Part 19 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARL OF SELKIRK (Founder of Selkirk Settlement, 1820)]

CHAPTER XX

THE NEW CENTURY

Quebec entered upon the nineteenth century equipped with the machinery of const.i.tutional government, which was, however, clogged in action by unhappy divisions within the city. The four years of Sir James Craig's rule were disturbed by a truceless war between the Legislative a.s.sembly and the Governor, whose arbitrary temper ill qualified him to lead a people still groping for standing-ground within the area of their new const.i.tution. He looked at popular inst.i.tutions with the distrust natural to an old soldier, and the period of his administration became known in the annals of the province as ”the reign of little King Craig.” Born at Gibraltar, he had entered the army at the tender age of fifteen, and having earned rapid promotion on many battlefields, he finally reached the rank of major-general at the close of the American revolutionary war. Further experience in India and the Mediterranean increased his reputation, and in the autumn of 1807 he arrived in Quebec full of military honours, and imbued with the high political views then held by the most exclusive wing of the Tory party. The members of the Legislative Council and the administrative clique drew close about the person of this new champion, and in the same degree the French majority in the Legislative a.s.sembly held aloof. The burning questions of the day, whether the judges should sit and vote in Parliament, whether the a.s.sembly could communicate directly with the Home Government--these were but the occasions of an antagonism really due to diversity of race and temperament; for, as Lord Durham discovered a generation later, ”this sensitive and polite people” revolted, not so much against political disability, as against the exclusive manners and practices of a ruling cla.s.s far removed from themselves by language and mode and code, who ruffled their racial pride at every turn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FERRY-BOAT ON THE ST. LAWRENCE]

The new Governor was now the forcible instrument of this unsympathetic power. With an undue sense of the importance of the vice-royalty, the _ipse dixit_ of ”the little king” dissolved Parliament on more than one occasion. On the other side, _Le Canadien_, the journal of the French party, rhetorically stood for liberty, fraternity, and equality as against arbitrary government. Moderate men, wavering for a time, were at last scandalised by its editorial violence, and rallied to the side of the Governor. The situation quickly became acute, and stringent measures of repression were adopted by Sir James Craig and his councillors. The offending journal was suppressed; five recalcitrant officers of militia were relieved of their command; and, finally, the city guards were strengthened to meet the peril of a possible insurrection. Soon a new element of danger appeared in the threatened war between England and the United States, offering to the aggrieved party a tempting occasion for redress. Fortunately, however, neither the unwisdom of the English Government nor the neighbourhood of a hostile power availed to drive or lure the Canadians into the crooked path of rebellion. As the past had already proved, their country's peril was sufficient to unite in hearty concord all parties, French and English, in the defence of the common heritage; the experience of half a century of British rule having convinced even the survivors of the _Ancien Regime_ that however haughty or aloof officials might be, security, order, and justice prevailed under the British flag.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lord Sydenham.

Governor General of Canada 1839-1841.]

Considering the especial temptations to treason bearing upon the French population at this crisis, such loyal conduct is the more praiseworthy. In the first place, it was maintained throughout a war which was part of England's life-and-death struggle against France, the mother-country of French Canadians. Again, apart from this natural affinity with the chiefest enemy of England, material causes operated yet further to strain their faith; for the enterprise of Montgomery and Arnold was about to be resumed; and the French must choose either to suffer the terrors of a hostile invasion, or to join the armies of the United States in driving the British power for ever from the Continent. Finally, as if these tests of loyalty were not enough, the port of Quebec was invaded by English press-gangs, who terrorised the quays of the Lower Town and kidnapped able-bodied youths of both races. But notwithstanding so many temptations to swerve from allegiance, when news came in June, 1812, that the Americans had declared war against England, the loyal sentiment of the Canadians was unanimous, the Maritime Provinces joining their forces with those of Lower and Upper Canada to repel the invaders; and Major-General Isaac Brock, the Lieutenant-Governor, in his speech to the Legislature of the Upper Province, thus expressed the feeling of the entire country:--

”We are engaged,” he declared, ”in an awful and eventful contest. By unanimity and despatch in our councils, and vigour in our operations, we may teach the enemy this lesson, that a country defended by free men enthusiastically devoted to the cause of their king and const.i.tution can never be conquered.”

Thus, instead of the support on which they calculated, the invading army was to encounter a resolute and united foe. Nor were the causes of Canadian loyalty far to seek. The French population, by nature loyal and content, were unwilling to sever the ties of n.o.ble monarchical tradition binding them to the past, and embark upon the troubled seas of American politics, there to be lost among loose and powerful majorities out of sympathy with their conservative ideals, their temperament, and those racial rights so fully acknowledged by England after the Conquest. Also east and west, the Maritime Provinces and Upper Canada contained an element already devotedly attached to the Crown. The sacrifices of the United Empire loyalists made almost sacred the soil of Upper Canada, now Ontario. Men who had already braved the anger of their fellow-citizens in the American Colonies, and abandoned their homes to witness to the ideal of a united empire, were not likely at the last to throw away their crown of service and stultify themselves before the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR GORDON DRUMMOND (Lieut.-Governor of Upper Canada, December 1813 to April 1815)]

Upper Canada was already a flouris.h.i.+ng colony, containing at the outbreak of this American war about a quarter of the population of the two provinces combined. To balance inferiority in point of numbers, the peculiar circ.u.mstances of the English colonists--affinity of race to the mother-country, a fertile territory, the memory of special benefits received--combined to bring the zealous British sentiment of the new province into special prominence at this crisis. Inspired by the wise counsels of Sir Guy Carleton, the British Government had there formerly pursued a generous policy now about to bear opportune fruit; for when, at the end of the War of Independence, the loyalist refugees were crowding to the appointed places of rendezvous along the northern frontier, facing the future unprovided, the large sum of 3,000,000 sterling had been granted to recompense their losses, in addition to further help allowed more needy settlers. Under the four years of Colonel Simcoe's sympathetic rule (1791-95), the province had trebled its population, a vigorous immigration policy enticing crowds of wavering loyalists or enterprising speculators from the south.

”Where,” asks Brock in his proclamation at the opening of the war, ”where is to be found, in any part of the world, a growth so rapid in prosperity and wealth as this colony exhibits?”

Yet the inhabitants of Upper Canada, for all their special interest in the British connection, hardly exceeded the Lower Province in the zeal with which they rose to meet the new invasion. Indeed, the United States had entirely miscalculated the strength of this spirit of loyalty, which proved a more potent inspiration than their own vaunted superiority in resources and population: for, on the American side, recruits came slowly forward, and the movement had none of the spontaneity evident among their adversaries. The ”Loyal and Patriotic Society,” established by Bishop Strachan, then rector of York, undertook to provide for the national wants of Canada created by the war. The sum of 120,000 was raised in Upper Canada and the Maritime Provinces, while the Quebec Legislature contributed no less than 250,000 towards preparations for defence. At the same time, the colonials were zealously enlisting, all men between the ages of sixteen and forty-five being required to serve in the militia; and their strength was further supplemented by more than four thousand regulars, scattered throughout the country.

The Commander-in-Chief of these forces was Sir George Prevost, who had come to Quebec as Governor in succession to Sir James Craig, a change much welcomed by the French Canadians; for although the new Governor was not an able general, he possessed the gentle art of conciliation, a gift of almost equal value at that critical time. As the New England States had been averse to war from the beginning, the adjoining Maritime Provinces of Canada were spared the trial of invasion, and the quarrel was fought out along the southern border of Upper and Lower Canada.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAJOR-GENERAL SIR ISAAC BROCK, K. B.

(Administrator of Upper Canada, 1812)]

The American Commander, General Dearborn, divided his army of invasion into three parts, intending first to secure a base of operations at the three important points of Detroit, Niagara, and Queenston, and thence to overrun the Upper Province. He was confident that, with the help of the disaffected colonists, these columns would soon be able to converge and march together upon the capital. General Hull, of Michigan, commanded the army of the west; Van Rensselaer led the army of the centre against Niagara and Queenston; while the army of the north, under Dearborn himself, moved from Albany by Lake Champlain towards Ontario.

On the Canadian side, Major-General Brock appeared to realise most clearly the need for decided measures. His commanding presence--he was six feet three inches in height--and his immense muscular strength were joined to an intense and chivalrous spirit which was a deciding influence in uniting the colonists to energetic defence. His practical sense appears in an order directing officers ”On every occasion when in the field to dress in conformity to the men, in order to avoid the bad consequence of a conspicuous dress,”--an expedient only lately adopted in more modern warfare, and not until bitter necessity forced it.

In other respects, however, we have outgrown the ideas entertained at that time on the subject of martial appearance, for the writer of the _Ridout Letters_[44] says, immediately after the battle on Queenston Heights--

”The American prisoners, officers, and men are the most savage-looking fellows I ever saw. To strike a greater terror in their enemies they had allowed their beards on their upper lips to grow. This, however, had no other effect upon us than to raise sensations of disgust.”

[Footnote 44: _Ten Years of Upper Canada in Peace and War_, 1805-1815, _being the Ridout Letters, with Annotations_, by Matilda Edgar, 1891.]

Brock was a native of the Island of Guernsey, and had served with the armies of Britain in many parts of the world, being also present with Nelson at Copenhagen; but had already served officially in Canada for ten years before the war. He now found himself opposed to the vainglorious Hull; nor was it long before he justified his reputation and won glory for the arms of Canada by capturing the American General at Detroit, together with 2500 troops and thirty-three cannon. Brock's ally on this occasion was the Chief Tec.u.mseh, an Indian of reputed supernatural birth, the natives having been induced to throw in their lot with the British colonists in consequence of the seizure of the old port of Michillimackinac by a small force of regulars and Canadian voyageurs. Following his career of victory, Brock was soon afterwards confronted by the army of the Centre, consisting of six thousand Americans, and engaged in the memorable battle on Queenston Heights.

Here, after a long and doubtful fight, the colonial forces were once more successful, though they paid a heavy price for victory in the loss of their wise and brave commander, whose name is endeared to all Canadians, and whose renown grows with succeeding generations.

Meanwhile General Dearborn had undertaken the invasion of Lower Canada with the army of the north, setting out from Albany to attack Montreal by way of Lake Champlain; and to oppose him Colonel De Salaberry, at the head of the French Canadian regiment of Voltigeurs, together with three hundred Indians and a force of rural militia, held an advanced post on the River Lacolle. De Salaberry was distinguished by long experience of foreign service in the British army, having already confronted the Americans, when as a mere boy-subaltern he had covered the evacuation of Matilda. In 1795 he commanded a company of Grenadiers in the expedition to Martinique; and some years later held the post of honour with the Light Brigade at the capture of Flus.h.i.+ng.