Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources / Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"

by Sir William Howard Russell

On a gloomy winter evening I was once more battling with the ice on the St. Lawrence; and, after a long passage, left Point Levi for Montreal.

A weary life-long night it seemed, and a still wearier day in the train. It was close upon twenty-one hours of stuffy, foodless travel, ere we arrived at Montreal. Nor can I remember anything worth recording of all that linked weariness, long drawn out, except that, halting at a roadside station in the night, I came on a detachment of the Scots Fusilier Guards, who had come up from Rivière du Loup, after their passage in sleighs over the snows of New Brunswick, and were in high spirits, looking very red in the face, and bulky in comparison with the lean habitans. “Misthress,” quoth one of them to the woman at the bar, “wad ye gi’e me a dhrap av whuskie?” The Hebe complied with this request, and for some very small pecuniary consideration filled him out nearly a tumblerful of the dreadful preparation known in the States as “Fortyrod.” The soldier tasted it, blinked his eyes, squeezed them close, pursed up his lips, smacked them, gave a short watery cough, smelt the mixture, and, looking at his comrades, exclaimed, “My Gude! Hech! I’d jist as soon face a charge of baynets.” After that proem I was prepared to see the hardy warrior eject the fluid, but he proceeded to a most inconsequent act: for, nodding his head, he said, “Sae, here’s t’ye, my lads,” and tossed down the fire-water incontinent.

There were several companies of H.M.’s 63rd Regiment in the train, also going up to Montreal. It did not escape me that at the station pickets were looking sharply out for intending deserters, who might have cut away in the darkness; and I was told, and felt inclined to believe it might be worth their while, that there were Yankee crimps lying in wait at all the stations to help the deserters across the frontier, if they could induce them to leave their colours. The anxiety and annoyance caused by desertion, and by the chance of it, add to the dissatisfaction which is now expressed in our army in Canada; but I must say I cannot quite sympathise with the violence and exaggeration in which that dislike finds vent.

Captains of companies suffer losses, but in many instances they have only themselves to blame. The men, seduced by high pay, either in the States or as farm-labourers in Canada, are seized with an irresistible desire to quit the service abruptly, “without leave,” and resort to ingenious artifices to escape. Sometimes a whole guard will march off bodily, non-commissioned officers and all; occasionally one of the number will submit to be handcuffed, and will be marched by his comrades through the post as a deserter, or a man will put on a sergeant’s jacket or sew chevrons on his coat sleeve, and march off his party as if they were going out on picket or patrol duty. Such artifices cannot always be successfully encountered, but they are to be met to some extent by increased vigilance.

I need not say that it was with satisfaction I exchanged my railway van for a comfortable room in the house of Mr. Rose at Montreal. The news of an immediate advance of the army of the Potomac which had been received from New York turned out to be untrue; no immediate hurry was there need for to go down to the seat of war. I dined at the club, where we had a very agreeable party, enlivened by the fervent conversation of some Southern gentlemen of the little colony of refugees which finds shelter in Montreal under the British flag. There is some work of Nemesis in the condition of these gentlemen. Here are Charleston people, who claimed the right to imprison British subjects because they had dark skins, now taking refuge under the British flag, from the exercise of the very power which enabled them to maintain their claim, and apologising to Englishmen for the peculiar institution on the ground that they treated their niggers better than the Yankees do.

The snow again falling, and the day cold. On the Sunday after my arrival, I walked into town in moccasins, and attended service in Christchurch, where the ritual was in close imitation of the cathedral formula at home. I saw a party of the Guards marched to church, who had an air of profound discontent on their manly features. Some Canadians near me evidently regarded them as hardened heretics going to a place of punishment, and at the same time deserving it as foreign mercenaries; but the Guards certainly did not seem to care one farthing for their opinion, if they understood the expression of it. The building is very handsome; but, in spite of the cold outside, I found the atmosphere unbearable, owing to the stoves, iron pipes, or some other undesirable calorific apparatus. The sermon was respectable and frigid.

I spent the next day visiting the remarkable places and persons passed over in Montreal on my last brief visit. In the evening I dined with Colonel Kelly and H.M.’s 47th Regiment, who entertained Sir Fenwick Williams and the officers of the Guards then in garrison, and on the following morning at 9 o’clock I drove over to the Barracks to see a drill of the regiment on the St. Lawrence in snow-shoes. Sir Fenwick Williams and some staff officers were on the ground. The regiment was admirably handled by Colonel Kelly, and the scene was very novel and amusing. The regiment was in excellent condition: the men seemed rather to like the fun with the snow-shoes, and when skirmishers were thrown out or called in at the double, there was certainty of a fall or two from unlucky privates tripping up in their shoes and tumbling in the snow, which flew like puffs of musketry. Fresh from parades of volunteers I felt the force of Lord Clyde’s maxim—“The first duty of a soldier is to obey”—as I looked at the measured tread even at the quickest, and the alert, agile formations of the men to whom discipline was the whole scope of military intellect. There was, I thought, in that complex machine of many parts, but of only one animating, moving power, what would be cheaply bought by the United States by many hundreds of thousands of dollars for the purposes of war, though man to man one of their regiments might be more intelligent, and quite as capable of deeds of valour as the old 47th, of whom indeed not many had the Crimean medal, though the campaign is now but a few years old.

In the evening I dined with the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Fenwick Williams, and met Mr. Cartier, Mr. Galt, and Mr. Rose.

The letters from England which came by every mail showed that the position was not much understood, as it was believed there would be a speedy movement of the army of the Potomac, which I knew to be buried in mud. The American papers of course deluded their readers by constant assurances that McClellan was about to move next week. It would seem, after all, that in new countries the practice of going into winter quarters, which prevailed among sixteenth and seventeenth century generals, was founded on good reason; but that as the land became better drained, and the roads were improved by civilisation and populations, the necessity for inaction was diminished. Napoleon astonished Europe by some wonderful escapades in the field; but even in the Peninsula the British suffered greatly in winter movements. In the old French war, operations in Canada were usually over in August or early in September; but the Americans, in their bold and skilful campaign of 1775, commenced their invasion or dash late in the year—managed so well that they broke in almost simultaneously at Montreal and Quebec, on the British, who had only one regular regiment in the Provinces, in November—and it was on the last day of the year that Montgomery and Arnold made their brilliant and unsuccessful attempt to carry the citadel by escalade.

Again, in 1812, it was as late as October before the Americans opened their campaign on the Niagara frontier; and it was about the middle of November when they directed their ill-managed and abortive demonstration against Montreal. They again moved in January, 1813, and several actions took place in the early months of the year, nor did the approach of winter drive the contending parties from the field; and a good deal of sharp fighting took place in December. In the following year the Americans began the offensive at a later period, though the corps intended to operate against the Montreal district was in motion in the first week of March. Our defeat at Plattsburgh occurred on September 11th. The Americans make much of it—with great justice. They defeated the best regiments of an army which had proved itself, in face of the picked troops of Napoleon, the first in Europe. When winter is well established in these high latitudes, perhaps it is, under ordinary circumstances, more favourable to military operations than it is in lower latitudes, where tremendous rains alternate with heavy snow-storms, which do not form permanent deposits over which to move men or guns.