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_Title:_ The Father of British Canada:
   A Chronicle of Carleton
   [vol. 12 of the "Chronicles of Canada"]
_Date of first publication:_ 1920
_Author:_ William Charles Henry Wood (1864-1947)
_Illustrator:_ C. W. Jefferys (1869-1951)
_Illustrator:_ Alexander Hay Ritchie (1775-1890)
_Date first posted:_ November 15,2013
_Date last updated:_ November 15,2013
Faded Page eBook #20131117

This ebook was produced by: David Edwards, David T. Jones & the Online
Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

(This file was produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)




       This book is dedicated to the memory of our dear colleague
                          James 'jimmy' Wright
who worked tirelessly and cheerfully with his friends at DPC despite great
  hardship




                          CHRONICLES OF CANADA

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


                                   12

                             THE FATHER OF
                             BRITISH CANADA

                            BY WILLIAM WOOD

Part IV

The Beginnings of British Canada




[Illustration]




                             THE FATHER OF
                             BRITISH CANADA

                        A Chronicle of Carleton

                                   BY

                              WILLIAM WOOD

                                TORONTO
                        GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
                                  1920

     Copyright in all Countries subscribing to the Berne Convention

             Press of The Hunter-Ross Co., Limited, Toronto




                                   to

                         WILLIAM DOUW LIGHTHALL

                        author, patriot, friend




                           Table of Contents

                      I. Guy Carleton
                      II. General Murray
                      III. Governor Carleton
                      IV. Invasion
                      V. Beleaguerment
                      VI. Deliverance
                      VII. The Counterstroke
                      VIII. Guarding the Loyalists
                      IX. Founding Modern Canada
                      X. 'Nunc Dimittis'
                      BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
                      INDEX




                             ILLUSTRATIONS

        THE FIGHT AT THE SAULT-AU-MATELOT
        From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys.

        SIR GUY CARLETON, LORD DORCHESTER
        From an engraving by A. H. Ritchie.

        JAMES MURRAY
        From an engraving in the Dominion Archives.

        British Possessions in North America
        Map

        MONTREAL and QUEBEC CITY
        Map

        RICHARD MONTGOMERY
        From an engraving in the John Ross Robertson Collection,
        Toronto public library.

        BENEDICT ARNOLD
        From an engraving in the John Ross Robertson Collection,
        Toronto public library.




                               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
_lése-majesté_.

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 quarter-master-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.

[Illustration]

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 flagship 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, undermanned, 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 Lévis, 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 Lévis 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 Lévis 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.

[Illustration]

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.[1] 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.[2]

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 régime 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 _corvée_, 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 régime 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.[3] 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.'

[Illustration: British Possessions in North America]

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 Cramahé, 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 régime, 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.




                              CHAPTER III


                           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
régime. 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 M'Govoch, 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 M'Govoch, 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 1627 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 Cramahé. 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 régime. 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 soccage'
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--Voilà 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.

[Illustration: MONTREAL and QUEBEC CITY]

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.[4] 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 murdering his French-Canadian
prisoners at Château Richer because they had fought disguised as
Indians.[5] 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 Chaudiére
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 Cramahé. 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 Chaudiére, 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 Chaudiére,
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 Chaudiére 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 Cramahé 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 Cramahé 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 Chaudiére 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 Cramahé 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
Chaudiére, and at other points higher up than Cramahé'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 Cramahé
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 Tourt'e' 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 _étoffe 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
bluejackets 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 M'Kenzie, Hamilton being made a lieutenant-colonel
and M'Kenzie 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.

[Illustration]

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 medium ranges. They were used at convenient points to stop
rushes, much like modern machine-guns.

Thanks chiefly to Cramahé the defences were not nearly so 'ruinous' as
Arnold at first had thought them. The walls, however useless against the
best siege artillery, were formidable enough against irregular troops
and makeshift batteries. while the warehouses and shipping in the Lower
Town were protected by two stockades, one straight under Cape Diamond,
the other at the corner where the Lower Town turns into the valley of
the St Charles. The first was called the Prés-de-Ville, the second the
Sault-au-Matelot. The shipping was open to bombardment from the Levis
shore. But the Americans had no guns to spare for this till April.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Montgomery's advance was greatly aided by the little flotilla which
Easton had captured at Sorel. Montgomery met Arnold at
Pointe-aux-Trembles, twenty miles above Quebec, on the 2nd of December
and supplied his little half-clad force with the British uniforms taken
at St Johns and Chambly. He was greatly pleased with the magnificent
physique of Arnold's men, the fittest of an originally well-picked lot.
He still had some 'pusillanimous wretches' among his own New Yorkers,
who resented the air of superiority affected by Arnold's New Englanders
and Morgan's Virginians. He felt a well-deserved confidence in
Livingston and some of the English-speaking Canadian 'patriots' whom
Livingston had brought into his camp before St Johns in September. But
he began to feel more and more doubtful about the French Canadians, most
of whom began to feel more and more doubtful about themselves. On the
6th he arrived before Quebec and took up his quarters in Holland House,
two miles beyond the walls, at the far end of the Plains of Abraham. The
same day he sent Carleton the following summons:

    Sir,--Notwithstanding the personal ill-treatment I have received
    at your hands--notwithstanding your cruelty to the unhappy
    Prisoners you have taken, the feelings of humanity induce me to
    have recourse to this expedient to save you from the Destruction
    which hangs over you. Give me leave, Sir, to assure you that I
    am well acquainted with your situation. A great extent of works,
    in their nature incapable of defence, manned with a motley crew
    of sailors, the greatest part our friends. of citizens, who wish
    to see us within their walls, & a few of the worst troops who
    ever stiled themselves Soldiers. The impossibility of relief,
    and the certain prospect of wanting every necessary of life,
    should your opponents confine their operations to a simple
    Blockade, point out the absurdity of resistance. Such is your
    situation! I am at the head of troops accustomed to Success,
    confident of the righteousness of the cause they are engaged in,
    inured to danger, & so highly incensed at your inhumanity,
    illiberal abuse, and the ungenerous means employed to prejudice
    them in the mind of the Canadians that it is with difficulty I
    restrain them till my Batteries are ready from assaulting your
    works, which afford them a fair opportunity of ample vengeance
    and just retaliation. Firing upon a flag of truce, hitherto
    unprecedented, even among savages, prevents my taking the
    ordinary mode of communicating my sentiments. However, I will at
    any rate acquit my conscience. Should you persist in an
    unwarrantable defence, the consequences be upon your own head.
    Beware of destroy ing stores of any kind, Publick or Private, as
    you have done at Montreal and in Three Rivers--If you do, by
    Heaven, there will be no mercy shown.

Though Montgomery wrote bunkum like the common politician of that and
many a later age, he was really a brave soldier. What galled him into
fury was 'grave Carleton's' quiet refusal to recognize either him or any
other rebel commander as the accredited leader of a hostile army. It
certainly must have been exasperating for the general of the Continental
Congress to be reduced to such expedients as tying a grandiloquent
ultimatum to an arrow and shooting it into the beleaguered town. The
charge of firing on flags of truce was another instance of 'talking for
Buncombe.' Carleton never fired on any white flag. But he always sent
the same answer: that he could hold no communication with any rebels
unless they came to implore the king's pardon. This, of course, was an
aggravation of his offensive calmness in the face of so much
revolutionary rage. To individual rebels of all sorts he was, if
anything, over-indulgent. He would not burn the suburbs of Quebec till
the enemy forced him to it, though many of the houses that gave the
Americans the best cover belonged to rebel Canadians. He went out of his
way to be kind to all prisoners, especially if sick or wounded. And it
was entirely owing to his restraining influence that the friendly
Indians had not raided the border settlements of New England during the
summer. Nor was he animated only by the very natural desire of bringing
back rebellious subjects to what he thought their true allegiance, as
his subsequent actions amply proved. He simply acted with the calm
dignity and impartial justice which his position required.

Three days before Christmas the bombardment began in earnest. The
non-combatants soon found, to their equal amazement and delight, that a
good many shells did very little damage if fired about at random. But
news intended to make their flesh creep came in at the same time, and
probably had more effect than the shells on the weak-kneed members of
the community. Seven hundred scaling-ladders, no quarter if Carleton
persisted in holding out, and a prophecy attributed to Montgomery that
he would eat his Christmas dinner either in Quebec or in Hell--these
were some of the blood-curdling items that came in by petticoat or arrow
post. One of the most active purveyors of all this bombast was Jerry
Duggan, a Canadian 'patriot' barber now become a Continental major.

But there was a serious side. Deserters and prisoners, as well as
British adherents who had escaped, all began to tell the same tale,
though with many variations. Montgomery was evidently bent on storming
the walls the first dark night. His own orders showed it.

    Head Quarters, Holland House.
    Near Quebec, 15_th Decr._ 1775.

    The General having in vain offered the most favourable terms of
    accommodation to the Governor of Quebec, & having taken every
    possible step to prevail on the inhabitants to desist from
    seconding him in his wild scheme of defending the Town--for the
    speedy reduction of the only hold possessed by the Ministerial
    Troops in this Province----The soldiers, flushed with continual
    success, confident of the justice of their cause, & relying on
    that Providence which has uniformly protected them, will advance
    with alacrity to the attack of works incapable of being defended
    by the wretched Garrison posted behind them, consisting of
    Sailors unacquainted with the use of arms, of Citizens incapable
    of Soldiers' duty, & of a few miserable Emigrants. The General
    is confident that a vigorous & spirited attack must be attended
    with success. The Troops shall have the effects of the Governor,
    Garrison, & of such as have been active in misleading the
    Inhabitants & distressing the friends of liberty, equally
    divided among them, except the 100th share out of the whole,
    which shall be at the disposal of the General to be given to
    such soldiers as distinguished themselves by their activity &
    bravery, to be sold at public auction: the whole to be conducted
    as soon as the City is in our hands and the inhabitants
    disarmed.

It was a week after these orders had been written before the first
positive news of the threatened assault was brought into town by an
escaped British prisoner who, strangely enough, bore the name of Wolfe.
Wolfe's escape naturally caused a postponement of Montgomery's design
and a further council of war. Unlike most councils of war this one was
full of fight.   Three feints were to be made at different points while
the real attack was to be driven home at Cape Diamond. But just after
this decision had been reached two rebel Montrealers came down and, in
another debate, carried the day for another plan. These men, Antell and
Price, were really responsible for the final plan, which, like its
predecessor, did not meet with Montgomery's approval. Montgomery wanted
to make a breach before trying the walls. But he was no more than the
chairman of a committee. and this egregious committee first decided to
storm the unbroken walls and then changed to an attack on the Lower Town
only. Antell was Montgomery's engineer. Price was a red-hot agitator.
Both were better at politics than soldiering. Their argument was that if
the Lower Town could be taken the Quebec militia would force Carleton to
surrender in order to save the warehouses, shipping, and other valuable
property along the waterfront, and that even if Carleton held out in
debate he would soon be brought to his knees by the Americans, who would
march through the gates, which were to be opened by the 'patriots'
inside.

Another week passed. and Montgomery had not eaten his Christmas dinner
either in Quebec or in the other place. But both sides knew the crisis
must be fast approaching. for the New Yorkers had sworn that they would
not stay a minute later than the end of the year, when their term of
enlistment was up. Thus every day that passed made an immediate assault
more likely, as Montgomery had to strike before his own men left him.
Yet New Year's Eve itself began without the sign of an alarm.

Carleton had been sleeping in his clothes at the Récollets', night after
night, so that he might be first on parade at the general rendezvous on
the Place d'Armes, which stood near the top of Mountain Hill, the only
road between the Upper and the Lower Town. Officers and men off duty had
been following his example. and every one was ready to turn out at a
moment's notice.

A north-easterly snowstorm was blowing furiously, straight up the St
Lawrence, making Quebec a partly seen blur to the nearest American
patrols and the Heights of Abraham a wild sea of whirling drifts to the
nearest British sentries. One o'clock passed, and nothing stirred. But
when two o'clock struck at Holland House Montgomery rose and began to
put the council's plan in operation. The Lower Town was to be attacked
at both ends. The Prés-de-Ville barricade was to be carried by
Montgomery and the Sault-au-Matelot by Arnold, while Livingston was to
distract Carleton's attention as much as possible by making a feint
against the landward walls, where the British still expected the real
attack. Livingston's Canadian fighting 'patriots' waded through the
drifts, against the storm, across the Plains, and took post close in on
the far side of Cape Diamond, only eighty yards from the same walls that
were to have been stormed some days before. Jerry Duggan's parasitic
Canadian 'patriots' took post in the suburb of St John and thence round
to Palace Gate. Montgomery led his own column straight to Wolfe's Cove,
whence he marched in along the narrow path between the cliff and the St
Lawrence till he reached the spot at the foot of Cape Diamond just under
the right of Livingston's line. Arnold, whose quarters were in the
valley of the St Charles, took post in St Roch, with a mortar battery to
fire against the walls and a column of men to storm the
Sault-au-Matelot. Livingston's and Jerry Duggan's whole command numbered
about four hundred men, Montgomery's five hundred, Arnold's six. The
opposing totals were fifteen hundred Americans against seventeen hundred
British. There was considerable risk of confusion between friend and
foe, as most of the Americans, especially Arnold's men, wore captured
British uniforms with nothing to distinguish them but odds and ends of
their former kits and a sort of paper hatband bearing the inscription
_Liberty or Death_.

A little after four the sentries on the walls at Cape Diamond saw lights
flashing about in front of them and were just going to call the guard
when Captain Malcolm Fraser of the Royal Emigrants came by on his rounds
and saw other lights being set out in regular order like lamps in a
street. He instantly turned out the guards and pickets. The drums beat
to arms. Every church bell in the city pealed forth its alarm into that
wild night. The bugles blew. The men off duty swarmed on to the Place
d'Armes, where Carleton, calm and intrepid as ever, took post with the
general reserve and waited. There was nothing for him to do just yet.
Everything that could have been foreseen had already been amply provided
for. and in his quiet confidence his followers found their own.

Towards five o'clock two green rockets shot up from Montgomery's
position beside the Anse des Mères under Cape Diamond. This was the
signal for attack. Montgomery's column immediately struggled on again
along the path leading round the foot of the Cape towards the
Prés-de-Ville barricade. Livingston's serious 'patriots' on the top of
the Cape changed their dropping shots into a hot fire against the walls.
while Jerry Duggan's little mob of would-be looters shouted and blazed
away from safer cover in the suburbs of St John and St Roch. Arnold's
mortars pitched shells all over the town. while his storming-party
advanced towards the Sault-au-Matelot barricade. Carleton, naturally
anxious about the landward walls, sent some of the British militia to
reinforce the men at Cape Diamond, which, as he knew, Montgomery
considered the best point of attack. The walls lower down did not seem
to be in any danger from Jerry Duggan's 'patriots,' whose noisy
demonstration was at once understood to be nothing but an empty feint.
The walls facing the St Charles were well manned and well gunned by the
naval battalion. Those facing the St Lawrence, though weak in
themselves, were practically impregnable, as the cliffs could not be
scaled by any formed body. The Lower Town, however, was by no means so
safe, in spite of its two barricades. The general uproar was now so
great that Carleton could not distinguish the firing there from what was
going on elsewhere. But it was at these two points that the real attack
was rapidly developing.

The first decisive action took place at Prés-de-Ville. The guard there
consisted of fifty men--John Coffin, who was a merchant of Quebec,
Sergeant Hugh M'Quarters of the Royal Artillery, Captain Barnsfair, a
merchant skipper, with fifteen mates and skippers like himself, and
thirty French Canadians under Captain Chabot and Lieutenant Picard.
These fifty men had to guard a front of only as many feet. On their
right Cape Diamond rose almost sheer. On their left raged the stormy St
Lawrence. They had a tiny block-house next to the cliff and four small
guns on the barricade, all double-charged with canister and grape. They
had heard the dropping shots on the top of the Cape for nearly an hour
and had been quick to notice the change to a regular hot fire. But they
had no idea whether their own post was to be attacked or not till they
suddenly saw the head of Montgomery's column halting within fifty paces
of them. A man came forward cautiously and looked at the barricade. The
storm was in his face. The defences were wreathed in whirling snow. And
the men inside kept silent as the grave. When he went back a little
group stood for a couple of minutes in hurried consultation. Then
Montgomery waved his sword, called out 'Come on, brave boys, Quebec is
ours!' and led the charge. The defenders let the Americans get about
half-way before Barnsfair shouted 'Fire!' Then the guns and muskets
volleyed together, cutting down the whole front of the densely massed
column. Montgomery, his two staff-officers, and his ten leading men were
instantly killed. Some more farther back were wounded. And just as the
fifty British fired their second round the rest of the five hundred
Americans turned and ran in wild confusion.

A few minutes later a man whose identity was never established came
running from the Lower Town to say that Arnold's men had taken the
Sault-au-Matelot barricade. If this was true it meant that the
Prés-de-Ville fifty would be caught between two fires. Some of them made
as if to run back and reach Mountain Hill before the Americans could cut
them off. But Coffin at once threatened to kill the first man to move.
and by the time an artillery officer had arrived with reinforcements
perfect order had been restored. This officer, finding he was not wanted
there, sent back to know where else he was to go, and received an answer
telling him to hurry to the Sault-au-Matelot. When he arrived there,
less than half a mile off, he found that desperate street fighting had
been going on for over an hour.

Arnold's advance had begun at the same time as Livingston's
demonstration and Montgomery's attack. But his task was very different
and the time required much longer. There were three obstacles to be
overcome. First, his men had to run the gauntlet of the fire from the
bluejackets ranged along the Grand Battery, which faced the St Charles
at its mouth and overlooked the narrow little street of Sous-le-Cap at a
height of fifty or sixty feet. Then they had to take the small advanced
barricade, which stood a hundred yards on the St Charles side of the
actual Sault-au-Matelot or Sailor's Leap, which is the north-easterly
point of the Quebec promontory and nearly a hundred feet high. Finally,
they had to round this point and attack the regular Sault-au-Matelot
barricade. This second barricade was about a hundred yards long, from
the rock to the river. It crossed Sault-au-Matelot Street and St Peter
Street, which were the same then as now. But it ended on a wharf
half-way down the modern St James Street, as the outer half of this
street was then a natural strand completely covered at high tide. It was
much closer than the Prés-de-Ville barricade was to Mountain Hill, at
the top of which Carleton held his general reserve ready in the Place
d'Armes. and it was fairly strong in material and armament. But it was
at first defended by only a hundred men.

The American forlorn hope, under Captain Oswald, got past most of the
Grand Battery unscathed. But by the time the main body was following
under Morgan the British bluejackets were firing down from the walls at
less than point-blank range. The driving snow, the clumps of bushes on
the cliff, and the little houses in the street below all gave the
Americans some welcome cover. But many of them were hit. while the gun
they were towing through the drifts on a sleigh stuck fast and had to be
abandoned. Captain Dearborn, the future commander-in-chief of the
American army in the War of 1812, noted in his diary that he 'met the
wounded men very thick' as he was bringing up the rear. When the forlorn
hope reached the advanced barricade Arnold halted it till the supports
had come up. The loss of the gun and the worrying his main body was
receiving from the sailors along the Grand Battery spoilt his original
plan of smashing in the barricade by shell fire while Morgan circled
round its outer flank on the ice of the tidal flats and took it in rear.
So he decided on a frontal attack. When he thought he had a fair chance
he stepped to the front and shouted, 'Now, boys, all together, rush!'
But before he could climb the barricade he was shot through the leg. For
some time he propped himself up against a house and, leaning on his
rifle, continued encouraging his men, who were soon firing through the
port-holes as well as over the top. But presently growing faint from
loss of blood he had to be carried off the field to the General Hospital
on the banks of the St Charles.

The men now called out for a lead from Morgan, who climbed a ladder,
leaped the top, and fell under a gun inside. In another minute the whole
forlorn hope had followed him, while the main body came close behind.
The guard, not strong in numbers and weak in being composed of young
militiamen, gave way but kept on firing. 'Down with your arms if you
want quarter!' yelled Morgan, whose men were in overwhelming strength.
and the guard surrendered. A little way beyond, just under the bluff of
the Sault-au-Matelot, the British supports, many of whom were Seminary
students, also surrendered to Morgan, who at once pressed on, round the
corner of the Sault-au-Matelot, and halted in sight of the second or
regular barricade. What was to be done now? Where was Montgomery? How
strong was the barricade. and had it been reinforced? It could not be
turned because the cliff rose sheer on one flank while the icy St
Lawrence lashed the other. Had Morgan known that there were only a
hundred men behind it when he attacked its advanced barricade he might
have pressed on at all costs and carried it by assault. But it looked
strong, there were guns on its platforms, and it ran across two streets.
His hurried council of war over-ruled him, as Montgomery's council had
over-ruled the original plan of storming the walls. and so his men began
a desultory fight in the streets and from the houses.

This was fatal to American success. The original British hundred were
rapidly reinforced. The artillery officer who had found that he was not
needed at the Prés-de-Ville after Montgomery's defeat, and who had
hurried across the intervening half-mile, now occupied the corner
houses, enlarged the embrasures, and trained his guns on the houses
occupied by the enemy. Detachments of Fusiliers and Royal Emigrants also
arrived, as did the thirty-five masters and mates of merchant vessels
who were not on guard with Barnsfair at the Prés-de-Ville. Thus, what
with soldiers, sailors, and militiamen of both races, the main
Sault-au-Matelot barricade was made secure against being rushed like the
outer one. But there was plenty of fighting, with some confusion at
close quarters caused by the British uniforms which both sides were
wearing. A Herculean sailor seized the first ladder the Americans set
against the barricade, hauled it up, and set it against the window of a
house out of the far end of which the enemy were firing. Major Nairne
and Lieutenant Dambourges of the Royal Emigrants at once climbed in at
the head of a storming-party and wild work followed with the bayonet.
All the Americans inside were either killed or captured. Meanwhile a
vigorous British nine-pounder had been turned on another house they
occupied. This house was likewise battered in, so that its surviving
occupants had to run into the street, where they were well plied with
musketry by the regulars and militiamen. The chance for a sortie then
seeming favourable, Lieutenant Anderson of the Navy headed his
thirty-five merchant mates and skippers in a rush along Sault-au-Matelot
Street. But his effort was premature. Morgan shot him dead, and Morgan's
Virginians drove the seamen back inside the barricade.

Carleton had of course kept in perfect touch with every phase of the
attack and defence. and now, fearing no surprise against the walls in
the growing daylight, had decided on taking Arnold's men in rear. To do
this he sent Captain Lawes of the Royal Engineers and Captain M'Dougall
of the Royal Emigrants with a hundred and twenty men out through Palace
Gate. This detachment had hardly reached the advanced barricade before
they fell in with the enemy's rearguard, which they took by complete
surprise and captured to a man. Leaving M'Dougall to secure these
prisoners before following on, Lawes pushed eagerly forward, round the
corner of the Sault-au-Matelot cliff, and, running in among the
Americans facing the main barricade, called out, 'You are all my
prisoners!' 'No, we're not. you're ours!' they answered. 'No, no,'
replied Lawes, as coolly as if on parade, 'don't mistake yourselves, I
vow to God you're mine!' 'But where are your men?' asked the astonished
Americans. and then Lawes suddenly found that he was utterly alone! The
roar of the storm and the work of securing the prisoners on the far side
of the advanced barricade had prevented the men who should have followed
him from understanding that only a few were needed with M'Dougall. But
Lawes put a bold face on it and answered, 'O, Ho, make yourselves easy!
My men are all round here and they'll be with you in a twinkling.' He
was then seized and disarmed. Some of the Americans called out, 'Kill
him! Kill him!' But a Major Meigs protected him. The whole parley had
lasted about ten minutes when M'Dougall came running up with the missing
men, released Lawes, and made prisoners of the nearest Americans. Lawes
at once stepped forward and called on the rest to surrender. Morgan was
for cutting his way through. A few men ran round by the wharf and
escaped on the tidal flats of the St Charles. But, after a hurried
consultation, the main body, including Morgan, laid down their arms.
This was decisive. The British had won the fight.

The complete British loss in killed and wounded was wonderfully small,
only thirty, just one-tenth of the corresponding American loss, which
was large out of all proportion. Nearly half of the fifteen hundred
Americans had gone--over four hundred prisoners and about three hundred
killed and wounded. Nor were the mere numbers the most telling point
about it. for the worse half escaped--Livingston's Montreal 'patriots,'
many of whom had done very little fighting, Montgomery's time-expired
New Yorkers, most of whom wanted to go home, and Jerry Duggan's
miscellaneous rabble, all of whom wanted a maximum of plunder with a
minimum of war.

The British victory was as nearly perfect as could have been desired. It
marked the turn of the tide in a desperate campaign which might have
resulted in the total loss of Canada. And it was of the greatest
significance and happiest augury because all the racial elements of this
new and vast domain had here united for the first time in defence of
that which was to be their common heritage. In Carleton's little
garrison of regulars and militia, of bluejackets, marines, and merchant
seamen, there were Frenchmen and French Canadians, there were
Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotsmen, Welshmen, Orcadians, and Channel
Islanders, there were a few Newfoundlanders, and there were a good many
of those steadfast Royal Emigrants who may be fitly called the
fore-runners of the United Empire Loyalists. Yet, in spite of this
remarkable significance, no public memorial of Carleton has ever been
set up. and it was only in the twentieth century that the Dominion first
thought of commemorating his most pregnant victory by placing tablets to
mark the sites of the two famous barricades.

                 *        *        *        *        *

As soon as things had quieted down within the walls Carleton sent out
search-parties to bring in the dead for decent burial and to see if any
of the wounded had been overlooked. James Thompson, the assistant
engineer, saw a frozen hand protruding from a snowdrift at
Prés-de-Ville. It was Montgomery's. The thirteen bodies were dug out and
Thompson was ordered to have a 'genteel coffin made for Mr Montgomery,'
who was buried in the wall just above St Louis Gate by the Anglican
chaplain. Thompson kept Montgomery's sword, which was given to the
Livingston family more than a century later.

The beleaguerment continued, in a half-hearted way, till the spring. The
Americans received various small reinforcements, which eventually
brought their total up to what it had been under Montgomery's command.
But there were no more assaults. Arnold grew dissatisfied and finally
went to Montreal. while Wooster, the new general, who arrived on the 1st
of April, was himself succeeded by Thomas, an ex-apothecary, on the 1st
of May. The suburb of St Roch was burnt down after the victory. so the
American snipers were bereft of some very favourite cover, and this,
with other causes, kept the bulk of the besiegers at an ineffective
distance from the walls.

The British garrison had certain little troubles of its own. for
discipline always tends to become irksome after a great effort. Carleton
was obliged to stop the retailing of spirits for fear the slacker men
would be getting out of hand. The guards and duties were made as easy as
possible, especially for the militia. But the 'snow-shovel parade' was
an imperative necessity. The winter was very stormy, and the drifts
would have frequently covered the walls and even the guns if they had
not promptly been dug out. The cold was also unusually severe. One early
morning in January an angry officer was asking a sentry why he hadn't
challenged him, when the sentry said, 'God bless your Honour! and I'm
glad you're come, for I'm blind!' Then it was found that his eyelids
were frozen fast together.

News came in occasionally from the outside world. There was intense
indignation among the garrison when they learned that the American
commanders in Montreal were imprisoning every Canadian officer who would
not surrender his commission. Such an unheard-of outrage was worthy of
Walker. But others must have thought of it. for Walker was now in
Philadelphia giving all the evidence he could against Prescott and other
British officers. Bad news for the rebels was naturally welcomed,
especially anything about their growing failure to raise troops in
Canada. On hearing of Montgomery's defeat the Continental Congress had
passed a resolution, addressed to the 'Inhabitants of Canada,' declaring
that 'we will never abandon you to the unrelenting fury of your and our
enemies.' But there were no trained soldiers to back this up. and the
raw militia, though often filled with zeal and courage, could do nothing
to redress the increasingly adverse balance. In the middle of March the
Americans sent in a summons. But Carleton refused to receive it. and the
garrison put a wooden horse and a bundle of hay on the walls with a
placard bearing the inscription, 'When this horse has eaten this bunch
of hay we will surrender.' Some excellent practice made with 13-inch
shells sent the Americans flying from their new battery at Levis. and by
the 17th of March one of the several exultant British diarists, whose
anonymity must have covered an Irish name, was able to record that
'this, being St Patrick's Day, the Governor, who is a true Hibernian,
has requested the garrison to put off keeping it till the 17th of May,
when he promises, they shall be enabled to do it properly, and with the
usual solemnities.'

A fortnight later a plot concerted between the American prisoners and
their friends outside was discovered just in time. With tools supplied
by traitors they were to work their way out of their quarters, overpower
the guard at the nearest gate, set fire to the nearest houses in three
different streets, turn the nearest guns inwards on the town, and shout
'Liberty for ever!' as an additional signal to the storming-party that
was to be waiting to confirm their success. Carleton seized the chance
of turning this scheme against the enemy. Three safe bonfires were set
ablaze. The marked guns were turned inwards and fired at the town with
blank charges. And the preconcerted shout was raised with a will. But
the besiegers never stirred. After this the Old-Countrymen among the
prisoners, who had taken the oath and enlisted in the garrison, were
disarmed and confined, while the rest were more strictly watched.

Two brave attempts were made by French Canadians to reach Quebec with
reinforcements, one headed by a seigneur, the other by a parish priest.
Carleton had sent word to M. de Beaujeu, seigneur of Crane Island, forty
miles below Quebec, asking him to see if he could cut off the American
detachment on the Levis shore. De Beaujeu raised three hundred and fifty
men. But Arnold sent over reinforcements. A habitant betrayed his
fellow-countrymen's advance-guard. A dozen French Canadians were then
killed or wounded while forty were taken prisoners. whereupon the rest
dispersed to their homes. The other attempt was made by Father Bailly,
whose little force of about fifty men was also betrayed. Entrapped in a
country-house these men fought bravely till nearly half their number had
been killed or wounded and the valiant priest had been mortally hit.
They then surrendered to a much stronger force which had lost more men
than they.

This was on the 6th of April, just before Arnold was leaving in disgust.
Wooster made an effort to use his new artillery to advantage by
converging the fire of three batteries, one close in on the Heights of
Abraham, another from across the mouth of the St Charles, and the third
from Levis. But the combination failed: the batteries were too light for
the work and overmatched by the guns on the walls, the practice was bad,
and the effect was nil. On the 3rd of May the new general, Thomas, an
enterprising man, tried a fireship, which was meant to destroy all the
shipping in the Cul de Sac. It came on, under full sail, in a very
threatening manner. But the crew lost their nerve at the critical
moment, took to the boats too soon, and forgot to lash the helm. The
vessel immediately flew up into the wind and, as the tidal stream was
already changing, began to drift away from the Cul de Sac just when she
burst into flame. The result, as described by an enthusiastic British
diarist, was that 'she affoard'd a very pritty prospect while she was
floating down the River, every now & then sending up Sky rackets, firing
of Cannon or bursting of Shells, & so continued till She disappear'd in
the Channell.'

Three days later, on the 6th of May, when the beleaguerment had lasted
precisely five months, the sound of distant gunfire came faintly up the
St Lawrence with the first breath of the dawn wind from the east. The
sentries listened to make sure. then called the sergeants of the guards,
who sent word to the officers on duty, who, in their turn, sent word to
Carleton. By this time there could be no mistake. The breeze was
freshening. the sound was gradually nearing Quebec. and there could
hardly be room for doubting that it came from the vanguard of the
British fleet. The drums beat to arms, the church bells rang, the news
flew round to every household in Quebec. and before the tops of the
Surprise frigate were seen over the Point of Levy every battery was
fully manned, every battalion was standing ready on the Grand Parade,
and every non-combatant man, woman, and child was lining the seaward
wall. The regulation shot was fired across her bows as she neared the
city. whereupon she fired three guns to leeward, hoisted the private
signal, and showed the Union Jack. Then, at last, a cheer went up that
told both friend and foe of British victory and American defeat. By a
strange coincidence the parole for this triumphal day was St George,
while the parole appointed for the victorious New Year's Eve had been St
Denis. so that the patron saints of France and England happen to be
associated with the two great days on which the stronghold of Canada was
saved by land and sea.

The same tide brought in two other men-of-war. Some soldiers of the
29th, who were on board the _Surprise_, were immediately landed,
together with the marines from all three vessels. Carleton called for
volunteers from the militia to attack the Americans at once. and nearly
every man, both of the French- and of the English-speaking corps,
stepped forward. There was joy in every heart that the day for striking
back had come at last. The columns marched gaily through the gates and
deployed into line at the double on the Heights outside. The Americans
fired a few hurried shots and then ran for dear life, leaving their
dinners cooking, and, in some cases, even their arms behind them. The
Plains were covered with flying enemies and strewn with every sort of
impediment to flight, from a cannon to a loaf of bread. Quebec had been
saved by British sea-power. and, with it, the whole vast dominion of
which it was the key.

[Illustration]




                               CHAPTER VI


                              DELIVERANCE


                                  1776

The Continental Congress had always been anxious to have delegates from
the Fourteenth Colony. But as these never came the Congress finally
decided to send a special commission to examine the whole civil and
military state of Canada and see what could be done. The news of
Montgomery's death and defeat was a very unwelcome surprise. But
reinforcements were being sent. the Canadians could surely be persuaded.
and a Congressional commission must be able to set things right. This
commission was a very strong one. Benjamin Franklin was the chairman.
Samuel Chase of Maryland and Charles Carroll of Carrollton were the
other members. Carroll's brother, the future archbishop of Baltimore,
accompanied them as a sort of ecclesiastical diplomatist. Franklin's
prestige and the fact that he was to set up a 'free' printing-press in
Montreal were to work wonders with the educated classes at once and with
the uneducated masses later on. Chase would appeal to all the reasonable
'moderates.' Carroll, a great landlord and the nearest approach yet made
to an American millionaire, was expected to charm the Canadian noblesse.
while the fact that he and his exceedingly diplomatic brother were
devout Roman Catholics was thought to be by itself a powerful argument
with the clergy.

When they reached St Johns towards the end of April the commissioners
sent on a courier to announce their arrival and prepare for their proper
reception in Montreal. But the ferryman at Laprairie positively refused
to accept Continental paper money at any price. and it was only when a
'Friend of Liberty' gave him a dollar in silver that he consented to
cross the courier over the St Lawrence. The same hitch occurred in
Montreal, where the same Friend of Liberty had to pay in silver before
the cab-drivers consented to accept a fare either from him or from the
commissioners. Even the name of Carroll of Carrollton was conjured with
in vain. The French Canadians remembered Bigot's bad French paper. Their
worst suspicions were being confirmed about the equally bad American
paper. So they demanded nothing but hard cash--_argent dur_. However,
the first great obstacle had been successfully overcome. and so, on the
strength of five borrowed silver dollars, the accredited commissioners
of the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies made their state
entry into what they still hoped to call the Fourteenth Colony. But
silver dollars were scarce. and on the 1st of May the crestfallen
commissioners had to send the Congress a financial report which may best
be summed up in a pithy phrase which soon became proverbial--'Not worth
a Continental.'

On the 10th of May they heard the bad news from Quebec and increased the
panic among their Montreal sympathizers by hastily leaving the city lest
they should be cut off by a British man-of-war. Franklin foresaw the end
and left for Philadelphia accompanied by the Reverend John Carroll,
whose twelve days of disheartening experience with the leading
French-Canadian clergy had convinced him that they were impervious to
any arguments or blandishments emanating from the Continental Congress.
It was a sad disillusionment for the commissioners, who had expected to
be settling the affairs of a fourteenth colony instead of being obliged
to leave the city from which they were to have enlightened the people
with a free press. In their first angry ignorance they laid the whole
blame on their unfortunate army for its 'disgraceful flight' from
Quebec. A week later, when Chase and Charles Carroll ought to have known
better, they were still assuring the Congress that this 'shameful
retreat' was 'the principal cause of all the disorders' in the army. and
even after the whole story ought to have been understood neither they
nor the Congress gave their army its proper due. But, as a matter of
fact, the American position had become untenable the moment the British
fleet began to threaten the American line of communication with
Montreal. For the rest, the American volunteers, all things considered,
had done very well indeed. Arnold's march was a truly magnificent feat.
Morgan's men had fought with great courage at the Sault-au-Matelot. And
though Montgomery's assault might well have been better planned and
executed, we must remember that the good plan, which had been rejected,
was the military one, while the bad plan, which had been adopted, was
concocted by mere politicians. Nor were 'all the disorders' so severely
condemned by the commissioners due to the army alone. Far from it,
indeed. The root of 'all the disorders' lay in the fact that a makeshift
government was obliged to use makeshift levies for an invasion which
required a regular army supported by a fleet.

On the 19th of May another disaster happened, this time above Montreal.
The Congress had not felt strong enough to attack the western posts. So
Captain Forster of the 8th Foot, finding that he was free to go
elsewhere, had come down from Oswegatchie (the modern Ogdensburg) with a
hundred whites and two hundred Indians and made prisoners of four
hundred and thirty Americans at the Cedars, about thirty miles up the St
Lawrence from Montreal. Forster was a very good officer. Butterfield,
the American commander, was a very bad one. And that made all the
difference. After two days of feeble and misdirected defence Butterfield
surrendered three hundred and fifty men. The other eighty were
reinforcements who walked into the trap next day. Forster now had four
American prisoners for every white soldier of his own. while Arnold was
near by, having come up from Sorel to Lachine with a small but
determined force. So Forster, carefully pointing out to his prisoners
their danger if the Indians should be reinforced and run wild, offered
them their freedom on condition that they should be regarded as being
exchanged for an equal number of British prisoners in American hands.
This was agreed to and never made a matter of dispute afterwards. But
the second article Butterfield accepted was a stipulation that, while
the released British were to be free to fight again, the released
Americans were not. and it was over this point that a bitter controversy
raged. The British authorities maintained that all the terms were
binding because they had been accepted by an officer commissioned by the
Congress. The Congress maintained that the disputed article was obtained
by an unfair threat of an Indian massacre and that it was so one-sided
as to be good for nothing but repudiation.

'The Affair at the Cedars' thus became a sorely vexed question. In
itself it would have died out among later and more important issues if
it had not been used as a torch to fire American public opinion at a
time when the Congress was particularly anxious to make the Thirteen
Colonies as anti-British as possible. Most of Forster's men were
Indians. He had reminded Butterfield how dangerous an increasing number
of Indians might become. Butterfield was naturally anxious to prove that
he had yielded only to overwhelming odds and horrifying risks. Americans
in general were ready to believe anything bad about the Indians and the
British. The temptation and the opportunity seemed made for each other.
And so a quite imaginary Indian massacre conveniently appeared in the
American news of the day and helped to form the kind of public opinion
which was ardently desired by the party of revolt.

The British evidence in this and many another embittering dispute about
the Indians need not be cited, since the following items of American
evidence do ample justice to both sides. In the spring of 1775 the
Massachusetts Provincial Congress sent Samuel Kirkland to exhort the
Iroquois 'to whet their hatchet and be prepared to defend our liberties
and lives'. while Ethan Allen asked the Indians round Vermont to treat
him 'like a brother and ambush the regulars.' In 1776 the Continental
Congress secretly resolved 'that it is highly expedient to engage the
Indians in the service of the United Colonies.' This was before the
members knew about the Affair at the Cedars. A few days later Washington
was secretly authorized to raise two thousand Indians. while agents were
secretly sent 'to engage the Six Nations in our Interest, on the best
terms that can be procured.' Within three weeks of this secret
arrangement the Declaration of Independence publicly accused the king of
trying 'to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless
Indian savages.' Four days after this public accusation the Congress
gave orders for raising Indians along 'the Penobscot, the St John, and
in Nova Scotia'. and an entry to that effect was made in its Secret
Journal. Yet, before the month was out, the same Congress publicly
appealed to 'The People of Ireland' in the following words: 'The wild
and barbarous savages of the wilderness have been solicited by gifts to
take up the hatchet against us, and instigated to deluge our settlements
with the blood of defenceless women and children.'

The American defeats at Quebec and at the Cedars completely changed the
position of the two remaining commissioners. They had expected to
control a victorious advance. They found themselves the highest
authority present with a disastrous retreat. Thereupon they made blunder
after blunder. Public interest and parliamentary control are the very
life of armies and navies in every country which enjoys the blessings of
self-government. But civilian interference is death. Yet Chase and
Carroll practically abolished rank in the disintegrating army by
becoming an open court of appeal to every junior with a grievance or a
plan. There never was an occasion on which military rule was more
essential in military matters. Yet, though they candidly admitted that
they had 'neither abilities nor inclination' to command, these wretched
misrulers tried to do their duty both to the Congress and the army by
turning the camp into a sort of town meeting where the best orders had
no chance whatever against the loudest 'sentiments.' They had themselves
found the root of all evil in the retreat from Quebec. Their army, like
every impartial critic, found it in 'the Commissioners and the
smallpox'--with the commissioners easily first. The smallpox had been
bad enough at Quebec. It became far worse at Sorel. There were few
doctors, fewer medicines, and not a single hospital. The reinforcements
melted away with the army they were meant to strengthen. Famine
threatened both, even in May. Finally the commissioners left for home at
the end of the month. But even their departure could no longer make the
army's burden light enough to bear.

Thomas, the ex-apothecary, who did his best to stem the adverse tide of
trouble, caught the smallpox, became blind, and died at the beginning of
June. Sullivan, the fourth commander in less than half a year, having
determined that one more effort should be made, arrived at Sorel with
new battalions after innumerable difficulties by the way. He was led to
believe that Carleton's reinforcements had come from Nova Scotia, not
from England. and this encouraged him to push on farther. He was
naturally of a very sanguine temper. and Thompson, his
second-in-command, heartily approved of the dash. The new troops cheered
up and thought of taking Quebec itself. But, after getting misled by
their guide, floundering about in bottomless bogs, and losing a great
deal of very precious time, they found Three Rivers defended by
entrenchments, superior numbers, and the vanguard of the British fleet.
Nevertheless they attacked bravely on the 8th of June. But, taken in
front and flank by well-drilled regulars and well-handled men-of-war,
they presently broke and fled. Every avenue of escape was closed as they
wandered about the woods and bogs. But Carleton, who came up from Quebec
after the battle was all over, purposely opened the way to Sorel. He had
done his best to win the hearts of his prisoners at Quebec and had
succeeded so well that when they returned to Crown Point they were kept
away from the rest of the American army lest their account of his
kindness should affect its anti-British zeal. Now that he was in
overwhelming force he thought he saw an even better chance of earning
gratitude from rebels and winning converts to the loyal side by a still
greater act of clemency.

The battle of Three Rivers was the last action fought on Canadian soil.
The American army retreated to Sorel and up the Richelieu to St Johns,
where it was joined by Arnold, who had just evacuated Montreal. Most of
the Friends of Liberty in Canada fled either with or before their beaten
forces. So, like the ebbing of a whole river system, the main and
tributary streams of fugitives drew south towards Lake Champlain. The
neutral French Canadians turned against them at once. though not to the
extent of making an actual attack. The habitant cared nothing for the
incomprehensible constitutionalities over which different kinds of
British foreigners were fighting their exasperating civil war. But he
did know what the king's big fleet and army meant. He did begin to feel
that his own ways of life were safer with the loyal than with the rebel
side. And he quite understood that he had been forced to give a good
deal for nothing ever since the American commissioners had authorized
their famishing army to commandeer his supplies and pay him with their
worthless 'Continentals.'

From St Johns the worn-out Americans crawled homewards in stray,
exhausted parties, dropping fast by the way as they went. 'I did not
look into a hut or a tent,' wrote a horrified observer, 'in which I did
not find a dead or dying man.' Disorganization became so complete that
no exact returns were ever made up. But it is known that over ten
thousand armed men crossed into Canada from first to last and that not
far short of half this total either found their death beyond the line or
brought it back with them to Lake Champlain.

It was on what long afterwards became Dominion Day--the 1st of
July--that the ruined American forces reassembled at Crown Point, having
abandoned all hope of making Canada the Fourteenth Colony. Three days
later the disappointed Thirteen issued the Declaration of Independence
which virtually proclaimed that Canadians and Americans should
thenceforth live a separate life.




                              CHAPTER VII


                           THE COUNTERSTROKE


                               1776-1778

Six thousand British troops, commanded by Burgoyne, and four thousand
Germans, commanded by Baron Riedesel, had arrived at Quebec before the
battle of Three Rivers. Quebec itself had then been left to the care of
a German garrison under a German commandant, 'that excellent man,
Colonel Baum,' while the great bulk of the army had marched up the St
Lawrence, as we have seen already. Such a force as this new one of
Carleton's was expected to dismay the rebel colonies. And so, to a great
extent, it did. With a much larger force in the colonies themselves the
king was confidently expected to master his unruly subjects, no matter
how much they proclaimed their independence. The Loyalists were
encouraged. The trimmers prepared to join them. Only those steadfast
Americans who held their cause dearer than life itself were still
determined to venture all. But they formed the one party that really
knew its own mind. This gave them a great advantage over the king's
party, which, hampered at every turn by the opposition in the mother
country, was never quite sure whether it ought to strike hard or gently
in America.

On one point, however, everybody was agreed. The command of Lake
Champlain was essential to whichever side would hold its own. The
American forces at Crown Point might be too weak for the time being. But
Arnold knew that even ten thousand British soldiers could not overrun
the land without a naval force to help them. So he got together a
flotilla which had everything its own way during the time that Carleton
was laboriously building a rival flotilla on the Richelieu with a very
scanty supply of ship-wrights and materials. Arnold, moreover, could
devote his whole attention to the work, makeshift as it had to be. while
Carleton was obliged to keep moving about the province in an effort to
bring it into some sort of order after the late invasion. Throughout the
summer the British army held the line of the Richelieu all the way south
as far as Isle-aux-Noix, very near the lake and the line. But Carleton's
flotilla could not set sail from St Johns till October 5, by which time
the main body of his army was concentrated round Pointe-au-Fer, at the
northern end of the lake, ninety miles north of the American camp at
Crown Point.

It was a curious situation for a civil and military governor to be
hoisting his flag as a naval commander-in-chief, however small the fleet
might be. But it is commonly ignored that, down to the present day, the
governor-general of Canada is appointed 'Vice-Admiral of the Same' in
his commissions from the Crown. Carleton of course carried expert naval
officers with him and had enough professional seamen to work the vessels
and lay the guns. But, though Captain Pringle man&oelig.uvred the
flotilla and Lieutenant Dacre handled the flagship _Carleton_, the
actual command remained in Carleton's own hands. The capital ship (and
the only real square-rigged 'ship') of this Lilliputian fleet was
Pringle's _Inflexible_, which had been taken up the Richelieu in
sections and hauled past the portages with immense labour before
reaching St Johns, whence there is a clear run upstream to Lake
Champlain. The _Inflexible_ carried thirty guns, mostly 12-pounders, and
was an overmatch for quite the half of Arnold's decidedly weaker
flotilla. The _Lady Maria_ was a sort of sister ship to the _Carleton_.
The little armada was completed by a 'gondola' with six 9-pounders, by
twenty gunboats and four longboats, each carrying a single piece, and by
many small craft used as transports.

On the 11th of October Carleton's whole naval force was sailing south
when one of Arnold's vessels was seen making for Valcour Island, a few
miles still farther south on the same, or western, side of Lake
Champlain. Presently the Yankee ran ashore on the southern end of the
island, where she was immediately attacked by some British small craft
while the _Inflexible_ sailed on. Then, to the intense disgust of the
_Inflexible's_ crew, Arnold's complete flotilla was suddenly discovered
drawn up in a masterly position between the mainland and the island. It
was too late for the _Inflexible_ to beat back now. But the rest of
Carleton's flotilla turned in to the attack. Arnold's flanks rested on
the island and the mainland. His rear could be approached only by
beating back against a bad wind all the way round the outside of Valcour
Island. and, even if this man&oelig.uvre could have been performed, the
British attack on his rear from the north could have been made only in a
piecemeal way, because the channel was there at its narrowest, with a
bad obstruction in the middle. So, for every reason, a frontal attack
from the south was the one way of closing with him. The fight was
furious while it lasted and seemingly decisive when it ended. Arnold's
best vessel, the _Royal Savage_, which he had taken at St Johns the year
before, was driven ashore and captured. The others were so severely
mauled that when the victorious British anchored their superior force in
line across Arnold's front there seemed to be no chance for him to
escape the following day. But that night he performed an even more
daring and wonderful feat than Bouchette had performed the year before
when paddling Carleton through the American lines among the islands
opposite Sorel. Using muffled sweeps, with consummate skill he slipped
all his remaining vessels between the mainland and the nearest British
gunboat, and was well on his way to Crown Point before his escape had
been discovered. Next day Carleton chased south. The day after he
destroyed the whole of the enemy's miniature sea-power as a fighting
force. But the only three serviceable vessels got away. while Arnold
burnt everything else likely to fall into British hands. So Carleton had
no more than his own reduced flotilla to depend on when he occupied
Crown Point.

A vexed question, destined to form part of a momentous issue, now arose.
Should Ticonderoga be attacked at once or not? It commanded the only
feasible line of march from Montreal to New York. and no force from
Canada could therefore attack the new republic effectively without
taking it first. But the season was late. The fort was strong, well
gunned, and well manned. Carleton's reconnaissance convinced him that he
could have little chance of reducing it quickly, if at all, with the
means at hand, especially as the Americans had supplies close by at Lake
George, while he was now a hundred miles south of his base. A winter
siege was impossible. Sufficient supplies could never be brought through
the dense, snow-encumbered bush, all the way from Canada, even if the
long and harassing line of communications had not been everywhere open
to American attack. Moreover, Carleton's army was in no way prepared for
a midwinter campaign, even if it could have been supplied with food and
warlike stores. So he very sensibly turned his back on Lake Champlain
until the following year.

                 *        *        *        *        *

That was the gayest winter Quebec had seen since Montcalm's first
season, twenty years before. Carleton had been knighted for his services
and was naturally supposed to be the chosen leader for the next
campaign. The ten thousand troops gave confidence to the loyalists and
promised success for the coming campaign. The clergy were getting their
disillusioned parishioners back to the fold beneath the Union Jack.
while _Jean Ba'tis'e_ himself was fain to admit that his own ways of
life and the money he got for his goods were very much safer with _les
Angla's_ than with the revolutionists, whom he called les _Bastonna's_
because most trade between Quebec and the Thirteen Colonies was carried
on by vessels hailing from the port of Boston. The seigneurs were
delighted. They still hoped for commissions as regulars, which too few
of them ever received. and they were charmed with the little viceregal
court over which Lady Maria Carleton, despite her youthful
two-and-twenty summers, presided with a dignity inherited from the
premier ducal family of England and brought to the acme of conventional
perfection by her intimate experience of Versailles. On New Year's Eve
Carleton gave a public féte, a state dinner, and a ball to celebrate the
anniversary of the British victory over Montgomery and Arnold. The
bishop held a special thanksgiving and made all notorious renegades do
open penance. Nothing seemed wanting to bring the New Year in under the
happiest auspices since British rule began.

But, quite unknown to Carleton, mischief was brewing in the Colonial
Office of that unhappy government which did so many stupid things and
got the credit for so many more. In 1775 the well-meaning Earl of
Dartmouth was superseded by Lord George Germain, who continued the
mismanagement of colonial affairs for seven disastrous years. Few
characters have abused civil and military positions more than the man
who first, as a British general, disgraced the noble name of Sackville
on the battlefield of Minden in 1759, and then, as a cabinet minister,
disgraced throughout America the plebeian one of Germain, which he took
in 1770 with a suitable legacy attached to it. His crime at Minden was
set down by the thoughtless public to sheer cowardice. But Sackville was
no coward. He had borne himself with conspicuous gallantry at Fontenoy.
He was admired, before Minden, by two very brave soldiers, Wolfe and the
Duke of Cumberland. And he afterwards fought a famous duel with as much
sang-froid as any one would care to see. His real crime at Minden was
admirably exposed by the court-martial which found him 'guilty of having
disobeyed the orders of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, whom he was by
his commission bound to obey as commander-in-chief, according to the
rules of war.' This court also found him 'unfit to serve his Majesty in
any military capacity whatever'. and George II directed that the
following 'remarks' should be added when the sentence was read out on
parade to every regiment in the service: 'It is his Majesty's pleasure
that the above sentence be given out in public orders, not only in
Britain, but in America, and in every quarter of the globe where British
troops happen to be, so that all officers, being convinced that neither
high birth nor great employments can shelter offences of such a nature,
and seeing they are subject to censures worse than death to a man who
has any sense of honour, may avoid the fatal consequences arising from
disobedience of orders.'

This seemed to mark the end of Sackville's sinister career. But when
George II died and George III began to reign, with a very different set
of men to help him, the bad general reappeared as an equally bad
politician. Haughty, cantankerous, and self-opinionated to the last
degree, Germain, who had many perverse abilities fitting him for the
meaner side of party politics, was appointed to the post for which he
was least qualified just when Canada and the Thirteen Colonies most
needed a master mind. Worse still, he cherished a contemptible grudge
against Carleton for having refused to turn out a good officer and put
in a bad one who happened to be a pampered favourite. At first, however,
Carleton was allowed to do his best. But in the summer of 1776 Germain
restricted Carleton's command to Canada and put Burgoyne, a junior
officer, in command of the army destined to make the counterstroke. The
ship bearing this malicious order had to put back. so it was not till
the middle of May 1777 that Carleton was disillusioned by its arrival as
well as by a second and still more exasperating dispatch accusing him of
neglect of duty for not having taken Ticonderoga in November and thus
prevented Washington from capturing the Hessians at Trenton. The
physical impossibility of a winter siege, the three hundred miles of
hostile country between Trenton and Ticonderoga, and the fact that the
other leading British general, Howe, had thirty thousand troops in the
Colonies, while Carleton had only ten thousand with which to hold Canada
that year and act as ordered next year, all went for nothing when
Germain found a chance to give a good stab in the back.

On May 20 Carleton wrote a pungent reply, pointing out the utter
impossibility of following up his victory on Lake Champlain by carrying
out Germain's arm-chair plan of operations in the middle of winter. 'I
regard it as a particular blessing that your Lordship's dispatch did not
arrive in due time.' As for the disaster at Trenton, he 'begs to inform
his Lordship' that if Howe's thirty thousand men had been properly used
the Hessians could never have been taken, 'though all the rebels from
Ticonderoga had reinforced Mr Washington's army.' Moreover, 'I never
could imagine why, if troops so far south [as Howe's] found it necessary
to go into winter quarters, your Lordship could possibly expect troops
so far north to continue their operations.' A week later Carleton wrote
again and sent in his resignation. 'Finding that I can no longer be of
use, under your Lordship's administration . . . I flatter myself I shall
obtain the king's permission to return home this fall. . . . I shall
embark with great satisfaction, still entertaining the ardent wish that,
after my departure, the dignity of the Crown in this unfortunate
Province may not appear beneath your Lordship's concern.'

Burgoyne had spent the winter in London and had arrived at Quebec about
the same time as Germain's dispatches. He had loyally represented
Carleton's plans at headquarters. But he did not know America and he was
not great enough to see the weak points in the plan which Germain
proposed to carry out with wholly inadequate means.

There was nothing wrong with the actual idea of this plan. Washington,
Carleton, and every other leading man on either side saw perfectly well
that the British army ought to cut the rebels in two by holding the
direct line from Montreal to New York throughout the coming campaign of
1777. Given the irresistible British command of the sea, fifty thousand
troops were enough. The general idea was that half of these should hold
the four-hundred-mile line of the Richelieu, Lake Champlain, and the
Hudson, while the other half seized strategic points elsewhere and still
further divided the American forces. But the troops employed were ten
thousand short of the proper number. Many of them were foreign
mercenaries. And the generals were not the men to smash the enemy at all
costs. They were ready to do their duty. But their affinities were
rather with the opposition, which was against the war, than with the
government, which was for it. Howe was a strong Whig. Burgoyne became a
follower of Fox. Clinton had many Whig connections. Cornwallis voted
against colonial taxation. To make matters worse, the government itself
wavered between out-and-out war and some sort of compromise both with
its political opponents at home and its armed opponents in America.

Under these circumstances Carleton was in favour of a modified plan.
Ticonderoga had been abandoned by the Americans and occupied by the
British as Burgoyne marched south. Carleton's idea was to use it as a
base of operations against New England, while Howe's main body struck at
the main body of the rebels and broke them up as much as possible.
Germain, however, was all for the original plan. So Burgoyne set off for
the Hudson, expecting to get into touch with Howe at Albany. But
Germain, in his haste to leave town for a holiday, forgot to sign Howe's
orders at the proper time. and afterwards forgot them altogether. So
Howe, pro-American in politics and temporizer in the field,
man&oelig.uvred round his own headquarters at New York until October,
when he sailed south to Philadelphia. Receiving no orders from Germain,
and having no initiative of his own, he had made no attempt to hold the
line of the Hudson all the way north to Albany, where he could have met
Burgoyne and completed the union of the forces which would have cut the
Colonies in two. Meanwhile Burgoyne, ignorant of Germain's neglect and
Howe's futilities, was struggling to his fate at Saratoga, north of
Albany. He had been receiving constant aid from Carleton's scanty
resources, though Carleton knew full well that the sending of any aid
beyond the limits of the province exposed him to personal ruin in case
of a reverse in Canada. But it was all in vain. and, on the 17th of
October, Burgoyne--much more sinned against than sinning--laid down his
arms. The British garrison immediately evacuated Ticonderoga and retired
to St Johns, thus making Carleton's position fairly safe in Canada. But
Germain, only too glad to oust him, had now notified him that Haldimand,
the new governor, was on the point of sailing for Quebec. Haldimand, to
his great credit, had asked to have his own appointment cancelled when
he heard of Germain's shameful attitude towards Carleton, and had only
consented to go after being satisfied that Carleton really wished to
come home. The exchange, however, was not to take place that year.
Contrary winds blew Haldimand back. and so Canada had to remain under
the best of all possible governors in spite of Germain.

Germain had provoked Carleton past endurance both by his public blunders
and by his private malice. Even in 1776 there was hate on one side,
contempt on the other. When Germain had blamed Carleton for not carrying
out the idiotic winter siege of Ticonderoga, Carleton, in his official
reply, 'could only suppose' that His Lordship had acted 'in other places
with such great wisdom that, without our assistance, the rebels must
immediately be compelled to lay down their arms and implore the King's
mercy.' After that Germain had murder in his heart to the bitter end of
Carleton's rule. Carleton had frequently reported the critical state of
affairs in Canada. 'There is nothing to fear from the Canadians so long
as things are in a state of prosperity. nothing to hope from them when
in distress. There are some of them who are guided by sentiments of
honour. The multitude is influenced by hope of gain or fear of
punishment.' The recent invasion had proved this up to the hilt. Then a
welcome reaction began. The defeat of the invaders, the arrival of
Burgoyne's army, and the efforts of the seigneurs and the clergy had
considerably brightened the prospects of the British cause in Canada.
The partial mobilization of the militia which followed Burgoyne's
surrender was not, indeed, a great success. But it was far better than
the fiasco of two years before. There was also a corresponding
improvement in civil life. The judges whom Carleton had been obliged to
appoint in haste all proved at leisure the wisdom of his choice. and
there seemed to be every chance that other nominees would be equally fit
for their positions, because the Quebec Act, which annulled every
appointment made before it came into force, opened the way for the
exclusion of bad officials and the inclusion of the good.

But the chance of perverting this excellent intention was too much for
Germain, who succeeded in foisting one worthless nominee after another
on the province just as Carleton was doing his best to heal old sores.
One of the worst cases was that of Livius, a low-down, money-grubbing
German Portuguese, who ousted the future Master of the Rolls, Sir
William Grant, a man most admirably fitted to interpret the laws of
Canada with knowledge, sympathy, and absolute impartiality. Livius as
chief justice was more than Carleton could stand in silence. This
mongrel lawyer had picked up all the Yankee vices without acquiring any
of the countervailing Yankee virtues. He was 'greedy of power, more
greedy of gain, imperious and impetuous in his temper, but learned in
the ways and eloquence of the New England provinces, and valuing himself
particularly on his knowledge of how to manage governors.' He had been
sent by Germain 'to administer justice to the Canadians when he
understands neither their laws, manners, customs, nor language.' Other
like nominees followed, 'characters regardless of the public tranquility
but zealous to pay court to a powerful minister and--provided they can
obtain advantages--unconcerned should the means of obtaining them prove
ruinous to the King's service.' These pettifoggers so turned and twisted
the law about for the sake of screwing out the maximum of fees that
Carleton pointedly refused to appoint Livius as a member of the
Legislative Council. Livius then laid his case before the Privy Council
in England. But this great court of ultimate appeal pronounced such a
damning judgment on his gross pretensions that even Germain could not
prevent his final dismissal from all employment under the Crown.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Wounded in the house of those who should have been his friends, thwarted
in every measure of his self-sacrificing rule, Carleton served on
devotedly through six weary months of 1778--the year in which a
vindictive government of Bourbon France became the first of the several
foreign enemies who made the new American republic an accomplished fact
by taking sides in a British civil war. His burden was now far more than
any man could bear. Yet he closed his answer to Germain's parting shot
with words which are as noble as his deeds:

'I have long looked out for the arrival of a successor. Happy at last to
learn his near approach, I resign the important commands with which I
have been entrusted into hands less obnoxious to your Lordship. Thus,
for the King's service, as willingly I lay them down as, for his
service, I took them up.'




                              CHAPTER VIII


                         GUARDING THE LOYALISTS


                               1782-1783

Burgoyne's surrender marked the turning of the tide against the British
arms. True, the three campaigns of purely civil war, begun in 1775, had
reached no decisive result. True also that the Independence declared in
1776 had no apparent chance of becoming an accomplished fact. But 1777
was the fatal year for all that. The long political strife in England,
the gross mismanagement of colonial affairs under Germain, and the
shameful blunders that made Saratoga possible, all combined to encourage
foreign powers to take the field against the king's incompetent and
distracted ministry. France, Spain, and Holland joined the Americans in
arms. while Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and all the German
seaboard countries formed the Armed Neutrality of the North. This made
stupendous odds--no less than ten to one. First of the ten came the
political opposition at home, which, in regard to the American rebellion
itself, was at least equal to the most powerful enemy abroad. Next came
the four enemies in arms: the American rebels, France, Spain, and
Holland. Finally came the five armed neutrals, all ready to use their
navies on the slightest provocation.

From this it may be seen that not one-half, perhaps not a quarter, of
all the various forces that won the Revolutionary war were purely
American. Nor were the Americans and their allies together victorious
over the mother country, but only over one sorely hampered party in it.
Yet, from the nature of the case, the Americans got much more than the
lion's share of the spoils, while, even in their own eyes, they seemed
to have gained honour and glory in the same proportion. The last real
campaign was fought in 1781 and ended with the British surrender at
Yorktown. From that time on peace was in the air. The unfortunate
ministry, now on the eve of political defeat at home, were sick of civil
war and only too anxious for a chance of uniting all parties against the
foreign foes. But they had first to settle with the Americans, who had
considered themselves an independent sovereign power for the last five
years and who were determined to make the most of England's
difficulties. No darker New Year's Day had ever dawned on any cabinet
than that of 1782 on North's. In spite of his change from repression to
conciliation, and in spite of dismissing Germain to the House of Lords
with an ill-earned peerage, Lord North found his majority dwindling
away. At last, on the 20th of March, he resigned.

Meanwhile every real statesman in either party had felt that the crisis
required the master-hand of Carleton. With Germain, the empire-wrecker,
gone, Carleton would doubtless have served under any cabinet, for no
government could have done without him. But his actual commission came
through the Rockingham administration on the 4th of April. After three
quiet years of retirement at his country seat in Hampshire he was again
called upon to face a situation of extreme difficulty. For once, with a
wisdom rare enough in any age and almost unknown in that one, the
government gave him a free hand and almost unlimited powers. The only
questions over which he had no final power were those of making
treaties. He was appointed 'General and Commander-in-chief of all His
Majesty's forces within the Colonies lying in the Atlantic Ocean, from
Nova Scotia to the Floridas, and inclusive of Newfoundland and Canada
should they be attacked.' He was also appointed commissioner for
executing the terms of any treaty that might be made. and his
instructions contained two passages which bore eloquent witness to the
universal confidence reposed in him. 'It is impossible to judge of the
precise situation at so great a distance' and 'His Majesty's affairs are
so situated that further deliberations give way to instant decision. We
are satisfied that whatever inconveniences may arise they will be
compensated by the presence of a commander-in-chief of whose discretion,
conduct, and ability His Majesty has long entertained the highest
opinion.' Thus the great justifier of British rule beyond the seas
arrived in New York on the 9th of May 1782 with at least some hope of
reconciling enough Americans to turn the scale before it was too late.

For three months the prospect, though worse than he had anticipated, did
not seem utterly hopeless. It had been considerably brightened by
Rodney's great victory over the French fleet which was on its way to
attack Jamaica. But an unfortunate incident happened to be exasperating
Loyalists and revolutionists at this very time. Some revolutionists had
killed a Loyalist named Philip White, apparently out of pure hate. Some
Loyalists, under Captain Lippincott, then seized and hanged Joshua
Huddy, a captain in the Congress militia, out of sheer revenge. A paper
left pinned on Huddy's breast bore the inscription: 'Up goes Huddy for
Philip White.' Washington then demanded that Lippincott should be
delivered up. and, on Carleton's refusal, chose a British prisoner by
lot instead. The lot fell on a young Lieutenant Asgill of the Guards,
whose mother appealed to the king and queen of France and to their
powerful minister, Vergennes. The American Congress wanted blood for
blood, which would have led to an endless vendetta. But Vergennes
pointed out that Asgill, a youth of nineteen, was as much a prisoner of
the king of France as of the Continental Congress. At this the Congress
gnashed its teeth, but had to give way.

While the Asgill affair was still running its course, and embittering
Loyalists and rebels more than ever, Carleton was suddenly informed that
the government had decided to grant complete independence. This was more
than he could stand. and he at once asked to be recalled. He had been
all for honourable reconciliation from the first. He had been
particularly kind to his American prisoners in Canada and had purposely
refrained from annihilating the American army after the battle of Three
Rivers. But he was not prepared for independence. Nor had he been sent
out with this ostensible object in view. His official instructions were
to inform the Americans that 'the most liberal sentiments had taken root
in the nation, and that the narrow policy of monopoly was totally
extinguished.' Now he was called upon to surrender without having tried
either his arms or his diplomacy. With British sea-power beginning to
reassert its age-long superiority over all possible rivals, with
practically all constitutional points of dispute conceded to the
revolutionists, and with the certain knowledge that by no means the
majority of all Americans were absolute anti-British out-and-outers, he
thought it no time to dismember the Empire. His Intelligence Department
had been busily collecting information which seems surprising enough as
we read it over to-day, but which was based on the solid facts of that
unhappy time. One member of the Continental Congress was anxious to know
what would become of the American army if reconciliation should be
effected on the understanding that there would be no more imperial
taxation or customs duty--would it become part of the Imperial Army, or
what?

But speculation on all such contingencies was suddenly cut short by the
complete change of policy at home. The idea was to end the civil war
that had divided the Empire and to concentrate on the foreign war that
at least united the people of Great Britain. No matter at what cost this
policy had now to be carried out. and Carleton was the only man that
every one would trust to do it. So, sacrificing his own feelings and
convictions, he made the best of an exceedingly bad business. He had to
safeguard the prisoners and Loyalists while preparing to evacuate the
few remaining footholds of British power in the face of an implacable
foe. At the same time he had to watch every other point in North America
and keep in touch with his excellent naval colleague, Admiral Digby,
lest his own rear might be attacked by the three foreign enemies of
England. He was even ordered off to the West Indies in the autumn. But
counter-orders fortunately arrived before he could start. Thus,
surrounded by enemies in front and rear and on both flanks, he spent the
seven months between August and the following March.

At the end of March 1783 news arrived that the preliminary treaty of
peace had been signed. The final treaty was not signed till his
fifty-ninth birthday, the 3rd of the following September. The signature
of the preliminaries simplified the naval and military situation. But it
made the situation of the Loyalists worse than ever. Compared with them
the prisoners of war had been most highly favoured from the first. And
yet the British prisoners had little to thank the Congress for. That
they were badly fed and badly housed was not always the fault of the
Americans. But that political favourites and underlings were allowed to
prey on them was an inexcusable disgrace. When a prisoner complained, he
was told it was the fault of the British government which would not pay
for his keep! This answer, so contrary to all the accepted usages of
war, which reserve such payments till after the conclusion of peace, was
no empty gibe. for when, some time before the preliminaries had been
signed, the British and American commissioners met to effect an exchange
of prisoners, the Americans began by claiming the immediate payment of
what the British prisoners had cost them. This of course broke up the
meeting at once. In the meantime the German prisoners in British pay
were offered their freedom at eighty dollars a head. Then farmers came
forward to buy up these prisoners at this price. But the farmers found
competitors in the recruiting sergeants, who urged the Germans, with
only too much truth, not to become 'the slaves of farmers' but to follow
'the glorious trade of war' against their employers, the British
government. To their honour be it said, these Germans kept faith with
the British, much to the surprise of the Americans, who, like many
modern writers, could not understand that these foreign mercenaries took
a professional pride in carrying out a sworn contract, even when it
would pay them better to break it. The British prisoners were not put up
for sale in the same way. But money sent to them had a habit of
disappearing on the road--one item mentioned by Carleton amounted to six
thousand pounds.

If such was the happy lot of prisoners during the war, what was the
wretched lot of Loyalists after the treaty of peace? The words of one of
the many petitions sent in to Carleton will suggest the answer. 'If we
have to encounter this inexpressible misfortune we beg consideration for
our lives, fortunes, and property, _and not by mere terms of treaty_.'
What this means cannot be appreciated unless we fully realize how strong
the spirit of hate and greed had grown, and why it had grown so strong.

The American Revolution had not been provoked by oppression, violence,
and massacre. The 'chains and slavery' of revolutionary orators was only
a figure of speech. The real causes were constitutional and personal.
and the actual crux of the question was one of payment for defence. Of
course there were many other causes at work. The social, religious, and
political grudges with which so many emigrants had left the mother
country had not been forgotten and were now revived. Commercial
restrictions, however well they agreed with the spirit of the age, were
galling to such keen traders. And the mere difference between colonies
and motherland had produced misunderstandings on both sides. But the
main provocative cause was Imperial taxation for local defence. The
Thirteen Colonies could not have held their own by land or sea, much
less could they have conquered their French rivals, without the Imperial
forces, which, indeed, had done by far the greater part of the fighting.
How was the cost to be shared between the mother country and themselves?
The colonies had not been asked to pay more than their share. The point
was whether they could be taxed at all by the Imperial government when
they had no representation in the Imperial parliament. The government
said Yes. The colonies and the opposition at home said No. As the
colonies would not pay of their own accord, and as the government did
not see why they should be parasites on the armed strength of the mother
country, parliament proceeded to tax them. They then refused to pay
under compulsion. and a complete deadlock ensued.

The personal factors in this perhaps insoluble problem were still more
refractory than the constitutional. All the great questions of peace and
war and other foreign relations were settled by the mother country,
which was the only sovereign power and which alone possessed the force
to make any British rights respected. The Americans supplied subordinate
means and so became subordinate men when they and the Imperial forces
worked together. This, to use a homely phrase, made their leaders feel
out of it. Everything that breeds trouble between militiamen and
regulars, colonials and mother-countrymen, fanned the flame of colonial
resentment till the leaders were able to set their followers on fire. It
was a leaders' rebellion: there was no maddening cruelty or even
oppression such as those which have produced so many revolutions
elsewhere. It was a leaders' victory: there was no general feeling that
death or independence were the only alternatives from the first. But as
the fight went on, and Loyalists and revolutionists grew more and more
bitter towards one another, the revolutionary followers found the same
cause for hating the Loyalists as their leaders had found for hating the
government. Many of the Loyalists belonged to the well-educated and
well-to-do classes. So the envy and greed of the revolutionary followers
were added to the personal and political rage of their leaders.

The British government had done its best for the Loyalists in the treaty
of peace and had urged Carleton, who needed no urging in such a cause,
to do his best as well. But the treaty was made with the Congress. and
the Congress had no authority over the internal affairs of the thirteen
new states, each one of which could do as it liked with its own envied
and detested Loyalists. The revolutionists wanted some tangible spoils.
The safety of peace had made the trimmers equally 'patriotic' and
equally clamorous. So the confiscation of Loyalist property soon became
the order of the day.

It was not the custom of that age to confiscate private property simply
because the owners were on the losing side, still less to confiscate it
under local instead of national authority. But need, greed, and
resentment were stronger than any scruples. Need was the weakest,
resentment the strongest of all the animating motives. The American army
was in rags and its pay greatly in arrears while the British forces
under Carleton were fed, clothed, and paid in the regular way. But it
was the passionate resentment of the revolutionists that perverted this
exasperating difference into another 'intolerable wrong.' Washington was
above such meaner measures. But when he said the Loyalists were only fit
for suicide, and when Adams, another future president, said they ought
to be hanged, it is little wonder that lesser men thought the time had
come for legal looting. Those Loyalists who best understood the temper
of their late fellow-countrymen left at once. They were right. Even to
be a woman was no protection against confiscation in the case of Mary
Phillips, sister-in-law to Beverley Robinson, a well-known Loyalist who
settled in New Brunswick after the Revolution. Her case was not nearly
so hard as many another. But her historic love-affair makes it the most
romantic. Eight-and-twenty years before this General Braddock had
marched to death and defeat beside the Monongahela with two handsome and
gallant young aides-de-camp, Washington and Morris. Both fell in love
with bewitching Mary Phillips. But, while Washington left her
fancy-free, Morris won her heart and hand. Now that the strife was no
longer against a foreign foe but between two British parties, the former
aides-de-camp found themselves rivals in arms as well as love. for
Colonel Morris was Carleton's right-hand man in all that concerned the
Loyalists, being the official head of the department of Claims and
Succour.

Morris, Morgan, and Carleton were the three busiest men in New York.
Forty thick manuscript volumes still show Maurice Morgan's assiduous
work as Carleton's confidential secretary. But Morris had the more
heart-breaking duty of the three, with no relief, day after sorrow-laden
day, from the anguishing appeals of Loyalist widows, orphans, and other
ruined refugees. No sooner had the dire news arrived that peace had been
made with the Congress, and that each of the thirteen United States was
free to show uncovenanted mercies towards its own Loyalists, than the
exodus began. Five thousand five hundred and ninety-three Loyalists
sailed for Halifax in the first convoy on the 17th of April with a
strong recommendation from Carleton to Governor Parr of Nova Scotia.
'Many of these are of the first families and born to the fairest
possessions. I therefore beg that you will have them properly
considered.' Shipping was scarce. for the hostility of the whole foreign
naval world had made enormous demands on the British navy and mercantile
marine. So six thousand Loyalists had to march overland to join
Carleton's vessels at New York, some of them from as far south as
Charlottesville, Virginia. They were carefully shepherded by Colonel
Alured Clarke, of whom we shall hear again.

Meanwhile Carleton and Washington had exchanged the usual compliments on
the conclusion of peace and had met each other on the 6th of May at
Tappan, where they discussed the exchange of prisoners. By the terms of
the treaty the British were to evacuate New York, their last foothold in
the new republic, with all practicable dispatch. so, as summer changed
into autumn, the Congress became more and more impatient to see the last
of them. But Carleton would not go without the Loyalists, whose many
tributary streams of misery were still flowing into New York. In
September, when the treaty of peace was ratified in Europe, the Congress
asked Carleton point-blank to name the date of his own departure. But he
replied that this was impossible and that the more the Loyalists were
persecuted the longer he would be obliged to stay. The correspondence
between him and the Congress teems with complaints and explanations. The
Americans were very anxious lest the Loyalists should take away any
goods and chattels not their own, particularly slaves. Carleton was
disposed to consider slaves as human beings, though slavery was still
the law in the British oversea dominions, and so the Americans felt
uneasy lest he might discriminate between their slaves and other
chattels. Reams of the Carleton papers are covered with descriptive
lists of claimed and counter-claimed niggers--Julius Caesars, Jupiters,
Venuses, Dianas, and so on, who were either 'stout wenches' and 'likely
fellows' or 'incurably lazy' and 'old worn-outs.'

Perhaps, when a slave wished to remain British, and his case was nicely
balanced between the claimants and the counter-claimants, Carleton was a
little inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But with other
forms of disputed property he was too severe to please all Loyalists. A
typical case of restitution in Canada will show how differently the two
governments viewed the rights of private property. Mercier and Halsted,
two Quebec rebels, owned a wharf and the frame of a warehouse in 1775.
It was Arnold's intercepted letter to Mercier that gave Carleton's
lieutenant, Cramahé, the first warning of danger from the south. Halsted
was Major Caldwell's miller at the time and took advantage of his
position to give his employer's flour to Arnold's army, in which he
served as commissary throughout the siege. Just after the peace of 1783
Mercier and Halsted laid claim to their former property, which they had
abandoned for eight years and on which the government had meanwhile
built a provision store, making use of the original frame. The case was
complicated by many details too long for notice here. But the British
government finally gave the two rebels the original property, plus
thirteen years' rent, less the cost of government works erected in the
meantime. All the documents are still in Quebec.

Property was troublesome enough. But people were worse. And Carleton's
difficulties increased as the autumn wore on. The first great harrying
of the Loyalists drove more than thirty thousand from their homes. and
about twenty-five thousand of these embarked at New York. Then there
were the remnants of twenty Loyalist corps to pension, settle, or
employ. There were also the British prisoners to receive, besides ten
thousand German mercenaries. Add to all this the regular garrison and
the general oversight of every British interest in North America, from
the Floridas to Labrador, remember the implacable enemy in front, and we
may faintly imagine what Carleton had to do before he could report that
'His Majesty's troops and such remaining Loyalists as chose to emigrate
were successfully withdrawn on the 25th [of November] without the
smallest circumstance of irregularity.'

Thus ended one of the greatest acts in the drama of the British Empire,
the English-speaking peoples, or the world. and thus, for the second
time, Carleton, now in his sixtieth year, apparently ended his own long
service in America. He had left Canada, after saving her from
obliteration, because, so long as he remained her governor, the war
minister at home remained her enemy. He had then returned to serve in
New York, and had stayed there to the bitter end, because there was no
other man whom the new government would trust to command the rearguard
of the Empire in retreat.




                               CHAPTER IX


                         FOUNDING MODERN CANADA


                               1786-1796

Carleton now enjoyed two years of uninterrupted peace at his country
seat in England. His active career seemed to have closed at last. He had
no taste for party politics. He was not anxious to fill any position of
civil or military trust, even if it had been pressed upon him. And he
had said farewell to America for good and all when he had left New York.
Though as full of public spirit as before and only just turned sixty, he
bid fair to spend the rest of his life as an English country gentleman.
His young wife was well contented with her lot. His manly boys promised
to become worthy followers of the noble profession of arms. And the
overseeing of his little estate occupied his time very pleasantly
indeed. Like most healthy Englishmen he was devoted to horses, and,
unlike some others, he was very successful with his thoroughbreds.

He had first bought a place near Maidenhead, beside the Thames, which is
nowhere lovelier than in that sylvan neighbourhood. Then he bought the
present family seat of Greywell Hill near the little village of Odiham
in Hampshire. As an ex-governor and commander-in-chief, a county
magnate, a personage of great importance to the Empire, and the one
victorious British general in the unhappy American war, he had more than
earned a peerage. But it was not till 1786, on the eve of his
sixty-second birthday, and at a time when his services were urgently
required again, that he received it. Needless to say this peerage had
nothing whatever to do with his acceptance of another self-sacrificing
duty. It was not given till several months after he had promised to
return to Canada. and he would certainly have refused it if it had been
held out to him as an inducement to go there. He became Baron Dorchester
and was granted the not very extravagant addition to his income of a
thousand pounds a year payable during four lives, his own, his wife's,
and those of his two eldest sons. His elevation to the House of Lords
met with the almost unanimous approval of his fellow-peers, in marked
contrast to the open hostility they had shown towards his old enemy,
Lord George Germain, when that vile wrecker had been 'kicked upstairs'
among them. The Carleton motto, crest, and supporters are all most
appropriate. The crest is a strong right arm with the hand clenched
firmly on an arrow. The motto is _Quondam his vicimus armis--We used to
conquer with these arms_. The supporters are two beavers, typifying
Canada, while their respective collars, one a naval the other a military
coronet, show how her British life was won and saved and has been kept.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Carleton was a man of great reserve and self-control. But his kindly
nature must have responded to the cordial welcome which he received on
his return to Quebec in October 1786. It was not without reason that the
people of Canada rejoiced to have him back as their leader. All that the
Indians imagined the Great White Father to be towards themselves he was
in reality towards both red man and white. Stern, when the occasion
forced him to be stern, just in all his dealings between man and man,
dignified and courteous in all his ways, a soldier through every inch of
his stalwart six feet, he was a ruler with whom no one ever dreamt of
taking liberties. But neither did any deserving one in trouble ever
hesitate to lay the most confidential case before him in the full
assurance that his head and heart were at the service of all committed
to his care. And no other governor, before his time or since, ever
inspired his followers with such a firm belief that all would turn out
for the best so long as he was in command.

This power of inspiring confidence was now badly needed. Everything in
Canada was still provisional. Owing to the war the Quebec Act of 1774
had never been thoroughly enforced. Then, when the war was over, the
Loyalists arrived and completely changed the circumstances which the act
had been designed to meet. The next constitution, the Canada Act of
1791, was of a very different character. During the seventeen years
between these two constitutions all that could be done was to make the
best of a very confusing state of flux. Not that the Quebec Act was a
dead letter--far from it--but simply that it could not go beyond
restoring the privileges of the French-Canadian priests and seigneurs
within the area then effectively occupied by the French-Canadian race.
Carleton, as we have seen, had faced its problem for the first four
years. Haldimand had carried on the government under its provisions for
the following six. Hamilton and Hope, successive lieutenant-governors,
had bridged the two years between Haldimand's retirement and Carleton's
second appointment. Now Carleton was to pick up the threads and make
what he could of the tangled skein for the next five years. Haldimand
had not been popular with either of the two chief parties into which the
leading French Canadians were divided. The seigneurs had nothing like
the same regard for a Swiss soldier of fortune that they had for
aristocratic British commanders like Murray and Carleton. The clergy
also preferred these Anglicans to such a strong Swiss Protestant. The
habitants and agitators, who were far less favourable to the new régime,
had passionately resented Haldimand's firmness at times of crisis. But,
despite all this French-Canadian animus, he was not such an absolute
martinet as some writers would have us think. The war with France and
with the American Revolutionists required strong government in Canada.
while the influx of Loyalists had introduced an entirely new set of most
perplexing circumstances. On the whole, Haldimand had done very well in
spite of many personal and public drawbacks. and it was through no
special fault of his, nor yet of Hope's, that the threads which Carleton
picked up formed such a perversely tangled skein.

The troubles that now dogged the great conciliator's every step were of
all kinds--racial, religious, social, political, military, diplomatic,
legal. The confusion resulting from the intermixture of French and
English civil laws had become a great deal more confounded since he had
left Canada eight years before. The old proportions of races and
religions to each other had changed most disturbingly. The Loyalists
were of quite a different social class from the English-speaking
immigrants of earlier days. They wanted a parliament, public schools,
and many other things new to the country. and they were the sort of
people who had a right to have them. The problem of defence was always a
vexed one with the inadequate military forces at hand and the
insuperable difficulties concerning the militia. The British still held
the Western forts pending the settlement of the frontier and the
execution of the treaty of peace in full. This naturally annoyed the
American government and gave Carleton endless trouble. But more serious
still was the ceaseless western march of the American backwoodsmen, who
were everywhere in conflict with the Indians. The Indians, in their
turn, were confused between the British and Americans under the new
conditions. They and their ever-receding rights and territories had not
been mentioned in the treaty. But, seeing that they would be better off
under British than under American rule, they were inclined to take sides
accordingly. There were now no openly hostile sides to take. But, for
all that, the British posts in the hinterland looked like weak little
islands which might be suddenly engulfed in the sea of Indian troubles
raging round them. Then, at the other end of the British line, there
were the three maritime provinces to watch over. New Brunswick had been
divided off from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island had been taken
from the direct supervision of the home authorities and placed under the
command of the new governor at Quebec. Thus Carleton had to deal
directly with everything that happened from the far West to Gaspé, while
dealing indirectly with the three maritime provinces and all the
troubles that proved too much for their own lieutenant-governors. There
was no chance of concentrating on one thing at a time. Nothing would
wait. The governor had to watch the writhing tangle as a whole during
every minute he devoted to any one kinked and knotted thread.

Fortunately there were some good men in office on both sides of the
Atlantic. Lords Sydney and Grenville, the two cabinet ministers with
whom Carleton had most to do, were both sensible and sympathetic. Years
afterwards Grenville, the favourite cousin of Pitt, became the colleague
of Fox at the head of the celebrated 'Ministry of All the Talents.' Hope
was an acceptable lieutenant-governor, and his successor, Sir Alured
Clarke, was better still. François Bailly, the coadjutor Roman Catholic
bishop of Quebec, who had gone to England as French tutor to Carleton's
children, was a most enlightened cleric. So too was Charles Inglis, the
Anglican bishop of Nova Scotia, appointed in 1787. He was the first
Canadian bishop of the Anglican communion and his diocese comprised the
whole of British North America. William Smith, the new chief justice,
was as different from Carleton's last chief justice, Livius, as angels
are from devils. Smith had been an excellent chief justice of his native
New York in the old colonial days, and, like Inglis, was a very ardent
Loyalist. He respected all reasonable French-Canadian peculiarities. But
he favoured the British-Constitutional way of 'broadening down from
precedent to precedent' rather than the French way of referring to a
supposedly infallible written regulation. We shall soon meet him as a
far-seeing statesman. But he well deserves an honoured place in Canadian
history for his legal services alone. To him, more than to any other
man, is due the nicely balanced adjustments which eventually harmonized
the French and English codes into a body of laws adapted to the
extraordinary circumstances of the province of Quebec.

Besides the committee on laws Carleton had nominated three other active
committees of his council, one on police, another on education, and a
third on trade and commerce. The police committee was of the usual kind
and dealt with usual problems in the usual way. But the education
committee brought out all the vexed questions of French and English,
Protestant and Roman Catholic, progressive and reactionary. Strangely
enough, the sharpest personal controversy was that between Hubert, the
Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec, and his coadjutor Bailly. Hubert
enumerated all the institutions already engaged in educational work and
suggested that 'rest and be thankful' was the only proper attitude for
the committee to assume. But Bailly very neatly pointed out that his
respected superior's real opinions could not be those attributed to him
over his own signature because they were at variance with the facts.
Hubert had said that the curés were spreading education with most
commendable zeal, had repudiated the base insinuation that only three or
four people in each parish could read and write, and had wound up by
thinking that while there was so much land to clear the farmers would do
better to keep their sons at home than send them to a university, where
they would be under professors so 'unprejudiced' as to have no definite
views on religion. Bailly argued that the bishop could not mean what
these words seemed to imply, as the logical conclusion would be to wait
till Canada was cleared right up to the polar circle. In the end the
committee made three very sanguine recommendations: a free common school
in every parish, a secondary school in every town or district, and an
absolutely non-sectarian central university. This educational ladder was
never set up. There was nothing to support either end of it. The
financial side was one difficulty. The Jesuits' estates were intended to
be made over into educational endowments under government control. But
Amherst's claim that they had been granted to him in 1760 was not
settled for forty years. and by that time all chance of carrying out the
committee's intentions was seen to be hopeless.

Commerce was another burning question and one of much more immediate
concern. In 1791 the united populations of all the provinces amounted to
only a quarter of a million, of whom at least one-half were French
Canadians. Quebec and Montreal had barely ten thousand citizens apiece.
But the commercial classes, mostly English-speaking, had greatly
increased in numbers, ability, and social standing. The camp-following
gangs of twenty years before had now either disappeared or sunk down to
their appropriate level. So petitions from the 'British merchants'
required and received much more consideration than formerly. The
Loyalists had not yet had time to start in business. All their energies
were needed in hewing out their future homes. But two parts of the
American Republic, Vermont and Kentucky, were very anxious to do
business with the British at any reasonable price. Some of their
citizens were even ready for a change of allegiance if the terms were
only good enough. Vermont wanted a 'free trade' outlet to the St
Lawrence by way of the Richelieu. The rapids between St Johns and
Chambly lay in British territory. But Vermont was ready to join in
building a canal and would even become British to make sure. The old
Green Mountain Boys had changed their tune. Ethan Allen himself had
buried the hatchet and, like his brother, become Carleton's friendly
correspondent. He frankly explained that what Vermonters really wanted
was 'property not liberty' and added that they would stand no coercion
from the American government. About the same time Kentucky was bent on
getting an equally 'free trade' outlet to the Gulf of Mexico by way of
the Mississippi. The fact that France, Spain, the British Empire, and
the United States might all be involved in war over it did not trouble
the conspirators in the least. The central authority of the new Republic
was still weak. The individual states were still ready to fly asunder.
Federal taxation was greatly feared. Anything that savoured of federal
interference with state rights was passionately resented. The general
spirit of the westerners was that of the exploiting pioneer in a virgin
wilderness--a law unto itself alone. There were various plans for
opening the coveted Mississippi. One was to join Spain. Another was to
seize New Orleans, turn out the French, and bring in the British. Then,
to make the plot complete, the French minister to the United States was
asking permission to make a tour through Canada at the very time when
Carleton was sending home reams of documents bearing on the impending
troubles. The letters exchanged on this subject are perfect models of
politeness. But Carleton's answer was an emphatic No.

Foreign complications were thickening fast. The French Revolution had
already begun, though its effect was not yet felt in Canada. The
American government was anxiously watching its refractory states, while
an anti-British political party was making headway in the South. As if
this was not enough to engage whatever attention Carleton had to spare
from the internal affairs of Canada, he suddenly heard that the
Spaniards had been seizing British vessels trading to a British post on
Vancouver Island.[6] This Nootka Affair, which nearly brought on a war
with Spain in 1790, was settled in London and Madrid. But the threat of
war added to Carleton's anxieties.

Meanwhile the governor was busily employed with an immigration problem.
It was desirable that the English-speaking immigrants should settle on
the land with the least possible friction between them and the French
Canadians. The French Canadians differed among themselves. But no such
differences brought them any closer to their new neighbours on questions
of land settlement. The French had granted lands in seigneuries. The
British would hear of nothing but free and common socage. French farms
were measured by the arpent and were staked out in long and narrow
oblongs. British farms were measured by the acre and staked out 'on the
square.' Language, laws, religion, manners and customs, ways of life,
were also different. So there was hardly any intermixture of
settlements. The French Canadians remained where they were. Most of the
new Anglo-Canadians settled in the Maritime Provinces or moved west into
what is now Ontario. A few settled in rural Quebec on lands outside the
line of seigneuries. The Eastern Townships, that part of the province
lying east of the Richelieu and nearest the American frontier, absorbed
many English, Irish, and Scots, as well as a good many Americans who
were attracted by cheap land. Ontario, or Upper Canada, received still
more Americans, who were to be a thorn in the side of the British during
the War of 1812.

But Carleton's work comprised much more than this. There were the Church
of England, the Post Office, a refractory lieutenant-governor down in
Prince Edward Island, two royal visitors, and many other distracting
matters. The only Anglican see thus far established was at Halifax. but
the bishop there had authority over the whole country and the government
intended to establish the Church of England in Canada and endow it. The
Presbyterians also petitioned for the establishment of the Scottish
Church. The fortunes or misfortunes of the Clergy Reserves belong to
another chapter of Canadian history. But the root of their good or evil
was planted in the time of Carleton. The postal service was surrounded
by enormous difficulties--the vast extent of wild country, the few
towns, the long winters, the poverty of the people. The question of the
winter port was even then a live one between St John and Halifax. Each
of these towns asserted its advantages and promised twelve trips a year
and connection with Quebec overland by means of walking postmen till a
bush road should be cut from Quebec to the sea. In Prince Edward Island
the old lieutenant-governor, Walter Patterson, declined to make way for
the new one, Edmund Fanning. In the end Patterson gave up the contest.
But the incident, trivial as it now appears, shows what a
governor-general had to face in the early days when each province had
queer little ways of its own. Patterson had no precise official reason.
But he said he could not go home to answer charges he did not understand
and leave an island which had been his very successful hobby for so many
years! The people sided with him so vigorously that time had to be given
them to cool down before the transfer could be peaceably effected.

A judge whose court is in perpetual session or a commander whose
inadequate forces are continually surrounded by prospective enemies has
little time for the amenities of purely social life. So Carleton
generally left his young consort to rule the viceregal court at the
Château St Louis with a perfect blend of London and Versailles. Two
Princes of the Blood, however, demanded more than the usual attention
from the governor. Prince William Henry, afterwards King William IV, was
the first member of the Royal Family to set foot in the New World when
he arrived in H.M.S. _Pegasus_ in 1787. He was the proverbial jolly Jack
Tar, extremely affable to everybody. and he quickly won golden opinions
from all who met him, except perhaps from Lady Dorchester and sundry
would-be partners for his duty dances. Philippe Aubert de Gaspé and
other privileged chroniclers record with slightly shocked delight how
often he would break loose from Lady Dorchester's designing care, long
before she thought it right for him to do so, and 'command' his partners
for their pretty faces instead of by precedence. At Sorel the people
were so carried away by their enthusiasm that they insisted on changing
the name of their little town to William Henry. Happily this name never
took root in public sentiment and the old one soon came back to stay.

The second member of the Royal Family to come to Canada was Prince
Edward, Duke of Kent, fourth son of George III, father of Queen Victoria
and grandfather of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, who became the
first royal governor-general in 1911, exactly a hundred and twenty years
later. The Duke of Kent would have gladly returned to Quebec as
governor-general, and the people would have gladly welcomed him. But he
was not a favourite with the government at home, and so he never came.
There was no doubt about his being a popular favourite in Quebec during
the three years he spent there as colonel of the 7th Fusiliers. Nor has
he been forgotten to the present day. Kent House is still the name of
his quarters in the town as well as of his country residence at
Montmorency Falls seven miles away, while the only new opening ever made
in the walls is called Kent Gate.

The duke made fast friends with several of the seigneurial families,
more especially with the de Salaberrys, whose manor-house at Beauport
stood half-way between Montmorency and Quebec and not far from
Montcalm's headquarters in 1759. The de Salaberrys were a military
family. All the sons went into the Army and one became the hero of
Châteauguay in the War of 1812. But the duke mixed freely with many
other people than the local aristocracy. He was young, high-spirited,
and loved adventure, as was proved by his subsequent gallantry at
Martinique. He was also fond of driving round incognito, a habit which
on at least one occasion obliged him to put his skill at boxing to good
use. This was at Charlesbourg, a village near Quebec, where he was
watching the fun at the first election ever held. Perhaps, from a
meticulously constitutional point of view, the scene of a hotly
contested election was not quite the place for Princes of the Blood.
But, however that might be, when the duke saw two electors pommelling a
third, who happened to be a friend of his, he dashed in to the rescue
and floored both of them with a neatly planted right and left. One of
these men, who lived to see King Edward VII arrive in 1860, as Prince of
Wales, always took the greatest pride in telling successive generations
of voters how Queen Victoria's father had knocked him down.

Like his brother before him the duke was very fond of dancing, and kept
many a reluctant senior and many a tired-out chaperone up till all hours
at the grand ball given in honour of his twenty-fourth birthday. Also
like his brother he was inclined to reduce his duty dances to a minimum,
much to Lady Dorchester's dismay. She had gone home with her husband for
two years shortly after the duke's arrival. But she had seen enough of
him, and was to see enough again on her return, to make her regret the
good old times of more exacting ceremony. To her dying day, half a
century later, she kept up a prodigious stateliness of manner. Before
meals she expected the whole company to assemble and remain standing
till she had made her royal progress through the room. She was a living
anachronism for many years before her death, with her high-heeled,
gold-buttoned, scarlet-coloured shoes, her Marie-Antoinette _coiffure_
raised high above her head and interlaced with ribbons, her elaborately
gorgeous dress, her intricate array of ornaments, and her long,
jet-black, official-looking cane. But she was no anachronism to herself.
for she still lived in the light of other days, in the fondly remembered
times when, as the vice-reine of the Château St Louis, she helped her
consort to settle nice points of etiquette and maintain a dignity
befitting His Majesty's chosen representative. How did the seigneurs
rank among themselves and with the leading English-speaking people? Who
were to dance in the state minuet? Should dancing cease when the bishops
came in, and for how long? Was that curtsy dropped quite low enough to
her viceregal self, and did that _débutante_ offer her blushing cheek in
quite the proper way to Carleton when he graciously gave her the
presentation kiss? How immeasurably far away it all seems now, that
stately little court where the echoes of a dead Versailles lived on for
seven years after the fall of the Bastille! And yet there is still one
citizen of Quebec whose early partners were chaperoned by ladies who had
danced the minuet with Lord and Lady Dorchester.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The two royal visits were not without their political
significance--using the word political in its larger meaning. But the
three years between them--that is, 1788-89-90--formed the really
pregnant time of constitutional development, when the Canada Act of 1791
was taking shape in the minds of its chief authors--Carleton and Smith
in Canada, Grenville and Pitt in England. The Loyalists and the
English-speaking merchants of Quebec and Montreal took good care to make
themselves heard at every stage of the proceedings. Most French
Canadians would have preferred to be left without the suspected
blessings of a parliament. The clergy and seigneurs wished for a
continuance of the Quebec Act, and the habitants wanted they knew not
what, provided it would enable them to get more and give less. The
English-speaking people, on the other hand, were all for a parliament.
But they differed widely as to what kind of parliament would suit their
purpose best. As a rule they acquiesced, with a more or less bad grace,
in the necessity of admitting French Canadians on the same terms as
themselves. If Canada, without the Maritime Provinces, should be taken
as a whole then the French Canadians would only be in a moderate
majority. If, however, two provinces, Upper Canada and Lower Canada,
were to be erected, then the English-speaking minority in Lower Canada
would be outvoted three or four to one.

There was a third alternative: no less than the establishment of a
regular Dominion of British North America in 1790, a step which might
have saved much trouble between that time and the Confederation of 1867.
William Smith was its strongest advocate, Carleton its most cautious and
judicious supporter. The chief justice was in favour of federating Upper
and Lower Canada with the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland into a
single dominion. Each of the six provinces would have its own parliament
under a lieutenant-governor, while there would also be a central
parliament under a governor-general. Carleton forwarded the suggestion
to the home government. but he nowhere committed himself to any very
definite scheme. His own preference was for keeping the existing
province of Quebec a little longer, then dividing it, and afterwards
drawing in the other provinces. The chief justice preferred to make a
constitution. The governor preferred to let it grow. The home
government's preference could not be stated better than in Grenville's
dispatch to Carleton of the 20th of October 1789: 'The general object is
to assimilate the constitution to that of Great Britain as nearly as the
difference arising from the manners of the People and from the present
situation of the Province will admit.... Attention is due to the
prejudices and habits of the French Inhabitants and every caution should
be used to continue to them the enjoyment of those civil and religious
Rights which were secured to them by the Capitulation or which have
since been granted by the liberal and enlightened spirit of the British
Government.' Except for its rather too self-righteous conclusion this
confidential announcement really is an admirable statement of the
'liberal and enlightened' views which prevailed at Westminster.

The bill, postponed in 1790, was introduced by Pitt himself in the House
of Commons on the 7th of March 1791. Sixteen days later Adam Lymburner,
a representative merchant of Quebec, whom Carleton described as 'a
quiet, decent man, not unfriendly to the administration,' pleaded for
hours before the committee of the House of Commons against the division
of the province. All the English-speaking minority in the prospective
province of Lower Canada were afraid of being swamped by the
French-Canadian vote, and so of being hampered in liberty and trade. The
London merchants naturally backed Lymburner. Fox opposed the bill as not
being liberal enough. Burke flared up into the speech which led to his
final breach with Fox. Pitt, the pilot who was to weather far greater
storms in the years to come, eventually got the bill through both Houses
with substantial majorities. On the 14th of May it became law. Quebec
and Ontario were parted for good, notwithstanding the legislative union
of fifty years later.

The Canada Act, or, as it is better known, the Constitutional Act, cut
off Upper Canada. Lower Canada was now the old Quebec reduced to its
right size, endowed with clarified laws and a brand-new parliament, and
made as acceptable as possible to the English-speaking minority without
any injustice to the vastly greater French majority. Quebec, Three
Rivers, Montreal, and Sorel got each two members in the new parliament,
an allotment which ensured a certain representation of the 'British'
merchants. The franchise was the same in both provinces: in the country
parts a forty-shilling freehold or its equivalent, and in the towns
either a five-pound annual ownership value or twice that for a tenant.
The Crown gave up all taxation except commercial duties, which were to
be applied solely for the benefit of the provinces. Lands outside the
seigneuries were to be in free and common socage, while seigneurial
tenure itself could be converted into freehold on petition. One-seventh
of the Crown lands was reserved for the endowment of the Church of
England. The Crown kept all rights of veto and appointment. The
legislatures were small in membership. The Upper Houses could be made
hereditary. though the actual tenure was never more than for life during
good behaviour. Carleton favoured the hereditary principle whenever it
could be applied with advantage. But he knew the ups and downs of
colonial fortunes too well to believe that Canada was ready for any such
experiment.

No one dreamt of having what is now known as responsible government,
that is, an executive sitting in the legislature and responsible to the
legislature for its acts. Nor was the greatest of all parliamentary
powers--the power of the purse--given outright. This, however, was owing
to simple force of circumstances and not to any desire of abridging the
liberties of the people. The fact is that at this time eighty per cent
of the total civil expenditure had to be paid by the home government. It
is frequently ignored that the mother country paid most of Canada's
bills till long after the War of 1812, that she paid nearly all the
naval and military accounts for longer still, and that she has borne far
more than her own share of the common defence down to the present day.

The new constitution came into force on the 26th of December 1791. and,
for the first time, Upper and Lower Canada had the right to elect their
own representatives. Assemblies, of course, were nothing new in British
North America. Nova Scotia had an assembly in 1758, the year that
Louisbourg was taken. Prince Edward Island had one in 1773, the year
before the Quebec Act was passed. New Brunswick had one in 1786, the
year Carleton began his second term. But assemblies still had all the
charm of novelty in 'Canada proper.' Perhaps it would be more
appropriate to say that Upper Canada experienced more charm than novelty
while Lower Canada experienced more novelty than charm. The
Anglo-Canadians in all five provinces were used to parliaments in
America. Their ancestors had been used to them for centuries in England.
So the little parliament of Upper Canada at Newark passed as many bills
in five weeks as that of Lower Canada passed in seven months. The fact
that there were fifty members in the Assembly at Quebec, while there
were only half as many in both chambers at Newark, doubtless had
something to do with it. But the fact that the Quebec parliament was an
innovation, while the one at Newark was a simple development, had very
much more.

There is no need to follow the course of legislation in any of the five
provinces. As most of the civil and practically all the naval and
military expenditure had to be met by the Imperial Treasury, and as
Canada was five parts and no whole from her own parliamentary point of
view, the legislation required for a grand total of two hundred and
fifty thousand people could not be of the national kind. But at Quebec
the scene, the setting, and the unheard-of innovation itself all give a
special interest to every detail of the opening ceremony on the 17th of
December 1792.

Carleton was in England, so the Speech from the Throne was read by the
lieutenant-governor, Major-General Sir Alured Clarke. Half of the Upper
House and two-thirds of the Lower were French Canadians. A
French-Canadian member was nominated for the speakership and elected
unanimously. Both races were for the most part represented by members
whose official title of 'Honourable Gentlemen' was not at all a
misnomer. The French members of the Assembly were half distrustful both
of it and of themselves. But they knew how to add grace and dignity to a
very notable occasion. The old Bishop's Palace served as the Houses of
Parliament and so continued for many years to come. It was a solid
rather than a stately pile. But it stood on a commanding site at the
head of Mountain Hill between the Grand Battery and the Château St
Louis. Every one was in uniform or in what corresponded to court dress.
Round the throne stood many officers in their red and gold, conspicuous
among them the Duke of Kent. In front sat the Executive and Legislative
Councillors, corresponding to the modern cabinet ministers and senators.
Their roll, as well as the Assembly's, bore many names that recalled the
glories of the old régime--St Ours, Longueuil, de Lanaudiére,
Boucherville, de Salaberry, de Lotbiniére, and many more. The Council
chamber was crowded in every part long before the governor arrived. 'The
Ladies introduced into the House' were 'without Hat, Cloak, or Bonnet,'
the 'Doorkeeper of His Majesty's Council' having taken good care to see
them 'leave the same in the Great Committee Room previous to their
Introduction.' 'The Ladies attached to His Excellency's Suite' were
admitted 'within the railing or body of the House' and 'accommodated
with the seats of the members as far as possible.' Outwardly it was all
very much the same in principle as the opening of any other British
parliament--the escort, guard, and band, the royal salute, the brilliant
staff, the scarlet cloth of state, the few and quiet members of the
Upper House, the many of the Lower, jostling each other to get a good
place near Mr Speaker at the bar, the radiant ladies, the crowded
galleries corniced with inquiring faces and craned necks, the Gentlemen
Ushers and their quaint bows, the Speech from the Throne and the
occasional lifting of His Excellency's hat, the retiring in full state.
and then the ebbing away of all the sightseers, their eddying currents
of packed humanity in the halls and passages, the porch, the door, the
emptying street. But inwardly what a world of difference! For here was
the first British parliament in which legislators of foreign birth and
blood and language were shaping British laws as British subjects.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In September 1793 Carleton returned from his two years' absence and was
welcomed more warmly than ever. Quebec blazed with illuminations. The
streets swarmed with eager crowds. The first session of the first
parliament had been better than any one had dared to hope for. There was
a general tendency to give the new constitution a fair trial. and all
classes looked to Carleton to make the harmony that had been attained
both permanent and universal. Dr Jacob Mountain, first Anglican bishop
of Quebec, also arrived shortly afterwards and was warmly greeted by the
Roman Catholic prelate, who embraced him, saying, 'It's time you came to
shepherd your own flock.' Mountain was statesman and churchman in one.
He had been chosen by the elder Pitt to be the younger's tutor and then
chosen by the younger to be his private secretary. The fact that the
Anglican bishop of Quebec was then and for many years afterwards a sort
of Canadian chaplain-general to the Imperial troops and that most of the
leading officials and leading Loyalists belonged to the Church of
England made him a personage of great importance. It was fortunate that,
as in the case of Inglis down in Halifax, the choice could not have
fallen on a better man or on one who knew better how to win the esteem
of communions other than his own. This same year (1793) died William
Smith, full of honours. But the next year his excellent successor
arrived in the person of William Osgoode, the new chief justice, an
eminent English lawyer who had served for two years as chief justice of
Upper Canada and whose name is commemorated in Osgoode Hall, Toronto. He
had come out on the distinct understanding that no fees were to be
attached to his office, only a definite salary. This was a great triumph
for Carleton, who certainly practised what he preached.

So far, so good. But the third conspicuous new arrival, John Graves
Simcoe, lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, who had come out the year
before, was a great deal less to Carleton's liking. Simcoe was a good
officer who threw himself heart and soul into the work of settling the
new province. He won the affectionate regard of his people and is
gratefully remembered by their posterity. But he was too exclusively of
his own province in his civil and military outlook and was disposed to
ignore Carleton as his official chief. Moreover, he was appointed in
spite of Carleton's strongly expressed preference for Sir John Johnson,
who, to all appearances, was the very man for the post. Sir William
Johnson, the first baronet, had been the great British leader of the
Indians and a person of much consequence throughout America. His son
John inherited many of his good qualities, thoroughly understood the
West and its problems, was a devoted Loyalist all through the
Revolution, when he raised the King's Royal Regiment of New York, and
would have been second only to Carleton himself in the eyes of all
Canadians, old and new. But the government thought his private interests
too great for his public duty--an excellent general principle, though
misapplied in this particular case. At any rate, Simcoe came instead,
and the friction began at once. Simcoe's commission clearly made him
subordinate to Carleton. Yet Simcoe made appointments without consulting
his superior and argued the point after he had been brought to book. He
communicated directly with the home government over his superior's head
and was not rebuked by the minister to whom he wrote--Henry Dundas,
afterwards first Viscount Melville. Dundas, indeed, was half inclined to
snub Carleton. Simcoe desired to establish military posts wherever he
thought they would best promote immediate settlement, a policy which
would tend to sap both the government's resources and the self-reliance
of the settlers. He also wished to fix the capital at London instead of
York, now Toronto, and to make York instead of Kingston the naval base
for Lake Ontario. Thus the friction continued. At length Carleton wrote
to the Duke of Portland, Pitt's home secretary, saying: 'All command,
civil and military, being thus disorganized and without remedy, your
Grace will, I hope, excuse my anxiety for the arrival of my successor,
who may have authority sufficient to restore order, lest these
insubordinations should extend to mutiny among the troops and sedition
among the people.' That was in November 1795. The government, however,
took no decisive action, and next year both Carleton and Simcoe left
Canada for ever.

When this unfortunate quarrel began (1793) Canada was in grave danger of
being attacked by both the French and the American republics. The
danger, however, had been greatly lessened by Jay's Treaty of 1794 and
was to be still further lessened (1796) by the transfer of the Western
Posts to the United States and by the presidential election which gave
the Federal party a new lease of power, though no longer under
Washington. Had Carleton remained in Canada these felicitous events
would have offered him a unique opportunity of strengthening the
friendly ties between the British and the Americans in a way which might
have saved some trouble later on. But that was not to be.

To understand the dangers which threatened Canada during the last three
years of Carleton's rule we must go back to February 1793, when
revolutionary France declared war on England and there then began that
titanic struggle which only ended twenty-two years later on the field of
Waterloo. The Americans were divided into two parties, one disposed to
be friendly towards Great Britain, the other unfriendly. The names these
parties then bore must not be confused with those borne by their
political offspring at the present day. The Federals, progenitors of the
present Republicans, formed the friendly party under Washington,
Hamilton, and Jay. The Republicans, progenitors of the present
Democrats, formed the unfriendly party under Jefferson, Madison, and
Randolph. The Federals were in power, the Republicans in opposition.
When the Republicans got into power in 1801 under Jefferson they pursued
their anti-British policy till they finally brought on the War of 1812
under the presidency of Madison. The strength of the peace party lay in
the North: that of the war party lay in the South. The peaceful
Federals, now that Independence had been gained, were in favour of
meeting the amicable British government half-way. When Pitt came into
power in 1783 he at once held out the olive branch. Now, ten years
later, the more far-seeing statesmen on both sides were preparing to
confirm the new friendship in the practical form of Jay's Treaty, which
put the United States into what is at present known as a
most-favoured-nation position with regard to British trade and commerce.
Moreover, Washington and his Northern Federals much preferred a British
Canada to a French one, while Jefferson and the Southern Republicans
thought any stick was good enough to beat the British dog with.

The Jeffersonians eagerly seized on the reports of a speech which
Carleton made to the Miamis, who lived just south of Detroit, and used
it to the utmost as a means of stirring up anti-British feeling.
Carleton had said: 'You are witnesses that we have acted in the most
peaceable manner and borne the language and conduct of the United States
with patience. But I believe our patience is almost exhausted.' Applied
to the vexed questions of the Western Posts, of the lawless ways of the
exterminating American pioneers, and of the infinitely worse jobbing
politicians behind them, this language was mildness itself. But in view
of the high statesmanship of Washington and his government it was
injudicious. All the same, Dundas, more especially because he was a
cabinet minister, was even more injudicious when he adopted a tone of
reproof towards Carleton, whose great services, past and present,
entitled him to unusual respect and confidence. The negotiations for
Jay's Treaty were then in progress in London, and Jefferson saw his
chance of injuring both the American and British governments by
magnifying Carleton's speech into an 'unwarrantable outrage.' He also
hoped that an Indian war would upset the treaty and bring on a British
war as well. And the prospect did look encouragingly black in the West,
where the American general Wayne was ready waiting south of Lake Erie,
while the trade in scalps was unusually brisk. Forty dollars was the
regular market price for an ordinary Indian's scalp. But as much as a
thousand was offered for Simon Girty's in the hope of getting that
inconvenient British scout put quickly out of the way. Nearer home
Jefferson and his band of demagogues had other arguments as well. The
Federal North would suffer most by war, while the Republican South might
use war as a means of repudiating all the debts she owed to Englishmen.
This would have been a very different thing from the insolvency of the
Continental Congress during the Revolution. It was dire want, not
financial infamy, that made the Revolutionary paper money 'not worth a
Continental.' But it would have been sheer theft for the Jeffersonian
South to have made its honest obligations 'rotten as a Pennsylvanian
bond.'

The wild French-Revolutionary rage that swept through the South now
fanned the flame and made the sparks fly over into Canada. In April 1793
a fiery Red Republican, named Genet, landed at Charleston as French
minister to the United States and made a triumphal progress to
Philadelphia. Nobody bothered about the fundamental differences between
the French and American revolutions. France and England were going to
war and that was enough. Genet was one of those 'impossibles' whom
revolutions throw into ridiculous power. When he began his campaign the
Republican South was at his feet. Planters and legislators donned caps
of liberty and danced themselves so crazy over the rights of abstract
man that they had no enthusiasm left for such concrete instances as
Loyalists, Englishmen, and their own plantation slaves. Then Genet made
his next step in the new diplomacy by fitting out French privateers in
American harbours and seizing British vessels in American waters. This
brought Washington down on him at once. Then he lost his head
completely, abused everybody, including Jefferson, and retired from
public life as an American citizen, being afraid to go home.

Genet's absurd career was short, but very meteoric while it lasted, and
full of anti-British mischief-making. His agents were everywhere. and
his successor, Adet, carried on the underground agitation with equal
zeal and more astuteness. Vermont offered an excellent base of
operations. Finding that its British proclivities had not produced the
Chambly canal for its trade with the St Lawrence, it had become more
violently anti-British than ever before and even proposed taking Canada
single-handed. This time its new policy remained at fever heat for over
three years and only cooled down when a British man-of-war captured the
incongruously named _Olive Branch_, in which Ira Allen was trying to run
the blockade from Ostend with twenty thousand muskets and other arms
which he represented as being solely for the annual drill of the Vermont
militia. Thus Carleton had to watch the raging South, the dangerous
West, and bellicose Vermont, all together, besides taking whatever
measures he could against the swarms of secret enemies within the gates.
The American immigrants who wanted 'property not liberty' were ready
enough for a change of flag whenever it suited them. But they were few
compared with the mass of French Canadians who were being stirred into
disaffection. The seigneurs, the clergy, and the very few enlightened
people of other classes had no desire for being conquered by a regicide
France or an obliterating American Republic. But many of the habitants
and of the uneducated in the towns lent a willing ear to those who
promised them all kinds of liberty and property put together.

The danger was all the greater because it was no longer one foreigner
intriguing against another, as in 1775, but French against British and
class against class. Some of the appeals were still ridiculous. The
habitants found themselves credited with an unslakable thirst for higher
education. They were promised 'free' maritime intercommunication between
the Old World and the New, a wonderful extension of representative
institutions, and much more to the same effect, universal revolutionary
brotherhood included. But when Frenchmen came promising fleets and
armies, when these emissaries were backed by French Canadians who had
left home for good reasons after the troubles of 1775, and when the
habitants were positively assured by all these credible witnesses that
France and the United States were going to drive the British out of
Canada and make a heaven on earth for all who would turn against
Carleton, then there really was something that sensible men could
believe. Everything for nothing--or next to nothing. Only turn against
the British and the rest would be easy. No more tithes to the curés, no
more seigneurial dues, no more taxes to a government which put half the
money in its own pocket and sent the other half to the king, who spent
it buying palaces and crowns.

'Nothing is too absurd for them to believe,' wrote Carleton, who felt
all the old troubles of 1775 coming back in a greatly aggravated form.
He lost no time in vain regrets, however, but got a militia bill through
parliament, improved the defences of Quebec, and issued a proclamation
enjoining all good subjects to find out, report, and seize every
sedition-monger they could lay their hands on. An attempt to embody two
thousand militiamen by ballot was a dead failure. The few
English-speaking militiamen required came forward 'with alacrity.' The
habitants hung back or broke into riotous mobs. The ordinary habitant
could hardly be blamed. He saw little difference between one kind of
English-speaking people and another. So he naturally thought it best to
be on the side of the prospective winners, especially when they
persuaded him that he would get back everything taken from him by 'the
infamous Quebec Act.' There really was no way whatever of getting him to
see the truth under these circumstances. The mere fact that his
condition had improved so much under British rule made him all the
readier to cry for the Franco-American moon. Things presently went from
bad to worse. A glowing, bombastic address from 'The Free French to
their Canadian Brothers' (who of course were 'slaves') was even read out
at more than one church door. Then the Quebec Assembly unanimously
passed an Alien Act in May 1794, and suspected characters began to find
that two could play at the game. This stringent act was not passed a day
too soon. By its provisions the Habeas Corpus Act could be suspended or
suppressed and the strongest measures taken against sedition in every
form. Monk, the attorney-general, reported that 'It is astonishing to
find the same savagery exhibited here as in France.' The habitants and
lower class of townsfolk had been well worked up 'to follow France and
the United States by destroying a throne which was the seat of
hypocrisy, imposture, despotism, greed, cruelty' and all the other
deadly sins. The first step was to be the assassination of all obnoxious
officials and leading British patriots the minute the promised invasion
began to prove successful.

No war came. And, as we have seen already, Carleton's last year, 1796,
was more peaceful than his first. But even then the external dangers
made the governor-general's post a very trying one, especially when
internal troubles were equally rife. Thus Carleton never enjoyed a
single day without its anxious moments till, old and growing weary,
though devoted as ever, he finally left Quebec on the 9th of July. This
was the second occasion on which he had been forced to resign by unfair
treatment at the hands of those who should have been his best support.
It was infinitely worse the first time, when he was stabbed in the back
by that shameless political assassin, Lord George Germain. But the
second was also inexcusable because there could be no doubt whatever as
to which of the incompatibles should have left his post--the replaceable
Simcoe or the irreplaceable Carleton. Yet as H.M.S. _Active_ rounded
Point Levy, and the great stronghold of Quebec faded from his view,
Carleton had at least the satisfaction of knowing that he had been the
principal saviour of one British Canada and the principal founder of
another.




                               CHAPTER X


                            'NUNC DIMITTIS'


                               1796-1808

Our tale is told.

The _Active_ was wrecked on the island of Anticosti, where the estuary
of the St Lawrence joins the Gulf. No lives were lost, and the Carletons
reached Percé in Gaspé quite safely in a little coasting vessel. Then a
ship came round from Halifax and sailed the family over to England at
the end of September, just thirty years after Carleton had come out to
Canada to take up a burden of oversea governance such as no other
viceroy, in any part of the world-encircling British Empire, has ever
borne so long.

He lived to become a wonderful link with the past. When he died at home
in England he was in the sixty-seventh year of his connection with the
Army and in the eighty-fifth of his age. More than any other man of note
he brought the days of Marlborough into touch with those of Wellington,
though a century lay between. At the time he received his first
commission most of the senior officers were old Marlburians. At the time
of his death Nelson had already won Trafalgar, Napoleon had already been
emperor of the French for nearly three years, and Wellington had already
begun the great Peninsular campaigns. Carleton's own life thus
constitutes a most remarkable link between two very different eras of
Imperial history. But he and his wife together constitute a still more
remarkable link between two eras of Canadian history which are still
farther apart. At first sight it seems almost impossible that he, who
was the trusted friend of Wolfe, and she, who learned deportment at
Versailles in the reign of Louis Quinze, should together make up a
living link between 1690, when Frontenac saved Quebec from the American
Colonials under Phips, and 1867, when the new Dominion was proclaimed
there. But it is true. Carleton, born in the first quarter of the
eighteenth century, knew several old men who had served at the Battle of
the Boyne, which was fought three months before Frontenac sent his
defiance to Phips 'from the mouth of my cannon.' Carleton's wife, living
far on into the second quarter of the nineteenth century, knew several
rising young men who saw the Dominion of Canada well started on its
great career.

All Carleton's sons went into the Army and all died on active service.
The fourth was killed in 1814 at Bergen-op-Zoom carrying the same sword
that Carleton himself had used there sixty-seven years before. A picture
of the first siege of Bergen-op-Zoom hangs in the dining-room of the
family seat at Greywell Hill to remind successive generations of their
martial ancestors. But no Carleton needs to be reminded of a man's first
duty at the call to arms. The present holder of the Dorchester estates
and title is a woman. But her son and heir went straight to the front
with the cavalry of the first British army corps to take the field in
Belgium during the Great World War of 1914.

Carleton spent most of his last twelve years at Kempshot near
Basingstoke because he kept his stud there and horses were his chief
delight. But he died at Stubbings, his place near Maidenhead beside the
silver Thames, on the 10th of November 1808.

Thus, after an unadventurous youth and early manhood, he spent his long
maturity steering the ship of state through troublous seas abroad. then
passed life's evening in the quiet haven of his home.




                               FOOTNOTES
Footnote 1:

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.

Footnote 2:

See _The War Chief of the Ottawas_, chap. iii.

Footnote 3:

_The War Chief of the Ottawas._

Footnote 4:

See, in this Series, _The Fighting Governor_.

Footnote 5:

See _The Passing of New France_, p. 118.

Footnote 6:

See _Pioneers of the Pacific Coast_ in this Series.




                          BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE


The Seigneurs and the Loyalists, both closely associated with Carleton's
Canadian career, are treated in two volumes of the present Series: _The
Seigneurs of Old Canada_ and _The United Empire Loyalists_. Two other
volumes also provide profitable reading: _The War Chief of the Six
Nations: A Chronicle of Brant_, the Indian leader who was to Carleton's
day what Tecumseh was to Brock's, and _The War Chief of the Ottawas: A
Chronicle of the Pontiac War_.

Only one life of Carleton has been written, _Lord Dorchester_, by A. G.
Bradley (1907). The student should also consult _John Graves Simcoe_, by
Duncan Campbell Scott (1905), _Sir Frederick Haldimand_, by Jean
M'Ilwraith (1904), and _A History of Canada from 1763 to 1812_ by Sir
Charles Lucas. Carleton is the leading character in the first half of
the third volume of _Canada and its Provinces_, which, being the work of
different authors, throws light on his character from several different
British points of view as well as from several different kinds of
evidence. Kingsford's _History of Canada_, volumes iv to vii, treats the
period in considerable detail. Justin Smith's two volumes, _Our Struggle
for the Fourteenth Colony_, is the work of a most painstaking American
scholar who had already produced an excellent account of _Arnold's March
from Cambridge to Quebec_, in which, for the first time, _Arnold's
Journal_ was printed word for word. _Arnold's Expedition to Quebec_, by
J. Codman, is another careful work. These are the complements of the
British books mentioned above, as they emphasize the American point of
view and draw more from American than from British sources of original
information. The unfortunate defect of _Our Struggle for the Fourteenth
Colony_ is that the author's efforts to be sprightly at all costs tend
to repel the serious student, while his very thoroughness itself repels
the merely casual reader.

So many absurd or perverting mistakes are still made about the life and
times of Carleton, and a full understanding of his career is of such
vital importance to Canadian history, that no accounts given in the
general run of books--including many so-called 'standard works'--should
be accepted without reference to the original authorities. Justin
Smith's books, cited above, have useful lists of authorities. though
there is no discrimination between documents of very different value.
The original British diaries kept during Montgomery and Arnold's
beleaguerment have been published by the Literary and Historical Society
of Quebec in two volumes, at the end of which there is a very useful
bibliography showing the whereabouts of the actual manuscripts of these
and many other documents in English, French, and German. In addition to
the American and British diarists who wrote in English there were
several prominent French Canadians and German officers who kept most
interesting journals which are still extant. The Dominion Archives at
Ottawa possess an immense mass of originals, facsimiles, and verbatim
copies of every kind, including maps and illustrations. The Dominion
Archivist, Dr Doughty, has himself edited, in collaboration with
Professor Shortt, all the _Documents relating to the Constitutional
History of Canada from 1759 to 1791_.

The present Chronicle is based on the original evidence of both sides.




                                 INDEX


Adams, President John, and the Loyalists, 174.
Adet, M., his anti-British campaign, 219.
Ainslie, Thomas, quoted, 92.
Allen, Ethan, leader of the Green Mountain Boys, 63, 65-66, 69, 136.
  taken prisoner at Montreal, 75-77.
  Carleton's friendly correspondent, 192.
Allen, Ira, 219-220.
American War of Independence, the: causes of, 171-173.
  revolutionists and Loyalists, 61-62, 166, 173-174.
  division of parties in Britain, 61, 163.
  and in Canada, 62.
  the first shot fired, 62.
  American invasion of Canada, 63-142.
  British campaign against Thirteen Colonies, 143-161.
  what forced the granting of Independence, 162-163.
  the treaty of peace, 166-169.
Amherst, Sir Jeffery, and Carleton, 5, 19, 21.
  and the Jesuits' estates, 191.
Anderson, Lieut., killed at the Sault-au-Matelot, 118.
Antell, with Montgomery at Quebec, 106.
Arnold, Benedict, 63-64.
  and the Green Mountain Boys, 65 65-67, 68.
  his daring march against Quebec, 71, 80-83, 85-86, 178.
  meets Montgomery, 99.
  wounded in assault on the Sault-au-Matelot, 108, 109, 110, 113-115, 125.
  at Montreal, 122, 134-135, 140.
  his defeat on Lake Champlain, 144-148.

Bailly, Father, his attempt to assist Carleton, 126.
Bailly, François, coadjutor bishop of Quebec, 188.
  his educational work,189-190.
Barnsfair, Captain, at Prés-de-Ville, 111, 112.
Baum, Colonel, 143.
Beaujeu, M. de, and Carleton, 125-126.
Bouchette, with Carleton in the race for Quebec, 90.
Brown, William, starts the first newspaper in Canada, 37-39.
Brown, Major, 75, 76.
  his attempt to bluff Carleton, 89-90.
Burgoyne, General, 143, 152, 154, 155.
  meets disaster at Saratoga, 156.
Burke, Edmund, 204.
Burr, Aaron, 81.
Burton, Colonel, commands the district of Three Rivers, 19, 21, 23.
Bute, Marquis of, 24-25.
Butterfield, Colonel, defeated at the Cedars, 134-136.

Canada: the Capitulation, 16.
  why conquered by Britain,20-21.
  her defences under Murray, 21-22.
  the French population in 1762, 22-23.
  civil government inaugurated in, 25-28.
  political war between the 'King's Old Subjects'
  and the French-Canadians, 28-33, 36.
  the baiting of the redcoats, 33-36.
  the first newspaper,  37-39.
  the Indian trade,  41-42.
  the Walker affair,  43-45.
  the Quebec Act,  52-55, 60,  158-159, 184, 222.
  and the American Revolution, 61, 62.
  state of prior to American invasion, 71-75.
  Montgomery and Arnold's Invasion, 75-142.
  Carlton's final administration, 184-186.
  the Loyalists, 186.
  the problem of defence, 186-187.
  education, 189-90.
  commerce, 191-193.
  population in 1791, 191.
  foreign complications, 194.
  immigration problem, 194-195.
  the church question, 195.
  the postal service, 195-196.
  two royal visits, 197-201.
  the Constitutional Act of 1791, 201-208.
  her indebtedness to Britain, 206, 208.
  and anti-British sentiment in United States, 218-223.
  See Quebec.
Carden, Major, defeats Americans at Montreal, 76-77.
Carleton, Guy, his birth and parentage, 1.
  his early career, 1-6.
  Wolfe his friend and champion, 2-7, 12.
  incurs George II's displeasure, 2, 5, 6.
  his engineering skill, 4, 5.
  with Wolfe as quarter-master-general, 6-11.
  twice mentioned in dispatches and in Wolfe's will, 12-13.
  governor of Canada, 40-41, 49-50, 158-159.
  his troubles with the Council, 42-43.
  the Walker affair, 43-45.
  the constitutional problem, 45-47.
  sails for England in connection with the Quebec Act, 46, 48-49, 60.
  advocates the seigneurial militia system, 47-49.
  his romantic marriage, 50-52.
  his defence of Canada against Montgomery's invasion, 64-65, 71-74, 76,
    77, 78, 79, 80, 85.
  his race for Quebec, 86-92.
  his defence of Quebec, 93, 94, 102-103, 107, 109, 110-111, 118, 121,
    122, 125, 127-129.
  his policy of clemency at Three Rivers, 140, 167.
  his victory on Lake Champlain, 144-148, 149-150.
  knighted, 149.
  his quarrel with Germain and his resignation, 152-161.
  his arrival in New York with unlimited powers, 164-165.
  objects to America being granted complete Independence, 166-169.
  his work in connection with the British evacuation of America, 168, 170,
    173, 175-180.
  becomes Baron Dorchester, 181-183.
  his welcome to Quebec, 183-185, 208, 210-211, 212.
  some problems requiring solution, 186-188, 189, 193, 194, 195, 201,
    202-203, 206.
  his quarrel with Simcoe, 212-214, 224.
  his attitude towards the Americans, 214, 216, 217, 220, 221.
  his final departure from Canada, 223-235.
  his wonderful record and death, 225-228.
  his character, 2, 3, 49, 102-103, 181, 183-184.
  his descendants, 227.
Carroll, Charles, Congress commissioner to Canada, 130-132, 133, 137-139.
Carroll, John, Archbishop of Baltimore, 131, 132.
Cedars, the affair at the, 134-136.
Chabot, Captain, at Prés-de-Ville, 111.
Chambly, the defence of, 73-74.
  its disgraceful surrender, 74, 77-78, 99.
Chase, Samuel, member of the Congress Commission, 130-132, 133, 137-139.
Chatham, Earl of, 24-25, 211.
  and Carleton, 2, 6, 49.
  See Pitt.
Church of England in Canada, the, 183, 195, 205, 211.
Clarke, Sir Alured, 176.
  lieutenant-governor, 188, 208.
Clergy Reserves, the, 195.
Clinton, General, 155.
Coffin, John, at Prés-de-Ville, 111, 113.
Connaught, Duke of, 198.
Constitutional Act of 1791, the, 184, 201-208.
Continental Congress, and the American Revolution, 61-62, 64, 67-68.
  the plan of campaign against Canada, 71.
  and Montgomery's defeat, 123-124.
  sends a commission into Canada, 130-132, 133, 137-139.
  the 'Affair at the Cedars,' 134-136.
  and the Indians,136-137.
  the Asgill affair, 166.
  and the Loyalists, 173-174, 176-177.
  See Thirteen Colonies and United States.
Cook, Captain, 8.
Cornwallis, General, 155.
Cramahé, Colonel, 36.
  Carleton's lieutenant, 49, 74, 83, 84-85, 99, 178.
Crown Point, 64, 66, 140, 148.

Dacre, Lieutenant, 145.
Dambourges, Lieutenant, at the Sault-au-Matelot, 117.
Dearborn, Captain, 114-115.
Digby, Admiral, 168.
Dorchester, Baron.
  See Carleton.
Dorchester, Lady, 2, 51-52, 226-227.
  her viceregal court at Quebec, 149-150, 196-197, 200-201.
Duggan, Jerry, his bombast before Quebec, 104, 108, 110, 120.
Dundas, Henry, Viscount Melville, and Carleton, 213, 217.
Durell, Admiral, 7-9.

Easton, Colonel, his summons to Carleton, 87-89.
Egremont, Lord, 26.

Fanning, Edmund, lieutenant-governor of Prince Edward Island, 196.
Forster, Captain, his 'Affair at the Cedars,' 134-136.
Fort George, 64.
Fox, Charles James, 188, 204.
France, cedes Canada to Britain, 14-16.
  her association with Americans against Britain, 162, 214, 215, 218-219,
    221.
Franklin, Benjamin, his mission into Canada, 34, 130-132.
Fraser, Captain Malcolm, at the defence of Quebec, 109.
French Canadians, their appreciation of the British, 15, 22, 35, 36.
  after the Capitulation, 16-17, 47.
  their number in 1762, 22-23.
  changes in their laws, 26-27.
  their disabilities under English civil law, 45-46.
  and the militia, 47-48.
  the Quebec Act, 54-55.
  and the American Revolution, 62.
  the invasion of Canada, 71-73, 76, 78, 79, 82, 84, 85, 100.
  the siege of Quebec, 125-126.
  and Continental paper money, 131-132, 141.
  after the American retreat, 140-141, 149-150, 158-159.
  their partiality for certain governors, 185.
  and the Loyalists, 194-195.
  the Act of 1791, 202, 208.
  the anti-British campaign in United States, 220-223.
  See Canada and Great Britain.

Gage, General, 21, 22.
  hard pressed at Boston, 64-65.
Genet, Edmond Charles, his anti-British campaign, 218-219.
George II, and Carleton, 2, 5, 6, 151.
George III, 152.
Germain, Lord George, 150-151.
  his quarrel with Carleton,152-153, 157-158.
  bungles his own plan against the Thirteen colonies, 156.
  his gross mismanagement of colonial affairs, 159-161, 162, 164, 183.
Germans, British mercenaries in America, 143, 153, 170, 179.
Gilmore, Thomas, starts the first newspaper in Canada, 37-39.
Girty, Simon, a British scout, 217.
Grant, Sir William, 159.
Graves, Admiral, 65.
Great Britain, her varying French Canadian policy, 16-17.
  her Indian policy, 27-28.
  and the American Revolution, 61.
  her critical case in 1777-1782, 162-164.
  grants complete Independence to the United States, 166-168.
  her policy in regard to the property of rebels, 178-179.
  the war with France and her friendly attitude towards the United States,
    214-16.
Green Mountain Boys, the, 63, 65-67, 68, 79, 192.
Grenville, Lord, and the constitution of Canada, 188, 201, 203-204.

Haldimand, General, governor of Canada, 157, 184-186.
Hamilton, Alexander, friendly towards Britain, 215.
Hamilton, Captain, at the defence of Quebec, 96.
Hamilton, Henry, lieutenant-governor, 185.
Hey, William, chief justice, and the Walker affair, 44.
Hope, Henry, lieutenant-governor, 185, 186, 188.
Howard, Ladies Anne and Maria, 50-51.
  See Dorchester, Lady.
Howe, General, his American sympathies, 153, 155, 156.
Hubert, Bishop, his dispute with his coadjutor, 189-190, 211.

Indians, British and American attitude towards, 27-28, 187.
  and the American invasion of Canada, 76, 78, 82, 103, 134-136.
  the dispute regarding their use in war, 136-137.
Inglis, Charles, Bishop of Nova Scotia, 188, 211.
Irving, Colonel, and Carleton, 41, 42-43, 44.
Isle-aux-Coudres, 8.

Jay, John, his friendliness towards Britain, 214, 215, 216.
Jefferson, Thomas, his anti-British policy, 215, 216, 217-218.
Jesuits, their power on the wane, 42.
Jesuits' Estates, the, 191.
Johnson, Sir John, and Carleton, 212-213.

Kent, Duke of, 96.
  his visit to Canada, 197-200, 209.
Kentucky, and trade with the British, 192-193.
Kirkland, Samuel, and the Indians, 136.

La Corne de St Luc, and the Walker affair, 44.
Lake Champlain, the battle on, 144-148.
Lawes, Captain, at the Sault-au-Matelot, 118-120.
Legislative Council, the, 29, 41, 42-43.
  under the Quebec Act, 54, 60, 71.
Lévis, General, 14.
  his desperate throw for victory, 15-16.
Ligonier, Sir John, and Carleton, 6.
Livingston, James, his company of Canadian 'patriots,' 69, 75, 100, 108,
  110, 120, 122.
Livius, Peter, his gross pretensions, 159-160.
Lower Canada, the first parliament in, 207-210.
  and the anti-British campaign in the United States, 222-223.
  See Quebec.
Lymburner, Adam, 204.

M'Dougall, Captain, at the Sault-au-Matelot, 118-120.
M'Kenzie, Captain, 96.
Maclean, Colonel, at the defence of Quebec, 83, 85, 96.
M'Quarters, Sergeant Hugh, at Prés-de-Ville, 111.
Madison, President James, his anti-British policy, 215.
Maritime War, the, 24-25.
  See Seven Years' War.
Meigs, Major, at the assault on the Sault-au-Matelot, 119.
Monk, James, attorney-general of Lower Canada, 223.
Montgomery, Richard, 69-71.
  his siege of St Johns, 75, 78, 80.
  his race for Carleton, 86-92.
  his meeting with Arnold and arrival before Quebec, 99-100.
  his summons to Carleton to surrender, 100-102.
  his plans for an assault, 104-8, 133-4.
  killed at Prés-de-Ville, 107-112, 121-122.
Montreal, Capitulation of, 16.
  and the baiting of the redcoats, 33-36.
  and the American Revolution, 62-63, 74, 76.
  in the hands of the Americans, 123.
  and the Congress Commission, 131-132.
Morgan, Daniel, with Arnold's expedition against Quebec, 81, 114-116, 118,
  119-120.
Morgan, Maurice, Carleton's confidential secretary, 46, 175-176.
Morris, Colonel, and the Loyalists, 175-176.
Mountain, Jacob, Bishop of Quebec, 211.
Murray, General, 12, 14-15.
  governor of Canada, 17-19, 25, 26, 28, 32, 49-50.
  quells disturbance among British troops, 19-20, 35-36.
  his report on Canada, 20-24.
  champions the French-Canadian cause, 32-33.
  called home, 36-37, 41.

Nairne, Major, at the Sault-au-Matelot, 117.
Napier, Captain, 91.
Nootka Affair, the, 193-4.
North, Lord, his unfortunate ministry, 163-164.

Osgoode, William, chief justice of Canada, 211-212.
Oswald, Captain, in the assault on the Sault-au-Matelot, 114.

Paris, Treaty of, 25.
Parr, Governor, and the Loyalists, 176.
Patterson, Walter, lieutenant-governor of Prince Edward Island, 196.
Payne, Captain, and the Walker affair, 35.
Phillips, Mary, her historic love-affair, 175.
Picard, Lieutenant, at Prés-de-Ville, 111.
Pitt, William, 211, 216.
  and the Canada Act of 1791, 201, 204-205.
  See Chatham, Earl of.
Pontiac's War, 27-28.
Presbyterian Church in Canada, the, 195.
Prés-de-Ville, 99.
  the attack on, 110-113.
Prescott, Colonel, 90, 91.
  taken prisoner, 123.
'Presentment of the Grand Jury of Quebec,' the, 30-33.
Preston, Major, his defence of St Johns, 74-75, 78, 80.
Price, a rebel Montrealer, 106.
Prince Edward Island, the refractory lieutenant-governor, 195, 196.
Pringle, Captain, on Lake Champlain, 145-146.

Quebec: some war prices in Wolfe's camp, 10-11.
  conditions after the fall, 14-5.
  her defences in 1762, 21-22.
  under the Quebec Act, 53.
  the American invasion of Canada, 83-84, 85.
  Montgomery and Arnold's Siege, 93-129.
  Quebec in 1775, 93.
  position of the combatants, 93-94.
  the defences, 94, 99, 110-111, 113-114, 122.
  Carleton's compulsory measures of defence, 94-95, 122-123.
  composition of the British defenders, 95-97, 121.
  a comparison of men and armaments, 97-99, 99-100, 108-109.
  Montgomery's summons to Carleton, 100-102.
  the bombardment, 103-107, 124, 126.
  Prés-de-Ville and the Sault-au-Matelot, 107-121, 133-134.
  the reply to the American summons, 124.
  the plot among the American prisoners, 124-125.
  the relief and the American retreat, 127-129.
  --gay times in Quebec, 149-150.
  the opening of the first parliament, 208-210.
Quebec Act of 1774, the, 52-55, 60, 158-159, 184, 222.
  feelings regarding, 55-56.
  some criticism, 56-59.

Richmond, Duke of, and Carleton, 3 3.
Riedesel, Baron, 143 143.
Roman Catholics, under the Quebec Act, 53 53-4.

Sackville, Lord George, 5.
  See Germain.
St Johns, 64, 67.
  its siege and surrender, 74-75, 78, 79, 80, 99.
Saratoga, British disaster at, 156, 162.
Sault-au-Matelot, 99.
  the assault on, 113-120.
Saunders, Admiral, with Wolfe at Quebec, 7,
 8, 9.
Schuyler, General Philip, and the invasion of Canada, 67-68, 69, 70.
Seven Years' War, the first shot fired in, 4.
  Pitt's bloody and expensive war, 24-25.
Seymour, Miss, and the Carleton romance, 51-52.
Simcoe, John Graves, his quarrel with Carleton, 212-214, 224.
Smith, William, chief justice of Canada, 188-189, 201.
  advocates Confederation, 202-203, 211.
Sorel, 74, 86, 87-88, 138, 205.
  a change of name, 197.
Stopford, Major, his disgraceful surrender of Chambly, 74, 75, 77.
Sullivan, General John, his defeat at Three Rivers, 139-140.
Sydney, Lord, and Carleton, 188.

Templer, Colonel, 71.
Thirteen Colonies, and the Indian trade, 41-42.
  their fury at the Quebec Act, 56.
  revolutionists and Loyalists, 61-62.
  their Declaration of Independence, 142.
  their relations with Britain before the Revolution, 171-173.
  See American War of Independence and United States.
Thomas, General John, and the siege of Quebec, 122, 139.
Thompson, James, finds Montgomery's body, 121-122.
Three Rivers, the battle of, 139-140.
Ticonderoga, 64, 65-66, 69-70.
  a momentous issue, 148, 152-153, 155, 157.
Trenton, the British disaster at, 153.

United Empire Loyalists, the, 17, 61-62, 143.
  their wretched situation in United States, 169, 170-171, 173.
  the exodus, 176-180, 184, 186, 191, 194-195, 201.
United States, the central authority weak, 173, 192-193.
  pro-British and anti-British feeling in, 214-223.
  See American War of Independence, Continental Congress, and Thirteen
    Colonies.
Upper Canada, its first parliament, 207-208.
  See Canada.

Vergennes, Comte de, French minister to United States, 166.
Vermont, and trade with the British, 192.
  anti-British, 219-220.

Walker, Thomas, his persecution of the redcoats,34-36, 43-44.
  his arrest, 75, 78-79, 91, 123.
Warde, Colonel George, 5, 12.
Warner, Seth, and the Green Mountain Boys, 63, 65-66, 69, 79.
Washington, George, 4, 68.
  and the American Revolution, 71, 82, 137, 152-153, 154, 166, 176-177.
  and the Loyalists, 174.
  his love-affair, 175.
  his friendliness towards Britain, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219.
Wayne, General, 217.
William IV, his visit to Canada, 197.
Wolfe, General, 151.
  his friendship for Carleton, 2, 3, 5, 6-7, 12.
  his siege of Quebec, 6-7, 8, 9, 11-12, 18.
Wooster, General, 68, 69.
  and the siege of Quebec, 122, 124, 126.

Yorktown, British surrender at, 163.




                        THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton of the University of Toronto

A series of thirty-two freshly-written narratives for popular reading,
designed to set forth, in historic continuity, the principal events
and movements in Canada, from the Norse Voyages to the Railway Builders.


PART I. THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS

1. The Dawn of Canadian History
A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

2. The Mariner of St Malo
A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK


PART II. THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE

3. The Founder of New France
A Chronicle of Champlain
BY CHARLES W. COLBY

4. The Jesuit Missions
A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness
BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

5. The Seigneurs of Old Canada
A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism
BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO

6. The Great Intendant
A Chronicle of Jean Talon
BY THOMAS CHAPAIS

7. The Fighting Governor
A Chronicle of Frontenac
BY CHARLES W. COLBY


PART III. THE ENGLISH INVASION

8. The Great Fortress
A Chronicle of Louisbourg
BY WILLIAM WOOD

9. The Acadian Exiles
A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline
BY ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY

10. The Passing of New France
A Chronicle of Montcalm
BY WILLIAM WOOD

11. The Winning of Canada
A Chronicle of Wolfe
BY WILLIAM WOOD


PART IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH CANADA

12. The Father of British Canada
A Chronicle of Carleton
BY WILLIAM WOOD

13. The United Empire Loyalists
A Chronicle of the Great Migration
BY W. STEWART WALLACE

14. The War with the United States
A Chronicle of 1812
BY WILLIAM WOOD


PART V. THE RED MAN IN CANADA

15. The War Chief of the Ottawas
A Chronicle of the Pontiac War
BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

16. The War Chief of the Six Nations
A Chronicle of Joseph Brant
BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

17. Tecumseh
A Chronicle of the last Great Leader of his People
BY ETHEL T. RAYMOND


PART VI. PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST

18. The 'Adventurers of England' on Hudson Bay
A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
BY AGNES C. LAUT

19. Pathfinders of the Great Plains
A Chronicle of La Vérendrye and his Sons
BY LAWRENCE J. BURPEE

20. Adventurers of the Far North
A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

21. The Red River Colony
A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba
BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

22. Pioneers of the Pacific Coast
A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
BY AGNES C. LAUT

23. The Cariboo Trail
A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia
BY AGNES C. LAUT


PART VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM

24. The Family Compact
A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada
BY W. STEWART WALLACE

25. The Patriotes of '37
A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lower Canada
BY ALFRED D. DECELLES

26. The Tribune of Nova Scotia
A Chronicle of Joseph Howe
BY WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT

27. The Winning of Popular Government
A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN


PART VIII. THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY

28. The Fathers of Confederation
A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion
BY A. H. U. COLQUHOUN

29. The Day of Sir John Macdonald
A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion
BY SIR JOSEPH POPE

30. The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier
A Chronicle of Our Own Times
BY OSCAR D. SKELTON


PART IX. NATIONAL HIGHWAYS

31. All Afloat
A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways
BY WILLIAM WOOD

32. The Railway Builders
A Chronicle of Overland Highways
BY OSCAR D. SKELTON

                              Published by
                        Glasgow, Brook & Company
                            TORONTO, CANADA

[The end of _The Father of British Canada_ by William Wood]