In the meantime Lord Selkirk left the matter of retribution upon the murderers of Governor Semple to the law and returned to England. Punishment was duly meted out to the wrongdoers. The Red River colony struggled manfully against adversity for several winters, and it was not until 1822 that it at last surmounted the evils which threatened to starve it out of existence. But the heart of its founder was not to be gladdened by the tidings of its growing prosperity. The Earl had reached England disheartened; his health was shattered by the long and anxious struggle to found a colony at Red River, and in April 1820 he breathed his last. Selkirk may be truly called the founder and father of the prosperous North-West of to-day.
Soon after his death the Hudson's Bay and North-West Companies, for so long such fierce competitors in the fur trade, joined hands in friendly partnership.
Gone now for ever were the old free days of the hunters and trappers, the bushrangers and voyageurs. The whole fur trade was placed on a strictly commercial basis. The Nor'-Westers, rough, enterprising adventurers, found themselves part of a huge machine operated by a governor and committee in far-away England. Smaller and more remote grew the regions where they could roam free and undisturbed. Rupert's Land extended from the American border to the Pole, and from the Great Lakes to the Pacific, and the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company ruled it and most of those who dwelt there with a rod of iron for the next fifty years.
Trouble, however, was still in store for Red River. Blood was yet to flow before the Bois-Brulé could adapt himself to the new order of things.
CHAPTER XVIII
TRAITORS, REDCOATS, AND REDSKINS
When on that memorable morning in June 1837 the young Princess Victoria was awakened from her slumber and told that she had become mistress of the British Empire, far away, in one part of the Empire, two men were plotting to overthrow the new Queen's authority. Canada was again beset by disloyalty and rebellion. By this time that portion of the country which Champlain had founded and Frontenac ruled, now called Lower Canada, was filled with industrious, God-fearing peasantry, tilling their farms, pursuing the peaceful, wholesome life of the village and countryside. Westward to them lay Upper Canada and the towns and homesteads of the Loyalists, into which many more thousands of settlers had poured since the days of King George III. Amongst both these people a host of agitators arose, restless lawyer-politicians for the most part, who cried out for liberty and a republic. We have seen these crafty-eyed men, with their loud voices and sardonic smile, stalking all through the pages of New World history. They were the successors of the renegades who revolted against Champlain, just as 150 years before that there were the jealous malcontents who revolted against Christopher Columbus and brought him in sorrow to the grave. Frontenac faced them, and with an effort he put them down; the gallant Lasalle met his death at their hands; under Samuel Adams they achieved a triumph in New England which led to the loss of the thirteen American colonies. A noisy, reckless faction of this kind it was which had forced America into the shameful, useless war of 1812. Now the revolutionists stalked rampant in Canada, and it was high time their leaders were overthrown and crushed. In the English part of Canada, the Upper Provinces, the revolutionaries were led by a rash and impulsive Scotchmen named William Mackenzie. In Lower Canada, which was chiefly peopled by French Canadians, the rebels looked to Louis Papineau as their leader. When Lord Gosford, the Governor, warned the people of the peril they ran in listening to the counsels of the demagogues who would ruin them, they only met in the streets shouting "Long live Papineau, our deliverer!" Daring bands of rebels, called "Sons of Liberty," tore down the Governor's proclamation. In a few weeks Papineau gave the signal and his followers flew to arms. It was the time of harvest; the grain had ripened and was ready for the reaper, but the English settlers in Lower Canada, loyal to their young Queen, dared not use their scythes and sickles for fear of the loaded muskets of the French Canadian rebels. They fled for refuge to Montreal, where the first skirmish in the rebellion took place. Then the rebels set upon a small body of loyal cavalry marching from St. John's, on the Richelieu River. Amongst them was a young officer, Lieutenant Weir, the bearer of despatches from Colonel Gore. He was made prisoner and placed in the custody of some of the insurgents, who, regardless of mercy and decency, butchered him in barbarous fashion. While Weir was being hacked to pieces by Papineau's men, the rebel leader learned from the captured despatches that Gore and his soldiers were marching upon them. At St. Denis, therefore, they entrenched themselves, and for some hours held the post, keeping up a deadly fire upon the troops.
Fortunately for the English flag in Canada, there was an able man to defend it in the person of Sir John Colborne, one of the generals of the Duke of Wellington. He sent Colonel Wetherell to take the rebel post at St. Charles. Here a weak and foolish American, who called himself "General" Brown, abandoned his men almost at the first artillery discharge. Though they fought on for a time, none the worse for their leader's absence, they were soon dispersed by assault. Colborne himself, with a force of regulars and militia, marched to the villages of St. Eustache and St. Benoit. The parish church at St. Eustache, built of stone, was turned into a fort, and here, in the sacred edifice, the rebels bade defiance to the soldiers of the Queen. Their fate was a terrible one. Flames shot through the roof and steeple, and the walls began to fall in. The rebels continuing to make a stand until escape was too late, almost the whole number of those who thus held St. Eustache were burnt to ashes.
When Colborne marched his men on to St. Benoit the rebels, now thoroughly frightened at their misdeeds, sued for peace. They surrendered ignominiously, but this did not prevent the British settlers, whose homes and harvests they had destroyed, from venting their anger upon them, so that this village and many houses round about fell a prey to their wrath. That night the countryside was lit up by a terrible glow. On the morrow it was seen how few amongst the vast body of French Canadians were really disloyal to the Government which had given them political and religious liberty. In one of the districts which had been claimed by Papineau, 1500 militiamen put themselves under the French Canadian, Colonel de Hertel, and declared themselves staunch in their allegiance and ready to help in quelling the rebellion. Although Papineau's men had fled cravenly across the border at the first outbreak of trouble, others still continued to foment war and bloodshed. Two unhappy brothers named Nelson gained an unenviable notoriety. One of them boldly proclaimed the "Republic" of Canada; but all they gained for their pains was the melancholy pleasure of seeing their countrymen, of both French and English origin, in distress, gaols filled with their deluded followers, many of whom were afterwards hanged for treason.