Part 11

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.