Читать книгу Canada and its Provinces - Adam Shortt - Страница 28

Table of Contents

After the Conquest in 1760 Canada was under the benevolent military rule of Murray and Carleton. These two excellent soldiers—like many another in their position—had to protect the conquered, not against the generous army, navy and government of the conquerors, but against the parasitic class of camp followers that never fights but always tries to exploit any weakened people in the distressing interval between the clash of arms and the resumption of settled business. They did their work well, so far as their very imperfect means allowed them, and they earned the undying gratitude of the French-Canadian race. But they did not receive the support from England which they had a right to expect. The government there had fallen into the hands of lesser men, who tried cheese-paring economies to offset the legitimate expenditure of the Seven Years' War, and who were so distracted by American affairs that they had hardly a glance to bestow on the defence of Canada. They let the navy deteriorate rapidly, in spite of the patent fact that, from 1765 onwards, the French navy was being rapidly strengthened in a way it had never been before since the days of Colbert. The army, too, was allowed to become even worse than it had been during the worst periods of the whole century. The standard of living had risen in civil life, but nothing was done to raise it in the services. Pay, treatment, discipline, drill and organization—all were bad. There had been a serious mutiny in 1763 at Quebec, caused by an idiotic ministerial order that the troops should pay for their rations, though the already insufficient pay itself was not raised a penny. So when the opposition did everything they could to prevent recruiting, it was not surprising that any man, however unfit, was kept in the depleted ranks, and that recourse was had to Hessian mercenaries.

Carleton's position was very precarious, and more so than he thought. Both he and Murray had repeatedly advised the government to employ the French-Canadian seigneurs and gentry in the service of the crown. He had even proposed the raising of a Canadian regiment. But the craze for a penny-wise economy, and the many distractions elsewhere, prevented any attention being paid to the subject till too late. Carleton himself must share some of the blame, because he undoubtedly over-estimated the general loyalty of the French Canadians to the new régime and the immediately beneficial effects of the Quebec Act of 1774. He so misled the ignorant government that when the crisis came they ordered him to raise first three thousand and then six thousand Canadians at once. They might as well have said a million. They had relaxed every means of governing and leading a people accustomed to strong personal rule, left Canadian life in a state of flux, and done nothing to foster the military spirit. So, in spite of their general benevolence towards the conquered, they had failed to make Canadians realize that there could be no Canadian future outside the British Empire. Carleton of course saw this, as did the Canadian priests and leading laymen. But he was unduly optimistic in supposing that the people at large saw it too. He is, however, decidedly entitled to the benefit of the doubt whether his optimistic forecast would not have been realized if his wise counsels had been followed from the very first.

But whatever the reasons, the fact was that he found himself left to safeguard the whole of Canada with a handful of regulars (not much over one thousand effectives), another handful of men raised from the disbanded remnants of Wolfe's army, a little body of the new Anglo-Canadians, the small proportion of French Canadians who really understood the issues involved, and a few little men-of-war and some small merchant vessels. These quite inadequate forces were thinly spread over the whole country from Quebec to the Great Lakes. He had sent two battalions to Boston in 1774 in answer to an urgent call. When he required a like force back in 1775, Admiral Graves refused to sail it up the St Lawrence in October. The Indians, who have always been better cared for on the British than on the American side, were so much restrained by Carleton, who wanted to make it a white man's war, that they hardly knew what to do. Moreover, the revolutionists were strong in Montreal, considerable in Quebec, and active in their propaganda everywhere. Their plausible agents, with the assistance of some French Canadians who either chose, or were bought into, the revolutionary cause, went about the country parishes telling the habitants that the British authorities had concocted plans to enslave them at home and carry off their young men to fight British battles in foreign parts. Then there were all the usual rumours that run like wildfire among an ignorant and credulous people on the approach of unknown danger. At one time there were said to be seven thousand Russians coming up the St Lawrence. Montgomery had five thousand men. Arnold's rangers were bullet-proof. Carleton was going to seize all habitants who joined the enemy and burn them alive. The Quebec Act, which the revolutionists had been furiously opposing, because they thought it too favourable to the Roman Catholics and French Canadians, was now denounced to the habitants as an insidious attempt to take away their British liberties and prevent their adopting American liberties instead. This propaganda succeeded so far as to win over the worst of the people, and unsettle the mass of them by poisoning their minds against their own leaders and the British government. Among the English-speaking population of Canada it was naturally much more effective, as so many had come in from the American colonies. A magistrate of Montreal named Walker was particularly rancorous and active. In 1767, after having made himself unbearably obnoxious to the garrison, he was soundly thrashed. This, of course, was a most illegal act, however human, and it embittered him and his kind more than ever.

On a small scale there grew up a habit of baiting the military, under cover of the constitution, analogous to the systematic baiting in vogue at Boston, where, although the orders of the British authorities that the troops were never to retaliate were kept with wonderful discipline under the strongest provocation from mobs and magistrates, yet the mob assaults continued unchecked until one day some soldiers did fire in self-defence during a particularly savage attack, thus turning a mob-made brawl into what the Americans called the 'Boston Massacre.' The magistrates, no whit behindhand, magnified every offence committed by a soldier into a grave crime, imposed fines which they knew the soldiers could not pay, and, in at least one instance—officially reported on July 2, 1769—sold a man into plantation slavery in default of such fine. All this hatred was reflected, in a minor way, by the revolutionary party in Montreal and Quebec. Of course, there was another point of view. Whenever, before or during the war, Americans were imprisoned as 'rebels' they were still more embittered, as they, quite naturally, thought themselves belligerents in a better cause. 'Remember Portsea gaol!' shouted Paul Jones's first lieutenant as he headed the boarding party which took the Serapis. There were doubts, perplexities, misunderstandings, rights and wrongs on both sides. But, as very often is the case in troublous times, the revolutionists were more bitter and far more outrageous than the authorities.

This was the Canada that Carleton now had to defend: a country whose few English-speaking people were half rebellious and half loyal; whose French-speaking people were a few hostile, a few loyal, and most of them quite unreliable; whose garrisons were weak and scattered; whose direct connection with the sea was soon to be cut off by the winter; and whose own population was outnumbered twentyfold by the seething one beside it.