A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs Part 3

As December wore on Montgomery grew eager to seize his prey. Carleton sat unmoved behind his walls and allowed the enemy to invest the town.

He would hold no communication with the rebel army. When Montgomery sent messengers to the gates, under a flag of truce, Carleton would not receive them; the only message he would take, he said, would be an appeal to the mercy of the King, against whom they were in rebellion.

Montgomery, too, showed for his foe lofty scorn, in words at least. On December 15th in General Orders he spoke of "the wretched garrison"

posted behind the walls of Quebec, "consisting of sailors unacquainted with the use of arms, of citizens incapable of the soldier's duty and [a gibe at the corps in which Nairne served] a few miserable emigrants."

He went on to promise his troops that when they took Quebec "the effects of the Governor, garrison, and of such as have been active in misleading the inhabitants and distressing the friends of liberty" should be equally divided among the victors. The opposing sides showed, in truth, the bitterness and exasperation of family quarrels and abandoned the usual courtesies of war. The Americans lay in wait to shoot sentries; they fired on single persons walking on the ramparts. It was reported to the British that Montgomery had said "he would dine in Quebec or in h.e.l.l on Christmas"--gossip probably untrue, as a British diarist of the time is fair enough to note, since it is not in accord with the dignity and sobriety of Montgomery's character.

He did what he could to make possible this Christmas festivity within Quebec's walls. His men got together some five hundred scaling ladders.

Then heavy snow came and the defenders jeered at such preparations: "Can they think it possible that they can approach the walls laden with ladders, sinking to the middle every step in snow? Where shall we be then? Shall we be looking on cross-armed?" The clear and inconceivably cold weather was also one of Quebec's defences for, as one diarist puts it, no man, after being exposed to it for ten minutes, could hold arms in his half-frozen hands firmly enough to do any execution. But by nothing short of death itself was Montgomery to be daunted; steadily he made his plans to a.s.sault the town.

Meanwhile Quebec was ready. Carleton ordered out of the town all who could not a.s.sist to the best of their power in the defence. Some shammed illness to escape their tasks. But this was the exception. Well-to-do citizens worked zealously, took their share of sentry duty on the bitterly cold nights, and submitted to the commands of officers in the militia, their inferiors in education and fortune. On the loftiest point of Cape Diamond Carleton erected a mast, thirty feet high, with a sentry box at its top. From this he could command a bird's eye view of the enemy's operations, to a point as distant as Ste. Foy Church. When one of the besiegers asked a loyalist Canadian what the queer-looking object on the pole really was he answered, "It is a wooden horse with a bundle of hay before him." A second remark capped this one: "General Carleton has said that he will not give up the town till the horse has ate all the hay; and the General is a man of his word."

Although Montgomery did not eat his Christmas dinner in Quebec a few days later he was ready for an a.s.sault. The crisis came on the last day of the year 1775. Early on that day, between four and five in the morning, Captain Malcolm Fraser, in command of the main guard, was going his rounds in Quebec when he saw a signal thrown by the enemy from the heights outside the walls near Cape Diamond. Fraser knew at once that it meant an attack. He sent word to the other guards in Quebec and ordered the ringing of the alarm bell, and the drum-beat to arms. He himself ran down St. Louis street, shouting to the guards to "Turn out"

as loudly and often as he could, and with such effect that he was heard even by General Carleton, lodged at the Recollet convent. It was a boisterous night and the elements themselves raged so fiercely that some of the alarms were not heard. But, in time, all Quebec was aroused and the guards stood at their posts.

The alarm was completed when to its din was added the menacing sound of cannon. The besiegers began to ply the town with sh.e.l.ls, and those who looked out over the ramparts could see in the darkness the flash of guns. Soon began from behind ridges of snow, within eighty yards of the walls of Cape Diamond, the patter of musketry. The Americans were seeking to lead the defenders of Quebec to believe that an a.s.sault on the walls of the Upper Town on the side of the Plains of Abraham was imminent and to hold the defence to this point. In fact the real danger was far away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MANOR HOUSE AT MURRAY BAY

(The upper view from the West, the lower from the East)]

Montgomery's was a hazardous plan. He had resolved to try to seize the Lower Town first and then to get his troops into the Upper Town by way of the steep Mountain Street, thus taking the defenders of the walls in the rear. It was a desperate venture, depending for its success largely upon the surprise of the garrison which Malcolm Fraser's thorough-going alarm had prevented. Montgomery himself, with a force of several hundred men, marched to the Lower Town from Wolfe's Cove along the narrow path under the cliffs, a distance of nearly two miles, with progress impeded by darkness, by heavy snow-drifts, and by blocks of ice which the tide had strewn along the sh.o.r.e. His men struggled on in the dark hoping to surprise the post which guarded the road below Cape Diamond at a point called Pres de Ville. Here were some fifty defenders and the tale of what happened is soon told. The guardians of the post were on the alert, for at it, too, Malcolm Fraser's warning had been effective. As Montgomery bravely advanced, at the head of his men, there was a flash and a roar in the darkness and the blinding snow storm, and, a moment after, Montgomery lay dead in the snow with a bullet through his head. Two or three other officers were struck down. The British heard groans and then there was silence. As daylight came they saw hands and arms protruding from the snow, but only slowly did they realize that the chief of their foes was killed.

Nairne was on duty elsewhere but he did not miss severe fighting. Arnold was to advance on the Lower Town from the north-eastern suburb, St.

Roch's, to meet at the foot of Mountain Street Montgomery coming from the west. At first he was more fortunate than Montgomery. When the rocket from Cape Diamond went up he set out. The storm was frightful but it served to conceal Arnold's force from Quebec's sentries. The Americans pa.s.sed under the height where stands the Hotel Dieu. Here Nairne was stationed with a small guard. They spied the Americans in the darkness and kept up as effective a fire as the dim light permitted. But the a.s.sailants were able to advance along the whole east side of Quebec and to reach the entrance to the Sault au Matelot, a short and narrow street opening into the steep Mountain Street, by which alone the Upper Town could be reached. Here fortune favoured them for, apparently, in spite of Fraser's alarm, they surprised the guard at the first barrier by which the street was closed. The street itself they secured but when they reached the second barrier at its farther end, commanding the road to the Upper Town, it was well defended by an alert garrison. Arnold had already been wounded and taken to the rear and Morgan, an intrepid leader, was in command of the a.s.sailing force. Every moment he expected that Montgomery would arrive to attack the second barrier on the Sault au Matelot from the West as he attacked it from the East. But Montgomery was dead and Morgan waited in vain.

While the Americans were checked by the second barrier, Carleton was not idle. There was an excellent chance to send a force out of the Palace Gate near the Hotel Dieu, by which the a.s.sailants had pa.s.sed, and to attack them in the rear. For this duty Colonel Caldwell was told off and he took with him Nairne and his picket of about thirty men. The force plodded through the deep snow in the tracks of the enemy who, about daybreak, were astonished to find themselves shut in by British forces at each end of the Sault au Matelot. A hand to hand fight followed. The Americans took refuge in the houses of the street and it was the task of the British to drive them out. In this Nairne distinguished himself.

"Major Nairne of the Royal Emigrants and M. Dambourges of the same corps by their gallant behaviour attracted the attention of every body,"

writes an English officer.[8] By ladders, taken from the enemy, they mounted to a window of one of the houses, from which came a destructive fire, and at the point of the bayonet drove the foe out by the door into the street. In the end, to the number of more than four hundred, the Americans were forced to surrender. The casualties included thirty killed and forty-two wounded. By eight o'clock all was over. "It was the first time I ever happened to be so closely engaged," Nairne wrote to his sister on May 14th, 1776, "as we were obliged to push our bayonets. It is certainly a disagreeable necessity to be obliged to put one another to death, especially those speaking the same language and dressed in the same manner with ourselves.... These mad people had a large piece of white linen or paper upon their foreheads with the words "Liberty or Death" wrote upon it." Nairne's account is modest enough.

One would not gather from it that his own conspicuous courage had obtained general recognition.[9]

Even with Montgomery killed, Arnold wounded, and quite one-quarter of their force dead or captured, those grim men who wished "Liberty or Death" had no thought of raising the siege. Ere long Arnold was again active and, for four months longer, the Americans kept Carleton shut up within Quebec. So deep lay the snow that to walk into the ditch from the embrasures in the walls was easy; buried in the snow were the muzzles of guns thirty feet from the bottom of the ditch. Sometimes Nairne was actively engaged in scouting work. In February we find him leading a party to take possession of the English burying ground in the suburbs; on March 19th, he went out into the open from Cape Diamond to the height overlooking the Anse de Mer. But nothing happened; a diarist expresses, on April 21st, his contempt for the American attack by writing: "Hitherto they have killed a boy, wounded a soldier, and broke the leg of a turkey."[10]

The a.s.sailants were, in truth, impotent before the masterly inactivity of Carleton, who waited patiently behind his walls for the arrival in the spring of a British fleet. Counting upon this expectancy the Americans tried an old-time ruse. Between nine and ten o'clock in the evening of May 3rd, with the moon s.h.i.+ning brightly and the tide flowing in and nearly high, a s.h.i.+p under full sail came into view from the direction of the Island of Orleans. With the wind behind her she swung in at a good rate of speed. Those who watched were, for a moment, sure that the long expected rescue had come. But, as she bore down to the _cul de sac_ where lay the s.h.i.+pping at Quebec, she made no response to signals. At last, the British, after three vain efforts to draw a response, warned her to reply or they should fire. When this threat was carried out she was only some two hundred yards away. Then suddenly flames burst out on the s.h.i.+p, followed by random explosions; a boat left her side rowed very swiftly, and it was now apparent that she was sent to burn, if possible, the British s.h.i.+pping. It must have been an anxious moment when she was so near and heading straight for her prey.

But, showing a natural prudence, those who steered left her too soon and, with no hand at the helm, her head came up quickly in the wind. By this time all Quebec had been alarmed and, as attack from the landward side was also expected, every man was soon at his post. The s.h.i.+p was a striking sight as, with sails and rigging on fire, she drifted helplessly before the town. When the tide turned she floated down, a ma.s.s of fire, with explosions shaking her from time to time, to the shallows off Beauport where she soon lay stranded, a blackened ruin of half-burnt timbers.

Quebec still waited for rescue, and not in vain. At day break, on the 6th of May, a frigate appeared round Point Levi. Again went forth the cry of "A s.h.i.+p," "A s.h.i.+p." "The news," we are told, "soon reached every pillow in town." Men half dressed rushed to the Grand Battery, which was quickly crowded with spectators, who indulged in much shaking of hands, and in the exchange of compliments, as the character of the s.h.i.+p became clear. She was the British frigate _Surprise_, and, with much difficulty, had forced her way, under full sail, through the great fields of ice which still blocked the river. Following her closely were the _Isis_ and a sloop the _Martin_. Quebec went wild with joy. But there was still serious business on hand. The _Surprise_ brought a part of the 29th regiment and a good many marines. They were landed at once.

Carleton lost not a moment and, by twelve o'clock of the same day, the gates of Quebec were thrown open and he marched out to attack the Americans.

It was only a thin red line that stretched across the Plains of Abraham.

But the Americans dared not face it. The newly arrived s.h.i.+ps might, they feared, carry a force up the river and cut off retreat; so, after some desultory skirmis.h.i.+ng, the investing army fled. It was now commanded by General Wooster, for Arnold had gone to Montreal. The flight soon became a panic. Arms, clothes, food, private letters and papers were thrown away. Nairne was in command of a portion of the Highland Emigrants, who were the vanguard of the British pursuing force, and was among the first to occupy the American batteries. On that very ground he had fought, victorious in 1759, woefully beaten in 1760; now, a victor again, he helped to drive back a force, some of whose members had been his companions in those earlier campaigns. That night the relieved British slept secure in Quebec, while the bedraggled American force was making its distressful way towards Montreal.

Though the American army soon withdrew from Montreal and from Canada, the war was still to drag on for many weary years. Throughout the whole of it Nairne remained on active service. In September, 1776, we find him in command of the garrison at Montreal. In 1777 he was sent to command the post at Isle aux Noix which guarded the route into Canada by way of Lake Champlain. Here Fraser was serving under him as Captain; the two friends were usually together throughout the war. At Isle aux Noix Nairne remained until June, 1779. We get glimpses from his letters of the defects in the service at this time. There were involuntary evils, such as scurvy, caused by want of fresh meat and vegetables, but relieved by drinking a decoction of hemlock spruce. Moral evils there were too, such as gambling and drunkenness; in 1778 the commanding officer gave warning that he had heard of losses at play, and that those taking part in such practises would be excluded from promotion.

The British officers showed sometimes a fool-hardy recklessness. On March 9th, 1778, one Lieutenant Mackinnon, with forty-five volunteers, set out from Pointe au Fer, near Isle aux Noix, to surprise an American post at Parsons' House, no less than sixty miles distant, and in the heart of the enemy's country. A few days later two of the volunteers returned with news that the attack had wholly failed, that six of the party were killed and six wounded, and that Lieutenant Mackinnon and four others were missing. So reckless an attack was bad enough and, in the General Orders, it was condemned as "a presumptuous disregard of military discipline"; only vigilance and watchfulness were required of the picket at Pointe au Fer, so that the enemy might not invade the province. At the incident the Commander-in-Chief was very angry. "I never saw the General in such a pa.s.sion in my life," wrote an officer to Nairne. Mackinnon had surrounded the house in the darkness and both he and his men, as far as is known, had done their best. Though wounded and for a time missing, in the end Mackinnon got back crippled to Isle aux Noix. But he had failed, and whispers soon began that he showed cowardice in the attack; an absurd charge, as Nairne said, for he had given proof of rather too much, than of too little, courage. The accusation gave Nairne infinite trouble. The subalterns in the Royal Highland Emigrants refused to do duty with Mackinnon, and General Haldimand, who succeeded Carleton in the summer of 1778, would not take the matter seriously enough to grant a Court Martial, that Mackinnon might clear himself. For quite a year and a half the affair dragged on.

In the end, at a Court of Enquiry, Mackinnon was acquitted. Haldimand told Nairne to rebuke the officers sternly for combining to subvert authority, for disrespect to their superiors, and for refusing, on the basis of futile reports and hearsays, to serve with Mackinnon. "I much mistake his character," wrote Nairne of Mackinnon, "if he can ... be prevented from calling one or two of those gentlemen to a severe account."

A part of Nairne's duty was to watch the French Canadians and check sedition. In spite of the failure of Arnold's expedition many of them were still favourable to the American cause. They harboured deserters in the remoter parishes, gave protection and a.s.sistance to rebels, and threw as many difficulties as possible in the path of loyalists. Nairne found two men issuing papers from a printing press to foment sedition and sent them down to Quebec to stand their trial for treason.

From Isle aux Noix Nairne was sent, in the summer of 1779, with fifty of his Royal Highland Emigrants, to command at Carleton Island, near Kingston where Lake Ontario flows into the St. Lawrence; some thirty-five years later his only surviving son held a military command at the same place. Here there was much to do in strengthening the fortifications and in keeping up communications with Niagara and other points in the interior. The situation was not without its embarra.s.sments. Prisoners were sent in from Niagara and he had no prison in which to keep them. For want of fresh meat and vegetables there was much sickness. But the Indians were his greatest trial. Through him came their supplies and, to hold them at all, he had sometimes to serve out the rum for which such savages are always greedy. On July 4th, Nairne made a speech to these Mississaga Indians and said pretty plainly what he thought of them. Against the American scouts they had proved no defence; at night they fired off guns in the neighbouring woods and created false alarms, which prevented Nairne's men from getting their proper sleep. "My men work hard in the day," he said, "and I will have them to sleep sound at night," and he warned the Indians that he would fire upon them if their noise disturbed him further. The savages, he wrote to Haldimand, are "almost unbearable, greedy and importunate."

They behaved more like rebels than friends and their talk ended always in the demand for rum, "the cause of all bad behaviour in Indians."

On the remoter frontiers the war was ruthless beyond measure. Sir John Johnson devastated the Mohawk valley, in the present State of New York, and some of his prisoners were received at Carleton Island. Of this inglorious warfare Haldimand's secretary, Captain Matthews, wrote to Nairne a little later [17th June, 1780], "You will have heard that Sir John Johnson has executed the purpose of his enterprise without the loss of a man, having destroyed upwards of an hundred dwelling houses, barns, mills, stock, &c., and brought off 150 Loyalists, besides Women and Children." The worst outrages came from the Indian allies, of whom Nairne thought so badly. From Niagara, on March 1st, 1779, Captain John MacDonnell wrote to Nairne of the terrible ma.s.sacre at Cherry Valley, on the New York frontier, which excited horror throughout the colonies, and did much to inflame the hatred of the Americans for England. Not, however, the English but the Indians were really guilty. "There has nothing appeared," wrote Captain MacDonnell, "on the theatre of the war of near so tragical or rather barbarous a hue; the reflection never represents itself to my view but when accompanyed with the greatest horrors; both s.e.xes, young and old Tomahawked, Speared and Scalped indiscriminately in the most inhuman and cruel manner. But that there was all possible care and precaution taken to prevent them is undenyable. Captain Butler, who had command of the expedition, was indefatigable in his endeavours and exertions to restrain and mitigate the fury and ferocity of the savages often at the risk of the Tomahawk being made use of against himself as well as the Indian officers.... Out of a hundred and seventy scalps three-fourths were those of Women and Children." Butler's name is still looked upon in the United States as that of a fiend incarnate, but the testimony of his fellow officer seems to free him from blame for the worst of the horrors. Both sides were bitter, but Nairne himself never shows any vehemence of pa.s.sion. In his view the war was a painful necessity, to be fought to the end without anger.

Late in 1779, Nairne was recalled from Carleton Island. He reached Montreal on the 5th of December, and, two days later, secured leave of absence to look after his private affairs. At this time General Haldimand had matured a plan to take advantage of the remote position of Murray Bay to confine there some of his American prisoners. At Murray Bay they seemed particularly safe. There was as yet no road over Cap Tourmente; in any case to go in the direction of Quebec would mean seizure sooner or later; to go in the opposite direction would be to perish in the wilderness; and the only outlet was by water across a wintry river some twelve miles broad. On the 26th of January, 1780, Haldimand wrote to Nairne at Murray Bay that he was to erect buildings for rebel and other prisoners, and that, to do the work, some men were being sent down; he was to employ in addition as many of the inhabitants as he might think necessary.

Nairne stayed on at Murray Bay in 1780 much longer than the two months for which he had originally asked. A part of his duty was to watch that American colony, so different in station and situation from the many Americans who now visit the spot. As yet there were no barracks in which to confine the poor fellows, and the climate of Murray Bay is not too hospitable in winter. Some kind of rough quarters must have been prepared for the prisoners, in the winter of 1779-80, and they were kept busy in helping to build the houses intended for their occupation. They seemed contented. One of them Nairne kept about his person. He knew where everything was placed and all the men were used, Nairne says, in the best manner he could think of. But liberty is sweet and they longed for their own land. So, early in May, 1780, when the ice was out of the river and there was a chance to get away, eight of them made a dash for liberty.[11] No doubt under cover of night, they stole a boat and put out boldly into the great river across which, in so small a craft, few ever venture, even in mild summer weather. Almost wonderful to relate, they reached the south sh.o.r.e in safety. Nairne was uncertain whether they had gone up, down, or across the river. He hurried to Tadousac, crossed to Cacouna and then went up the south sh.o.r.e. At St. Roch he found that the men, rowing a boat, had been seen to pa.s.s. On May 14th this boat was found abandoned. On the 15th the men were seen on the highway carrying their packs. We are almost sorry to learn that the poor fellows were in the end captured and taken to Quebec. Nairne reported the flight of these men on the 14th of May. Their example was contagious for, on the 18th, while he was absent in their pursuit, four others made off, found a small boat on the sh.o.r.e some nine miles from Malbaie, and put out into the river, where their tiny craft was seen heading for Kamouraska on the south sh.o.r.e. A few days later two others also escaped.

These had not courage to strike out into the river, and one of them was caught at Baie St. Paul. Nairne offered a reward of four dollars for each of the prisoners and probably all were taken. A sequel of the incident was that a non-commissioned officer and eight men of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment were sent to guard the remaining prisoners at Murray Bay--a task apparently beyond Nairne's local militia. This guard was, no doubt, composed of Germans; one wonders to what extent they fraternized with the French Canadians. It is amusing to read that, when one of them deserted, he was brought back by a habitant.

In 1781 we find Nairne stationed at Vercheres on the south side of the St. Lawrence, nearly opposite Montreal. He was now in charge of the expatriated Loyalists who had found refuge in that part of Canada. A whole corps of them were billeted in the two parishes of Vercheres and Contrecoeur--the officers chiefly at Contrecoeur. They lived, of course, in the cottages with the habitants. On December 16th, 1781, Nairne writes to General Riedesel, a German officer who played a conspicuous part on the British side in the Revolutionary war and was now in command at Sorel, that the Canadians do not mind supplying firewood for the loyalist officers but that they rather object to having the same people quartered upon them for two years at a time. Though an occasional officer had said that the Loyalists were not obedient, he adds that they were quiet and orderly people. Some of them had large families and must have crowded uncomfortably their involuntary hosts.

These colonial English living in the households of their old-time enemies, the French Canadians, make a somewhat pathetic picture. We see what domestic suffering the Revolutionary War involved. Some were very old; one "genteel sort of woman," a widow, had four children, the youngest but four months old; there was another whose husband had been hanged at Saratoga as a spy. Very large sums pa.s.sed through Nairne's hands in behalf of the Loyalists. One account which he renders amounts to about 20,000.[12]

Nairne's regiment, the Royal Highland Emigrants, had been put upon the permanent establishment in 1779. Sometimes he complained that his own promotion was slow; not until the spring of 1783 was he given the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Having reached this goal he intended, as soon as he decently could, to sell out and retire. Late in 1782 we find him again in command at Isle aux Noix and not sure but that he may at any time be surprised by the Americans. It seems odd that, though Cornwallis had already surrendered at Yorktown, and the war was really over, Nairne was still hoping for final victory for Great Britain; on February 8th, 1783, he writes: "It is to be hoped that affairs will at last take a favourable turn to Great Britain; her cause is really a just one." In fact preliminary articles of the most disastrous peace Great Britain has ever made had already been signed.

Nairne was now anxious to go home. But even in June, 1783, he could not get leave of absence from Isle aux Noix for even a fortnight. Conditions were still unsettled. American traders were now pressing into Canada but Nairne sent back any that he caught; the cessation of arms was, he said, no warrant as yet for commercial intercourse and many suspicious characters were about. The troops from Europe were returning home.

General Riedesel, about to leave for Germany, wrote from Sorel on July 6th, 1783, a warm letter of thanks to Nairne for the attention, readiness, and punctuality of his services. Not long after, in the same year, Nairne was at last free. He now sold his commission, receiving for it 3,000. With the sale he renounced all claim to half-pay, pension, or other consideration for past services and the sum he received was, therefore, no very great final reward for his long services. There had been some compet.i.tion for this commission and its final disposal throws some light on promotion in the army under the purchase system. General Haldimand insisted that Captain Matthews, who appears to have been his relative, should get it, since the General "must provide for his own family." At this time Malcolm Fraser too thought of selling out but he made difficulties about terms and the opportunity pa.s.sed; Fraser was, indeed, to live to see recruiting service in the war of 1812. When the war was over, Nairne hurried to Murray Bay and to the country life in which he delighted, and in his correspondence we soon find him discussing not high questions of national defence but the qualities of "a well-bred bull calf" and of an improved plough. "I have more satisfaction," he says, perhaps with a touch of irony, "in a country life and [in] cultivating a farm than even [in] being employed as first major of the Quebec militia." Henceforth his heart is wholly at Murray Bay and in his interests there.

[Footnote 8: Diary of an English Officer. Proceedings of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, 1871-72, p. 61.]

[Footnote 9: See Appendix C., p. 273, for the text of his letter to his sister describing the operations of the winter at Quebec. It is an able review of the campaign.]

[Footnote 10: Proceedings of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, 7th Series, 1905, p. 75; "Blockade of Quebec," etc.]

[Footnote 11: The men's names were Peter Ferris, Squir Ferris, Claudius Brittle (Sr.), Claudius Brittle (Jr.), Nathan Smith, Marshal Smith, Justice St.u.r.devant, John Ward.]

[Footnote 12: The book in which Nairne kept the accounts, with the names of the recipients of the king's bounty, is still at Murray Bay.]

CHAPTER V

THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN NAIRNE

Nairne's careful education of his children.--His son John enters the army.--Nairne's counsels to his son.--John Nairne goes to India.--His death.--Nairne's declining years.--His activities at Murray Bay.--His income.--His daughter Christine and Quebec society.--The isolation of Murray Bay in Winter.--Signals across the river.--Nairne's reading.--His notes about current events.--The fear of a French invasion of England.--Thoughts of flight from Scotland to Murray Bay.--Nairne's last letter, April 20th, 1802.--His death and burial at Quebec.

Colonel Nairne's life was troubled with many sorrows. In 1773, when he was on a visit to Scotland, Malcolm Fraser had had the painful duty of writing to tell him of the death of three of his infant children at Murray Bay from a prevailing epidemic. His daughter, Anne, born in 1784, was sent to Scotland to be educated. She contracted consumption and after a prolonged illness died there in 1796. "This event gave me great affliction," wrote Nairne, "she was always a most amiable child." There now remained two sons and three daughters,[13] and Nairne may well have been certain that his name would go down to an abundant posterity. One of the chief interests of his life was their training and education. All in turn were sent to Scotland for their chief schooling. The eldest son, John, born in 1777, and his sister Christine, some three years older, lived in Edinburgh with aunts who showed exhaustless kindness and interest. Nairne was grateful, and writing from Malbaie on August 27th, 1791, he says: "[I] am glad of an opportunity, my dear Christine and Jack, to remind you both in the strongest manner I am able of the grat.i.tude and a.s.siduous Duty you owe to your Aunts and other Relations for admitting you into their family and also for the attention they are pleased to bestow on your education." Upon his children he imposes indeed counsels of perfection not easy to fulfil; "Remember it's my injunctions and absolute orders to you both to have always an obedient temper to your superiors ... to receive every reprimand with submission and attention as it can only be intended for your benefit in order to give you a valuable character which of all things is the greatest blessing both for this world and the next; besides you must consider that you are never to indulge yourselves in any sort of indolence or laziness but to rise early in the morning to be the more able to fulfil your Duty.... As to you, Jack, I expect to see you a Gallant and honourable fellow that will always scorn to tell the least lie in your life. It was well done to answer Captain Fraser [Malcolm Fraser, a Lieutenant in 1762, is still only a Captain in 1791!] with which he was well pleased.... Both of you have I think improved in your writing which gives me pleasure." He adds regretfully to Christine: "I cannot send you a m.u.f.f this year but perhaps I may do so next year." The letter closes with a modest list of purchases to be sent out from Edinburgh for Malbaie: "one piece of Calico for two gowns; one piece of calico for children; three pieces of linen (for s.h.i.+rts), two of which coa.r.s.e and the other a little finer; one yard of cambrick; five yards of muslin (for caps and Handkerchiefs); six yards of lace (for caps); twelve yards of different ribbons, three pairs of worsted stockings and three pairs of cotton stockings for myself."

Jack was to follow a military career, and he entered the army when a youth of sixteen or seventeen. His first active service was in the West Indies, after war with revolutionary France broke out, and the dangers of that climate gave his father some anxiety; all will be well, he hopes, if Jack continues to take a certain "powder of the Jesuits'

Bark"; above all "the best rules are temperance and sobriety"; then "the same gracious Power who protected me in many dangers through the course of three Wars will also vouchsafe protection to you through this one."

In 1795, when Jack was only eighteen, his corps was back in England and, through the influence of a distant relative, General Graeme, with the Duke of York, Commander in Chief of the Army and all powerful in days when promotion went avowedly by favour and purchase rather than by merit, Jack secured a Lieutenancy in the 19th Regiment. His father was delighted: "I wish you much joy with all my heart of your quick rise in being at your age already a Lieutenant in an old Regiment whereas I was past twenty-six years of age before I obtained a Lieutenancy in the British service and that only in a young corps." At the time, with Britain warring on the French Directory, service in Europe for Jack was not unlikely, and was desired by Nairne. But in the end Jack's regiment was ordered to India. Nairne was sorely disappointed, but writing to Jack he laid down a great guiding principle: "we must suppose that Providence orders everything aright and that, provided we are always active and diligent in doing our duty, there is reason to be satisfied."

In view of what was to happen, his anxiety for the success of his son is pathetic. He exhorts him in regard to every detail of conduct. He is to avoid drink and gambling; to pay his accounts promptly; to be punctual and scrupulously exact whenever duty or business is concerned. The father is particularly anxious about his son's capacity to express himself in good English and lays down the sound maxim that "writing a correct and easy style is undoubtedly of all education the most necessary and requisite." To acquire this he "ought to write and read a great deal with intense labour, attention and application"; to write several hours a day is not too much and to get time he must go to bed early and rise early. It is wise to keep a grammar and dictionary always at hand to correct possible errors. He should also translate from French into English. The father himself undertakes the duty of the complete letter writer, drawing up for Jack a model on which his letters may be based. "In writing ordinary letters (as in conversation) a large scope may be taken, as of News, all sorts of information, adventures, descriptions, remarks, enquirys, compliments, &c., &c., but in a letter upon business one is commonly confined only to what is necessary to be said on the subject and to civilitys and politeness." Certainly Jack did not lack admonition and when he does well his father writes that it makes him "very happy." When in one letter Jack mentions the practise of smoking his father is severe: "All our family have ever been temperate not [practising] even the Debauchery of smoking tobacco, a nasty Dutch, d.a.m.n'd custom, a forerunner of idleness and drunkenness; therefore Jack, my lad, let us hear no more of your handling your Pipe, but handle well your fuzee, your sword, your pen and your Books."

Certainly the pictures sometimes drawn of the brutality, violent manners and ignorance of the British officer at this period find no confirmation in Nairne's monitions to his son, or in the account of his own military experience which dates from the mid-eighteenth century. He says to Jack: "Say your Prayers regularly to G.o.d Almighty and trust entirely to His Will and Pleasure for your own preservation.... If you should happen to be in an engagement attend to your men, encourage them to act with spirit in such a manner as most effectually to destroy their enemy's."[14] When Jack is a little too free in his demands for money the Colonel, writing on Nov. 22nd, 1795, tells him of his own experience:

I have done wrong in having given you so much money since you went into the Army which might have served you almost without any pay from the King and which by the bye I can little afford. You obtained it easily; for which reason I suppose you have spent it easily: you have no right to expect more than I had at your age yet you seem to regard twenty pounds as I would have done twenty s.h.i.+llings. But you must now understand that twenty pounds is a considerable sum to my circ.u.mstances they being straitened for the Rank and the family which I have to support; therefore I have to inform you that you are to draw no more Bills upon Mr. Ker nor upon me without first obtaining his or my consent in writing for so doing. It is no disgrace nor does it hurt the service (but quite the contrary) for every officer and soldier to live within the limits of the pay which Government has thought proper to allow them. They are thereby more led to temperance, to improve themselves by study, to mind their duty and how best to promote the service of their country. I served sixteen years as a subaltern officer in the army, made long sea voyages with the Regiment, furnished myself with sea stores, camp equipage and every other necessary equipments [and] my Father nor any Relation during that time was never [put to] one farthing's expense upon my account.

Altho' I sometimes lost money in the Recruiting service I repayed it by stoppages from my pay, was always present with the men whether in camp or in Garrison and punctually attending on my Duty.

I endeavoured to be in a good mess for my Dinner, drank small Beer or Water when it was good; when the Water was bad qualified it with a mixture of Wine or Ginger or Milk or Vinegar but no grog or smoking tobacco. I was always an enemy to suppers, never engaged myself in the Evenings, but on particular occasions or to be Complaisant to Strangers. Nor [did I] ask Company to see me when on Guard; nor show a Vanity to treat people. By which means I had a great deal of quiet and sober time to myself, to read and to write, &c., &c., especially as I always rose early in the Mornings. You may believe also that I was always far from being concerned in any sort of Gaming so as to risk losing any of my money or to have a desire to gain any from others. By such a Conduct I received more favour and regard sometimes from my Commanding officers even than I thought I was ent.i.tled to.

These monitions to Jack were written while his father was in Scotland in 1795. There they separated, the father to return to Canada with Christine whose schooldays were now ended, Jack to go with his regiment to India. In parting from his son the father p.r.o.nounced a solemn benediction: "that G.o.d may preserve you and a.s.sist you in following always that which is good and virtuous shall ever be my most earnest prayer." They never met again. Jack continued to draw rather freely upon his father for funds, and Nairne wrote to the Colonel of the regiment to ask for information about the young man. Before an answer came Scottish relatives learned in 1800 of Jack's fate and wrote of it to Murray Bay.