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