires along the street, and lay down in our blankets on the frozen ground. The object of our expedition was to annihilate Duncombe.

“At about two in the morning we were kicked till we woke up, when we were summoned to partake of the banquet the Government provided of pork and bread. For the ensuing two weeks of our expedition we looked back in raptures at that meal, for we got hardly another bite except an occasional one stolen from the farmers. Once I got one hot potato from the table while the people were at breakfast; the other fellows took the rest, and it was all done in a moment. We got an occasional frozen potato or turnip, but the farmers, who were nearly all rebels there, generally left their houses empty. Lane, the commissary, was all the time a three-days’ journey behind us.

“When we reached Brantford we were quartered in the Methodist Church, three hundred of us, a coloured company from Toronto part of the three hundred. Many queer things happened there, including a burlesque sermon from the pulpit by a darkey, and the attempt to take up a collection after it for commissariat purposes. I was sentry that night over the so-called stores, and as I was leaving the church a kettle of boiling fat was brought in. I had not time to wait, so I dipped my india-rubber cup in and took a drink. I scalded my thumb and finger, burnt my mouth and tongue, melted my cup, and then had two hours in which to quietly meditate on the result of drinking red-hot fat in a hurry. As I was leaving the church a strip of red flannel was handed me to sew on my fur cap; none of us had uniforms, and the flannel was our distinguishing mark from the enemy. While on sentry a woman crossed the road and asked me if I had seen her husband; I said I had seen no one, and asked her to sew the flannel on my cap. It appeared I was keeping sentry over her husband’s bake-shop, which had been taken for commissary purposes, and she kept me bareheaded in a snowstorm for an hour waiting for that cap. That was our first snow, and before that all our teaming had been by waggons. While bareheaded the commissary came along to get into his store; I challenged him, and he said he had not got the watchword. I would not let him pass; so he forced his way against my bayonet. That made him go off vowing vengeance. Soon Colonel MacNab and Colonel Mills and the commissary came up. I guessed what they came for, and challenged them. MacNab was in the middle. To ‘Advance, friend, and give the countersign,’ he said, ‘Don’t you know me?’ I said I knew no one on duty. He then came up and whispered ‘Quebec,’ and I let him pass. That ended the attempt to catch me tripping while on duty. When the woman brought me my cap I said I was not going to thank her for sewing it, because she sympathised with the rebellion. Suddenly I heard musket shots, and it appeared the rebels were marching in to take Brantford without knowing we were there waiting for them. A doctor in advance of their army had been taken prisoner at the bridge; but he lied to MacNab, and said he was on his way to see a sick person. This seemed probable, and he was let go, when he rode back to warn the rebels. A shot was sent after him, and that started the alarm I heard. All our companies were mustered in line in a great snowstorm, and furnished with thirty-six rounds of ball cartridge; then we began quick march to catch the enemy, who retreated when the doctor reached them. We caught up to them at Beemersville, when they took position and fired a volley; we charged, and they subsided; so we ate their breakfast. During the day several hundred Indians drew up in line in an orchard and took us for rebels; we took them for the same. We were in line to receive them, and pails of whiskey were dealt along. The others took it, but I refused, although the sergeant who dealt it out said it would give me Dutch courage. I said I wanted only English courage. Officers met each other half way with flags of truce for a parley. It turned out we were all of the same side, so they brought their painted faces to within ten feet opposite; but we couldn’t speak Indian and they couldn’t speak English, so we were not very communicative. When there was to be no fighting I wanted my whiskey, but the sergeant would not give it.

“I went into the tavern to capture a prisoner almost in my hand. He had fired two rifles at me, and then he ran to the tavern; my musket was not loaded, so I could not return fire, but I threw it at him. I got him fast in the tavern, almost transfixing him with my bayonet before I could divert it; as it was, his long whiskers were pinned into the wall, and to withdraw the steel I had to plant my foot against his waistband. But when our men came pouring in several tried to kill him, so I stood before him and we fenced with bayonets, I against three or four. They desisted when I told them that the first blood spilt would be theirs or mine, and I sent for a sergeant to come and take the man. But when they went out I had to stand between my prisoner and the crowd.

“We slept three deep in straw that night. I came in late, found a place, and used another man for a pillow; soon a comrade came in and woke me up by sitting on my head while he pulled off his boots. I shook him off three or four times, but he remonstrated with me for being inconsiderate, as my head was the highest thing in the room and the best for his purpose. He was so persistent, and I so sleepy, that I agreed to let him stay if he would promise to get off when he got rid of his boots. He promised, and I went to sleep; and I suppose he must have done as he said, for I did not find him on my head in the morning.

“Near what was then Sodom-and-Gomorrah we came on seven haystacks in a row by the fence line; the cavalry had tied their horses to the fence and divided the stacks among them; then the teams came up, and the stacks were melted more thoroughly than the snow. My legs were stiff from walking, and a pock-marked Irishman’s hands were stiff from driving; so we exchanged musket and whip, and I had a day’s relief while driving for him. The snow had grown so deep that a team took the lead, breaking the way for the men, who would pass by in full procession, while the teamster drew to one side to rest his horses. Before we left Norwich three or four hundred men gave themselves up as prisoners, heartily sick of what they had supposed was patriotism. When we got to Ingersoll and asked for food they said there that everything had been bought up that was not poisonous; the grocery man had nothing to offer me but soft soap, and he recommended that in strong terms. I declined the inference.

“Our barracks there were in the blacksmith’s shop, without a floor, and built over the creek on the only street in the place. I took my bayonet out of the sheath and knocked at the kitchen door of the best looking house I could see. A lady answered, and I asked her if there was a gentleman in the house that I could talk to. She said no, her husband was with the officers. I said I came to buy a loaf of bread. She could spare me none, as she was going to give a dinner to the officers that evening, and at any rate she did not sell bread, that was not her business. I told her I was sorry there was no man in the house that I could talk to, but as there was not I must tell to her that I had been all over the village trying to buy food, and as I had not been able to get any I had taken this bayonet out with a view to fighting for some if I could not buy it; that I was soldiering to drive the rebels out, and that we had no commissariat; that that sort of thing was hard for me and the rest of the men, when officers could have banquets given them after being too ignorant to organize a commissariat. I told her a great many things, and apologized for having to talk to her so, and that I was sorry there was no man to talk to. She ended by giving me nearly a whole loaf, the price for which she said was a York sixpence. I put a York shilling down on the table and took my loaf to the barracks, where I cut it in as many pieces as there happened to be men in. As soon as I had put a piece in my mouth I found myself reeling and getting blind. They led me out and I fell into the creek, with my head under water; they picked me out again, but my appetite was all gone, and I gave away my bit of bread. I wandered about, and after awhile heard that the Orangemen were having a feast. I and several others went to the same house, and we were all in the seventh heaven of happiness; good food, and served by a handsome hostess and two beautiful daughters. After eating, we joined the Orangemen in the next room, and we spent several hours drinking grog and singing. That was our tenth day out, and that supper was my third meal. Generally our meals consisted in sucking a corner of a blanket; we kept our mouths moist that way, and averted faintness and reeling.

“When going to Hamilton teams were pressed from the farmers, and we were carried seven men and a driver in each. When we got to the mountain the angle and state of the road sent the first sleigh over the precipice, and ours, the second, hung over at right angles; but we managed by hugging the bank and shifting our weight. I looked over and saw the first sleigh on a ledge about one hundred feet below, and as the men were not visible I suppose they were buried in the snow.

“When sitting in the tavern that day I found in my pocket a small apple I had bought near Paris. I took a bite of it and that brought the saliva into my mouth, when, naturally, I fainted as I sat.

“As we marched into Hamilton we had to pass by my door, so I marched out of the ranks and into it. Of my three meals in two weeks, only one was at the expense of the Government.”

* * * * *

“When I was going from Hamilton to Windsor I had to take to sleighing at Chatham, and as we drove down the river, hugging the shore, many large fields of ice floated down the open. We passed three men on one cake, another on a second, and later a fifth, all dead and frozen Yankees, sympathisers. At Windsor I stopped with Mr. Baby, whose house windows were riddled with bullets, and I saw vacant lots broken up and dotted with graves. As an encouragement for me, on my way to Detroit, I was told that the Yankees had threatened to hang the first six Canadians they could catch, to the lamp posts, in return for Colonel Prince’s shooting. When I got my pass from a lieutenant to enable me to cross the river he told me the same thing. I got over and was trying to get my boxes examined by two men who called themselves custom house officers, when I found I had to go off, for peace’ sake, with three others, to report. I guessed what it was about, and made up my mind. They took me to a low tavern filled with unwashed men, and I was left sitting with one of my three while the other two reported on me to an officer. Was I in the ‘war’? Yes. Which side, the patriotic? _Yes._ Where? Under General Duncombe. How did he make out? Beaten horribly. My questioner had been at Navy Island, and said ‘the British had sent over a ---- rocket, which they all looked at while it zigzagged round until it fell plump on the island, where it fizzed away so long that they went to see what was the matter with it, and while they were looking the ----thing burst, and ---- if it didn’t kill eight; they didn’t feel any curiosity to examine any of the rest that came.’ I treated this fellow to a drink, unrectified and tasting like sulphuric acid. I didn’t drink mine, so he did. Then I was conducted to the officers’ room, about eighteen gentlemanly looking fellows, apparently American officers, who were deputed to conduct the campaign, so as to give better prospects of success in the conquering and annexing of Canada. They tried to catch me tripping, but I lied manfully; I had no scruples about treating such gentry so. I knew all about what I had seen, and all I had to do was to reverse the position. But my stay in Detroit was short, and I soon returned to work in Canada.

“In our scrimmage with the enemy our captain of cavalry fired his pistol at a rebel, but his horse inopportunely pranced and the bullet ran along the animal’s neck and out at his forehead. He fell, stunned, crushing the captain pretty badly, one of whose hands was permanently injured. He told the story to some one, and that person said, ‘Don’t tell that story again; say the rebels shot your horse, and claim a pension.’ He took his friend’s advice, but I don’t know about the pension. At a review afterwards I saw the same captain on the same horse, and I told the story to the man I was with; we then went up to the captain, and asked him how he got his hand hurt, and he replied that the rebels had shot his horse!

“After our campaign I found I could drink thirteen cups of tea at a meal for several successive meals; but I could not sleep in a bed, or in fact stay long in the house at night at all.” This narrator gives some most unflattering opinions of Colonel MacNab in his generalship in the Duncombe campaign, and many tales of the commissariat department alone seem to bear out his statements from a private’s point of view. He is contemptuous and satirical in describing the methods employed in the Little Scotland affair, “but considering we were about 30 to 1 it did not much matter.”

Another gives a summary of the few casualties at Little Scotland, and, as a death dealer, thinks sauerkraut almost equal to bullets: “A private from Hamilton nearly perished after eating a quart of raw frozen sauerkraut. I was detailed to bring in some prisoners, a cold trip in the snow, and I was fired at from behind an elevation in the road in front of us. We found two of the prisoners covered up in an oat bin in a tannery. Our luggage-train had such a hard time that in one place we had to build a bridge and hold it down with hand-spikes while the train went over. We had no rest and little to eat; no salt at all, and our rations only frozen bread. We would gnaw at it a while and then lay it aside to rest our jaws; but we had to be careful that the hero of the sauerkraut would not make away with it, as he had a hungry maw and a canvas bag. At night we slept in the open, and we wrapped ourselves in Indian blankets--to find them frozen round us. But a fire made of fence rails thawed us and our bread and blankets.”

Occasionally there were volunteers who were not made of the stuff which could be comfortable in a frozen blanket or willing to face a foe. An American, engaged in shipping lumber to Buffalo, with no love for Canadians, had boards added in every possible way about his vessel and covered with all available lanterns and candles. This display sent terror, as he expected, to the hearts of the raw recruits. When ordered to hold themselves in readiness for the advancing foe, one of them approached the captain and declared he was not going, as he had “only listed to stan’ guard.”

Le Grand Brule.

“_It appears to me that there is no danger in leaving Canada in
Sir John Colborne’s hands for the present, and that his powers
are amply sufficient for all emergencies that may arise._”

While in Upper Canada vigilance committees had merged into military organizations with much intended secrecy, in Lower Canada matters went with a higher hand. In the former, “shooting matches,” where turkeys took the place of Loyalists, were fashionable with the more advanced Reformers; sharp-shooting practice went on, with an occasional feu de joie in honour of Papineau when some courier brought an enthusiasm-begetting letter from below. Mr. Bidwell, an “incurable American in mind, manners, and utterance,” gave his legal opinion that trials of skill such as these were not contrary to law. It was found, too, that bayonets were much the handiest weapons in hunting deer; from humane desire some hunters added these to their rifles, so that such monarchs of the forest as came in their way could be speedily put out of misery.

But in Montreal and elsewhere the rebels drilled on the military parade grounds and complained bitterly if interfered with, and officers of the troops would make small knots of amused audience near them. The bulk of these patriots were boys, but they did not like to hear themselves so called; they were tired of the times of peace, when sons bury their fathers, and were ambitious for the times of war, when fathers bury their sons. One of them challenged an officer, demanding satisfaction for such a “remarque insultante,” and two more jostled a soldier on sentry, trying to take his musket from him. His officer advised, “If the gentlemen come near you again, you have your bayonet; use it, and I will take the consequences.” For, withal hoping it was but an effect of humour, which sometimes hath his hour with every man, instructions were not to force matters by any hasty act. The only result of this incident was another private challenge, an exchange of shots, and Sir John Colborne’s disapproval, all part of the excitement surrounding the Doric-Liberty riots, when the patriots were ambitious to be “fils de la victoire” as well as “fils de la liberté.”

On his way to the famous Six Counties meeting, Papineau narrowly escaped a thrashing from a noted pugilist who would willingly have championed England had not a party of officers on “board the boat, bound for a fox hunt, interfered.” The officers did not scruple to ride at and rout with their whips the parcel of young boys, who, armed with duck guns, met Papineau as escort at Longueuil, the lads fleeing in all directions, while Papineau made his disappearance unostentatiously down a byway.

In after years Longueuil was a favourite haunt for Papineau. He would sit for hours in a small rustic arbour built upon a point of land where he could look upon a wide and beautiful view, pondering on the things that might have been had Sir John Colborne not been the man he was.

As early as the 14th of October matters were thought so ripe for insurrection that the troops were kept ready in barracks for a minute’s notice, and a loyalist meeting--a sure forerunner of disturbance--at which Campbell Sweeny was one of the ablest speakers, was held. By afternoon Loyalists and Canadians had come to blows, and fought, off and on, into the night, the former thenceforth called the Axe-handle Guards, from their weapons on that occasion. On the following day a young officer named Lysons was sent to Toronto to ask Sir Francis Bond Head for as many troops as he could spare. He could spare all, except the detachment at Bytown. Garrison artillery was turned into field artillery, with guns, harness and horses newly bought; and Sir John Colborne, apparently the right man in the right place, was appointed commander of the forces. Asked what Cromwell had done for his country, an old Scotch laird once answered, “God, doctor, he gart kings ken they had a lith in their necks.” Colborne at once set about assuring Canadian rebels that they were made on the same anatomical principles as kings. He was not likely to make a plaything of Revolution. This old and tried soldier had been in New York ready to sail for home, not a little wearied after his Upper Canadian experiences, when he received his new command. He lost no time in repairing to Quebec to organize and appraise his available forces. He armed the Irish colonists; what they would do was the question, for there was much sympathy among them for the oppressed Canadians, but Garneau sarcastically remarks that Colborne possibly appreciated the versatility of that race.

Hitherto the military in Canada had been left unsupported by their own authorities. Colborne felt them to be something after the pattern of the standing army in the Isle of Champagne, which consisted of two, who always sat down; and he proceeded to make those under him stand up. He asked for reinforcements from home, his policy being of the kind which dictated the display of the British fleet in Delagoa Bay but lately--to frighten, overawe, to show the case to be hopeless, and so save further demonstration from the disaffected. By his detractors he has been accused of taking measures to force premature revolt, knowing that to allow the movement to ripen it would become a grand combination of force which he would be unable to resist. Calumny of this kind was common and not confined to one side of politics, as witness the theory that Mackenzie was in the pay of the British Government to stir up rebellion.

It was a master-stroke of policy, said the cavillers, to force the first encounter in Montreal; and thence was traced the line of disaster which followed. Among the scuffles--“troubles sérieux”--was the famous one between the Doric Club and the Sons of Liberty. Warrants against the chief malcontents followed, including Papineau, Morin, O’Callaghan and Nelson. Arrests in the rural districts were resisted strongly. After the Governor (Gosford) had proclaimed martial law, the clash of arms began to be heard. Lieutenant Ermatinger of the Royal Volunteer Cavalry and some twenty men were despatched to St. John’s, _via_ Longueuil and Chambly, to arrest Davignon and Demarais, two noted malcontents. Ermatinger did his work quietly, put irons on their hands and feet and ropes about their necks, and after placing them in agonizing positions on the boards of the waggon in which they were to be conveyed to Montreal, began his return. Their appearance of complete defeat struck the young lieutenant as possibly a wholesome lesson to others; so instead of returning by a direct route he took them where the display would not be lost. Near Longueuil he was warned by a woman that a rescue party awaited him on the road. Disregarding her, he went on till some three hundred men, armed with the usual long guns, in a field on their right, and protected by the high fences, proved her to be correct. Shots were exchanged, Ermatinger himself was wounded in face and shoulder with duck-shot, and a plucky little Surgeon-Major of Hussars (Sharp) in the leg. Some half-dozen others of the Loyalists were disabled, and they began to make good their retreat. Sharp, in spite of his wounds, managed to cover it. The waggon upset prisoners and constables, and as there was neither time nor inclination to pack them in again, the escape was due rather to accident than to rescue. Meantime a party of regulars awaited Ermatinger’s return at the ferry, ready to escort the expected prisoners to gaol; the civil force was so inadequate that he and his men had in fact been doing the work of special constables. Shots in the distance, then the stragglers wounded or whole, told their story, and it was deemed expedient to send a stronger force. A detachment of Royals, Royal Artillery, and some cavalry, comprising a few of those wounded the day before, went back to the scene, commanded by Wetherall. Tracks of blood in the fields, an overturned waggon and a dead horse, wayside houses and barns with shutters and windows nailed tight but hearth-fires still burning, told of conflict and hurried departure. Not an inmate or weapon was to be found, but a pedestrian said he saw women and children and some armed men farther on. The cavalry in advance gave chase to some thirty armed horsemen, who, after leading their pursuers over very rough riding, took to the woods, leaving behind only one solitary footman, who at once gave himself up. The infantry then were ordered into the woods, and the cavalry drew up along its edge, twenty or thirty shots were exchanged, and this time they were rewarded with seven prisoners.

The miscarriage of the first attempt made the rebels ironical. Ermatinger’s followers, called the Queen’s Braves, were portrayed as “decamping across the fields, leaving Messieurs Davignon and Demarais to their farmer rescuers, ... one of the gallant soldiers first discharging his pistol, ... but his hand trembling with fear did no other execution than graze the shoulder of M. Demarais.... The disciplined mercenaries of tyrants were far from invulnerable when opposed by men resolved to be free.”

St. Denis and St. Charles were seats of discontent and determined resistance. A combined movement was therefore resolved on, one command under Lieut.-Colonel Wetherall, one under Lieut.-Colonel Hughes, and the whole under Colonel the Honourable Charles Gore. A magistrate’s general address preceded this action, accompanying the order of the Lieut.-General commanding. “Should our language be misunderstood, should reason be slow to make itself heard, it is still our duty to warn you that neither the military force nor the civil authorities will be outraged with impunity, and that the vengeance of the laws will be equally prompt and terrible. The aggressors will become the victims of their rashness, and will owe the evils that will fall upon their heads to their own obstinacy. It is not those who push you to excess who are your true friends. These men have already abandoned you, and would abandon you again at the moment of danger, while we, who call you back to peace, think ourselves to be the most devoted servants of our country.” D. B. Viger’s name heads the list of magistrates, a signature which made some eyes open wide.

But, in an evil moment, the Nation Canadienne persevered in its trial of strength; Papineau, at its head, proclaimed himself “a brilliant leader and a constellation of moral excellence,” and his proclamation declared that “all ties were severed with an unfeeling mother country, that the glorious fate of disenthralling their native soil from all authority, except that of the brave, democratic spirit residing in it, awaited the young men of all the colonies.”

Meanwhile the Church issued its pastoral letter, never having countenanced either Papineau or his followers. The premier Bishop had ended his personal exhortation by proposing the health of the Sovereign, and his brother Bishops and all the clergy had risen and drunk the toast respectfully. His mandement was accepted with few exceptions. At the parish church of St. Charles the greater portion of its masculine hearers left the church cursing, and the Abbé Blanchet, curé of the parish, was a patriot who took no trouble to hide his sentiments.

At St. Charles the rebels had seized the château, substantial and built on old French models, of M. Debartch, seigneur of the manor. He fled for his life on horseback, while General Storrow Brown regaled his followers on the seigneur’s good beef and mutton, after which they cut down the trees and made the house into no bad imitation of a fortress. M. L’Espérance, whom they courted as a colonel, refused to act. They told him to leave the parish at once; he tried to do so, and then they took him prisoner, contributing $236 of his money to their exchequer. They loop-holed the walls, and made their barricades in the form of a parallelogram on the acres which lay between the river Richelieu and the hill at the foot of which the house stood. The tree trunks were banked with earth, a tidy fortress in appearance, but a trap from which there was no escape in case of defeat, practically of no strength against the loyalist guns. But no outside strength of position availed where such miserable management prevailed within. General Brown had lost an eye in one of the late affrays in Montreal; he was now thrown from his horse on the frozen ground and severely injured. He had but a handful of men to resist attack, for he had sent out a number the night before on various errands. They had not returned, and the few with him were wretchedly armed. By the time the troops arrived he himself was in the village, trying to beat up recruits; and when the firing began without him he took the precaution to remove himself still farther. The unhappy followers he had forsaken were being killed or, trying to escape, taken; every building but the château itself was burned and the barricades demolished. The fields were by this time covered with flying women and children. One woman, who evidently had not time to save herself, was found dead, after the battle, in the midst of the smoking ruins of her dwelling.

There were two cannon within the fortress, but they were only used twice. Wetherall posted his men on the small hill, got his guns into place and began to play on the insurgents, who were left no egress but by the river. They managed to gall him, one party making a sortie; the firing was kept up for an hour but ever grew fainter, while the balls from the field-pieces made great breaches in the rude earthworks, and the undisciplined, unofficered defenders were deeper in confusion. Then came the cruel advance with fixed bayonets, and all who did not ask for quarter received none; the Richelieu was on the other side of them, and “many leaped into the lake who were not thirsty.” “The slaughter on the side of the rebels was great,” wrote Wetherall; “I counted fifty-six bodies, and many more were killed in the buildings and the bodies burnt.” The rebel record reads not at all like this, and ends, “One hundred of these brave men took shelter in a barn filled with hay and straw. The Royal butchers set fire to it and burned them alive. One hundred were drowned in crossing the Richelieu. The village of St. Charles was entirely burned by the soldiers during the attack; those of the inhabitants who escaped the flames perished in the woods from the effects of fright and cold.... The prisoners that fell into their hands were inhumanly treated, and many of the wounded murdered in cold blood.” But, as a brother officer records, “Nothing succeeds like success. Colonel Wetherall was lauded to the skies.”

“We understand the capture of St. Charles was effected with great ease,” says a correspondent in a tone admiring the burning and complete destruction; “no loss of consequence to the troops.” “As soon as possible after the action, the troops, with the greatest humanity, began to bury the bodies of the killed, the scene truly deplorable, wives and daughters ransacking among the bodies for those to whom they wished to pay the last rites.” The _Montreal Courier_ said that hot shot had been used.

In Montreal the welcome to the troops was, as might be expected, extravagantly joyful: “It was an interesting sight to see the hundreds who crowded on the wharf to witness it. The cavalry landed first, two of them carrying the liberty pole and cap erected at St. Charles at the meeting of the Six Counties, with its wooden tablet bearing the inscription ‘À Papineau par ses citoyens reconnaissants,’ the former fragment of the spoils looking sadly like a fool’s cap upon a barber’s pole. The artillery followed, with the two little guns taken at St. Olivière in addition to their proper armament. After them rode the commanding officer, followed by the bands of the Royals and the infantry, the first company of which followed the prisoners, thirty-two in number.”

“The pole, it was hoped by some, would be deposited in that proud fane of British glory, where the tattered ensigns of extinguished rebels in Ireland and of blood-hunted Covenanters in Scotland wave over the tombs of sleeping monarchs in melancholy conjunction with the virgin standard of Bunkers Hill and the trophies of such days as Trafalgar, Cape Vincent, and Waterloo!”!!

It had been intended that the other half of the force, under Colonel Hughes, Colonel Gore accompanying it, should appear before disaffected and mutinous St. Denis simultaneously with Wetherall’s appearance at St. Charles. But the gods of war were not with them as with the others. Torrents of rain, pitchy darkness, rain turning to snow, men and horses sinking in mud, harness breaking, knee deep in water or winding along trails did the column bound for St. Denis find itself, while a few broken bridges were the only drawback to the victorious Wetherall. Four miles away, they surmised their plight and slow approach had led to a warning to their enemies and time for preparation. For eleven hours they toiled, at the rate of a mile and a half an hour, the mud pulling off the men’s boots and moccasins. The cavalry were kept busy driving away parties who were destroying the bridges, all of which had to be repaired before the gullies and streams could be crossed and the howitzers carried over. A most useful man was Cornet Campbell Sweeny, of the Mounted Dragoons, who prevented much damage and was alert in securing early intelligence. They heard the church bells ring the alarm--in rebel language usually called the _tocsin_--and they found a welcome awaiting them from some eight hundred men armed with a scant stock of good and bad guns, pikes, pitchforks, and cudgels.

Before Colonel Gore left he had sent on young Lieutenant Weir, in plain clothes, to prepare for the advance. He was to meet the troops at Sorel, but failed to do so, as they had taken a byroad known as the Pot-au-Beurre to avoid St. Ours, a stronghold of the rebels. This Weir did not know. He took a calèche, and insisted that the man should drive him by the very road which it was impolitic to take. He gave up this calèche, being urged by a Frenchman to take one driven by himself. Weir believed the man’s assertions, engaged the calèche for the balance of his journey, and was driven straight to Nelson’s quarters. When he arrived there and was stopped by the rebel sentry he boldly asked where the troops were. This was the first intimation to the others that the troops were expected. Tied hand and foot, he was put into a cart and removed under escort. As Weir was at once arrested he had disappeared before his friends’ arrival. Among the preparations Nelson immediately set his son Horace and his pupil Dansereau to make bullets.

At the outskirts another skirmishing party gave the troops a brisk salute, and from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon the struggle lasted. Success in resistance seemed so uncertain that Nelson persuaded Papineau to retire and save the person most sacred to the cause. “It is not here you are most useful,” said he; “we shall want your presence at another time.” Papineau argued that his retirement at such a moment might be misinterpreted, but eventually agreed that his rôle was more that of orator than soldier--to breathe fire-eating words rather than to stand the fire of Colonel Gore’s guns. Nelson then rode out to reconnoitre, was afraid he would fall in with the advancing column, and came back at a hard gallop. In the meantime Captain Markham at the head of his men was pushing on, taking house after house, till he reached a stockade across the road which fenced off the large stone building, four stories high, where Nelson had ensconced himself, with other houses so situated as to strengthen its position. The howitzer now came into play; one of the houses was taken, and attention was turned towards securing a large distillery near by. Captain Markham, severely wounded in the knee and with two balls in his neck, still kept with his men; but they, too, began to fall. The previous night’s toil, the cold and hunger, told on them; ammunition began to run out, and the insurgents received additions to their numbers from the neighbouring villages. One of the defenders was Père Laflèche, who had been soldier before priest and now combined his callings. He was telling his beads when he first caught sight of the troops, and in a twinkling exchanged his rosary for a musket. “Hue donc!” he cried, and a ball sped to the death of an advance guard. Another, David Bourdages, son of a celebrated patriot, kept two boys busy loading for him for nearly two hours; he then tranquilly lit his pipe and began again, still smoking. The chronicle says that nearly every shot dealt death. At that rate of computation a simple problem in junior mathematics would show that Bourdages alone could have comfortably despatched half the attacking force.

Meanwhile Weir, hurried off in Nelson’s cart, complained to his captors of the tightness of the cords which bound him. Captain Jalbert, two men, Migneault and Lecour, with the young driver Gustin, who formed his guard, disputed with him; he insisted, they assailed him, and he jumped out of the cart and underneath it to escape their blows. He was fired at twice with pistols, and had sabre cuts on his head and hands, the latter hacked away, as, tied together, they vainly attempted to screen the former. Dragged from beneath the cart the butchery was finished, and the body was secured under the water of the Richelieu by a pile of stones.

With the troops it had become a question how to manage a retreat. There was no ambulance, there were seventeen wounded, and it was decided to remove Captain Markham only. The circumstances demanded that they should so be left, but their comforts were attended to as far as might be. The rebel chronicles say that the troops deserted their wounded.

The insurgents had turned from the defensive to the offensive, and came out to dislodge some of their enemies in rear of a barn; a galling fire was kept up from the fortified house, and Captain Markham, in transit, was again wounded, as was also one of his bearers. The rebel fire was dexterous and precise; the retreating party had to cross a frozen ploughed field, and Captain Markham was put in the only cart and sent to the rear. Hughes needed all his cool address to conduct the rear guard, for the inhabitants seemed to swarm from every direction. Thus hampered they only removed themselves some three miles when, exhausted, in a freezing atmosphere, their gun-carriage broken down and frozen in the ground, they spiked the gun and threw its remaining ammunition in the river. They kept on their march till daylight, by which time the men were nearly barefoot, for their moccasins were cut by the rough ice and frozen earth; their horses were lamed, and the lighted villages through which they passed made them apprehensive of attack. At daylight a halt was called, and the men, half dead through fatigue and hunger, lay wherever they could find a place in the barns of a deserted farmhouse. A young officer who in the plight of darkness the night before had got a lantern, stuck it to a pole and sent it on ahead of the men as a guiding star, now turned his attention to a search for potatoes--which he found and boiled in sufficient quantity to allow each man three or four before the weary march was resumed.

Nelson had had his triumph; a short-lived one, for he at once had to follow the advice so recently given by him to Papineau, that one’s discretions are one’s best valours. According to a manuscript letter historically quoted, the English commander had more faith in the dictum of a priest than in his own guns. Perhaps a submission gained by obedience to a higher authority than military force might be of greater service to the crown they served. Wetherall sent for the curé of St. Denis--as soon as “il voyait qu’il n’avait pas a faire à des enfants”--and besought him to tell his people that if they did not succumb they would be tormented in even a worse place than Lower Canada; that if they persisted, he would refuse them burial. The last was a former expedient to ensure an appearance of loyalty. Many graves were to be seen in old gardens or by the wayside along the south coast, outside of consecrated ground, the graves of “Canadian rebels;” rebels who, during the Revolution of 1776, had taken part with the Americans, thinking that by so doing they would hasten the coming of “the old folks back again.” “You smell English,” said one of them on his death-bed, raising himself to give his curé a scowling defiance on this his one strongest conviction, and, turning to the wall, died, outside the Church but true to France.

After the curé’s menace, “which succeded à merveille,” the men on whom Nelson had counted were reduced one half, a story confirmed by Colonel Gore’s later despatch, wherein he also says, “I was accompanied by Mons. Crenier, the parish priest, who gave me every information in his power.” The Colonel revisited St. Denis with an increased force, but found the place abandoned; Nelson had escaped with Papineau and others, although there were many signs of greater defences having been made. So the troops marched on to St. Charles with their rescued howitzer. Montreal was now put in a state of defence; stockades surrounded it, and only a few gates, well guarded, were left open.

There were two searches now to be made, one for the body of Weir, another for the bodies, living or dead, of Papineau, Nelson, and others, the heads of the first two being valued at $4,000 and $2,000 respectively. The melancholy duty of searching for Weir was given to a lieutenant of the 32nd, Griffin, who, conducted to the place by a young girl who had witnessed the hiding of it, found the body. Several of the fingers were split, an axe, some said a spade, having been the last weapon used upon him. He had taken breakfast with Nelson and was well treated throughout by him. On leaving the house, Nelson, in Weir’s presence and after begging him not to be refractory, had commanded the men to treat him with all possible attention, but on no account to allow him to escape. Their tale was that the sound of the firing, as they travelled from the point of attack, so excited Weir that in his struggles he loosened the binding of one of his arms, and springing from them ran. They overtook him, and the appearance of his body told the sequel. It was taken to Montreal for burial with military honours, in which regulars and volunteers took an equal share. To the patriot eye this natural action was making “a vile use” of an “unfortunate occurrence,” to “waken the old British horror against Frenchmen, Jacobins and blood-thirsty revolutionists.” As a set-off to this peculiar view of a terrible act there is the following sentence anent the second occupation of St. Denis, by a Tory paper: “We are not sanguine enough to expect that any regular opposition will be attempted.”

“Jock Weir, remember Jock Weir!” now became the war-cry of his incensed comrades.

The hunt for the leaders began in earnest. Papineau, a lawyer of some repute, was then a man of about forty-eight years, of good average height, inclined to corpulency, certainly not the figure to imagine under small haystacks or at full length in ditches. His face was strongly marked with those features which proclaim a Jewish ancestor somewhere; dark very arched eyebrows, hair nearly black, the eye dark, quick and penetrating; an exterior of determination and force in keeping with the well-stored mind, conversational power, cultivation and gentlemanly address which marked the man. His eloquence had passed into a proverb. An unusually precocious Canadian child always had said of it, “C’est un Papineau.”

His followers had every excuse for their worship, and thought him equal, perhaps superior, to Washington. His father, “le père des patriotes,” who had not let his patriotism go the length of severance from Britain, frowned on the more advanced son, still keeping to feudal tenure and the Catholic religion as the priests taught. The Code Papineau junior had not much feudalism in it, and politics may be said to have been the son’s religion.