dispersion of the main body of rebels at Napierville, another point of
simultaneous attack. The household of a large landowner named Brown,
who in himself and his circumstances was much like Ellice, was treated
in the same way. Some of the Ellice servants escaped, fled to Montreal,
and there told a tale of how the family was confined in a cellar,
with other particulars not calculated to allay popular alarm. Ellice,
Brown, and some others were now separated from the rest and taken to
Chateauguay, where they were put in a room from which daylight was
carefully excluded, but which was afterwards lighted by candles. In
it they were well treated by the curé, M. Quintal, and nuns, who sent
them such comforts from their larders and cellars as compel disbelief
in a double Lent. The prisoners could also send to the village for
whatever they wished to buy, but they were not allowed to send any
letters unread by the rebels. Presently they were packed into carts to
be conveyed to Napierville, no doubt with many memories of Jock Weir
to discompose them; but by the time the seigniory of St. George was
reached their escort heard that the patriots had not only evacuated
Napierville, but in their haste had thrown away their arms and were
now pursued by cavalry. The escort fled and the prisoners continued on
their way, even advised by passing rebel habitants as to the best means
to extricate themselves, and eventually reached Montreal, where their
plight created a fresh sensation. But they retained warm memories of
the curé’s kindness, and later presented him with a piece of plate with
thanks for his hospitality.
Meantime an old Deborah, in the guise of a squaw, who hunted a lost cow
in the woods at Caughnawaga, came into the church where the Indians
were at their prayers with the alarming news that the woods were full
of rebels and that a party was then surrounding the church. The braves
turned out, and the chief’s flexible glottis turned from the plaintive
melody of Indian hymns to a warwhoop, an example which was promptly
followed by the rest. The nearest rebel was seized and disarmed, a
panic took the patriot band, sixty-four were made prisoners, and they
were taken into Montreal that same Sunday of great excitements. The
lack of a cowbell, warwhoops and daring, had paralyzed a fair-sized,
fairly armed force. The Indian appears no more, but one hopes he got
what all Indians so dearly prize, a medal.
After this, fires were seen to break out almost simultaneously from the
houses of the absent rebels, and soon Mr. Ellice’s flourishing little
settlement was in ashes. For nights the atmosphere of Chateauguay
district was red with reflected light from the “vast sheet of livid
flame.” Portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and other republican
heroes, were found in Dr. Côte’s house, and it is said they were
committed by Sir John’s orders to a specially hot corner, with the
customary “so perish all traitors.” The regulars, who had arrived
to avenge the Beauharnois and other disturbances, came in the _John
Bull_--an ominous name for the peace of poor Jean. This part of the
expedition was under command of Sir James McDonell, a very different
person from the next McDonell quoted. But after they had watched the
lights on the enemy’s fast-deserted outposts die, they made a grand
haul of curious literature, patriot documents describing a plan of
Canada’s future government, with the names of ministers and heads
of all departments told off--many details interesting to those who,
doubtless, under the new régime would decorate gallows and occupy cells.
Colonel Angus McDonell of the Glengarries writes distressedly from
Beauharnois: “We proceeded towards Beauharnois by a forced march,
burning and laying waste the country as we went along, and it was a
most distressing and heart-rending scene to see this fine settlement
so completely destroyed, the houses burned and laid in ashes, and I
understand the whole country to St. Charles experienced the same fate.
The wailing and lamentation of the women and children on beholding
their homes in flames and their property destroyed, their husbands,
fathers, sons and relations, dragged along prisoners--women perishing
in the snow, and children frozen stiff by their side or scattered
in black spots upon the snow--half-grown children running frantic
in the woods, frightened at the sight of friend or foe--and such of
the habitants as did not appear, their houses were consigned to the
flames, as they were supposed to be rebels.” One of the last had
gone the day before to Montreal on business, and returned to find
the above condition of things, his home in ashes, his wife and child
missing. Passion and grief overcame fear; in a frenzy he rushed to an
officer--“Ah, you burn my house, kill my wife--my dear wife--my little
child--me always good subject--no rebel--_sacre_ British--where _ma
femme_--where _mon enfant_--oh, _Jesu Marie_--” and dropped senseless.
He was sent to Montreal, where in a few days he died in prison, still
calling on wife and child. When the former, who had taken refuge with
a relative, heard he was a prisoner, she went on foot to Montreal, her
child in her arms; she reached the prison the night before his death,
but was refused admittance, and a few days’ further agony ended her
troubles also.
It is popularly supposed that the humble habitant wife was the one
who suffered most; but degree did not save a woman from gross insult
and spoliation, nor was the gentlewoman lacking in ingenuity. On the
morning of the battle of St. Denis brave Madame Pagé of that place made
her husband a novel armour, a cuirass of a quire of paper. It saved his
life, for in the mêlée a ball otherwise intended for his destruction
got no farther than the fourth fold. Mesdames Dumouchel, Lemaire,
Girouard and Masson were not exempt when the loyal, the volunteer and
the regular arrived at their doors. The regulars forbade the habitants
to succour any in distress, and when these women were left almost nude
outside their desolated homes they showed wonderful nerve in surviving
the vengeance of ce vieux brûlot and his followers. But Mdlles.
Lemaire and Masson could not sustain the shock to mind and body, and
one young two-days’ mother died from fright. Madame Mongrain barely
escaped with life and children, and her handsome home was quickly a
wreck under the hands of “ces sauvages,” who gambolled and skipped
in the light of its blaze, to the playing of their own trumpets and
uttering “les cries feroces.” Madame Masson, when adjuring her son, Dr.
Hyacinth Masson, on the eve of his exile to Bermuda, to be brave in the
future as in the past, delivered herself of Spartan sentiments worthy
of any historic setting, concluding her address, “Sois courageux jusqu’
à la fin. Je suis fière de toi. Je me consolerai dans ton absence en
pensant que Dieu m’ a donné des enfants aussi bon patriotes _et dignes
de moi_.” No wonder men were staunch when their mothers exerted an
influence which after the lapse of sixty odd years draws forth from a
former Son of Liberty-Chasseur: “I was vigorous and strong in those
days, and from my mother inherited an ardent love for the country in
which I was born. Her letters so magnetized me with patriotism that I
could willingly lay down my life for the cause.”
Sir John was no novice in dealing with the French after his
governorship in the island of Guernsey. He made us a link between old
and new by bestowing the name of Sarnia on the St. Clair border, a name
written of as the old classical one of that moiety of England’s sole
relic of the Dukedom of Normandy. There the language of debate and of
the Legislature was French, and the patois of the islander as perverted
a language as the Canadian’s.
At the present day there are probably not many Glengarries left to tell
the tale of their share in that terrible week. One, an Englishman
moreover, who became a Highlander through stress of circumstances,
remembers very distinctly the work which he confesses he did faithfully
but with many heartbreaks for the women and children. It is unnecessary
to say that he is devoted still to the memory of Sir John Colborne.
“We were at the Prescott windmill, but had only been at work there one
day and one night when we were ordered to Beauharnois, five hundred
of us. Sir John was there before us. There was a mistake in the time
of the arrival of the troops he expected--trouble about a boat and
difficulties with the current. We walked all the way to Beauharnois,
and hadn’t bite or sup except half a snack at Cornwall, and the men
were all worn out with excitement and work at Prescott. Sir John, on
a little black pony, met us just by a small bay at the Cedar Rapids.
‘Now, boys,’ says he, ‘I’ll ride my pony on before you--where I go
you can. Come on!’ So we broke step and spread, for fear of the ice
breaking, and followed him in safety. When he saw us five hundred, and
thinking of his disappointment about the regulars, he says, ‘We can
face ‘em with _that_.’ Some of those nearest him objected that the
Glengarries had no band, and a band would be indispensable in a fight.
So a big strapping Highlander steps up and says, ‘We’ll make a band
of our own.’ ‘Never mind a band,’ says Sir John. ‘But I’m a piper,
and there are a lot more of us, and we can be a band,’ says the man.
‘All right,’ says Sir John, ‘but anyway those Glengarries would face
anything.’ Then they got their pipes together and made their band, and
the big fellow says, ‘What’ll we play, Governor?’ and Sir John says,
‘Play what you like, play what you like.’ So they did play,--‘The
Campbells are comin’, ha--hah--ha--_hah_, and of course the Frenchmen
couldn’t stand _that_. Losh, how the people did run!”
This informant’s tale was something after the fashion of that told of
the piper who fell out of the retreating ranks at Corunna--where Major
Colborne’s advancement had been included in Sir John Moore’s dying
wishes--and sat on a log to rest. A bear came on the scene just as the
Highlander was eating the remainder of his rations. He recognized the
bear from its picture, and on the policy of conciliation so soon to
become national propitiated him with bite about. The bread disappeared
all too soon, and the Highlander cautiously reached for his pipes. At
the first squeal the bear was astonished, at the full blast he fled.
“Oh, ho,” said the piper, “if she’d known you liked music so well she
would haf played pefore dinner.”
On the present occasion it was the ordinary Highland music before
dinner, for the Glengarries were empty.
“Sir John now told us to lose no time in attending to fourteen small
cannon that were looking down at us from the top of the incline where
the priest’s house stood. Losh! if they’d fired their one wooden
cannon it would have smothered the half of us. Yes, a wooden cannon
it was, hooped in iron, and if you’d seen the stuff we took out of it
afterwards at Montreal--for Sir John was bound to keep it and send it
to England--horse-shoes, smoothing irons, nails, balls, and every kind
of rubbish. It was a twelve-pounder, easily handled, and some of the
men drew it to Montreal. Then we were told to feed ourselves. And we
did. We stole right and left, and there wasn’t a chicken left alive;
it was a turkey here and a duck there; hens, anything we could catch;
fence-rails were piled and a camp-fire made. We covered the geese and
fowls with clay, thrust them into the fire, and when the clay cracked
they were ready, for feathers and skin came off with it. Some would
snatch a wing, others a leg; and man, there was some could stand a
whole bird, inside and out. But hungry as I was, I couldn’t stomach
it. Three others and I went to a little store near by, where we got
some brown bread and some cheese on the counter; we found a cupboard
in the cellar, and in it a nice ham, a box of bottled ale turned up,
and we took a bottle apiece. Then we went and sat behind the house, and
had a good English supper of it; and it had to last us till we got to
Montreal.
“‘Now, then,’ said Sir John, when we were all through, ‘set fire and
burn it.’ And we did. He was still thirsting to revenge Jock Weir.
It was Jock Weir here and Jock Weir there, but he told us to spare
the priest’s house--which we did. We were young, and it was a kind
of a frolic to us; but oh, those women and children! I wake in the
night and think I hear them yet. Losh! I’ll never forget it--a woman
with a child under each arm, others tugging at her skirts. But we
did them no harm; we only burnt everything up. The Colonel told them
they needn’t be afraid; but what was the good of stopping when their
homes were to be burnt! They went off to the woods, and, man! it was
terrible--terrible. We got to Beauharnois at two in the morning, and
we had it afire by six; left at eight, and were in Montreal by noon.
Here we had our barracks in the emigrant sheds. Sir John took a great
notion to us. ‘_I’ll_ drill you, you Glengarry men!’ And he _did_. We
were devoted to him, and obeyed almost before he spoke--when there was
anything to do. So he drilled us that day for about two hours on the
ice, and you should have seen some of those poor kiltie regulars! You
know, Sir John was a _good_ man, but he was a rough ’un, and he wanted
everything just as _he_ said. But losh, man, it was a shame to drill
them for two hours on the ice. The poor rogues threatened they would
go home--the 93rd they were, afterwards in Toronto. They wore kilts,
but we had trousers, blue with red stripe; we did have red coats, too,
but it’s all true about the way we came home on horseback, and with
plug hats, too, and in fact with anything we could lay our hands on.
There was a great deal of talk about it, I believe; but Sir John made
us return the things afterwards. One big fellow, at Beauharnois, saw a
beautiful sofa going into the fire, so he seized it and said he would
have it. He heaved it out, but losh, man, when the orders came to march
on to Montreal he didn’t know what to do with it, and had to chuck it
into the river. We were two weeks in Montreal, and we stood guard at
the executions. It was a dreadful sight to see men hung up in a row,
all dropped at once. Yes, there was a ‘movable gallows,’ and a very
tidy thing it was. It was put up in an hour, and when the execution was
over, the Colonel said, ‘Go drill those men;’ when we came back, in an
hour, there was no sign of it left. An attempt at rescue was feared,
and they said Papineau himself was there to see--a tall, middling stout
man, a regular Frenchman, and they _said_ it was Papineau. We were well
treated, fed whenever there was anything to eat, and properly paid at
the end. So Sir John came to the barracks one morning, and says he,
‘You Glengarries can go now, for all the good you are!’ And that was
just what we wanted.”
“The ghost of a goose is a curious sight,
A strange enough phantom at best,”
but when it is that of a military goose, and history records not
whether goose or gander, biography becomes delicate writing. In ’37,
not only were men warlike and women sympathetic, but the very geese
flew to arms. “Confoun’ a’ questions o’ dates,” says the _Noctes_;
confoun’ a’ questions o’ sex--the goose of the Coldstream Guards must
not be forgotten; the black-coated laity thought they possessed many
such. This lineal descendant of the fabulous Roman bird was born and
brought up in the citadel at Quebec, which may be the reason that
it despised the estate of _oie des moissons_ and aspired to that of
_anser ruficollis_ upon a battlefield. One day, in its morning walk
on that historic ground, it left the flock forever, stepped up to the
sentry, paced back and forth with him on his beat, gravely ducking at
every arch, and when rain came on and he turned into the sentry-box
goosie got in too, poked out her head, and kept at attention until
the corporal came with the relief. The ensuing ceremony met with
her approbation, as did the new guard; she gave one last look at
the retreating figure, and began her walk up and down with the new.
Thereafter, the sentry order always finished, “In case of fire alarm
the guard, _and take care of the goose_.”
’Twould offend against taste in ordinary cases
“To tell how poor goosie was put out of pain
(And the plucking and basting we need not explain);”
and how this innovation on Follow-the-Drum in after years made the
voyage home with her regiment and continued her duties in Portman
Street barracks, till a military funeral finished her course, belongs
to the history of Her Majesty’s forces. That she was a goose is proved
by record of her characteristics; _anser canadensis_ is a clamorous
bird, and armed humans underneath his flight are made aware of his
presence by his noisy gabble--if silent he would never be discovered.
It is said the prudent fair ones of the flock keep a chucky-stone
in the mouth during travel, in order to guard against temptation.
Therefore, as the Great Grey Goose of the West was a gander and
gabbler, the silent sentry, the goose militant of the Coldstream
Guards, must have been a goose, and is a Deborah.
* * * * *
When we come to the details of Mackenzie’s life, his attitude towards
wife and bairns and mother and theirs towards him would disarm even
his political critic. There is the meeting of the two old schoolmates,
Isabel Baxter and Mackenzie, without recognition, the brief courtship,
and a life of mutual devotion. There is baby Joseph Hume, whose early
death saddened the father’s life; and there is the pathetic entry in
his diary, after his rebellion had entailed banishment: “My daughter
Janet’s birthday, aged thirteen. When I came home in the evening we had
no bread; took a cup of tea without it, and Helen, to comfort me, said
it was no better on the evening of my own birthday.”
They drank the cup of poverty together, father, mother, grandmother and
children. For twenty-four hours at a stretch there was no food, fire
or light; and after such a fast the father would go forth shivering to
collect a small due or meet a friend willing to share a sixpence. The
younger children never ceased to cry for food; the others suffered in
silence. We read of the servant, one of the true-hearted Irish, and
she is content to starve with the rest. Despite poverty, the father
continued to wear a watch, once the property of his eldest daughter,
whom he sincerely mourned for twelve years with an almost superstitious
veneration. We find him telling his son to cheer up, not to despond;
that there are green spots in the desert of life; that after darkness
comes light. And even in this dreadful plight there are moments when
the tragic becomes serio-comic. There is a night when the plaintive
sounds from the darkness about him urge him to make one more assault
upon the cupboard that he knows is empty--no, not quite empty; there
is a book, and by the embers of their dying fire he reads the title,
“The Dark Ages,” and he and all indulge in a hearty laugh, and then go
supperless--nay, breakfastless and dinnerless--to bed.
The family did not follow him into exile immediately, but his devoted
wife reached Navy Island a few hours before the dramatic moment when
Drew arrived and the _Caroline_ became a torch. Like Deborah, she,
too, might have said, “I will surely go with thee, notwithstanding the
journey shall not be for thine honour.” The general belief is that,
though loyal to him and a staunch Reformer, she by no means sympathised
in his ultra opinions and combustive action. She remained for two weeks
in that dreadful place, made flannel cartridge-bags, slept in a rough
log shanty on a shelf covered with straw, where the walls were poor
protection from wet and cold and but a thin partition from the unholy
clamour of the desperate crowd about her, and tried to inspire her
husband and his followers by an example of courage and freedom from
fear. Then ill-health obliged her to leave, and when accompanying her
to the house of a friend in Buffalo Mackenzie was arrested for breach
of the neutrality laws. Scylla and Charybdis, the devil and the deep
sea, a dilemma with the orthodox number of horns, lose all strength as
similes at this point of the small hero’s career.
The devotion of Mackenzie’s mother, like that of most mothers, begins
at the date of his birth. She was her husband’s senior by nineteen
years and old for a first experience of motherhood. The husband’s
death followed soon after, and then came the vows which her Church
prescribed for the orphaned infant’s baptism, a struggle with
misfortune, and a determination to keep a roof over their two heads.
Strange to say, both grandparents were Mackenzies,--one Black Colin, or
Colin Dhu--and both Loyalists who fought for the Stuarts.
In 1801 there was a grievous famine, and one of the earliest memories
of “the bright boy with yellow hair--wearing a blue short coat with
yellow buttons,” is that of his mother taking the chief treasure of
her kist, a plaid of her own clan tartan and spun with her own hands
when a girl, to sell for bread. As he lay in his bed and watched her
take it out--not with tears we may be sure, Mrs. Mackenzie was no
crying woman--did this earnest of future days of want and care shadow
the equally heroic spirit of the child. The priest-grey coat of his
father had to follow. “Well may I love the poor, greatly may I esteem
the humble and the lowly, for poverty and adversity were my nurses, and
in my youth were want and misery my familiar friends,” he wrote later.
Divine worship was held in that family of two, and it was a daily
prayer that the rightful monarch might be set upon the throne, with the
saving clause--prophetic glimpses of a Family Compact--that he might
have able and wise counsellers, added.
Flesh and blood had revolted at the long tasks of memorizing Scripture,
Westminster Catechism, Psalms and “Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted,”
set him by his parent. The leader of men was first a leader of boys,
and the rebel of after years began that career by rebelling against
his mother at the ripe age of ten years, leaving home and setting up
on his own account in the Grampians as a hermit. An old castle perched
somewhere near where the clouds seemed to touch the crags was to have
been the hermitage, but a most carnal need of bread and butter and a
fear of fairies induced a return. Though longing to be a hermit, young
Willie had no taste for the study of polemics; but he would read till
midnight, and his mother feared that “the laddie would read himself out
o’ his judgment.” The first school to which he went was held in an old
Roman Catholic chapel, where the former Holy Water basin was made the
seat of punishment. This very small boy was early a good arithmetician
and made satisfactory general progress, but he managed to find time to
decorate the backs of his fellows with caricatures in chalk, and to
pin papers to their coat-tails. One day he went into that sanctum, the
master’s closet, put on the fool’s cap, tied himself up with the taws,
and with the birch for sceptre took his seat in the holy cup. There was
the usual denouement of discovery, a master boiling with rage, the taws
and birch in active use, and a sorrowful small boy.
The mother was extremely small in stature, brunette, and with dark
brown hair which, when it turned white, remained as long and abundant
as ever; her eyes were sharp and piercing, generally quiet in
expression but under excitement flashed ominously. The cheek bones
were high, and the small features unmistakably Celtic, the thin-lipped
mouth telling of an unconquerable will which she bequeathed to her only
child. The face under the broad high forehead was seldom allowed to
relax into perfect placidity, the surface always showing more or less
of the inward volcano; any repose there was due to religious feeling.
In the son we have but a replica of the mother. She spoke Gaelic, but
seldom used it; she did not reckon fairies among abolished myths, and
she believed firmly in the Mackenzie death-warning which was always
given by an invisible messenger. The strongest affection existed
between mother and son, who lived together for the last seventeen years
of the former’s life.
It was but little to the credit of one of his powerful enemies that,
in an effort to equal the _Advocate_, jeering remarks upon Mackenzie’s
aged mother were made in the public press. But so it was; and he was
advised to mend his ways as an editor, if he expected to continue to
support his mother and family. The inference, as his biographer gives
it, is that it was not praiseworthy to support an aged mother. It drew
from the son the boast that if he could keep his old mother, his wife
and his family, and avoid debt, he cared not for wealth.