Canada in the Revolution

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Canada in the Revolution

CANADA IN THE REVOLUTION. "Canada," as known in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, did not exist as a nation at the time of the American Revolution. Its creation in the modern sense came in 1867, when the various colonies of British North America gradually came together to form the Canadian Confederation, the latest province to join being Newfoundland in 1949. During the American Revolution, the British possessions north of the so-called thirteen colonies were extensive in territory and sparsely populated. Each was a quite different entity from the others and each had its own government and laws. On the Atlantic seaboard were the colonies of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Island of St. John (later Prince Edward Island). On the continent, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence westward to past the Great Lakes, was Canada. North and west of Canada was Rupert's Land, the vast wilderness that was the Hudson's Bay Company's fur trade domain.

The largest and most important of these in 1775 was Canada, officially called the Province of Quebec after 1763. It was a province like no other in the British Empire because it had been the former northern part of New France and nearly all of its population of about eight-five thousand was of French ancestry except for two or three thousand newly arrived Britons and Americans. Nearly all were settled along the shores of the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers. The fortress city of Quebec was the capital and port of entry. Montreal was the main business city and key to the fur trade that was so important to Canada's economy. Trois-Rivières (Three Rivers) was the next town of importance in the St. Lawrence Valley. There were no substantial settlements further west except for the town of Detroit, between Lakes Erie and Huron.

BRITISH RULE IN CANADA

Following the surrender of the last French troops to British forces at Montreal in September 1760 and the Treaty of Paris three years later, when France abandoned its North American colony, Britain found itself having to rule a rapidly expanding French population. A worse problem concerned the conciliation of the civil and religious rights of the Roman Catholic French Canadian population, guaranteed by the Treaty of Paris (1763), with those of the small Protestant British and American community that had just arrived. The latter claimed that only they should rule the country, with their own elected legislature reserved to Protestants, which was utterly unacceptable to the French Canadians who formed the overwhelming majority of the population. As there was no likelihood of massive immigration from the British Isles, it was obvious that a satisfactory result, agreeable to the French Canadians, had to be found if the colony was to thrive. It was further understood that pushing French Canadians to revolt could be disastrous. Half of them were veterans of the late conflict and a rebellion would require a consider-able British military effort to defeat.

The solution found was the Quebec Act of 1774, which basically satisfied no one. Unfortunately, the British-appointed governor, Guy Carleton, had misread French Canadians' social organization and fostered, through an appointed legislative council, a feudal-style society based on the powers of the gentry, or seigneurs, over farmers. The law was for the most part badly received by the British and Americans as it restored Canada's vast wilderness frontier and seemed more favorable to the French Canadians than to them. For their part, most ordinary French Canadians resented the extensive powers it gave to the church and the seigneurs, powers they had never enjoyed under the French royal government. Furthermore, although British subjects, they were still excluded from the public service or from obtaining military commissions in the regular forces because they were Catholics. However, it was a worthy effort and most in Canada looked to see how it would actually work and would adapt accordingly. The social climate was calm and there was no great discernable resentment against British authority, a very different situation than found in the thirteen American colonies.

Another concern for the British authorities in Canada was the vast expanse of the Great Lakes region and relations with aborigine nations there. Chief Pontiac's uprising during 1763–1764, while overrunning most of the western forts, had been defeated. This, however, left the new British overlords rather unsure about their future prospects in dealing with aborigines in the Great Lakes area. They wisely continued the policies of the French by maintaining garrisons in western forts such as Frontenac (later Kingston, Ontario), Niagara, and Michilimackinac while the British Indian Department, a political as well as a military organization, fostered good relations by diplomacy, gifts to the various nations, and a certain degree of protection from American settlers encroaching on native lands.

The military situation in Canada was quite stable at the eve of the American Revolution. In 1774 the 7th, 10th, 26th, and 52nd regiments, with Royal Artillery detachments, were in garrison in the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Valleys and the 8th was stationed at the Great Lakes. All were understrength and totaled about 1,700 officers and men. At this time, General Gage in Boston had overall military command in North America and, given the tense political climate in that city, instructed Governor Carleton to immediately send the 10th and 52nd there, which was accordingly done. Excluding the garrisons on the Great Lakes, there were only about 800 regulars left in Canada by the spring of 1775. The Canadian militia, which was to be reorganized, listed about 18,000 men who on paper were able to bear arms. But this organization, excellent during the French regime, had been very neglected by suspicious British authorities so that it had become totally inefficient and was practically unarmed.

AMERICAN ATTACK

Unbeknown to Canada, tensions in Massachusetts had broken out into fighting between American Patriots and British troops in April 1775. On 10 May a bemused detachment of the Twenty-sixth Foot was captured at Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point in New York by a party of Patriots led by Ethan Allen. The Americans had decided to invade Canada and, during the summer of 1775, General Richard Montgomery led an American army of some two thousand men up the Richelieu River valley. In September he laid siege to the fort at Saint-Jean (St. John), defended by a garrison of five hundred British troops and Canadian volunteers. Nearby Fort Chambly was easily captured on 20 October. The siege of Saint-Jean dragged on until 2 November, when its garrison surrendered after a resistance of fifty-five days. It was a disaster for Carleton, who was left with perhaps one hundred regulars to defend Canada. Montreal obviously could not be held, and the Americans entered the city on 12 November, just as Carleton was leaving it.

Carleton reached Quebec on 19 November and quickly organized its defenses to withstand a siege. He now knew that a second American army of about 700 men under the command of General Benedict Arnold had come up through Maine and was at Lévis, facing Quebec. On 3 December, Montgomery's army linked with Arnold's outside the city. Within its ramparts, Carleton only had about 110 regulars, mostly from the Seventh Foot and the Royal Marines, some 200 recruits of the newly raised Royal Highland Emigrants, 80 artificers, and 460 sailors. All able-bodied men in the city were organized into companies numbering about 320 British and 580 French Canadian militiamen. In all, the city had a garrison of about 1,700 men. The Americans staged a disastrous assault in a snowstorm on 31 December in which General Montgomery was killed, Arnold wounded, and some 400 Americans captured. The siege, now more like a blockade, dragged on until May 1776, when reinforcements arrived at Quebec from England. West of Montreal, a mixed party of the Eighth Foot, Indians, and Canadian militiamen beat an American force at Cedars. After a repressive occupation and, as a final act, trying unsuccessfully to set fire to the city on 15 June, the American army retired to the state of New York.

An important decision made by the British government back in July 1775 was to split North America in two commands. Thenceforth, the Canada command under Governor Carleton was a separate, independent command from that of General Gage's, the latter comprising the thirteen colonies, Nova Scotia, and the Island of St. John. One result was that Carleton now had the power to raise units without first asking General Gage. With hundreds of persecuted Americans who remained loyal to the crown now seeking refuge in Canada from their Patriot neighbors, a number of Loyalist units were raised, the most famous being the King's Royal Regiment of New York and Butler's Rangers. Together with the aborigines, most of whom took up arms with the British, these Loyalist units raided the Americans frontiers from Canada until the end of the war.

FRENCH CANADIAN NEUTRALITY

While some French Canadians joined the Americans or fought for the British, the vast majority remained neutral during the Revolution. They saw the conflict as a fight between their old enemies, the British and Americans, who only fifteen years earlier had invaded and ravaged parts of their homeland. And they knew better than to believe the promises made by the American Continental Congress and the kings of Britain or France. Three companies of French Canadian militia were embodied under some duress in 1777; two were part of General Burgoyne's disastrous Saratoga campaign, and the other was at the unsuccessful siege of Fort Stanwix. A new and, to the French Canadians, generally positive element was the arrival of German regiments in British pay beginning in 1776. Their officers often spoke French, they had blue or white uniforms rather than the scorned red coats, and the German soldiers were generally seen as more open and friendly than the dour British. The British government certainly noted this, and the regular garrisons in the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Valleys were eventually largely German, some five thousand being on guard by 1782. In 1778 Carleton was replaced by Sir Frederick Haldiman, a Swiss soldier fluent in French. By then, the British knew they would never enlist the French Canadians, so they did all they could to keep them neutral, and in this they succeeded.

RESISTANCE IN NOVA SCOTIA

Nova Scotia was a small colony of seventeen thousand souls in 1775. With Halifax as the main base for the Royal Navy in the North Atlantic as well as an important staging point for the army and the colony's most important city, American autonomist ideas were not entertained for long. The most serious event was an attempt by about five hundred American patriots to capture Fort Cumberland (the former French Fort Beauséjour near latter-day Aulac, New Brunswick) in November 1776. Some two hundred Loyalists of the Royal Fencible Americans Regiment garrisoned the fort with their families, many having been among the eleven hundred refugees recently evacuated from Boston. They resisted until relief arrived on 28 December and then chased back the Americans. Otherwise, American privateers, more intent on looting than the spread of liberty, would occasionally raid small coastal towns such as Charlottetown (Island of St. John) in 1775 or Liverpool (Nova Scotia) in 1778. Local provincial troops were consequently raised in Nova Scotia, the Island of St. John, and Newfoundland to assist the British regular garrisons.

FRENCH NAVAL ATTACK

One of the most spectacular, if least written about, events in Canada during the Revolution occurred in faraway Hudson's Bay during 1782. On 8 August, the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Prince of Wales saw three sails on the horizon that, to their utter surprise and dismay, turned out to be a French 74-gun battleship with two frigates. A 250-man-strong detachment from the Armagnac and Auxerrois regiments landed and demanded the immediate surrender of the bastioned stone fort. They were commanded by count La Pérouse, a daring sailor who was to become one of the great explorers of the Pacific. The fort surrendered, as later did those of York Factory and Severn, and all were blown up. Although the British later made light of the raid, it must have been a painful loss, as no dividends were paid to the company's shareholders for the next two years.

As a whole, the American Revolution's effect on Canada was, except for the invasion of 1775–1776, relatively minor during the course of the conflict. The real impact came at war's end, when some forty thousand Loyalists arrived in the country and forever transformed it.