In my correspondence with Col. Eden I have had occasion to refer to the factsand reports that establish the decided character which the agitators have lately assumed. The people have elected the dismissed officers of the militia to command them. At St Ours a pole has been erected in favour of a dismissed captain with this inscription on it, 'Elu par le peuple.' At St Hyacinthe the tri-coloured flag was displayed for several days. Two families have quitted the town in consequence of the annoyance they received from the patriots. Wolfred Nelson warned the patriots at a public meeting to be ready to arm. The tri-coloured flag is to be seen at two taverns between St Denis and St Charles. Many of the tavern-keepers have discontinued their signs and substituted for them an eagle. The bank notes or promissory notes issued at Yamaska have also the same emblem marked on them. Mr Papineau was escorted from Yamaska to St Denis by a numerous retinue, and it is said that 200 or 300 carriages accompanied him on his route. He has attended five public meetings lately; and at one of them La Valtrie, a priest, was insulted in his presence. The occurrence at St Denis was certainlya political affair, a family at St Antoine opposed to the proceedings of W. Nelson, having been annoyed by the same mob that destroyed the house of Madame St Jacques a few hours before the shot was fired from her window.
Special animosity was shown toward the Chouayens, those French Canadians who had refused to follow Papineau's lead. P. D. Debartzch, a legislative councillor and a former supporter of Papineau, who had withdrawn his support after the passing of the Ninety-Two Resolutions, was obliged to flee from his home at St Charles; and Dr Quesnel, one of the magistrates of L'Acadie, had his house broken into by a mob that demanded his resignation as magistrate.
On November 6 rioting broke out in Montreal. The Doric Club, an organization of the young men of English blood in the city, came into conflict with the French-CanadianFils de la Liberté. Which side provoked the hostilities, it is now difficult to say. Certainly, both sides were to blame for their behaviour during the day. The sons of liberty broke the windows of prominent loyalists; and the members of the Doric Club completely wreckedthe office of theVindicatornewspaper. It was only when the Riot Act was read, and the troops were called out, that the rioting ceased.
Up to this point thePatrioteshad not indulged in any overt acts of armed rebellion. Some of their leaders, it is true, had been laying plans for a revolt. So much is known from the correspondence which passed between the leadingPatriotesin Lower Canada and William Lyon Mackenzie, the leader of the rebellion in Upper Canada. Thomas Storrow Brown, one of Papineau's lieutenants, wrote to Mackenzie asking him to start the ball rolling in Upper Canada first, in order to draw off some of the troops which Sir John Colborne had massed in Lower Canada. But all calculations were now upset by events which rapidly precipitated the crisis in the lower province.
Soon after the fracas in the streets of Montreal between the Doric Club and theFils de la Liberté, a priest named Quibilier waited on Papineau, and advised him, since his presence in Montreal had become a source of disturbance, to leave the city. Whether he came as an emissary from the ecclesiastical authorities or merely as a friend is not clear. At any rate, Papineau accepted his advice,and immediately set out for St Hyacinthe. The result was most unfortunate. The government, thinking that Papineau had left the city for the purpose of stirring up trouble in the Richelieu district, promptly issued warrants for the arrest of Papineau and some of his chief lieutenants, Dr Wolfred Nelson, Thomas Storrow Brown, Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, and several others.
Meanwhile, on the day that these warrants for arrest were being issued (November 16), a skirmish took place between a small party of British troopers and a band ofPatrioteson the road between Chambly and Longueuil—a skirmish which may be described as the Lexington of the Lower Canada rebellion. The troopers, under Lieutenant Ermatinger, had been sent to St Johns to arrest two French Canadians, named Demaray and Davignon, who had been intimidating the magistrates. The arrest had been effected, and the party were on their way back to Montreal, when they were confronted by an armed company ofPatriotes, under the command of Bonaventure Viger, who demanded the release of the prisoners. A brisk skirmish ensued, in which several on both sides were wounded. The troopers, outnumbered by at least fiveto one, and having nothing but pistols with which to reply to the fire of muskets and fowling-pieces, were easily routed; and the two prisoners were liberated.
The news of this affair spread rapidly through the parishes, and greatly encouraged thePatriotesto resist the arrest of Papineau and his lieutenants. Papineau, Nelson, Brown, and O'Callaghan had all evaded the sheriff's officer, and had taken refuge in the country about the Richelieu, the heart of the revolutionary district. In a day or two word came to Montreal that considerable numbers of armed habitants had gathered at the villages of St Denis and St Charles, evidently with the intention of preventing the arrest of their leaders. The force at St Denis was under the command of Wolfred Nelson, and that at St Charles was under the command of Thomas Storrow Brown. How these self-styled 'generals' came to be appointed is somewhat of a mystery. Brown, at any rate, seems to have been chosen for the position on the spur of the moment. 'A mere accident took me to St Charles,' he wrote afterwards, 'and put me at the head of a revolting force.'
Sir John Colborne, who was in command of the British military forces, immediatelydetermined to disperse these gatherings by force and to arrest their leaders. His plan of campaign was as follows. A force consisting of one regiment of infantry, a troop of the Montreal Volunteer Cavalry, and two light field-guns, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Wetherall, had already been dispatched to Chambly by way of the road on which the rescue of Demaray and Davignon had taken place. This force would advance on St Charles. Another force, consisting of five companies of the 24th regiment, with a twelve-pounder, under Colonel Charles Gore, a Waterloo veteran, would proceed by boat to Sorel. There it was to be joined by one company of the 66th regiment, then in garrison at Sorel, and the combined force would march on St Denis. After having dispersed the rebels at St Denis, which was thought not to be strongly held, the little army was to proceed to St Charles, where it would be joined by the force under Wetherall.
At eight o'clock on the evening of November 22, Colonel Gore set out with his men from the barrack-square at Sorel for St Denis. The journey was one of eighteen miles; and in order to avoid St Ours, which was held by thePatriotes, Gore turned away from the mainroad along the Richelieu to make a detour. This led his troops over very bad roads. The night was dark and rain poured down in torrents. 'I got a lantern,' wrote one of Gore's aides-de-camp afterwards, 'fastened it to the top of a pole, and had it carried in front of the column; but what with horses and men sinking in the mud, harness breaking, wading through water and winding through woods, the little force soon got separated, those in the rear lost sight of the light, and great delays and difficulties were experienced. Towards morning the rain changed to snow, it became very cold, and daybreak found the unfortunate column still floundering in the half-frozen mud four miles from St Denis.'
Meanwhile word had reached the rebels of the coming of the soldiers. At daybreak Dr Wolfred Nelson had ridden out to reconnoitre, and had succeeded in destroying several bridges. As the soldiers approached St Denis they heard the church bells ringing the alarm; and it was not long before they found that the village was strongly defended. After capturing some of the houses on the outskirts of the village, they were halted by a stockade built across the road covered by a large brick house, well fortified on all sides. The commander ofthe troops brought reinforcements up to the firing line, and the twelve-pounder came into action. But the assailants made very little impression on the defence. Although the engagement lasted for more than five hours, the troops succeeded in capturing nothing more than one of the flanking houses. The ammunition of the British was running low, and the numbers of the insurgents seemed to be increasing. Colonel Gore therefore deemed it advisable to retire. By some strange oversight the British were without any ambulance or transport of any kind; and they were compelled to leave their dead and wounded behind them. Their casualties were six killed and eighteen wounded. The wounded, it is a pleasure to be able to say, were well looked after by the victoriousPatriotes.
The British effected their retreat with great steadiness, despite the fact that the men had had no food since the previous day and had been marching all night. They were compelled to abandon their twelve-pounder in the mud; but they reached St Ours that night without further loss. The next day they were back at Sorel.
The number of the insurgents at St Denis has never been accurately ascertained;probably they were considerably in excess of the troops. Their position was one of great strength, and good judgment had been shown in fortifying it. On the other hand, with the exception of a few veterans of Major de Salaberry's Voltigeurs, they were untrained in war; and their muskets and fowling-pieces were much inferior to the rifles of the regulars. Their victory, it must be said, reflected great credit upon them; although their losses had been twice as great as those of the soldiers,[1] these peasants in homespun had stood their ground with a courage and steadiness which would have honoured old campaigners. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said about some of their leaders. Papineau and O'Callaghan were present in St Denis when the attack began; but before the morning was well advanced, they had departed for St Hyacinthe, whence they later fled to the United States. Papineau always declared that he had taken this action at thesolicitation of Wolfred Nelson, who had said to him: 'Do not expose yourself uselessly: you will be of more service to us after the fight than here.' In later days, however, when political differences had arisen between the two men, Nelson denied having given Papineau any such advice. It is very difficult to know the truth. But even if Nelson did advise Papineau to leave, it cannot be said that Papineau consulted his own reputation in accepting the advice. He was not a person without military experience: he had been a major in the militia, and was probably superior in rank to any one in the village. His place was with the brave farmers who had taken up arms on his behalf.
An episode in connection with the attack on St Denis left a dark stain on thePatrioteescutcheon and embittered greatly the relations between the two races in Canada. This was the murder, on the morning of the fight, of Lieutenant Weir, a subaltern in the 32nd regiment, who had been sent with dispatches to Sorel by land. He had reached Sorel half an hour after Colonel Gore and his men had departed for St Denis. In attempting to catch up with Gore's column he had taken the direct road to St Denis and had arrived therein advance of the British troops. On approaching the village he was arrested, and by Wolfred Nelson's orders placed in detention. As the British attack developed, it was thought better by those who had him in charge to remove him to St Charles. They bound him tightly and placed him in a wagon. Hardly had they started when he made an attempt to escape. In this emergency his warders seem to have lost their heads. In spite of the fact that Weir was tightly bound and could do no harm, they fell upon him with swords and pistols, and in a short time dispatched him. Then, appalled at what they had done, they attempted to hide the body. When the British troops entered St Denis a week later, they found the body lying, weighted down with stones, in the Richelieu river under about two feet of water. The autopsy disclosed the brutality with which Weir had been murdered; and the sight of the body so infuriated the soldiers that they gave the greater part of the village of St Denis to the flames. In the later phases of the rebellion the slogan of the British soldiers was, 'Remember Jack Weir.'
Another atrocious murder even more unpardonable than that of Weir was perpetrateda few days later. On November 28 somePatriotesnear St Johns captured a man by the name of Chartrand, who was enlisted in a loyal volunteer corps of the district. After a mock trial Chartrand was tied to a tree and shot by his own countrymen.
[1] According to a report twelvePatrioteslost their lives during the engagement. Among them was Charles Ovide Perrault, member of the Assembly for Vaudreuil, a young barrister of considerable promise. He seems to have been Papineau's closest follower and confidant During the last sessions of the Lower Canada legislature Perrault contributed many letters toLa Minerve.
The check administered to Colonel Gore's column at St Denis, in the first engagement of the rebellion, was the only victory which fell to the rebel forces. In the meantime Lieutenant-Colonel Wetherall, with several companies of infantry, a troop of volunteer cavalry, and two field-guns, was marching on St Charles. On the evening of November 22 Major Gugy, the leader of the English party in the Assembly, had brought to Wetherall at Chambly instructions to advance down the Richelieu and attack the rebel position at St Charles in the morning. He set out accordingly at about the hour when Gore headed his forces up the river from Sorel. But, while Gore carried out his orders to the letter and reached St Denis on the morning of the 23rd, Wetherall allowed himself some latitude in interpreting his instructions. This was largely due to the advice of Gugy, if we are to believethe account which Gugy has left us. 'In the first place,' it runs, 'not one of the force knew anything of the roads or people, nor do I believe that more than one spoke French.... The storm raged so fearfully, the rain poured in such torrents, and the frost set in afterwards so intensely, that ... men and horses were equally fatigued ... all so exhausted as to be unable to cope, on broken or woody ground, successfully with any resolute enemy.... I learned that we had marched without a dollar, without a loaf of bread, without a commissary, and without a spare cartridge—a pretty predicament in an enemy's country, surrounded by thousands of armed men.' It was apparent to Gugy that Sir John Colborne, in issuing his orders, had greatly underestimated the difficulty of the task he was setting for the troops. After crossing the river above the Chambly Basin, Gugy therefore induced Wetherall to halt until daylight; and, turning himself into a commissary, he billeted the men and horses in the neighbouring houses and stables.
The next day about noon the column reached St Hilaire, some seven miles from St Charles. Here Wetherall obtained information which led him to fear that Gorehad met with some kind of check; and he was persuaded to send back to Chambly for a reinforcement of one company which had been left in garrison there. His messenger reached Chambly at four o'clock on the morning of the 24th. Major Warde, the commandant at Chambly, at once embarked his company on a scow and dropped down the river to St Hilaire; but he arrived too late to allow of any further action that day, and it was not until the morning of the 25th that the column moved on St Charles.
Meanwhile, the rebels had been making preparations for defence. They had fortified the manor-house of Debartzch, who had fled to Montreal, and built round it a rampart of earth and tree-trunks—a rampart which, for some mysterious reason, was never completed. They appointed as commander Thomas Storrow Brown, a Montreal iron-merchant, for whose arrest a warrant had been issued and who had fled to St Charles with two or three otherPatriotepoliticians. But Brown had no military experience, and was still suffering so severely from injuries received in the rioting in Montreal that his proper place was a home for convalescents rather than a field of battle. His appointment can only beexplained by the non-appearance of the localPatrioteleaders. 'The chief men,' Brown testified afterwards, 'were, with two or three exceptions, absent or hiding.' It is evident that the British authorities expected to meet with the strongest opposition at St Charles, since that place had been the scene of the great demonstration earlier in the year. But, as a matter of fact, the rebel forces at St Charles were much less formidable than those at St Denis. Not only were they lacking in proper military leadership; they were also fewer in number and were, moreover, very inadequately armed. If Brown's statements are to be relied upon, there were not in the rebel camp two hundred men. 'Of ammunition,' wrote Brown, 'we had some half dozen kegs of gunpowder and a little lead, which was cast into bullets; but as the fire-arms were of every calibre, the cartridges made were too large for many, which were consequently useless. We had two small rusty field-pieces, but with neither carriages nor appointments they were as useless as two logs. There was one old musket, but not a bayonet. The fire-arms were common flintlocks, in all conditions of dilapidation, some tied together with string, and very many withlock-springs so worn out that they could not be discharged.'
On the 24th Brown made a reconnaissance in the direction of St Hilaire. He destroyed a bridge over a ravine some distance to the south of St Charles, and placed above it an outpost with orders to prevent a reconstruction of the bridge. But when the British troops appeared on the morning of the 25th, this and other outlying pickets fell back without making any resistance. They probably saw that they were so outnumbered that resistance would be hopeless. On the approach of the troops Brown at first assumed an attitude of confidence. A messenger came from Wetherall, 'a respectable old habitant,' to tell the rebels that if they dispersed quietly, they would not be molested. Brown treated the message as a confession of weakness. 'I at once supposed,' he said, 'that, followed in the rear by our friends from above, they were seeking a free passage to Sorel, and determined to send a message, thatif they would lay down their arms, they should pass unmolested.' This message does not seem to have reached its destination. And hardly had the engagement opened when Brown quickly changed his tune. 'To go forwardwas useless, as I could order nothing but a retreat—without it the people commenced retiring. I tried to rally the little squads, my only hope being in keeping together the fowling-pieces we had collected, but finding, after a long trial, my strength and authority insufficient, I considered my command gone, turned my horse, and rode to ... St Denis (seven or eight miles), where ... I arrived about nightfall.'
The engagement lasted less than an hour. The rebels, or at any rate those of them who were armed, seem to have been outnumbered by the soldiers, of whom there were between three and four hundred. But the fighting was apparently brisk while it lasted. The British lost three killed and eighteen wounded. ThePatriotelosses are not known. The local tradition is that forty-two were killed and many more wounded. We know that thirty were taken prisoners on the field.
The defeat of the rebels at St Charles really terminated the rebellion in the country about the Richelieu. When news of the defeat spread over the countryside, thePatrioteforces immediately disbanded, and their leaders sought safety in flight. Papineau and O'Callaghan, who had been at St Hyacinthe,succeeded in getting across the Vermont border; but Wolfred Nelson was not so fortunate. After suffering great privations he was captured by some loyalist militia not far from the frontier, taken to Montreal, and there lodged in prison.
For some reason which it is difficult to discern, Wetherall did not march on from St Charles to effect a pacification of St Denis. On December 1, however, Colonel Gore once more set out from Sorel, and entered St Denis the same day. He found everything quiet. He recovered the howitzer and five of the wounded men he had left behind. In spite of the absence of opposition, his men took advantage of the occasion to wreak an unfair and un-British vengeance on the helpless victors of yesterday. Goaded to fury by the sight of young Weir's mangled body, they set fire to a large part of the village. Colonel Gore afterwards repudiated the charge that he had ordered the burning of the houses of the insurgents; but that defence does not absolve him from blame. It is obvious, at any rate, that he did not take adequate measures to prevent such excesses; nor was any punishment ever administered to those who applied the torch.
But the end of rebellion was not yet in sight. Two more encounters remain to be described. The first of these occurred at a place known as Moore's Corners, near the Vermont border. After the collapse at St Charles a number ofPatrioterefugees had gathered at the small town of Swanton, a few miles south of Missisquoi Bay, on the American side of the boundary-line. Among them were Dr Cyrile Côté and Edouard Rodier, both members of the Lower Canada Assembly; Ludger Duvernay, a member of the Assembly and editor ofLa Minerve; Dr Kimber, one of the ringleaders in the rescue of Demaray and Davignon; and Robert Shore Milnes Bouchette, the descendant of a French-Canadian family long conspicuous for its loyalty and its services to the state. Bouchette's grandfather had been instrumental in effecting the escape of Sir Guy Carleton from Montreal in 1775, when that place was threatened by the forces of Montgomery. The grandson's social tastes and affiliations might have led one to expect that he would have been found in the ranks of the loyalists; but the arbitrary policy of the Russell Resolutions had driven him into the arms of the extremePatriotes. Arrested for disloyalty at the outbreak ofthe rebellion, he had been admitted to bail and had escaped. These men, under the belief that the habitants would rise and join them, determined upon an armed invasion of Canada. Possibly they believed also that Wolfred Nelson was still holding out. Papineau, it was said, had reported that 'the victor of St Denis' was entrenched with a considerable force at St Césaire on the Yamaska. They therefore collected arms and ammunition, sent emissaries through the parishes to the north to rouse thePatriotes, and on December 6, flying some colours which had been worked for them by the enthusiastic ladies of Swanton, they crossed the Canadian border, about two hundred strong. They had two field-pieces and a supply of muskets and ammunition for those whom they expected to join the party on Canadian soil.
Hardly had the invaders crossed the border when they encountered at Moore's Corners a body of the Missisquoi Volunteers, under the command of Captain Kemp, who were acting as escort to a convoy of arms and ammunition. Having received warning of the coming of the insurgents, Kemp had sent out messengers through the countryside to rouse the loyalistpopulation. To these as they arrived he served out the muskets in his wagons. And when the rebels appeared, about eight o'clock at night, he had a force at his disposal of at least three hundred men, all well armed.
There is reason for believing that Kemp might have succeeded in ambushing the advancing force, had not some of his men, untrained volunteers with muskets in their hands for the first time, opened fire prematurely. The rebels returned the fire, and a fusillade continued for ten or fifteen minutes. But the rebels, on perceiving that they had met a superior force, retired in great haste, leaving behind them one dead and two wounded. One of the wounded was Bouchette, who had been in command of the advance-guard. The rebels abandoned also their two field-pieces, about forty stand of arms, five kegs of gunpowder, and six boxes of ball-cartridge, as well as two standards. Among the loyalists there were no casualties whatever. Only three of the rebels were taken prisoner besides the two wounded, a fact which Kemp explained by several factors—the undisciplined state of the loyalists, the darkness of the night, the vicinity of woods, and the proximity of the boundary-line,beyond which he did not allow the pursuit to go. The 'battle' of Moore's Corners was in truth an excellent farce; but there is no doubt that it prevented what might have been a more serious encounter had the rebel column reached the neighbourhood of St Johns, where many of thePatrioteswere in readiness to join them.
A few days later, in a part of the province some distance removed from the Richelieu river and the Vermont border, there occurred another collision, perhaps the most formidable of the whole rebellion. This was at the village of St Eustache, in the county of Two Mountains, about eighteen miles north-west of Montreal. The county of Two Mountains had long been known as a stronghold of the extremePatriotes. The local member, W. H. Scott, was a supporter of Papineau, and had a large and enthusiastic following. He was not, however, a leader in the troubles that ensued. The chief organizer of revolt in St Eustache and the surrounding country was a mysterious adventurer named Amury Girod, who arrived in St Eustache toward the end of November with credentials, it would seem from Papineau, assigning to him the task of superintending thePatriotecausein the north. About Girod very little is known. He is variously described as having been a Swiss, an Alsatian, and a native of Louisiana. According to his own statement, he had been at one time a lieutenant-colonel of cavalry in Mexico. He was well educated, could speak fluently several languages, had a bold and plausible manner, and succeeded in imposing, not only upon thePatrioteleaders, but upon the people of St Eustache. He found a capable and dauntless supporter in Dr J. O. Chénier, the young physician of the village. Chénier was one of the few leaders of the revolt whose courage challenges admiration; and it is fitting that to-day a monument, bearing the simple inscription CHÉNIER, should stand in the Place Viger in Montreal, among the people for whom, though misguidedly and recklessly, he laid down his life.
To St Eustache, on Sunday, November 26, came the news of Wolfred Nelson's victory at St Denis. On Monday and Tuesday bands ofPatrioteswent about the countryside, terrorizing and disarming the loyalists and compelling the faint-hearted to join in the rising. On Wednesday night the rebels gathered to the number of about four hundredin St Eustache, and got noisily drunk (s'y enivrèrent bruyamment). They then proceeded, under the command of Girod and Chénier, to the Indian mission settlement at the Lake of Two Mountains. Here they broke into the government stores and possessed themselves of some guns and ammunition. They next made themselves unwelcome to the superior of the mission, the Abbé Dufresne, and, in spite of his protestations, carried off from the mission-house a three-pounder gun. On their return to St Eustache they forcibly entered the convent which had been lately completed, though it was not yet occupied, and camped there.
The loyalists who were forced to flee from the village carried the news of these proceedings to Montreal; but Sir John Colborne was unwilling to take any steps to subdue thePatriotesof St Eustache until the insurrection on the Richelieu had been thoroughly crushed. All he did was to send a detachment of volunteers to guard the Bord à Plouffe bridge at the northern end of the island of Montreal.
On Sunday, December 3, word reached St Eustache of the defeat of the insurgents at St Charles. This had a moderating influence on many of thePatriotes. All week the AbbéPaquin, parish priest of St Eustache, had been urging the insurgents to go back quietly to their homes. He now renewed his exhortations. He begged Chénier to cease his revolutionary conduct. Chénier, however, was immovable. He refused to believe that the rebels at St Charles had been dispersed, and announced his determination to die with arms in his hands rather than surrender. 'You might as well try to seize the moon with your teeth,' he exclaimed, 'as to try to shake my resolve.'
The events of the days that followed cannot be chronicled in detail. When the Abbé Paquin and his vicar Desèves sought to leave the parish, Girod and Chénier virtually placed them under arrest. The abbé did not mince matters with Chénier. 'I accuse you before God and man,' he said, 'of being the author of these misfortunes.' When some of the habitants came to him complaining that they had been forced against their will to join the rebels, he reminded them of the English proverb: 'You may lead a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink.' Unfortunately, the Abbé Paquin's good influence was counteracted by that of the Abbé Chartier, the curé of the neighbouring village of StBenoit, a rare case of an ecclesiastic lending his support to the rebel movement, in direct contravention of the orders of his superiors. On several occasions the Abbé Chartier came over to St Eustache and delivered inflammatory addresses to the rebel levies.
The vicar Desèves has left us a vivid picture of the life which the rebels led. No attempt was made to drill them or to exercise discipline. Time hung heavy on their hands. He continually saw them, he says, passing through the village in knots of five or six, carrying rusty guns out of order, smoking short black pipes, and wearing bluetuqueswhich hung half-way down their backs, clothes ofétoffe du pays, and leather mittens. They helped themselves to all the strong drink they could lay their hands on, and their gait showed the influence of their potations. Their chief aim in life seemed to be to steal, to drink, to eat, to dance, and to quarrel. With regard to the morrow, they lived in a fool's paradise. They seem to have believed that the troops would not dare to come out to meet them, and that when their leaders should give the word they would advance on Montreal and take it without difficulty. Their numbers during this period showed a good deal offluctuation. Ultimately Girod succeeded in gathering about him nearly a thousand men. Not all these, however, were armed; according to Desèves a great many of them had no weapons but sticks and stones.
By December 13 Sir John Colborne was ready to move. He had provided himself with a force strong enough to crush an enemy several times more numerous than the insurgents led by Girod and Chénier. His column was composed of the 1st Royals, the 32nd regiment, the 83rd regiment, the Montreal Volunteer Rifles, Globensky and Leclerc's Volunteers, a strong force of cavalry—in all, over two thousand men, supported by eight pieces of field artillery and well supplied with provision and ammunition transport.
The troops bivouacked for the night at St Martin, and advanced on the morning of the 14th. The main body crossed the Mille Isles river on the ice about four miles to the east of St Eustache, and then moved westward along the St Rose road. A detachment of Globensky's Volunteers, however, followed the direct road to St Eustache, and came out on the south side of the river opposite the village, in full view of the rebels. Chénier, at the head of a hundred and fifty men, crossed theice, and was on the point of coming to close quarters with the volunteers when the main body of the loyalists appeared to the east. Thereupon Chénier and his men beat a hasty retreat, and made hurried preparations for defending the village. The church, the convent, the presbytery, and the house of the member of the Assembly, Scott, were all occupied and barricaded. It was about the church that the fiercest fighting took place. The artillery was brought to bear on the building; but the stout masonry resisted the battering of the cannon balls, and is still standing, dinted and scarred. Some of the Royals then got into the presbytery and set fire to it. Under cover of the smoke the rest of the regiment then doubled up the street to the church door. Gaining access through the sacristy, they lit a fire behind the altar. 'The firing from the church windows then ceased,' wrote one of the officers afterwards, 'and the rebels began running out from some low windows, apparently of a crypt or cellar. Our men formed up on one side of the church, and the 32nd and 83rd on the other. Some of the rebels ran out and fired at the troops, then threw down their arms and begged for quarter. Our officers tried to save theCanadians, but the men shouted "Remember Jack Weir," and numbers of these poor deluded fellows were shot down.'
One of those shot down was Chénier. He had jumped from a window of the Blessed Virgin's chapel and was making for the cemetery. How many fell with him it is difficult to say. It was said that seventy rebels were killed, and a number of charred bodies were found afterwards in the ruins of the church. The casualties among the troops were slight, one killed and nine wounded. One of the wounded was Major Gugy, who here distinguished himself by his bravery and kind-heartedness, as he had done in the St Charles expedition. Many of the rebels escaped. A good many, indeed, had fled from the village on the first appearance of the troops. Among these were some who had played a conspicuous part in fomenting trouble. The Abbé Chartier of St Benoit, instead of waiting to administer the last rites to the dying, beat a feverish retreat and eventually escaped to the United States. The Church placed on him its interdict, and he never again set foot on Canadian soil. The behaviour of the adventurer Girod, the 'general' of the rebel force, was especiallyreprehensible. When he had posted his men in the church and the surrounding buildings, he mounted a horse and fled toward St Benoit. At a tavern where he stopped to get a stiff draught of spirits he announced that the rebels had been victorious and that he was seeking reinforcements with which to crush the troops completely. For four days he evaded capture. Then, finding that the cordon was tightening around him, he blew out his brains with a revolver. Thus ended a life which was not without its share of romance and mystery.
On the night of the 14th the troops encamped near the desolate village of St Eustache, a large part of which had unfortunately been given over to the flames during the engagement. In the morning the column set out for St Benoit. Sir John Colborne had threatened that if a single shot were fired from St Benoit the village would be given over to fire and pillage. But when the troops arrived there they found awaiting them about two hundred and fifty men bearing white flags. All the villagers laid down their arms and made an unqualified submission. And it is a matter for profound regret that, notwithstanding this, the greater part of the villagewas burned to the ground. Sir John Colborne has been severely censured for this occurrence, and not without reason. Nothing is more certain, of course, than that he did not order it. It seems to have been the work of the loyalist volunteers, who had without doubt suffered much at the hands of the rebels. 'The irregular troops employed,' wrote one of the British officers, 'were not to be controlled, and were in every case, I believe, the instrument of the infliction.' Far too much burning and pillaging went on, indeed, in the wake of the rebellion. 'You know,' wrote an inhabitant of St Benoit to a friend in Montreal, 'where the younger Arnoldi got his supply of butter, or where another got the guitar he carried back with him from the expedition about the neck.' And it is probable that the British officers, and perhaps Sir John Colborne himself, winked at some things which they could not officially recognize. At any rate, it is impossible to acquit Colborne of all responsibility for the unsoldierly conduct of the men under his command.
It is usual to regard the rebellion of 1837 in Lower Canada as no less a fiasco than its counterpart in Upper Canada. There is no doubt that it was hopeless from the outset.It was an impromptu movement, based upon a sudden resolution rather than on a well-reasoned plan of action. Most of the leaders—Wolfred Nelson, Thomas Storrow Brown, Robert Bouchette, and Amury Girod—were strangers to the men under their command; and none of them, save Chénier, seemed disposed to fight to the last ditch. The movement at its inception fell under the official ban of the Church; and only two priests, the curés of St Charles and St Benoit, showed it any encouragement. The actual rebellion was confined to the county of Two Mountains and the valley of the Richelieu. The districts of Quebec and Three Rivers were quiet as the grave—with the exception, perhaps, of an occasional village like Montmagny, where Étienne P. Taché, afterwards a colleague of Sir John Macdonald and prime minister of Canada, was the centre of a local agitation. Yet it is easy to see that the rebellion might have been much more serious. But for the loyal attitude of the ecclesiastical authorities, and the efforts of many clear-headed parish priests like the Abbé Paquin of St Eustache, the revolutionary leaders might have been able to consummate their plans, and Sir John Colborne, with the small number of troops athis disposal, might have found it difficult to keep the flag flying. The rebellion was easily snuffed out because the majority of the French-Canadian people, in obedience to the voice of their Church, set their faces against it.
The rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada profoundly affected public opinion in the mother country. That the first year of the reign of the young Queen Victoria should have been marred by an armed revolt in an important British colony shocked the sensibilities of Englishmen and forced the country and the government to realize that the grievances of the Canadian Reformers were more serious than they had imagined. It was clear that the old system of alternating concession and repression had broken down and that the situation demanded radical action. The Melbourne government suspended the constitution of Lower Canada for three years, and appointed the Earl of Durham as Lord High Commissioner, with very full powers, to go out to Canada to investigate the grievances and to report on a remedy.
John George Lambton, the first Earl ofDurham, was a wealthy and powerful Whig nobleman, of decided Liberal, if not Radical, leanings. He had taken no small part in the framing of the Reform Bill of 1832, and at one time he had been hailed by the English Radicals or Chartists as their coming leader. It was therefore expected that he would be decently sympathetic with the Reform movements in the Canadas. At the same time, Melbourne and his ministers were only too glad to ship him out of the country. There was no question of his great ability and statesmanlike outlook. But his advanced Radical views were distasteful to many of his former colleagues; and his arrogant manners, his lack of tact, and his love of pomp and circumstance made him unpopular even in his own party. The truth is that he was an excellent leader to work under, but a bad colleague to work with. The Melbourne government had first got rid of him by sending him to St Petersburg as ambassador extraordinary; and then, on his return from St Petersburg, they got him out of the way by sending him to Canada. He was at first loath to go, mainly on the ground of ill health; but at the personal intercession of the young queen he accepted the commission offered him. It wasan evil day for himself, but a good day for Canada, when he did so.
Durham arrived in Quebec, with an almost regal retinue, on May 28, 1838. Gosford, who had remained in Canada throughout the rebellion, had gone home at the end of February; and the administration had been taken over by Sir John Colborne, the commander-in-chief of the forces. As soon as the news of the suspension of the constitution reached Lower Canada, Sir John Colborne appointed a provisional special council of twenty-two members, half of them French and half of them English, to administer the affairs of the province until Lord Durham should arrive. The first official act of Lord Durham in the colony swept this council out of existence. 'His Excellency believes,' the members of the council were told, 'that it is as much the interest of you all, as for the advantage of his own mission, that his administrative conduct should be free from all suspicions of political influence or party feeling; that it should rest on his own undivided responsibility, and that when he quits the Province, he should leave none of its permanent residents in any way committed by the acts which his Government may havefound it necessary to perform, during the temporary suspension of the Constitution.' In its place he appointed a small council of five members, all but one from his own staff. The one Canadian called to this council was Dominick Daly, the provincial secretary, whom Colborne recommended as being unidentified with any political party.
The first great problem with which Lord Durham and his council had to deal was the question of the political prisoners, numbers of whom were still lying in the prisons of Montreal. Sir John Colborne had not attempted to decide what should be done with them, preferring to shift this responsibility upon Lord Durham. It would probably have been much better to have settled the matter before Lord Durham set foot in the colony, so that his mission might not have been handicapped at the outset with so thorny a problem; but it is easy to follow Colborne's reasoning. In the first place, he did not bring the prisoners to trial because no Lower-Canadian jury at that time could have been induced to convict them, a reasonable inference from the fact that the murder of Weir had gone unavenged, even as the murderers of Chartrand were to be acquittedby a jury a few months later. In the second place, Colborne had not the power to deal with the prisoners summarily. Moreover, most of the rebel leaders had not been captured. The only three prisoners of much importance were Wolfred Nelson, Robert Bouchette, and Bonaventure Viger. The rest of thePatrioteleaders were scattered far and wide. Chénier and Girod lay beneath the springing sod; Papineau, O'Callaghan, Storrow Brown, Robert Nelson, Côté, and Rodier were across the American border; Morin had just come out of his hiding-place in the Canadian backwoods; and LaFontaine, after vainly endeavouring, on the outbreak of rebellion, to get Gosford to call together the legislature of Lower Canada, had gone abroad. The future course of the rebels who had fled to the United States was still doubtful; there was a strong probability that they might create further disturbances. And, while the situation was still unsettled, Colborne thought it better to leave the fate of the prisoners to be decided by Durham.
Durham's instructions were to temper justice with mercy. His own instincts were apparently in favour of a complete amnesty; but he supposed it necessary to make anexample of some of the leaders. After earnest deliberation and consultation with his council, and especially with his chief secretary, Charles Buller, the friend and pupil of Thomas Carlyle, Durham determined to grant to the rebels a general amnesty, with only twenty-four exceptions. Eight of the men excepted were political prisoners who had been prominent in the revolt and who had confessed their guilt and had thrown themselves on the mercy of the Lord High Commissioner; the remaining sixteen were rebel leaders who had fled from the country. Durham gave orders that the eight prisoners should be transported to the Bermudas during the queen's pleasure. The sixteen refugees were forbidden to return to Canada under penalty of death without benefit of clergy.
No one can fail to see that this course was dictated by the humanest considerations. A criminal rebellion had terminated without the shedding judicially of a drop of blood. Lord Durham even took care that the eight prisoners should not be sent to a convict colony. The only criticism directed against his course in Canada was on the ground of its excessive lenity. Wolfred Nelson and Robert Bouchette had certainly suffered a milder fatethan that of Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews, who had been hanged in Upper Canada for rebellion. Yet when the news of Durham's action reached England, it was immediately attacked as arbitrary and unconstitutional. The assault was opened by Lord Brougham, a bitter personal enemy of Lord Durham. In the House of Lords Brougham contended that Durham had had no right to pass sentence on the rebel prisoners and refugees when they had not been brought to trial; and that he had no right to order them to be transported to, and held in, Bermuda, where his authority did not run. In this attitude he was supported by the Duke of Wellington, the leader of the Tory party. Wellington's name is one which is usually remembered with honour in the history of the British Empire; but on this occasion he did not think it beneath him to play fast and loose with the interests of Canada for the sake of a paltry party advantage. It would have been easy for him to recognize the humanity of Durham's policy, and to join with the government in legislating away any technical illegalities that may have existed in Durham's ordinance; but Wellington could not resist the temptation to embarrass the Whigadministration, regardless of the injury which he might be doing to the sorely tried people of Canada.
The Melbourne administration, which had sent Durham to Canada, might have been expected to stand behind him when he was attacked. Lord John Russell, indeed, rose in the House of Commons and made a thoroughgoing defence of Durham's policy as 'wise and statesmanlike.' But he alone of the ministers gave Durham loyal support. In the House of Lords Melbourne contented himself with a feeble defence of Durham and then capitulated to the Opposition. Nothing would have been easier for him than to introduce a bill making valid whatever may have been irregular in Durham's ordinance; but instead of that he disallowed the ordinance, and passed an Act of Indemnity for all those who had had a part in carrying it out. Without waiting to hear Durham's defence, or to consult with him as to the course which should be followed, the Cabinet weakly surrendered to an attack of his personal enemies. Durham was betrayed in the house of his friends.
The news of the disallowance of the ordinance first reached Durham through the columns of an American newspaper.Immediately his mind was made up. Without waiting for any official notification, he sent in his resignation to the colonial secretary. He was quite satisfied himself that he had not exceeded his powers. 'Until I learn,' he wrote, 'from some one better versed in the English language that despotism means anything but such an aggregation of the supreme executive and legislative authority in a single head, as was deliberately made by Parliament in the Act which constituted my powers, I shall not blush to hear that I have exercised a despotism; I shall feel anxious only to know how well and wisely I have used, or rather exhibited an intention of using, my great powers.' But he felt that if he could expect no firm support from the Melbourne government, his usefulness was gone, and resignation was the only course open to him. He wrote, however, that he intended to remain in Canada until he had completed the inquiries he had instituted. In view of the 'lamentable want of information' with regard to Canada which existed in the Imperial parliament, he confessed that he 'would take shame to himself if he left his inquiry incomplete.'
A few days before Durham left Canada he took the unusual and, under ordinarycircumstances, unconstitutional course of issuing a proclamation, in which he explained the reasons for his resignation, and in effect appealed from the action of the home government to Canadian public opinion. It was this proclamation which drew down on him fromThe Timesthe nickname of 'Lord High Seditioner.' The wisdom of the proclamation was afterwards, however, vigorously defended by Charles Duller. The general unpopularity of the British government, Duller explained, was such in Canada that a little more or less could not affect it; whereas it was a matter of vital importance that the angry and suspicious colonists should find one British statesman with whom they could agree. The real justification of the proclamation lay in the magical effect which it had upon the public temper. The news that the ordinance had been disallowed, and that the whole question of the political prisoners had been once more thrown into the melting-pot, had greatly excited the public mind; and the proclamation fell like oil upon the troubled waters. 'No disorder, no increase of disaffection ensued; on the contrary, all parties in the Province expressed a revival of confidence.'
Lord Durham left Quebec on November 1,1838. 'It was a sad day and a sad departure,' wrote Buller. 'The streets were crowded. The spectators filled every window and every house-top, and, though every hat was raised as we passed, a deep silence marked the general grief for Lord Durham's departure.' Durham had been in Canada only five short months. Yet in that time he had gained a knowledge of, and an insight into, the Canadian situation such as no other governor of Canada had possessed. The permanent monument of that insight is, of course, his famousReport on the Affairs of British North America, issued by the Colonial Office in 1839. This is no place to write at length about that greatest of all documents ever published with regard to colonial affairs. This much, however, may be said. In theReportLord Durham rightly diagnosed the evils of the body politic in Canada. He traced the rebellion to two causes, in the main: first, racial feeling; and, secondly, that 'union of representative and irresponsible government' of which he said that it was difficult to understand how any English statesman ever imagined that such a system would work. And yet one of the two chief remedies which he recommended seemed like a death sentence passed on the French in Canada.This was the proposal for the legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada with the avowed object of anglicizing by absorption the French population. This suggestion certainly did not promote racial peace. The other proposal, that of granting to the Canadian people responsible government in all matters not infringing 'strictly imperial interests,' blazed the trail leading out of the swamps of pre-rebellion politics.
In one respect only is Lord Durham'sReportseriously faulty: it is not fair to French Canadians. 'They cling,' wrote Durham, 'to ancient prejudices, ancient customs, and ancient laws, not from any strong sense of their beneficial effects, but with the unreasoning tenacity of an uneducated and unprogressive people.' To their racial and nationalist ambitions he was far from favourable. 'The error,' he contended, 'to which the present contest is to be attributed is the vain endeavour to preserve a French-Canadian nationality in the midst of Anglo-American colonies and states'; and he quoted with seeming approval the statement of one of the Lower Canada 'Bureaucrats' that 'Lower Canada must beEnglish, at the expense, if necessary, of not beingBritish.' His primaryobject in recommending the union of the two Canadas, to place the French in a minority in the united province, was surely a mistaken policy. Fortunately, it did not become operative. Lord Elgin, a far wiser statesman, who completed Durham's work by introducing the substance of responsible government which theReportrecommended, decidedly opposed anything in the nature of a gradual crusade against French-Canadian nationalism. 'I for one,' he wrote, 'am deeply convinced of the impolicy of all such attempts to denationalize the French. Generally speaking, they produce the opposite effect, causing the flame of national prejudice and animosity to burn more fiercely. But suppose them to be successful, what would be the result? You may perhapsAmericanize, but, depend upon it, by methods of this description you will neverAnglicizethe French inhabitants of the province. Let them feel, on the other hand, that their religion, their habits, their prepossessions, their prejudices if you will, are more considered and respected here than in other portions of this vast continent, and who will venture to say that the last hand which waves the British flag on American ground may not be that of a French Canadian?'