The vicar Desèves has left us a vivid picture of the life which the rebels led. No attempt was made to drill them or to exercise discipline. Time hung heavy on their hands. He continually saw them, he says, passing through the village in knots of five or six, carrying rusty guns out of order, smoking short black pipes, and wearing blue tuques which hung half-way down their backs, clothes of étoffe du pays, and leather mittens. They helped themselves to all the strong drink they could lay their hands on, and their gait showed the influence of their potations. Their chief aim in life seemed to be to steal, to drink, to eat, to dance, and to quarrel. With regard to the morrow, they lived in a fool's paradise. They seem to have believed that the troops would not dare to come out to meet them, and that when their leaders should give the word they would advance on Montreal and take it without difficulty. Their numbers during this period showed a good deal of fluctuation. Ultimately Girod succeeded in gathering about him nearly a thousand men. Not all these, however, were armed; according to Desèves a great many of them had no weapons but sticks and stones.
By December 13 Sir John Colborne was ready to move. He had provided himself with a force strong enough to crush an enemy several times more numerous than the insurgents led by Girod and Chénier. His column was composed of the 1st Royals, the 32nd regiment, the 83rd regiment, the Montreal Volunteer Rifles, Globensky and Leclerc's Volunteers, a strong force of cavalry—in all, over two thousand men, supported by eight pieces of field artillery and well supplied with provision and ammunition transport.
The troops bivouacked for the night at St Martin, and advanced on the morning of the 14th. The main body crossed the Mille Isles river on the ice about four miles to the east of St Eustache, and then moved westward along the St Rose road. A detachment of Globensky's Volunteers, however, followed the direct road to St Eustache, and came out on the south side of the river opposite the village, in full view of the rebels. Chénier, at the head of a hundred and fifty men, crossed the ice, and was on the point of coming to close quarters with the volunteers when the main body of the loyalists appeared to the east. Thereupon Chénier and his men beat a hasty retreat, and made hurried preparations for defending the village. The church, the convent, the presbytery, and the house of the member of the Assembly, Scott, were all occupied and barricaded. It was about the church that the fiercest fighting took place. The artillery was brought to bear on the building; but the stout masonry resisted the battering of the cannon balls, and is still standing, dinted and scarred. Some of the Royals then got into the presbytery and set fire to it. Under cover of the smoke the rest of the regiment then doubled up the street to the church door. Gaining access through the sacristy, they lit a fire behind the altar. 'The firing from the church windows then ceased,' wrote one of the officers afterwards, 'and the rebels began running out from some low windows, apparently of a crypt or cellar. Our men formed up on one side of the church, and the 32nd and 83rd on the other. Some of the rebels ran out and fired at the troops, then threw down their arms and begged for quarter. Our officers tried to save the Canadians, but the men shouted "Remember Jack Weir," and numbers of these poor deluded fellows were shot down.'
One of those shot down was Chénier. He had jumped from a window of the Blessed Virgin's chapel and was making for the cemetery. How many fell with him it is difficult to say. It was said that seventy rebels were killed, and a number of charred bodies were found afterwards in the ruins of the church. The casualties among the troops were slight, one killed and nine wounded. One of the wounded was Major Gugy, who here distinguished himself by his bravery and kind-heartedness, as he had done in the St Charles expedition. Many of the rebels escaped. A good many, indeed, had fled from the village on the first appearance of the troops. Among these were some who had played a conspicuous part in fomenting trouble. The Abbé Chartier of St Benoit, instead of waiting to administer the last rites to the dying, beat a feverish retreat and eventually escaped to the United States. The Church placed on him its interdict, and he never again set foot on Canadian soil. The behaviour of the adventurer Girod, the 'general' of the rebel force, was especially reprehensible. When he had posted his men in the church and the surrounding buildings, he mounted a horse and fled toward St Benoit. At a tavern where he stopped to get a stiff draught of spirits he announced that the rebels had been victorious and that he was seeking reinforcements with which to crush the troops completely. For four days he evaded capture. Then, finding that the cordon was tightening around him, he blew out his brains with a revolver. Thus ended a life which was not without its share of romance and mystery.
On the night of the 14th the troops encamped near the desolate village of St Eustache, a large part of which had unfortunately been given over to the flames during the engagement. In the morning the column set out for St Benoit. Sir John Colborne had threatened that if a single shot were fired from St Benoit the village would be given over to fire and pillage. But when the troops arrived there they found awaiting them about two hundred and fifty men bearing white flags. All the villagers laid down their arms and made an unqualified submission. And it is a matter for profound regret that, notwithstanding this, the greater part of the village was burned to the ground. Sir John Colborne has been severely censured for this occurrence, and not without reason. Nothing is more certain, of course, than that he did not order it. It seems to have been the work of the loyalist volunteers, who had without doubt suffered much at the hands of the rebels. 'The irregular troops employed,' wrote one of the British officers, 'were not to be controlled, and were in every case, I believe, the instrument of the infliction.' Far too much burning and pillaging went on, indeed, in the wake of the rebellion. 'You know,' wrote an inhabitant of St Benoit to a friend in Montreal, 'where the younger Arnoldi got his supply of butter, or where another got the guitar he carried back with him from the expedition about the neck.' And it is probable that the British officers, and perhaps Sir John Colborne himself, winked at some things which they could not officially recognize. At any rate, it is impossible to acquit Colborne of all responsibility for the unsoldierly conduct of the men under his command.
It is usual to regard the rebellion of 1837 in Lower Canada as no less a fiasco than its counterpart in Upper Canada. There is no doubt that it was hopeless from the outset. It was an impromptu movement, based upon a sudden resolution rather than on a well-reasoned plan of action. Most of the leaders—Wolfred Nelson, Thomas Storrow Brown, Robert Bouchette, and Amury Girod—were strangers to the men under their command; and none of them, save Chénier, seemed disposed to fight to the last ditch. The movement at its inception fell under the official ban of the Church; and only two priests, the curés of St Charles and St Benoit, showed it any encouragement. The actual rebellion was confined to the county of Two Mountains and the valley of the Richelieu. The districts of Quebec and Three Rivers were quiet as the grave—with the exception, perhaps, of an occasional village like Montmagny, where Étienne P. Taché, afterwards a colleague of Sir John Macdonald and prime minister of Canada, was the centre of a local agitation. Yet it is easy to see that the rebellion might have been much more serious. But for the loyal attitude of the ecclesiastical authorities, and the efforts of many clear-headed parish priests like the Abbé Paquin of St Eustache, the revolutionary leaders might have been able to consummate their plans, and Sir John Colborne, with the small number of troops at his disposal, might have found it difficult to keep the flag flying. The rebellion was easily snuffed out because the majority of the French-Canadian people, in obedience to the voice of their Church, set their faces against it.