Meanwhile at Murray Bay events were happening. Colonel Fraser was kept busy. Some of the French Canadians already showed a restiveness that ended in open rebellion in 1837 and these misguided people now dreamed of using the war with the United States as an opportunity for throwing off the British yoke. At Murray Bay traitorous meetings were held. Fraser watched them closely and caused a number of the habitants to be imprisoned for a time on a charge of treason. For an old man of eighty he showed amazing vigour. His neighbours of the Nairne household were now in great trouble. Tom's elder sister by five years, Mary, the sprightly "Polly" of his letters, had brought grief to her family. She made a clandestine marriage with a habitant, the news of which, the young man, in his last letter preserved to us, wrote, "nearly bereft me of my senses." In those anxious days of domestic difficulty and of war the old mother and her two remaining daughters at the Manor House had assuredly enough to think of. Then came Fate's sharpest blow. The tradition is still preserved at Murray Bay that on November 11th, 1813, Mrs. Nairne, the Captain's mother, was in the kitchen at Murray Bay, when suddenly a sound like the report of a gun came up as it were from the cellar. She put her hands to her head, cried "Tom is killed," and sank fainting into a chair. The day and the hour were, it is said, noted by those about her.
By this time Thomas Nairne's regiment had passed from Burlington Heights to Kingston, at the opposite end of Lake Ontario, some two hundred miles away. The St. Lawrence River had now become the chief danger point for Canada. On October 21st the American General Wilkinson, with 8,000 men, left Sackett's Harbour near the east end of Lake Ontario, opposite Kingston, in boats, to descend the St. Lawrence and attack Montreal—the identical plan that the British had found so successful in 1760. In addition, as fifty years earlier, another American force was to advance through the country bordering on Lake Champlain so that the two armies might unite before Montreal. From the first the American plans went ill. The more easterly force met with ignominious defeat by a handful of French Canadians at Chateauguay. Wilkinson did little better. British troops, among them Nairne's regiment, were hurried down the river under Colonel Morrison to harass, if possible, Wilkinson's rear and to fire upon his 300 boats from the points of vantage on the shore. After a slow descent, day after day, on the night of November 10th the rear of the American force, under General Boyd, landed and encamped near Crysler's farm, a short distance above the beginning of the Long Sault Rapids on the St. Lawrence, to descend which needed caution. As the American rear was some distance from the vanguard, the British, though much inferior in numbers, thought the time favourable for attack. On the morning of the 11th when General Boyd was about to begin his day's march forward, the British, some 800 against a force of 1800, advanced in line. Their right was on the river and the line extended to a wood about 700 yards to the left. The American general did not refuse the gage of battle and a sharp fight followed. Boyd tried to outflank the British left and Nairne's company was sent forward to charge for one of the enemy's guns. When well in advance it was checked by a deep ravine lying between the two armies and the American cavalry made a movement to cut off the advancing party. The pause was fatal to Thomas Nairne. A musket ball entered his head just above the left ear; he died instantly and without pain. The British won the day. After a fierce fight the enemy fled to their boats, embarked in great disorder and fled down the river. Their generals, when they could hold a council, decided that the attack on Montreal must be abandoned.
Meanwhile dead on the field of battle lay Thomas Nairne. When the action was over and the enemy had retired, his fellow officers bethought them of the body of their companion lying stark where he fell. Already some sinister visitor had been upon the spot for his watch was stolen—"as was not unusual on such occasions," wrote Nairne's Commanding-officer, Colonel Plenderleath, grimly. They dug a grave; Colonel Plenderleath stooped over the body to cut off for those who loved him a lock of hair falling over the dead face, and then, without a coffin, they laid him in the earth. But before the grave was filled a member of the Canadian militia stepped forward. He said that he had known Nairne's father, and begged that, for the esteem and veneration which he bore that gallant soldier, he might be allowed time to provide a coffin for his son. A rough box was hastily prepared. In this the body was placed and once more lowered into the grave and there, a few yards from where he fell, the mortal remains of Thomas Nairne were committed to the earth with the solemn rites of the Anglican Church.
The next day Colonel Plenderleath, who was not two yards away when Captain Nairne fell, wrote to Judge Bowen what words of comfort he could for Nairne's friends:
He was a gallant officer of most amiable Manners and Disposition.... It may be of some comfort to his family that he has fallen in the honourable service of his country. We obtained a complete victory, having beaten a force greatly superior to ours, driven him from the field of battle, and captured one Gun and several Prisoners.
If Nairne fell Canada was saved and the gallant young officer did not die in vain.
News travelled slowly in those days but bad news has swifter wings than good; a week after Thomas Nairne fell the particulars of his death had reached Quebec. It was Judge Bowen's painful duty to send to Murray Bay the intelligence he had received from Nairne's Colonel. He wrote to Mr. Le Courtois, the curé, giving the sad news and adding "I understand that the enemy have since crossed over to their own side.... Would to God their visit had fallen upon any other head than that of our poor friends." He begged Mr. Le Courtois, who, himself an exile from France because of the Revolution, had witnessed many sad days, to be the minister of consolation at this time. "You will, I am sure be the friend of the distressed and instil into their bosoms that peace which, I am afraid, nothing but your assistance and time can restore to them." Mr. Le Courtois was to hand to Miss Nairne a touching and wise letter from Bowen. "Do not, my dear Miss Nairne," he wrote, "give way to feelings but too natural upon a trying moment like this but rather exert yourself to speak comfort and consolation to your dear Mother. Recall to her that we are all but sojourners here on earth and that he is but gone before to those blessed mansions of eternal peace and happiness where she will one day meet him never to part again." Old Malcolm Fraser sent the sad news to Tom's friends in Scotland. "I am not fit to write much," he said, but he found comfort in the thought that the young Captain died gallantly and that the enemy "must have suffered great loss of men, as they were entirely drove off the Field and they lost a piece of cannon. But, alas! all this can afford little consolation to his good and afflicted mother."
Nairne's body was not allowed to remain where he had fallen. Judge Bowen thought he ought to lie at Quebec beside his soldier father and this was also in accord with Mrs. Nairne's wishes. Colonel Morrison, the officer in command on the field where Nairne fell, had already been transferred to the garrison at Quebec and every attention was paid to the task. Bowen ordered a strong oak coffin, large enough to contain that in which Nairne was buried, and with this itself in an outer box a man was sent to bring back the body. He bore a letter from the Bishop of Quebec to the clergyman who had buried Nairne. All was carried out as arranged. A second time Nairne's body was taken from the grave where it had been laid and its bearer began his long winter journey to Quebec. The sleigh with its sad burden, a moving dark speck on a white background, made its slow way along the wintry roads and by the shores of the ice bound St. Lawrence. We can picture the awed solemnity with which the French Canadian peasants heard the story of Nairne's fall as his body rested for the night in inn or farm yard. On January 20th, 1814, Bowen wrote to Mr. Le Courtois that the body would arrive by Saturday as it was at Berthier on the previous day when the stage passed.
The funeral took place at one o'clock on the 26th of January, 1814. Of the people of Murray Bay a single unnamed habitant was present, a man detained by Bowen in Quebec that he might witness the ceremony and carry back an account of it to his home. "I examined the body," wrote Bowen briefly of what must have been a grim task, "with the assistance of my friend Buchanan and there cannot now be the smallest doubt as to the identity of it. He was buried poor Fellow in the Cloathes he wore when killed. His Regimental Jackit and shoes which were put into his coffin I found in it upon opening it and have taken them out and will preserve them for his poor friends if so melancholy a Remembrance of him should be desired by them." The lock of hair cut off by Colonel Plenderleath at the funeral was brought to Quebec by young Sewell, one of Nairne's companions; the remainder of his effects, sent forward in a box, seem to have been lost on the way. At the funeral the six senior Captains in Quebec were his pall bearers and the mourners were fellow officers of the 49th and Quebec friends of his family—well-known names—Caldwell, McCord, Stewart, Hale, Mountain, Dunn and Bowen himself. A great crowd was present. "Never," wrote Bowen to Miss Nairne, "was a funeral at Quebec more generally attended." The death of the young officer was too tragic not to call forth the sympathy of a wide circle. Eulogies were pronounced upon him and they said only what was true—that a soldier, brave, lovable and promising had fallen on the field of honour.