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.