Chapter VI: Part 6

So also did Robert Nelson say that feudal nonsense was abolished forever, and the Church of not much more account. He and his brother Wolfred had their own interpretation of their relative’s saying that “England expects every man to do his duty.” Mrs. Wolfred Nelson’s grandfather, le Marquis de Fleurimont, was one of the French officers wounded in September, 1759; afterwards he took the oath of allegiance, and was again wounded in the repulse of Montgomery before Quebec. These Frenchified Englishmen seem to have been born for something better than treason, stratagem and spoils; they took none of the last and found the first two meant prison and expatriation. Wolfred Nelson was by far the best looking of the leaders, tall, with handsome features, and had moreover a brave and manly disposition. His proclamations were wonderfully worded, his Athanasian rendering declaring the Canadian Republic to be “one and indivisible.” Colonel Gore sought to take these prominent men, having heard that they were secreted at St. Hyacinthe. Accordingly a young officer and a picked party were told off, their sleighs without bells being timed to arrive after dark at the house where the leaders were supposed to be. The guide brought the sleighs there somewhere near midnight, and they found the usual comfortable French quarters, solid barns with yards and outbuildings. A chain of sentries was posted round the place and through the buildings; a knock brought madame, a most charming old lady, to the window; they were very welcome, and she showed them not only over the house, but she kept them seeking in many corners they would not have found for themselves, in cellars where stores of winter vegetables and fruit lay in rows, cupboards full of treasures, in cavernous depths beyond rafters which promised a reward for search, but only revealed much bacon and ham, flitches “the manifest product of a high-caste gramnivorous pig.” But Papineau, on the watch, had had time to get to a deep ditch which ran back into the fields, whence he made his way to a small bush near by. From there he escaped to the States; but Nelson was taken and lodged in Kingston gaol. Years afterwards, at an evening party, after his return from France, the charming, white-haired Papineau said to a gentleman who had been the soldier so prominent in the search, “I hear you are the officer who came to call on me at Madame ----’s, in ’37. You little know how nearly you took me.... You did your work admirably, for, though we were on the watch, I had only just time to run away down that wet ditch before your sentries met.” Among the effects then seized were many papers of value to the captors, one of them a letter from Papineau, finishing, “Continue to push it (the rebellion) as vigorously as you can,” and another, a schoolboy letter from Nelson’s son, a lad of fourteen, somewhat after the manner of Tom Sawyer: “I wish that it (the rebellion) will do well and without any noise, which I hate very much--except with the other side. I believe that the prediction of that man Bourgeoi will be accomplished, which is that the province will be all covered with blood and dead bodies.” A Montreal newspaper deplores “the fattening of Nelson for the gallows,” and considered that “death on the scaffold was the best example such a father could give to such a child.”

And yet Dr. O’Callaghan could write from over the border, “If you are to blame for the movement, blame then those who plotted and continued it, and who are to be held in history responsible for it. We, my friends, were the victims, not the conspirators; and were I on my deathbed I could declare before heaven that I had no more idea of a movement of resistance when I left Montreal and went to the Richelieu River with M. Papineau than I have now of being bishop of Quebec. And I also know that M. Papineau and I secreted ourselves for some time in a farmer’s house in the parish of St. Marc, lest our presence might alarm that country and be made a pretext for rashness.... I saw as clearly as I now see the country was not prepared.” Dr. O’Callaghan, the _fidus Achates_ of Papineau, the editor of the _Vindicator_, was not likely to have been as innocent as he afterwards remembered himself.

Another who managed to hide safely but nearer home, after the battle of St. Charles, was George Cartier. With his cousin Henri he passed the winter at the house of Antoine Larose, in his native village of St. Antoine, and the person destined to be his father-in-law was in hiding not far off. The future Sir George, to make sure of a quiet resting-place, wrote, and had published in a Montreal newspaper: “George E. Cartier, advocate, a young man of great ability and talent, was found frozen in the woods by his father. He might have served his Queen in the highest councils of his country had he not been brought up in a line of politics which led to his untimely end.” He read his self-description and epitaph, and handed it to his cousin, remarking, “At present, my dear Henri, we can sleep tranquil.” But he reckoned, not without his host, who was incorruptible, but without his host’s servant-maid. The maid had an admirer, and the admirer grew jealous of the two young men who enjoyed advantages superior to those granted him, made a scene with his fiancée, threatened to inform on them and to denounce M. Larose to the authorities for harbouring rebels. So the two young men, nephews many times removed of the celebrated Jacques, had to decamp to the less confined neighbourhood of les États Unis. In after years, when Mackenzie with questionable taste treated the episode of the rebellion as a comedy, he met M. Cartier, in parliamentary obstructive debate, and twitted him that they had both been “out” on the wrong side, and that the Government had shown its appreciation of the comparative values of their heads. He referred to the price of a thousand pounds set on his own, and only three hundred on that of the young man whose sudden demise from hunger and cold in the woods of Verchères had spoilt “une brilliante carrière.”

* * * * *

Naturally, Montreal was now in a highly excited state, distracted at defeat and elated at victory; openly rejoicing or inwardly chafing, as the case might be. The specie in the Bank found its way for safe keeping to Quebec, ammunition, arms and soldiers began to arrive, volunteer battalions were formed; the gaol was crowded with prisoners; the outlets of the city were barricaded, and a general hum of expectation was in the air.

Detachments of the 1st Royals under Colonel Wetherall, of the 32nd and 83rd under Maitland and Dundas, the Volunteer Montreal Rifle Corps under Captain Leclerc, and a strong squadron of horse with six pieces of artillery, fully served, under command of Major Jackson, one sunny day defiled through the streets with colours waving and bands playing. The field battery, rocket troop and all the transports were on runners, for it was now the 15th of December and the snow was deep. The Commander-in-chief, the generally popular and much-feared hero of Waterloo and a hundred other fights, Sir John Colborne, with his richly caparisoned staff and escorted by two hundred Dragoons, brought up the rear of this imposing display.

They proceeded to the western extremity of the island, past the ruins of two old forts and the smaller remains of a larger one, all telling of former war times. At the expansion of the river, caused by its narrow outlets, was the Lake of the Two Mountains, where one of the hills, in summer clothed with richest verdure to the water’s edge, was called Calvary. Within its shadow lay St. Eustache, St. Benoit, and Ste. Scholastique; any of them might have been named Golgotha, so soon were they to become the place of skulls. “Le Grand Brûlé” was so named before “le vieux brûlot” was to rechristen it with fire and blood, for a forest fire had swept it at the end of the last or the beginning of this century; the “Petit Brûlé” was near Ste. Scholastique--names significant to the dwellers there of a fate worse than burning by forest fire.

St. Eustache, most picturesque of the early French settlements, was built on a tongue of land. At that day it consisted of a square of handsome stone houses, comfortable and well finished, in which the wealthy but discontented owners lived; hard by were the manor-house, the presbytère and convent, and in the centre stood the parish church, its two towers topped by spires as glittering as the “panoply of war” then in full sight ready for the attack. The people of this village, between five and six hundred, were enthusiastic Liberals, disaffected French--traitors, rebels or patriots, according to the point of view. Sir John Colborne saw them in strong colours, and was determined on their downfall, extermination if necessary. The defence was under Dr. Chénier and Girod. The latter, a misguided Swiss adventurer, had figured in several of the South American revolutionary wars, and later was a protégé of Perrault the philanthropist; his career was one of singular folly; he loved to appear in buccaneer style, affected the manner and language of a dictator, and accented his doings by usually riding a fine grey mare as his charger, which he had stolen from M. Dumont, a loyal Canadian. The parish priest, M. Paquin, assisted by his vicar, who read Colborne’s proclamation--a document not to be misunderstood and not of a cheerful tenor--succeeded in persuading the peasants to return to their homes in peace, that nothing but disaster awaited them if they persisted, and as a result of such persuasions but one solitary person was left to represent an insurgent garrison. But some fifteen hundred from about the Brûlé soon replaced them, some regularly armed, but most of them unarmed. M. Paquin now sent for Chénier, expostulated with him and showed how his undertaking was perilous and hopeless. Chénier was moved to tears, but he maintained that the news of Wetherall’s victory at St. Charles was false; he was resolved to die with arms in his hands. He and Girod turned the ecclesiastics out of their house, making it another point of defence and the church into a citadel. Many of the prudent were by now wending their way towards Montreal; some arrests followed; and those who remained and found themselves unarmed were assured by Chénier, “Be easy about that; there will be men killed. You can take their muskets.”

A habitant from l’Isle Jésu brought word of the approach of the troops, and soon Sir John Colborne’s two thousand men stood in the valley which looked made but for the place of peace. The whole force, field pieces, rocket mortar and train waggons, covered two miles of roadway. The advance guard would have reached there with the habitant had not the ice been unsafe, causing the men to make a detour to Ste. Rose, thereby increasing the march by six miles. The water had been open two days before, but to prove that it would bear, Colonel Gugy--“a tall, majestic-looking gentleman who expressed himself in a beautiful manner”--galloped from shore to shore. About noon all had arrived, and as they neared the village and took up position their numbers and character must have impressed the unhappy people with the hopelessness of the coming conflict. The usual desertions began, until Chénier, looking at one road full of his enemies and another full of his retreating countrymen, addressed the few who remained with him: “My brothers, behold advancing before you, to burn and destroy your beautiful homes, the servile mercenaries of the despotic Government which has enslaved your country.” And they in return cried the old cry, “Liberty or Death.”... “We will never desert our wives and little ones.” Officers in charge of divided squads put in a state of defence the manor house, the presbytère, the convent and one villager’s house, while Chénier, in person taking command of from sixty to eighty, many of whom were still without arms, went to the church, where the women and children had already fled. The last, for further safety, he placed in the vaults underneath. The doors were then barricaded, and the windows removed to convert the openings into loopholes. Thus did they await the coming annihilation, “nor,” said a British officer afterwards, “did they quail as our overwhelming force approached; they raised one loud and shrill terrific cheer, and then all was still as death till the cannonading and musketry began.” The field battery opened fire; but there was no reply. At first it was supposed that the place had been abandoned; but as another brigade came down the village street a rattling fire poured from the church. It was evident they meant to show fight. The howitzers tried to batter down the barricaded doors, but without effect. Colonel Jackson, of the artillery, asked for a surrender. The answer “was plucky but idiotic;” they pooh-poohed the offer, and among other preparations took a cannon to the top of the steeple. Then Jackson set his own gun, blew the steeple and all that was in it down, and those below who ran out of the doors were bayoneted. An officer who went into one of the empty houses close by upset a stove and placed on the coals all the combustibles he could find. In a moment the line of fire lengthened, and under cover of the smoke Colonel Wetherall and his men came at the double down the street; cavalry and still another regiment surrounded the village to prevent chance of escape, with a further precaution of a corps of volunteers spread out on the ice to pick off any unfortunate should he get through such a double line. The envelopment of fire was completed. The church and houses were now all ablaze. Driven by the flames the unhappy defenders abandoned one position for another, only to find the second worse. At the back of the church a small door leading into the sacristy had been forced, and the soldiers, groping their way through smoke and darkness, led by Colonel Gugy, were shot at by the few who remained. Gugy was one of those wounded. The staircase was gone, and another officer lighted a fire beneath the altar, got his men out, and the cessation of shots within told the success of his work. The simultaneous fire pouring on the French from all sides was liking boiling water on an anthill. Men half-roasted, with bullets already lodged in their miserable bodies, women creeping from the crypt, found that what flame and bullet had spared the bayonet could finish. Chénier and the few remaining, mad with despair, leaped from the windows into the graveyard, and fought there anew with all the desperation of a forlorn hope. A ball brought the leader down; but rallying his sinking strength he rose, to be again shot, until, with the fourth bullet, he rose no more--the blackened semblance of a man. He died “comme un héros digne de la Grèce antique.” In the mêlée a few managed to escape, but for a moment only; those who made for the ice were picked off there, and those who fell on their knees and begged for quarter heard “Jock Weir, remember Jock Weir.” By half-past four the work was finished. Cannon and musketry had ceased, but the houses still burned; the churchyard and the convent were heaped with dead, and the wounded, burning alive, received now and then a merciful shot or a stab from a bayonet. The village swine added yet another horror. “Pshaw,” said a Scotch volunteer to a squeamish comrade, “it’s nothing but French hog eating French hog.” Pathos was added to horrors, when it appeared that the pockets of some of the youngest of the insurgents were full of marbles--toys turned to missiles.

The air was insufferable, but in spite of it loot and pillage went on. At Montreal, in the clear atmosphere of a Canadian December night, the bright belt of illuminated sky told as plainly as telegraph that the expedition had been a success. “Such a scene,” wrote a correspondent to the press, “was never witnessed. It must prove an awful example. The artillery opened fire at half-past one. Everything was over, except the shooting of a few fugitives, by half-past three.”

Quite a different view of the case is found in official despatches. Sir John Colborne writes to Lord Glenelg, 30th March, ’38: “On the evening in which the troops took possession of St. Eustache, the loyal inhabitants of that village and neighbourhood, anxious to return to their homes and to protect the remainder of their property, followed the troops; and I believe it is not denied that the houses which were burnt, except those that were necessarily destroyed in driving the rebels from the fortified church, were set on fire by the Loyalists of St. Eustache and Rivière du Chêne, who had been driven from the country in October and November.” And in a despatch from Glenelg to Lord Durham, June 2nd, ’38, we find: “Having laid that despatch before the Queen, Her Majesty has commanded me to desire Your Lordship to signify to Sir J. Colborne, that while she deeply laments that any needless severities should have been exercised by one class of Her Majesty’s subjects against another, Her Majesty is gratified to learn, as she fully anticipated, that her troops are in no degree responsible for any of the excesses which unhappily attended the defeat of the insurgents at St. Benoit and St. Charles, but that in the harassing service in which they were engaged they maintained unimpaired their high character for discipline and training.”

Certainly some of her officers did their best to make up for “needless severity.” Colonel Gugy and Colonel Griffin afterwards were unwearied, and in a measure successful, in their mediations between exasperated nationalities. The former persuaded many at the time to return to their houses, and priest and layman alike commended him in his rôle of pacificator. Colborne appointed Colonel Griffin military magistrate, with civil powers, in the County of Two Mountains, and in that office he protected the weak, raised the fallen, and did much to assuage the necessary horrors of civil war.

When the curé Paquin had begged the people to give in, Chénier’s wife added her entreaties, saying there was no disgrace in surrendering to such a superior force. But her husband had only fondly kissed her, repeating that well-worn sentence, “La garde meurt mais ne se rend pas,” bade her good-bye and sent her to a place of safety. One tradition has it that a greater ordeal than farewell and death awaited her. The usual terrors of the law were expended upon her scorched remnant of a husband; the mutilated quarters lay tossed about in the house of one Anderson, near the battlefield, and she was not allowed to bury them. After a burial of some fashion she had the hardihood to seek the remains, disinter and secrete them, and when opportunity came, in the refuge of a friend’s garret, sew the parts together and have them buried properly. The edge of romance is dulled when we read that there was more of the hot head and mulish foot about Chénier than the hero; but to the present day there is a local phrase, “Brave comme Chénier.” The day after the battle Colborne’s chief officers declared that they were obliged to despatch Chénier. A patriot dame standing by said none but an English soldier was capable of killing a wounded man. The Abbé Paquin declares that the mutilation of the body and the removal of the heart were incidents in the _post mortem_, held by the desire of the surgeons, to ascertain the precise wound of which he died, and the historian De Bellefeuille corroborates his assertion. This scarcely accounts for parading the heart about on the point of a bayonet, and it is also pertinently asked, “Depuis quand ouvre-t-on les corps des soldats tués sur un champ de bataille pour savoir de quoi ils sont morts!”

* * * * *

Terrified at the fate of St. Eustache, the inhabitants of St. Benoit turned out to meet Sir John, a white flag displayed from every window. At Ste. Scholastique they carried their emblems of submission in their hands, white flags and lighted tapers, sinking on their knees in the roadway as they presented them. At Carillon they did the same. Like the three hundred men of Liége, “all in their white shirts and prostrate on their knees praying for grace,” the crowd through which Colborne passed presented the appearance of two distinct assortment of souls, “... of the elect and of the damned.” There were but few of the elect in this case. Arrests were made and the torch was applied, although Christie says “He dealt with much humanity, dismissing most of them.” Of Colborne it might be said, “Where he makes a desert, calls it peace.” The Glengarry Highlanders met the troops at St. Benoit, and in the succeeding burnings, according to Gore’s own words, “were in every case, I believe, the instruments of infliction;” such irregular troops were not to be controlled. “Many of those who served as volunteers,” says Christie, “were persons who had been exceedingly ill-treated by the patriots while in the ascendant.”

The ironical Bishop Lartigue now found it well to write another pastoral. After all the carnage was over the voices of the clergy generally were uplifted, this time thanking God that peace was restored. “How now about the fine promises made by the seditious of the wonderful things they would do for you?” asks this terrible bishop. “Was it the controlling spirit of a numerical majority of the people of this country, who, according to the insurgents, ought to have sway in all things, that directed their military operations? Did you find yourselves in a condition of greater freedom than before, while exposed to all sorts of vexations, threatened with fire-raisings, loss of goods, deprivation of life itself, if you did not submit to the frightful despotisms of these insurgents, who by violent, not persuasive means, caused more than a moiety of all the dupes they had to take up arms against the victorious armies of our sovereign?”

No sooner had rebellion come to a head and French blood flowed than France remembered where Canada was, and quickly learned much about her. People were asking in wonderment what all the trouble could be. The Gallican remembered his cousin-several-times-removed, and set about helping him. One journal advised volunteers and auxiliaries, and another made the oft-repeated comparison between Canada and Ireland. Engraved copies of Papineau’s portrait adorned windows, and biographical sketches of him appeared in the newspapers. _Le Journal des Débats_ did not confine itself to printed sympathy, but suggested that arms and ammunition should be smuggled into Canada and volunteers enlisted to go there to help.

This sympathy spread far afield in Europe. At the Russian Emperor’s birthday fête at New Archangel the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Naval Forces gave a splendid banquet, at the close of which “a collection was made for the unfortunate patriots of Canada.” Without exception, every one present contributed, with a result of 22,800 francs; and what is more, this sum was forwarded to its destination by the Admiral himself. We hope he had more definite geographical ideas than had the nearer French. Given a letter to post to Quebec, before rebellion had brought it and its people prominently forward, a post-office clerk in Paris gravely asked if it should go _via_ Panama or Cape Horn.

And then France remembered that those who had returned at the time of the Conquest said “it was very cold over there.”

Gallows Hill.

“_Up then, brave Canadians! Get your rifles and make short work
of it._”

“_Canadians, rally round your Head,
Nor to these base insurgents yield._”

“_Sir Francis Bond Head’s entire government of Upper Canada was
one long, earnest, undeviating opposition to the instructions of
H. M. colonial ministers._”--BLAKE.

The winter of 1837, in England, was so severe that the mails were conveyed in sleighs, even in the southern counties, a freak of nature no doubt meant to put her in sympathy with the many million arpents of snow by that time dyed in patches with good Canadian blood. In the colony it set in stormily; but as December lengthened it became mild and open throughout the country, until on the day of Gallows Hill that month of storm had almost turned to the brightness and healthy beauty of a Canadian June. The brilliant sunlight which was to burnish up the arms of the men of Gore had power to convert the blackest landscape into a thing of beauty--a scene peculiar to the land of shield of crystal, golden grain and Italian sky. Straight from the Laurentian Hills the sun turned his roses and purples on the bright tin spires of parish churches, blazed in small squares of white-curtained habitant windows, where weeping wives and mothers execrated the Dictator in voluble patois, and glared on the blackened drama of Le Grand Brûlé. The snow which made the background of that Lower Canadian picture sparkled under the prismatic colours, and lit up the icy fragments like the lustres of a chandelier. The mysterious bell of St. Regis sounded its Angelus through the rosy atmosphere; the Caughnawagas, waiting but a word to come forward in defence of their new Great Mother, grew a deeper tint as, turned from the sunk sun, they knelt to their aves. Farther on it touched on the cabins of Glengarry, where ninety-nine out of every hundred men were variations of the name Macdonald, with only a nickname--Shortnose, Longnose, Redhead or Mucklemou’--to distinguish them; all busy furbishing up every available weapon, ready to follow where they might be called. If one record profanes not their memory some of them went out as infantry, to return as kilted cavalry; naught but intervention of stern discipline prevented Jean Baptiste’s herds being in front of the kilts on the return march; their genius as linguists had failed when their Gaelic fell on patois-accustomed ears.

We follow the sun through the Thousand Islands, where it touched each evergreen crest with glory to make a crown of isles for the great pirate king, Bill Johnston, who had a trick of posing, blunderbuss in hand, ready for attack; to the homes of the Bay of Quinte, where the descendants of Rogers’ Rangers were ready for defence; to the winter rainbows of the Niagara and the opaline ripples in La Traverse of the St. Clair. It tinged the spiral columns of smoke which singly rose from immigrant cabins and, mingling, turned to clouds of sweet-smelling incense. It sank to rest in Huron, and the vast country over which it had made its day’s journey lay behind it, angry, sullen, fearing, uncertain, where, of the two dispensations, one was in throes of birth and the other feared those of death.

Those scattered through this wide region who were in sympathy with Lower Canada--and they were many--felt the discouragement of the disaster of St. Charles. Yet they persevered, and read the results there as an object lesson in the importance of military leadership. The motto was, “The strength of the people is nothing without union, and union nothing without confidence and discipline.” Alas, discipline they had none; confidence was to fly as soon as the enemy appeared--what mattered that if the enemy fled, too, no one was there to see; and as for union, the recriminations of Rolph and Mackenzie, the coldness of the Baldwin wing, the fighting within camp and without, all told a tale of dissension. Sir Francis Bond Head’s own letter to Sir John Colborne, in answer to the commander’s request for troops, shows how completely that astute governor played into their hands had they been but united and ready to take advantage of him. He would give up even his sentry and orderlies, and by some political military Euclid of his own invention “prove to the people in England that this Province requires no troops at all, and, consequently, that it is perfectly tranquil.... I consider it of immense importance, practically, to show to the Canadas that loyalty produces tranquillity, and that disloyalty not only brings troops into the Province, but also produces civil war.” There is some key to his Euclid, all propositions not being fully demonstrated; for he says, “I cannot, of course, explain to you all the reasons I have for my conduct” (things equal to the same thing are equal to anything). “I know the arrangements I have made are somewhat irregular, but I feel confident the advantages arising from them will be much greater than the disadvantages.”

Charles XII. was called Demirbash by the Turks--a man who fancies his head made of iron, who may run amuck without any fear for his skull. Sir Francis lost no opportunity to test the thickness and hardness of his.

His troops gone, the militia disorganized and never out but for one training day since 1815, he found his forces consisted of about three hundred men, and the work before him was to overcome a bad, bold plot, “which appears unequalled by any recorded in history since the great conspiracy of Cataline for the subversion of Rome!”

“Must I stand and crouch under thy testy humour!” might have cried Sir Francis; and quick as echo came the answer, “He’s but a mad lord, and naught but humour sways him.”

Search through his literary contemporaries, from Galt, who calls him the sly, downright author of the “Bubbles of the Brunnens,” to the somewhat bilious sketches of “those dealers in opinions, journalists,” confirms Lord Gosford’s saying that one of the essential elements of fitness for office is to be acceptable to the great body of the people. Sir Francis had a great reputation for literary smartness; he was on excellent terms with himself, and there are a few other writers of his time who have recorded things to his credit which are hard to believe in the after-light of condensed history. But most people never tired of either abusing or ridiculing him.

“‘Where are you from?’ asked a worthy but inquisitive landlord of a distinguished traveller, evidently just from Downing Street, who arrived in Canada at this solemn juncture. The testy Englishman made a laconic reply, that he had come from a very hot place. ‘And where are you going?’ continued Boniface. ‘To the devil,’ roared the traveller. And then they knew he was going to dine with Sir Francis Bond Head.”

Phrenology was a popular study then, and it afforded opportunities to those who never tired of punning in doggerel and skits on this Head. The cranium must have presented a remarkable assemblage of bumps; for, according to his many detractors and his few admirers, Sir Francis was a remarkable man. Not that he required a Boswell or Anthony Hamilton to say for him that which he was unequal to say for himself. There are no blushes on the pages of either “Narrative” or “Emigrant.”

Friends and detractors alike agreed that he had a wonderful faculty for sleep. According to himself, he was one of those felines who wait for their prey, apparently soundly off, but in reality with one eye open. When he came out it was thought the Whig ministry had let loose a tiger upon the colony. All sorts of stories were rife about him; he was placarded as a tried Reformer, much to his own surprise and amusement, for he tells us himself his emotions on seeing the piece of news which looked down on him from the posters, as he rode to Government House on his arrival. Was he a Radical? was he really the “Galloping Head”? had he ridden six thousand miles of the South American pampas, one thousand of them at a stretch in eight days, and without the comfort of galligaskins? He himself was at a loss to know why he had ever received his appointment; but these questioners at the recital of his adventures began to think that the post of lieutenant-governor in Upper Canada was a prize of sufficient size to attract persons of first-rate abilities. They required a man of statesmanlike sagacity and diplomatic shrewdness for a position which was no sinecure, and Lord Glenelg had sent them a rough rider. “Who _shall_ we send out as lieutenant-governor to conciliate the discontented inhabitants of Upper Canada?” asked the Cabinet. The Canadians wanted a governor, and they were sent a political Puck. They thought it hard to have been given in Sir John Colborne’s place but a Captain of Engineers. “Captains of Engineers,” said one belonging to the same order, “are sometimes devilish clever fellows.”

And so, in a sense, Head proved himself to be. He contrived to compress into the two years of his Canadian life more mischief than could have been accomplished by ten ordinary men. Rash, impetuous, inordinately vain and self-conscious, dramatic, he was not only an actor who took the world for his stage, but he was his own playwright, star, support, claquer and critic; the stirring up of a rebellion was a mere curtain-lifter to him; but, fortunately, if the vehicle of disaster to the Province, he made his exit from it ignominiously. This was the man who, at twelve o’clock on the night of December 4th, was awakened and told for the third time that the enemy had really arrived and was knocking at the door.

At one of the stopping-places of his former travels he had “felt his patriotism gain force upon the plains of Marathon.” It now took the persistent efforts of three messengers to oust him from a feather bed. Colonel Moodie had lost his life trying to ride through the rebel ranks to do this same service, and Colonel FitzGibbon lost no time in warning all, governor and citizens alike. When Sir Francis was inquired for at Government House at ten o’clock, Mrs. Dalrymple, his sister-in-law, reported that the Governor was fatigued and already asleep. FitzGibbon, restless and disturbed, feeling that he could never sleep again, insisted; and the hero of active service in Spain, the spectator of Waterloo and Quatre Bras, appeared in his dressing-gown, concealed his irritation as best he might, and got back to bed as quickly as possible. “What is all this noise about,” asked Judge Jonas Jones, who also did not like disturbance; “who desired you to call me? Colonel FitzGibbon? The zeal of that man is giving us a great deal of unnecessary trouble.”

About an hour earlier, John Powell, a magistrate who had been busy swearing in special constables, went on horseback with some other volunteers to patrol the northern approaches to the city. At the rise of the Blue Hill Mackenzie and two others were met, the first armed with a large horse pistol, the others with rifles. Powell was not only taken prisoner, but was told “they would let Bond Head know something before long,” that “they had borne tyranny and oppression too long, and were now determined to have a government of their own.” A fellow-prisoner told Powell of the death of Colonel Moodie, put spurs to his horse and managed to escape. Confident that the city’s safety now depended on his own ability to elude his captors, Powell essayed to do the same, but was told by one of them, Anderson, he “would drive a ball through” him. Then followed the incident which has been described as Anderson’s fall from his horse and picked up with neck broken, as “an atrocious murder,” “a victim to Powell’s treachery,” and as a self-deliverance from those whom he believed to be common assassins. When questioned as to his arms he had replied that he had none, a denial refuted shortly afterwards when he drew the pistols given him by a bailiff on leaving the City Hall. Mackenzie had doubted his word, but the statement was repeated. He replied, “Then, gentlemen, as you are my townsmen and men of honour, I should be ashamed to show that I question your word by ordering you to be searched.” Powell, in his account, allows no such quixotic courtesy, and says he heard nothing but mutterings of dissatisfaction. Then, not two feet from Anderson, Powell suddenly reined back his horse, drew a pistol and fired. The shot struck Anderson in the back of his neck; he fell like a sack--the spinal cord was severed and death must have been instantaneous. To wheel about, ride at a breakneck pace, pass Mackenzie himself, hear the latter’s bullet whistle past him, turn in his saddle and snap a pistol at Mackenzie’s face, dismount when he heard the clatter of following hoofs, to hide behind a log, while the pursuer passed, to run down the College Avenue, hugging the shadows as he went, until Government House was reached, brought him where FitzGibbon and others, discomfited, had failed to rouse this phenomenal sleeper. An hour before there had been a moment’s consciousness with the ringing of the Upper Canada College bell by the energetic hand of a youth named John Hillyard Cameron; but on hearing that it was rung by Colonel FitzGibbon’s command, the sleeper, like a marmot, turned over and went to sleep again. Unceremoniously shaking majesty in its nightcap, Powell managed to perform what Sir Francis, in his own account of the affair, calls a sudden awakening. Months before, the Governor had said he awaited the moment when Mackenzie should have “advanced within the short, clumsy clutches of the law,” asking Attorney-General Hagerman to advise him of the moment; he desired to wait until, in the name of law and justice, he could “seize his victim.” A warrant of arrest for Mackenzie on the charge of high treason had so far proved innocuous; now the mountain was obliging enough to come to Mahomet, and Mahomet did not seem inclined to hurry. Next to Bidwell, Mackenzie had most incurred his enmity, they, with “other nameless demagogues,” being the branches of “that plant of cancerous growth, revolution,” to which he would most willingly apply his pruning-knife. And apply it unsparingly he did; but for every twig lopped off he beheld a dozen hardy shoots springing from the wound. Truly the colonial tree was a stubborn growth; no yew or box-clipped fancy, its shaping was beyond his skill.

“Up, then, brave Canadians, get ready your rifles and make short work of it,” had been the legend on Mackenzie’s hand-bills; and here he was within a mile of the Governor and capital.

After a leisurely toilet, Sir Francis entrusted the care of his family to faithful friends, who put them on board a boat lying in the bay. Late as it was, navigation was not closed, and there was no sign of the seals of winter upon the lake. Yet the air was intensely cold, and the stars shone like diamonds as the Governor made his way over the creaking, lightly snow-covered planks from Government House to the City Hall. Every bell in the city was ringing with all its might.

“Though cracked and crazy I have mettle still,
And burst with anger at such treatment ill.”

The most monotonous and the shrillest note of the Carillon, in Head’s own words, proclaimed “_... Murder, murder, murder, and much worse!_” “What’s amiss?” “You are, and you do not know it;” or Lady Macbeth might have been heard calling, “What’s the business, that such a hideous trumpet calls to parley the sleeper of the house.”

The bells were distinctly heard at Gallows Hill. An occasional shot, fired at random yet startling, pierced these impromptu chimes. The rumours of the streets condensed at rallying points, where people told of the rattle of Powell’s horse’s hoofs as he made his mad gallop from Mackenzie to Head; of how hundreds, soon thousands, were at Gallows Hill, ready to descend upon them; of how the city was defenceless, and would the speaker and his friend enrol for its defence or not; how the generally staid persons of the Chief-Justice and Judges Macaulay and McLean, unusually excited, were seen with muskets on their shoulders; how the third judge, Jonas Jones, was losing not a moment to get some thirty volunteers to remain on guard at the toll gate on Yonge Street for the night; how such young fellows as Henry Sherwood, James Strachan, John Beverley Robinson, jun., were galloping about as aides, appointed in a moment and eager in their master’s service; all were on the alert, keeping vigil to a day of uproar and excitement.

At the market-house the Governor found assembled the force on which he had to depend. It was not long before he was aware that one, at least, was armed. A ball whistled through the room where he was closeted in earnest talk with Judge Jones, and stuck in the wall close beside them. Men, brimful of loyalty and agitation, were seen parading hurriedly in front of the City Hall, a musket on either shoulder, hungering for an enemy and afraid that he might come.

At sunrise Colonel FitzGibbon rode out to reconnoitre the position of the invaders, and reported that they numbered some five hundred men, a half-armed rabble without competent leader or discipline--a fit sequel to that “volume of shreds and patches,” the grievance book; a set of stragglers in an unfortified position. At eight, Sir Francis and his comrades at the City Hall, after a nap taken on the floor, rose to inspect and to be inspected, a group almost as sorry in military appearance as the one reported on by FitzGibbon. The Governor had a short double-barrelled gun in his belt and another on his shoulder; as a kind of twin or complement to him, the Chief-Justice was armed with thirty rounds of ball cartridge. Sir Francis made a brief but animated address, to which the assemblage returned three cheers. A few days before he had “requested an officer” to strengthen the fort lying west of the city; accordingly, its earthworks were surrounded by a double line of palisades, the barracks were loopholed, the magazine stockaded, and a company of Toronto militia lodged there. But as “a commander without troops,” the market-house--full of men, with its two six-pounders “completely filled with grape shot,” furnished with four thousand stand of arms, bayonets, belts and ball cartridge, brought from the depot at Kingston shortly before--was more to Sir Francis’ mind than the empty fort would have been. Besides which, he states in his own account, in the moral combat in which he was about to engage, he would have been out of his proper element in a fort. “The truth is,” he concludes, after disposing of many ill-natured remarks made about him by persons unversed in even the rudiments of war, “if Mr. Mackenzie had conducted his gang within pistol-shot of the market-house, the whole of the surprise would have belonged to him.”

The “officer” who was “requested” to strengthen the fort was no doubt Colonel Foster, Assistant Adjutant-General and Commander of the Forces for some years before the Rebellion broke out. His name unaccountably has been omitted from many of the chronicles of those times. He began his military career in the 52nd Oxfordshire Regiment of Foot, and during his colonial service he enjoyed the confidence of Lord Dalhousie and Sir John Colborne. When the latter sent his celebrated request for troops, Foster remonstrated, as it was well known to him, at any rate, that a rebellion in Upper Canada was imminent. Foster was then left in command “of the sentries, sick soldiers, and women and children remaining in the fort.” A captain in the 96th at Lundy’s Lane, he was no novice in Canadian requirements, and the letter quoted from Sir John Colborne shows how he fulfilled his duty:

“MONTREAL, May 18, 1838.

“MY DEAR COLONEL FOSTER,--I cannot quit Canada without bidding you adieu and requesting that you will accept my sincere thanks for your constant attention in the discharge of the duties of your Department during the seven years which you passed at my military right hand in Upper Canada. I assure you that the little trouble experienced by me in my military command I attribute to your arrangements and punctuality.

“With every wish for your happiness,
“Believe me, my dear Colonel Foster,
“Sincerely yours,
“J. COLBORNE.”

Colley Lyons Lucas Foster is described as a fine-looking man, of commanding presence and thoroughbred manner, a true gentleman and a thorough soldier of the Wellington type. His very cordial intercourse with his beau ideal of a general was attested by many letters to him in the Great Duke’s own handwriting.

But whatever Mackenzie’s wishes were, his “gang” had no notion of getting anywhere so uncomfortably near. Yet, if there was to be a fight, what was to be done; for it was hard indeed, after such preparation, if the enemy would not come. “I will not fight them on their ground,” said the Governor; “they must fight me on mine.” He would not even allow the picket guard, withdrawn by Judge Jones at daylight, to be replaced by Colonel FitzGibbon. “Do not send out a man--we have not men enough to defend the city. Let us defend our posts; and it is my positive order that you do not leave this building yourself.” Notwithstanding which a picket of twenty-seven, under the command of Sheriff Jarvis, was placed a short distance up Yonge Street. Prior to taking position there, it was suggested that a flag of truce should be sent--some accounts say from a humane desire on the part of the Governor to prevent the shedding of blood; others say to give time in which to allow answers to be returned to the expresses which he promptly had sent to MacNab in Hamilton and Bonnycastle in Kingston. In the faulty despatch sent to Glenelg relating the episode he represents himself by that white ensign as “parentally calling upon them to avoid the effusion of human blood,” having “the greatest possible reluctance at the idea of entering upon a civil war;” while in his after justification, “The Emigrant,” he says “The sun set without our receiving succour or any intimation of its approach.” He was no believer in “the fewer men the greater share of honour.”

The Sheriff had thought to ride out with the flag, but he had many sins laid against him in the rebel repository of grievance, such as standing at the polls, riding-whip in hand, to expedite the votes he approved and discountenance others, and it was thought imprudent to allow him to take the rôle of mediator. Mr. Robert Baldwin, not long returned from a prolonged visit to Great Britain, at all times above suspicion as to loyalty, a Reformer to the core, but as far removed from rebellion as the Chief-Justice himself, together with Dr. Rolph--about whom there were diverse opinions--were the final choice. Adjured by the Sheriff, in the name of God, to go out to try “to stop the proceedings of these men who are going to attack us,” the first man who was appealed to had refused; the act would lay him open to suspicion. Rolph considered that the Constitution was virtually suspended, and that Sir Francis had no authority to send out the flag. As soon as it became known that anything so novel was on the tapis excitement in the town merged into curiosity, and all, from the smallest urchin up, crowded to see the two start forth on their mission. A question which bids fair to remain as unsolved as “The Lady or the Tiger” now had its beginning. We can fancy the doctor pondering as he rode, “Am I politic? Am I subtle? Am I a Machiavel?” Rather should he have remembered the late counsel of the Keeper of the Great Seal, that the councillors should leave simulation and dissimulation at the porter’s lodge. The dying testimony of Lount, “He gave me a wink to walk on one side,” that the message should not be heeded, the counter testimony of others that this took place at the _second_ visit of the bearers, have furnished theme for pages, the outcome of which is to mar or make whiter the character of one of the most prominent, certainly the ablest, of the _dramatis personæ_ in that _entr’acte_ of the rebellion, the Flag of Truce.

The point of the question is not, _Did_ Dr. Rolph wink, but, _When_ did he wink. If after his ambassadorial function was over, the act, according to the rules which govern flags of truce, could not be taken exception to. If whilst an ambassador, the case becomes one not of ordinary manners and morals, but shows him as a double traitor.

Arrived at Gallows Hill--ominous title, a fitting one, thought the Loyalists--the three on horseback, “_in solid_ _phalanx_” Hugh Carmichael, the bearer, in the middle, Dr. Rolph, as spokesman, asked what the insurgents wanted, said the Governor deprecated the effusion of blood, and offered an amnesty if they would return to their homes. The result of the conference which ensued was that no reliance was to be felt in the bare word of Sir Francis; it must be in writing, that no act of hostility would be committed in the time allowed for an answer; that they demanded “independence and a convention to arrange details.” Moreover, he was given until two o’clock only to decide.

The answer of these “infatuated creatures” had a curious effect. For once Sir Francis declined to taunt with the license of ink. His nerves were much steadied by the report of undisciplined, unarmed hundreds, instead of thousands eager for carnage, brought back by the truce party; and letters stating that volunteers bound for his aid were on the way enabled him to disregard what in courtesy would be due to his agents. He curtly told them his refusal, and they made a third trip to report him to his enemy. Baldwin then returned to his wonted retirement, and Rolph busied himself in preparation for the result of his advice--“Wend your way into the city as soon as possible at my heels”--by at once seeing the Radicals in town and instructing them to arm themselves, as Mackenzie was on the road. “Why do you stand here with your hands in your breeches pockets? Go, arm yourselves how you can; Mackenzie will be in immediately!”--an event for which he did not wait. Some time before, Judge Jonas Jones had said that Dr. Rolph had a vile democratic heart, and ought to be sent out of the Province. Mr. Baldwin, riding away, heard cheers, but did not know the cause. Four weeks later, writing of the event, he says: “Whether under the circumstances I acted judiciously in undertaking the mission, I know not. One thing I know, that what I did I did for the best, and with the sincerest desire of preventing as far as possible the destruction of life and property.”

But Mackenzie was busy setting fire to Dr. Horne’s house. Its only guard was a very large and handsome Newfoundland dog which formerly had been patrol for Bonnycastle on the beach which skirted his isolated cottage on the bay, a beach much frequented by smugglers and other idlers. The brute valiantly defended his new beat, but without avail. After a series of capers which caused some of his followers to say that little Mac. was out of his head and unfit to be left at large, an end was made of the dog, and the fire was lighted.

A messenger was now sent after the dilatory general by Rolph, who, like the mother of Sisera, was sick at heart to know what hindered the wheels of his chariot. The messenger was a young fellow named Henry Hover Wright, one of Rolph’s students, just arrived from Niagara and full of wonder at being met on the wharf by armed men. The only guard he encountered on Yonge Street was one man--rebel--armed with a fusil. Wright passed him, asking why they did not come. The answer was, “We cannot go until General Mackenzie is ready.” The latter at that moment was busy ordering away a new-comer, saying, “I don’t know you, and there are too many friends,” and particularly busy in his endeavour to get dinner and supper for the men. Mounted on a small white horse, from which vantage he incessantly harangued his followers, he told them he would be commander-in-chief as Colonel Van Egmond had not arrived. Van Egmond did not arrive until the Thursday, when Mackenzie, after breakfasting with him, threatened to shoot him.