The Fauch-a-Ballaughs were gayer still, in white blanket coat, red sash, green buttons, green facings and green seams, high cap with green top falling over—an old hat and the humour of forty fancies pricked int’ it for a feather—and blue breeches with a red stripe.
One corps had a euphonious and suggestive Dahomean title from corporations gained in forty years of piping peace and good dinners. They were chiefly Lower Town merchants, veterans in business if not in war, who soon brought their cognomens under the discipline of black leather belts, cartouche box and twenty rounds of ball cartridge; good Brown Besses rested on the shelves provided by a kindly Mother Nature; and with much puffing and blowing, their eyes fronted and righted until a permanent cast was threatened.
All corps dined much, whether they were to fight or not. Military dinners were frequent, and always went off with great éclat, the local excitement lending “go” to them all. Even in that time of ferment there were, as there had been since the Conquest, sensible men, French and English, of the better classes who had made the fact of a common enemy—the American assault of Quebec—a ground for a common patriotism. History has handed down a glowing account of one St. Andrew’s dinner given in ’37, in Quebec, and Mr. Archibald Campbell’s lines, sung by himself in a clear and mellow voice, are worth reproduction as indicative of the Scottish spirit:
“Men of Scotia’s blood or land,
No longer let us idly stand
Our ‘origin’ which traitors brand
As ‘foreign’ here.
By gallant hearts those rights were gained,
By gallant hearts shall be maintained,
E’en tho’ our dearest blood be drained
Those rights to keep.
On the crest of Abram’s heights,
Victorious in a thousand fights,
The Scottish broadsword won our rights,
Wi’ fatal sweep.
Then when the Gaul shall ask again
Who called us here across the Main,
Each Scot shall answer, bold and plain,
‘Wolfe sent me here.’
Be men like those the hero brought,
With their best blood the land was bought,
And, fighting as your fathers fought,
Keep it or die.”
There were men then in Quebec whose denunciations of British rule were given with a vim not exceeded by Papineau himself, who were destined, fermentation over, to be like the wine kept for the end of the feast. It so happened that Sir E. P. Taché, aide-de-camp to the Queen in after years, was then Patriote—to be spelled in capitals and rolled with the reverberation of the Parisian R. He was subjected to an unexpected domiciliary visit, as a cannon was supposed to be hidden under his winter supply of provisions. The searchers were rewarded by a pair of duelling pistols, then a part of every gentleman’s outfit, and a veritable Mons Meg, six inches long, which belonged to a small boy of the same number of years.
As history counts, it was not long before Etienne Taché, in the fold and one of our Queen’s knights good and true, declared “the last gun fired for British supremacy in America would be fired by a French-Canadian.”