Gallows Hill.
“Up then, brave Canadians! Get your rifles and make short work of it.”
“Canadians, rally round your Head,
Nor to these base insurgents yield.”
“Sir Francis Bond Head’s entire government of Upper Canada was one long, earnest, undeviating opposition to the instructions of H. M. colonial ministers.”—Blake.
The winter of 1837, in England, was so severe that the mails were conveyed in sleighs, even in the southern counties, a freak of nature no doubt meant to put her in sympathy with the many million arpents of snow by that time dyed in patches with good Canadian blood. In the colony it set in stormily; but as December lengthened it became mild and open throughout the country, until on the day of Gallows Hill that month of storm had almost turned to the brightness and healthy beauty of a Canadian June. The brilliant sunlight which was to burnish up the arms of the men of Gore had power to convert the blackest landscape into a thing of beauty—a scene peculiar to the land of shield of crystal, golden grain and Italian sky. Straight from the Laurentian Hills the sun turned his roses and purples on the bright tin spires of parish churches, blazed in small squares of white-curtained habitant windows, where weeping wives and mothers execrated the Dictator in voluble patois, and glared on the blackened drama of Le Grand Brûlé. The snow which made the background of that Lower Canadian picture sparkled under the prismatic colours, and lit up the icy fragments like the lustres of a chandelier. The mysterious bell of St. Regis sounded its Angelus through the rosy atmosphere; the Caughnawagas, waiting but a word to come forward in defence of their new Great Mother, grew a deeper tint as, turned from the sunk sun, they knelt to their aves. Farther on it touched on the cabins of Glengarry, where ninety-nine out of every hundred men were variations of the name Macdonald, with only a nickname—Shortnose, Longnose, Redhead or Mucklemou’—to distinguish them; all busy furbishing up every available weapon, ready to follow where they might be called. If one record profanes not their memory some of them went out as infantry, to return as kilted cavalry; naught but intervention of stern discipline prevented Jean Baptiste’s herds being in front of the kilts on the return march; their genius as linguists had failed when their Gaelic fell on patois-accustomed ears.
We follow the sun through the Thousand Islands, where it touched each evergreen crest with glory to make a crown of isles for the great pirate king, Bill Johnston, who had a trick of posing, blunderbuss in hand, ready for attack; to the homes of the Bay of Quinte, where the descendants of Rogers’ Rangers were ready for defence; to the winter rainbows of the Niagara and the opaline ripples in La Traverse of the St. Clair. It tinged the spiral columns of smoke which singly rose from immigrant cabins and, mingling, turned to clouds of sweet-smelling incense. It sank to rest in Huron, and the vast country over which it had made its day’s journey lay behind it, angry, sullen, fearing, uncertain, where, of the two dispensations, one was in throes of birth and the other feared those of death.
Those scattered through this wide region who were in sympathy with Lower Canada—and they were many—felt the discouragement of the disaster of St. Charles. Yet they persevered, and read the results there as an object lesson in the importance of military leadership. The motto was, “The strength of the people is nothing without union, and union nothing without confidence and discipline.” Alas, discipline they had none; confidence was to fly as soon as the enemy appeared—what mattered that if the enemy fled, too, no one was there to see; and as for union, the recriminations of Rolph and Mackenzie, the coldness of the Baldwin wing, the fighting within camp and without, all told a tale of dissension. Sir Francis Bond Head’s own letter to Sir John Colborne, in answer to the commander’s request for troops, shows how completely that astute governor played into their hands had they been but united and ready to take advantage of him. He would give up even his sentry and orderlies, and by some political military Euclid of his own invention “prove to the people in England that this Province requires no troops at all, and, consequently, that it is perfectly tranquil.... I consider it of immense importance, practically, to show to the Canadas that loyalty produces tranquillity, and that disloyalty not only brings troops into the Province, but also produces civil war.” There is some key to his Euclid, all propositions not being fully demonstrated; for he says, “I cannot, of course, explain to you all the reasons I have for my conduct” (things equal to the same thing are equal to anything). “I know the arrangements I have made are somewhat irregular, but I feel confident the advantages arising from them will be much greater than the disadvantages.”
Charles XII. was called Demirbash by the Turks—a man who fancies his head made of iron, who may run amuck without any fear for his skull. Sir Francis lost no opportunity to test the thickness and hardness of his.
His troops gone, the militia disorganized and never out but for one training day since 1815, he found his forces consisted of about three hundred men, and the work before him was to overcome a bad, bold plot, “which appears unequalled by any recorded in history since the great conspiracy of Cataline for the subversion of Rome!”