CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes

Volume 12

THE FATHER OF BRITISH CANADA

A Chronicle Of Carleton

By WILLIAM WOOD
TORONTO, 1916

CONTENTS

I.    GUY CARLETON, 1724-1759
II.   GENERAL MURRAY, 1759-1766
III.  GOVERNOR CARLETON, 1766-1774
IV.   INVASION, 1776
V.    BELEAGUERMENT, 1775-1776
VI.   DELIVERANCE, 1776
VII.  THE COUNTERSTROKE, 1776-1778
VIII. GUARDING THE LOYALISTS, 1782-1783
IX.   FOUNDING MODERN CANADA, 1786-1796
X.    'NUNC DIMITTIS,' 1796-1808

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE


CHAPTER I

GUY CARLETON
1724-1759

Guy Carleton, first Baron Dorchester, was born at Strabane,
County Tyrone, on the 3rd of September 1724, the anniversary
of Cromwell's two great victories and death. He came of
a very old family of English country gentlemen which had
migrated to Ireland in the seventeenth century and
intermarried with other Anglo-Irish families equally
devoted to the service of the British Crown. Guy's father
was Christopher Carleton of Newry in County Down. His
mother was Catherine Ball of County Donegal. His father
died comparatively young; and, when he was himself fifteen,
his mother married the rector of Newry, the Reverend
Thomas Skelton, whose influence over the six step-children
of the household worked wholly for their good.

At eighteen Guy received his first commission as ensign
in the 25th Foot, then known as Lord Rothes' regiment
and now as the King's Own Scottish Borderers. At
twenty-three he fought gallantly at the siege of
Bergen-op-Zoom. Four years later (1751) he was a lieutenant
in the Grenadier Guards. He was one of those quiet men
whose sterling value is appreciated only by the few till
some crisis makes it stand forth before the world at
large. Pitt, Wolfe, and George II all recognized his
solid virtues. At thirty he was still some way down the
list of lieutenants in the Grenadiers, while Wolfe, two
years his junior in age, had been four years in command
of a battalion with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Yet
he had long been 'my friend Carleton' to Wolfe, he was
soon to become one of 'Pitt's Young Men,' and he was
enough of a 'coming man' to incur the king's displeasure.
He had criticized the Hanoverians; and the king never
forgave him. The third George 'gloried in the name of
Englishman.' But the first two were Hanoverian all through.
And for an English guardsman to disparage the Hanoverian
army was considered next door to _lese-majeste_.

Lady Dorchester burnt all her husband's private papers
after his death in 1808; so we have lost some of the most
intimate records concerning him. But 'grave Carleton'
appears so frequently in the letters of his friend Wolfe
that we can see his character as a young man in almost
any aspect short of self-revelation. The first reference
has nothing to do with affairs of state. In 1747 Wolfe,
aged twenty, writing to Miss Lacey, an English girl in
Brussels, and signing himself 'most sincerely your friend
and admirer,' says: 'I was doing the greatest injustice
to the dear girls to admit the least doubt of their
constancy. Perhaps with respect to ourselves there may
be cause of complaint. Carleton, I'm afraid, is a recent
example of it.' From this we may infer that Carleton was
less 'grave' as a young man than Wolfe found him later
on. Six years afterwards Wolfe strongly recommended him
for a position which he had himself been asked to fill,
that of military tutor to the young Duke of Richmond,
who was to get a company in Wolfe's own regiment. Writing
home from Paris in 1753 Wolfe tells his mother that the
duke 'wants some skilful man to travel with him through
the Low Countries and into Lorraine. I have proposed my
friend Carleton, whom Lord Albemarle approves of.' Lord
Albemarle was the British ambassador to France; so Carleton
got the post and travelled under the happiest auspices,
while learning the frontier on which the Belgian, French,
and British allies were to fight the Germans in the Great
World War of 1914. It was during this military tour of
fortified places that Carleton acquired the engineering
skill which a few years later proved of such service to
the British cause in Canada.

In 1754 George Washington, at that time a young Virginian
officer of only twenty-two, fired the first shot in what
presently became the world-wide Seven Years' War. The
immediate result was disastrous to the British arms; and
Washington had to give up the command of the Ohio by
surrendering Fort Necessity to the French on--of all
dates--the 4th of July! In 1755 came Braddock's defeat.
In 1756 Montcalm arrived in Canada and won his first
victory at Oswego. In 1757 Wolfe distinguished himself
by formulating the plan which, if properly executed,
would have prevented the British fiasco at Rochefort on
the coast of France. But Carleton remained as undistinguished
as before. He simply became lieutenant-colonel commanding
the 72nd Foot, now the Seaforth Highlanders. In 1758 his
chance appeared to have come at last. Amherst had asked
for his services at Louisbourg. But the king had neither
forgotten nor forgiven the remarks about the Hanoverians,
and so refused point-blank, to Wolfe's 'very great grief
and disappointment... It is a public loss Carleton's not
going.' Wolfe's confidence in Carleton, either as a friend
or as an officer, was stronger than ever. Writing to
George Warde, afterwards the famous cavalry leader, he
said: 'Accidents may happen in the family that may throw
my little affairs into disorder. Carleton is so good as
to say he will give what help is in his power. May I ask
the same favour of you, my oldest friend?' Writing to
Lord George Sackville, of whom we shall hear more than
enough at the crisis of Carleton's career Wolfe said:
'Amherst will tell you his opinion of Carleton, by which
you will probably be better convinced of our loss.' Again,
'We want grave Carleton for every purpose of the war.'
And yet again, after the fall of Louisbourg: 'If His
Majesty had thought proper to let Carleton come with us
as engineer it would have cut the matter much shorter
and we might now be ruining the walls of Quebec and
completing the conquest of New France.' A little later
on Wolfe blazes out with indignation over Carleton's
supersession by a junior. 'Can Sir John Ligonier (the
commander-in-chief) allow His Majesty to remain
unacquainted with the merit of that officer, and can he
see such a mark of displeasure without endeavouring to
soften or clear the matter up a little? A man of honour
has the right to expect the protection of his Colonel
and of the Commander of the troops, and he can't serve
without it.  If I was in Carleton's place I wouldn't stay
an hour in the Army after being aimed at and distinguished
in so remarkable a manner.' But Carleton bided his time.

At the beginning of 1759 Wolfe was appointed to command
the army destined to besiege Quebec. He immediately
submitted Carleton's name for appointment as
quartermaster-general. Pitt and Ligonier heartily approved.
But the king again refused. Ligonier went back a second
time to no purpose. Pitt then sent him in for the third
time, saying, in a tone meant for the king to overhear:
'Tell His Majesty that in order to render the General
[Wolfe] completely responsible for his conduct he should
be made, as far as possible, inexcusable if he should
fail; and that whatever an officer entrusted with such
a service of confidence requests ought therefore to be
granted.' The king then consented. Thus began Carleton's
long, devoted, and successful service for Canada, the
Empire, and the Crown.

Early in this memorable Empire Year of 1759 he sailed
with Wolfe and Saunders from Spithead. On the 30th of
April the fleet rendezvoused at Halifax, where Admiral
Durell, second-in-command to Saunders, had spent the
winter with a squadron intended to block the St Lawrence
directly navigation opened in the spring. Durell was a
good commonplace officer, but very slow. He had lost many
hands from sickness during a particularly cold season,
and he was not enterprising enough to start cruising
round Cabot Strait before the month of May. Saunders,
greatly annoyed by this delay, sent him off with eight
men-of-war on the 5th of May. Wolfe gave him seven hundred
soldiers under Carleton. These forces were sufficient to
turn back, capture, or destroy the twenty-three French
merchantmen which were then bound for Quebec with supplies
and soldiers as reinforcements for Montcalm. But the
French ships were a week ahead of Durell; and, when he
landed Carleton at Isle-aux-Coudres on the 28th of May,
the last of the enemy's transports had already discharged
her cargo at Quebec, sixty miles above.

Isle-aux-Coudres, so named by Jacques Cartier in 1535,
was a point of great strategic importance; for it commanded
the only channel then used. It was the place Wolfe had
chosen for his winter quarters, that is, in case of
failure before Quebec and supposing he was not recalled.
None but a particularly good officer would have been
appointed as its first commandant. Carleton spent many
busy days here preparing an advanced base for the coming
siege, while the subsequently famous Captain Cook was
equally busy 'a-sounding of the channell of the Traverse'
which the fleet would have to pass on its way to Quebec.
Some of Durell's ships destroyed the French 'long-shore
batteries near this Traverse, at the lower end of the
island of Orleans, while the rest kept ceaseless watch
to seaward, anxiously scanning the offing, day after day,
to make out the colours of the first fleet up. No one
knew what the French West India fleet would do; and there
was a very disconcerting chance that it might run north
and slip into the St Lawrence, ahead of Saunders, in the
same way as the French reinforcements had just slipped
in ahead of Durell. Presently, at the first streak of
dawn on the 23rd of June, a strong squadron was seen
advancing rapidly under a press of sail. Instantly the
officers of the watch called all hands up from below.
The boatswains' whistles shrilled across the water as
the seamen ran to quarters and cleared the decks for
action. Carleton's camp was equally astir. The guards
turned out. The bugles sounded. The men fell in and
waited. Then the flag-ship signalled ashore that the
strangers had just answered correctly in private code
that all was well and that Wolfe and Saunders were aboard.

Next to Wolfe himself Carleton was the busiest man
in the army throughout the siege of Quebec. In addition
to his arduous and very responsible duties as
quartermaster-general, he acted as inspector of engineers
and as a special-service officer for work of an
exceptionally confidential nature. As quartermaster-general
he superintended the supply and transport branches.
Considering that the army was operating in a devastated
hostile country, a thousand miles away from its bases at
Halifax and Louisbourg, and that the interaction of the
different services--naval and military, Imperial and
Colonial--required adjustment to a nicety at every turn,
it was wonderful that so much was done so well with means
which were far from being adequate. War prices of course
ruled in the British camp. But they compared very favourably
with the famine prices in Quebec, where most 'luxuries'
soon became unobtainable at any price. There were no
canteen or camp-follower scandals under Carleton. Then,
as now, every soldier had a regulation ration of food
and a regulation allowance for his service kit. But
'extras' were always acceptable. The price-list of these
'extras' reads strangely to modern ears. But, under the
circumstances, it was not exorbitant, and it was slightly
tempered by being reckoned in Halifax currency of four
dollars to the pound instead of five. The British Tommy
Atkins of that and many a later day thought Canada a
wonderful country for making money go a long way when he
could buy a pot of beer for twopence and get back thirteen
pence Halifax currency as change for his English shilling.
Beef and ham ran from ninepence to a shilling a pound.
Mutton was a little dearer. Salt butter was eightpence
to one-and-threepence. Cheese was tenpence; potatoes from
five to ten shillings a bushel. 'A reasonable loaf of
good soft Bread' cost sixpence. Soap was a shilling a
pound. Tea was prohibitive for all but the officers.
'Plain Green Tea and very Badd' was fifteen shillings,
'Couchon' twenty shillings, 'Hyson' thirty. Leaf tobacco
was tenpence a pound, roll one-and-tenpence, snuff
two-and-threepence. Sugar was a shilling to eighteen
pence. Lemons were sixpence apiece. The non-intoxicating
'Bad Sproos Beer' was only twopence a quart and helped
to keep off scurvy. Real beer, like wine and spirits,
was more expensive. 'Bristol Beer' was eighteen shillings
a dozen, 'Bad malt Drink from Hellifax' ninepence a quart.
Rum and claret were eight shillings a gallon each, port
and Madeira ten and twelve respectively. The term 'Bad'
did not then mean noxious, but only inferior. It stood
against every low-grade article in the price-list. No
goods were over-classified while Carleton was
quartermaster-general.

The engineers were under-staffed, under-manned, and
overworked. There were no Royal Engineers as a permanent
and comprehensive corps till the time of Wellington.
Wolfe complained bitterly and often of the lack of men
and materials for scientific siege work. But he 'relied
on Carleton' to good purpose in this respect as well as
in many others. In his celebrated dispatch to Pitt he
mentions Carleton twice. It was Carleton whom he sent to
seize the west end of the island of Orleans, so as to
command the basin of Quebec, and Carleton whom he sent to
take prisoners and gather information at Pointe-aux-Trembles,
twenty miles above the city. Whether or not he revealed
the whole of his final plan to Carleton is probably more
than we shall ever know, since Carleton's papers were
destroyed. But we do know that he did not reveal it to
any one else, not even to his three brigadiers, Monckton,
Townshend, and Murray.

Carleton was wounded in the head during the Battle of
the Plains; but soon returned to duty. Wolfe showed his
confidence in him to the last. Carleton's was the only
name mentioned twice in the will which Wolfe handed over
to Jervis, the future Lord St Vincent, the night before
the battle. 'I leave to Colonel Oughton, Colonel Carleton,
Colonel Howe, and Colonel Warde a thousand pounds each.'
'All my books and papers, both here and in England, I
leave to Colonel Carleton.' Wolfe's mother, who died five
years later, showed the same confidence by appointing
Carleton her executor.

With the fall of Quebec in 1759 Carleton disappears from
the Canadian scene till 1766. But so many pregnant events
happened in Canada during these seven years, while so
few happened in his own career, that it is much more
important for us to follow her history than his biography.

In 1761 he was wounded at the storming of Port Andro
during the attack on Belle Isle off the west coast of
France. In 1762 he was wounded at Havana in the West
Indies. After that he enjoyed four years of quietness at
home. Then came the exceedingly difficult task of guiding
Canada through twelve years of turbulent politics and
most subversive war.


CHAPTER II

GENERAL MURRAY
1759-1766

Both armies spent a terrible winter after the Battle of
the Plains. There was better shelter for the French in
Montreal than for the British among the ruins of Quebec.
But in the matter of food the positions were reversed.
Nevertheless the French gallantly refused the truce
offered them by Murray, who had now succeeded Wolfe. They
were determined to make a supreme effort to regain Quebec
in the spring; and they were equally determined that the
habitants should not be free to supply the British with
provisions.

In spite of the state of war, however, the French and
British officers, even as prisoners and captors, began
to make friends. They had found each other foemen worthy
of their steel. A distinguished French officer, the Comte
de Malartic, writing to Levis, Montcalm's successor,
said: 'I cannot speak too highly of General Murray,
although he is our enemy.' Murray, on his part, was
equally loud and generous in his praise of the French.
The Canadian seigneurs found fellow-gentlemen among
the British officers. The priests and nuns of Quebec
found many fellow-Catholics among the Scottish and Irish
troops, and nothing but courteous treatment from the
soldiers of every rank and form of religion. Murray
directed that 'the compliment of the hat' should be paid
to all religious processions. The Ursuline nuns knitted
long stockings for the bare-legged Highlanders when the
winter came on, and presented each Scottish officer with
an embroidered St Andrew's Cross on the 30th of November,
St Andrew's Day. The whole garrison won the regard of
the town by giving up part of their rations for the hungry
poor; while the habitants from the surrounding country
presently began to find out that the British were honest
to deal with and most humane, though sternly just, as
conquerors.

In the following April Levis made his desperate throw
for victory; and actually did succeed in defeating Murray
outside the walls of Quebec. But the British fleet came
up in May; and that summer three British armies converged
on Montreal, where the last doomed remnants of French
power on the St Lawrence stood despairingly at bay. When
Levis found his two thousand effective French regulars
surrounded by eight times as many British troops he had
no choice but to lay down the arms of France for ever.
On the 8th of September 1760 his gallant little army was
included in the Capitulation of Montreal, by which the
whole of Canada passed into the possession of the British
Crown.

Great Britain had a different general idea for each one
of the four decades which immediately followed the conquest
of Canada. In the sixties the general idea was to kill
refractory old French ways with a double dose of new
British liberty and kindness, so that Canada might
gradually become the loyal fourteenth colony of the Empire
in America. But the fates were against this benevolent
scheme. The French Canadians were firmly wedded to their
old ways of life, except in so far as the new liberty
enabled them to throw off irksome duties and restraints,
while the new English-speaking 'colonists' were so few,
and mostly so bad, that they became the cause of endless
discord where harmony was essential. In the seventies
the idea was to restore the old French-Canadian life so
as not only to make Canada proof against the disaffection
of the Thirteen Colonies but also to make her a safe base
of operations against rebellious Americans. In the eighties
the great concern of the government was to make a harmonious
whole out of two very widely differing parts--the
long-settled French Canadians and the newly arrived United
Empire Loyalists. In the nineties each of these parts
was set to work out its own salvation under its own
provincial constitution.

Carleton's is the only personality which links together
all four decades--the would-be American sixties, the
French-Canadian seventies, the Anglo-French-Canadian
eighties, and the bi-constitutional nineties--though, as
mentioned already, Murray ruled Canada for the first
seven years, 1759-66.

James Murray, the first British governor of Canada, was
a younger son of the fourth Lord Elibank. He was just
over forty, warm-hearted and warm-tempered, an excellent
French scholar, and every inch a soldier. He had been a
witness for the defence of Mordaunt at the court-martial
held to try the authors of the Rochefort fiasco in 1757.
Wolfe, who was a witness on the other side, referred to
him later on as 'my old antagonist Murray.' But Wolfe
knew a good man when he saw one and gave his full confidence
to his 'old antagonist' both at Louisbourg and Quebec.
Murray was not born under a lucky star. He saw three
defeats in three successive wars. He began his service
with the abortive attack on pestilential Cartagena, where
Wolfe's father was present as adjutant-general. In
mid-career he lost the battle of Ste Foy. [Footnote:
See _The Winning of Canada_, chap. viii. See also, for
the best account of this battle and other events of the
year between Wolfe's victory and the surrender of Montreal,
_The Fall of Canada_, by George M. Wrong. Oxford, 1914.]
And his active military life ended with his surrender of
Minorca in 1782. But he was greatly distinguished for
honour and steadfastness on all occasions. An admiring
contemporary described him as a model of all the military
virtues except prudence. But he had more prudence and
less genius than his admirer thought; and he showed a
marked talent for general government. The problem before
him was harder than his superiors could believe. He was
expected to prepare for assimilation some sixty-five
thousand 'new subjects' who were mostly alien in religion
and wholly alien in every other way. But, for the moment,
this proved the least of his many difficulties because
no immediate results were required.

While the war went on in Europe Canada remained nominally
a part of the enemy's dominions, and so, of course, was
subject to military rule. Sir Jeffery Amherst, the British
commander-in-chief in America, took up his headquarters
in New York. Under him Murray commanded Canada from
Quebec. Under Murray, Colonel Burton commanded the district
of Three Rivers while General Gage commanded the district
of Montreal, which then extended to the western wilds.
[Footnote: See _The War Chief of the Ottawas_, chap. iii.]

Murray's first great trouble arose in 1761. It was caused
by an outrageous War Office order that fourpence a day
should be stopped from the soldiers to pay for the rations
they had always got free. Such gross injustice, coming
in time of war and applied to soldiers who richly deserved
reward, made the veterans 'mad with rage.' Quebec promised
to be the scene of a wild mutiny. Murray, like all his
officers, thought the stoppage nothing short of robbery.
But he threw himself into the breach. He assembled the
officers and explained that they must die to the last
man rather than allow the mutineers a free hand. He then
held a general parade at which he ordered the troops to
march between two flag-poles on pain of instant death,
promising to kill with his own hands the first man who
refused. He added that he was ready to hear and forward
any well-founded complaint, but that, since insubordination
had been openly threatened, he would insist on subordination
being publicly shown. Then, amid tense silence, he gave
the word of command--_Quick, March!_--while every officer
felt his trigger. To the immense relief of all concerned
the men stepped off, marched straight between the flags
and back to quarters, tamed. The criminal War Office
blunder was rectified and peace was restored in the ranks.

'Murray's Report' of 1762 gives us a good view of the
Canada of that day and shows the attitude of the British
towards their new possession. Canada had been conquered
by Great Britain, with some help from the American
colonies, for three main reasons: first, to strike a
death-blow at French dominion in America; secondly, to
increase the opportunities of British seaborne trade;
and, thirdly, to enlarge the area available for British
settlement. When Murray was instructed to prepare a report
on Canada he had to keep all this in mind; for the
government wished to satisfy the public both at home and
in the colonies. He had to examine the military strength
of the country and the disposition of its population in
case of future wars with France. He had to satisfy the
natural curiosity of men like the London merchants. And
he had to show how and where English-speaking settlers
could go in and make Canada not only a British possession
but the fourteenth British colony in North America. Burton
and Gage were also instructed to report about their own
districts of Three Rivers and Montreal. The documents
they prepared were tacked on to Murray's. By June 1762
the work was completed and sent on to Amherst, who sent
it to England in ample time to be studied there before
the opening of the impending negotiations for peace.

Murray was greatly concerned about the military strength
of Quebec, then, as always, the key of Canada. Like the
unfortunate Montcalm he found the walls of Quebec badly
built, badly placed, and falling into ruins, and he
thought they could not be defended by three thousand men
against 'a well conducted _Coup-de-main_.' He proposed
to crown Cape Diamond with a proper citadel, which would
overawe the disaffected in Quebec itself and defend the
place against an outside enemy long enough to let a
British fleet come up to its relief. The rest of the
country was defended by little garrisons at Three Rivers
and Montreal as well as by several small detachments
distributed among the trading-posts where the white men
and the red met in the depths of the western wilderness.

The relations between the British garrison and the French
Canadians were so excellent that what Gage reported from
Montreal might be taken as equally true of the rest of
the country: 'The Soldiers live peaceably with the
Inhabitants and they reciprocally acquire an affection
for each other.' The French Canadians numbered sixty-five
thousand altogether, exclusive of the fur traders and
coureurs de bois. Barely fifteen thousand lived in the
three little towns of Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers;
while over fifty thousand lived in the country. Nearly
all the officials had gone back to France. The three
classes of greatest importance were the seigneurs, the
clergy, and the habitants. The lawyers were not of much
account; the petty commercial classes of less account
still. The coureurs de bois and other fur traders formed
an important link between the savage and the civilized
life of the country.

Apart from furs the trade of Canada was contemptibly
small in the eyes of men like the London merchants. But
the opportunity of fostering all the fur trade that could
be carried down the St Lawrence was very well worth while;
and if there was no other existing trade worth capturing
there seemed to be some kinds worth creating. Murray held
out well-grounded hopes of the fisheries and forests. 'A
Most immense Cod Fishery can be established in the River
and Gulph of St Lawrence. A rich tract of country on the
South Side of the Gulph will be settled and improved,
and a port or ports furnished with every material requisite
to repair ships.' He then went on to enumerate the other
kinds of fishery, the abundance of whales, seals, and
walruses in the Gulf, and of salmon up all the tributary
rivers. Burton recommends immediate attention to the iron
mines behind Three Rivers. All the governors expatiate
on the vast amount of forest wealth and remind the home
government that under the French regime the king, when
making out patents for the seigneurs, reserved the right
of taking wood for ship-building and fortifications from
any of the seigneuries. Agriculture was found to be in
a very backward state. The habitants would raise no more
than they required for their own use and for a little
local trade. But the fault was attributed to the gambling
attractions of the fur trade, to the bad governmental
system, and to the frequent interruptions of the _corvee_,
a kind of forced labour which was meant to serve the
public interest, but which Bigot and other thievish
officials always turned to their own private advantage.
On the whole, the reports were most encouraging in the
prospects they held out to honest labour, trade, and
government.

While Murray and his lieutenants had been collecting
information for their reports the home government had
been undergoing many changes for the worse. The
master-statesman Pitt had gone out of power and the
back-stairs politician Bute had come in. Pitt's 'bloody
and expensive war'--the war that more than any other,
laid the foundations of the present British Empire--was
to be ended on any terms the country could be persuaded
to bear. Thus the end of the Seven Years' War, or, as
the British part of it was more correctly called, the
'Maritime War,' was no more glorious in statesmanship
than its beginning had been in arms. But the spirit of
its mighty heart still lived on in the Empire's grateful
memories of Pitt and quickened the English-speaking world
enough to prevent any really disgraceful surrender of
the hard-won fruits of victory.

The Treaty of Paris, signed on the 10th of February 1763,
and the king's proclamation, published in October, were
duly followed by the inauguration of civil government in
Canada. The incompetent Bute, anxious to get Pitt out of
the way, tried to induce him to become the first British
governor of the new colony. Even Bute probably never
dared to hope that Pitt would actually go out to Canada.
But he did hope to lower his prestige by making him the
holder of a sinecure at home. However this may be, Pitt,
mightiest of all parliamentary ministers of war, refused
to be made either a jobber or an exile; whereupon Murray's
position was changed from a military command into that
of 'Governor and Captain-General.'

The changes which ensued in the laws of Canada were
heartily welcomed so far as the adoption of the humaner
criminal code of England was concerned. The new laws
relating to debtor and creditor also gave general
satisfaction, except, as we shall presently see, when
they involved imprisonment for debt. But the tentative
efforts to introduce English civil law side by side with
the old French code resulted in great confusion and much
discontent. The land laws had become so unworkable under
this dual system that they had to be left as they were.
A Court of Common Pleas was set up specially for the
benefit of the French Canadians. If either party demanded
a jury one had to be sworn in; and French Canadians were
to be jurors on equal terms with 'the King's Old Subjects.'
The Roman Catholic Church was to be completely tolerated
but not in any way established. Lord Egremont, in giving
the king's instructions to Murray, reminded him that the
proviso in the Treaty of Paris--_as far as the Laws of
Great Britain permit_--should govern his action whenever
disputes arose. It must be remembered that the last
Jacobite rising was then a comparatively recent affair,
and that France was equally ready to upset either the
Protestant succession in England or the British regime
in Canada.

The Indians were also an object of special solicitude in
the royal proclamation. 'The Indians who live under our
Protection should not be molested in the possession of
such parts of our Dominions and Territories as, not having
been ceded to or purchased by Us, are reserved to them.'
The home government was far in advance of the American
colonists in its humane attitude towards the Indians.
The common American attitude then and long afterwards
--indeed, up to a time well within living memory--was
that Indians were a kind of human vermin to be exterminated
without mercy, unless, of course, more money was to be
made out of them alive. The result was an endless struggle
along the ever-receding frontier of the West. And just
at this particular time the 'Conspiracy of Pontiac' had
brought about something like a real war. The story of
this great effort of the Indians to stem the encroachments
of the exterminating colonists is told in another chronicle
of the present Series. [Footnote: The War Chief of the
Ottawas.] The French traders in the West undoubtedly had
a hand in stirring up the Indians. Pontiac, a sort of
Indian Napoleon, was undoubtedly cruel as well as crafty.
And the Indians undoubtedly fought just as the ancestors
of the French and British used to fight when they were
at the corresponding stage of social evolution. But the
mere fact that so many jealously distinct tribes united
in this common cause proves how much they all must have
suffered at the hands of the colonists.

While Pontiac's war continued in the West Murray had to
deal with a political war in Canada which rose to its
height in 1764. The king's proclamation of the previous
October had 'given express Power to our Governor that,
so soon as the state and circumstances of the said Colony
will admit thereof, he shall call a General Assembly in
such manner and form as is used in those Colonies and
Provinces in America which are under our immediate
government.' The intention of establishing parliamentary
institutions was, therefore, perfectly clear. But it was
equally clear that the introduction of such institutions
was to depend on 'circumstances,' and it is well to
remember here that these 'circumstances' were not held
to warrant the opening of a Canadian parliament till
1792. Now, the military government had been a great
success. There was every reason to suppose that civil
government by a governor and council would be the next
best thing. And it was quite certain that calling a
'General Assembly' at once would defeat the very ends
which such bodies are designed to serve. More than
ninety-nine per cent of the population were dead against
an assembly which none of them understood and all
distrusted. On the other hand, the clamorous minority of
less than one per cent were in favour only of a parliament
from which the majority should be rigorously excluded,
even, if possible, as voters. The immense majority
comprised the entire French-Canadian community. The
absurdly small minority consisted mostly of Americanized
camp-following traders, who, having come to fish in
troubled waters, naturally wanted the laws made to suit
poachers. The British garrison, the governing officials,
and the very few other English-speaking people of a more
enlightened class all looked down on the rancorous
minority. The whole question resolved itself into this:
should Canada be handed over to the licensed exploitation
of a few hundred low-class camp-followers, who had done
nothing to win her for the British Empire, who were
despised by those who had, and who promised to be a
dangerous thorn in the side of the new colony?

What this ridiculous minority of grab-alls really wanted
was not a parliament but a rump. Many a representative
assembly has ended in a rump, The grab-alls wished to
begin with one and stop there. It might be supposed that
such pretensions would defeat themselves. But there was
a twofold difficulty in the way of getting the truth
understood by the English-speaking public on both sides
of the Atlantic. In the first place, the French Canadians
were practically dumb to the outside world. In the second,
the vociferous rumpites had the ear of some English and
more American commercial people who were not anxious to
understand; while the great mass of the general public
were inclined to think, if they ever thought at all, that
parliamentary government must mean more liberty for every
one concerned.

A singularly apt commentary on the pretensions of the
camp-followers is supplied by the famous, or infamous,
'Presentment of the Grand Jury of Quebec' in October
1764. The moving spirits of this precious jury were
aspirants to membership in the strictly exclusive, rumpish
little parliament of their own seeking. The signatures
of the French-Canadian members were obtained by fraud,
as was subsequently proved by a sworn official protestation.
The first presentment tells its own tale, as it refers
to the only courts in which French-Canadian lawyers were
allowed to plead. 'The great number of inferior Courts
are tiresome, litigious, and expensive to this poor
Colony.' Then came a hit at the previous military
rule--'That Decrees of the military Courts may be amended
[after having been confirmed by legal ordinance] by
allowing Appeals if the matter decided exceed Ten Pounds,'
which would put it out of the reach of the 'inferior
Courts' and into the clutches of 'the King's Old Subjects.'
But the gist of it all was contained in the following:
'We represent that as the Grand Jury must be considered
at present as the only Body representative of the Colony,
... We propose that the Publick Accounts be laid before
the Grand Jury at least twice a year.' That the grand
jury was to be purged of all its French-Canadian members
is evident from the addendum slipped in behind their
backs. This addendum is a fine specimen of verbose
invective against 'the Church of Rome,' the Pope, Bulls,
Briefs, absolutions, etc., the empanelling 'en Grand and
petty Jurys' of 'papist or popish Recusants Convict,'
and so on.

The 'Presentment of the Grand Jury' was presently followed
by _The Humble Petition of Your Majesty's most faithful
and loyal Subjects, British Merchants and Traders, in
behalf of Themselves and their fellow Subjects, Inhabitants
of Your Majesty's Province of Quebec_. 'Their fellow
Subjects' did not, of course, include any 'papist or
popish Recusants Convict.' Among the 'Grievances and
Distresses' enumerated were 'the oppressive and severely
felt Military government,' the inability to 'reap the
fruit of our Industry' under such a martinet as Murray,
who, in one paragraph, is accused of 'suppressing dutyfull
Remonstrances in Silence' and, in the next, of 'treating
them with a Rage and Rudeness of Language and Demeanor
as dishonourable to the Trust he holds of Your Majesty
as painfull to Those who suffer from it.' Finally, the
petitioners solemnly warn His Majesty that their 'Lives
in the Province are so very unhappy that we must be under
the Necessity of removing from it, unless timely prevented
by a Removal of the present Governor.'

In forwarding this document Murray poured out the vials
of his wrath on 'the Licentious Fanaticks Trading here,'
while he boldly championed the cause of the French
Canadians, 'a Race, who, could they be indulged with a
few priveledges which the Laws of England deny to Roman
Catholicks at home, would soon get the better of every
National Antipathy to their Conquerors and become the
most faithful and most useful set of Men in this American
Empire.'

While these charges and counter-charges were crossing
the Atlantic another, and much more violent, trouble came
to a head. As there were no barracks in Canada billeting
was a necessity. It was made as little burdensome as
possible and the houses of magistrates were specially
exempt. This, however, did not prevent the magistrates
from baiting the military whenever they got the chance.
Fines, imprisonments, and other sentences, out of all
proportion to the offence committed, were heaped on every
redcoat in much the same way as was then being practised
in Boston and other hotbeds of disaffection. The redcoats
had done their work in ridding America of the old French
menace. They were doing it now in ridding the colonies
of the last serious menace from the Indians. And so the
colonists, having no further use for them, began trying
to make the land they had delivered too hot to hold them.
There were, of course, exceptions; and the American
colonists had some real as well as pretended grievances.
But wantonly baiting the redcoats had already become a
most discreditable general practice.

Montreal was most in touch with the disaffected people
to the south. It also had a magistrate of the name of
Walker, the most rancorous of all the disaffected
magistrates in Canada. This Walker, well mated with an
equally rancorous wife, was the same man who entertained
Benjamin Franklin and the other commissioners sent by
Congress into Canada in 1776, the year in which both the
American Republic and a truly British Canada were born.
He would not have been flattered could he have seen the
entry Franklin made about him and his wife in a diary
which is still extant. The gist of it was that wherever
the Walkers might be they would soon set the place by
the ears. Walker, of course, was foremost in the persecution
of the redcoats; and he eagerly seized his opportunity
when an officer was billeted in a house where a brother
magistrate happened to be living as a lodger. Under such
circumstances the magistrate could not claim exemption.
But this made no difference either to him or to Walker.
Captain Payne, the gentleman whose presence enraged these
boors, was seized and thrown into gaol. The chief justice
granted a writ of habeas corpus. But the mischief was
done and resentment waxed high. The French-Canadian
seigneurs sympathized with Payne, which added fuel to
the magisterial flame; and Murray, scenting danger,
summoned the whole bench down to Quebec.

But before this bench of bumbles started some masked men
seized Walker in his own house and gave him a good sound
thrashing. Unfortunately they spoilt the fair reprisal
by cutting off his ear. That very night the news had run
round Montreal and made a start for Boston and Quebec.
Feeling ran high; and higher still when, a few weeks
later, the civil magistrates vented their rage on several
redcoats by imposing sentences exceeding even the utmost
limits of their previous vindictive action. Montreal
became panic-stricken lest the soldiers, baited past
endurance, should break out in open violence. Murray
drove up, post-haste, from Quebec, ordered the affected
regiment to another station, reproved the offending
magistrates, and re-established public confidence. Official
and private rewards were offered to any witnesses who
would identify Walker's assailants. But in vain. The
smouldering fire burst out again under Carleton. But the
mystery was never cleared up.

Things had now come to a crisis. The London merchants,
knowing nothing about the internal affairs of Canada,
backed the petition of the Quebec traders, who were quite
unworthy of such support from men of real business probity
and knowledge. The magisterial faction in Canada advertised
their side of the case all over the colonies and in any
sympathetic quarter they could find in England. The
seigneurs sent home a warm defence of Murray; and Murray
himself sent Cramahe, a very able Swiss officer in the
British Army. The home government thus had plenty of
contradictory evidence before it in 1765. The result was
that Murray was called home in 1766, rather in a spirit
of open-minded and sympathetic inquiry into his conduct
than with any idea of censuring him. He never returned
to Canada. But as he held the titular governorship for
some time longer, and as he was afterwards employed in
positions of great responsibility and trust, the verdict
of the home authorities was clearly given in his favour.

The troublous year of 1764 saw another innovation almost
as revolutionary, compared with the old regime, as the
introduction of civil government itself. This was the
issue of the first newspaper in Canada, where, indeed,
it was also the first printed thing of any kind. Nova
Scotia had produced an earlier paper, the _Halifax
Gazette_, which lived an intermittent life from 1752 to
1800. But no press had ever been allowed in New France.
The few documents that required printing had always been
done in the mother country. Brown and Gilmore, two
Philadelphians, were thus undertaking a pioneer business
when they announced that 'Our Design is, in case we are
fortunate enough to succeed, early in this spring to
settle in this City [Quebec] in the capacity of Printers,
and forthwith to publish a weekly newspaper in French
and English.' The _Quebec Gazette_, which first appeared
on the 21st of the following June, has continued to the
present time, though it is now a daily and is known as
the _Quebec Chronicle_. Centenarian papers are not common
in any country; and those that have lived over a century
and a half are very few indeed. So the _Quebec Chronicle_,
which is the second surviving senior in America, is also
among the great press seniors of the world.

The original number is one of the curiosities of journalism.
The publishers felt tolerably sure of having what was
then considered a good deal of recent news for their
three hundred readers during the open season. But, knowing
that the supply would be both short and stale in winter,
they held out prospects of a Canadian _Tatler_ or _Spectator_,
without, however, being rash enough to promise a supply
of Addisons and Steeles. Their announcement makes curious
reading at the present day.

   The Rigour of Winter preventing the arrival of ships
   from _Europe_, and in a great measure interrupting
   the ordinary intercourse with the Southern Provinces,
   it will be necessary, in a paper designed for General
   Perusal, and Publick Utility, to provide some things
   of general Entertainment, independent of foreign
   intelligence: we shall therefore, on such occasions,
   present our Readers with such _Originals_, both in
   _Prose_ and _Verse_, as will please the FANCY and
   instruct the JUDGMENT. And here we beg leave to observe
   that we shall have nothing so much at heart as the
   support of VIRTUE and MORALITY and the noble cause of
   LIBERTY. The refined amusements of LITERATURE, and
   the pleasing veins of well pointed wit, shall also be
   considered as necessary to this collection; interspersed
   with chosen pieces, and curious essays, extracted from
   the most celebrated authors; So that, blending PHILOSOPHY
   with POLITICKS, HISTORY, &c., the youth of both sexes
   will be improved and persons of all ranks agreeably
   and usefully entertained. And upon the whole we will
   labour to attain to all the exactness that so much
   variety will permit, and give as much variety as will
   consist with a reasonable exactness. And as this part
   of our project cannot be carried into execution without
   the correspondence of the INGENIOUS, we shall take
   all opportunities of acknowledging our obligations,
   to those who take the trouble of furnishing any matter
   which shall tend to entertainment or instruction. Our
   Intentions to please the _Whole_, without offence to
   any _Individual_, will be better evinced by our practice,
   than by writing volumes on the subject. This one thing
   we beg may be believed, that PARTY PREJUDICE, or
   PRIVATE SCANDAL, will never find a place in this PAPER.


GOVERNOR CARLETON
1766-1774

The twelve years of Carleton's first administration
naturally fall into three distinct periods of equal
length. During the first he was busily employed settling
as many difficulties as he could, examining the general
state of the country, and gradually growing into the
change that was developing in the minds of the home
government, the change, that is, from the Americanizing
sixties to the French-Canadian seventies. During the
second period he was in England, helping to shape the
famous Quebec Act. During the third he was defending
Canada from American attack and aiding the British
counterstroke by every means in his power.

On the 22nd of September 1766 Carleton arrived at Quebec
and began his thirty years' experience as a Canadian
administrator by taking over the government from Colonel
Irving, who had held it since Murray's departure in the
spring. Irving had succeeded Murray simply because he
happened to be the senior officer present at the time.
Carleton himself was technically Murray's lieutenant till
1768. But neither of these facts really affected the
course of Canadian history.

The Council, the magistrates, and the traders each
presented. the new governor with an address containing
the usual professions of loyal devotion. Carleton remarked
in his dispatch that these separate addresses, and the
marked absence of any united address, showed how much
the population was divided. He also noted that a good
many of the English-speaking minority had objected to
the addresses on account of their own opposition to the
Stamp Act, and that there had been some broken heads in
consequence. Troubles enough soon engaged his anxious
attention--troubles over the Indian trade, the rights
and wrongs of the Canadian Jesuits, the wounded dignity
of some members of the Council, and the still smouldering
and ever mysterious Walker affair.

The strife between Canada and the Thirteen Colonies over
the Indian trade of the West remained the same in principle
as under the old regime. The Conquest had merely changed
the old rivalry between two foreign powers into one
between two widely differing British possessions; and
this, because of the general unrest among the Americans,
made the competition more bitter, if possible, than ever.

The Jesuits pressed their claims for recognition, for
their original estates, and for compensation. But their
order had fallen on evil days all over the world. It was
not popular even in Canada. And the arrangement was that
while the existing members were to be treated with every
consideration the Society itself was to be allowed to
die out.

The offended councillors went so far as to present Carleton
with a remonstrance which Irving himself had the misfortune
to sign. Carleton had consulted some members on points
with which they were specially acquainted. The members
who had not been consulted thereupon protested to Irving,
who assured them that Carleton must have done so by
accident, not design. But when Carleton received a joint
letter in which they said, 'As you are pleased to signifye
to Us by Coll. Irving that it was accident, & not
Intention,' he at once replied: 'As Lieutenant Colonel
Irving has signified to you that the Part of my Conduct
you think worthy of your Reprehension happened by Accident
let him explain his reasons for so doing. He had no
authority from me.' Carleton then went on to say that he
would consult any 'Men of Good Sense, Truth, Candour,
and Impartial Justice' whenever he chose, no matter
whether they were councillors or not.

The Walker affair, which now broke out again, was much
more serious than the storm in the Council's teacup. It
agitated the whole of Canada and threatened to range the
population of Montreal and Quebec into two irreconcilable
factions, the civil and the military. For the whole of
the two years since Murray had been called upon to deal
with it cleverly presented versions of Walker's views
had been spread all over the colonies and worked into
influential Opposition circles in England. The invectives
against the redcoats and their friends the seigneurs were
of the usual abusive type. But they had an unusually
powerful effect at that particular time in the Thirteen
Colonies as well as in what their authors hoped to make
a Fourteenth Colony after a fashion of their own; and
they looked plausible enough to mislead a good many
moderate men in the mother country too. Walker's case
was that he had an actual witness, as to the identity of
his assailants, in the person of McGovoch, a discharged
soldier, who laid information against one civilian, three
British officers, and the celebrated French-Canadian
leader, La Corne de St Luc. All the accused were arrested
in their beds in Montreal and thrown into the common
gaol. Walker objected to bail on the plea that his life
would be in danger if they were allowed at large. He also
sought to postpone the trial in order to punish the
accused as much as possible, guilty or innocent. But
William Hey, the chief justice, an able and upright man,
would consent to postponement only on condition that bail
should be allowed; so the trial proceeded. When the grand
jury threw out the case against one of the prisoners
Walker let loose such a flood of virulent abuse that
moderate men were turned against him. In the end all the
accused were honourably acquitted, while McGovoch, who
was proved to have been a false witness from the first,
was convicted of perjury. Carleton remained absolutely
impartial all through, and even dismissed Colonel Irving
and another member of the Council for heading a petition
on behalf of the military prisoners.

The Walker affair was an instance of a bad case in which
the law at last worked well. But there were many others
in which it did not. What with the _Coutume de Paris_,
which is still quoted in the province of Quebec; the
other complexities of the old French law; the doubtful
meanings drawn from the capitulation, the treaty, the
proclamation, and the various ordinances; the instinctive
opposition between the French Canadians and the
English-speaking civilians; and, finally, what with the
portents of subversive change that were already beginning
to overshadow all America,--what with all this and more,
Carleton found himself faced with a problem which no man
could have solved to the satisfaction of every one
concerned. Each side in a lawsuit took whatever amalgam
of French and English codes was best for its own argument.
But, generally speaking, the ingrained feeling of the
French Canadians was against any change of their own laws
that was not visibly and immediately beneficial to their
own particular interests. Moreover, the use of the unknown
English language, the worthlessness of the rapacious
English-speaking magistrates, and the detested innovation
of imprisonment for debt, all combined to make every part
of English civil law hated simply because it happened to
be English and not French. The home authorities were
anxious to find some workable compromise. In 1767 Carleton
exchanged several important dispatches with them; and in
1768 they sent out Maurice Morgan to study and report,
after consultation with the chief justice and 'other well
instructed persons.' Morgan was an indefatigable and
clear-sighted man who deserves to be gratefully remembered
by both races; for he was a good friend both to the French
Canadians before the Quebec Act and to the United Empire
Loyalists just before their great migration, when he was
Carleton's secretary at New York. In 1769 the official
correspondence entered the 'secret and confidential'
stage with a dispatch from the home government to Carleton
suggesting a House of Representatives to which, practically
speaking, the towns would send Protestant members and
the country districts Roman Catholics.

In 1770 Carleton sailed for England. He carried a good
deal of hard-won experience with him, both on this point
and on many others. He went home with a strong opinion
not only against an assembly but against any immediate
attempts at Anglicization in any form. The royal
instructions that had accompanied his commission as
'Captain-General and Governor-in-chief' in 1768 contained
directions for establishing the Church of England with a
view to converting the whole population to its tenets later
on. But no steps had been taken, and, needless to say, the
French Canadians remained as Roman Catholic as ever.

An increasingly important question, soon to overshadow
all others, was defence. In April 1768 Carleton had
proposed the restoration of the seigneurial militia
system. 'All the Lands here are held of His Majesty's
Castle of St Lewis [the governor's official residence in
Quebec]. The Oath which the Vassals [seigneurs] take is
very Solemn and Binding. They are obliged to appear in
Arms for the King's defence, in case his Province is
attacked.' Carleton pointed out that a hundred men of
the Canadian seigneurial families were being kept on full
pay in France, ready to return and raise the Canadians
at the first opportunity. 'On the other hand, there are
only about seventy of these officers in Canada who have
been in the French service. Not one of them has been
given a commission in the King's [George's] Service, nor
is there One who, from any motive whatever, is induced
to support His Government.' The few French Canadians
raised for Pontiac's war had of course been properly paid
during the continuance of their active service. But they
had been disbanded like mere militia afterwards, without
either gratuities or half-pay for the officers. This
naturally made the class from which officers were drawn
think that no career was open to them under the Union
Jack and turned their thoughts towards France, where
their fellows were enjoying full pay without a break.

What made this the more serious was the weakness of the
regular garrisons, all of which, put together, numbered
only 1,627 men. Carleton calculated that about five
hundred of 'the King's Old Subjects' were capable of
bearing arms; though most of them were better at talking
than fighting. He had nothing but contempt for 'the flimsy
wall round Montreal,' and relied little more on the very
defective works at Quebec. Thus with all his wonderful
equanimity, 'grave Carleton' left Canada with no light
heart when he took six months' leave of absence in 1770;
and he would have been more anxious still if he could
have foreseen that his absence was to be prolonged to no
less than four years.

He had, however, two great satisfactions. He was
represented at Quebec by a most steadfast lieutenant,
the quiet, alert, discreet, and determined Cramahe; and
he was leaving Canada after having given proof of a
disinterestedness which was worthy of the elder Pitt
himself. When Pitt became Paymaster-General of England
he at once declined to use the two chief perquisites of
his office, the interest on the government balance and
the half per cent commission on foreign subsidies, though
both were regarded as a kind of indirect salary. When
Carleton became governor of Canada he at once issued a
proclamation abolishing all the fees and perquisites
attached to his position and explained his action to the
home authorities in the following words: 'There is a
certain appearance of dirt, a sort of meanness, in exacting
fees on every occasion. I think it necessary for the
King's service that his representative should be thought
unsullied.' Murray, who had accepted the fees, at first
took umbrage. But Carleton soon put matters straight with
him. The fact was that fees, and even certain perquisites,
were no dishonour to receive, as they nearly always formed
a recognized part, and often the whole, of a perfectly
legal salary. But fees and perquisites could be abused;
and they did lead to misunderstandings, even when they
were not abused; while fixed salaries were free from both
objections. So Carleton, surrounded by shamelessly
rapacious magistrates and the whole vile camp-following
gang, as well as by French Canadians who had suffered
from the robberies of Bigot and his like, decided to
sacrifice everything but his indispensable fixed salary
in order that even the most malicious critics could not
bring any accusation, however false, against the man who
represented Britain and her king.

An interesting personal interlude, which was not without
considerable effect on Canadian history, took place in
the middle of Carleton's four years' stay in England. He
was forty-eight and still a bachelor. Tradition whispers
that these long years of single life were the result of
a disappointing love affair with Jane Carleton, a pretty
cousin, when both he and she were young. However that
may be, he now proposed to Lady Anne Howard, whose father,
the Earl of Effingham, was one of his greatest friends.
But he was doomed to a second, though doubtless very
minor, disappointment. Lady Anne, who probably looked on
'grave Carleton' as a sort of amiable, middle-aged uncle,
had fallen in love with his nephew, whom she presently
married, and with whom she afterwards went out to Canada,
where her husband served under the rejected uncle himself.
What added spice to this peculiar situation was the fact
that Carleton actually married the younger sister of the
too-youthful Lady Anne. When Lady Anne rejoined her sister
and their bosom friend, Miss Seymour, after the
disconcerting interview with Carleton, she explained her
tears by saying they were due to her having been 'obliged
to refuse the best man on earth.' 'The more fool you!'
answered the younger sister, Lady Maria, then just
eighteen, 'I only wish he had given me the chance!' There,
for the time, the matter ended. Carleton went back to
his official duties in furtherance of the Quebec Act.
His nephew and the elder sister made mutual love. Lady
Maria held her tongue. But Miss Seymour had not forgotten;
and one day she mustered up courage to tell Carleton the
story of 'the more fool you!' This decided him to act at
once. He proposed; was accepted; and lived happily married
for the rest of his long life. Lady Maria was small,
fair-haired, and blue-eyed, which heightened her girlish
appearance when, like Madame de Champlain, she came out
to Canada with a husband more than old enough to be her
father. But she had been brought up at Versailles. She
knew all the aristocratic graces of the old regime. And
her slight, upright figure--erect as any soldier's to
her dying day--almost matched her husband's stalwart form
in dignity of carriage.

The Quebec Act of 1774--the Magna Charta of the
French-Canadian race--finally passed the House of Lords
on the 18th of June. The general idea of the Act was to
reverse the unsuccessful policy of ultimate assimilation
with the other American colonies by making Canada a
distinctly French-Canadian province. The Maritime Provinces,
with a population of some thirty thousand, were to be as
English as they chose. But a greatly enlarged Quebec,
with a population of ninety thousand, and stretching far
into the unsettled West, was to remain equally
French-Canadian; though the rights of what it was then
thought would be a perpetual English-speaking minority
were to be safeguarded in every reasonable way. The whole
country between the American colonies and the domains of
the Hudson's Bay Company was included in this new Quebec,
which comprised the southern half of what is now the
Newfoundland Labrador, practically the whole of the modern
provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and all the western
lands between the Ohio and the Great Lakes as far as the
Mississippi, that is, the modern American states of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The Act gave Canada the English criminal code. It recognized
most of the French civil law, including the seigneurial
tenure of land. Roman Catholics were given 'the free
Exercise' of their religion, 'subject to the King's
Supremacy' as defined 'by an Act made in the First Year
of Queen Elizabeth,' which Act, with a magnificently
prophetic outlook on the future British Empire, was to
apply to 'all the Dominions and Countries which then did,
or thereafter should, belong to the Imperial Crown.' The
Roman Catholic clergy were authorized to collect 'their
accustomed Dues and Rights' from members of their own
communion. The new oath of allegiance to the Crown was
silent about differences of religion, so that Roman
Catholics might take it without question. The clergy and
seigneurs were thus restored to an acknowledged leadership
in church and state. Those who wanted a parliament were
distinctly told that 'It is at present inexpedient to
call an Assembly,' and that a Council of from seventeen
to twenty-three members, all appointed by the Crown,
would attend to local government and have power to levy
taxes for roads and public buildings only. Lands held
'in free and common socage' were to be dealt with by the
laws of England, as was all property which could be freely
willed away. A possible establishment of the Church of
England was provided for but never put in operation.

In some ways the Act did, in other ways it did not, fulfil
the objects of its framers. It was undoubtedly a generous
concession to the leading French Canadians. It did help
to keep Canada both British and Canadian. And it did open
the way for what ought to have been a crushing attack on
the American revolutionary forces. But it was not, and
neither it nor any other Act could possibly have been,
at that late hour, completely successful. It conciliated
the seigneurs and the parochial clergy. But it did not,
and it could not, also conciliate the lesser townsfolk
and the habitants. For the last fourteen years the
habitants had been gradually drifting away from their
former habits of obedience and former obligations towards
their leaders in church and state. The leaders had lost
their old followers. The followers had found no new
leaders of their own.

Naturally enough, there was great satisfaction among the
seigneurs and the clergy, with a general feeling among
government supporters, both in England and Canada, that
the best solution of a very refractory problem had been
found at last. On the other hand, the Opposition in
England, nearly every one in the American colonies, and
the great majority of English-speaking people in
Newfoundland, the Maritime Provinces, and Canada itself
were dead against the Act; while the habitants, resenting
the privileges already reaffirmed in favour of the
seigneurs and clergy, and suspicious of further changes
in the same unwelcome direction, were neutral at the best
and hostile at the worst.

The American colonists would have been angered in any
case. But when they saw Canada proper made as unlike a
'fourteenth colony' as could be, and when they also saw
the gates of the coveted western lands closed against
them by the same detested Act--the last of the 'five
intolerable acts' to which they most objected--their fury
knew no bounds. They cursed the king, the pope, and the
French Canadians with as much violence as any temporal
or spiritual rulers had ever cursed heretics and rebels.
The 'infamous and tyrannical ministry' in England was
accused of 'contemptible subservience' to the 'bloodthirsty,
idolatrous, and hypocritical creed' of the French Canadians.
To think that people whose religion had spread 'murder,
persecution, and revolt throughout the world' were to be
entrenched along the St Lawrence was bad enough. But to
see Crown protection given to the Indian lands which the
Americans considered their own western 'birthright' was
infinitely worse. Was the king of England to steal the
valley of the Mississippi in the same way as the king of
France?

It is easy to be wise after the event and hard to follow
any counsel of perfection. But it must always be a subject
of keen, if unavailing, regret that the French Canadians
were not guaranteed their own way of life, within the
limits of the modern province of Quebec, immediately
after the capitulation of Montreal in 1760. They would
then have entered the British Empire, as a whole people,
on terms which they must all have understood to be
exceedingly generous from any conquering power, and which
they would have soon found out to be far better than
anything they had experienced under the government of
France. In return for such unexampled generosity they
might have become convinced defenders of the only flag
in the world under which they could possibly live as
French Canadians. Their relations to each other, to the
rest of a changing Canada, and to the Empire would have
followed the natural course of political evolution, with
the burning questions of language, laws, and religion
safely removed from general controversy in after years.
The rights of the English-speaking minority could, of
course, have been still better safeguarded under this
system than under the distracting series of half-measures
which took its place. There should have been no question
of a parliament in the immediate future. Then, with the
peopling of Ontario by the United Empire Loyalists and
the growth of the Maritime Provinces on the other side,
Quebec could have entered Carleton's proposed Confederation
in the nineties to her own and every one else's best
advantage.

On the other hand, the delay of fourteen years after the
Capitulation of 1760 and the unwarrantable extension of
the provincial boundaries were cardinal errors of the
most disastrous kind. The delay, filled with a futile
attempt at mistaken Americanization, bred doubts and
dissensions not only between the two races but between
the different kinds of French Canadians. When the hour
of trial came disintegration had already gone too far.
The mistake about the boundaries was equally bad. The
western wilds ought to have been administered by a
lieutenant-governor under the supervision of a
governor-general. Even leasing them for a short term of
years to the Hudson's Bay Company would have been better
than annexing them to a preposterous province of Quebec.
The American colonists would have doubtless objected to
either alternative. But both could have been defended on
sound principles of administration; while the sudden
invasion of a new and inflated Quebec into the colonial
hinterlands was little less than a declaration of war.
The whole problem bristled with enormous difficulties,
and the circumstances under which it had to be faced made
an ideal solution impossible. But an earlier Quebec Act,
without its outrageous boundary clause, would have been
well worth the risk of passing; for the delay led many
French Canadians to suppose, however falsely, that the
Empire's need might always be their opportunity; and this
idea, however repugnant to their best minds and better
feelings, has persisted among their extreme particularists
until the present day.


CHAPTER IV

INVASION
1775

Carleton's first eight years as governor of Canada were
almost entirely occupied with civil administration. The
next four were equally occupied with war; so much so,
indeed, that the Quebec Act could not be put in force on
the 1st of May 1775, as provided for in the Act itself,
but only bit by bit much later on. There was one short
session of the new Legislative Council, which opened on
the 17th of August. But all men's minds were even then
turned towards the Montreal frontier, whence the American
invasion threatened to overspread the whole country and
make this opening session the last that might ever be
held. Most of the members were soon called away from the
council-chamber to the field. No further session could
be held either that year or the next; and Carleton was
obliged to nominate the judges himself. The fifteen years
of peace were over, and Canada had once more become an
object of contention between two fiercely hostile forces.

The War of the American Revolution was a long and
exceedingly complicated struggle; and its many varied
fortunes naturally had a profound effect on those of
Canada. But Canada was directly engaged in no more than
the first three campaigns, when the Americans invaded
her in 1775 and '76, and when the British used her as
the base from which to invade the new American Republic
in 1777. These first three campaigns formed a purely
civil war within the British Empire. On each side stood
three parties. Opponents were ranged against each other
in the mother country, in the Thirteen Colonies, and in
Canada. In the mother country the king and his party
government were ranged against the Opposition and all
who held radical or revolutionary views. Here the strife
was merely political. But in the Thirteen Colonies the
forces of the Crown were ranged against the forces of
the new Continental Congress. The small minority of
colonists who were afterwards known as the United Empire
Loyalists sided with the Crown. A majority sided with
the Congress. The rest kept as selfishly neutral as they
could. Among the English-speaking civilians in Canada,
many of whom were now of a much better class than the
original camp-followers, the active loyalists comprised
only the smaller half. The larger half sided with the
Americans, as was only natural, seeing that most of them
were immigrants from the Thirteen Colonies. But by no
means all these sympathizers were ready for a fight.
Among the French Canadians the loyalists included very
few besides the seigneurs, the clergy, and a handful of
educated people in Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec.
The mass of the habitants were more or less neutral. But
many of them were anti-British at first, while most of
them were anti-American afterwards.

Events moved quickly in 1775. On the 19th of April the
'shot heard round the world' was fired at Lexington in
Massachusetts. On the 1st of May, the day appointed for
the inauguration of the Quebec Act, the statue of the
king in Montreal was grossly defaced and hung with a
cross, a necklace of potatoes, and a placard bearing the
inscription, _Here's the Canadian Pope and English
Fool--Voila le Pape du Canada et le sot Anglais_. Large
rewards were offered for the detection of the culprits;
but without avail. Excitement ran high and many an argument
ended with a bloody nose.

Meanwhile three Americans were plotting an attack along
the old line of Lake Champlain. Two of them were outlaws
from the colony of New York, which was then disputing
with the neighbouring colony of New Hampshire the possession
of the lawless region in which all three had taken refuge
and which afterwards became Vermont. Ethan Allen, the
gigantic leader of the wild Green Mountain Boys, had a
price on his head. Seth Warner, his assistant, was an
outlaw of a somewhat humbler kind. Benedict Arnold, the
third invader, came from Connecticut. He was a horse-dealer
carrying on business with Quebec and Montreal as well as
the West Indies. He was just thirty-four; an excellent
rider, a dead shot, a very fair sailor, and captain of
a crack militia company. Immediately after the affair at
Lexington he had turned out his company, reinforced by
undergraduates from Yale, had seized the New Haven powder
magazine and marched over to Cambridge, where the
Massachusetts Committeemen took such a fancy to him that
they made him a colonel on the spot, with full authority
to raise men for an immediate attack on Ticonderoga. The
opportunity seemed too good to be lost; though the
Continental Congress was not then in favour of attacking
Canada, as its members hoped to see the Canadians throw
off the yoke of empire on their own account. The British
posts on Lake Champlain were absurdly undermanned.
Ticonderoga contained two hundred cannon, but only forty
men, none of whom expected an attack. Crown Point had
only a sergeant and a dozen men to watch its hundred and
thirteen pieces. Fort George, at the head of Lake George,
was no better off; and nothing more had been done to man
the fortifications at St Johns on the Richelieu, where
there was an excellent sloop as well as many cannon in
charge of the usual sergeant's guard. This want of
preparation was no fault of Carleton's. He had frequently
reported home on the need of more men. Now he had less
than a thousand regulars to defend the whole country:
and not another man was to arrive till the spring of next
year. When Gage was hard pressed for reinforcements at
Boston in the autumn of 1774 Carleton had immediately
sent him two excellent battalions that could ill be spared
from Canada. But when Carleton himself made a similar
request, in the autumn of 1775, Admiral Graves, to his
lasting dishonour, refused to sail up to Quebec so late
as October.

The first moves of the three Americans smacked strongly
of a well-staged extravaganza in which the smart Yankees
never failed to score off the dunderheaded British. The
Green Mountain Boys assembled on the east side of the
lake. Spies walked in and out of Ticonderoga, exactly
opposite, and reported to Ethan Allen that the commandant
and his whole garrison of forty unsuspecting men would
make an easy prey. Allen then sent eighty men down to
Skenesborough (now Whitehall) at the southern end of the
lake, to take the tiny post there and bring back boats
for the crossing on the 10th of May. Then Arnold turned
up with his colonel's commission, but without the four
hundred men it authorized him to raise. Allen, however,
had made himself a colonel too, with Warner as his
second-in-command. So there were no less than three
colonels for two hundred and thirty men. Arnold claimed
the command by virtue of his Massachusetts commission.
But the Green Mountain Boys declared they would follow
no colonels but their own; and so Arnold, after being
threatened with arrest, was appointed something like
chief of the staff, on the understanding that he would
make himself generally useful with the boats. This
appointment was made at dawn on the 10th of May, just as
the first eighty men were advancing to the attack after
crossing over under cover of night. The British sentry's
musket missed fire; whereupon he and the guard were
rushed, while the rest of the garrison were surprised in
their beds. Ethan Allen, who knew the fort thoroughly,
hammered on the commandant's door and summoned him to
surrender 'In the name of the Great Jehovah and the
Continental Congress!' The astonished commandant, seeing
that resistance was impossible, put on his dressing-gown
and paraded his disarmed garrison as prisoners of war.
Seth Warner presently arrived with the rest of Allen's
men and soon became the hero of Crown Point, which he
took with the whole of its thirteen men and a hundred
and thirteen cannon. Then Arnold had his own turn, in
command of an expedition against the sergeant's guard,
cannon, stores, fort, and sloop at St Johns on the
Richelieu, all of which he captured in the same absurdly
simple way. When he came sailing back the three victorious
commanders paraded all their men and fired off many
straggling fusillades of joy. In the meantime the
Continental Congress at Philadelphia, with a delightful
touch of unconscious humour, was gravely debating the
following resolution, which was passed on the 1st of
June: _That no Expedition or Incursion ought to be
undertaken or made, by any Colony or body of Colonists,
against or into Canada_.

The same Congress, however, found reasons enough for
changing its mind before the month of May was out. The
British forces in Canada had already begun to move towards
the threatened frontier. They had occupied and strengthened
St Johns. And the Americans were beginning to fear lest
the command of Lake Champlain might again fall into
British hands. On the 27th of May the Congress closed
the phase of individual raids and inaugurated the phase
of regular invasion by commissioning General Schuyler to
'pursue any measures in Canada that may have a tendency
to promote the peace and security of these Colonies.'
Philip Schuyler was a distinguished member of the family
whose head had formulated the 'Glorious Enterprize' of
conquering New France in 1689. [Footnote: See, in this
Series, _The Fighting Governor_.] So it was quite in line
with the family tradition for him to be under orders to
'take possession of St Johns, Montreal, and any other
parts of the country,' provided always, adds the cautious
Congress, that 'General Schuyler finds it practicable,
and that it will not be disagreeable to the Canadians.'

A few days later Arnold was trying to get a colonelcy
from the Convention of New York, whose members just then
happened to be thinking of giving commissions to his
rivals, the leaders of the Green Mountain Boys, while,
to make the complication quite complete, these Boys
themselves had every intention of electing officers on
their own account. In the meantime Connecticut, determined
not to be forestalled by either friend or foe, ordered
a thousand men to Ticonderoga and commissioned a general
called Wooster to command them. Thus early were sown the
seeds of those dissensions between Congress troops and
Colony troops which nearly drove Washington mad.

Schuyler reached Ticonderoga in mid-July and assumed his
position as Congressional commander-in-chief. Unfortunately
for the good of the service he had only a few hundred
men with him; so Wooster, who had a thousand, thought
himself the bigger general of the two. The Connecticut
men followed Wooster's lead by jeering at Schuyler's men
from New York; while the Vermonters added to the confusion
by electing Seth Warner instead of Ethan Allen. In
mid-August a second Congressional general arrived, making
three generals and half a dozen colonels for less than
fifteen hundred troops. This third general was Richard
Montgomery, an ardent rebel of thirty-eight, who had been
a captain in the British Army. He had sold his commission,
bought an estate on the Hudson, and married a daughter
of the Livingstons. The Livingstons headed the
Anglo-American revolutionists in the colony of New York
as the Schuylers headed the Knickerbocker Dutch. One of
them was very active on the rebel side in Montreal and
was soon to take the field at the head of the American
'patriots' in Canada. Montgomery was brother to the
Captain Montgomery of the 43rd who was the only British
officer to disgrace himself during Wolfe's Quebec campaign,
which he did by murdering his French-Canadian prisoners
at Chateau Richer because they had fought disguised as
Indians. [Footnote: See _The Passing of New France_, p.
118.] Richard Montgomery was a much better man than his
savage brother; though, as the sequel proves, he was by
no means the perfect hero his American admirers would
have the world believe. His great value at Ticonderoga
was his professional knowledge and his ardour in the
cause he had espoused. His presence 'changed the spirit
of the camp.' It sadly needed change. 'Such a set of
pusillanimous wretches never were collected' is his own
description in a despairing letter to his wife. The
'army,' in fact, was all parts and no whole, and all the
parts were mere untrained militia. Moreover, the spirit
of the 'town meeting' ruled the camp. Even a battery
could not be moved without consulting a council of war.
Schuyler, though far more phlegmatic than Montgomery,
agreed with him heartily about this and many other
exasperating points. 'If Job had been a general in my
situation, his memory had not been so famous for patience.'

Worn out by his worries, Schuyler fell ill and was sent
to command the base at Albany. Montgomery then succeeded
to the command of the force destined for the front. The
plan of invasion approved by Washington was, first, to
sweep the line of the Richelieu by taking St Johns and
Chambly, then to take Montreal, next to secure the line
of the St Lawrence, and finally to besiege Quebec.
Montgomery's forces were to carry out all the preliminary
parts alone. But Arnold was to join him at Quebec after
advancing across country from the Kennebec to the Chaudiere
with a flying column of Virginians and New Englanders.

Carleton opened the melancholy little session of the new
Legislative Council at Quebec on the very day Montgomery
arrived at Ticonderoga--the 17th of August. When he closed
it, to take up the defence of Canada, the prospect was
already black enough, though it grew blacker still as
time went on. Immediately on hearing the news of
Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and St Johns at the end of May
he had sent every available man from Quebec to Montreal,
whence Colonel Templer had already sent off a hundred
and forty men to St Johns, while calling for volunteers
to follow. The seigneurial class came forward at once.
But all attempts to turn out the militia en masse_ proved
utterly futile. Fourteen years of kindly British rule
had loosened the old French bonds of government and the
habitants were no longer united as part of one people
with the seigneurs and the clergy. The rebels had been
busy spreading insidious perversions of the belated Quebec
Act, poisoning the minds of the habitants against the
British government, and filling their imaginations with
all sorts of terrifying doubts. The habitants were
ignorant, credulous, and suspicious to the last degree.
The most absurd stories obtained ready credence and ran
like wildfire through the province. Seven thousand Russians
were said to be coming up the St Lawrence--whether as
friends or foes mattered nothing compared with the awful
fact that they were all outlandish bogeys. Carleton was
said to have a plan for burning alive every habitant he
could lay his hands on. Montgomery's thousand were said
to be five thousand, with many more to follow. And later
on, when Arnold's men came up the Kennebec, it was
satisfactorily explained to most of the habitants that
it was no good resisting dead-shot riflemen who were
bullet-proof themselves. Carleton issued proclamations.
The seigneurs waved their swords. The clergy thundered
from their pulpits. But all in vain. Two months after
the American exploits on Lake Champlain Carleton gave a
guinea to the sentry mounted in his honour by the local
militia colonel, M. de Tonnancour, because this man was
the first genuine habitant he had yet seen armed in the
whole district of Three Rivers. What must Carleton have
felt when the home government authorized him to raise
six thousand of His Majesty's loyal French-Canadian
subjects for immediate service and informed him that the
arms and equipment for the first three thousand were
already on the way to Canada! Seven years earlier it
might still have been possible to raise French-Canadian
counterparts of those Highland regiments which Wolfe had
recommended and Pitt had so cordially approved. Carleton
himself had recommended this excellent scheme at the
proper time. But, though the home government even then
agreed with him, they thought such a measure would raise
more parliamentary and public clamour than they could
safely face. The chance once lost was lost for ever.

Carleton had done what he could to keep the enemy at
arm's length from Montreal by putting every available
man into Chambly and St Johns. He knew nothing of Arnold's
force till it actually reached Quebec in November. Quebec
was thought secure for the time being, and so was left
with a handful of men under Cramahe. Montreal had a few
regulars and a hundred 'Royal Emigrants,' mostly old
Highlanders who had settled along the New York frontier
after the Conquest. For the rest, it had many American
and a few British sympathizers ready to fly at each
others' throats and a good many neutrals ready to curry
favour with the winners. Sorel was a mere post without
any effective garrison. Chambly was held by only eighty
men under Major Stopford. But its strong stone fort was
well armed and quite proof against anything except siege
artillery; while its little garrison consisted of good
regulars who were well provisioned for a siege. The mass
of Carleton's little force was at St Johns under Major
Preston, who had 500 men of the 7th and 26th (Royal
Fusiliers and Cameronians), 80 gunners, and 120 volunteers,
mostly French-Canadian gentlemen. Preston was an excellent
officer, and his seven hundred men were able to give a
very good account of themselves as soldiers. But the fort
was not nearly so strong as the one at Chambly; it had
no natural advantages of position; and it was short of
both stores and provisions.

The three successive steps for Montgomery to take were
St Johns, Chambly, and Montreal. But the natural order
of events was completely upset by that headstrong Yankee,
Ethan Allen, who would have his private war at Montreal,
and by that contemptible British officer, Major Stopford,
who would not defend Chambly. Montgomery laid siege to
St Johns on the 18th of September, but made no substantial
progress for more than a month. He probably had no use
for Allen at anything like a regular siege. So Allen and
a Major Brown went on to 'preach politicks' and concert
a rising with men like Livingston and Walker. Livingston,
as we have seen already, belonged to a leading New York
family which was very active in the rebel cause; and
Livingston, Walker, Allen, and Brown would have made a
dangerous anti-British combination if they could only
have worked together. But they could not. Livingston
hurried off to join Montgomery with four hundred 'patriots'
who served their cause fairly well till the invasion was
over. Walker had no military qualities whatever. So Allen
and Brown were left to their own disunited devices.
Montreal seemed an easy prey. It had plenty of rebel
sympathizers. Nearly all the surrounding habitants were
either neutrals or inclined to side with the Americans,
though not as fighting men. Carleton's order to bring in
all the ladders, so as to prevent an escalade of the
walls, had met with general opposition and evasion.
Nothing seemed wanting but a good working plan.

Brown, or possibly Allen himself, then hit upon the idea
of treating Montreal very much as Allen had treated
Ticonderoga. In any case Allen jumped at it. He jumped
so far, indeed, that he forestalled Brown, who failed to
appear at the critical moment. Thus, on the 24th of
September, Allen found himself alone at Long Point with
a hundred and twenty men in face of three times as many
under the redoubtable Major Carden, a skilled veteran
who had won Wolfe's admiration years before. Carden's
force included thirty regulars, two hundred and forty
militiamen, and some Indians, probably not over a hundred
strong. The militia were mostly of the seigneurial class
with a following of habitants and townsmen of both French
and British blood. Carden broke Allen's flanks rounded
up his centre, and won the little action easily, though
at the expense of his own most useful life. Allen was
very indignant at being handcuffed and marched off like
a common prisoner after having made himself a colonel
twice over. But Carleton had no respect for
self-commissioned officers and had no soldiers to spare
for guarding dangerous rebels. So he shipped Allen off
to England, where that eccentric warrior was confined in
Pendennis Castle near Falmouth in Cornwall.

This affair, small as it was, revived British hopes in
Montreal and induced a few more militiamen and Indians
to come forward. But within a month more was lost at
Chambly than had been gained at Montreal. On the 18th of
October a small American detachment attacked Chambly with
two little field-guns and induced it to surrender on the
20th. If ever an officer deserved to be shot it was Major
Stopford, who tamely surrendered his well-armed and
well-provided fort to an insignificant force, after a
flimsy resistance of only thirty-six hours, without even
taking the trouble to throw his stores into the river
that flowed beside his strong stone walls. The news of
this disgraceful surrender, diligently spread by rebel
sympathizers, frightened the Indians away from St Johns,
thus depriving Major Preston, the commandant, of his best
couriers at the very worst time. But the evil did not
stop there; for nearly all the few French-Canadian
militiamen whom the more distant seigneurs had been able
to get under arms deserted _en masse_, with many threats
against any one who should try to turn them out again.

Chambly is only a short day's march from Montreal to the
west and St Johns to the south; so its capture meant that
St Johns was entirely cut off from the Richelieu to the
north and dangerously exposed to being cut off from
Montreal as well. Its ample stores and munitions of war
were a priceless boon to Montgomery, who now redoubled
his efforts to take St Johns. But Preston held out bravely
for the remainder of the month, while Carleton did his
best to help him. A fortnight earlier Carleton had arrested
that firebrand, Walker, who had previously refused to
leave the country, though Carleton had given him the
chance of doing so. Mrs Walker, as much a rebel as her
husband, interviewed Carleton and noted in her diary that
he 'said many severe Things in very soft & Polite Termes.'
Carleton was firm. Walker's actions, words, and
correspondence all proved him a dangerous rebel whom no
governor could possibly leave at large without breaking
his oath of office. Walker, who had himself caused so
many outrageous arrests, now not only resisted the legal
arrest of his own person, but fired on the little party
of soldiers who had been sent to bring him into Montreal.
The soldiers then began to burn him out; whereupon he
carried his wife to a window from which the soldiers
rescued her. He then surrendered and was brought into
Montreal, where the sight of him as a prisoner made a
considerable impression on the waverers.

A few hundred neighbouring militiamen were scraped
together. Every one of the handful of regulars who could
be spared was turned out. And Carleton set off to the
relief of St Johns. But Seth Warner's Green Mountain
Boys, reinforced by many more sharpshooters, prevented
Carleton from landing at Longueuil, opposite Montreal.
The remaining Indians began to slink away. The
French-Canadian militiamen deserted fast--'thirty or
forty of a night.' There were not two hundred regulars
available for a march across country. And on the 30th
Carleton was forced to give up in despair. Within the
week St Johns surrendered with 688 men, who were taken
south as prisoners of war. Preston had been completely
cut off and threatened with starvation as well. So when
he destroyed everything likely to be needed by the enemy
he had done all that could be expected of a brave and
capable commander.

It was the 3rd of November when St Johns surrendered.
Ten days later Montgomery occupied Montreal and Arnold
landed at Wolfe's Cove just above Quebec. The race for
the possession of Quebec had been a very close one. The
race for the capture of Carleton was to be closer still.
And on the fate of either depended the immediate, and
perhaps the ultimate, fate of Canada.

The race for Quebec had been none the less desperate
because the British had not known of the danger from the
south till after Arnold had suddenly emerged from the
wilds of Maine and was well on his way to the mouth of
the Chaudiere, which falls into the St Lawrence seven
miles above the city. Arnold's subsequent change of sides
earned him the execration of the Americans. But there
can be no doubt whatever that if he had got through in
time to capture Quebec he would have become a national
hero of the United States. He had the advantage of leading
picked men; though nearly three hundred faint-hearts did
turn back half-way. But, even with picked men, his feat
was one of surpassing excellence. His force went in eleven
hundred strong. It came out, reduced by desertion as well
as by almost incredible hardships, with barely seven
hundred. It began its toilsome ascent of the Kennebec
towards the end of September, carrying six weeks' supplies
in the bad, hastily built boats or on the men's backs.
Daniel Morgan and his Virginian riflemen led the way.
Aaron Burr was present as a young volunteer. The portages
were many and trying. The settlements were few at first
and then wanting altogether. Early in October the drenched
portagers were already sleeping in their frozen clothes.
The boats began to break up. Quantities of provisions
were lost. Soon there was scarcely anything left but
flour and salt pork. It took nearly a fortnight to get
past the Great Carrying Place, in sight of Mount Bigelow.
Rock, bog, and freezing slime told on the men, some of
whom began to fall sick. Then came the chain of ponds
leading into Dead River. Then the last climb up to the
height-of-land beyond which lay the headwaters of the
Chaudiere, which takes its rise in Lake Megantic.

There were sixty miles to go beyond the lake, and a badly
broken sixty miles they were, before the first settlement
of French Canadians could be reached. There was no trail.
Provisions were almost at an end. Sickness increased.
The sick began to die. 'And what was it all for? A chance
to get killed! The end of the march was Quebec
--impregnable!' On the 24th of October Arnold, with
fifteen other men, began 'a race against time, a race
against starvation' by pushing on ahead in a desperate
effort to find food. Within a week he had reached the
first settlement, after losing three of his five boats
with everything in them. Three days later, and not one
day too soon, the French Canadians met his seven hundred
famishing men with a drove of cattle and plenty of
provisions. The rest of the way was toilsome enough. But
it seemed easy by comparison. The habitants were friendly,
but very shy about enlisting, in spite of Washington's
invitation to 'range yourselves under the standard of
general liberty.' The Indians were more responsive, and
nearly fifty joined on their own terms. By the 8th of
November Arnold was marching down the south shore of the
St Lawrence, from the Chaudiere to Point Levis, in full
view of Quebec. He had just received a dispatch ten days
old from Montgomery by which he learned that St Johns
was expected to fall immediately and that Schuyler was
no longer with the army at the front. But he could not
tell when the junction of forces would be made; and he
saw at once that Quebec was on the alert because every
boat had been either destroyed or taken over to the other
side.

The spring and summer had been anxious times enough in
Quebec. But the autumn was a great deal worse. Bad news
kept coming down from Montreal. The disaffected got more
and more restless and began 'to act as though no opposition
might be shown the rebel forces.' And in October it did
seem as if nothing could be done to stop the invaders.
There were only a few hundred militiamen that could be
depended on. The regulars, under Colonel Maclean, had
gone up to help Carleton on the Montreal frontier. The
fortifications were in no state to stand a siege. But
Cramahe was full of steadfast energy. He had mustered
the French-Canadian militia on September 11, the very
day Arnold was leaving Cambridge in Massachusetts for
his daring march against Quebec. These men had answered
the call far better in the city of Quebec than anywhere
else. There was also a larger proportion of English-speaking
loyalists here than in Montreal. But no transports brought
troops up the St Lawrence from Boston or the mother
country, and no vessel brought Carleton down. The loyalists
were, however, encouraged by the presence of two small
men-of-war, one of which, the _Hunter_, had been the
guide-ship for Wolfe's boat the night before the Battle
of the Plains. Some minor reinforcements also kept
arriving: veterans from the border settlements and a
hundred and fifty men from Newfoundland. On the 3rd of
November, the day St Johns surrendered to Montgomery, an
intercepted dispatch had warned Cramahe of Arnold's
approach and led him to seize all the boats on the south
shore opposite Quebec. This was by no means his first
precaution. He had sent some men forty miles up the
Chaudiere as soon as the news of the raids on Lake
Champlain and St Johns had arrived at the end of May.
Thus, though neither of them had anticipated such a bolt
from the blue, both Carleton and Cramahe had taken all
the reasonable means within their most restricted power
to provide against unforeseen contingencies.

Arnold's chance of surprising Quebec had been lost ten
days before he was able to cross the St Lawrence; and
when the habitants on the south shore were helping his
men to make scaling-ladders the British garrison on the
north had already become too strong for him. But he was
indefatigable in collecting boats and canoes at the mouth
of the Chaudiere, and at other points higher up than
Cramahe's men had reached when on their mission of
destruction or removal, and he was as capable as ever
when, on the pitch-black night of the 13th, he led his
little flotilla through the gap between the two British
men-of-war, the _Hunter_ and the _Lizard_. The next day
he marched across the Plains of Abraham and saluted Quebec
with three cheers. But meanwhile Colonel Maclean, who
had set out to help Carleton at Montreal and turned back
on hearing the news of St Johns, had slipped into Quebec
on the 12th. So Arnold found himself with less than seven
hundred effectives against the eleven hundred British
who were now behind the walls. After vainly summoning
the city to surrender he retired to Pointe-aux-Trembles,
more than twenty miles up the north shore of the St
Lawrence, there to await the arrival of the victorious
Montgomery.

Meanwhile Montgomery was racing for Carleton and Carleton
was racing for Quebec. Montgomery's advance-guard had
hurried on to Sorel, at the mouth of the Richelieu,
forty-five miles below Montreal, to mount guns that would
command the narrow channel through which the fugitive
governor would have to pass on his way to Quebec. They
had ample time to set the trap; for an incessant nor'-easter
blew up the St Lawrence day after day and held Carleton
fast in Montreal, while, only a league away, Montgomery's
main body was preparing to cross over. Escape by land
was impossible, as the Americans held Berthier, on the
north shore, and had won over the habitants, all the way
down from Montreal, on both sides of the river. At last,
on the afternoon of the 11th, the wind shifted. Immediately
a single cannon-shot was fired, a bugle sounded the _fall
in!_ and 'the whole military establishment' of Montreal
formed up in the barrack square--one hundred and thirty
officers and men, all told. Carleton, 'wrung to the soul,'
as one of his officers wrote home, came on parade 'firm,
unshaken, and serene.' The little column then marched
down to the boats through shuttered streets of timid
neutrals and scowling rebels. The few loyalists who came
to say good-bye to Carleton at the wharf might well have
thought it was the last handshake they would ever get
from a British 'Captain-General and Governor-in-chief'
as they saw him step aboard in the dreary dusk of that
November afternoon. And if he and they had known the
worst they might well have thought their fate was sealed;
for neither of them then knew that both sides of the St
Lawrence were occupied in force at two different places
on the perilous way to Quebec.

The little flotilla of eleven vessels got safely down to
within a few miles of Sorel, when one grounded and delayed
the rest till the wind failed altogether at noon on the
12th. The next three days it blew upstream without a
break. No progress could be made as there was no room to
tack in the narrow passages opposite Sorel. On the third
day an American floating battery suddenly appeared, firing
hard. Behind it came a boat with a flag of truce and the
following summons from Colonel Easton, who commanded
Montgomery's advance-guard at Sorel:

   SIR,--By this you will learn that General Montgomery
   is in Possession of the Fortress Montreal. You are
   very sensible that I am in Possession at this Place,
   and that, from the strength of the United Colonies on
   both sides your own situation is Rendered Very
   disagreeable. I am therefore induced to make you the
   following Proposal, viz.:--That if you will Resign
   your Fleet to me Immediately, without destroying the
   Effects on Board, You and Your men shall be used with
   due civility, together with women & Children on Board.
   To this I shall expect Your direct and Immediate
   answer. Should you Neglect You will Cherefully take
   the Consequences which will follow.

Carleton was surprised: and well he might be. He had not
supposed that Montgomery's men were in any such commanding
position. But, like Cramahe at Quebec, he refused to
answer; whereupon Easton's batteries opened both from
the south shore and from Isle St Ignace. Carleton's
heaviest gun was a 9-pounder; while Easton had four
12-pounders, one of them mounted on a rowing battery that
soon forced the British to retreat. The skipper of the
schooner containing the powder magazine wanted to surrender
on the spot, especially when he heard that the Americans
were getting some hot shot ready for him. But Carleton
retreated upstream, twelve miles above Sorel, to Lavaltrie,
just above Berthier on the north shore, where, on attempting
to land, he was driven back by some Americans and habitants.
Next morning, the 16th, a fateful day for Canada, the
same Major Brown who had failed Ethan Allen at Montreal
came up with a flag of truce to propose that Carleton
should send an officer to see for himself how well all
chance of escape had now been cut off. The offer was
accepted; and Brown explained the situation from the
rebel point of view. 'This is my small battery; and, even
if you should chance to escape, I have a grand battery
at the mouth of the Sorel [Richelieu] which will infallibly
sink all of your vessels. Wait a little till you see the
32-pounders that are now within half-a-mile.' There was
a good deal of Yankee bluff in this warning, especially
as the 32-pounders could not be mounted in time. But the
British officer seemed perfectly satisfied that the way
was completely blocked; and so the Americans felt sure
that Carleton would surrender the following day.

Carleton, however, was not the man to give in till the
very last; and one desperate chance still remained. His
flotilla was doomed. But he might still get through alone
without it. One of the French-Canadian skippers, better
known as 'Le Tourte' or 'Wild Pigeon' than by his own
name of Bouchette because of his wonderfully quick trips,
was persuaded to make the dash for freedom. So Carleton,
having ordered Prescott, his second-in-command, not to
surrender the flotilla before the last possible moment,
arranged for his own escape in a whaleboat. It was with
infinite precaution that he made his preparations, as
the enemy, though confident of taking him, were still on
the alert to prevent such a prize from slipping through
their fingers. He dressed like a habitant from head to
foot, putting on a tasselled _bonnet rouge_ and an _etoffe
du pays_ (grey homespun) suit of clothes, with a red sash
and _bottes sauvages_ like Indian moccasins. Then the
whaleboat was quietly brought alongside. The crew got in
and plied their muffled oars noiselessly down to the
narrow passage between Isle St Ignace and the Isle du
Pas, where they shipped the oars and leaned over the side
to paddle past the nearest battery with the palms of
their hands. It was a moment of breathless excitement;
for the hope of Canada was in their keeping and no turning
back was possible. But the American sentries saw no
furtive French Canadians gliding through that dark November
night and heard no suspicious noises above the regular
ripple of the eddying island current. One tense half-hour
and all was over, The oars were run out again; the men
gave way with a will; and Three Rivers was safely reached
in the morning.

Here Carleton met Captain Napier, who took him aboard
the armed ship _Fell_, in which he continued his journey
to Quebec. He was practically safe aboard the _Fell_;
for Arnold had neither an army strong enough to take
Quebec nor any craft big enough to fight a ship. But the
flotilla above Sorel was doomed. After throwing all its
powder into the St Lawrence it surrendered on the 19th,
the very day Carleton reached Quebec. The astonished
Americans were furious when they found that Carleton had
slipped through their fingers after all. They got Prescott,
whom they hated; and they released Walker, whom Carleton
was taking as a prisoner to Quebec. But no friends and
foes like Walker and Prescott could make up for the loss
of Carleton, who was the heart as well as the head of
Canada at bay.

The exultation of the British more than matched the
disappointment of the Americans. Thomas Ainslie, collector
of customs and captain of militia at Quebec, only expressed
the feelings of all his fellow-loyalists when he made
the following entry in the extremely accurate diary he
kept throughout those troublous times:

'On the 19th (a Happy Day for Quebec!), to the unspeakable
joy of the friends of the Government, and to the utter
Dismay of the abettors of Sedition and Rebellion, General
Carleton arrived in the _Fell_, arm'd ship, accompanied
by an arm'd schooner. We saw our Salvation in his Presence.'


CHAPTER V

BELEAGUERMENT
1775-1776

When Carleton finally turned at bay within the walls of
Quebec the British flag waved over less than a single
one out of the more than a million square miles that had
so recently been included within the boundaries of Canada.
The landward walls cut off the last half-mile of the
tilted promontory which rises three hundred feet above
the St Lawrence but only one hundred above the valley of
the St Charles. This promontory is just a thousand yards
wide where the landward walls run across it, and not much
wider across the world-famous Heights and Plains of
Abraham, which then covered the first two miles beyond.
The whole position makes one of Nature's strongholds when
the enemy can be kept at arm's length. But Carleton had
no men to spare for more than the actual walls and the
narrow little strip of the Lower Town between the base
of the cliff and the St Lawrence. So the enemy closed in
along the Heights' and among the suburbs, besides occupying
any point of vantage they chose across the St Lawrence
or St Charles.

The walls were by no means fit to stand a siege, a fact
which Carleton had frequently reported. But, as the
Americans had neither the men nor the material for a
regular siege, they were obliged to confine themselves
to a mere beleaguerment, with the chance of taking Quebec
by assault. One of Carleton's first acts was to proclaim
that every able-bodied man refusing to bear arms was to
leave the town within four days. But, though this had
the desired effect of clearing out nearly all the dangerous
rebels, the Americans still believed they had enough
sympathizers inside to turn the scale of victory if they
could only manage to take the Lower Town, with all its
commercial property and shipping, or gain a footing
anywhere within the walls.

There were five thousand souls left in Quebec, which was
well provisioned for the winter. The women, children,
and men unfit to bear arms numbered three thousand. The
'exempts' amounted to a hundred and eighty. As there was
a growing suspicion about many of these last, Carleton
paraded them for medical examination at the beginning of
March, when, a good deal more than half were found quite
fit for duty. These men had been malingering all winter
in order to skulk out of danger; so he treated them with
extreme leniency in only putting them on duty as a 'company
of Invalids.' But the slur stuck fast. The only other
exceptions to the general efficiency were a very few
instances of cowardice and many more of slackness. The
militia order-books have repeated entries about men who
turned up late for even important duties as well as about
others whose authorized substitutes were no better than
themselves. But it should be remembered that, as a whole,
the garrison did exceedingly good service and that all
the malingerers and serious delinquents together did not
amount to more than a tenth of its total, which is a
small proportion for such a mixed body.

The effective strength at the beginning of the siege was
eighteen hundred of all ranks. Only one hundred of these
belonged to the regular British garrison in Canada--a
few staff-officers, twenty-two men of the Royal Artillery,
and seventy men of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, a regiment
which was to be commanded in Quebec sixteen years later
by Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent. The Fusiliers
and two hundred and thirty 'Royal Emigrants' were formed
into a little battalion under Colonel Maclean, a first-rate
officer and Carleton's right-hand man in action. 'His
Majesty's Royal Highland Regiment of Emigrants,' which
subsequently became the 84th Foot, now known as the 2nd
York and Lancaster, was hastily raised in 1775 from the
Highland veterans who had settled in the American colonies
after the Peace of 1763. Maclean's two hundred and thirty
were the first men he could get together in time to reach
Quebec. The only other professional fighters were four
hundred blue-jackets and thirty-five marines of H.M.SS.
_Lizard_ and _Hunter_, who were formed into a naval
battalion under their own officers, Captains Hamilton
and McKenzie, Hamilton being made a lieutenant-colonel
and McKenzie a major while doing duty ashore. Fifty
masters and mates of trading vessels were enrolled in
the same battalion. The whole of the shipping was laid
up for the winter in the Cul de Sac, which alone made
the Lower Town a prize worth taking. The 'British Militia'
mustered three hundred and thirty, the 'Canadian Militia'
five hundred and forty-three. These two corps included
practically all the official and business classes in
Quebec and formed nearly half the total combatants. Some
of them took no pay and were not bound to service beyond
the neighbourhood of Quebec, thus being very much like
the Home Guards raised all over Canada and the rest of
the Empire during the Great World War of 1914. All the
militia wore dark green coats with buff waistcoats and
breeches. The total of eighteen hundred was completed by
a hundred and twenty 'artificers,' that is, men who would
now belong to the Engineers, Ordnance, and Army Service
Corps. As the composition of this garrison has been so
often misrepresented, it may be as well to state distinctly
that the past or present regulars of all kinds, soldiers
and sailors together, numbered eight hundred and the
militia and other non-regulars a thousand. The French
Canadians, very few of whom were or had been regulars,
formed less than a third of the whole.

Montgomery and Arnold had about the same total number of
men. Sometimes there were more, sometimes less. But what
made the real difference, and what really turned the
scale, was that the Americans had hardly any regulars
and that their effectives rarely averaged three-quarters
of their total strength. The balance was also against
them in the matter of armament. For, though Morgan's
Virginians had many more rifles than were to be found
among the British, the Americans in general were not so
well off for bayonets and not so well able to use those
they had; while the artillery odds were still more against
them. Carleton's artillery was not of the best. But it
was better than that of the Americans. He decidedly
overmatched them in the combined strength of all kinds
of ordnance--cannons, carronades, howitzers, mortars,
and swivels. Cannons and howitzers fired shot and shell
at any range up to the limit then reached, between two
and three miles. Carronades were on the principle of a
gigantic shotgun, firing masses of bullets with great
effect at very short ranges--less than that of a long
musket-shot, then reckoned at two hundred yards. The
biggest mortars threw 13-inch 224-lb shells to a great
distance. But their main use was for high-angle fire,
such as that from the suburb of St Roch under the walls
of Quebec. Swivels were the smallest kind of ordnance,
firing one-, two-, or three-pound balls at short or medi