The French commander, however, was not the man to abandon the siege on account of a single warship, for as yet he did not know that the Leostaff was but the herald of further arrivals; and his guns continued to hurl grenades and roundshot into the city. The English batteries returned their fire with so much violence that De Levis again determined to try and carry the place by direct assault. Scaling-ladders and battering-rams were made ready, but no opportunity came to use them. Another week of vigorous siege passed; and at nightfall, on the 15th of May, to the unspeakable joy of the harassed garrison, the Vanguard and the Diana, British ships of war, came to anchor in the basin. Next morning the three vessels made their way up the river past Quebec, and attacked the French squadron which had brought the army of De Levis from Montreal. These were the ships, it will be remembered, which withdrew up the river on the approach of Holmes's fleet in the summer of 1759. The naval engagement was fierce but decisive, the French commander Vauquelin behaving with the utmost gallantry, and refusing to strike his flag even when his powder was spent and his ship a wreck. "Our ships," says Knox, in describing the battle, "forced La Pomone ashore and burned her, then pursued the others; drove l'Atalanta ashore near Pointe-aux-Trembles, and set her on fire; took and destroyed all the rest, except a small sloop of war which escaped to Lake St. Peter." On the English side, the Leostaff wrecked on the rocks.

To De Levis the destruction of the French squadron was the greatest possible catastrophe, for the ships carried his supplies. No alternative but retreat remained; and next morning, when Murray marched out for a sortie, he found the French camp deserted by all save the sick and wounded, whom in a letter left behind De Levis had commended to his care. Their tents still stood upon the Plains, and their guns and mortars gaped silently in the trenches; but the French army had already passed over the Cap Rouge, and the fourth siege of Quebec had come to an end.

So, too, had the ancien regime: for although Bougainville still held his strong position at Isle-aux-Noix, and Montreal, whither Vaudreuil had transferred his government, was not subdued till the 8th of September, 1760, when three British columns under Amherst, Murray, and Haviland compelled Vaudreuil to make a formal surrender of that city and of the whole of Canada; still, the key of New France had passed into English hands. Quebec, the Gibraltar of America, was never more to salute the Bourbon lilies, and French empire in the Western world had ceased to be.



CHAPTER XVI

THE FIRST YEARS OF BRITISH RULE

The period which immediately succeeded the capitulation of Canada is known as the regne militaire; but the administration so sternly named was remarkable for the most careful equity. Allowing for circumstances which made military rule a necessity, it was in fact an era of almost unexampled tenderness; for though still on the threshold of her colonial empire, England already realised that the lightest yoke is the longest borne. She had annexed the vast domain of Canada, and the sentiment of its seventy thousand French inhabitants was her first concern. These must be won to a new loyalty and schooled in the free institutions of a progressive nation.

The note of the new administration was struck in the general orders issued by General Amherst, September 9th, 1760: "The General is confident that when the troops are informed that the country is the King's, they will not disgrace themselves by the least appearance of inhumanity, or by unsoldierlike behaviour in taking any plunder, more especially as the Canadians become now good subjects, and will feel the good effects of His Majesty's protection." This confidence in a policy of conciliation was fully justified by the event.

Ever since the Battle of the Plains, the habitants and the citizens of Quebec had been slowly but steadily settling to allegiance, and now, when the fall of Montreal had destroyed the last vestige of French dominion, the people generally came forward to enroll themselves. And that they were received into the British fold with something more than a perfunctory welcome is proved by an extract from Amherst's instructions: "These newly acquired subjects," he writes to General Gage, "when they have taken the oath, are as much His Majesty's subjects as any of us, and are, so long as they remain deserving of it, entitled to the same protection. I would have you particularly give it in charge to the troops to live in good harmony and brotherhood with them, and avoid all differences soever."

Naturally enough, the recent belligerents were deprived of their weapons; and commissioners went through the different parishes administering the oath and collecting arms. A firelock was left to each native militia officer, and, under certain conditions, the rank and file also could retain guns for hunting.



The Canadians were allowed the free exercise of their religion; and although nothing was said about the retention of the French language, its employment followed as a matter of course, since only the soldiers of the garrison knew English. The adjustment of civil disputes was placed in the hands of the officers of militia, who met for that purpose every Tuesday; and from their tribunal an appeal to the Governor was also allowed.

Criminal cases were submitted to a court of military officers, civil misdemeanours being defined in the police regulations. To secure the city as far as possible from her ancient scourge of fire, and to lessen the chances of incendiarism, it was ordered that chimneys were to be swept at least once a month under penalty of six livres. The fire-brigade of the capital consisted, ex officio, of all the carpenters, who were required to attend with axes, the citizens being compelled to assemble with buckets. The habitants, while forbidden to harbour English deserters, received due recompense for any of the garrison billeted upon them. For the better regulation of prices, they were forbidden to sell their produce to strangers—"coureurs de cote"—but were required to bring it to market. Through representations made by the English Government, France at length consented to redeem the billets d'ordonnance with which her moribund administration had hopelessly flooded the country. The hand of the new government was light, the civic burden easy. The days of the corvee were now passed, and harsh impressment no longer compelled the habitant to fight on short rations and without pay. Very soon the French Canadian, as he felt the improvement in his condition, ceased to feel resentment against his English conqueror.

That the military rule succeeding to the conquest of the country was benevolent, that its quality of mercy was not strained, is shown by the citizens of Montreal, who at the death of George II. "placed themselves in mourning," and presented the following robust address to the Governor:—

"To His Excellency General Gage the Governor of Montreal and its dependencies.

"The address of the Officers of Militia and Merchants of the City of Montreal.

"Cruel Destiny has thus Cutt short the Glorious Days of so Great & so Magnanimous a Monarch! We are come to pour out our Grief into the paternal Bosom of Your Excellency, the sole Tribute of Gratitude of a People who never Cease to Exhalt the mildness and Moderation of their New Masters. The General who has conquered Us has rather treated Us as a Father than a Vanquisher, & has left us a precious Pledge (gage) by Name & Deed of his Goodness to Us; What acknowledgments are we not beholden to make for so many Favours?

"They shall be for ever Engraven in our Hearts in Indelible Character. We Entreat Your Excellency to continue Us the Honour of Your Protection. We will endeavour to Deserve it by our Zeal & by the Earnest Prayers We shall ever offer up to the Immortal Being for Your Health and Preservation."



On the other hand, there were those whose temperaments were opposed to acceptance of the new order of things—those to whom conquest by the hereditary enemy was intolerable. These irreconcilable spirits were mainly civil and military officers, seigneurial families, and emigres of the first generation. To them estates in the New World meant much, but the motherland and the Bourbon lilies meant yet more; and as for the more recent arrivals, not having yet struck deep root in the land of their adoption, they were content to return to France. Accordingly, many of these availed themselves of the transportation provided for in the terms of capitulation, and their departure robbed Canada of much of her best blood. The new government was hard pressed to find ships to accommodate these distinguished passengers, as well as the two thousand disarmed soldiers of De Levis. At last, however, they were all embarked, and the crowded vessels set sail, only to be attacked by furious gales. De Levis narrowly escaped a watery grave off the rocks of Newfoundland, while the ship carrying Vaudreuil and his suite fared little better.

But the most distressing disaster of all befell the Auguste, a frigate bearing the French officer La Corne, his family, his friends, and a large number of soldiers. Scarcely had the ill-fated ship passed the island of Anticosti when a dreadful storm overtook her from the west and drove her into the Gulf. A few days later, a fire broke out in the cook's galley, which was extinguished only by the most desperate energy of passengers and crew, and not before most of the provisions had been destroyed. Off Isle Royale another storm arose, in which they helplessly tossed for several days, being finally driven upon the coast. The Auguste went to pieces on the reefs. La Corne and six companions gained the shore, and unable to render assistance, saw their families drown in the surf. De Gaspe, in his work Les Anciens Canadiens, recounts the tragic story in the words of La Corne himself:

"From the 13th to the 15th [of November] we were driven at the mercy of a violent storm, without knowing where we were. We were obliged as best we could to replace the crew, for the men, worn out with fatigue, had taken refuge in their hammocks and would not leave them; threats, promises, even blows, had been tried in vain. Our mizzen-mast being broken, our sails torn to shreds, and incapable of being clewed up or lowered, the first mate proposed as a last resource in this extremity to run into shore. It was a desperate act. The fatal moment arrived! The captain and mate looked sadly at me with clasped hands. I but too well understood this mute language of men who from their profession were accustomed to brave death. We made the land to starboard, where we perceived the mouth of a river, which might prove to be navigable. Without concealing anything, I informed the passengers of both sexes of this manoeuvre, which was for life or death....Who could describe the fury of the waves! The storm had burst upon us in all its violence; our masts seemed to reach up to the clouds, and then to plunge into the abyss. A terrible shock told us that the ship had touched the bottom. We then cut away the cordage and masts to lighten her and try to float her again; this came to pass, but the force of the waves turned her over on her side....As the ship was already leaking in every part, the passengers all rushed on deck; and some...threw themselves into the sea and perished....The passengers and crew had lashed themselves to the shrouds and spars in order to resist the waves which, breaking over the ship, were snatching fresh victims every moment....Our only remaining resource was the two boats, the larger of which was carried away by a wave and dashed to pieces. The other was lowered into the water....I hastily seized a rope, and by means of a tremendous leap fell into the boat; the same wave which saved my life carried away my two children....It would be difficult to describe the horror of this terrible disaster, the cries of those still on board the ship, and the harrowing spectacle of those who, having thrown themselves into the waves, were making useless efforts to gain the beach....Seven living men at last found themselves on the shore of that unknown land...and (in the evening) it was a heartrending sight which presented itself when a hundred and fourteen corpses were stretched on the sand, many of them with arms and legs broken, or bearing other marks of the fury of the elements."

For weeks the fugitives wandered about the woods, and at last were rescued by a party of Indians thirty leagues from Louisbourg. The indefatigible La Corne crossed in a birch-bark canoe from Cape Breton to the mainland, and, travelling five hundred and fifty leagues on snow-shoes, came again to Quebec. Here, in spite of his own dire predictions, he found a gaiety and contentment which fairly startled him. Within the walls of the grim old river-fortress the ancient foes were making peace in the reconstruction of industry. The wise forbearance of the conquerors, and the facile temper of the conquered, provided, far beyond hope, a solution for what was, prima facie, a difficult situation. "It is very surprising," writes an officer of the Highlanders, "with what ease the gaiety of their tempers enables them to bear misfortunes which to us would be insupportable. Families, whom the calamities of war have reduced from the height of luxury to the want of common necessaries, laugh, dance, and sing, comforting themselves with this reflection—Fortune de guerre. Their young ladies take the utmost pains to teach our officers French; with what views I know not, if it is not that they may hear themselves praised, flattered, and courted without loss of time," Those who remained behind, sacrificing allegiance to their old flag for the sake of allegiance to the soil, were indeed far happier than the irreconcilables who had elected to return to the motherland, bereft of all but their movable property. And among these homing Frenchmen were some whose reception caused them a very reasonable anxiety. Vaudreuil, Bigot, Pean, Cadet, Varin, Penisseault, and several others who had held offices in Canada, were cast into the Bastille, charged with the corruptions which had sapped the life-blood of New France. For months they contemplated their misdeeds in the sombre silence of the dungeon, and the next year were brought forth for trial. Vaudreuil, for lack of evidence, was acquitted properly acquitted, so far as can be known, his chief fault having been a fatal ill-judgment; but a just fate overtook Bigot, Cadet, and their knavish parasites. The Intendant was banished from France for life, and all his property confiscated; Cadet was banished for nine years and fined six million livres; the others received sentences in keeping with the measure of their guilt.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in Quebec, a decade of English rule slipped uneventfully by, marked chiefly by new perceptions of citizenship on the part of the French. The ancien regime had been conducted on the principle of centralised authority, allowing no place to personal liberty. Neither on its civil nor its military side were any rights extended to the individual. Up to the Conquest, the citizens of Quebec had been no more than cogs in the wheel of State, driven fast or slow according to the spasmodic interest felt by the Home government in her always troublesome colony—a land which had first claimed consideration as the gateway to Cathay, and presently appeared to be nothing better than a "thousand leagues of snow and ice." This decline from the equator of enthusiasm to the north pole of neglect indicated the unstable fortunes of the colony. National spirit was left to fill up the ranks of her army when danger threatened the frontiers; and to the simple habitant, who had no interest to keep alive the memory of France, Quebec and Louisbourg were the ends of the earth, and the annals of his parish the Alpha and Omega of knowledge.

With British rule all this was changed. In Quebec the Tiers Etat awoke to its latent destiny thirty years before the same realisation came to Paris; and it was the new principles of government which achieved this bloodless revolution. The rights of man were no longer confined to the Governor, Intendant, and the Sovereign Council; and the plainest citizen felt a new pulse within him as soon as he saw the trend of the English system. Instead of being kept in the dark as to what was taking place in the outside world, he found a strange solicitude in high quarters to keep him informed on every subject of public importance. Under General Murray a newspaper was established, the Quebec Gazette, which began as a weekly in 1764.[34] The first issue of this pioneer of Canadian journalism consisted of four folio pages, two columns to a page, one French, one English; and the outline of its policy is given in the Printer's Address to the Public, promising:—

"A view of foreign affairs and political transactions from which a judgment may be formed of the interests and connections of the several powers of Europe; to collect the transactions and occurrences of our mother-country; and to introduce every remarkable event, uncommon debates, extraordinary performances, and interesting turn of affairs that shall be thought to merit the notice of the reader as matter of entertainment, or that can be of service to the public as inhabitants of an English colony....And here we beg leave to observe that we shall have nothing so much at heart as the support of virtue and morality and the noble cause of liberty. The refined amusements of literature and the pleasing veins of well-pointed wit shall also be considered as necessary to the collection—interspersed with other chosen pieces and curious essays extracted from the most celebrated authors—so that, blending philosophy with politics, history, etc., the youth of both sexes will be improved, and persons of all ranks agreeably and usefully entertained."[35] With such a high conception of its functions, the Quebec Gazette launched itself twenty-four years in advance of the London Times, and fourteen years before Benjamin Franklin founded the Montreal Gazette.

[Footnote 34: It was changed into a bi-weekly in 1818, and in 1874 was merged into the Chronicle as a daily paper.]

[Footnote 35: Article by John S. Reade in the Centenary number, Quebec Gazette, 1864.]

Since the Conquest, Quebec had been governed under the terms of a royal proclamation which, remarkable to relate, prescribed no definite forms of administration; and by the articles of capitulation almost everything was left to the discretion of the Governor. General Murray proved himself a discreet ruler; but friction of some sort was almost inevitable in a situation presenting such conflicting interests and delicate problems; and it now came from those few hundred British settlers who wrongly supposed that their nationality gave them privileges over ten times their number of French fellow-subjects. Governor Murray, fortunately, held no partisan views; and his policy was followed with equal firmness and greater success by Sir Guy Carleton, who next assumed the administration in 1766.

The new Governor had, indeed, a remarkable connection with the history of Quebec. In 1759 he had accompanied his friend James Wolfe to the siege of the city, and like his General, was wounded on the Plains of Abraham. He remained with Murray in Quebec during the trying winter of 1760, and fought in the battle of Ste. Foye. And now, after a brilliant campaign in the West Indies, the gallant soldier was returning to the fortress on the St. Lawrence at another critical moment in its history.

Events were rapidly moving to a crisis in the English colonies to the south. In spite of Burke and Pitt, England was blindly imperilling her possessions in America by the imposition of the Stamp Act, and a failure to realise that the Thirteen Colonies had long outgrown a state of tutelage, and were not prepared to accept legislation from the motherland. But as a preliminary measure of offence, the newly assembled congress determined to detach Canada from the British crown, and, naturally, they counted most of all upon disaffection among the French Canadian population. It is not possible to give in full the letter which George Washington despatched on this occasion to "The Inhabitants of Canada"; but the following is part of it:—

"FRIENDS AND BRETHREN—The unnatural contest between the English colonies and Great Britain has now risen to such a height that arms alone must decide it. The colonies, confiding in the justice of their cause, and the purity of their intention, have reluctantly appealed to that Being in whose hands are all human events....Above all, we rejoice that our enemies have been deceived with regard to you. They have persuaded themselves, they have even dared to say, that the Canadians were not capable of distinguishing between the blessings of liberty and the wretchedness of slavery;...but they have been deceived; instead of finding in you a poverty of soul and baseness of spirit, they see with a chagrin, equal to our joy, that you are enlightened, generous, and virtuous; that you will not renounce your own rights, or serve as instruments to deprive your fellow-subjects of theirs. Come then, my brethren, unite with us in an indissoluble union, let us run together to the same goal....Come then, ye generous citizens, range yourselves under the standard of general liberty, against which all the force and artifices of tyranny will never be able to prevail.

GEORGE WASHINGTON."

The blandishments of the Thirteen Colonies, or "The Provincials," as they were called, found almost no response in Canada. Sir Guy Carleton had left nothing undone to foster loyalty in the hearts of the French Canadians; and the passing of the Quebec Act in 1774, which secured to them freedom of worship and confirmed their own system of jurisprudence, held the French fast to their allegiance at a time when disaffection would have been ruinous to the Empire.

Controversies still rage over the propriety of legalising the French language in a British dominion; but any one who examines well the circumstances which induced it must see that not only justice but military expediency required liberal treatment and wide consideration for seventy thousand subjects speaking an alien tongue, if the fruits of the Seven Years' War were not to be heedlessly thrown away. The solution of the language problem lies in the peaceful assimilation which time and growing population alone can bring. Almost a thousand years ago a Norman race was grafted upon a Saxon stock, and the blending of these elements has produced Great Britain, the strongest nation of the modern world. In Canada religious, industrial, and social conditions have as yet prevented definite fusion of the two races; but the march of events and the pressure of common interests must secure it in good time.



CHAPTER XVII

THE FIFTH SIEGE

Besides Sir Guy Carleton, Wolfe's army of 1759 contained other officers who were destined to reappear in the history of the city. One of these was Richard Montgomery, then a lieutenant in the Seventeenth Foot, but now, after a lapse of sixteen years, a brigadier-general, and charged with a far different commission. Moses Hazen and Donald Campbell, two officers who figured prominently in the battle of Ste. Foye, were likewise returning in different guise to the scene of their former exploits; and Benedict Arnold, no stranger in Quebec, came there once more. All of these had made merry at Freemasons' Hall, the festive hostelry at the top of Mountain Hill, which had been a jovial rendezvous in the days of military rule. Here they had toasted and sung, little dreaming that one day they would assail that fort they had so dearly won, and face in battle their former messmates. Yet fate had so ordained; and when the thirteen revolting colonies determined to strike the mother-country by an attack on Canada, it was to Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold that Congress gave the command of the two invading armies. The former was despatched against Montreal, the latter was sent to take Quebec.



Down the Richelieu came Montgomery, and the forts of Ticonderoga, Crown Point, St. John, and Chambly fell before him. Sir Guy Carleton hurried to Montreal, but as he was unable to rally the citizens to their own defence, the town soon fell into the hands of the impetuous invader. General Carleton escaped in the guise of a peasant through the provincial lines, and paddled to Quebec in a canoe. There his first step was to purge of treason the city upon which the hope of all Canada now rested. Citizens suspected of disaffection were banished beyond the walls; and though the garrison numbered only eighteen hundred men, French and English, the loyalty of all was secure, begetting confidence in their power to meet the attack. A contemporary diary, that of James Thompson, refers thus to the defences: "I received order from General Carleton to put the extensive fortifications of Quebec in a state of repair at a time when there was not a single article of material in store with which to perform such an undertaking....My first object was to secure stout spar timber for palisading a great extent of open ground between the gates called Palace and Hope, and again from half-bastion of Cape Diamond along the brow of the cliff towards Castle St. Lewis. I began at Palace Gate, palisading with loopholes for musketry, and made a projection in the form of a bastion, as a defence for a line of pickets, in the gorge of which I erected a blockhouse, which made a good defence....Also a blockhouse on the Cape under Cape Diamond bastion....I also had a party of the carpenters barricading the extremities of the Lower Town by blockading up all the windows of the houses next to the riverside and those facing the water, leaving only loopholes for musketry, as a defence in case the St. Lawrence should freeze across....At this time, the nights being dark, I strongly recommended the use of lanterns extended on poles from the salient angles of all the bastions. By means of these lights even a dog could be distinguished if in the great ditch in the darkest night. This we continued in the absence of the moon, with the exception of a composition burned in iron pots, substituted for candles."



It was November, and up to this time General Carleton had feared only the arrival of Montgomery's army from Montreal. Suddenly, however, a new enemy appeared at Point Levi. Benedict Arnold, at the head of seven hundred men, had accomplished an amazing journey. Through the tangled forests of New Hampshire and Maine, beset by the driving storms of an early winter, this intrepid army toiled overland from Boston to Point Levi. On the night of the 14th of November, Arnold's force crossed the river, and gained the Plains of Abraham without opposition. Three weeks later Montgomery's army arrived from Montreal, and the united forces established themselves at Ste. Foye. Both Montgomery and Arnold had counted upon the co-operation of the French Canadians; and owing to the success of the army against Montreal, some of the fickle habitants were persuaded to join the invaders. In general, however, the French population were not forgetful of the just treatment they had met at the hands of the British, and if they were not to be depended upon for a powerful defence, they at least rendered no assistance to the besiegers. About half of those whom Carleton had kept within the walls were French, but these, as has been said, were wholly trustworthy.

The Governor paid no heed to Montgomery's call to surrender. His envoys were turned away from the gates, and the resolute equanimity of the town disturbed him. That his temper hardly stood the strain is evident from the following letter to the Governor:—

"SIR—Notwithstanding the personal ill-treatment I have received at your hands, and notwithstanding your cruelty to the unhappy prisoners you have taken, the feelings of humanity induce me to have recourse to this expedient to save you from the destruction which hangs over you. Give me leave, sir, to assure you, I am well acquainted with your situation. A great extent of works, in their nature incapable of defence, manned with a motley crew of sailors, the greatest part our friends, of citizens who wish to see us within their walls, and a few of the worst troops who ever styled themselves soldiers. The impossibility of relief, and the certain prospect of wanting every necessary of life, should your opponents confine their operations to a simple blockade, point out the absurdity of resistance....I am at the head of troops accustomed to success...and so highly incensed at your inhumanity, illiberal abuse, and the ungenerous means employed to prejudice them in the minds of the Canadians, that it is with difficulty I restrain them till my batteries are ready....Beware of destroying stores of any kind, public or private....If you do, by Heavens, there will be no mercy shown!

"RICHARD MONTGOMERY, Continental Army, G.C."

If there was one man who knew the impracticability of a "simple blockade," it was the General in command of the Continental army. No one stood in greater need of "stores of any kind, public or private." The spirit of his army was doubtless as he described it; but he had wholly mistaken the temper of the garrison.

Kirke, Phipps, Wolfe, and Levis had all left their mark upon Quebec, and now the battered walls were once more threatened by Montgomery. The Provincial army had taken possession of every point of vantage outside the gates, the General having established his headquarters at Holland House, by the Ste. Foye road, while Arnold occupied the suburb of St. Roch towards Charles River. The houses of the habitants, the General Hospital, and the Intendant's Palace were thronged with soldiers, who found their tents poor protection against the rigours of a winter campaign. A six-gun battery was erected within three hundred paces of St. John's Gate, a battery of two guns thundered from the bank of the St. Charles, while a third belched impotent fire across the river from Point Levi. From the cupola of the Intendant's Palace a body of riflemen continued to pick man after man off the ramparts, until Sir Guy Carleton at last trained his guns upon it. It was a hard thing for the Governor to destroy perhaps the finest building of all Quebec, but the rigours of the siege seemed to leave him no alternative; and soon the venerable building lay in ruins, having witnessed the chequered history of the city since the days of the great Talon.

Day and night the cannon on the ramparts answered the enemy's howitzers, and once again the river gorge echoed back the roar of artillery. Shells and grenades burst continually in the streets, and as weeks wore away the citizens became inured to the dangers of battle or sudden death by roundshot, grape, and canister. Outside the walls, the enemy suffered in like manner, running the gauntlet of Carleton's artillery and exposed to the musketry of the garrison. One day as Montgomery dashed over the snow-covered plain in a carriole his horse was killed by a cannon shot. Such casual dangers, however, were the least cause of his anxiety, which was especially due to the prolongation of the siege. His men were ill-clothed, depending for rations largely upon the goodwill of the habitants, who anxiously weighed the chances of British prowess. Moreover, desertion and sickness thinned his ranks; and at last, having resolved upon a coup de main, he formed his plans and awaited a dark night for their execution.

Meantime, the wary Carleton neglected no means of informing himself of the enemy's intentions. When this latest resolution of the invader came to his ears, the night watches of Quebec were doubled, and he and his devoted officers slept in their clothes at the Recollet Convent, whence, at a moment's notice, they could hasten to a threatened quarter. On the 30th of December a deserter from Montgomery's camp, being allowed within the gates, confirmed Carleton's suspicions by affirming that the Continental army had received final instructions, with permission to plunder the city on its capture. Once more the Governor inspected the fortifications and the barriers of the Lower Town, and anxiously awaited the assault.

Having accurate knowledge of the city's defences, Montgomery saw but one plan promising success to his enterprise. This was to divide his force and attack the Lower Town from two directions. From St. Roch Arnold was to force the barrier below the Sault-au-Matelot, while he himself should creep along through Pres-de-Ville, at the base of Cape Diamond, carry the barrier and blockhouse standing in his way, and reach the foot of Mountain Hill. Uniting at this point, the two columns would gain the Upper Town and overpower the garrison, the real assault being conducted under cover of a simulated attack upon the ramparts from the Plains. The plan was desperate, but at least not more hopeless for the ill-conditioned troops of the invaders than a long and cruel siege.

It was the last night of the year 1775, the stars were winter bright, but the fleecy clouds of impending storm were driven across the sky. Silently, the guards paced the ramparts of the watchful city, gazing eagerly over the glimmering Plains of Abraham, and across the river where the lights of the Levi outposts twinkled against the dark sky. Midnight passed, the stars were obscured, and snowflakes began to fall, at first slowly, then swiftly blown upon the rising wind. Presently, as the clock in the guard-house struck four, two rockets shot up from the enemy's camp and burst in a fiery shower beyond the Cape. Captain Malcolm Fraser of the Highlanders stopped short in his round of inspection: "Guard, turn out!" he shouted. Having raised the guard, he rushed down St. Louis Street sounding the alarm, and at the Recollet Convent found General Carleton and his staff. In five minutes every bell within the walls was ringing, drummers were beating the assembly, and every soldier of the fort was at his post.

Meanwhile, the two forces of the Continental army were marching to the attack. Arnold's division, having the shorter distance to traverse, reached its objective first. "When we came to Craig's house, near Palace Gate," writes a participant,[36] "a horrible roar of cannon took place, and a ringing of the bells of the city, which are very numerous and of all sizes. Arnold, leading the forlorn hope, advanced perhaps one hundred yards before the main body....The snow was deeper than in the fields, because of the nature of the ground; and the path made (by the advance guard) was almost imperceptible because of the falling snow. Covering the locks of our guns with the lappets of our coats, holding down our heads (for it was impossible to bear up our faces against the imperious storm of wind and snow), we ran along the foot of the hill in single file....In these intervals we received a tremendous fire of musketry from the ramparts above us. Here we lost some brave men, when powerless to return the salutes we received, for the enemy was covered by his impregnable defences....They were even sightless to us; we could see nothing but the blaze from the muzzles of the muskets....We proceeded rapidly, exposed to the long line of fire from the garrison, for now we were unprotected by any buildings. The fire had slackened in a small degree. The enemy had been partly called off to resist the General (Montgomery), and strengthen the party opposed to Arnold in our front. Now we saw Colonel Arnold returning, wounded in the leg and supported by two gentlemen....(He) called on the troops in a cheering voice as we passed, urging us forward, yet it was observable among the soldiery, with whom it was my misfortune to be now placed, that the Colonel's retiring damped their spirits....Thus proceeding, enfiladed by an animated but lessened fire, we came to the first barrier, where Arnold had been wounded at the onset. This contest had lasted but a few minutes, and had been somewhat severe, but the energy of our men prevailed. The embrasures were entered when the enemy were discharging their guns. The guard, consisting of thirty persons, were either taken or fled, leaving their arms behind them....From the first barrier to the second there was a circular course along the sides of the houses and partly through the streets....This second barrier was erected across and near the mouth of a narrow street adjacent to the foot of a hill which opened into a larger, leading soon into the main body of the Lower Town. Here it was that the most serious contention took place....Confined in a narrow street, hardly more than twenty feet wide, and on lower ground, scarcely a ball, well aimed or otherwise, but must take effect upon us....A crowd of every class of the army had gathered into the narrow pass, attempting to surmount the barrier, which was about twelve feet or more high, and so strongly constructed that nothing but artillery could effectuate its destruction....Within the barrier, and close into it, were two ranges of musketeers, armed with musket and bayonet, ready to receive those who might venture the dangerous leap....This was near daylight,...and all hope of success having vanished, a retreat was contemplated....The moment (however) was foolishly lost when such a movement might have been made with tolerable success...and Captain Laws, at the head of two hundred men, issuing from Palace Gate, most fairly and handsomely cooped us up. Many of the men, aware of the consequences, and all our Indians and Canadians, escaped across the ice which covered the Bay of St. Charles....This was a dangerous and desperate adventure, but worth while the undertaking, in avoidance of our subsequent sufferings. Its desperateness consisted in running two miles across shoal ice, thrown up by the high tides of this latitude; and its danger, in the meeting with air-holes, deceptively covered by the bed of snow...."

[Footnote 36: Siege of Quebec, 1775, 1776, by John Joseph Henry.]



With the other wing of the invading army, the issue was even less doubtful and far more tragic. Montgomery had pushed through the storm, along the base of the cliffs from Wolfe's Cove to the base of Cape Diamond. Deep snow covered the rocky pathway, and spray from the fretting river had rendered it slippery with ice. Every man in the chosen company knew the peril of the enterprise, and moved forward stealthily. Soon the advance guard led by Montgomery in person could discern through the driving snow the first straggling houses of the Lower Town. A barrier crossed the roadway, but no sight or sound gave evidence that the guard was on the alert. Forward they crept, silent and full of desperate purpose. Suddenly, when they were within thirty yards of the barrier and counting fully upon the surprise of the outpost, four cannon and a score of muskets pounded forth a deadly fire. Itself taken by surprise, the Continental army broke and fled. No sound reached the wakeful guard save the groans of the wounded who had gone down before that fatal barrier; but, distrustful even of the silence, their battery continued to sweep the pass.

At dawn a reconnoitring party ventured forth from the guard-house. Thirteen bodies lay half buried in the snow, and the only remains of the invading army were General Montgomery, his two aides-de-camp, Cheeseman and M'Pherson, a sergeant, and eight men. All but the sergeant were dead, and he too died within an hour. As for the General, only an arm appeared above the snow, and a drummer-boy picked up his sword close by. The English soldiers, uncertain whose body it was, fetched a prisoner, one of Arnold's forlorn hope, who could not restrain his grief for the brave General who had been the idol of his troops. Widow Prentice, of Freemasons' Hall, also recognised Montgomery by the sabre-cut upon his cheek; and Sir Guy Carleton having no further doubt as to his identity, gave orders that the slain General should have honourable burial. Up Mountain Hill they bore him to the small house in St. Louis Street, still known as Montgomery House, and later in the same day he was laid in a coffin draped with black, and borne by soldiers to a new-made grave in the gorge of the St. Louis bastion. A brass tablet now marks the spot near the present St. Louis Gate.



Although both divisions of their army were defeated, over four hundred prisoners taken, and their General slain, the invaders were yet unwilling to give up the struggle against the grim walls of Quebec. They were sore beset by cold, hunger, and the hardships of active warfare; and smallpox carried off nearly five hundred of their number. On the death of Montgomery, Arnold had succeeded to the chief command, but it was April before his wound was healed. Meanwhile, they had quickly erected a new battery at Point Levi, and once again the guns of the citadel entered upon an artillery duel with that historic ravelin. From time to time rockets sent up from the enemy's camp threw the defenders of the city into unusual alarm, and once or twice, when the signals seemed more pregnant, the whole force turned out and swiftly took up their assigned positions. General Carleton on the other side, not having enough soldiers to dislodge the besiegers, had been content to hold fast and wait until spring should bring him reinforcements from England. No vigilance on the part of the garrison was relaxed, and throughout the cold and dreary winter the sentries marched night and day upon the ramparts.

Towards late spring the increased activity of the besiegers caused a corresponding restiveness among the many prisoners within the city. Sir Guy Carleton had treated them with as much liberality as was possible under the circumstances; but on an attempt on the part of some of the officers to bribe the guard, he speedily placed the offenders in irons. On the last day of March a large number of prisoners made an attempt to escape from the Dauphin barracks, just inside St. John's Gate. Their plan was to overpower the guard, whose strength was necessarily small, capture the adjacent city gate, and hold it open for their comrades on the Plains. The plot was discovered, however, and the prisoners were transferred to the British gunboats in the harbour.

As the weeks went by, the anxiety of an ever threatened attack told heavily on the garrison, and even the convalescent were called upon for guard-house duty. A blockade extending over four or five months was exhausting their provisions; and for fuel they were at length reduced to tearing down wooden houses in the suburb of St. Roch. For half a year the Richelieu, Montreal, and Three Rivers, in fact the whole of Canada, had been virtually in the enemy's hands; Quebec alone remained, but, commanded by Carleton, Quebec was a fortress in the most real sense.

It was the evening of the 3rd of May, and in the gathering darkness a ship rounded Point Levi and drew near to the ships in the basin. Cheers rose from the garrison and a saluting gun boomed from the citadel. Still the strange craft made no salute, and a heavy crash of artillery burst from the Grand Battery. For answer, flames leaped up the rigging and along the bulwarks of the approaching schooner. It was the Gaspe, which the enemy had fitted up as a fire-ship and sent into the harbour. The crew, being disconcerted by the alert challenge of the garrison, hastily lighted the fuses and escaped in small boats, but only to see the impotent fire-ship carried down the river by the ebbing tide.

Meanwhile, the invading army had drawn near to the ramparts, intending to assault the town under the confusion caused by the Gaspe. To these dogged troops, steeled for their last great effort, the failure of the fire-ship was a severe blow. Moreover, their slight remaining hope vanished a day or two later when the British frigate Surprise, arrived in the harbour, having boldly forced its way through the ice-packs which still beset the lower river. Not long afterwards the Isis, fifty guns, and the sloop-of-war Martin also rounded Point Levi.

After six months of toil, privation, and suspense the brave garrison was at last relieved. Once more in Quebec numberless joy-bells rang out, and artillery crashed triumphantly across the tide. Flags ran up on every bastion and parapet within the walls, and the cheers of the reinforced garrison carried dark despair to the enemy's camp across the Plains.

The siege was immediately raised, the invaders thinking only of escape. General Carleton, with a force of only a thousand men, marched out by the city gates and tried to fall upon the enemy's flank. So rapid had been their flight, however, that only the van of his column was able to come up with the Provincials, who, in their hurried retreat, had not only abandoned their artillery, ammunition, and scaling-ladders, but had left their sick and wounded in the tents of Ste. Foye. Once more the invader had failed to seize the key of all Canada; and another successful conflict was written in the annals of Quebec. Never again was a hostile army to beset those grim grey walls. "Twice conquered and thrice conquering" became the pregnant summary of two centuries of the history of the fortress, and the lapse of still another hundred years makes no amendment necessary. Like her younger sister, New Orleans, the city upon the St. Lawrence had often been the battlefield of the nations, but, for both, the centuries have brought prosperity and peace.



CHAPTER XVIII

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROGRESS

Quebec had passed through her last ordeal of fire and sword, and for many years the 31st of December was celebrated with enthusiasm as the anniversary of the victory. But although the effort to detach the French Canadians from their allegiance to Great Britain resulted miserably in the defeat of Montgomery and Arnold, the Thirteen Colonies did not quite relinquish the hope of accomplishing their end. Instead of an army, Congress now despatched commissioners to Canada, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton being of the number. The mission, however, was without success; for the ancient capital, although the most foreign in speech and custom of all places in British North America, remained steadfast under the temptation to swerve from her allegiance. Franklin, indeed, added nothing to his reputation by his general relations with the settlements on the St. Lawrence. For twenty-four years he had held the position of Deputy-Postmaster General for the English colonies, Quebec being regarded as in some sense within his jurisdiction; and the unsatisfactory monthly service between Quebec and Montreal as well as the absence of intermediate post-offices, had made him unpopular along the Canadian river. It is not surprising, therefore, that he failed to arouse the enthusiasm of the French, especially for a cause which their strong monarchical principles failed to approve.



It is estimated that more than twenty-five thousand United Empire Loyalists crossed the border at the end of the American Revolutionary War to live under the British flag. These, for the most part, went to Upper Canada, the settlements along Lake Ontario and the Bay of Quinte, being centres of vigorous life and progress; while not a few settled in Quebec, adding to the sound character of its sturdy population.

A further accession, moreover, was made by the arrival of two regiments of Hessians and Brunswickers, who came out to garrison the citadel. Many of these presently obtained their discharge in order to marry and settle down in Quebec. The current directory discloses many names of German origin, names now high up in the roll of citizenship, but once in the books of the Hanoverian regiments of George III.

A memorable figure passes across the stage of Quebec history just at this time. In 1782 the frigate Albemarle, twenty-eight guns, lay in the harbour, and her brilliant, handsome commander was Horatio Nelson. This paragon of fortune had entered His Majesty's Navy as a child of twelve; at fourteen he was captain's coxswain on the expedition of the Carcass to the North Pole; and now, with an astonishing experience crowded into a life of twenty-four years, he dropped anchor before the rock of Quebec.



The sober Haldimand was Governor, and the Sturm und Drang of the American Revolution had cast a cloud upon the social life of Canada. For if Quebec was not what it had been in the days of Sir Guy and Lady Carleton, the sterner regime of Haldimand had deeper influences behind it than the militarism of a rigid soldier. Nevertheless, Nelson and his gay company helped to lighten the heavy cloud, and for the space of a few weeks dinners and dances, on shore and on board the Albemarle, enlivened the autumn season in the capital. Southey's Life of Nelson contains rather a quaint picture of the commander of the Albemarle about this time. Prince William Henry, then known as the Duke of Clarence, regarded him as the merest boy of a captain he had ever seen. Dressed in a full-laced uniform, an old-fashioned waistcoat with long flaps, and his lank, unpowdered hair tied in a stiff Hessian tail of extraordinary length, he made altogether so remarkable a figure that, to use the Prince's own words, "I had never seen anything like it before, nor could I imagine who he was nor what he came about. But his address and conversation were irresistibly pleasing; and when he spoke on professional subjects, it was with an enthusiasm which showed he was no common being."



Freemasons' Hall, at the top of Mountain Hill, was the fashionable rendezvous ashore, and not since the days of Murray's garrison had the old stone hostel been so merrily possessed. One Miss Mary Simpson appears to have been a belle of the period; and Sir James Le Moine, the antiquary, has identified her as the lady whose charms might have changed the course of history. "At Quebec," writes his biographer, "Nelson became acquainted with Alexander Davison, by whose interference he was prevented from making what would have been called an imprudent marriage. The Albemarle was about to leave the station, her captain had taken leave of his friends, and was gone down the river to the place of anchorage, when, the next morning, as Davison was walking on the beach, to his surprise he saw Nelson coming back in his boat. Upon inquiring the cause of his reappearance, Nelson took his arm to walk towards the town, and told him he found it utterly impossible to leave Quebec without again seeing the woman whose society contributed so much to his happiness, and then and there offering her his hand. 'If you do,' said his friend, 'your utter ruin must inevitably follow.' 'Then let it follow,' cried Nelson; 'for I am resolved to do it.' 'And I,' replied Davison, 'am resolved you shall not.' Nelson, however, on this occasion was less resolved than his friend, and suffered himself to be led back to the boat."[37]



It is not clear why Nelson's utter ruin should "inevitably follow" his marriage with Mary Simpson. Was it on account of his youth? Or was the statement due to Davison's distrust of marriage in general? If this was the reason, it is evident that Nelson was not greatly moved by his friend's pessimism; for not much more than a year later we find him making an unsuccessful proposal of marriage to Miss Andrews, the daughter of an English clergy-man at St. Omer, France, a rebuff for which, in the following year, he found consolation in an alliance with Mrs. Nesbit.

[Footnote 37: Southey's Life of Nelson, chap. i.]



The settlement of the United Empire Loyalists in Canada greatly altered the political complexion of the conquered country. The terms of the Quebec Act of 1774, though necessary in the circumstances, were distinctly opposed to the views of the English minority, who strongly resented the employment of French civil law. And now these newcomers greatly increased the strength of this English faction, the peculiar conditions under which they chose to throw in their lot with Canada giving them a claim upon the Home government which could not be disregarded. The continuous agitation for parliamentary government which marked the years from 1783 to 1790, was not confined to the English section of the population. With the English, however, it took the special form of a demand for a separate province west of the river Beaudette, the capital of which should be Cataraqui,[38] "with the blessings of British laws, and of British Government, and an exemption from French tenures."

In the midst of this political turmoil, Sir Guy Carleton, who, for his distinguished services, had been raised to the peerage with the title of Lord Dorchester, returned to Canada as Governor-General; and on the 23rd of October, 1786, Quebec welcomed her former deliverer at the landing-stage, the whole population, French and English, uniting to give him an honourable and joyous reception. Every one felt indeed that Dorchester was the man to solve the political difficulty of the period; and with these omens of success he set to work forthwith, dividing the province into four administrative districts on an English pattern, and preparing for the English government a careful report on the social, political, and judicial conditions of his province, to facilitate remedial legislation.

[Footnote 38: Now the City of Kingston, Ontario.]



In the spring of 1791 the younger Pitt introduced into the British House of Commons a Bill providing for the political needs of Canada. It proposed the division of the country into two provinces, the special character of each being preserved through the medium of an elective assembly. This naturally raised strenuous opposition among the English minority whom this division would still leave in the province of Lower Canada. It was all very well, they declared, for the English of Upper Canada to be accorded representative government, but for themselves this measure would mean a further decrease of influence in Quebec. On behalf of the English section of the population, Adam Lymburner, an influential merchant of the city, proceeded to England, and was heard at the bar of the House of Commons. The debate was keen and fierce. Pitt supported the Bill in its original form, contending that the territorial separation would put an end to the strife between the old French inhabitants and the new settlers from Britain and the New England colonies. Edmund Burke, whose speech related mainly to the French Revolution, was of opinion that "to attempt to amalgamate two populations composed of races of men diverse in language, laws, and customs, was a complete absurdity." Fox, opposing the division of the province, accused Burke of irrelevancy in his address, and made a speech which provoked a memorable quarrel and brought to an end the friendship of the two greatest Parliamentary orators of the century.

At last, however, the Bill became law under the title of the Constitutional Act; and on the 17th of December, 1792, the first legislature of Lower Canada assembled in the chapel of the Bishop's Palace, which had been fitted up as a council chamber. From the seventeenth century this hoary structure of stone had overlooked the Grand Battery from the top of Mountain Hill, commanding a view of the basin and the attenuated Cote de Beaupre, of which from the time of Laval it had been the seigneurial manor-house. In appropriating the episcopal palace for legislative purposes, the Imperial government recompensed the Catholic see of Quebec by an annuity. The old French building was demolished in 1834, and the new House of Parliament, soon afterwards erected on the same site, served to indicate the wonderful political development of the French province as an integral part of the British Empire.

The proclamation of the Constitutional Act, on the 26th of December, 1791, was the signal for great public rejoicings in Quebec. During the day the regimental bands played to the trooping of the colours on the Esplanade, and in the evening the streets were ablaze with lights and torches, while fountains of fireworks broke from the high bastions of the citadel. A public dinner, attended by one hundred and sixty gentlemen, brought the fete to a close.



An unusual feature of these celebrations was the presence of His Royal Highness Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, son of George III., who had come to Quebec in the preceding summer as colonel of the Seventh Fusiliers. The transfer of this gay regiment from the Gibraltar of the Old World to the Gibraltar of the New did more than merely decorate the social annals of Quebec; for the visible presence of a prince of the blood contributed not a little to crystallise the loyalty of a French province not quite beyond the influence of the great revolutionary fires of Europe. Although he was but twenty-five, Prince Edward had the tact and savoir faire of riper years; and during his three years' residence in the garrison, exerted a great and far-reaching influence on the fidelity of French Canada. The reception of the gallant Prince when he landed at the head of his regiment in August 1791 was marked by all that enthusiasm which the Gallic city had learned of old. Long since, in 1665, the Marquis de Tracy had schooled her in these august pageants, and now when Commodore Sawyer's squadron, consisting of the Leander, the Resource, the Ariadne, the Thisbe, the Ulysses, and the Resistance, dropped anchor in the basin, Quebec was streaming with flags and bunting and resounding with music. Next day his Royal Highness held a levee at Chateau St. Louis, where the civic authorities assembled to do him honour.



Prince Edward established himself at Kent House, the sombre mansion in St. Louis Street, which Bigot had built for the fascinating Angelique des Meloises almost half a century before. Here he held his court; but his heart was in the country, and except upon public occasions, he preferred the stately retirement of Haldimand House, a rustic retreat still standing near the brink of Montmorency Falls. Gaily he made his promenade along the Beauport Road, or shot over the marshes of La Carnardiere; and at his own or the neighbouring homestead of M. de Salaberry, the genial company whiled away many an evening with whist. Frequent balls and receptions in the old Chateau recalled the days of Frontenac's merry court; or, still further back, that night of Canada's first ball, the 4th of February, 1667, when the courtly soldiers of the Carignan-Salieres regiment led the grand dames of New France through the mazes of a Versailles quadrille. From a child, indeed, Quebec had conned the worldly wisdom of Fontainebleau. Her wholesome reputation for the social graces is reflected in the compliment paid by George III. to the first Canadian lady who had the honour to be presented at the Court of St. James's: "Madame, if the ladies of Canada are at all like you, I have indeed made a conquest!"



It was among these gracious spirits that Prince Edward's lines were fallen; and within the space of three years the large-hearted Duke had bound the hearts of French Canada more firmly to the throne upon which his own daughter was to sit as Queen Victoria.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in Europe, the feudalism which had lost Canada to France was in its mortal throes. The shock of the French Revolution was quivering through the hemisphere, and the convulsion was felt heavily in the New World. In the United States, Washington was President, Hamilton was at the Treasury, and Jefferson was Secretary of State, with Madison as a colleague in the Cabinet. In the early stages of the Revolution the United States had given enthusiastic sympathy to the movement; but as it grew in violence, all but the mob and Jefferson and Madison were alienated. No degree of tyranny appeared to offend the sensibilities of these latter statesmen; and when the French Convention declared war against England, their approval of that measure all but committed the United States to the principles of red republicanism. Genet, the French Ambassador to the United States, with an insolence that defeated itself, carried on unblushing intrigues until his recall was requested. For a time, moreover, the populace cried out for war with England, and only the calm resolution of Washington averted such a catastrophe. John Jay was presently despatched to England to negotiate the "Treaty of Amity and Commerce," but it required all the weight of the sober-minded portion of the population to secure its final ratification.

This, however, did not prevent M. Adet, the new French Ambassador to the United States, from sending an address to the French Canadians, informing them of the success of the arms of France against the allied powers of Europe, and calling upon them to rally round the standard of the Republic. The response to this appeal in the Province of Lower Canada was absurdly feeble. The greatest power in all Canada—the Church—shrank in horror from the blood-stained banner of regicide France; and zealous always for the monarchy, the Catholic hierarchy indignantly spurned the overtures of a republic whose most cherished principle was atheism—which had abandoned the worship of God for the cult of Reason. "For God and the King" had been the priestly motto from time immemorial, and the new Republic repudiated obligation not to one only but to both. Accordingly, the vast influence of the Church was exerted on the side of loyalty to Great Britain.

It must not be assumed, however, that the intrigues which the French Republic carried on by way of the United States, found no response whatever in Lower Canada; for naturally enough there were some whose habitual discontent made them ready for treasonable enterprise. Yet the promoters of disaffection miscalculated the numbers and strength of their party, and the resulting demonstration was factitious and puerile.

Lord Dorchester was withdrawn from Canada in the midst of this small and abortive mutiny. For sixteen years, all told, this gallant soldier of Wolfe's army had administered the country he helped to conquer, and no Governor before or since has earned a more deserving fame. Quebec and Montreal strove to outdo each other in the protestations of loyalty and regret marking their valedictory addresses. On the 9th of July, 1796, the frigate Active embarked the veteran Governor, and sailed for England. The vessel was wrecked, however, off the island of Anticosti, fortunately without loss of life; and in small boats Lord Dorchester and his companions reached Isle Percee, where they were afterwards picked up by a ship from Halifax and conveyed to England.

General Prescott, who succeeded to the governorship, was a man of harsher temperament. But although his anxiety for the loyalty of the French province was much increased by the intrigues of revolutionary agents, he soon perceived their plans to be fatuous and their enterprise devoid of importance. While the forward spirits in Quebec were leavening the mass of the habitants with specious reports of a French fleet ready to co-operate with them, a force composed for the most part of ill-disposed Americans was to percolate into Canada from Vermont. This so-called fleet consisted of a ship, ironically called the Olive Branch, which had sailed from Ostend bound for Vermont with twenty thousand stand of arms, several pieces of artillery, and a quantity of ammunition. She had not got far on her way, however, before a British cruiser seized her and bore her into Portsmouth harbour.

Meanwhile, Du Milliere, an alleged French General, was scattering money about on the borders of Vermont, while a plausible American was intriguing at Quebec. With timber cutters and the simplest of artisans as his confederates, this misguided revolutionist hatched his theatrical conspiracy in the neighbouring woods. He proposed to overcome the city-guard with laudanum; and fifteen thousand men were only awaiting the uplifting of his hand! These and similar illusions possessed a poor dupe named M'Lane, until the Government having decided upon the apprehension of the leading conspirators, M'Lane was arrested and charged with high treason. Chief Justice Osgoode presided at the trial, and a jury condemned him to death.



On the 21st of July, 1797, above two thousand troops were drawn up in the streets of Quebec as the chief conspirator was led forth to his execution on the glacis just outside St. John's Gate. "I saw M'Lane conducted to the place of execution," writes De Gaspe excitedly. "He was seated with his back to the horse on a wood-sleigh whose runners grated on the bare ground and stones. An axe and a block were on the front part of the conveyance. He looked at the spectators in a calm, confident manner, but without the least effrontery. He was a tall and remarkably handsome man. I heard some women of the lower class exclaim, whilst deploring his sad fate, 'Ah, if it were only as in old times, that handsome man would not have to die! There would be plenty of girls ready to marry him in order to save his life!' And even several days after the execution I heard the same thing repeated. This belief, then universal among the lower class, must, I suppose, have arisen from the fact that many French prisoners, condemned to the stake by the savages, had owed their lives to the Indian women who had married them. The sentence on M'Lane, however, was executed in all its barbarity. I saw all with my own eyes, a big student named Boudrault lifting me up from time to time in his arms so that I might lose nothing of the horrible butchery. Old Dr. Duvert was near us, and he drew out his watch as soon as Ward the hangman threw down the ladder upon which M'Lane was stretched on his back, with the cord round his neck made fast to the beam of the gallows....'He is quite dead,' said Dr. Duvert, when the hangman cut down the body at the end of about twenty-five minutes....The spectators who were nearest to the scaffold say that the hangman then refused to proceed further with the execution...and it was only after a good supply of guineas that the sheriff succeeded in making him execute all the sentence, and that after each act of the fearful drama his demands became more and more exorbitant. Certain it is that after that time Mr. Ward became quite a personage, never walking in the streets except with silk stockings, a three-cornered hat, and a sword at his side. Two watches, one in his breeches pocket and the other hanging from his neck by a silver chain, completed his toilet."



With Black, the ship-carpenter who turned king's evidence against M'Lane, the reward was far different. Blood-money failed to solace him for the contumely heaped upon him; and, according to the historian Garneau, he was so overcome by public contempt that after some years he was reduced to begging his bread in the streets of Quebec.



Since the enactment of this gruesome tragedy more than a century ago, the steep declivity which joins the Lower to the Upper Town, just outside St. John's Gate, has retained the name of Gallows Hill. No other executions appear to have taken place upon the spot, a well-known hillock upon the Plains of Abraham having been for many years the Golgotha of Quebec, while Gallows Hill only served this purpose during a transition period. By 1814 we find an execution taking place from the gaol erected four years before in St. Stanislaus Street within the walls. On the 20th of May in this year, Patrick Murphy paid the extreme penalty of the law for the wilful murder of Marie Anne Dussault of the Parish of Les Escuriels. Four years later Charles Alarie and Thomas Thomas were executed at the same place, "for stealing to the value of forty shillings in a vessel on a navigable river." The same register chronicles the dire fate of John Hart, a Nova Scotian who, for larceny, was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, and to be publicly "whipt between ten and twelve in the market-place." Hart had no stomach for this ignominy, and escaped from gaol on the 14th of February, 1826. Having been recaptured three days later, in November of that year he stood with the noose about his neck upon the fatal door.



It is doubtful, indeed, whether the unfortunate creatures behind those stout walls on the Cote St. Stanislaus ever breathed the prayer contained in a quaint inscription which till lately survived upon the lintel of their prison-house: "Carcer iste bonos a pravis vindicare possit."[39] To-day the building itself serves a more kindly purpose, though the pious legend over the doorway might need but slight revision. Morrin College occupies one wing, and the other contains the well-stocked library of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. Valuable manuscripts have taken the place of useless malefactors in the donjon keep, and the vaults are full of the gold and myrrh of history.



[Footnote 39: "May this prison cause the wicked to bear testimony to the just."]

The punishment of crime undoubtedly underwent more change in the last half of the nineteenth century than during several of the preceding centuries. There is, for instance, a striking resemblance between the public whipping of John Hart and the chastisement of offenders so long before as the time of Frontenac. In the year 1681, one Jean Rattier was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted on condition of accepting the post of public executioner. Fourteen years afterwards Rattier's own wife was apprehended for theft, and according to her sentence, she was publicly whipped in the Lower Town Market-place by the dutiful husband.



CHAPTER XIX

THE STORY OF THE GREAT TRADING COMPANIES

But now to leave the fortress city for a little space, and see its influence working in the wilds which it had commanded by the valour of its adventurers and traders. While England and France had been contending on the St. Lawrence for mastery, and the struggle to gain or to retain the Gibraltar of America had dragged its length through generations, far off in the white north another strife between the civil energies of both nations was being waged. The English explorers—Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, and Baffin—had been the first to reach the northern coast from the sea, giving their names to water and territory which have since become familiar to the civilised world. Theirs was the old dream—a north-western route to India and China. No such vision, however, had presented itself to the French explorers who, about the same time as the English, planted their flag upon those barren shores, and pushed up from the south, partly to explore, but more certainly to develop the trade in furs which the Compagnie des cents Associes, founded by Richelieu in 1627, had already worked to advantage. The charter of this Company, indeed, did not include the regions of Hudson's Bay, but was confined to the province of Canada alone. To-day, Canada comprises all the vast territory north of the 49th parallel of latitude, even to the pole; then its sphere of influence stretched westward to the Missouri and the Mississippi, and southward to Louisiana; while those regions now called Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Athabasca, Assiniboine, and the Klondike were as yet unknown. When Hearne, the Hudson's Bay Company explorer, pushed his way northward and westward to the copper mine on the Copper River, it seemed as if the ultimate ends of the world had been reached, and that the vast region of ice and snow, inhabited by wandering tribes of Indians, would be for ever the property of a trading company.



So far back as 1630 an agency of commerce and exploration was founded in Quebec, under the name of the Beaver Company. This was forty years before the Hudson's Bay Company received its charter from the second Charles. The French went so far in their eagerness for territory that they even claim to have discovered Hudson's Bay, through one Jean Bourdon, in 1656. This claim is not admitted, however, in the Jesuit Relations, where, in 1672, Father Albanel writes: "Hitherto this voyage had been considered impossible to Frenchmen, who, after having undertaken it three times, and not having been able to surmount the obstacles, had seen themselves to abandon it in despair of success." The claims of England to the territory were undoubted; but there can be no question that Frenchmen were the first traders in the vicinity of Hudson's Bay.



The names of two stand out clearly, first as agents of French enterprise, and afterwards of successful English adventure, in this early commercial history of the far north; where, for nearly two centuries and a half, British energy and justice, and the honesty of English rule has, through the Hudson's Bay Company, worked southward to meet the ever increasing territory owned by the French until 1759. The Frenchmen whose names are so identified with the early history of Hudson's Bay were Medard Chouart, called also Groseilliers, and Pierre Radisson. They had emigrated from France as young men in the middle years of the century, and settled at first in Three Rivers. After a somewhat intricate matrimonial experience, Radisson had established relations which afterwards stood them both in good stead, at the same time typifying the ambiguous nature of international relations in the far north. On the French side he was son-in-law to Abraham Martin, whose name was given to the Heights of Abraham; he was also son-in-law to Sir John Kirke, a brother of the English admiral to whom Champlain surrendered Quebec; while to bind him closer to the companion of his adventurous life, he was brother-in-law to Groseilliers.



Thus allied by disposition and relationship the two enterprising Frenchmen, allured by visions of fortune and adventure in the unknown regions of the north, soon abandoned the safe comforts of town life; and having served a probation in several short expeditions, they at last applied to the reigning powers in Quebec for leave to operate on a larger scale. The existing Company, however, jealous for its monopoly, hedged them round with such difficult conditions that the young men broke impatiently from all control and plunged into the wilds of the West, penetrating at least as far as Lake Winnipeg. But Quebec was a stern step-mother, and when they returned, instead of meeting congratulation, they were arrested and fined for illicit trading. After a vain appeal to Paris, finding themselves rejected and discredited among their own countrymen, the two adventurers performed the first of those political somersaults which made them a nine days' wonder alternately in London and Paris, and finally brought to one, at least, an inglorious competency of L10 a month. Fifty eventful years were, however, to roll past before that anti-climax to the drama of their lives. To begin with, when they had shaken off the dust of New France, they repaired to Boston, propounding to the New England traders the novel scheme for furnishing an expedition to be sent round to Hudson's Bay by way of the sea; at the same time offering their own experience for service in the undertaking. Although disposed to favour the proposal, the Boston merchants had no available ships of their own, but advised an application to the English Court. Arriving in England in 1667, the two friends were introduced by Lord Arlington, then ambassador in Paris, to Prince Rupert, the natural patron of all adventurers at the time, and who, moreover, was then expecting a grant of territory in America as a reward for his services to the royal cause. Already the merchants of London had been roused to the possibilities of this trade by the recent arrival of the first cargo of furs from New Amsterdam; and now when the two impartial Frenchmen pointed out to them that the trade was being choked in Quebec, and that England had a golden opportunity of profitable enterprise, two vessels, the Nonsuch and the Eagle, were fitted out without delay, and one Captain Gillam received instructions to investigate and report.



Such was the beginning of the Hudson's Bay Company. Having spent a winter at Fort Charles, the first fort on the Bay, so named after the royal patron, the adventurers returned to England in 1670 with such solid proofs of the soundness of the speculation, that the new Company received a charter from the King under the title of "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, Trading into Hudson's Bay." The Company were constituted lords and proprietors of the territories round Hudson's Bay, now called Rupert's Land, having powers like those of the feudal lords of an earlier time—"to employ ships of war, to erect forts, to make reprisals, to send home English traders who neglected their licenses, and to declare war or make peace with any people not Christian." Although the Declaration of Rights in 1689 limited the rights granted by exclusive charters, and allowed British subjects to trade freely to any quarter, yet the Hudson's Bay Company had in the twenty years previous to that date obtained such a hold upon the new territory, especially by the erection of forts, that they easily left all competitors behind.

The spirit of discovery was never so alive among the French as during those years following the expulsion of Radisson and Groseilliers; yet the Government in Quebec was slow to realise the serious nature of the menace in the north; and from the official papers afterwards prepared for the British delegates at Utrecht, their easy confidence is thus described:—

"Mr. Bailey, the Company's first Governor of their factories and settlements in that Bay, entertained a friendly correspondence by letters and otherwise with Monsieur Frontenac, then Governor of Canada, not in the least complaining, in several years, of any pretended injury done to France by the said Company's settling a trade and building a fort at the bottom of Hudson's Bay, nor making pretensions to any right of France on that Bay, or to the countries bordering on it, till long after this time."

Trouble, however, came in due course. With a natural distrust of renegade Frenchmen, Governor Bailey suspected the two friends of being concerned in a plot set on foot by certain Jesuit agents of the Intendant Talon in 1673, by which the loyalty of the Indians was to be alienated from the English traders. After scenes of personal violence, the alleged traitors justified the suspicions of the Governor by severing once more the slender tie of their allegiance and returning to the service of France. Nor was it long before new fruits of their restless energy appeared. In 1681 the Compagnie du Nord was organised as a rival to the "Adventurers of England"; and in the same year the Intendant Duchesneau complained to his Government of the aggressions of the English traders.

"They" (the English), he wrote, "are still in Hudson's Bay on the north and do great damage to our fur trade....The sole means to prevent them succeeding in what is prejudicial to us would be to drive them by main force from that Bay, which belongs to us. Or, if there would be an objection in coming to that extremity, to construct forts on the rivers falling into the lakes, in order to stop the Indians at these points."

From this time to the peace of Utrecht there was war between the Hudson's Bay Company and the French. A veiled expedition set out from Quebec in 1682, under the guidance of Groseilliers and Radisson, to attack the forts on the Bay; and by their effrontery and good generalship they at last became possessed of the newly built Fort Nelson, with Bridgar its Governor, and returned next year with their prisoners and spoils to Quebec. But this triumph was soon converted by their lawless temper into disgrace and condemnation; and to escape penalty for misappropriating large quantities of fur, the two leaders were compelled to fly from New France for the second time, and once more take refuge in Paris.

But now the English Company decided to make another bid for the services of these versatile bushrangers, who once more proved their graceful facility for playing a double game. Radisson was sent by the English ambassador to London, where he became a lion of society, and was presented to Charles II. John Selwyn thus describes his appearance:[40]—

"To the Duke's Playhouse, where Radisson, the American fur-trader, was in the royal box. Never was such a combination of French, English, and Indian savage as Sir John Kirke's son-in-law....He was not wont to dress so when he was last here, but he has got him a new coat with much lace upon it, which he wears with his leather breeches and shoes. His hair is a perfect tangle. It is said he has made an excellent fortune for himself."

[Footnote 40: Quoted by Beckles Willson, The Great Company, vol. i. p. 141.]



Radisson's star, however, was almost set, for although he enriched his new masters with fresh cargoes of spoil from the north, his reckless disposition had again involved him in a quarrel with a powerful agent of the Company, and on returning to England he found himself discredited and neglected. With a pension of ten pounds a month, paid by the Company only after the strenuous Radisson had had recourse to law, he continued to live in obscurity until 1720, his friend Groseilliers having died ten years before. He had paid dearly for his lack of patriotism. An affected or assumed distrust of him on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had profited enormously by his services, was the unconvincing reason given for mean neglect and an injustice only at last set right by the law invoked through Sir William Young and Richard Cradock, members of the Company. Brigand or traitor though he was, as such he had been the agent of the Hudson's Bay Company, and his bold services were worthy of reward.

Meantime the Company's servants were being hard pressed in the Bay, confronted as they were by one of the best commanders of the time, the famous Sieur d'Iberville, who gained his first laurels in this obscure conflict. Although the glory of the campaign was reaped by their French assailants, who, between the years 1682 and 1688, inflicted losses on the Company to the extent of seven ships with their cargoes, and six forts and factories, yet the material advantages turned out in the end to be on the side of the English traders. Among other indiscretions, the conquerors fell to quarrelling with the Indian tribes, who soon made their position on the shores of Hudson's Bay intolerable; while the coureurs de bois, spreading out from their headquarters at Michillimackinac, diverted the Indian trappers from French and English forts alike.

On the other hand, the Hudson's Bay Company were able, in 1690, to declare a dividend of seventy-five per cent on their original stock; and on the accession of William III. they presented him with a substantial proof of the progress of their undertaking:—

"On this happy occasion," so their address ran, "we desire also most humbly to present to your Majesty a dividend of 225 guineas upon a L300 stock in the Hudson's Bay Company...and although we have been the greatest sufferers of any Company from those enemies of all mankind, the French, yet when your Majesty's just arms shall have given repose to all Christendom, we also shall enjoy our share of these great benefits, and do not doubt but to appear often with this golden fruit in our hands, under the happy influence of your Majesty's most gracious protection over us and all our concerns."

William acknowledged this manifestation of loyalty by granting the Company a confirmation of their charter, and by including a statement of their grievances in his first declaration of war against France; but it is evident that the Home Government at that time took little real heed to the interests of this distant dependency, and by a casual clause in the Treaty of Ryswick the most important ports on Hudson's Bay were ceded to the French.

The Company's prospects after that surrender were indeed gloomy; shares fell low, indifference and ignorance prevailing in high places; and the faithful remnant could only hope for a renewal of the war. But at last Fortune began to smile again; for although no important battles were ever afterwards fought in the region of the Bay, the brilliant campaigns of Marlborough in Europe reflected glory upon the struggling traders in the New World, and gave them prestige and power; until finally, by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the huge undefined domain of Hudson's Bay was unconditionally yielded up to Great Britain. After many years one more hapless attempt was made to capture the forts of the north; but thenceforth the French put forward no regular claim to the territory so long disputed.

Although the merchants of New England in due course made efforts to secure a share of the fur trade, the only real competition, from first to last, was offered by the French explorers. In 1684 Du Lhut had been sent westward by Governor La Barre to counteract the influence of the Hudson's Bay Company with the Indians, and he had only reported to his master that in two years not a single savage would visit the English at Hudson's Bay. Iberville's victories in the north, however, had distracted the attention of the Government from this enterprise, and the work was left to be carried on by independent traders. A profitable trade in furs sprang up on the lines of La Verendrye's discoveries, and the forts of Michillimackinac and Sault Ste. Marie continued to flourish until the traders were finally withdrawn from all the outlying regions to defend Quebec against the English.

It had been a gallant fight, in which the native qualities of both races had been seen to advantage. Ardent, brave, adventurous, the Frenchman had ever been the best of pioneers. With a faculty for acquiring languages and dialects, he quickly adapted himself to the ways of the Indian, won their sympathy, and treated them with an equality and freedom which made their path of peaceful conquest easy and trade a cheerful jugglery. From first to last there entered into the life of the French trader and adventurer an element of patriotism and romance—conquest for conquest's sake and for the glory of French enterprise. He must ever remain the more eloquent, the more picturesque figure, the more admired pioneer of the Far North. But his rival, the Briton, had qualities which outwore him, and the patriarchal and stable methods of the Hudson's Bay Company prevailed in the end.

The heroic age of the Company had passed away; and now a long and uneventful period began, in which, as in the Middle Ages, the energies of men were slowly gathering for the more strenuous activity of modern conditions.

"Pro pelle cutem," the chosen motto of the Company, was perhaps humorously understood as conveying loosely the notion of an exchange of peltries; for certainly the vindictive principle, "a skin for a skin," did not mark their dealings with the Indian tribes. From the first they were fortunate in encountering more peaceable races than those opposing the colonists further south; and a regular trade was conducted upon the basis of a fixed scale of values, the unit of calculation being one beaver skin. Thus a gun could be procured for eight, or ten, or twelve winter beavers, according to the classification of the skin by size and weight. One beaver was the equivalent of a hatchet, or four pounds of shot, or half a pound of beads, or a pound of tobacco. A laced coat was worth six beavers, and a looking-glass and comb cost two beavers; and so on through all the luxuries and necessities of Indian life, other pelts being always reduced to the terms of beaver skins.

A traveller[41] who visited the country at a somewhat later period of the eighteenth century has drawn a picture of the ornate ceremony, which, on the Indian side at least, transformed barter into a solemn function, and provided the exiled traders with a comedy of manners. He describes how, salutes having been fired on both sides, the Indians are elaborately welcomed within the fort, where, after long silence and much tobacco-smoking, the subject of the visit is distantly broached, and the chief receives propitiatory gifts of brightly coloured apparel: "A coarse cloth coat, either red or blue, lined with baize, and having regimental cuffs; and a waistcoat and breeches of baize. The suit is ornamented with orris lace. He is also presented with a white orris shirt; his stockings are of yarn, one of them red, the other blue, and tied below the knee with worsted garters; his Indian shoes are sometimes put on, but he frequently walks in his stocking feet; his hat is coarse, and bedecked with three ostrich feathers of various colours, and a worsted sash tied round the crown; a small silk handkerchief is tied round his neck, and this compleats his dress."

[Footnote 41: Umfreville, Present State of Hudson's Bay, 1790.]

The Chief thus gaily equipped is conducted back from the fort to his own tent. "In the front a halbard and ensign are carried; next a drummer beating a march; then several of the factory servants bearing the bread, prunes, pipes, tobacco, brandy, etc. Then comes the Captain [Chief], walking quite erect and stately, smoaking his pipe, and conversing with the Factor."

Afterwards came the smoking of the sacred calumet, the pledge of peace and unity, followed by the inspection of the merchandise, and a speech from the Chief in this wise:—

"You told me last year to bring many Indians to trade, which I promised to do; you see I have not lied; here are a great many young men come with me; use them kindly, I say; let them trade good goods; I say! We lived hard last winter and hungry, the powder being short measure and bad, I say! Tell your servants to fill the measure, and not to put their thumbs within the brim; take pity on us, take pity on us, I say! We paddle a long way to see you; we love the English. Let us trade good black tobacco, moist and hard twisted; let us see it before it is opened. Take pity on us, take pity on us, I say! The guns are bad; let us trade light guns, small in the hand and well shaped, with locks that will not freeze in the winter, and red gun cases. Let the young men have more than measure of tobacco; cheap kettles, thick and high. Give us good measure of cloth; let us see the old measure; do you mind me? The young men love you, by coming so far to see you; take pity, take pity, I say; and give them good goods; they like to dress and be fine. Do you understand me?"

By such yearly functions, by gifts, and a sober friendliness never dissociated from the authority of the ruling race, the English company held its sway after the French had retired.



About this time, however, loud complaints were heard on all hands of the want of enterprise of the Hudson's Bay Company in not seizing the opportunities afforded by the charter. Its trade was lethargic, its traders were timid or slothful, its people possessed none of that audacity and adventure which had sent Frenchmen like Du Lhut and La Verendrye into the wilds intent on territory or trade. They yawned and were content with the trade which came their way. It seemed as though they smugly counted on their business virtue to attract, and their yearly gifts and patronage to allure the fur-hunting tribes. A world lay spread around them, and they remained at the doors of their posts and forts. No joy of the woods possessed them, no faith in the future drew them on; they followed the makers of Empire, guessing nothing of what Empire meant, hating their rivals for gifts they neither possessed nor desired. One Joseph Robson, who worked as surveyor in the northern forts in 1744, relates a conversation held that year with the captain at York Factory:—

"I expressed my surprise," he writes, "that the Company did not send Englishmen up the rivers to encourage and endear the natives, and by that means put a stop to the progress of the French....He said that he believed the French would have all the country in another century. To which I could not help immediately replying that such an alienation could only be effected through the remissness of the English." Robson next requested leave to travel inland; and "this brought on dismal tales of the difficulties to be encountered in such an expedition; and when I talked of going up rivers, I was told of stupendous heaps of ice and dreadful waterfalls, which would not only obstruct my passage but endanger my life. To confirm this, he said that Governor Maclish once attempted to go a little way up Nelson River to look for timber in order to build a factory, but found such heaps of ice in the river that they were discouraged from proceeding any higher."[42]

Umfreville, the writer and traveller already quoted, likewise challenges the Company for its "total want of spirit, to push on its work with that vigour which the importance of the contest deserves. The merchants from Canada," he continues, "have been heard to acknowledge that were the Hudson's Bay Company to prosecute their trade in a spirited manner, they must be soon obliged to give up all thoughts of penetrating into the country; as from the vicinity of the Company's factories to the inland parts, they can afford to undersell them in every branch."