On the other hand, there were those whose temperaments were opposed to acceptance of the new order of things—those to whom conquest by the hereditary enemy was intolerable. These irreconcilable spirits were mainly civil and military officers, seigneurial families, and émigrés of the first generation. To them estates in the New World meant much, but the motherland and the Bourbon lilies meant yet more; and as for the more recent arrivals, not having yet struck deep root in the land of their adoption, they were content to return to France. Accordingly, many of these availed themselves of the transportation provided for in the terms of capitulation, and their departure robbed Canada of much of her best blood. The new government was hard pressed to find ships to accommodate these distinguished passengers, as well as the two thousand disarmed soldiers of De Lévis. At last, however, they were all embarked, and the crowded vessels set sail, only to be attacked by furious gales. De Lévis narrowly escaped a watery grave off the rocks of Newfoundland, while the ship carrying Vaudreuil and his suite fared little better.
But the most distressing disaster of all befell the Auguste, a frigate bearing the French officer La Corne, his family, his friends, and a large number of soldiers. Scarcely had the ill-fated ship passed the island of Anticosti when a dreadful storm overtook her from the west and drove her into the Gulf. A few days later, a fire broke out in the cook's galley, which was extinguished only by the most desperate energy of passengers and crew, and not before most of the provisions had been destroyed. Off Isle Royale another storm arose, in which they helplessly tossed for several days, being finally driven upon the coast. The Auguste went to pieces on the reefs. La Corne and six companions gained the shore, and unable to render assistance, saw their families drown in the surf. De Gaspé, in his work Les Anciens Canadiens, recounts the tragic story in the words of La Corne himself:
"From the 13th to the 15th [of November] we were driven at the mercy of a violent storm, without knowing where we were. We were obliged as best we could to replace the crew, for the men, worn out with fatigue, had taken refuge in their hammocks and would not leave them; threats, promises, even blows, had been tried in vain. Our mizzen-mast being broken, our sails torn to shreds, and incapable of being clewed up or lowered, the first mate proposed as a last resource in this extremity to run into shore. It was a desperate act. The fatal moment arrived! The captain and mate looked sadly at me with clasped hands. I but too well understood this mute language of men who from their profession were accustomed to brave death. We made the land to starboard, where we perceived the mouth of a river, which might prove to be navigable. Without concealing anything, I informed the passengers of both sexes of this manœuvre, which was for life or death....Who could describe the fury of the waves! The storm had burst upon us in all its violence; our masts seemed to reach up to the clouds, and then to plunge into the abyss. A terrible shock told us that the ship had touched the bottom. We then cut away the cordage and masts to lighten her and try to float her again; this came to pass, but the force of the waves turned her over on her side....As the ship was already leaking in every part, the passengers all rushed on deck; and some...threw themselves into the sea and perished....The passengers and crew had lashed themselves to the shrouds and spars in order to resist the waves which, breaking over the ship, were snatching fresh victims every moment....Our only remaining resource was the two boats, the larger of which was carried away by a wave and dashed to pieces. The other was lowered into the water....I hastily seized a rope, and by means of a tremendous leap fell into the boat; the same wave which saved my life carried away my two children....It would be difficult to describe the horror of this terrible disaster, the cries of those still on board the ship, and the harrowing spectacle of those who, having thrown themselves into the waves, were making useless efforts to gain the beach....Seven living men at last found themselves on the shore of that unknown land...and (in the evening) it was a heartrending sight which presented itself when a hundred and fourteen corpses were stretched on the sand, many of them with arms and legs broken, or bearing other marks of the fury of the elements."
For weeks the fugitives wandered about the woods, and at last were rescued by a party of Indians thirty leagues from Louisbourg. The indefatigible La Corne crossed in a birch-bark canoe from Cape Breton to the mainland, and, travelling five hundred and fifty leagues on snow-shoes, came again to Quebec. Here, in spite of his own dire predictions, he found a gaiety and contentment which fairly startled him. Within the walls of the grim old river-fortress the ancient foes were making peace in the reconstruction of industry. The wise forbearance of the conquerors, and the facile temper of the conquered, provided, far beyond hope, a solution for what was, prima facie, a difficult situation. "It is very surprising," writes an officer of the Highlanders, "with what ease the gaiety of their tempers enables them to bear misfortunes which to us would be insupportable. Families, whom the calamities of war have reduced from the height of luxury to the want of common necessaries, laugh, dance, and sing, comforting themselves with this reflection—Fortune de guerre. Their young ladies take the utmost pains to teach our officers French; with what views I know not, if it is not that they may hear themselves praised, flattered, and courted without loss of time," Those who remained behind, sacrificing allegiance to their old flag for the sake of allegiance to the soil, were indeed far happier than the irreconcilables who had elected to return to the motherland, bereft of all but their movable property. And among these homing Frenchmen were some whose reception caused them a very reasonable anxiety. Vaudreuil, Bigot, Péan, Cadet, Varin, Penisseault, and several others who had held offices in Canada, were cast into the Bastille, charged with the corruptions which had sapped the life-blood of New France. For months they contemplated their misdeeds in the sombre silence of the dungeon, and the next year were brought forth for trial. Vaudreuil, for lack of evidence, was acquitted— properly acquitted, so far as can be known, his chief fault having been a fatal ill-judgment; but a just fate overtook Bigot, Cadet, and their knavish parasites. The Intendant was banished from France for life, and all his property confiscated; Cadet was banished for nine years and fined six million livres; the others received sentences in keeping with the measure of their guilt.
Meanwhile, in Quebec, a decade of English rule slipped uneventfully by, marked chiefly by new perceptions of citizenship on the part of the French. The ancien régime had been conducted on the principle of centralised authority, allowing no place to personal liberty. Neither on its civil nor its military side were any rights extended to the individual. Up to the Conquest, the citizens of Quebec had been no more than cogs in the wheel of State, driven fast or slow according to the spasmodic interest felt by the Home government in her always troublesome colony—a land which had first claimed consideration as the gateway to Cathay, and presently appeared to be nothing better than a "thousand leagues of snow and ice." This decline from the equator of enthusiasm to the north pole of neglect indicated the unstable fortunes of the colony. National spirit was left to fill up the ranks of her army when danger threatened the frontiers; and to the simple habitant, who had no interest to keep alive the memory of France, Quebec and Louisbourg were the ends of the earth, and the annals of his parish the Alpha and Omega of knowledge.
With British rule all this was changed. In Quebec the Tiers État awoke to its latent destiny thirty years before the same realisation came to Paris; and it was the new principles of government which achieved this bloodless revolution. The rights of man were no longer confined to the Governor, Intendant, and the Sovereign Council; and the plainest citizen felt a new pulse within him as soon as he saw the trend of the English system. Instead of being kept in the dark as to what was taking place in the outside world, he found a strange solicitude in high quarters to keep him informed on every subject of public importance. Under General Murray a newspaper was established, the Quebec Gazette, which began as a weekly in 1764.[34] The first issue of this pioneer of Canadian journalism consisted of four folio pages, two columns to a page, one French, one English; and the outline of its policy is given in the Printer's Address to the Public, promising:—
"A view of foreign affairs and political transactions from which a judgment may be formed of the interests and connections of the several powers of Europe; to collect the transactions and occurrences of our mother-country; and to introduce every remarkable event, uncommon debates, extraordinary performances, and interesting turn of affairs that shall be thought to merit the notice of the reader as matter of entertainment, or that can be of service to the public as inhabitants of an English colony....And here we beg leave to observe that we shall have nothing so much at heart as the support of virtue and morality and the noble cause of liberty. The refined amusements of literature and the pleasing veins of well-pointed wit shall also be considered as necessary to the collection—interspersed with other chosen pieces and curious essays extracted from the most celebrated authors—so that, blending philosophy with politics, history, etc., the youth of both sexes will be improved, and persons of all ranks agreeably and usefully entertained." [35]
With such a high conception of its functions, the Quebec Gazette launched itself twenty-four years in advance of the London Times, and fourteen years before Benjamin Franklin founded the Montreal Gazette.
Since the Conquest, Quebec had been governed under the terms of a royal proclamation which, remarkable to relate, prescribed no definite forms of administration; and by the articles of capitulation almost everything was left to the discretion of the Governor. General Murray proved himself a discreet ruler; but friction of some sort was almost inevitable in a situation presenting such conflicting interests and delicate problems; and it now came from those few hundred British settlers who wrongly supposed that their nationality gave them privileges over ten times their number of French fellow-subjects. Governor Murray, fortunately, held no partisan views; and his policy was followed with equal firmness and greater success by Sir Guy Carleton, who next assumed the administration in 1766.