IN CANADA
Regarde, me disait mon père
Ce drapeau vaillamment porté;
Il a fait ton pays prospère
Et respecte ta liberté.
Un jour, notre bannière auguste
Devant lui dut se replier;
Mais alors, s'il nous fut injuste,
Il a su le faire oublier.
Et si maintenant son pli vibre
A nos remparts jadis gaulois,
C'est an moins sur un peuple libre
Qui n'a rien perdu de sea droits.
Oublions les jours de tempêtes.
Et, mon enfaut, puisqu' aujourd'hui
Ce drapeau flotte sur nos têtes,
Il faut s'incliner devant lui.
"Le Drapeau Anglais."--_Fréchette._
It was early in the spring of 1802 that Isaac Brock with the 49th
Regiment sailed up the St. Lawrence after a long and stormy journey
across the Atlantic. One can well imagine the feelings of the young
colonel as he gazed for the first time at the rocky height of Quebec
crowned by that fortress, once the stronghold of French rule in
America. In the forty years that had passed since the conquest,
Quebec had changed but little. {34} There before him rose the craggy
steep where Wolfe had climbed to victory. The grey wall, pierced
with arched gateways and bristling with guns, still enclosed the
town. On one side stood out the great cathedral whose bell had rung
its summons for more than a century, regardless of the change of
earthly monarchs. Here, too, was the Ursuline Convent to which
Montcalm had been carried in his death agony. Above on the cliff
rose the old, half-ruined Chateau St. Louis, bearing the traces of
destruction by shot and shell. All spoke to Brock of stirring deeds
which even then could be recounted by those who had taken part in
them. He was fresh from fighting the French in the Old World, and
the scene of England's triumph might well rekindle the ardour that a
year's peace had not extinguished. Did a premonition come to him
that on another height in this new land, he too would find fame and
death? Perhaps not, for Brock was not given to much dreaming. He
only knew that there was work to be done and as an apt pupil from the
school of Nelson and Abercromby he was ready to do it in the best way
possible.
When Brock arrived in Canada the administration of affairs there was
in the hands of Sir Robert Shore Milnes, the lieutenant-governor.
Sir Robert Prescott, who had been governor and commander-in-chief
from 1797, in succession to Lord Dorchester, had left Canada in 1799,
and although he {35} held his rank as governor until 1807, he never
returned to service in the country.
[Sidenote: Canada's governors]
Canada had been fortunate in the men entrusted with her government,
and owing to their wise administration there had been very little
discontent among the new subjects of His Majesty. The French
Canadians had increased and prospered under British rule. First in
the roll of governors stands James Murray, that good and true soldier
who saved Quebec for England in the stormy year that followed Wolfe's
death, when the Marquis de Lévis brought all his consummate genius to
the task of winning it back for France. While the army of Vaudreuil
held the river at Montreal, and when it looked for many a weary month
as if Amherst would never come to its relief, the half-starved,
sickly but gallant garrison at Quebec struggled through the terrible
winter of 1759 and 1760. The story cannot be told too often of how
Murray kept up the courage of his men, and cared also for the feeble
folk who were left with him in the town; how, when spring came, both
French and English watched the river for the coming sails, well
knowing that the side to which food and arms came first would win the
day; how, when it was the English ships that came, de Lévis' army
melted away and Murray marched to join with Amherst at Montreal; and
how Vaudreuil and his abler lieutenant laid down their arms, and the
reign of France in the New World was over.
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[Sidenote: Haldimand and Dorchester]
General Murray remained as governor until 1767, when he was succeeded
by Sir Guy Carleton, that gallant soldier and statesman, whose life
reads like a romance, and who, with but a slight intermission was to
rule the country until 1796. It was he who led the grenadiers in
1759 on the Plains of Abraham and was wounded just before his general
sank in death. It was he who, in 1775, as governor and
commander-in-chief, drove back from Quebec the American invaders led
by Montgomery and Arnold, and who, in spite of traitors around him
and a people half sullen, half apathetic, encouraged the remnant to
fight for their country and British rule. It was he who pleaded the
cause of the old inhabitants before a committee of the English
parliament. He understood the difficulties to be met with in the
government of Canada when the population was so preponderatingly
French, and he helped to draw up the Quebec Act of 1774, which gave
to these new subjects the liberties and privileges that in time made
them loyal to England. Even the English population (there were but
two thousand, to a hundred thousand French) were a little sulky, and
inclined to think that too much had been granted to the
Gallo-Canadians, but time has proved the wisdom of the act. No
wonder that Carleton was welcomed by priest and peasant when he
returned as Lord Dorchester in 1792! It was Carleton, too, who, when
the arrival of the United Empire Loyalists had increased the number
of {37} English-speaking citizens, saw the difficulties under which
they laboured, and revised the act of 1791, which gave to Upper
Canada the laws it required. Between his two administrations,
General Haldimand had been governor from 1778 to 1786. He too had
been a gallant soldier, and had fought in the old French war in
America, as well as on many a field in Europe. He was Swiss French
by birth, and, speaking their language and understanding their
customs, he was well fitted to be the governor of a French
population. His administration was held under trying circumstances,
during those dark days for England when her armies were waging an
unsuccessful campaign in the neighbouring colonies, and when her
prestige had fallen in the New World. Haldimand succeeded, however,
in steering a very safe course through a stormy sea, and when he
handed the government over to Lord Dorchester he left behind him many
wise improvements that he had made in the condition of the country.
Stern as his rule had been, this testimony has been paid him by
Garneau, the French Canadian historian: "Good intents are
recognizable on his part, through much of what he did, his chief aim
really being to preserve Canada as a British dependency. It was he
who recommended the conservation of the territory situated between
the St. Lawrence and the United States frontiers, and caused Lord
Sydney, contrary to the mind of Lord North, to adopt, in 1784, the
right view of this matter. Now that we {38} retrospectively view
Haldimand's leaden tyranny without prejudice, now that we discern
what was his master thought, few of us, perhaps, will refuse to
pardon him for his rough but honest absolutism, out of regard for his
efforts to preserve intact a portion of the soil reclaimed by aliens,
which had been gained to civilization by our ancestors." After Lord
Dorchester came Sir Robert Prescott, who was the titular governor
when Brock arrived in 1802.
In England at this time Addington had succeeded Pitt as prime
minister, and had concluded a delusive peace with the first consul,
who had now taken upon himself the title of president of the Italian
republic. In America, Jefferson had been elected president and
Madison had been appointed his secretary of state. Both of these men
were hostile to England and friendly to France.
[Sidenote: St. Domingo]
Peace in Europe had made Bonaparte turn his attention to another
quarter of the world. In 1801, Spain, by treaty, had handed back to
France the immense territory of Louisiana, which had been ceded to
Spain by France in 1763. It stretched from the Rio del Norte on the
south to the boundaries of Canada on the north. The great dictator
now dreamed of restoring the old colonial power of France in America.
What would be easier than to send an army by the Mississippi and Ohio
to reach, by that route, Lake Erie and the Niagara peninsula, while a
fleet might ascend the St. Lawrence, where he fondly imagined the
French population would {39} easily be seduced from their allegiance
to Great Britain? The first step he took in the scheme was to plan
an expedition to occupy the island of St. Domingo, which he intended
to make a rendezvous for the French navy. The story of this
expedition is an interesting one, and as it has a bearing on the
events that happened afterwards in Canada, it may be as well to
glance at it.
The eastern part of the island of St. Domingo belonged to France, the
western to Spain. Before the French Revolution it contained a
population of six hundred thousand, over half a million being black
slaves, while French planters and officials, with their families,
numbered about fifty thousand, and mulattoes made up the remainder.
The trade with it was very extensive. Its combined exports and
imports were valued at one hundred and forty million dollars, while
seven hundred ocean vessels with eighty thousand seamen were employed
in the coffee, sugar, and indigo trade between France and the West
Indies. After the revolution the white population remained royalist,
while the mulattoes were republican. This involved the island in
civil war, which led to a general rising of the negroes and a
massacre of the whites in 1791. Slavery was then abolished in the
French part by order of the national assembly. Then Spain attempted
the conquest of the whole of the island, but the Spaniards were
defeated and driven out of the country. Toussaint L'Ouverture, the
grandson of a negro chief, {40} joined the forces of the French
republic, and obtained the rank of general in 1798. He was a man of
the Napoleon type, never resting, of boundless ambition and energy,
and possessing also the same love of display--"The gilded African,"
as the first consul called him, while others named him "The Bonaparte
of the Antilles."
In 1800, L'Ouverture assumed the title of governor, and took
possession of all the French territory ceded by Spain to France in
the Treaty of Basel of 1795. He then declared it an independent
republic. Bonaparte now determined to send an expedition there under
the command of his brother-in-law, General Le Clerc, to subdue the
insurgents. It sailed in November, 1801, from Brest, and landed in
St. Domingo in January, 1802. At first Le Clerc met with some
success, though at an immense cost of men, but the island remained
unconquered. Toussaint L'Ouverture took to the mountains and carried
on a guerilla warfare, most harassing to the French troops. At last,
by a stratagem, the rebel leader was seized and carried off to
France, where he was imprisoned in the fortress of Joux in the Jura
Mountains, and soon succumbed to the cold of the climate.
[Sidenote: The purchase of Louisiana]
In the island, however, things went from bad to worse for the French.
Fifty thousand troops had been sacrificed either in action or from
the effects of the climate, and vast sums of money had been
squandered. Plantations had ceased to {41} be cultivated and anarchy
ruled. In 1802 Le Clerc wrote that only four thousand men out of
twenty-eight thousand were fit for duty. More men and money were
needed. General Le Clerc died of fever in January, 1803, and
Rochambeau was sent out, but met with no better luck than his
predecessor. He demanded thirty-five thousand more men to get the
French out of their predicament. At this time there was a feeling
against France in congress because Le Clerc had seized supplies
belonging to American traders, and therefore America was not looking
quite so kindly on the occupation of Louisiana by the French.
Bonaparte had intended to send twenty thousand men there, but the
demands of St. Domingo made this impossible. The United States had
now begun to feel the need of obtaining possession of the mouths of
the Mississippi, so as to have freedom of commerce by that river to
supply the needs of Ohio and Kentucky. Spain had given American
traders the right to land produce at New Orleans, but suddenly
revoked the permission, and now Jefferson was determined to acquire
that place for the United States. Monroe was therefore sent to
France early in 1803 as a special envoy to negotiate for its
transfer. His instructions were, in case of failure, to propose an
alliance with England, so that the end might be gained. It was also
proposed by Jefferson that the United States should obtain possession
of Louisiana by purchase, and should grant commercial {42} privileges
to Great Britain. Monroe was very well received in London. The
prime minister agreed that it would be well for the United States to
obtain Louisiana, but if this were not possible they should prevent
it from going to France. In the preceding year the United States had
been quite content that France should occupy Louisiana, if only West
Florida could be added to the republic. However, the question was
soon settled by Bonaparte. He had become disgusted with his
expedition to St. Domingo, and his fruitless outlay there of men and
money. He could not afford to lose prestige in Europe, and he wanted
to cover up the disasters that had overtaken him in the West Indies.
He therefore suddenly determined to give up his plans in America and
to sell his right to Louisiana to the United States. He then made a
definite offer for the sale to Livingstone, the American minister in
Paris. Livingstone replied that the United States did not want the
country west of the Mississippi, but simply Florida and New Orleans.
Negotiations, however, went on, and were completed on the arrival in
Paris of Monroe. The price asked was one hundred millions of francs.
This was not accepted, but finally the price was fixed at sixty
millions, equal to about eleven million two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Florida was not included in the purchase. The
United States also agreed to meet the claims for damages at St.
Domingo made by American merchants, amounting to about three {43}
millions in addition. Spain protested vainly against the sale, for
on ceding the territory to France the stipulation had been that it
should not be alienated. Livingstone strenuously endeavoured to have
Florida included in the bargain but failed, though the first consul
promised his support towards obtaining it for the republic.
The acquisition of Louisiana changed the whole attitude of the United
States towards Great Britain,[1] as now they would not require her
assistance to secure the mouth of the Mississippi and the Floridas.
From this time President Jefferson showed a spirit of animosity in
his dealing with England.
The short-lived peace of Amiens was drawing to a close. In order to
cover up his disasters Bonaparte resolved to renew hostilities in
Europe. As an excuse he declared that he would not tolerate the
British occupation of Malta. England had refused to give it up
without a guarantee from the powers that it would be left in
possession of the Knights of St. John. At a meeting of the _corps
législatif_ on February 20th, 1803, these words were used: "The
French government says with pride that England alone cannot struggle
against France." This arrogant statement of course aroused the
British lion, and on March 8th, George III sent a message to the
House of Parliament, then assembled, that owing to the military
preparations of the French he had judged it necessary to take
precautions for {44} the safety of his kingdom. On May 16th, 1803,
England declared war, a war that was destined to last more that
twelve years, and to tax to the utmost the resources of the country.
[1] See "History of Canada," Kingsford, Vol. VIII.
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