There were men then in Quebec whose denunciations of British rule were given with a vim not exceeded by Papineau himself, who were destined, fermentation over, to be like the wine kept for the end of the feast. It so happened that Sir E. P. Taché, aide-de-camp to the Queen in after years, was then Patriote—to be spelled in capitals and rolled with the reverberation of the Parisian R. He was subjected to an unexpected domiciliary visit, as a cannon was supposed to be hidden under his winter supply of provisions. The searchers were rewarded by a pair of duelling pistols, then a part of every gentleman’s outfit, and a veritable Mons Meg, six inches long, which belonged to a small boy of the same number of years.
As history counts, it was not long before Etienne Taché, in the fold and one of our Queen’s knights good and true, declared “the last gun fired for British supremacy in America would be fired by a French-Canadian.”
From survivors, and from a few printed memorials, one finds that what was known as Training Day seems to have been a great farce in Upper Canada. The 4th of June, King George’s birthday, was its date. Descriptions of it take one back to the Duke of Brunswick’s lament over his army—that if it had been generaled by shoemakers and tailors it could not have been worse, for the Duke’s general marched with his division like cabbages and turnips in defile. Here there was no likeness to anything so formal; the army manœuvres partook of the wild luxuriance of native growths. If twelve were the hour for muster on the common at Fort George, it was sure to be after one before the arduous work of falling in began. “The men answered to their names, as the rolls of the various companies were called, with a readiness and distinctness of tone which showed that, in spite of the weather, they were wide-awake,” says the chronicle. Once they became more active a scene ensued which could not fail to gladden the eyes of the onlookers. In time, either slow or quick, the men did not seem to be guided by any rule of book, but exemplified home-made tactics, presenting lines for which mathematicians have yet furnished no name, putting out flanking parties at either end, and as nearly squaring a circle and circling a square as possible. “Though many jokes were passed, fewer sods were thrown than usual.” Even later than ’37, once men had been out and had come home veterans their services were in demand by officers newly appointed. As in the days of the good Duke of York, ignorance was an officer’s perquisite; then some intelligent sergeant whispered the word of command which his officer was ashamed to know; here, the poor officer was willing, but perhaps had a sergeant as ignorant as himself. However, he was not too haughty to search for some private to help him. “Say, they tell me you were out,” said one of these officers to a private; “I suppose you know something of military training. Now, I am a captain and don’t know anything, and I believe I’ll appoint you my sergeant.” The scene of initiation was by the Little Thames, on what was later to be a Court House site, thenceforward to be known as Stratford. The captain wore the battered remains of a tall silk hat, a black tailed coat, white linen trousers about six inches too short, and hose a world too wide for his shrunk shanks. The hastily-made sergeant, Tom Stoney, a blue-eyed young Irishman with a spice of fun but kind at heart, armed his superior officer with his own cavalry sword, and taking him into his small saddler-shop made himself military tailor as well. The captain never would have rested without spurs had he known that the late King on his first appearance in military uniform, although unmounted, wore a pair of gold ones that reached halfway up his legs like a gamecock. Stoney drew down the white pantaloons as far and as tight as possible, sewed on buttons, and cut and sewed two leather straps to aid in keeping the captain together. The men were got into line; the captain meekly took his place among them. “Right face!” cried the sergeant, and off flew a button, up went the trouser-leg to the knee—“pursued my humour, not pursuing his”—rejoicing in regained freedom, relented and came down again. Clump-clamp went the leather strap with every step. The sergeant’s commands came quicker than ever, the captain perspired, and toiling behind his men removed his silk hat to wipe his streaming face. Then he ventured his first “command”: “I think we have had enough drill; we’ll march down to the distillery, boys, if you like.” And they did.
In the Talbot District, Training Day since 1812 had been kept up with constancy. In spite of that, the inhabitants were somewhat unprepared when ’37 came. But the gathering of the Loyalists, however isolated they were from one another, was willing and surprisingly quick. Old officers of the army sought for and gathered up volunteers; they had neither drum nor fife, but there was a ready response from willing hearts, and from hands equally willing, however uncouth and unused to arms. The most embarrassing hindrances, sometimes, to everything like organization and drill and obedience to orders were those same old soldiers when, as was generally the case, they knew more than their officers. They stood in the ranks, and at the same time found fault with every word of command, so that they demoralized that which they had brought together. No set of volunteers was more difficult to handle than the old soldiers who had settled in Adelaide. Captain Pegley, although himself a retired regular officer, found them almost unmanageable when mixed with the more docile farmers and farmers’ sons. After much adjuration he at length broke out into exclamations which, on the whole, suited his mixed audience better than set military phrase. “Haw, man! gee, man!” cried he, a startling contrast to the studied politeness of some of the subs, who, with nothing whatever of the drill-sergeant tone, whenever the openings in the ranks were too wide, would say, “Won’t you be kind enough to step nearer this way; now, you men, be good enough to keep your places.” The sharpest order delivered by these subs was, “Halt! and let the others come up, can’t you!” Wheeling into line disclosed a line looking like the snake fence surrounding the stubble field which contained the wheel.
Marching in quick time with one bagpipe and a fiddle, or with a single drum and fife, was not antidote enough to the stubble as they passed the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel in blue frock coat, white trousers shoved up from his boots, a round hat above his fat face, seated in unostentatious dignity on his venerable white mare, whose sides were blown out with grass and her neck adorned with a rope halter. “Now, men, won’t you fall in,” he would pathetically inquire, while they showed every disposition to fall out. For, instead of the drum boy, in the centre of the parade-ground was a keg containing that liquid which in Lower Canada, when carried in a seal-skin covered bottle, was known as Lac dulce, or sometimes as old man’s milk. Then would Captain Rappelje command to drink the Sovereign’s health, which was done con amore; trials of strength, boxing and wrestling, would follow, when “Abe would knock Jehial as straight as a loon’s foot.”
What would men not do to keep these kegs full. Once Colonel Bostwick and Captain Neville were temporarily absent at the same time, while certain points on the river were guarded against surprise; the rebels were hourly expected, but failed to appear. Advantage was taken of the officers’ absence to cross at one of these points, to replenish the canteen. The boat, showing lights, returned before the expected time. Those on the pier bethought them of a Yankee boast to come across and eat the small village before breakfast. They prepared to fire into the boat, but changed their minds, and rushed to where their Captain and a companion were soundly sleeping. The pile of discarded clothing by the couch had been rather mixed, and the Captain measured six foot odd; his companion’s valour was contained in few inches.
“Come, come quick, quick, the rebels are upon us!” brought them to their feet, the big Captain thrusting himself as far as he could, and farther than the garments bargained for, into the unmentionables of the smaller man. They refused to cover below the calf; he tried to withdraw, they were obdurate, and in an agony of thought the enemy’s knock was heard. The small man had meanwhile decamped with a train at either heel. The Captain seized a jacket which matched the rest of his suit; in desperation he took the quilt, and in toga arrayed, like “that hook-nosed fellow of Rome,” reached the wharf in time to receive the whiskey kegs, where he delivered a lecture on breach of discipline and ordered the men to the guard-house. This Captain was a formidable figure out of his quilt, in his own red uniform with white facings and girt with a sword whose hilt of ivory and brass was further decorated with two beavers conventionalized beyond even the requirements of modern art. The sash, of double twisted silk, strange to say had been the property of John Rolph, who, during his life in Middlesex, had made his home in Captain Neville’s house—a queer foregathering, for we all know the one, and the latter was after the pattern of the U. E. Loyalist definition in 1777:
Captain Neville and Colonel Mahlon Burwell had a friendly rivalry as to who would furnish the country to which they were both so devoted with the most warlike sons. Leonidas, Blucher, Hannibal, Napoleon and Brock, did they call their unprotesting infants, until a mother rose to the assertion of her prerogative when Wolfe was suggested for one of her babies. The most warlike of this cream of heroism weighed but two pounds when he came into the world, and was put in his father’s carpet slipper to be weighed. Great, then, was the consternation when at the outbreak the following regimental order was issued, embracing fathers and sons:
“You are hereby ordered and required to warn all the men from sixteen to sixty, within limits of the late Captain David Rappelje’s company, to meet at St. Thomas, 13th inst., on Wednesday, with arms and ammunition, of whom I will take command.” The same village walls held another order from Sir Francis Bond Head. The result was more men brought together than ever before in the history of the settlement. The Mansion House was the great rallying point, and here, after the Scotch fashion, business was discussed, the suspected ones talked over by the extra loyal, and toasts and maledictions drunk according to the politics of the thirsty. That part of the country was one of the most disaffected sections, and neighbour looked upon neighbour with suspicion.
Some time before this, roused out of his retirement by the tales of agitation which he heard, Colonel Talbot attended the only political meeting of his Canadian life. On St. George’s Day of the year when Sir John Colborne, one of his nearest friends, took such a conspicuous part in the provincial elections, a large party of his people went out to meet the Colonel on the way from his Canadian Malahide castle. They found him on the top of Drake’s Hill, from which a beautiful view was afforded of the pleasant valley they were ready to defend. He entered the town, surrounded by waving flags bearing “The Hon. Thomas Talbot, Founder of the Talbot Settlement,” and other descriptive legends. The venerable figure of the eccentric lord of the manor, Executive Councillor, friend and fellow-officer of Wellington, stood there surveying his flock, the majority cheering him to the echo; but knots here and there bestowed unfavourable glances on them and him. His address was full of wit and sage advice. Some of the veterans, clad like himself in home-spun, who had toiled under his eye and by his aid had emerged from poverty to wealth, stood, with hands in their capacious pockets, looking up at him as if they “could fairly swallow his words.” When he referred to the pains he had taken to preserve loyalty among them, “That’s true, Colonel,” came as involuntary response. “But,” said he, “in spite of all my efforts, some black sheep have got into the flock—aye, and they have got the r-r-rot-t-t, too!”
His well-known aversion to altercation or controversy resulted in his being the only speaker. A loyal address was dictated by him extolling the blessings of government as then enjoyed and resting the blame of disaffection on the religious teaching of a certain lot of immigrants who had come to the Talbot Settlement in time to enjoy its prosperity, and then, not having the devotion bred by being first-comers, found it easy to pick flaws. The year ’37 brought to them a mysterious individual mounted on a cream-coloured horse which ambled him along the lanes and roads of Yarmouth. Like the clock peddler, the stranger wore deep green glasses in his spectacles. After his labours of disseminating dissension were over he managed to make his escape, but the cream-coloured nag figured as an officer’s charger on the Loyalist side—according to his late owner’s opinion, much after the manner of the unmounted Glengarries whose humour it was to steal at a moment’s rest—“convey, the wise it call”—but from the opposite point of view was pressed into government service. It was an animal of no prejudices, for with its rider it was always in the van.
Of those whose looks burned as they listened to the Colonel, and who would not subscribe to the address, some were yet to stand upon the drop to die for treason—a dignified name with which Colonel Talbot, in common with Drew, Prince and others, would have had little patience. These disaffected were chiefly influenced by an Englishman, George Lawton, who, like a good many of the demagogues of that day, had been a factious pate elsewhere. Concerned in the Bristol Riots, he was well up in the catch-words which thrilled the crowds there, and he used his strong mind and nimble tongue upon Canadian complications. He had to escape, somehow, from the consequences of his acts at home; so a sham illness and a sham death, a stuffed coffin and a funeral, and a voyage of the supposed deceased brought George Lawton to the Talbot District to sow those “seed-grains” of revolutionary doctrine which were to make him a second time an outcast. One of the first persons he met in this country was a chief mourner who had followed his coffin to the grave.
As early as ’33, Colonel Talbot writes to a friend: “My rebels endeavoured to hold a meeting at St. Thomas on the 17th, Dr. Franklin’s birthday as I am informed, but in which they were frustrated by my Royal Guards, who routed the rascals at all points and drove them out of the village like sheep, numbers with broken heads leaving their hats behind them—the glorious work of old Colonel Hickory. In short, it was a most splendid victory. Mr. Fraser, the Wesleyan minister, behaved admirably on the occasion, and I scarcely think they will venture to call another meeting in St. Thomas. Their object was to form a political union, the articles of which were to elect the Legislative Council and magistrates.”
At all periods of the Rebellion Talbot’s District provided much “sympathy.” Several men from Port Stanley set out to join the sympathisers who were making ready at Detroit. Their small vessel was provided with boiler and machinery, and they made fair headway until off a spot near the Lake Road, when the rudder gave way. In a frenzy of conscience the boat made for her own shore and stuck in the sand-bank. Just at that point there happened to be a small company of dragoons, who, when they saw the boat coming towards them, with armed men in it, divided into two parties and galloped off in opposite directions. The officer of the company, in two minds to go both ways at once, solved his difficulty by popping under an upturned canoe. The would-be saviours of their country in the rebel boat got clear of the sand-bank and made off, upon which the dragoons galloped back to look after their captain. After a careful search, for he was very coy, they found him under his canoe canopy, not a bad makeshift where umbrellas were not procurable.
There was scarcely a locality which did not give evidence that the rebel spirit had a lodgment not far off. But also in each there were martial spirits eager and willing to lead or be one of loyalist troops. Some of them tell their own stories so well that it would be a pity to garble or curtail them. One man describes how he gave up his professional work, as the winter and the Rebellion were coming on together. “... The political horizon at that time looked rather squally. The Rads. were holding frequent meetings in different parts of the country, at which loud and long speeches were made to the ignorant and wicked, until it broke out in a general rising among the disaffected portion—which was the largest portion of the County of York. In Simcoe the Rads. were fully half the population; but they did not turn out for fear of the other half, among whom were many fiery Orangemen. And to this Order I attribute the safety of our country, although many loyal men, not Orangemen, turned out in behalf of the Government. Without these men we should have failed, as, before troops could arrive from England, the Yankees would have flooded the country.
“The Home District appeared to be the stronghold of the disaffected in Upper Canada. On the 4th of December, as I was going towards Queensville, I met five or six men with rifles, whom I knew to be fond of hunting deer. We talked about hunting and I went on my way, when I met sixty or seventy more, straggling along, some with guns, some with swords, and others unarmed. They had several waggons with them, which appeared loaded, but were covered up. I began to suspect their object, but could get no satisfaction to my questions. Then I met a young fellow whom I followed into his father’s house, and saw his father give him a pair of boots and some money. That convinced me. I then turned back and followed the party, when I met a man who told me my suspicions were correct, and that they were going to take Toronto. I advised him to go home, but he said he dare not; so then I told him he had better go to the States. He said he would, and I afterwards learned that he took my advice. On my way south I went into the tavern on Tory Hill, and asked the landlady if she understood the movement, to which she replied that they were going to take Toronto, and she had known it for several days. Her husband and several others had gone there three days before, and I may say here that when I went to the city I found him there as a volunteer—either that or go to prison. I next saw Mr. Samuel Sweasey, and asked him if he understood the movement. ‘Yes, they are going to take Toronto, rob the Bank, hang the Governor, and when they come back they will hang you,’ When I asked him where his sons were, he said he had sent them to the woods to get rid of them, as the rebels were after them.” Between this narrator and his friends the news was soon pretty well spread in the neighbourhood of the Landing, Bond Head, Bradford and Newmarket as to what he had seen and heard. “Farther on I met several men, too great cowards to turn out with the rebels, but mean enough to give me great abuse on account of my principles.” He and various other officers met at Newmarket, and agreed to do all possible to raise quickly what force they could in their respective neighbourhoods, the narrator being assisted by one of his sons, who was a sergeant. “Two men had been sent from Newmarket to inform the Governor that there were a number up here he could depend on. These men were taken prisoners by Mackenzie’s party.... We felt much the want of arms. Orders were given to search for and seize all the arms that could be found; but we had poor success, as most of them were in the hands of the rebels and the rest were hidden away to prevent our getting them. About the 9th we heard that John Powell had shot Anderson,” followed by the rest of the doings after Montgomery’s. News reached the men of the north slowly, and for many reasons their march to the assistance of the city was delayed. “At McLeod’s inn, on Yonge Street, a most cowardly affair occurred. Some twenty-five or thirty of the Scotch and a few others, on hearing that a body of men under Lount was stationed in the Ridges, whom we might have to fight, turned tail and went home. Their minister did all he could to dissuade them; but home they would go. When he found persuasion useless, he mounted his horse and called for volunteers. A few fell in with him, and he and they were with us when we took up our march for the city.
“A certain officer had assumed the command, and was mounted on a horse that had been taken from a Lloydtown man as he was trying to get home after Montgomery’s. When we got down as far as Willis’s farm, at the entrance to the Ridges, a halt was called and a council held, and, as it was yet feared by some that there was a strong force of rebels in the Ridges, it was decided that a few of us, about eight, and mounted, should form an advance guard to reconnoitre. A man from the Landing had gone into Willis’s and got a gun, which when the colonel saw he called to the man to let him have. The other objected, whereupon the colonel went up to him and, in the presence of us all, wrenched it out of his hands. We were then ordered, the disarmed man one of us, to advance, which we did. The eight of us had two guns, three swords, one club, and this little party went through the Ridges while the colonel and his reserve waited for about half an hour. Hearing nothing from us in the shape of a skirmish they ventured through. When we got to Bond’s Lake I got a pitchfork for the man from whom the colonel had taken the gun.” At Thornhill they learned that the rebels were completely dispersed, and many were for returning home; but it was decided to continue the march and tender their services to the Government. “By this time we mustered pretty strong, as several had joined us during the night and morning, many of whom I presume would have joined the other party had they been able to reach the city and make a stand there. We had now some twenty-five or thirty prisoners that we had picked up as we came. These we tied and placed in two strings, somewhat in the form of Ʌ.” Arrived in the city the volunteers were inspected by the Governor, and thanked by him in Her Majesty’s name for the tender of their services. “When they came opposite to where I was sitting on my horse, Colonel Carthew said, ‘A more loyal man does not live,’ and upon this the Governor bowed twice and passed on.” Some ten or twelve of them did not accept their billet upon the people, but went to a tavern and paid their own way. “I was officer of the guard on the night that Peter Matthews was brought into the Parliament House (used as head-quarters and prison) a prisoner. On the next night I went with Mr. Robinson, Dr. King and Sheriff Jarvis to the hospital, where Edgar Stiles, Kavanagh, and Latra were lying, to take their depositions.” On the next night he was sent “with a strong party to Sharon, where we captured some thirty or forty and sent them to Toronto. For three or four days I was at Newmarket attending to the guards, as we had a number of prisoners in the Baptist meeting-house.... I was ordered to where Collingwood now stands to look for Lount, who was said to be there at a lonely house of one John Brasier. When we had got as far as Bradford a man was sent after us with a report that Lount had been taken somewhere below Toronto. When I went to Newmarket again I found that in my absence several gentlemen who had been nowhere at the first had come in, had got commissions and my men.... After this, some eighteen or twenty of us about the Landing and Sharon joined and formed a company for our mutual defence, armed with muskets. For a while we met for drill weekly, then monthly, and soon not at all.”
Lloydtown, although the seat of disaffection, had its loyalists, too; but as they were in the face of such odds they had to temper the exhibition of their loyalty with discretion. One of themselves says that when the call came for their aid they made a prompt response, but took the precaution to leave the village in small parties.
But loyalty was a term on a sliding scale, and a Scotchman whose vote was Reform was every whit as loyal as his Tory acquaintance who “suspicioned” him.
“Loyal? Of course I was loyal, as every one in our neighbourhood was; but most of us were true Reformers nevertheless, and not ashamed of the name, in spite of Mackenzie’s goings-on. I refused to volunteer in ’38 when the draftings began again, because all trouble in Upper Canada was over, and I could not see that I was called upon to give up important home duties; and besides that, the officers had nothing to do, and thought it would be a fine thing to get a company up and have the recompense for keeping it together. The captain only succeeded in getting a few volunteers, not twenty, and the thing was to be completed by ballot. That was a regular farce, and the ignorance of some of those who drew was ridiculous. A Scotchman, holding his slip in his hand, showed it exultantly to a friend, who did not begrudge him his luck, saying, ‘O-o-aye, ah’ve drawed a prize.’ But I met an Irishman, soon after, who had been sharper than the Scotchman, pretending that he knew the peculiar twist of a paper that was intended not to be ‘drawed.’ The Irishman was rejoicing in his own exemption, and wickedly gloating over his brother who was not up to the twisted paper trick and had ‘drawed.’ One man, now our most prominent citizen, and certainly one of the oldest, refused either to draw or volunteer, for reasons the same as mine; he had fought in ’37 on the loyalist side, and now in ’38 a warrant was out for him on the score of disloyalty! They tried to arrest him, thinking he would submit quietly, but he fought the thing on every point, and these so-called loyalists found they had no legal ground to stand on. They dare not press the matter, so my friend was let alone.”
“Our captain was a regular autocrat in manner and appearance, and he spoke with a thick, fast utterance of a kind better imagined than written, when he was excited. Two others, who happened to be where we were stationed, also had an impediment in their speech, and none of them were remarkable for smooth temper. X. was sitting in the tavern one day when Z. entered to get something which was lying on the back of X.’s chair. Z. stutteringly apologized for disturbing him. X. was annoyed at being mocked, and stutteringly told him he would stand no such insult. Z. wondered why it was an insult to claim his belongings on the chair, and was equally angry at being stuttered at in response to his polite speech. Stutters were bandied until mutual anger, recrimination and exasperation led to a mutual invitation to the open and an appeal to the captain’s sympathy, which was stutteringly refused, while he advised them not to be ‘such-ch f-f-fools.’”
“In the beginning of the winter of ’37-38, MacNab, president of our railroad, came with some of the directors into our office. He stood before the fire, with his coat-tails turned up, and seemed to have made up his mind to rival Cromwell, if not to surpass him. ‘Boys, the Rebellion has burst out and the railway has burst up. Make out your arrears of accounts due, get them verified and certified by the chief engineer and keep them safe—some day you may get the money. In the meantime we have none for you, and the banks are burst all over the country, and if we had any to give you you could not pass it. We have no further use for your services, unless you choose to enlist in the volunteer corps. In that case I can promise you lots of work at twenty-five cents a day without board, except by foraging on the enemy. I give you quarter of an hour to get your accounts verified, and then go. I want to lock up the office and put the key in my pocket by that time.’
“I don’t know what the other fellows did with themselves, but I got my $130 odd verified, and it will be just sixty years next December since that money started ‘coming’ to me. I joined the Guelph Light Infantry, under Captain Poore, and that afternoon we marched over awful roads to Ancaster. When we got there we made camp-fires along the street, and lay down in our blankets on the frozen ground. The object of our expedition was to annihilate Duncombe.
“At about two in the morning we were kicked till we woke up, when we were summoned to partake of the banquet the Government provided of pork and bread. For the ensuing two weeks of our expedition we looked back in raptures at that meal, for we got hardly another bite except an occasional one stolen from the farmers. Once I got one hot potato from the table while the people were at breakfast; the other fellows took the rest, and it was all done in a moment. We got an occasional frozen potato or turnip, but the farmers, who were nearly all rebels there, generally left their houses empty. Lane, the commissary, was all the time a three-days’ journey behind us.
“When we reached Brantford we were quartered in the Methodist Church, three hundred of us, a coloured company from Toronto part of the three hundred. Many queer things happened there, including a burlesque sermon from the pulpit by a darkey, and the attempt to take up a collection after it for commissariat purposes. I was sentry that night over the so-called stores, and as I was leaving the church a kettle of boiling fat was brought in. I had not time to wait, so I dipped my india-rubber cup in and took a drink. I scalded my thumb and finger, burnt my mouth and tongue, melted my cup, and then had two hours in which to quietly meditate on the result of drinking red-hot fat in a hurry. As I was leaving the church a strip of red flannel was handed me to sew on my fur cap; none of us had uniforms, and the flannel was our distinguishing mark from the enemy. While on sentry a woman crossed the road and asked me if I had seen her husband; I said I had seen no one, and asked her to sew the flannel on my cap. It appeared I was keeping sentry over her husband’s bake-shop, which had been taken for commissary purposes, and she kept me bareheaded in a snowstorm for an hour waiting for that cap. That was our first snow, and before that all our teaming had been by waggons. While bareheaded the commissary came along to get into his store; I challenged him, and he said he had not got the watchword. I would not let him pass; so he forced his way against my bayonet. That made him go off vowing vengeance. Soon Colonel MacNab and Colonel Mills and the commissary came up. I guessed what they came for, and challenged them. MacNab was in the middle. To ‘Advance, friend, and give the countersign,’ he said, ‘Don’t you know me?’ I said I knew no one on duty. He then came up and whispered ‘Quebec,’ and I let him pass. That ended the attempt to catch me tripping while on duty. When the woman brought me my cap I said I was not going to thank her for sewing it, because she sympathised with the rebellion. Suddenly I heard musket shots, and it appeared the rebels were marching in to take Brantford without knowing we were there waiting for them. A doctor in advance of their army had been taken prisoner at the bridge; but he lied to MacNab, and said he was on his way to see a sick person. This seemed probable, and he was let go, when he rode back to warn the rebels. A shot was sent after him, and that started the alarm I heard. All our companies were mustered in line in a great snowstorm, and furnished with thirty-six rounds of ball cartridge; then we began quick march to catch the enemy, who retreated when the doctor reached them. We caught up to them at Beemersville, when they took position and fired a volley; we charged, and they subsided; so we ate their breakfast. During the day several hundred Indians drew up in line in an orchard and took us for rebels; we took them for the same. We were in line to receive them, and pails of whiskey were dealt along. The others took it, but I refused, although the sergeant who dealt it out said it would give me Dutch courage. I said I wanted only English courage. Officers met each other half way with flags of truce for a parley. It turned out we were all of the same side, so they brought their painted faces to within ten feet opposite; but we couldn’t speak Indian and they couldn’t speak English, so we were not very communicative. When there was to be no fighting I wanted my whiskey, but the sergeant would not give it.
“I went into the tavern to capture a prisoner almost in my hand. He had fired two rifles at me, and then he ran to the tavern; my musket was not loaded, so I could not return fire, but I threw it at him. I got him fast in the tavern, almost transfixing him with my bayonet before I could divert it; as it was, his long whiskers were pinned into the wall, and to withdraw the steel I had to plant my foot against his waistband. But when our men came pouring in several tried to kill him, so I stood before him and we fenced with bayonets, I against three or four. They desisted when I told them that the first blood spilt would be theirs or mine, and I sent for a sergeant to come and take the man. But when they went out I had to stand between my prisoner and the crowd.
“We slept three deep in straw that night. I came in late, found a place, and used another man for a pillow; soon a comrade came in and woke me up by sitting on my head while he pulled off his boots. I shook him off three or four times, but he remonstrated with me for being inconsiderate, as my head was the highest thing in the room and the best for his purpose. He was so persistent, and I so sleepy, that I agreed to let him stay if he would promise to get off when he got rid of his boots. He promised, and I went to sleep; and I suppose he must have done as he said, for I did not find him on my head in the morning.
“Near what was then Sodom-and-Gomorrah we came on seven haystacks in a row by the fence line; the cavalry had tied their horses to the fence and divided the stacks among them; then the teams came up, and the stacks were melted more thoroughly than the snow. My legs were stiff from walking, and a pock-marked Irishman’s hands were stiff from driving; so we exchanged musket and whip, and I had a day’s relief while driving for him. The snow had grown so deep that a team took the lead, breaking the way for the men, who would pass by in full procession, while the teamster drew to one side to rest his horses. Before we left Norwich three or four hundred men gave themselves up as prisoners, heartily sick of what they had supposed was patriotism. When we got to Ingersoll and asked for food they said there that everything had been bought up that was not poisonous; the grocery man had nothing to offer me but soft soap, and he recommended that in strong terms. I declined the inference.
“Our barracks there were in the blacksmith’s shop, without a floor, and built over the creek on the only street in the place. I took my bayonet out of the sheath and knocked at the kitchen door of the best looking house I could see. A lady answered, and I asked her if there was a gentleman in the house that I could talk to. She said no, her husband was with the officers. I said I came to buy a loaf of bread. She could spare me none, as she was going to give a dinner to the officers that evening, and at any rate she did not sell bread, that was not her business. I told her I was sorry there was no man in the house that I could talk to, but as there was not I must tell to her that I had been all over the village trying to buy food, and as I had not been able to get any I had taken this bayonet out with a view to fighting for some if I could not buy it; that I was soldiering to drive the rebels out, and that we had no commissariat; that that sort of thing was hard for me and the rest of the men, when officers could have banquets given them after being too ignorant to organize a commissariat. I told her a great many things, and apologized for having to talk to her so, and that I was sorry there was no man to talk to. She ended by giving me nearly a whole loaf, the price for which she said was a York sixpence. I put a York shilling down on the table and took my loaf to the barracks, where I cut it in as many pieces as there happened to be men in. As soon as I had put a piece in my mouth I found myself reeling and getting blind. They led me out and I fell into the creek, with my head under water; they picked me out again, but my appetite was all gone, and I gave away my bit of bread. I wandered about, and after awhile heard that the Orangemen were having a feast. I and several others went to the same house, and we were all in the seventh heaven of happiness; good food, and served by a handsome hostess and two beautiful daughters. After eating, we joined the Orangemen in the next room, and we spent several hours drinking grog and singing. That was our tenth day out, and that supper was my third meal. Generally our meals consisted in sucking a corner of a blanket; we kept our mouths moist that way, and averted faintness and reeling.
“When going to Hamilton teams were pressed from the farmers, and we were carried seven men and a driver in each. When we got to the mountain the angle and state of the road sent the first sleigh over the precipice, and ours, the second, hung over at right angles; but we managed by hugging the bank and shifting our weight. I looked over and saw the first sleigh on a ledge about one hundred feet below, and as the men were not visible I suppose they were buried in the snow.
“When sitting in the tavern that day I found in my pocket a small apple I had bought near Paris. I took a bite of it and that brought the saliva into my mouth, when, naturally, I fainted as I sat.
“As we marched into Hamilton we had to pass by my door, so I marched out of the ranks and into it. Of my three meals in two weeks, only one was at the expense of the Government.”
“When I was going from Hamilton to Windsor I had to take to sleighing at Chatham, and as we drove down the river, hugging the shore, many large fields of ice floated down the open. We passed three men on one cake, another on a second, and later a fifth, all dead and frozen Yankees, sympathisers. At Windsor I stopped with Mr. Baby, whose house windows were riddled with bullets, and I saw vacant lots broken up and dotted with graves. As an encouragement for me, on my way to Detroit, I was told that the Yankees had threatened to hang the first six Canadians they could catch, to the lamp posts, in return for Colonel Prince’s shooting. When I got my pass from a lieutenant to enable me to cross the river he told me the same thing. I got over and was trying to get my boxes examined by two men who called themselves custom house officers, when I found I had to go off, for peace’ sake, with three others, to report. I guessed what it was about, and made up my mind. They took me to a low tavern filled with unwashed men, and I was left sitting with one of my three while the other two reported on me to an officer. Was I in the ‘war’? Yes. Which side, the patriotic? Yes. Where? Under General Duncombe. How did he make out? Beaten horribly. My questioner had been at Navy Island, and said ‘the British had sent over a —— rocket, which they all looked at while it zigzagged round until it fell plump on the island, where it fizzed away so long that they went to see what was the matter with it, and while they were looking the —— thing burst, and —— if it didn’t kill eight; they didn’t feel any curiosity to examine any of the rest that came.’ I treated this fellow to a drink, unrectified and tasting like sulphuric acid. I didn’t drink mine, so he did. Then I was conducted to the officers’ room, about eighteen gentlemanly looking fellows, apparently American officers, who were deputed to conduct the campaign, so as to give better prospects of success in the conquering and annexing of Canada. They tried to catch me tripping, but I lied manfully; I had no scruples about treating such gentry so. I knew all about what I had seen, and all I had to do was to reverse the position. But my stay in Detroit was short, and I soon returned to work in Canada.
“In our scrimmage with the enemy our captain of cavalry fired his pistol at a rebel, but his horse inopportunely pranced and the bullet ran along the animal’s neck and out at his forehead. He fell, stunned, crushing the captain pretty badly, one of whose hands was permanently injured. He told the story to some one, and that person said, ‘Don’t tell that story again; say the rebels shot your horse, and claim a pension.’ He took his friend’s advice, but I don’t know about the pension. At a review afterwards I saw the same captain on the same horse, and I told the story to the man I was with; we then went up to the captain, and asked him how he got his hand hurt, and he replied that the rebels had shot his horse!
“After our campaign I found I could drink thirteen cups of tea at a meal for several successive meals; but I could not sleep in a bed, or in fact stay long in the house at night at all.” This narrator gives some most unflattering opinions of Colonel MacNab in his generalship in the Duncombe campaign, and many tales of the commissariat department alone seem to bear out his statements from a private’s point of view. He is contemptuous and satirical in describing the methods employed in the Little Scotland affair, “but considering we were about 30 to 1 it did not much matter.”
Another gives a summary of the few casualties at Little Scotland, and, as a death dealer, thinks sauerkraut almost equal to bullets: “A private from Hamilton nearly perished after eating a quart of raw frozen sauerkraut. I was detailed to bring in some prisoners, a cold trip in the snow, and I was fired at from behind an elevation in the road in front of us. We found two of the prisoners covered up in an oat bin in a tannery. Our luggage-train had such a hard time that in one place we had to build a bridge and hold it down with hand-spikes while the train went over. We had no rest and little to eat; no salt at all, and our rations only frozen bread. We would gnaw at it a while and then lay it aside to rest our jaws; but we had to be careful that the hero of the sauerkraut would not make away with it, as he had a hungry maw and a canvas bag. At night we slept in the open, and we wrapped ourselves in Indian blankets—to find them frozen round us. But a fire made of fence rails thawed us and our bread and blankets.”
Occasionally there were volunteers who were not made of the stuff which could be comfortable in a frozen blanket or willing to face a foe. An American, engaged in shipping lumber to Buffalo, with no love for Canadians, had boards added in every possible way about his vessel and covered with all available lanterns and candles. This display sent terror, as he expected, to the hearts of the raw recruits. When ordered to hold themselves in readiness for the advancing foe, one of them approached the captain and declared he was not going, as he had “only listed to stan’ guard.”
“It appears to me that there is no danger in leaving Canada in Sir John Colborne’s hands for the present, and that his powers are amply sufficient for all emergencies that may arise.”
While in Upper Canada vigilance committees had merged into military organizations with much intended secrecy, in Lower Canada matters went with a higher hand. In the former, “shooting matches,” where turkeys took the place of Loyalists, were fashionable with the more advanced Reformers; sharp-shooting practice went on, with an occasional feu de joie in honour of Papineau when some courier brought an enthusiasm-begetting letter from below. Mr. Bidwell, an “incurable American in mind, manners, and utterance,” gave his legal opinion that trials of skill such as these were not contrary to law. It was found, too, that bayonets were much the handiest weapons in hunting deer; from humane desire some hunters added these to their rifles, so that such monarchs of the forest as came in their way could be speedily put out of misery.
But in Montreal and elsewhere the rebels drilled on the military parade grounds and complained bitterly if interfered with, and officers of the troops would make small knots of amused audience near them. The bulk of these patriots were boys, but they did not like to hear themselves so called; they were tired of the times of peace, when sons bury their fathers, and were ambitious for the times of war, when fathers bury their sons. One of them challenged an officer, demanding satisfaction for such a “remarque insultante,” and two more jostled a soldier on sentry, trying to take his musket from him. His officer advised, “If the gentlemen come near you again, you have your bayonet; use it, and I will take the consequences.” For, withal hoping it was but an effect of humour, which sometimes hath his hour with every man, instructions were not to force matters by any hasty act. The only result of this incident was another private challenge, an exchange of shots, and Sir John Colborne’s disapproval, all part of the excitement surrounding the Doric-Liberty riots, when the patriots were ambitious to be “fils de la victoire” as well as “fils de la liberté.”
On his way to the famous Six Counties meeting, Papineau narrowly escaped a thrashing from a noted pugilist who would willingly have championed England had not a party of officers on “board the boat, bound for a fox hunt, interfered.” The officers did not scruple to ride at and rout with their whips the parcel of young boys, who, armed with duck guns, met Papineau as escort at Longueuil, the lads fleeing in all directions, while Papineau made his disappearance unostentatiously down a byway.
In after years Longueuil was a favourite haunt for Papineau. He would sit for hours in a small rustic arbour built upon a point of land where he could look upon a wide and beautiful view, pondering on the things that might have been had Sir John Colborne not been the man he was.
As early as the 14th of October matters were thought so ripe for insurrection that the troops were kept ready in barracks for a minute’s notice, and a loyalist meeting—a sure forerunner of disturbance—at which Campbell Sweeny was one of the ablest speakers, was held. By afternoon Loyalists and Canadians had come to blows, and fought, off and on, into the night, the former thenceforth called the Axe-handle Guards, from their weapons on that occasion. On the following day a young officer named Lysons was sent to Toronto to ask Sir Francis Bond Head for as many troops as he could spare. He could spare all, except the detachment at Bytown. Garrison artillery was turned into field artillery, with guns, harness and horses newly bought; and Sir John Colborne, apparently the right man in the right place, was appointed commander of the forces. Asked what Cromwell had done for his country, an old Scotch laird once answered, “God, doctor, he gart kings ken they had a lith in their necks.” Colborne at once set about assuring Canadian rebels that they were made on the same anatomical principles as kings. He was not likely to make a plaything of Revolution. This old and tried soldier had been in New York ready to sail for home, not a little wearied after his Upper Canadian experiences, when he received his new command. He lost no time in repairing to Quebec to organize and appraise his available forces. He armed the Irish colonists; what they would do was the question, for there was much sympathy among them for the oppressed Canadians, but Garneau sarcastically remarks that Colborne possibly appreciated the versatility of that race.
Hitherto the military in Canada had been left unsupported by their own authorities. Colborne felt them to be something after the pattern of the standing army in the Isle of Champagne, which consisted of two, who always sat down; and he proceeded to make those under him stand up. He asked for reinforcements from home, his policy being of the kind which dictated the display of the British fleet in Delagoa Bay but lately—to frighten, overawe, to show the case to be hopeless, and so save further demonstration from the disaffected. By his detractors he has been accused of taking measures to force premature revolt, knowing that to allow the movement to ripen it would become a grand combination of force which he would be unable to resist. Calumny of this kind was common and not confined to one side of politics, as witness the theory that Mackenzie was in the pay of the British Government to stir up rebellion.
It was a master-stroke of policy, said the cavillers, to force the first encounter in Montreal; and thence was traced the line of disaster which followed. Among the scuffles—“troubles sérieux”—was the famous one between the Doric Club and the Sons of Liberty. Warrants against the chief malcontents followed, including Papineau, Morin, O’Callaghan and Nelson. Arrests in the rural districts were resisted strongly. After the Governor (Gosford) had proclaimed martial law, the clash of arms began to be heard. Lieutenant Ermatinger of the Royal Volunteer Cavalry and some twenty men were despatched to St. John’s, via Longueuil and Chambly, to arrest Davignon and Demarais, two noted malcontents. Ermatinger did his work quietly, put irons on their hands and feet and ropes about their necks, and after placing them in agonizing positions on the boards of the waggon in which they were to be conveyed to Montreal, began his return. Their appearance of complete defeat struck the young lieutenant as possibly a wholesome lesson to others; so instead of returning by a direct route he took them where the display would not be lost. Near Longueuil he was warned by a woman that a rescue party awaited him on the road. Disregarding her, he went on till some three hundred men, armed with the usual long guns, in a field on their right, and protected by the high fences, proved her to be correct. Shots were exchanged, Ermatinger himself was wounded in face and shoulder with duck-shot, and a plucky little Surgeon-Major of Hussars (Sharp) in the leg. Some half-dozen others of the Loyalists were disabled, and they began to make good their retreat. Sharp, in spite of his wounds, managed to cover it. The waggon upset prisoners and constables, and as there was neither time nor inclination to pack them in again, the escape was due rather to accident than to rescue. Meantime a party of regulars awaited Ermatinger’s return at the ferry, ready to escort the expected prisoners to gaol; the civil force was so inadequate that he and his men had in fact been doing the work of special constables. Shots in the distance, then the stragglers wounded or whole, told their story, and it was deemed expedient to send a stronger force. A detachment of Royals, Royal Artillery, and some cavalry, comprising a few of those wounded the day before, went back to the scene, commanded by Wetherall. Tracks of blood in the fields, an overturned waggon and a dead horse, wayside houses and barns with shutters and windows nailed tight but hearth-fires still burning, told of conflict and hurried departure. Not an inmate or weapon was to be found, but a pedestrian said he saw women and children and some armed men farther on. The cavalry in advance gave chase to some thirty armed horsemen, who, after leading their pursuers over very rough riding, took to the woods, leaving behind only one solitary footman, who at once gave himself up. The infantry then were ordered into the woods, and the cavalry drew up along its edge, twenty or thirty shots were exchanged, and this time they were rewarded with seven prisoners.
The miscarriage of the first attempt made the rebels ironical. Ermatinger’s followers, called the Queen’s Braves, were portrayed as “decamping across the fields, leaving Messieurs Davignon and Demarais to their farmer rescuers, ... one of the gallant soldiers first discharging his pistol, ... but his hand trembling with fear did no other execution than graze the shoulder of M. Demarais.... The disciplined mercenaries of tyrants were far from invulnerable when opposed by men resolved to be free.”
St. Denis and St. Charles were seats of discontent and determined resistance. A combined movement was therefore resolved on, one command under Lieut.-Colonel Wetherall, one under Lieut.-Colonel Hughes, and the whole under Colonel the Honourable Charles Gore. A magistrate’s general address preceded this action, accompanying the order of the Lieut.-General commanding. “Should our language be misunderstood, should reason be slow to make itself heard, it is still our duty to warn you that neither the military force nor the civil authorities will be outraged with impunity, and that the vengeance of the laws will be equally prompt and terrible. The aggressors will become the victims of their rashness, and will owe the evils that will fall upon their heads to their own obstinacy. It is not those who push you to excess who are your true friends. These men have already abandoned you, and would abandon you again at the moment of danger, while we, who call you back to peace, think ourselves to be the most devoted servants of our country.” D. B. Viger’s name heads the list of magistrates, a signature which made some eyes open wide.
But, in an evil moment, the Nation Canadienne persevered in its trial of strength; Papineau, at its head, proclaimed himself “a brilliant leader and a constellation of moral excellence,” and his proclamation declared that “all ties were severed with an unfeeling mother country, that the glorious fate of disenthralling their native soil from all authority, except that of the brave, democratic spirit residing in it, awaited the young men of all the colonies.”
Meanwhile the Church issued its pastoral letter, never having countenanced either Papineau or his followers. The premier Bishop had ended his personal exhortation by proposing the health of the Sovereign, and his brother Bishops and all the clergy had risen and drunk the toast respectfully. His mandement was accepted with few exceptions. At the parish church of St. Charles the greater portion of its masculine hearers left the church cursing, and the Abbé Blanchet, curé of the parish, was a patriot who took no trouble to hide his sentiments.
At St. Charles the rebels had seized the château, substantial and built on old French models, of M. Debartch, seigneur of the manor. He fled for his life on horseback, while General Storrow Brown regaled his followers on the seigneur’s good beef and mutton, after which they cut down the trees and made the house into no bad imitation of a fortress. M. L’Espérance, whom they courted as a colonel, refused to act. They told him to leave the parish at once; he tried to do so, and then they took him prisoner, contributing $236 of his money to their exchequer. They loop-holed the walls, and made their barricades in the form of a parallelogram on the acres which lay between the river Richelieu and the hill at the foot of which the house stood. The tree trunks were banked with earth, a tidy fortress in appearance, but a trap from which there was no escape in case of defeat, practically of no strength against the loyalist guns. But no outside strength of position availed where such miserable management prevailed within. General Brown had lost an eye in one of the late affrays in Montreal; he was now thrown from his horse on the frozen ground and severely injured. He had but a handful of men to resist attack, for he had sent out a number the night before on various errands. They had not returned, and the few with him were wretchedly armed. By the time the troops arrived he himself was in the village, trying to beat up recruits; and when the firing began without him he took the precaution to remove himself still farther. The unhappy followers he had forsaken were being killed or, trying to escape, taken; every building but the château itself was burned and the barricades demolished. The fields were by this time covered with flying women and children. One woman, who evidently had not time to save herself, was found dead, after the battle, in the midst of the smoking ruins of her dwelling.
There were two cannon within the fortress, but they were only used twice. Wetherall posted his men on the small hill, got his guns into place and began to play on the insurgents, who were left no egress but by the river. They managed to gall him, one party making a sortie; the firing was kept up for an hour but ever grew fainter, while the balls from the field-pieces made great breaches in the rude earthworks, and the undisciplined, unofficered defenders were deeper in confusion. Then came the cruel advance with fixed bayonets, and all who did not ask for quarter received none; the Richelieu was on the other side of them, and “many leaped into the lake who were not thirsty.” “The slaughter on the side of the rebels was great,” wrote Wetherall; “I counted fifty-six bodies, and many more were killed in the buildings and the bodies burnt.” The rebel record reads not at all like this, and ends, “One hundred of these brave men took shelter in a barn filled with hay and straw. The Royal butchers set fire to it and burned them alive. One hundred were drowned in crossing the Richelieu. The village of St. Charles was entirely burned by the soldiers during the attack; those of the inhabitants who escaped the flames perished in the woods from the effects of fright and cold.... The prisoners that fell into their hands were inhumanly treated, and many of the wounded murdered in cold blood.” But, as a brother officer records, “Nothing succeeds like success. Colonel Wetherall was lauded to the skies.”
“We understand the capture of St. Charles was effected with great ease,” says a correspondent in a tone admiring the burning and complete destruction; “no loss of consequence to the troops.” “As soon as possible after the action, the troops, with the greatest humanity, began to bury the bodies of the killed, the scene truly deplorable, wives and daughters ransacking among the bodies for those to whom they wished to pay the last rites.” The Montreal Courier said that hot shot had been used.
In Montreal the welcome to the troops was, as might be expected, extravagantly joyful: “It was an interesting sight to see the hundreds who crowded on the wharf to witness it. The cavalry landed first, two of them carrying the liberty pole and cap erected at St. Charles at the meeting of the Six Counties, with its wooden tablet bearing the inscription ‘À Papineau par ses citoyens reconnaissants,’ the former fragment of the spoils looking sadly like a fool’s cap upon a barber’s pole. The artillery followed, with the two little guns taken at St. Olivière in addition to their proper armament. After them rode the commanding officer, followed by the bands of the Royals and the infantry, the first company of which followed the prisoners, thirty-two in number.”
“The pole, it was hoped by some, would be deposited in that proud fane of British glory, where the tattered ensigns of extinguished rebels in Ireland and of blood-hunted Covenanters in Scotland wave over the tombs of sleeping monarchs in melancholy conjunction with the virgin standard of Bunkers Hill and the trophies of such days as Trafalgar, Cape Vincent, and Waterloo!”!!
It had been intended that the other half of the force, under Colonel Hughes, Colonel Gore accompanying it, should appear before disaffected and mutinous St. Denis simultaneously with Wetherall’s appearance at St. Charles. But the gods of war were not with them as with the others. Torrents of rain, pitchy darkness, rain turning to snow, men and horses sinking in mud, harness breaking, knee deep in water or winding along trails did the column bound for St. Denis find itself, while a few broken bridges were the only drawback to the victorious Wetherall. Four miles away, they surmised their plight and slow approach had led to a warning to their enemies and time for preparation. For eleven hours they toiled, at the rate of a mile and a half an hour, the mud pulling off the men’s boots and moccasins. The cavalry were kept busy driving away parties who were destroying the bridges, all of which had to be repaired before the gullies and streams could be crossed and the howitzers carried over. A most useful man was Cornet Campbell Sweeny, of the Mounted Dragoons, who prevented much damage and was alert in securing early intelligence. They heard the church bells ring the alarm—in rebel language usually called the tocsin—and they found a welcome awaiting them from some eight hundred men armed with a scant stock of good and bad guns, pikes, pitchforks, and cudgels.
Before Colonel Gore left he had sent on young Lieutenant Weir, in plain clothes, to prepare for the advance. He was to meet the troops at Sorel, but failed to do so, as they had taken a byroad known as the Pot-au-Beurre to avoid St. Ours, a stronghold of the rebels. This Weir did not know. He took a calèche, and insisted that the man should drive him by the very road which it was impolitic to take. He gave up this calèche, being urged by a Frenchman to take one driven by himself. Weir believed the man’s assertions, engaged the calèche for the balance of his journey, and was driven straight to Nelson’s quarters. When he arrived there and was stopped by the rebel sentry he boldly asked where the troops were. This was the first intimation to the others that the troops were expected. Tied hand and foot, he was put into a cart and removed under escort. As Weir was at once arrested he had disappeared before his friends’ arrival. Among the preparations Nelson immediately set his son Horace and his pupil Dansereau to make bullets.
At the outskirts another skirmishing party gave the troops a brisk salute, and from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon the struggle lasted. Success in resistance seemed so uncertain that Nelson persuaded Papineau to retire and save the person most sacred to the cause. “It is not here you are most useful,” said he; “we shall want your presence at another time.” Papineau argued that his retirement at such a moment might be misinterpreted, but eventually agreed that his rôle was more that of orator than soldier—to breathe fire-eating words rather than to stand the fire of Colonel Gore’s guns. Nelson then rode out to reconnoitre, was afraid he would fall in with the advancing column, and came back at a hard gallop. In the meantime Captain Markham at the head of his men was pushing on, taking house after house, till he reached a stockade across the road which fenced off the large stone building, four stories high, where Nelson had ensconced himself, with other houses so situated as to strengthen its position. The howitzer now came into play; one of the houses was taken, and attention was turned towards securing a large distillery near by. Captain Markham, severely wounded in the knee and with two balls in his neck, still kept with his men; but they, too, began to fall. The previous night’s toil, the cold and hunger, told on them; ammunition began to run out, and the insurgents received additions to their numbers from the neighbouring villages. One of the defenders was Père Laflèche, who had been soldier before priest and now combined his callings. He was telling his beads when he first caught sight of the troops, and in a twinkling exchanged his rosary for a musket. “Hue donc!” he cried, and a ball sped to the death of an advance guard. Another, David Bourdages, son of a celebrated patriot, kept two boys busy loading for him for nearly two hours; he then tranquilly lit his pipe and began again, still smoking. The chronicle says that nearly every shot dealt death. At that rate of computation a simple problem in junior mathematics would show that Bourdages alone could have comfortably despatched half the attacking force.
Meanwhile Weir, hurried off in Nelson’s cart, complained to his captors of the tightness of the cords which bound him. Captain Jalbert, two men, Migneault and Lecour, with the young driver Gustin, who formed his guard, disputed with him; he insisted, they assailed him, and he jumped out of the cart and underneath it to escape their blows. He was fired at twice with pistols, and had sabre cuts on his head and hands, the latter hacked away, as, tied together, they vainly attempted to screen the former. Dragged from beneath the cart the butchery was finished, and the body was secured under the water of the Richelieu by a pile of stones.
With the troops it had become a question how to manage a retreat. There was no ambulance, there were seventeen wounded, and it was decided to remove Captain Markham only. The circumstances demanded that they should so be left, but their comforts were attended to as far as might be. The rebel chronicles say that the troops deserted their wounded.
The insurgents had turned from the defensive to the offensive, and came out to dislodge some of their enemies in rear of a barn; a galling fire was kept up from the fortified house, and Captain Markham, in transit, was again wounded, as was also one of his bearers. The rebel fire was dexterous and precise; the retreating party had to cross a frozen ploughed field, and Captain Markham was put in the only cart and sent to the rear. Hughes needed all his cool address to conduct the rear guard, for the inhabitants seemed to swarm from every direction. Thus hampered they only removed themselves some three miles when, exhausted, in a freezing atmosphere, their gun-carriage broken down and frozen in the ground, they spiked the gun and threw its remaining ammunition in the river. They kept on their march till daylight, by which time the men were nearly barefoot, for their moccasins were cut by the rough ice and frozen earth; their horses were lamed, and the lighted villages through which they passed made them apprehensive of attack. At daylight a halt was called, and the men, half dead through fatigue and hunger, lay wherever they could find a place in the barns of a deserted farmhouse. A young officer who in the plight of darkness the night before had got a lantern, stuck it to a pole and sent it on ahead of the men as a guiding star, now turned his attention to a search for potatoes—which he found and boiled in sufficient quantity to allow each man three or four before the weary march was resumed.
Nelson had had his triumph; a short-lived one, for he at once had to follow the advice so recently given by him to Papineau, that one’s discretions are one’s best valours. According to a manuscript letter historically quoted, the English commander had more faith in the dictum of a priest than in his own guns. Perhaps a submission gained by obedience to a higher authority than military force might be of greater service to the crown they served. Wetherall sent for the curé of St. Denis—as soon as “il voyait qu’il n’avait pas a faire à des enfants”—and besought him to tell his people that if they did not succumb they would be tormented in even a worse place than Lower Canada; that if they persisted, he would refuse them burial. The last was a former expedient to ensure an appearance of loyalty. Many graves were to be seen in old gardens or by the wayside along the south coast, outside of consecrated ground, the graves of “Canadian rebels;” rebels who, during the Revolution of 1776, had taken part with the Americans, thinking that by so doing they would hasten the coming of “the old folks back again.” “You smell English,” said one of them on his death-bed, raising himself to give his curé a scowling defiance on this his one strongest conviction, and, turning to the wall, died, outside the Church but true to France.
After the curé’s menace, “which succeded à merveille,” the men on whom Nelson had counted were reduced one half, a story confirmed by Colonel Gore’s later despatch, wherein he also says, “I was accompanied by Mons. Crenier, the parish priest, who gave me every information in his power.” The Colonel revisited St. Denis with an increased force, but found the place abandoned; Nelson had escaped with Papineau and others, although there were many signs of greater defences having been made. So the troops marched on to St. Charles with their rescued howitzer. Montreal was now put in a state of defence; stockades surrounded it, and only a few gates, well guarded, were left open.
There were two searches now to be made, one for the body of Weir, another for the bodies, living or dead, of Papineau, Nelson, and others, the heads of the first two being valued at $4,000 and $2,000 respectively. The melancholy duty of searching for Weir was given to a lieutenant of the 32nd, Griffin, who, conducted to the place by a young girl who had witnessed the hiding of it, found the body. Several of the fingers were split, an axe, some said a spade, having been the last weapon used upon him. He had taken breakfast with Nelson and was well treated throughout by him. On leaving the house, Nelson, in Weir’s presence and after begging him not to be refractory, had commanded the men to treat him with all possible attention, but on no account to allow him to escape. Their tale was that the sound of the firing, as they travelled from the point of attack, so excited Weir that in his struggles he loosened the binding of one of his arms, and springing from them ran. They overtook him, and the appearance of his body told the sequel. It was taken to Montreal for burial with military honours, in which regulars and volunteers took an equal share. To the patriot eye this natural action was making “a vile use” of an “unfortunate occurrence,” to “waken the old British horror against Frenchmen, Jacobins and blood-thirsty revolutionists.” As a set-off to this peculiar view of a terrible act there is the following sentence anent the second occupation of St. Denis, by a Tory paper: “We are not sanguine enough to expect that any regular opposition will be attempted.”
“Jock Weir, remember Jock Weir!” now became the war-cry of his incensed comrades.
The hunt for the leaders began in earnest. Papineau, a lawyer of some repute, was then a man of about forty-eight years, of good average height, inclined to corpulency, certainly not the figure to imagine under small haystacks or at full length in ditches. His face was strongly marked with those features which proclaim a Jewish ancestor somewhere; dark very arched eyebrows, hair nearly black, the eye dark, quick and penetrating; an exterior of determination and force in keeping with the well-stored mind, conversational power, cultivation and gentlemanly address which marked the man. His eloquence had passed into a proverb. An unusually precocious Canadian child always had said of it, “C’est un Papineau.”
His followers had every excuse for their worship, and thought him equal, perhaps superior, to Washington. His father, “le père des patriotes,” who had not let his patriotism go the length of severance from Britain, frowned on the more advanced son, still keeping to feudal tenure and the Catholic religion as the priests taught. The Code Papineau junior had not much feudalism in it, and politics may be said to have been the son’s religion.
So also did Robert Nelson say that feudal nonsense was abolished forever, and the Church of not much more account. He and his brother Wolfred had their own interpretation of their relative’s saying that “England expects every man to do his duty.” Mrs. Wolfred Nelson’s grandfather, le Marquis de Fleurimont, was one of the French officers wounded in September, 1759; afterwards he took the oath of allegiance, and was again wounded in the repulse of Montgomery before Quebec. These Frenchified Englishmen seem to have been born for something better than treason, stratagem and spoils; they took none of the last and found the first two meant prison and expatriation. Wolfred Nelson was by far the best looking of the leaders, tall, with handsome features, and had moreover a brave and manly disposition. His proclamations were wonderfully worded, his Athanasian rendering declaring the Canadian Republic to be “one and indivisible.” Colonel Gore sought to take these prominent men, having heard that they were secreted at St. Hyacinthe. Accordingly a young officer and a picked party were told off, their sleighs without bells being timed to arrive after dark at the house where the leaders were supposed to be. The guide brought the sleighs there somewhere near midnight, and they found the usual comfortable French quarters, solid barns with yards and outbuildings. A chain of sentries was posted round the place and through the buildings; a knock brought madame, a most charming old lady, to the window; they were very welcome, and she showed them not only over the house, but she kept them seeking in many corners they would not have found for themselves, in cellars where stores of winter vegetables and fruit lay in rows, cupboards full of treasures, in cavernous depths beyond rafters which promised a reward for search, but only revealed much bacon and ham, flitches “the manifest product of a high-caste gramnivorous pig.” But Papineau, on the watch, had had time to get to a deep ditch which ran back into the fields, whence he made his way to a small bush near by. From there he escaped to the States; but Nelson was taken and lodged in Kingston gaol. Years afterwards, at an evening party, after his return from France, the charming, white-haired Papineau said to a gentleman who had been the soldier so prominent in the search, “I hear you are the officer who came to call on me at Madame ——’s, in ’37. You little know how nearly you took me.... You did your work admirably, for, though we were on the watch, I had only just time to run away down that wet ditch before your sentries met.” Among the effects then seized were many papers of value to the captors, one of them a letter from Papineau, finishing, “Continue to push it (the rebellion) as vigorously as you can,” and another, a schoolboy letter from Nelson’s son, a lad of fourteen, somewhat after the manner of Tom Sawyer: “I wish that it (the rebellion) will do well and without any noise, which I hate very much—except with the other side. I believe that the prediction of that man Bourgeoi will be accomplished, which is that the province will be all covered with blood and dead bodies.” A Montreal newspaper deplores “the fattening of Nelson for the gallows,” and considered that “death on the scaffold was the best example such a father could give to such a child.”