The Brougham had been burnt at the wharf, and the passengers captured; but the despatches, the things on board most coveted, escaped. A lady passenger proved equal to the question as to where they and a large sum in bank bills which the captain had contrived to keep possession of but could not hide, should be concealed. “Honi soit qui mal y pense”—she rolled them into a bundle and converted herself into a Bustle-Queen-at-Arms.
That the whole party was not killed was probably owing to the dispersion of the main body of rebels at Napierville, another point of simultaneous attack. The household of a large landowner named Brown, who in himself and his circumstances was much like Ellice, was treated in the same way. Some of the Ellice servants escaped, fled to Montreal, and there told a tale of how the family was confined in a cellar, with other particulars not calculated to allay popular alarm. Ellice, Brown, and some others were now separated from the rest and taken to Chateauguay, where they were put in a room from which daylight was carefully excluded, but which was afterwards lighted by candles. In it they were well treated by the curé, M. Quintal, and nuns, who sent them such comforts from their larders and cellars as compel disbelief in a double Lent. The prisoners could also send to the village for whatever they wished to buy, but they were not allowed to send any letters unread by the rebels. Presently they were packed into carts to be conveyed to Napierville, no doubt with many memories of Jock Weir to discompose them; but by the time the seigniory of St. George was reached their escort heard that the patriots had not only evacuated Napierville, but in their haste had thrown away their arms and were now pursued by cavalry. The escort fled and the prisoners continued on their way, even advised by passing rebel habitants as to the best means to extricate themselves, and eventually reached Montreal, where their plight created a fresh sensation. But they retained warm memories of the curé’s kindness, and later presented him with a piece of plate with thanks for his hospitality.
Meantime an old Deborah, in the guise of a squaw, who hunted a lost cow in the woods at Caughnawaga, came into the church where the Indians were at their prayers with the alarming news that the woods were full of rebels and that a party was then surrounding the church. The braves turned out, and the chief’s flexible glottis turned from the plaintive melody of Indian hymns to a warwhoop, an example which was promptly followed by the rest. The nearest rebel was seized and disarmed, a panic took the patriot band, sixty-four were made prisoners, and they were taken into Montreal that same Sunday of great excitements. The lack of a cowbell, warwhoops and daring, had paralyzed a fair-sized, fairly armed force. The Indian appears no more, but one hopes he got what all Indians so dearly prize, a medal.
After this, fires were seen to break out almost simultaneously from the houses of the absent rebels, and soon Mr. Ellice’s flourishing little settlement was in ashes. For nights the atmosphere of Chateauguay district was red with reflected light from the “vast sheet of livid flame.” Portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and other republican heroes, were found in Dr. Côte’s house, and it is said they were committed by Sir John’s orders to a specially hot corner, with the customary “so perish all traitors.” The regulars, who had arrived to avenge the Beauharnois and other disturbances, came in the John Bull—an ominous name for the peace of poor Jean. This part of the expedition was under command of Sir James McDonell, a very different person from the next McDonell quoted. But after they had watched the lights on the enemy’s fast-deserted outposts die, they made a grand haul of curious literature, patriot documents describing a plan of Canada’s future government, with the names of ministers and heads of all departments told off—many details interesting to those who, doubtless, under the new régime would decorate gallows and occupy cells.
Colonel Angus McDonell of the Glengarries writes distressedly from Beauharnois: “We proceeded towards Beauharnois by a forced march, burning and laying waste the country as we went along, and it was a most distressing and heart-rending scene to see this fine settlement so completely destroyed, the houses burned and laid in ashes, and I understand the whole country to St. Charles experienced the same fate. The wailing and lamentation of the women and children on beholding their homes in flames and their property destroyed, their husbands, fathers, sons and relations, dragged along prisoners—women perishing in the snow, and children frozen stiff by their side or scattered in black spots upon the snow—half-grown children running frantic in the woods, frightened at the sight of friend or foe—and such of the habitants as did not appear, their houses were consigned to the flames, as they were supposed to be rebels.” One of the last had gone the day before to Montreal on business, and returned to find the above condition of things, his home in ashes, his wife and child missing. Passion and grief overcame fear; in a frenzy he rushed to an officer—“Ah, you burn my house, kill my wife—my dear wife—my little child—me always good subject—no rebel—sacre British—where ma femme—where mon enfant—oh, Jesu Marie—” and dropped senseless. He was sent to Montreal, where in a few days he died in prison, still calling on wife and child. When the former, who had taken refuge with a relative, heard he was a prisoner, she went on foot to Montreal, her child in her arms; she reached the prison the night before his death, but was refused admittance, and a few days’ further agony ended her troubles also.
It is popularly supposed that the humble habitant wife was the one who suffered most; but degree did not save a woman from gross insult and spoliation, nor was the gentlewoman lacking in ingenuity. On the morning of the battle of St. Denis brave Madame Pagé of that place made her husband a novel armour, a cuirass of a quire of paper. It saved his life, for in the mêlée a ball otherwise intended for his destruction got no farther than the fourth fold. Mesdames Dumouchel, Lemaire, Girouard and Masson were not exempt when the loyal, the volunteer and the regular arrived at their doors. The regulars forbade the habitants to succour any in distress, and when these women were left almost nude outside their desolated homes they showed wonderful nerve in surviving the vengeance of ce vieux brûlot and his followers. But Mdlles. Lemaire and Masson could not sustain the shock to mind and body, and one young two-days’ mother died from fright. Madame Mongrain barely escaped with life and children, and her handsome home was quickly a wreck under the hands of “ces sauvages,” who gambolled and skipped in the light of its blaze, to the playing of their own trumpets and uttering “les cries feroces.” Madame Masson, when adjuring her son, Dr. Hyacinth Masson, on the eve of his exile to Bermuda, to be brave in the future as in the past, delivered herself of Spartan sentiments worthy of any historic setting, concluding her address, “Sois courageux jusqu’ à la fin. Je suis fière de toi. Je me consolerai dans ton absence en pensant que Dieu m’ a donné des enfants aussi bon patriotes et dignes de moi.” No wonder men were staunch when their mothers exerted an influence which after the lapse of sixty odd years draws forth from a former Son of Liberty-Chasseur: “I was vigorous and strong in those days, and from my mother inherited an ardent love for the country in which I was born. Her letters so magnetized me with patriotism that I could willingly lay down my life for the cause.”
Sir John was no novice in dealing with the French after his governorship in the island of Guernsey. He made us a link between old and new by bestowing the name of Sarnia on the St. Clair border, a name written of as the old classical one of that moiety of England’s sole relic of the Dukedom of Normandy. There the language of debate and of the Legislature was French, and the patois of the islander as perverted a language as the Canadian’s.
At the present day there are probably not many Glengarries left to tell the tale of their share in that terrible week. One, an Englishman moreover, who became a Highlander through stress of circumstances, remembers very distinctly the work which he confesses he did faithfully but with many heartbreaks for the women and children. It is unnecessary to say that he is devoted still to the memory of Sir John Colborne. “We were at the Prescott windmill, but had only been at work there one day and one night when we were ordered to Beauharnois, five hundred of us. Sir John was there before us. There was a mistake in the time of the arrival of the troops he expected—trouble about a boat and difficulties with the current. We walked all the way to Beauharnois, and hadn’t bite or sup except half a snack at Cornwall, and the men were all worn out with excitement and work at Prescott. Sir John, on a little black pony, met us just by a small bay at the Cedar Rapids. ‘Now, boys,’ says he, ‘I’ll ride my pony on before you—where I go you can. Come on!’ So we broke step and spread, for fear of the ice breaking, and followed him in safety. When he saw us five hundred, and thinking of his disappointment about the regulars, he says, ‘We can face ‘em with that.’ Some of those nearest him objected that the Glengarries had no band, and a band would be indispensable in a fight. So a big strapping Highlander steps up and says, ‘We’ll make a band of our own.’ ‘Never mind a band,’ says Sir John. ‘But I’m a piper, and there are a lot more of us, and we can be a band,’ says the man. ‘All right,’ says Sir John, ‘but anyway those Glengarries would face anything.’ Then they got their pipes together and made their band, and the big fellow says, ‘What’ll we play, Governor?’ and Sir John says, ‘Play what you like, play what you like.’ So they did play,—‘The Campbells are comin’, ha—hah—ha—hah, and of course the Frenchmen couldn’t stand that. Losh, how the people did run!”
This informant’s tale was something after the fashion of that told of the piper who fell out of the retreating ranks at Corunna—where Major Colborne’s advancement had been included in Sir John Moore’s dying wishes—and sat on a log to rest. A bear came on the scene just as the Highlander was eating the remainder of his rations. He recognized the bear from its picture, and on the policy of conciliation so soon to become national propitiated him with bite about. The bread disappeared all too soon, and the Highlander cautiously reached for his pipes. At the first squeal the bear was astonished, at the full blast he fled. “Oh, ho,” said the piper, “if she’d known you liked music so well she would haf played pefore dinner.”
On the present occasion it was the ordinary Highland music before dinner, for the Glengarries were empty.