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!”!!