The conquest of Canada by British arms in the Seven Years’ War gave rise to a situation in the colony which was fraught with tragic possibilities. It placed the French inhabitants under the sway of an alien race a race of another language, of another religion, of other laws, and which differed from them profoundly in temperament and political outlook. Elsewhere in Ireland, in Poland, and in the Balkans such conquests have been followed by centuries of bitter racial warfare. In Canada, however, for a hundred and fifty years French Canadians and English Canadians have, on the whole, dwelt together in peace and amity. Only on the one occasion, of which the story is to be told in these pages, has there been anything resembling civil war between the two races; and this unhappy outbreak was neither widespread nor prolonged. The record is one which Canadians, whether they be English or French, have reason to view with satisfaction.

It does not appear that the Canadians of 1760 felt any profound regret at the change from French to British rule. So corrupt and oppressive had been the administration of Bigot, in the last days of the Old Regime, that the rough-and-ready rule of the British army officers doubtless seemed benignant in comparison. Comparatively few Canadians left the country, although they were afforded facilities for so doing. One evidence of good feeling between the victors and the vanquished is found in the marriages which were celebrated between Canadian women and some of the disbanded Highland soldiers. Traces of these unions are found at the present day, in the province of Quebec, in a few Scottish names of habitants who cannot speak English.

When the American colonies broke out in revolution in 1775, the Continental Congress thought to induce the French Canadians to join hands with them. But the conciliatory policy of the successive governors Murray and Carleton, and the concessions granted by the Quebec Act of the year before, had borne fruit; and when the American leaders Arnold and Montgomery invaded Canada, the great majority of the habitants remained at least passively loyal. A few hundred of them may have joined the invaders, but a much larger number enlisted under Carleton. The clergy, the seigneurs, and the professional classes lawyers and physicians and notaries remained firm in their allegiance to Great Britain; while the mass of the people resisted the eloquent appeals of Congress, represented by its emissaries Franklin, Chase, and Carroll, and even those of the distinguished Frenchmen, Lafayette and Count d’Estaing, who strongly urged them to join the rebels. Nor should it be forgotten that at the siege of Quebec by Arnold the Canadian officers Colonel Dupre and Captains Dambourges, Dumas, and Marcoux, with many others, were among Carleton’s most trusted and efficient aides in driving back the invading Americans. True, in 1781, Sir Frederick Haldimand, then governor of Canada, wrote that although the clergy had been firmly loyal in 1775 and had exerted their powerful influence in favour of Great Britain, they had since then changed their opinions and were no longer to be relied upon. But it must be borne in mind that Haldimand ruled the province in the manner of a soldier. His high-handed orders caused dissatisfaction, which he probably mistook for a want of loyalty among the clergy. No more devoted subject of Great Britain lived at the time in Lower Canada than Mgr Briand, the bishop of Quebec; and the priests shaped their conduct after that of their superior. At any rate, the danger which Haldimand feared did not take form; and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 made it more unlikely than ever.

The French Revolution profoundly affected the attitude of the French Canadians toward France. Canada was the child of the ancien regime. Within her borders the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau had found no shelter. Canada had nothing in common with the anti-clerical and republican tendencies of the Revolution. That movement created a gap between France and Canada which has not been bridged to this day. In the Napoleonic wars the sympathies of Canada were almost wholly with Great Britain. When news arrived of the defeat of the French fleet at Trafalgar, a Te Deum was sung in the Catholic cathedral at Quebec; and, in a sermon preached on that occasion, a future bishop of the French-Canadian Church enunciated the principle that ’all events which tend to broaden the gap separating us from France should be welcome.’

It was during the War of 1812-14, however, that the most striking manifestation of French-Canadian loyalty to the British crown appeared. In that war, in which Canada was repeatedly invaded by American armies, French-Canadian militiamen under French-Canadian officers fought shoulder to shoulder with their English-speaking fellow-countrymen on several stricken fields of battle; and in one engagement, fought at Chateauguay in the French province of Lower Canada, the day was won for British arms by the heroic prowess of Major de Salaberry and his French-Canadian soldiers. The history of the war with the United States provides indelible testimony to the loyalty of French Canada.

A quarter of a century passed. Once again the crack of muskets was heard on Canadian soil. This time, however, there was no foreign invader to repel. The two races which had fought side by side in 1812 were now arrayed against each other. French-Canadian veterans of Chateauguay were on one side, and English-Canadian veterans of Chrystler’s Farm on the other. Some real fighting took place. Before peace was restored, the fowling-pieces of the French-Canadian rebels had repulsed a force of British regulars at the village of St Denis, and brisk skirmishes had taken place at the villages of St Charles and St Eustache. How this unhappy interlude came to pass, in a century and a half of British rule in Canada, it is the object of this book to explain.