‘What does she say?’ I asked the woman.
‘She wish you kill plenty bears, plenty deer, take many scalps. Say your hand like a sieve, give very good gifts.’
The woman and the child had most delicate, harmonious voices, which was the rule rather than the exception, I found; whereas every Indian, almost, with whom I ever conversed spoke as if he had a hot potato in his mouth or a heavy weight upon his chest, pronouncing his words laboriously from the lower part of his throat and moving the lips only very slightly.
The women were dressed in moccasins, leggings, and a loose short shirt like the men, but fastened with silver brooches at the neck. They also wore pieces of blue or green cloth folded closely around their middles and reaching to the knees; and silver bangles on their wrists. I shall have more to say later on the subject of these interesting people; but I cannot postpone a record of my astonishment when the squaw with whom I had been conversing took down the cradle from the tree and, unswaddling the young child, hugged it for a while to her tawny bosom – for I perceived that its body was as fair as that of an English child. I was to observe later than even negro children were not perfectly black when born, but acquired their jetty hue gradually; just as in the vegetable world the first tender blade of spring, on peeping through the soil, turns from white to pale green, and to emerald only when May is come.
We were asleep on straw in the barn of the Ursuline Convent when the drums suddenly began to beat and in came Lieutenant Kemmis, calling for his groom. He appeared to be in great animation.
‘Well, my gallant lads,’ he cried, ‘we are to have a smack at ’em this morning, it seems. See that you fall in quick and without confusion. Sergeant Lamb, pray inspect the men’s arms and ammunition. Pay especial attention to the flints. If any appear worn, serve out new from the box – you have the key?’
‘Very well, your Honour.... Fall in, men, and tumble to it! Your Honour, are they upon us?’
‘They crossed over a brigade of fifty batteaux last night from Sorel and landed at Point du Lac, about ten miles upstream from here. We are ordered to join the vanguard with the flank companies of the other regiments.’
Soon we were marching out into the darkness along the river-road, in column of route. Our company, being the eldest light infantry company present, had the right to lead the column of route. It was daylight before we came upon their vanguard. They were marching along the river-road in a careless manner, like a congregation coming out of church, as if not expecting to meet with any opposition. They were slender, loose-limbed men dressed in dark green hunting shirts, long mud-coloured breeches, with tan gaiters, They wore tan ruffles around their necks, at the bottom of their coats, on their shoulders, elbows, and about their wrists. Their hats were round and dark with a broad brim folded up in three places, and in one fold was stuck a sprig of green. This colouring, being in perfect imitation of the hues of a forest, made them very inconspicuous in woody country, whereas a red coat showed up like a poppy in a stubble-held. Here, however, in the open land between blue water and the brilliant fresh-green of young corn they were not indifferent targets. We quickly executed one of the new manœuvres that we had learned from The Thirty-third in Dublin, shaking out across a cornfield. There we fired two very disciplined volleys, to the great scandal and grief of the farmer, who tried to head us off with shouts and curses, caring nothing for the bullets which were already whizzing about him. ‘Sacré Nom du Grand Archange Saint Michel et de tons ses anges inférieurs – éloignez-vous bien vite de mes putats, assassins, on je vais le dire au Général Carleton.’ Which, it seems, was to say: ‘Sacred Name of the Good Archangel St Michael and all his inferior angels, get you gone quick from my potatoes, you hired robbers, or I shall go and complain to General Carleton!’
A bullet happened to strike the pipe out of the honest fellow’s mouth, and a clay splinter gashed his cheek. Suddenly realizing the hazards of his position between two tares, he leaped like a hare for the ditch, and lay there cursing and shouting. The burden of his song was that he would on the very next day get aboard his boat and descend to Quebec to complain of the outrage to General Carleton, who never failed to give redress.
The Americans did not stay within range, but ran to hold a slight ridge where they began to scoop shallow trenches in the light soil. Reinforcements came up on either side. Our orders were to hold fast and conserve our fire: if they attacked, we were to charge bayonets and meet them as they came.
This being the first skirmish I ever was engaged in, it really appeared to me to be a very serious matter, especially when the bullets came whistling by our ears. There were a few veterans among us who had been well used to this kind of work, among them old Sergeant Fitzpatrick, who went about with a hymn of the Rev. Charles Wesley’s upon his lips and a devout anger in his eyes. But Mad Johnny Maguire took it very easy. ‘Oh, by the powers, my honeys, take it easy!’ he said. ‘This is but only the froth of battle. I was with the dear Ninth in Sixty-two when we stormed the Moro Fort at Havannah. That was the real brew, full and deep, by Jesus Christ!’
He had told us all, during my inspection of their arms and pouches that morning: ‘Now there’s no need to be alarmed if you hear the sound of a bullet fired against you, for that means it isn’t there. It’s the bullet you don’t hear that’s the bother, for often you notice afterwards that it has killed you.’
‘Did that often happen to you, Johnny Maguire?’ we asked him.
‘Not to the best of my recollection,’ he answered very seriously, ‘but I had a devil of a big fright once or twice.’
Soon the cannon from the vessels in the river began to roar, and the held-pieces which accompanied the van shot over our heads. The fire from the river was particularly severe, for the ships stood in close and blazed from the flank at point-blank. In a battle all sense of the passage of time is absent, as in childhood or during play at cards when the stakes are high. It may have been five minutes or half an hour before we observed that the Americans were going away in two’s and three’s and that their fire was slackening. We charged bayonets and sprang forward at them with a shout. They made no attempt to stand, which would indeed have been folly in their situation. They had suddenly learned that a brigade of British troops had been landed from transports some distance in their rear, and their one thought now was to regain their batteaux, lying a matter of three miles away, before they were cut off. A few valiant or obstinate men stayed behind, firing to the last, but singularly little execution was done: in the whole course of the day our army lost no more than a dozen men killed or disabled. The retreating colonists had not far to run before they were in woodland: we pushed so rapidly ahead, to prevent their making a stand on the road, that their laggards took to the trees.
The Americans won the race to the boats, of which only two were taken, and were soon safe away among the islands and shallows of St Peter’s Lake, where our ships could not pursue them. Two generals, several inferior officers, and two hundred men surrendered in the woods. I had no personal adventures to boast of afterwards; the only American whom I shot at, as he ran from me in the forest, I missed. So ended the brief, glorious, and unremarkable battle of Three Rivers: of which the Americans later spoke as if it had been a great victory, declaring that as many of our people had fallen as at Bunker’s Hill, while their own losses were insignificant.
On the day following, we left Three Rivers and were put aboard our transports with all expedition; the wind springing up fair, the fleet sailed towards Sorel. The greatest breadth of St Peter’s Lake, through which we were now sailing, was about fourteen miles, and its length about eighteen. The number of islands here was so extraordinary that it was impossible not to feel astonishment that such large vessels as visited Montreal could pass between them; and indeed the channel was very intricate. Lieutenant Kemmis found the prospect highly romantic, especially since many islands were peopled with camps of Indians dressed in their festival clothes to salute the convoy as it passed, and birch-bark canoes we
re continually speeding in and out of the vessels, the Indians shouting lengthy exhortations and greetings. The only intelligible part of these was an insistent demand for Christians’ fire-water, as spirits were called; for, until the English landed on the American continent, no intoxicating liquors were known to these happy people.
The Friendship grounded on a sand-bank in the very middle of the lake. Some men were sent out in a boat with an anchor, which they dropped in deep water; this gave us purchase to heave the vessel clear, so that we were only stuck fast for two hours. However, it was found impossible to recover the anchor, which loss caused such grief and vexation to the Captain as I should not have expected him to express for that of the whole ship’s burden and company. With captains of hired transports, it was evident that the crew, the cargo, and the welfare of their country were but secondary objects. One of them about this time gave the frigate guarding a convoy the slip, and got safe into Boston with a cargo of fifteen hundred barrels of gunpowder, which he sold to the Americans for a sum which made him rich for life.
Our journey from Three Rivers to Sorel at the head of the lake took five days, which was one too many, for upon our disembarking we found the fires of the American encampment still burning, but the men gone. It was here that we saw the last of the Friendship. We disembarked with all our baggage and, leaving the St Lawrence (which runs eight miles an hour at this point), marched south up the Sorel River towards Lake Champlain. A second column pursued another part of the American forces towards Montreal. We began our march in three columns under the command of Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne, M.P., an officer of the greatest experience and universally esteemed by his men, yet somewhat of a grumbler and too easily carried away by his natural eloquence into an exaggeration of injuries received from, and faults committed by, those in authority over him. It was an excellent army, and a great many men served in it who had fought against the French and Spanish. The mistakes that we committed were therefore totally different from those of the Americans: accustomed only to warfare in Indian fashion, they erred in too little regularity of organization and discipline, we often in too great rigidity. Our arrangements for the march, for bivouacking, for reconnaissance of ground, for the placing of outposts, and for the supply of ammunition, victuals, and forage, were admirable; as they were throughout the war, consistent with circumstances. But we were always a few hours’ march behind the retreating enemy, who, notwithstanding their haste, took care to destroy by fire all batteaux, ships and military stores that they could not take with them, and many houses besides.
Their distresses were very great: a British army of superior strength hanging close on their rear, their men obliged to haul loaded batteaux up the rapids by main strength, often to their middles in water. They were likewise very short of lead for running their bullets, of paper and thread for cartridge-making, and of every sort of medicament. This last was the most serious lack of all, since great numbers of them were labouring under that terrible disease, the smallpox, which always struck so fatally in America. We had orders not to handle any belongings left behind by them in their flight, nor to occupy any dwellings where they had lodged. Their dead and dying being left behind in considerable numbers, we provided regular burial squads, consisting of men who had already had suffered from the disease.
The sickly season of the year had come, and the Americans felt such terror of death by smallpox that they suffered themselves to be inoculated against it by their surgeons – that is, the fetid matter from one suffering from the disease was pushed under the fingernails of a healthy man. The intention was that he should take the disease, but not badly, and thereafter be immune against the natural infection. In America, ever since the great epidemic of 1764, it had been the custom to have inoculation frolics: to make up a cheerful party of persons of both sexes, in a spacious house with an enclosed garden, for all to be infected together. They could count on two or three days in bed, and six weeks of quarantine spent in pleasant lounging, drinking, amatory and political discourse, cards, prayers, and horse-play. In these conditions, a few were seriously sick, some died, but very many lives were saved. However, the present was no time for such a frolic; the poor creatures being already worn out with the hardships of war and unable to endure the poison. Moreover, no quarantine was possible and those who were inoculated passed on the disease to their comrades. The surgeons were ordered to discontinue the practice, but this did not hinder the men from inoculating one another and performing the operation in a very dirty manner. Though the fatigues of our march were great, we could, I am sure, have overtaken the Americans had instinct not kept our men from increased exertions: we slackened our pace sufficiently to avoid infection from our sick adversaries.
The Canadians showed violent resentment against the invaders for bringing so much ill luck and so little real money into the country. Many of them had been influenced by hopes of gain or by prophecies of a British defeat to take a decided part in the Americans’ favour; and this against the warnings of their priests, who refused to confess any rebel. Nor could the clergy have well been expected to adopt any other course of action, Congress having been so highly indiscreet, not to say double-faced; for while pretending great attachment to the Habitants in their struggle against British oppression, they had at the same time published an address to the people of England, which totally contradicted this. The address warmly indicted Parliament for the countenance it had given to Popery in Canada, which they declared to be the dissemination of impiety, persecution, and murder in every part of the globe. Now, though Congress had assured these Canadian rebels, but a few months before, that ‘we will never abandon our Canadian friends to the fury of our common enemies’, they were left exposed to the heavy penalties annexed to the crime of aiding or comforting His Majesty’s foes. The retreating army could only recommend the rebel Habitants to throw themselves on the mercy of the Government; and this, though ironically intended, proved to be good advice. To the best of my knowledge (I was in Canada for twelve months after this) none of them was either imprisoned or otherwise punished by General Carleton.
On June 17th we came to the hills of Chambly, some forty miles beyond Sorel and there took possession of the old French castle. We found that all the wooden buildings of the place, and all the boats too large to be dragged up the rapids, had been reduced to ashes. The French people hereabouts were greatly relieved that in this new war they were not to be called up for forced labour, as in the old days. We were told that General Montcalm had once visited the castle in the last war to assure himself that it was in a correct posture of defence; the peasants came dropping on their knees about him to implore him to abate the oppression and tyranny of their militia captains. Among others, the owner of the saw-mill complained that, loyal subject of King Louis though he was, he had been reduced to extremities by the Corvée – his harvest was lost, his family starving, and his two remaining horses had perished of overwork that very day. Monsieur Montcalm looked sternly at him and then, thoughtfully twirling his Cross of St Louis, remarked: ‘But you have the hides still, have you not? That’s a deal, a great deal!’
It was at Chambly that our General Prescott had been captured by General Montgomery in the preceding year, together with eleven ships and several companies of men of the Seventh and Twenty-sixth Regiments. He was soon exchanged with the Americans for General Sullivan, who was now opposing us, and put in command of Newport, Rhode Island; but there he was again captured by a party of raiders as he slept, and carried off without his breeches. He was a very peevish, foolish man and suffered tortures from the gout. Our people then bought him back in exchange for another American general, Charles Lee; not so much because they needed poor General Prescott as because the return of General Lee to an enemy command would embarrass General Washington, to whom he was openly hostile. General Prescott won the jocular title of ‘Continental Currency’.
On the next day we occupied the redoubts at St John’s; where the enemy in their precipitation had left behind
twenty-two pieces of cannon, unspiked and with their ammunition unexploded. The country that we had marched through until we came to Chambly was flat and without interest except for the unusual birds, flowers, trees, and animals. We saw grey squirrels, and deer; and Smutchy Steel had the misfortune to catch a creature resembling a bushy-tailed grey cat streaked with white, which was pursued towards us by a pair of our dogs. This animal, which the Canadians called Devil’s Child, discharges its urine when attacked, which infects the air with an intolerable stench. Smutchy had his black linen gaiters soiled and was fain to strip them off and abandon them. There were sweet wild raspberries in plenty beside our route.
A bear crossed a clearing and I had a snapping shot at him, but missed. This animal was rather shy than fierce; he would seldom attack a man, and fled in terror from a yapping dog. Only in July was he dangerous, for this was his mating season and he was abominably jealous. Then he grew very lean for passion and rage, and abstained from eating. His flesh acquired so disagreeable a relish that the Indians would not eat him; but, this season over, he became fat again and ate his kill of honey, and of wild grapes and other autumnal fruit.
Of trees there were an infinite and delightful variety, many of them excessively tall, and very few exactly corresponding in foliage or bark to British trees. For example, there were three different sorts of walnut-tree – the hard, the tender, and the bitter. Of the tender, the wood of which was almost incorruptible in water or the ground, the Canadians made their coffins; the nut of the bitter yielded a very good sort of lamp-oil; the nut of the hard was the best to eat, but caused costiveness. There were beech and elm in great abundance, and the sugar-bearing maple, and cedars, and wild plum, and cherry.