The miscarriage of the first attempt made the rebels ironical. Ermatinger’s followers, called the Queen’s Braves, were portrayed as “decamping across the fields, leaving Messieurs Davignon and Demarais to their farmer rescuers, ... one of the gallant soldiers first discharging his pistol, ... but his hand trembling with fear did no other execution than graze the shoulder of M. Demarais.... The disciplined mercenaries of tyrants were far from invulnerable when opposed by men resolved to be free.”
St. Denis and St. Charles were seats of discontent and determined resistance. A combined movement was therefore resolved on, one command under Lieut.-Colonel Wetherall, one under Lieut.-Colonel Hughes, and the whole under Colonel the Honourable Charles Gore. A magistrate’s general address preceded this action, accompanying the order of the Lieut.-General commanding. “Should our language be misunderstood, should reason be slow to make itself heard, it is still our duty to warn you that neither the military force nor the civil authorities will be outraged with impunity, and that the vengeance of the laws will be equally prompt and terrible. The aggressors will become the victims of their rashness, and will owe the evils that will fall upon their heads to their own obstinacy. It is not those who push you to excess who are your true friends. These men have already abandoned you, and would abandon you again at the moment of danger, while we, who call you back to peace, think ourselves to be the most devoted servants of our country.” D. B. Viger’s name heads the list of magistrates, a signature which made some eyes open wide.
But, in an evil moment, the Nation Canadienne persevered in its trial of strength; Papineau, at its head, proclaimed himself “a brilliant leader and a constellation of moral excellence,” and his proclamation declared that “all ties were severed with an unfeeling mother country, that the glorious fate of disenthralling their native soil from all authority, except that of the brave, democratic spirit residing in it, awaited the young men of all the colonies.”
Meanwhile the Church issued its pastoral letter, never having countenanced either Papineau or his followers. The premier Bishop had ended his personal exhortation by proposing the health of the Sovereign, and his brother Bishops and all the clergy had risen and drunk the toast respectfully. His mandement was accepted with few exceptions. At the parish church of St. Charles the greater portion of its masculine hearers left the church cursing, and the Abbé Blanchet, curé of the parish, was a patriot who took no trouble to hide his sentiments.
At St. Charles the rebels had seized the château, substantial and built on old French models, of M. Debartch, seigneur of the manor. He fled for his life on horseback, while General Storrow Brown regaled his followers on the seigneur’s good beef and mutton, after which they cut down the trees and made the house into no bad imitation of a fortress. M. L’Espérance, whom they courted as a colonel, refused to act. They told him to leave the parish at once; he tried to do so, and then they took him prisoner, contributing $236 of his money to their exchequer. They loop-holed the walls, and made their barricades in the form of a parallelogram on the acres which lay between the river Richelieu and the hill at the foot of which the house stood. The tree trunks were banked with earth, a tidy fortress in appearance, but a trap from which there was no escape in case of defeat, practically of no strength against the loyalist guns. But no outside strength of position availed where such miserable management prevailed within. General Brown had lost an eye in one of the late affrays in Montreal; he was now thrown from his horse on the frozen ground and severely injured. He had but a handful of men to resist attack, for he had sent out a number the night before on various errands. They had not returned, and the few with him were wretchedly armed. By the time the troops arrived he himself was in the village, trying to beat up recruits; and when the firing began without him he took the precaution to remove himself still farther. The unhappy followers he had forsaken were being killed or, trying to escape, taken; every building but the château itself was burned and the barricades demolished. The fields were by this time covered with flying women and children. One woman, who evidently had not time to save herself, was found dead, after the battle, in the midst of the smoking ruins of her dwelling.
There were two cannon within the fortress, but they were only used twice. Wetherall posted his men on the small hill, got his guns into place and began to play on the insurgents, who were left no egress but by the river. They managed to gall him, one party making a sortie; the firing was kept up for an hour but ever grew fainter, while the balls from the field-pieces made great breaches in the rude earthworks, and the undisciplined, unofficered defenders were deeper in confusion. Then came the cruel advance with fixed bayonets, and all who did not ask for quarter received none; the Richelieu was on the other side of them, and “many leaped into the lake who were not thirsty.” “The slaughter on the side of the rebels was great,” wrote Wetherall; “I counted fifty-six bodies, and many more were killed in the buildings and the bodies burnt.” The rebel record reads not at all like this, and ends, “One hundred of these brave men took shelter in a barn filled with hay and straw. The Royal butchers set fire to it and burned them alive. One hundred were drowned in crossing the Richelieu. The village of St. Charles was entirely burned by the soldiers during the attack; those of the inhabitants who escaped the flames perished in the woods from the effects of fright and cold.... The prisoners that fell into their hands were inhumanly treated, and many of the wounded murdered in cold blood.” But, as a brother officer records, “Nothing succeeds like success. Colonel Wetherall was lauded to the skies.”
“We understand the capture of St. Charles was effected with great ease,” says a correspondent in a tone admiring the burning and complete destruction; “no loss of consequence to the troops.” “As soon as possible after the action, the troops, with the greatest humanity, began to bury the bodies of the killed, the scene truly deplorable, wives and daughters ransacking among the bodies for those to whom they wished to pay the last rites.” The Montreal Courier said that hot shot had been used.
In Montreal the welcome to the troops was, as might be expected, extravagantly joyful: “It was an interesting sight to see the hundreds who crowded on the wharf to witness it. The cavalry landed first, two of them carrying the liberty pole and cap erected at St. Charles at the meeting of the Six Counties, with its wooden tablet bearing the inscription ‘À Papineau par ses citoyens reconnaissants,’ the former fragment of the spoils looking sadly like a fool’s cap upon a barber’s pole. The artillery followed, with the two little guns taken at St. Olivière in addition to their proper armament. After them rode the commanding officer, followed by the bands of the Royals and the infantry, the first company of which followed the prisoners, thirty-two in number.”
“The pole, it was hoped by some, would be deposited in that proud fane of British glory, where the tattered ensigns of extinguished rebels in Ireland and of blood-hunted Covenanters in Scotland wave over the tombs of sleeping monarchs in melancholy conjunction with the virgin standard of Bunkers Hill and the trophies of such days as Trafalgar, Cape Vincent, and Waterloo!”!!
It had been intended that the other half of the force, under Colonel Hughes, Colonel Gore accompanying it, should appear before disaffected and mutinous St. Denis simultaneously with Wetherall’s appearance at St. Charles. But the gods of war were not with them as with the others. Torrents of rain, pitchy darkness, rain turning to snow, men and horses sinking in mud, harness breaking, knee deep in water or winding along trails did the column bound for St. Denis find itself, while a few broken bridges were the only drawback to the victorious Wetherall. Four miles away, they surmised their plight and slow approach had led to a warning to their enemies and time for preparation. For eleven hours they toiled, at the rate of a mile and a half an hour, the mud pulling off the men’s boots and moccasins. The cavalry were kept busy driving away parties who were destroying the bridges, all of which had to be repaired before the gullies and streams could be crossed and the howitzers carried over. A most useful man was Cornet Campbell Sweeny, of the Mounted Dragoons, who prevented much damage and was alert in securing early intelligence. They heard the church bells ring the alarm—in rebel language usually called the tocsin—and they found a welcome awaiting them from some eight hundred men armed with a scant stock of good and bad guns, pikes, pitchforks, and cudgels.