Canada: the Empire of the North Part 31

"Hah," laughed the barrister, "the last time we met, your Grace gave _me_ a ball."

"Best give you a brace of 'em now," retorted the witty Richmond; and he sent his quondam foe invitation to two more b.a.l.l.s.

Richmond it was who gave the famous ball before the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The story of his daughter's love match with Sir Peregrine Maitland is of a piece with the rest of the romance in Richmond's life.

Richmond and Maitland had been friends in the army, but when the duke began to observe that his daughter, Lady Sarah, and the younger man were falling in love, he thought to discourage the union with a poor man by omitting Maitland's name from invitation lists. When Lady Sarah came downstairs to a ball she surmised that Maitland had not been invited, and, withdrawing from the a.s.sembled guests, drove to her lover's apartments. She married Maitland without her father's consent, but a reconciliation had been patched up. Father and son-in-law now came to Canada as governor and lieutenant governor.

The military and social life of both unfitted them to appreciate the conditions in Canada. Socially both were the lions of the hour. As a man and gentleman Richmond was simply adored, and Quebec's love of all the pomp of monarchy was glutted to the full. No more distinguished governor ever played host in the old Chateau St. Louis; but as rulers, as pacifiers, as guides of the ship of state, Richmond and Maitland were dismal failures. To them Canada's demand for responsible {419} government seemed the rallying cry of an impending republic. "We must overcome democracy or it will overcome us," p.r.o.nounced Richmond. He failed to see that resistance to the demand for self-government would bring about the same results in Canada as resistance had brought about in the United States, and he could not guess--for the thing was new in the world's history--that the grant of self-government would but bind the colony the closer to the mother land.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FOURTH DUKE OF RICHMOND, GOVERNOR GENERAL OF CANADA, 1818-1819]

It is sad to write of two such high-minded, well-intentioned rulers, that the worst acts of misgovernment in Canada took place in their regime.

Richmond's death was as unusual as his life. Two accounts are given of the cause. One states that he permitted a pet dog to touch a cut in his face. The other account has it that he was bitten by a tame fox at a fair in Sorel, and the date of Richmond's death, late in August of 1819, exactly two months from the time he was bitten at Sorel,--which is the length of time that hydrophobia takes to develop in a grown person,--would seem to substantiate the latter story. He was traveling on horseback from Perth to Richmond, on the Ottawa, and had complained of feeling poorly. A small stream had to be crossed. The sight of the stream brought the strange water delirium to Richmond, when he begged his attendants to take him quickly to Montreal. It need scarcely be explained here that hydrophobia {420} is not caused by lack of water, but by contagious transmission. The feeling pa.s.sed, as the first terrors of the disease are usually spasmodic, and the Governor was proceeding through the woods with his attendants, when he suddenly broke away deliriously, leading them a wild race to a farm shed. There he died during the night, crying out as the lucid intervals broke the delirium of his agonies: "For shame! for shame Lenox! Richmond, be a man! Can you not bear it?"

Public affairs are meanwhile pa.s.sing from bad to worse. William Lyon MacKenzie has become leader of the agitators in his newspaper, _The Advocate_, of Toronto. A band of young vandals, sons of the ruling clique, wreck his newspaper office and throw the type into Toronto Bay, but MacKenzie recovers $3000 damages and goes on agitating. Four times he is publicly expelled from the House, and four times he is returned by the electors. What are they asking, these agitators, branded as rebels, expelled from the a.s.sembly, in some cases cast in prison by the councilors, in others threatened with death?

Control of public revenues.

Reform in the land system.

Munic.i.p.al rights for towns and cities.

The exclusion of judges from Parliament.

That the council be directly responsible to the people rather than the Crown.

Since 1818 the reformers have been agitating to have wrongs righted, and for nineteen years the clique has prevented official inquiry, gagged the press, bludgeoned conventions out of existence, and thrown leaders of opposition in prison.

MacKenzie now makes the mistake of publishing in his papers a letter from the English radical Hume, advocating the freedom of Canada "from the baneful domination of the mother country." At once, with a jingo whoop, the loyalty cry is emitted by "_the family compact_." Is not this what they have been telling the Governor from the first,--these reformers are republicans in {421} disguise? By trickery and manipulation they swing the next election so that MacKenzie is defeated. From that moment MacKenzie's tone changed. It may be that, losing all hope of reform, he became a republican. If this were treason, then the English ministers, who were advocating the same remedy, were guilty of the same treason. With MacKenzie, secretly and openly, are a host of sympathizers,--Dr. Rolph, Tom Talbot's old friend, come up from the London district to practice medicine in Toronto, and Van Egmond, who has helped to settle the Huron Tract of the Canada Company, founded by John Galt, the novelist, and some four thousand others whose names MacKenzie has on a list in his carpet bag.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE]

All the autumn of 1837 Fitzgibbons, now commander of the troops in Toronto, hears vague rumors of farmers secretly drilling, of workmen extemporizing swords out of scythes, of old soldiers furbishing up their arms of the 1812 War. What does it mean? Sir Francis Bond Head, the new governor of Ontario, refuses to believe his own ears. Neither does _the family compact_ realize that there is any danger to their long tenure of power. They affect to sneer at these poor patriots of the plow, little dreaming that the rights which these poor patriots of the scythe swords are burning to defend, will, by and by, be the pride of England's colonial system. The story of plot and counter plot cannot be told in detail here; it is too {422} long. But on the night of Monday, December 4, Toronto wakes up to a wild ringing of college bells. The rebel patriots have collected at Montgomery's Tavern outside Toronto, and are advancing on the city.

Poor MacKenzie's plans have gone all awry. Four thousand patriots had pledged themselves to a.s.semble at the tavern on December 7, but Dr.

Rolph, or some other friend in the city, sends word that the date has been discovered. The only hope of seizing the city is for them to come sooner; and MacKenzie arrives at the tavern on December 3, with only a few hundred followers, who have neither food nor firearms; and I doubt much if they had even definite plans; of such there are no records.

Before Van Egmond comes from Seaforth, doubt and dissension and distrust of success depress the insurgents; and it does n't help their spirits any to have four Toronto scouts break through their lines in the dark and back again with word of their weakness, though they plant a fatal bullet neatly in the back of one poor loyalist. If they had advanced promptly on the 4th, as planned, they might have given Sir Francis Bond Head and Fitzgibbons a stiff tussle for possession of the city, for Toronto's defenders at this time numbered scarcely three hundred; but during the days MacKenzie's followers delayed north of Yonge Street, Allan McNab came up from Hamilton with more troops. By Wednesday, the 6th, there were twelve hundred loyalist troops in Toronto; and noon of the 7th, out marches the loyalist army by way of Yonge Street, bands playing, flags flying, horses prancing under Fitzgibbons and McNab. It was a warm, sunny day. From the windows of Yonge Street women waved handkerchiefs and cheered. At street corners the rabble shouted itself hoa.r.s.e, just as it would have cheered MacKenzie had he come down Yonge Street victorious.

MacKenzie's sentries had warned the insurgents of the loyalists'

coming. MacKenzie was for immediate advance. Van Egmond thought it stark madness for five hundred poorly armed men to meet twelve hundred troopers in pitched battle; but it was too late now for stark madness to retreat. The loyalist {423} bands could be heard from Rosedale; the loyalists' bayonets could be seen glittering in the sun. MacKenzie posted his men a short distance south of the tavern in some woods; one hundred and fifty on one side of the road west of Yonge Street, one hundred on the other side. The rest of the insurgents, being without arms, did not leave the rendezvous. In the confusion and haste the tragic mistake was made of leaving MacKenzie's carpet bag with the list of patriots at the tavern. This gave the loyalists a complete roster of the agitators' names.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALLAN McNAB]

Fifteen minutes later it was all over with MacKenzie. The big guns of the Toronto troops sh.e.l.led the woods, killing one patriot rebel and wounding eleven, four fatally. In answer, only a clattering spatter of shots came from the rebel side. The patriots were in headlong flight with the mounted men of Toronto in pursuit.

It was over with MacKenzie, but, as the sequence of events will show, it was not all over with the cause. A book of soldiers' yarns might be told of hairbreadth escapes, the aftermath of the rebellion. Knowing his side was doomed to defeat, Dr. Rolph tried to escape from Toronto.

He was stopped by a loyalist sentry, but explained he was leaving the city to visit a patient. Farther on he had been arrested by a loyalist picket, when luckily a young doctor who had attended Rolph's medical lectures, all unconscious of MacKenzie's plot, vouched for his {424} loyalty. Riding like a madman all that night, Rolph reached Niagara and escaped to the American frontier. A reward of 1000 pounds had been offered for MacKenzie dead or alive. He had waited only till his followers fled, when he mounted his big bay horse and galloped for the woods, pursued by Fitzgibbons' men. The big bay carried him safely to the country, where he wandered openly for four days. It speaks volumes for the stanch fidelity of the country people to the cause which MacKenzie represented, that during these wanderings he was unbetrayed, spite of the 1000 pounds reward. Finally he too succeeded in crossing Niagara. Van Egmond was captured north of Yonge Street, but died from disease contracted in his prison cell before he could be tried. Lount, another of the leaders, had succeeded in reaching Long Point, Lake Erie. With a fellow patriot, a French voyageur, and a boy, he started to cross Lake Erie in an open boat. It was wintry, stormy weather.

For two days and two nights the boat tossed, a plaything of the waves, the drenching spray freezing as it fell, till the craft was almost ice-logged. For food they had brought only a small piece of meat, and this had frozen so hard that their numbed hands could not break it.

Weakening at each oar stroke, they at last saw the south sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie rise on the sky line; but before the close-m.u.f.fled refugees had dared to hope for safety on the American side, a strong south wind had sprung up that drove the boat back across the lake towards Grand River.

To remain exposed longer meant certain death. They landed, were mistaken for smugglers, and thrown into jail, where Lount was at once recognized.

In West Ontario one Dr. Duncombe had acted as MacKenzie's lieutenant.

Allan McNab had come west with six hundred men to suppress the rebellion. Realizing the hopelessness of further resistance, Duncombe had tried to save his men by ordering them to disperse to their homes.

He himself, with his white horse, took to the woods, where he lay in hiding all day--and it was a Canadian December--and foraged at night for berries and roots. Judge Ermatinger gives the graphic story of {425} Duncombe's escape. Starvation drove him to the house of a friend. The friend was out, and when the wife asked who he was, Duncombe laid his revolver on the table and made answer, "I am Duncombe; and I must have food." Here he lay disguised so completely with nightcap, nightdress, and all, as the visiting grandmother of the family, that loyalists who saw his white horse and came in to search the house, looked squarely at the rec.u.mbent figure beneath the bedclothes and did not recognize him. Duncombe at last reached his sister's home near London.

"Don't you know me?" he asked, standing in the open door, waiting for her recognition. In the few weeks of exposure and pursuit his hair had turned snow-white.

His friends suggested that he cross to the American frontier dressed as a woman, and the disguise was so perfect, curls of his sister's hair bobbing from beneath his bonnet, that two loyalist soldiers gallantly escorted the lady's sleigh across unsafe places in the ice. Duncombe waited till he was well on the American side, and his escorts on the way back to Sarnia. Then he emitted a yell over the back of the cutter, "Go tell your officers you have just helped Dr. Duncombe across!"

Having lost the fight for a cause which events have since justified, it is not surprising that the patriots on the American frontier now lost their heads. They formed organizations from Detroit to Vermont for the invasion of Canada and the establishment of a republic. These bands were known as "Hunter's Lodges." Rolph and Duncombe repudiated connection with them, but MacKenzie was head and heart for armed invasion from Buffalo. s.p.a.ce forbids the story of these raids. They would fill a book with such thrilling tales as make up the border wars of Scotland.

The tumultuous year of 1837 closed with the burning of the _Caroline_.

MacKenzie had taken up quarters on Navy Island in Niagara River. The _Caroline_, an American ship, was being employed to convey guns and provisions to the insurgents' camp. On the Canadian side of the river camped Allan McNab with {426} twenty-five hundred loyalist troops.

Looking across the river with field gla.s.ses, McNab sees the boat landing field guns on Navy Island for MacKenzie.

"I say," exclaims the future Sir Allan, "this won't do! Can't you cut that vessel out, Drew?" addressing a young officer.

"Nothing easier," answers Drew.

"Do it, then," orders McNab.

In spite of the fact "nothing was easier," Drew's men came near disaster on their midnight escapade. The river below Navy Island was three miles wide, and only a mile and a half from the rapids above the Falls, with a current like a mill race. Secretly seven boats, with four men in each, set out at half past eleven, a few friends on the river bank wishing Drew G.o.dspeed. Out from sh.o.r.e Drew draws his boats together, and tells the men the perilous task they have to do: if any one wishes to go back let him do so now. Not a man speaks. Halfway across, firing from the island drives two of the boats back. The rest get under shadow from the bright moonlight and go on. The roar of the Falls now became deafening, and some of the rowers called out they were being drawn down the center of the river astern. Drew fastens his eyes on a light against the American sh.o.r.e to judge of their progress. For a moment, though the men were rowing with all their might, the light ash.o.r.e and the boats in mid-river seemed to remain absolutely still.

Finally the boats gained an oar's length. Then a mighty pull, and all forge ahead. A strip of land hides approach to the _Caroline_. The Canadian boatmen lie in hiding till the moon goes down, then glide in on the _Caroline_, when Drew mounts the decks. Three unarmed men are found on the sh.o.r.e side. Drew orders them to land. One fires point-blank; Drew slashes him down with a single saber cut. The rest of the crew are roused from sleep and sent ash.o.r.e. The _Caroline_ is set on fire in four places. She is moored to the sh.o.r.e ice; axes chop her free. She is adrift; Drew the last to jump from her flaming decks to his place in the small boats. The flames are seen from the Canadian side, and huge bonfires light up the Canadian sh.o.r.e; by their gleam {427} Drew steers back for McNab's army, and is welcomed with cheers that split the welkin. Slowly the flaming vessel drifted down the channel to the Falls. Suddenly the lights went out; the _Caroline_ had either sunk on a reef or gone over the Falls. One man had been killed on the decks. As the vessel was American, and had been raided in American ports, the episode raised an international dispute that might in another mood have caused war.

Lount and Matthews pay for the rebellion on the gallows, upon which the imperial government expressed regret that the Toronto Executive "found such severity necessary." Later, when "the Hunters' Lodges" raid Prescott, and Van Shoultz, the Polish leader, with nine others, is executed at Kingston, a great revulsion of feeling takes place against _the family compact_. The execution of the patriots did more for their cause than all their efforts of twenty years. The Canadian people had supported the agitators up to the point of armed rebellion. That gave British blood pause, for the Britisher reveres the law next to G.o.d; but when the governing ring began to glut its vengeance under cloak of loyalty that was another matter. After the execution of Lount and Matthews _the family compact_ could scarcely count a friend outside its own circle in Upper Canada. It is worth remembering that the young lawyer who defended Van Shoultz in the trial at Kingston was a John A.

Macdonald, who later took foremost part in framing a new const.i.tution for Canada.

Affairs had gone faster in Quebec. There the rebellion almost became war. Papineau was leader of the agitators,--Papineau, fiery, impetuous, eloquent, followed by the bold boys in the bonnets blue, marching the streets of Montreal singing revolutionary songs and planting liberty trees. In Lower Canada, too, things have come to the pa.s.s where the agitators advocate armed resistance. From the first, in Quebec, the struggle has waged round two questions,--the exclusion of the French from the council, and the right of the colony to spend its own revenues; but boil down the ninety-two resolutions of 1834, and the demands {428} of the agitators in Lower Canada are the same as in Upper Canada, for complete self-government. A dozen clashes of authority lead up to the final outbreak. For instance, the House elects Papineau, the agitator, speaker. The Governor General refuses to recognize him, and Parliament is dissolved.

Failing to obtain redress by const.i.tutional methods, the agitators now advocate the right of a colony to abolish government unsuited to it.

The const.i.tutional party takes alarm and organizes volunteers.

Papineau's party, early in 1837, begin violently advocating that all French magistrates resign their commissions from the English government. On Richelieu River and up in Two Mountains, north of Montreal, are the strongholds of the agitators, where men have been drilling, and the boys in the bonnets blue rioting through the villages to the great scandal of parish priests.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOUIS J. PAPINEAU]

There are riots in Montreal early in November of 1837, and "the Sons of Liberty" are chased through the town. Then in the third week of November a troop of Montreal cavalry is sent to St. John's to arrest three agitators, who have been threatening a magistrate for refusing to resign his commission. The agitators are arrested and handcuffed, and at three in the morning the troops are moving along across country towards Longueuil with the prisoners in a wagon, when suddenly three hundred armed men rise on either side of the road to the fore. Shots are exchanged. In the confusion the prisoners jump from the wagon.

This is not resistance to authority. It is open rebellion. Papineau intrusts the management of affairs in St. Eustache, north of Montreal, to Girod, a Swiss, and to {429} Dr. Chenier, a local patriot. Papineau himself and Dr. Nelson and O'Callaghan are down on the Richelieu at St.

Denis.

Take the Richelieu region first. Colonel Gore is to strike up the river southward to St. Denis. Colonel Wetherell is to cross country from Montreal and strike down the river north to St. Charles, thus hemming in the insurgents between Gore on the north and himself on the south. There are eight hundred rebels at St. Denis, one hundred and fifty armed, and twelve hundred at St. Charles. Papineau and O'Callaghan for safety's sake slip across the line to Swanton in Vermont. One could wish that, having led their faithful followers up to the sticking point of stark madness, the agitators had remained shoulder to shoulder with the brave fellows on the field.

Colonel Gore came from Montreal by boat to the mouth of the Richelieu.

At seven-thirty on the night of November 22 two hundred and fifty troopers landed to march up the Richelieu road to St. Denis. Rain turning to sleet was falling in a deluge. The roads were swimming knee-deep in slush. Bridges had been cut, and in the darkness the loyalists had to diverge to fording places, which lengthened out the march twenty-four miles. At St. Denis was Dr. Nelson with the agitators in a three-story stone house, windows bristling with muskets.

By dawn Papineau and O'Callaghan had fled, and at nine o'clock came Colonel Gore's loyalist troopers, exhausted from the march, soaked to the skin, their water-sagged clothes freezing in the cold wind. The loyalists went into the fight unfed, and with a whoop; but it is not surprising that the peppering of bullets from the windows drove the troopers back, and Gore's bugles sounded retreat. Unaware of Gore's defeat, one Lieutenant Weir has been sent across country with dispatches. He is captured and bound, and, in a futile attempt to escape, shot and stabbed to death.

Wetherell comes down the river from Chambly with three hundred men. He finds St. Charles village protected by outworks of felled trees, and the houses are literally loopholed with muskets; but Wetherell has brought cannon along, and the cannon begin to sing on November 25.

Then Wetherell's {430} men charge through the village with leveled bayonets. The poor habitants scatter like frightened sheep; they surrender; one hundred perish. It is estimated that on both sides three hundred are wounded, though some English writers give the list of wounded as low as forty. Messengers galloped with news of the patriots' defeat at St. Charles to Dr. Nelson at St. Denis. The habitants fled to their homes. Nelson was left without a follower. He escaped to the woods, and for two weeks wandered in the forests of the boundary, exposed to cold and hunger, not daring to kindle a fire that would betray him, afraid to let himself sleep for fear of freezing to death. He was captured near the Vermont line and carried prisoner to Montreal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR JOHN COLBORNE, GOVERNOR OF CANADA, 1838-1841]