Ridgeway: An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada

by Scian Dubh

It is, we perceive, a fact, that O’Brien was correct in his first estimate of Greaves; as that smooth-tongued traitor was the notorious spy in the pay of the English government, sent out to Canada with a view to learning the particulars of the power and intentions of Fenianism in the Provinces, as well as in the adjoining Republic. In this connection, he had such papers in his possession as recommended him to the Canadian Minister who gave him, on his arrival in the city where we first encountered him, such assistance and direction as his maudlin state of mind could afford. He recommended him to the confidence of many persons in the upper part of the Province, where he had been staying for some time previous to his appearance at The Harp. Among these was the Hon. J. R——-, of Toronto—a Patrick’s Day Son of the Sod, who has often nailed Ireland to the cross for place and power; and who regards every body as his “dear friend” who can help him up the ladder—a man with no more human flesh about his bones or heart within him, than is possessed by the veriest skeleton that has ever served the purposes of a college of surgeons, after having reposed for a whole generation in the silence of the grave. Oh! how we long for the day when we shall meet such miserable Judases face to face, and spit upon them before the nations; and how willing we are to admit that we should rather tomorrow shake the manly hand of the English Joe Sheard of Toronto, open enemy and all as he is, than touch the vile, clammy paw of such repulsive creatures as compose the snake-like breed of which this same paltry and sordid trimmer is a true representative. Of course, Greaves and he understood each other at once—they were both traitors alike; only that the former was lavish of money in attaining his nefarious ends, while the latter would crawl to whatever goal he had in view, through any description of filth provided it would obviate the necessity of relaxing his gripe upon his ill-gotten gain. It is to such men as he, that Ireland owes all her misfortunes, and that the people of Canada owe the curse of the great embarrassments that now sorely beset them. For so far, not a single Irishman who has ever been prominently identified with the Government of Canada, if we are at all able to judge, has possessed a spark of honest or true patriotism. From first to last, every man Jack of them has fleeced the poor Canucks unmercifully, and played the toady to England in the most fulsome and sickening manner. Even the best of them were rotten to the core, and but mere adventurers. Look at the case of the “Hyena,” as he was called in his prime. One day we find him out at the elbows peddling samples of wine around the Province, and the next, wallowing in wealth through his Point Levi and other gouges at the expense of the people; until, at last, he became sufficiently corrupt for England to send him to take charge of her interests in one of her dependencies: where, as it is asserted, he, from time to time, is carried from boating parties, etc., to his palatial residence dead drunk, in open daylight. But why spend a single breath in referring to such miserable specimens of humanity? The world knows what they are; and Canada ought to have some slight acquaintance with them: as they built her into the worthless Grand Trunk at a ruinous figure, and, like her present, leading, political juggler, Sir John A., fleeced her in every direction that a collop could be cut out of her.

It was amongst such tricksters, English, Irish and Scotch, that Greaves, for the most part, moved secretly from the moment of his arrival in the Province up to the date at which we find him at Port Colborne. He was, however, surprised to learn that men so high in power, and that had been so high in power, really knew so little of the great impending movement which overshadowed the Provinces and bid fair to wrest them from the hands of England. But few papers in Upper Canada appeared to know anything of what was really going on in this relation, besides the Globe, of Toronto. Nearly all the others, like the leader of the government and his satellites, seemed to be at sea upon the subject. This fact Greaves took care to mention in the dispatches which he sent home to Ireland, from time to time; giving it as his opinion, that the Prime Minister of Canada was a dangerous man to entrust with any large interests, civil or military.

How the spy had become possessed of the letter or paper which so staggered O’Brien, is easily accounted for. One of the Organization in Ireland, named Greaves, who had been purchased by the government while on a mission of trust, and who had sworn his way into the Brotherhood with a view to making merchandise of it, gave up his credentials for a certain sum; and thus it was that they had fallen into the hands of the Castle of Dublin and subsequently into those of the spy. Cunning as O’Brien was, the spy read his connection with the Organization through exhibiting this document to him on the morning succeeding the night of our first introduction to The Harp; for he perceived, at once, that were O’Brien not, is some way, identified with the Brotherhood, he would have been unable to recognize the meaning of certain expressions contained in the paper, which, as already observed, seemed to impress him so suddenly and so forcibly.

Now, however, that the Provinces were actually invaded, Greaves, as we shall yet continue to call him, found that his mission had suddenly been brought to a close. As the cat was out of the bag, however, he instantly turned his undivided attention to some private matters of his own, and which, after all, was the only thing that induced him to move so rapidly west, after the escape of Barry and his comrades from the Fort. But with all his deeply laid schemes, he began to feel a strange presentiment that he had overreached himself, and that, notwithstanding the supposition that he had shut out our hero from Canada for all time to come, it was more than likely he was in the Province again, and that, too, as an invader, and but a very short distance from the village in which he now found himself. This surmise maddened him, for reasons to be disclosed in due course; and, as if urged by some unseen power, he was determined to make his way towards the camp of the invaders; well knowing that had Barry joined it, he would vouch for his friendliness; while, had he not re-entered the Province, he himself could make his way among the Brotherhood as a friend, by the same means that he had stepped into the good graces, or rather escaped the detection, of O’Brien.

Early on the morning of the second of June, then, he set out from Port Colborne, with a force under the command of Lieut. Col. Booker, anxious to witness, and if necessary, take part in the first encounter between the invaders and the Provincial troops. How did he know—perhaps a chance bullet fired by himself might find its billet in the heart of Barry, had the latter joined the Fenians; and if it did, then all would be right, and his triumph secured. Still he had his misgivings as to the success of the Canadians, notwithstanding their reputed superior numbers, and the presence of the regulars to strengthen and inspirit the volunteers. He saw that all was uncertainty and confusion. Col. Peacock, of the 16th regulars, chief in command of the united forces, was at “sixes and sevens” with the commanding officer of the volunteers, while General Napier, commanding the regular troops in the whole of Upper Canada, was so perplexed with rumors of invasion at various points, as to be absolutely lost in a maze of bewilderment, and utterly incapable of meeting the crisis in a soldierly and intelligent manner.

Thus the confusion ran amongst the Canadians, when Col. Booker, on the morning just alluded to, set out with his command from Port Colborne, to attack the Irish Republican forces, encamped at Newbiggin’s Farm, and with the further intention of forming a junction with the regulars under Col. Peacock, coming from Chippewa—the invaders being absolutely hemmed in on all sides; as a steamer with a field battery occupied the river in their rear, with a view to cutting off their retreat, when they were, as it was expected they should be, defeated by the large number of forces that were being steadily brought down upon them.

Arriving at the village of Ridgeway, the troops left the cars and proceeded cautiously in the direction of Stevensville, at or near which point they hoped to form the junction with Col. Peacock, who was on his way from Chippewa, where he had bivouacked the night before. The village of Ridgeway is on the line of the Grand Trunk Railway, which connects it with Port Colborne on Lake Erie on the one side, and Fort Erie on the same lake, at the mouth of the Niagara River, on the other. It is situated about eleven miles from the former place, and something like eight from the latter; leaving the extreme points distant from each other about nineteen miles. At this little place, then, Lieut. Col. Booker found himself, in command of a force which has been variously estimated at from twelve to eighteen hundred men, composed of the crack volunteers of the country, and, as a general thing, commanded by brave and experienced officers. It has, however, been asserted by some that there were not more than one thousand British engaged at Ridgeway; but we fear that this is under the mark, and are inclined to believe, that, at an honest computation, their force amounted to between thirteen and fourteen hundred. This we give on what we consider to be reliable authority, and can, at once, presume that the division under Col. Booker stood something more than three to one against the invaders, as the handful under the gallant O’Neill did not exceed four hundred on the actual field of Ridgeway.

Stevensville lies in the direction of Chippewa, on a wagon road branching off at right angles from the Grand Trunk at Ridgeway village, and here it was that Col. Peacock ordered Col. Booker to meet him, with the men under his command, with the design of forming a junction and attacking O’Neill with a combined force of volunteers and regulars amounting to between two and three thousand men. This junction O’Neill was determined to defeat, and did defeat it;—but let us not anticipate.

When Greaves stepped from the cars at Ridgeway, the first man he encountered was the Kid; and, strange as it may appear, a sign of recognition passed between them instantaneously. In a few moments they managed to extricate themselves from the crowds that thronged the place, and move off to an unfrequented spot, where they could converse unheard and unobserved. Here they were soon engaged on a subject which seemed to excite Greaves to the highest pitch, and elicit from him sundry ejaculations of surprise mixed with anger. Becoming cooler, however, he led his companion into a spot even more sequestered, and then fell into a low and earnest conversation with him, in which the name of Barry might be heard pronounced with a deadly, hissing vehemence, indicative of the most frightful passion and hate. All this time the Kid remained quite calm, answering the interrogatories of his employer, for such Greaves appeared to be, until, at last, the plot or contract, whatever it was, was completed, and the parties had again bent their steps to the railway station by different paths.

Had the gallant O’Neill two thousand men at his command on the morning of the 2d of June, 1866, with the certainty of reinforcements, Canada would, ere this, have been part and parcel of the United States, and Ireland an independent Republic, modeled after that of the American Union. No officer was better calculated to accomplish the overthrow of British power in the Dominion, than he. A thorough and practiced soldier—a man of great personal courage and daring, and above all, a genuine Celt, fired with the hereditary hatred of England so characteristic of his name and race, he was in himself a host. With two thousand men, composed of such stuff as he commanded at Ridgeway, he could have swept the road before him to Toronto; for there can be no doubt that his numbers would have been largely augmented on the way by Irish Nationalists and American sympathisers, who then, as now, pine for annexation. In addition, when it became once known, that a victorious army of the Republic of Ireland was marching on Toronto, a demonstration favorable to the invaders would have been made in that city, or such indications of friendship evinced by the Irish portion of the inhabitants, as would paralyze the energies of all those within its borders who were determined to stand by the flag of the tyrant. This, we are certain, would have been the real result of a march upon that city; for, all that thousands upon thousands of the people of Canada, who are now muzzled by the government, require at any moment to range them on the side of Ireland, is the assurance of success on the part of any invader, whether Irish or American, who makes a descent upon their shores. What a dreadful calamity, then, it was, that the War Department of the Irish Republic had fallen into such careless or incompetent hands, and that some man was not at its head who could have managed to have thrown upon Canadian soil, at Fort Erie and one or two other points, a force to act separately or in conjunction with sufficient effect to completely paralyse all opposition in Western Canada, among an already excited and incongruous host, who could have been easily swept before a compact handful of troops fired by a spirit so lofty and a resolve so unconquerable as that which actuated the brave little band of patriots who have made the 2d day of June, 1866, famous in the annals of the Irish race on this continent and on the other side of the Atlantic.