A GREETING TO THE R.S.C. AND C.H.A.

 

The Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, now celebrating its Centennial year, welcomes the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Historical Association with this little summary of those first, or last, or only things which have combined of make Quebec unique, not merely in the Province, the Dominion, or even the Empire itself, but, on several great occasions, in the world. Designed for the personal use of Fellows, Members, and their friends, this paper claims no other real distinction except that which it must derive from being addressed to such an audience of the fit, though few. But, strange to say, it also seems to enjoy the distinction of being the sole attempt that has ever been made to select, arrange, and incidentally explain what really is unique in this old City of Quebec—to the complete exclusion of everything, however important, that is not unique.

 

We all know the proverbial tourist so aptly satirised by C.S.C.

 

Round go the paddle wheels;

And now the tourist feels

As he should.

 

Well, average tourists are still the same; except, indeed, that, since ultra-modern tourists revel in a rapidity of locomotion unknown to C.S.C, they get an even more gloriously blurred impression of all they hurry past, but never really see, feel, know, or understand. For these the usual guidebook is simply forced to provide the usual fare, cut off into lengths suitable for purchasers and super-abundantly sweetened to taste. Moreover, it supplies the most appropriate kind of ready-made criticism, by carefully mentioning the supposed market value of everything civilised enough to be worth special mention in the language of dollars and cents.

 

But Quebec has other visitors: "the fit, though few" that really do see, and feel, and know, and even understand; the fit though few that reap the harvest of a quiet eye among those many scenes of "Nature's old felicities" which throne and which encircle this New-World queen of stronghold cities; the fit though few that also can appreciate what man has done to make her quite unique.

 

For these her story is, of course, an open book —or, at least, a book they all know how to open and to read. Therefore I do not presume to attempt even the most condensed epitome of Quebec's long and very complex story here. The humbler purpose of my little paper is simply to put before you a convenient little catalogue of those few compelling facts which have made Quebec unique in French, British, Canadian, American, and even world-wide history. Most of these facts belong to the past. But some are still so full of life that they are bound to be prime factors in more than one great problem of the future.

 

Needless, I hope, to say that, since even catalogues of barest facts may suffer from perversion, I try to compile this little one in the spirit of an impartial historian who takes an interest in all sides. Needful, however, to repeat that "unique" here means whatever is either the first, or the last, or the only thing of its kind in at least the history of Canada. Perhaps my net has taken some small fry. Yet there must be something well worth while in any comprehensive haul made out of such a teeming sea; for I fish the Province, as well as the City, whenever the subject seems to warrant it. Therefore I venture to lay it all before you now, conveniently sorted into the following five lots: I. FORERUNNERS OF THE R.S.C., II. CHURCH. III. STATE. IV. WAR. V. MISCELLANEOUS.

 

I. FORERUNNERS OF THE R.S.C.

This may well seem an unduly grandiose title; and one that should not, in any case, be applied to a mere city, or even a province, in connection with our Royal Society, which draws its life from the whole Dominion. And I of course admit that Quebec may be provincial, and provincial-minded too, as well as proudly Provincial, with a capital P, and a glorious history of her own. But our present theme is not concerned with the common human failings that all communities must have, nor with the special petty failings that every small community must develop in its own small way; while it is concerned with all those first, or last, or only things which have somehow made Quebec unique during certain curious phases of her intellectual life.

 

And might I kindly be excused for adding that there is one Provincial venture in the intellectual life of present-day Quebec which the Province hopes will never be unique ? This venture is the official establishment of substantial money prizes for works of special merit produced by its own Provincials. In this connection I should likewise add that works in English are offered a rather higher proportion of these prizes than a meticulous anxiety for "Rep-by-Pop" would warrant. Thus, when I talk of our "five centuries" you will perhaps admit the present one, on sufferance, with the rest.

 

Our Royal Society still has some years to live before it celebrates its jubilee. But the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec was founded more than one whole century ago; and, though it is the senior learned society in the whole of the British Empire overseas, yet the junior of its own forerunners in Quebec was older than the R.S.C. is now when the "Lit." itself was born. Nor is this all. There was a learned society in Quebec under the French régime; and one, moreover, that was trying to do then very much the same sort of work that our own scientific sections are doing now. This third and last of our regularly organized forerunners would, if still alive, be more than four times as old as our own forty-two years of age.

 

But if we reckon, as perhaps we may, two very remarkable sets of men as being also true forerunners of those who live the intellectual life to-day, though neither set was organized into any kind of society such as the R.S.C, then our Quebec forerunners can be traced back, fourthly, to those leaders of New France who, like Frontenac, knew the intellectual life of Old France two centuries and a half ago, and, fifthly, to those still earlier leaders, like Champlain and the Jesuits, who, on either side of just three centuries ago, wrote books, which, had we then existed, would certainly have qualified their authors for election to the R.S.C.

 

Let me now submit a few justifying details to prove Quebec unique on every one of these five counts.

 

(1). The Literary and Historical Society of Quebec (commonly called the "Lit.") was founded on the 6th of January, 1824, by Lord Dalhousie, the then Governor-in-chief, who, in the previous year, had asked both French- and English-speaking leaders "to join efforts with me in the formation of a Society, not entirely 'Antiquarian' but Historical rather and Canadian…Why should not we attempt something…likely to prove interesting to our country when our time has passed away ?...Our meetings may embrace Literature, Science, Education…Our hall of meeting shall be in one of the rooms of the old Château until a better can be found". Dalhousie's own subscription was four hundred dollars a year. The Society also "experienced the liberality of the Provincial Legislature", off and on, down to the end of the nineteenth century, chiefly on the understanding that the money should be spent on the publication of appropriate archives. Another society "for the encouragement of Arts and Sciences in Canada" was subsequently founded. But in 1829 this was amalgamated with the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, which, two years later, was granted a Royal Charter by King William IV. In the present century, after the complete cessation of all grants from Government, a small endowment, totalling under twenty thousand dollars, was raised. Over three-fourths of this was due to the generosity of Dr. James Douglas, a former President. For the rest, the Society depends upon its two hundred and fifty members at only five dollars a year, and on the excellent free quarters provided by the Corporation of Morrin College, whose own building, now no longer used as a college, was once the jail of Quebec, where public executions took place till 1864.

 

The Society has always comprised members of both races, and it has published many documents in both languages. Most of its members, however, have always belonged to the very small English-speaking population of Quebec. The Centenary Volume, to be published during the present year, will be the fiftieth produced by the wholly unpaid labour of those members who do the editorial work. The present value of some, at least, among these fifty volumes may be judged from the fact that, in spite of the progress of modern research, the purely Archival Index to their contents comprises more than three thousand references copied verbatim from the card-index entries made for the Quebec Provincial Archives. Every single item that was found to be imperfect in itself, or to have been superseded by better editions elsewhere, was entirely omitted, except for the significant entry: Of no archival importance. So, when we also remember that this index was finished only one year ago, we can see how the Society's work for one hundred years has stood the test of time.

 

The library of the "Lit." contains about fifty thousand volumes. These are rather miscellaneous on the whole, ranging from bluebooks and learned exchanges to at least some of the current season's froth. But the really good authors (good fiction included) both living and dead, are duly represented; while the rare works on Canada, with a few of other kinds, make a quite goodly collection of their own. Some fine volumes in the Aylwin department upstairs date back to the sixteenth century. Among those of the early seventeenth is a long array of folios containing the Lords' and Commons' Journals, partly in manuscript; while the Imperial Parliamentary Debates, in seventy volumes, range from 1660 to 1830. Of more local interest are the Land Warrants (1764-67) in the only official copy known; the original manuscript copy of the Rôle General de la Milice Canadienne who were reviewed at Quebec on the 11th of September, 1775, when Montgomery and Arnold were invading the Province ; and the original journal kept by James Thompson, who was a Highland volunteer under Wolfe, who was Overseer of Works when Carleton fortified Quebec, and who, living to well-nigh a hundred, also knew Dalhousie. Here, too, are the original minutes of the Agricultural Society of Quebec in 1789; also a fairly complete set of The Quebec Gazette, which, founded in 1764 and still appearing as the Chronicle, is by far the oldest paper in the whole of Canada. Perhaps the most valuable single item is the quite perfect L’Affaire du Canada, which contains all the documents connected with the trial of the infamous Intendant Bigot and his infamous associates. These five volumes, partly in manuscript, are certainly the only complete collection in all America. Whether France has such a complete original record is not at present known.

 

The "Lit." was obliged to give up its natural history museum for want of room. But it still has a few objects of a different kind that are, in their way, unique:—for instance, the handle of the first printing press in Quebec and Canada; also the whole of the last pillory used in connection with the jail ; also Sir Georges Cartier's desk, at which many Confederation matters were arranged; and fourthly, the builder's model, as well as the original picture, of the Royal William, a Quebec-built vessel, which, being doubly unique in the history of the whole world, must be more fully described under another heading. Finally, as every historical collection in Quebec has some souvenirs of war, those at the "Lit.", though few, are worthy of some special note, because they range from a piece of the vessel from which Wolfe directed his attack against the heights near Montmorency to the original Canadian model made for actual use in the great attack on Vimy Ridge. Perhaps, too, the "Lit." may well be pardoned for the pride it takes in knowing that, throughout the whole century of its existence, there has never been a British war in which some members have not borne their part, and that no less than three of the six senior fighting Generals of the whole Canadian army at the end of the Great World War were also members of the "Lit." These were Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Turner, Major-General Sir David Watson, and Major-General Sir Henry Burstall.

 

(2). Our second, and older, R.S.C. forerunner was the Quebec Library Association, which was founded in 1779 and amalgamated with the "Lit." in 1838, to the great advantage of all concerned on both sides.

 

(3). The third, and still older, Quebec forerunner of the R.S.C. was the Académie des Sciences formed by the Comte de la Galissonnière, who was devoted to the study of all that then went under the name of natural history. During his too short administration of New France (1747-49) he fostered collection and research by every means in his power. Under his most stimulating patronage Canon Gosselin sent a regular herbarium to Paris, Dr. Lacroix sent seeds and metals, including some Lake Superior copper, Father Lafiteau found the Canadian variety of ginseng, Dr. Gaulthier gave his own name to winter green, and Dr. Sarrazin sent to the parent Académie des Sciences a valuable series of notes on many of the most important Canadian mammals. Altogether, we might well surmise that La Galissonnière would have been persona gratissima with every Fellow of the R.S.C, and with its scientific sections most of all.

 

Here perhaps it may be excusable to say that the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec might well claim a modest share in the national honour of establishing a famous service to which so many members of our scientific sections have always belonged — no less than the Geological Survey of Canada; for it was on the consideration of a petition from this Society to the Government in 1841 that Parliament voted fifteen hundred pounds, Halifax currency, to make the first official survey of all the natural resources to be found in both the Canadas. Members of the present Survey may smile at the disproportion between the little means afforded and the vast ends sought. But the embryo was there.

 

And would it be permissible to add that the "Lit" was at least partly responsible for the founding of the Historic Landmarks Association, in connection with the Quebec Tercentenary of 1908 ; and that it may thus claim a grandpaternal interest in the Canadian Historical Association, which is the offspring of the H.L.A. ?

 

(4). You will remember that I promised you a forerunner of more than two centuries and a half ago. But I also warned you that this forerunner would not be any kind of regularly organized association. It consisted, in fact, of only the few congenial spirits that gathered round Frontenac at the Château St. Louis. Of course there were a few individuals outside this circle who might have had at least equal claims to sharing the intellectual life of that time; and there was at least an equally brilliant little social circle round Tracy and Courcelle some years before. But Frontenac's circle, and more especially Frontenac himself, come nearest to forming a coterie having some direct relations with the arts and sciences of France. The usual histories treat Frontenac only as a soldier-statesman; and when they mention his intellectual tastes at all it is only because these tastes helped to intensify his quarrels with the Church. They may mention that he had a little private theatre set up in the Château, where something like garrison theatricals amused his little social world on winter evenings. They sometimes quote Bishop Saint-Vallier's denunciation of a certain class of comedies: absolument mauvaises et criminelles d'elles-mêmes, comme pourrait être la comédie de Tartuffe. And they generally put in the usual tag about les Divines, because Saint-Simon and Madame de Se vigne supply ready-made references to les Divines, and because one of the two Divines, la comtesse de Frontenac, lived apart from her husband, and so gives scope for the usual wonderings why.

 

But less emphasis is laid, if laid at all, on the fact that the comtesse de Frontenac and Mdlle. d'Outrelaise were in fairly close touch with the best intellectual, as well as the best social, life of Paris; and hardly any reference is ever made to the far more cogent fact that Frontenac himself was far more intimately connected with the intellectual life than were both of these Divines together. Not only could he turn a set of apposite French verses as well as all except the very best of courtly poets but he was the most intimate habitué in the very intellectual circle that gathered round his favourite sister's husband, the Seigneur de Mont-mort, a true Mæcenas of the most enlightened kind. Montmort was one of the original forty who formed the French Academy. It was at his house that Molière first read Le Tartufe. There too were first discussed, from inside personal knowledge, many another work of literature that has since become a classic. Nor was this all. Montmort took an equally deep interest in the fine arts and in science. His friendship with Gassendi is well known. And was again at his famous house that Colbert chose the original members of the first Academy of Sciences. On the whole, I feel quite sure that Frontenac might well have been an F.R.S.C., as well as our official patron; and I incline to think that each one of our five sections would have found him a really kindred spirit.

 

(5). Here, with our first non-organized forerunners, I might stop. But perhaps it is at least excusable to mention Champlain and the authors of the Jesuit Relations, thus carrying back the intellectual life of Quebec to over three hundred years. Of course the Jesuits were not the first educated men who landed at Quebec; for the devoted Récollets preceded them; Champlain preceded the Récollets; and Jacques-Cartier preceded Champlain. Equally of course, the Jesuits were not professed exponents of the intellectual life, in the strictly modern sense, at all. They came as missionaries. They taught as priests. And what they wrote was propaganda. But, incidentally, they were indirect historians, occasionally writing with a genuine literary touch. Some of them would have been very welcome in our Section I, with the full approval of our Section II; while (considering time, place, people, and restricted opportunities) their knowledge of mathematics, physics, and chemistry was not unlike an early-seventeenth-century equivalent of what is now more fully known to Section III ; their remarks on geology and mineralogy bring them, with the same limitations, into touch with Section IV; and, even though with greater limitations still, their notes on natural history give them some kinship with our Section V.

 

Finally, Champlain and Jacques Cartier. We are not accustomed to regard Jacques Cartier as the first Canadian author. But that is what he was; and, within his self-appointed limits, a very good first author too. His admirably clear and vivid descriptions bring him fairly near to the very few authors who have written books of travel that are also works of literature; while his hydrographie notes (difference of period and of opportunities duly considered) are fully equal to those made by the greatest naval experts of the present day.

 

Jacques Cartier takes us back to a (shall I say posthumous?) F.R.S.C. of nearly four centuries ago; and he, please remember, would have also been a Fellow from unique Quebec, his domicile in Canada. Champlain of course is likewise a posthumous F.R.S.C; but likewise not, emphatically not, Honoris Causa; for he, more even than Jacques Cartier, would have been entirely eligible from his books alone. We all remember him as the founder of Quebec, New France, and Canada. But this should not obscure his other merits. We are apt to forget, some even never know, that he was a Captain in the Royal Navy of the north of France and a highly skilled hydrographer. We are also apt to give him less than his intellectual due as the author of books which happily combine the exact knowledge of the professional seaman and trained explorer with the exalting prevision of a pioneering coloniser and founder of a state. May I also remind you that he was the first to recommend the cutting of a Panama Canal ?

 

In this brief glance at our forerunners I speak —as I speak all through this little paper—under correction from those whose knowledge is better than mine. But I venture to think that Quebec is quite unique in being the only place in Canada, and probably the only place throughout the whole New World, where authors whose works are still alive have spent at least some pregnant part of their careers in five successive centuries—from Jacques Cartier's to our own.

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II. CHURCH

 

(1). The celebrated Quebec Act of 1774 created a situation which is still apparently unique in the whole world's history of church and state. Everybody knows what established churches are, and disestablished churches, and non-established churches too. We also know that an inevitable result of church establishment is some kind of directly responsible contact with the civil power. Every established church that ever has existed, or that exists to-day, has had, in one way or another, to reckon with the worldly powers of the state— either with an autocrat, or with an oligarchy, with a parliament, or perhaps with revolution. But here, in this Province of Quebec, is apparently the only church in history, which, though not established, is specifically recognized, and in such a way as practically to give it nearly all the rights and privileges of an established church, but—and here's the unique effect—none of the direct responsibilities. There are, of course, indirect responsibilities and many points of contact with the civil power. But, for a century and a half (1774-1924) there have been no real church-and-state debates in any parliament: none in the Provincial Houses, none in those of the Dominion, none even in those Imperial Houses from which this Act originally came.

 

There is some need of definition here, lest there should be misunderstandings. The Roman Catholic Church is one throughout the world. There are other than French-Canadian Roman Catholics in Quebec. And other forms of religion in Quebec enjoy similar tax-exemptions on property used in similar ways. Moreover, the whole question is so complex, when all its varied implications are involved, that these few sentences may seem absurd to those who know how many books might well be filled with facts and explanations. But, since the peculiar historical interest of the Quebec Act, coupled with its present-day effects, is only to be found, from first to last, among the French-Canadians, I am obliged to isolate them here, from the other children of their Church, in order to point the moral of my tale—which tale and moral are greatly to the honour of their Church.

 

For consider what the privileged position of this Church has been within this Province during the last three hundred years. Three hundred years ago exactly the Jesuits in France first heard the call sent to them by the Récollets in Canada. How well that call was answered is known to everyone. Presently Richelieu made up his unifying mind— more for the safety of the state than of the church—that New France should be free from all weakening differences among her own population. So he decreed that only good Catholics should be allowed to trade or settle there. Thenceforth French Canada was Roman Catholic, almost to a man. Then, two hundred and fifty years ago exactly, New France also became what French-Canadians are to-day— extremely Ultramontane. Even the rising glories of le Roi Soleil and all the Gallican tendencies of France herself could not prevail to have the first Bishop of Quebec placed under the Archbishopric of Rouen. The question had, indeed, been settled in 1659, when Laval had arrived at Quebec as Vicaire Apostolique and Bishop of Petrœa in partibus infidelium. This arrival meant that the Sulpician Abbé Queylus (who had been the Archbishop's Canadian Vicar-General for the last two years) was soon and completely superseded by Laval. Laval and the Ultramontane Jesuits looked straight to Rome; and there they found the jurisdiction they desired — straight from the Pope himself. Finally, one hundred and fifty years ago exactly, the Quebec Act made the Church of Rome unique within the Province by confirming its civil rights, without, however, subjecting it to the direct accountabilities which all established churches have always had to face elsewhere.

 

I repeat that this great question cannot be compressed within a few short paragraphs; and I again warn my readers that my own formula — "rights without responsibilities"—is wholly misleading without much fuller explanation than can be given here. But, because the French-Canadian part of the Church in the Province of Quebec was recognized without being established, and because it received the confirmation of its civil rights without being pro tanto subjected to the usual parliamentary questions and debates, it has, for a hundred and fifty British years, enjoyed what, with all proper qualifying explanations, may, in a governmental sense, be almost called "rights without responsibilities". This unique position would have been the sure undoing of most political institutions, and of many ecclesiastical institutions too. Therefore these two mere facts, first, that this privileged church should have satisfied most legitimate demands for three whole centuries —half British and half French—and, secondly, satisfied these demands so well that no repealing Act has even been debated—these two mere facts are proof that this uniquely privileged Church has used, but not abused, its quite peculiar powers.

 

(2). Visitors to the City and Province of Quebec cannot fail to notice that many public services of a more or less eleemosynary origin are still entirely carried on by the Roman Catholic Church, in contradistinction to the purely lay management usually found elsewhere. Indeed, with regard to sum totals, the City and Province might well be called unique in the vast number of schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages, asylums, and other institutions which are ecclesiastically managed. The modern differentiation which confines most "religious", qua "religious," to purely religious functions does not yet obtain here. French-Canadian Quebec, however much developed in some ways and modified in others, is still true to her own Church type in this respect. And here it is only fair to add that many P.Q. tax-exemptions in favour of the R.C. French-Canadian Church are in reality no more, and generally less, than what the state would have to pay for such public services in any other case.

 

(3). Quebec Church archives may claim to be unique, more especially if the Jesuit Relations are included, as they may well be; for there are several early years of which hardly any other archives exist. Quebec, we must remember, was for more than a century the only R. C. bishopric in either French- or English-speaking America; so everything that required episcopal action had to be referred to Quebec till 1786, when John Carroll became Vicar-General of Baltimore. If, for instance, a researcher wished to find the original evidence for some parochial affair at New Orleans in 1783, the year that George III acknowledged Independence, then this evidence could only be found at the Archbishop's Palace at Quebec, if it had ever involved episcopal action. Still more remarkable is the fact that the episcopal archives of all the American Western Posts held by the British till Jay's Treaty had been put into operation by both sides are still to be found in the same Palace, whither they originally went till 1796, or twenty years after Independence had been signed. Detroit, for instance, though French, British, and American, all within the eighteenth century, reported its parochial matters to Quebec for ninety-six of these first hundred years. Of course New Orleans was Spanish from 1762 to 1800, and Detroit was in occupied territory from 1783 to 1796. But these two facts, especially the first, rather increase the interest of the Quebec location of their archives.

 

(4). Three years later, in 1799, we find Mgr. Plessis, the French-Canadian Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec, preaching a sermon and issuing a mandement of thanksgiving for Nelson's victory over the French fleet at the Nile. This prelate gratefully acknowledged what the Canadian part of his Church owed to the just laws and the protecting arms of Britain against what he regarded as an apostate and regicide France. Bishop Plessis, whose sermon is still worth reading, was among the foremost Canadian patriots in the War of 1812, knowing, as he did, that the peculiar position of his Church could never be maintained outside the British Empire.

 

(5). The first nuns, first female teachers, and first nurses who ever came to Canada were the three Ursulines and three Hospitalières who arrived at Quebec in 1639. The Quebec Ursulines and Quebec Hospitalières are also the only nuns in the whole New World who have been through four sieges and have nursed the sick and wounded of all the warring peoples that have contended for the possession of Quebec (which of course meant Canada as well) — Indians, French, British, and Americans.

 

(6). Quebec has suffered from many disastrous fires. But the Hôpital-Général has always escaped ; and here you still may see a perfectly intact specimen of seventeenth-century French-Canadian architecture, in that part of the building which includes the belfry. From this date, 1671, down to the present day the structural history of Quebec may be followed up in stone. This senior of all Canadian hospitals does not, however, possess the oldest of all Canadian buildings still intact; for the Jesuit Mission House at Sillery, a few miles above the city, dates from 1637.

 

(7). The Ursulines are the only nuns in Canada whose building was actually turned into a fort. This was in 1660, when the Iroquois seemed determined to make a bloody end of all New France. Eighty men and twelve trained war-dogs garrisoned the convent, where every able-bodied nun was also told off to active duty. The Superior, the celebrated Mère Marie de l'Incarnation, took the most dangerous of all — the supply of ammunition to the men in action. The Ursulines, again, are the only community in New France which ever had a daughter of the New England Puritans as their Superior. Esther Wheelwright, great-granddaughter of the Reverend John Wheelwright, was taken by Indians at Wells in 1703, ransomed in 1708 by Vaudreuil (père) Governor-General, and elected Superior in 1761. The Ursuline chapel has by far the oldest votive lamp in Canada, the one first lit in 1717 by Marie Madeleine de Repentigny in memory of her dead affianced lover. In the present century the maternal members of her family in France have placed a new, and beautifully jewelled, lamp in this Chapel, and, having lighted it from the old lamp, have thereby endowed the Ursulines with another unique souvenir; for nowhere else in the whole New World are two votive lamps burning together in the same romantic way. But even these lamps are eclipsed by another double souvenir; for this one is unique both in the Old World and the New. No other place of worship in the world contains such personal souvenirs of the opposing commanders in a world-famous battle. In the Ursuline Chapel you may see on one side the tomb of Montcalm, while facing it is the pulpit from which the Chaplain of the British flagship Neptune preached the "mourning" sermon in memory of Wolfe.

 

(8). Quebec naturally has the oldest street in Canada, the little rue de Notre-Dame in Lower-Town, leading to where the first of all parish churches stood in 1615.

 

(9). The see of Quebec is incomparably senior to all others. Founded in 1674 it is 115 years older than the first R.C. bishopric in the United States (Carroll, at Baltimore, in 1789). It is also 119 years older than the Anglican see of Quebec (1793) which itself is very little junior to the first in Canada (Nova Scotia, 1787) and to the first Protestant Episcopal in the U.S. (Connecticut, 1784).

 

(10). The Quebec Basilica is by far the oldest Cathedral in French- or English-speaking America; and it possesses vestments and vessels which, as royal gifts from Louis XIV, are quite unmatched in Canada (and, of course, the United States). More than a century later (1800-1804) George III gave a complete set of communion plate to the Anglican Cathedral, which also has the only Royal Pew throughout the whole New World.

 

(11). Quebec has what is probably the only school in the world that has ever been founded in the middle of an earthquake season — le Séminaire Laval (1663).

 

(12). Finally, Quebec is next door to the great transatlantic Lourdes, where, before the shrine of la Bonne Sainte-Anne, pilgrims gather from all north-eastern North America in such numbers that, if the whole of London were to visit an English shrine, this concourse would not outnumber, in proportion, the Provincial French-Canadian pilgrims at Ste. Anne.

 

III. STATE

 

Here I shall be very brief, because everybody who is anybody knows the main political history of Quebec when she was the capital of Canada. But a few points seem worth emphasizing, however well they may be known to the elect.

 

(1). The real French constitution of Canada dates, not from the time of Champlain, but from that of Roberval, whose commission was granted by Francis I on the 15th of January, 1540. By this commission the whole political system of France was applied to Canada through the powers conferred on the King's "Lieutenant-Général," who thus became a very "potent, grave, and reverend seignior" indeed. His wretched colony, partly stocked with jail-birds, failed miserably enough; and one whole century and a quarter more elapsed before the arrival of the Marquis de Tracy made the foundations of New France at all secure. But the constitution of 1540 persisted still — feudal tenure, rights, and very searching duties, all included. There were revocations; but none that affected rights which had not been abused. Grants were simply reissued to previous good holders, as to Louis Hébert, who received the seigniory of Sault-au-Matelot in 1623. With the usual modifications of all constitutions this original one persisted through the time of the chartered company of One Hundred Associates, through that of the Royal Province of New France, on to the cession of 1763, through the Quebec Act of 1774, and even through the commutations and other changes effected in seignorial tenure eighty years later — down, in short, to the present day ; for seignorial tenure still survives in a greatly modified, but quite constitutional, form. Quebec is thus unique throughout the world in maintaining an integral part of a French constitution granted by the King who shone resplendent at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

 

(2). Now let us reverse the process, beginning with any P.Q. lawyer of the present day who chooses to quote the Coutume de Paris. This takes us back, through Confederation in the nineteenth century, to the Quebec Act of the eighteenth, thence to the time when Canada was a Province of centralised France in the seventeenth, and thence again to the time when, in the sixteenth century, France was just beginning to become a centralised monarchy, and the Coutume de Paris, as a great centralising force in helping to unify the laws, was beginning to gain ground at the expense of all the various local coutumes.

 

(3). The Habitant was the colonist, in sharp distinction from the coureur de bois, who was trader, trapper, and haunter of the wilds. Quebec had the first of all habitants, in the person of Louis Hébert, who began farming on the heights of Quebec just 250 years before Confederation. Six years later (1623) he was granted the first of all seigniories. But the mere bush lot of Sault-au-Matelot never grew into anything like a real seigniory; and Hébert died a virtual habitant, if also a titular seigneur. How well the early Habitants became rooted in the soil, and how well their stock has flourished in the selfsame soil from that time till our own, may perhaps be understood by looking through the official list compiled in 1908, the year of Tercentennial Quebec. This list (surely unique in all America) enumerates no less than 206 families who still occupy the same lands that were first farmed by their own ancestors during the seventeenth century.

 

(4). The first real seignior was Robert Giffard, who did homage for his fief of Beauport to Champlain's lieutenant, Bras de Fer du Châteaufort, at Quebec on New Year's Eve, 1635. Entering without sword or spur, he made obeisance, swore fealty, and was invested with his seigniory. Then, spurred and sworded, he went forth, ready to serve New France as coloniser in time of peace and commander of the local levies during war. Time, and place, and people all considered, the seigniorial system worked well enough throughout the French régime. The changed conditions and the changing personnel that followed the conquest made it grow increasingly anachronistic till 1854, when, again at Quebec, it was so changed by antagonistic legislation and by new commutations as to become but the simulacrum of its former self. Still, as a quite legal simulacrum, it exists to-day — the last vestige of the feudal age throughout the whole New World.

 

(5). Population, that is, French-Canadian population, from the strictly scientific point of view, presents a fact and factor that are unique in Canada, as well as being of peculiar interest among the population problems of the world at large. This French-Canadian problem is not an easy one to state, from lack of precise and accesible statistics. For though the parish registers have been admirably kept, though immigrants were well reported, and though works on genealogies abound, yet no one seems to have approached this literally and figuratively vital question from the purely scientific point of view. What we need to know is the exact number of immigrating males and females who became the actual ancestors of the nearly three million French-Canadians of the present day. We must also know the dates at which these ancestors arrived. The greatest immigration was about 250 years ago. The total number of ancestral immigrants has never, so far as I know, been determined. Some place it below 20,000 ; others above. But, in any case, the French Canadians, by natural increase in Canada alone, have multiplied at least one hundred times over within two hundred years: that is, fifty times over within a century, or five times over within each decade, or no less than twice in every two years. This fifty-per-cent-per-annum increase, by means of births alone, is certainly unique in all America.

 

(6). In this twentieth century, when Canadian ambassadors are so much discussed in Ottawa, we might remember that Father Druillettes, a properly accredited Canadian envoy, went from Quebec to Boston in the seventeenth. New England and New France discussed their differences amicably, Druillettes being entertained by General Gibbons and courteously received by Governor Dudley, Governor Bradford, and many other leaders. But the United Colonies of New England next year (1651) declined the proferred reciprocity, at the expense of war against the Iroquois; and New France bethought her of the potential enemy that New England might become — an enemy with already ten times the population of New France.

 

(7). The Quebec Act of 1774 was unique in the Imperial legislation of its age, unique (as we have seen already) in its privilege-recognition of the French-Canadian Church, and unique in its territorial dispensations most of all. What are now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan (and, of course, Ontario) thenceforth formed part of the Province of Quebec till the Peace of 1783. These unique nine P.Q. years deserve a special monograph from the administrative point of view. They have already received plenty of virulent, and lately some quite impartial, attention among those who know the Quebec Act only as one of the "Intolerable Five" which fanned the flame of revolution.

 

(8). The City of Quebec is unique in having been the home of an abortive oversea French pseudo-Parlement in the seventeenth century. Frontenac, shortly after his arrival in 1672, summoned no less than a Canadian imitation of the French States-General. The three Estates of the Province were there — to the number of nearly a thousand, as optimistic Frontenac surmised. He first made a counterpart of the Speech from the Throne and then exacted the oath from every member of the three Estates — Clergy, Nobles, and Bourgeoisie. But his enthusiastic report met with a chilling response from autocratic Louis, in the form of a dispatch from Colbert: "Since our Kings, for a long time past, have thought it inadvisable to summon the States-General in France, you should seldom, or, to be more precise, never, assemble the people of Canada together in that way."

 

(9). The first oversea British parliament that ever assembled at the call of a Governor-General was also unique in being mainly French by language. (The fact that Carleton was absent, and that Alured Clarke acted for him, makes no difference). All previous oversea legislatures of all kinds had been those of mere provinces or individual colonies of a purely provincial kind — as, indeed, this Parliament of Lower Canada itself was, in a territorial sense. But the Governor-General, qua Governor-General, assembled it; while the Parliament of Upper Canada (though not more essentially provincial in other ways) assembled at the call of its purely local Lieutenant-Governor. Both met in 1792.

 

(10). The basic instinct of every form of life —from plants to politics — is sheer self-preservation; and self-preservation comes home most nearly to fundamentally differentiated minorities when brought into growing contact with environmental forces which have great assimilating powers. Therefore the very day the French Canadians found themselves in Parliament they inevitably began evolving a policy which, with all its adaptations, naturally centres in the basic instinct of preserving that quadrunion of race, religion, language, and laws which seems best fitted to stand four-square against the assimilating forces of the Canadian and American environments. Of all French colonies beyond the seas French Canada alone remains, (that is, as a racial entity on a relatively large scale, though under a different régime.) France has again created an empire overseas; but this time not one which the French themselves can colonise to any great extent. The Americans have assimilated Louisiana out of its really French life altogether. P.Q. alone remains a quite distinctive entity, widely differentiated from the life of modern France, yet unassimilated by its vast North-American or closer Canadian environment. P.Q. is thus unique throughout both the Old World and the New. This uniqueness connotes extreme particularism in certain ways. But it also accounts for many a vivid interest and abiding charm which are themselves unique.

 

(11). I shall not add to my perhaps already too offensive statements of the obvious by descanting on the universally known fact that the Fathers of Confederation met in this City for the first time exactly sixty years ago.

 

(12). Nor shall I do more than mention the resultant fact of the Proclamation of the Dominion on the same historic spot — (that is, the open ground at the top of Mountain Hill, on your right as you come up) — the same spot that witnessed the meeting of the first Parliament in 1792, and that remained a Parliament ground, of different kinds, till 1883.

­­­­­­­

IV. WAR

 

"Unique" is fast becoming that very noisome thing, a tag, properer (not for sermons but) for advertisers, tub-thumping speechifiers, and others of the non-elect. Yet Quebec does happen to be what "tag-men" would delight to call "still more unique" in all concerning War than even in affairs of Church and State together. So, to avoid much strident repetition, let it here and now be said that the City of Quebec is quite unique, at least in Canada, in all things to be mentioned under War — that is to say, in the first, or last, or only things which happened to occur within or near her walls. Some of these happenings are also unique in all America; while others, again, are quite unique throughout the world.

 

For purposes of easy reference I group the various items under these five heads:—A. Wars, B. Garrisons, C. Fortifications, D. Miscellaneous, and E. (a mere P.S.) on the Misunderstandings about the infinitely hackneyed and quite misnomered Wolfe-and-Montcalm Campaign.

 

A. WARS. Quebec has been concerned in literally a dozen different wars.

 

(1). French and Indian wars, from Champlain's first expedition against the Iroquois in 1609 to Frontenac's last, in 1696. Quebec itself was the actual scene of Indian fighting for only a comparatively short time (e.g. in 1656, when the Iroquois killed out the Hurons on the Island of Orleans) yet it was the base on all occasions for all the forces, whether commanded by Champlain, Montmagny, Courcelle, La Barre, Denonville, or Frontenac.

 

(2). French and English met here first in 1629, when Champlain was forced to surrender owing to the hopeless dearth of men, munitions, and supplies. As usual, the determining influence of the sea-power which caused this hopeless dearth is slurred over in the usual histories or omitted altogether. There was a naval action (albeit on a microscopic scale) off the Saguenay in 1628, when the Kirkes defeated the tiny flotilla of four little armed vessels which were escorting eighteen little transports to Quebec under the gallant Claude de Roquemont.

 

(3). Courcelle's expedition against the Iroquois in 1666 led to the first and most dramatic Inland meeting between the French and English. The French, missing the Mohawk trail, suddenly, to their intense surprise, found themselves face to face with the English at Schenectady. They were looking for Mohawks. The only whites of whom they knew anything along the Hudson Valley were the Dutch. Yet here were the English, who, having supplanted the Dutch at New York eighteen months before, had now worked their way north straight toward the flank of New France. The two home governments were then at peace; so French and English parted with all the usual compliments; but not without most ominous forebodings on both sides.

 

Yet, for another generation, there was peace, till Frontenac's raids set the Colonial Americans to work on Pieter Schuyler's "Glorious Enterprize" of conquering New France by a double invasion, an inland army going up the line of the Hudson to Montreal, while a joint expedition ascended the St. Lawrence to Quebec. As we all know, this plan did not succeed till the time of Pitt, seventy years later. Meanwhile the French had their own strategic plans, all based on Quebec. Frontenac urged Louis XIV to get New York either by treaty or force, thus securing the most convenient ice-free port, driving a wedge through the country of the Iroquois, and cutting the English colonies in two. But the one chance of getting it by treaty, when Charles II was almost a pensioner of Louis XIV, was lost, and thenceforth sea-power became, as before and afterwards, the prime determinant in every war.

 

French strategy in America, still based upon Quebec, then aimed at the control of the three great gulfs, the three great rivers, and the five great lakes. Grandiose as this appears to us now, we must remember that France was then the first power in Europe and had a population far exceeding the population of Great Britain. Moreover, she did command the local areas of the three great gulfs toward the end of the seventeenth century, when Iberville commanded Hudson Bay, raided Newfoundland, and had no challenger in either the Gulf of St. Lawrence or of Mexico. The St. Lawrence, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers were also under French control, if under any, a little later on; while the five Great Lakes were practically free from all whites but the French.

 

The first combined invasion of New France by English-speaking forces was unique in being the only combined invasion ever attempted by the Colonial Americans alone (for the purely naval force at Louisbourg in 1745 was exclusively Imperial). Phipps's fleet and army were almost entirely composed of New England men and vessels; and the whole expedition reached Quebec without a ship, a penny, or a man, or even one official word, from the Home Government in London. Hopelessly mismanaged by its loquacious councils, and faced by Frontenac with the cleverly concentrated strength of New France, Phipps's armada retired beaten; whereupon the new church in Lower Town was called Notre-Dame-de-la-Victoire. In 1711 there was a second combined invasion; and this time an Imperial one, which, if properly led, Quebec could never have withstood. But the mulish Admiral, Sir Hovenden Walker, "kept it at North" till Egg Island, at the N.W. corner of the Gulf, was strewn with wrecked transports carrying a good number of the veteran soldiers who were completely miscommanded by that ass of a General, Jack Hill. The mule and ass then brayed together and went home; though the remaining force was still quite strong enough to take Quebec: where-upon the church's name was changed to des-Victoires.

 

(4). The only successful invasion was the famous one of 1759. This campaign, in spite of enough original evidence on both sides to settle all vexed questions, is still so much misrepresented as to be worth discussion in a little P.S., even before an audience of F.R.S.C.'s. (see under E, at the end of this section).

 

(5). Quebec, as the stronghold of New France, had now faced four different kinds of war: first, against the Indian frontier; then against English raiders from the sea; next against a combined invasion by Colonial Americans; and fourthly, against British combined invasions, by joint Imperial and Colonial forces, culminating in conquest, cession, and the change to the new régime, under which Quebec has been connected, in differing ways, with no less than eight other kinds of war.

 

The first of these other eight was the invasion by the American Revolutionists under Montgomery and Arnold in 1775-6. For that whole winter all Canada was practically under American control — all except Carleton's garrison inside the walls of Quebec. The double assault was defeated, Montgomery's at Près-de-Ville and Arnold's at the Sault-au-Matelot. (The sites of these two barricades were marked by bronze tablets some twenty years ago). Then up came a British fleet in May, and Canada was saved —as, indeed, she would have been, even if Quebec itself had fallen, so decisive has always been the influence of sea-power on the whole course of all our history.

 

(6). Two American invasions — one Colonial, the other Revolutionary — had now failed before Quebec. The third —that of the War of 1812 — never reached it at all. But Quebec was, of course, a prime American objective, as well as the local British stronghold, throughout the frontier operations; and the heroes of the two fights which are best known in their respective Provinces — Queenston in Ontario, Châteauguay in old Quebec — were both more than mere visitors to (or subordinates of headquarters at) Quebec. Brock had lived here, as Commandant, in the third house from the top of Fabrique Street; while De Salaberry was almost a Quebecker, the family seat being at Beauport, only a few miles off. De Salaberry and his brothers were officers in the Imperial Army; and his Voltigeurs were French-Canadian regulars — two points not usually stressed.

 

Another name connected with Quebec and 1812 is that of Wellington, who wrote a remarkably fine letter to Bathurst on hearing the news of Prevost's disgraceful defeat at Plattsburg. Though Canada was then little more than what is called a side-show, compared with Napoleonic Europe, and though Wellington was then the foremost figure among the Allies, yet, on the 14th of November, 1814, he wrote Bathurst the following confidential letter:—"I see that the Publick are very impatient about the want of success in America…I think that matters are in such an uncomfortable state here…that you could not spare me out of Europe…and I believe I should not be able to go to Quebec till April [i.e. two months before Waterloo]. If, however, in March next, you should think it expedient that I should go there, I beg that you will understand that I have no objection whatever. It will be for you to consider whether I can be most useful to you there, here, or elsewhere."

 

(7). Another, and much more unpleasant, kind of war managed from Quebec headquarters was the series of unhappy risings known as the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-8.

 

(8). Then, after the Trent Affair of 1861, came the Fenian Raids of 1866 and '70, forming another class apart.

 

(9). The Red River Expedition of 1870 was the last in which Imperial regulars and Canadian militia served together in Canada, the first in which either had gone west of the Great Lakes, and the last during which Headquarters were still at Quebec.

 

(10). (I do not forget the Papal Zouaves of 1870-1 or the Nile Voyageurs who rendezvoused at Quebec in 1884. But neither of these come within our terms of reference here: the Zouaves being unofficial volunteers and the Voyageurs being non-combatants for special service only.) The North-West Rebellion of 1885 was the first war in which Quebec was not Headquarters, the first in which Dominion regulars left Quebec for the front, and the first in which a Quebec City French-Canadian Militia battalion went west of the Lakes.

 

(11). In 1899 Quebec was the rendezvous of the first South African Contingent — the first Canadian unit that ever went on active service overseas. (The 100th Royal Canadians, raised in 1858, were an Imperial unit).

 

(12). In 1914 Valcartier, near Quebec, was the rendezvous, while Quebec itself was the point of departure for, the first Canadian contingents that ever went to war in Europe. The Great World War, as every enlightened person knew, was, in its essence, a life-and-death struggle against forces which aimed at the complete disablement, if not destruction, of all the French- and English-speaking peoples of the world — of course including all the daughter nations as well as both the mother countries. Thus, after ten different kinds of intervening wars, the stronghold City of Quebec, once the smallest of local French headquarters against a few wild savages, came into fully autonomous Dominion correlations with by far the greatest world-wide war that history has ever seen. It is worth noting that expert professional military foresight at Ottawa was not in fault about Quebec, first, in 1907, when Valcartier was strongly recommended, and again in 1912, when detailed plans were submitted for camping multiples of 10,000 men on (the right, not wrong, part of) that selected ground — ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, one hundred, and even two hundred thousand men. Some political wiseacres laughed at such absurdities. But Canada had half-a-million men under arms before that war was over. Quebec itself was also the place chosen for the famous-or-infamous Ross rifle. But the Ross rifle affair was not the fault of the military experts who specialised in rifles.

 

The Great World War brought about some very interesting correlations at Quebec between the three great peoples who had fought to win her — French, British, and Americans. The U.S. Government made their own small-arm ammunition at the Dominion Arsenal (next door to where Arnold's American invaders took up their quarters at the Palais); and, what caught the eye much more, many thousands of their soldiers sailed from Quebec for the front. British war activities of every kind were of course in evidence on every hand. Most were purely Canadian; but some were Imperial — munitions and certain kinds of inland water transport among them. Then, at one time, there was direct enlistment for "hostility men" into the Royal Navy; while, at another, there was enlistment for the Canadian Expeditionary Force that went to Siberia. Then, again, Quebec was the mobilisation centre for all the Jugo-Slavs throughout both North and South America. This mobilisation provided one of the strangest anomalies of this strange war ; for the Serbians, Montenegrins, and other Jugo-Slavs (many thousands of whom were mobilised at the St. Joseph Camp) came as civilians, remained civilians all through their training in Quebec, crossed the Atlantic as civilians, and only became recognized soldiers after they had reached the other side—generally some French port in the north of Africa. This unique civilian status persisted not only because they were the embryonic soldiers of an embryonic state but because foreign enlistment — even of an extra-territorial nature — was considered at least a potential breach of neutrality by the Wilsonian government at Washington. So here was a Canadian Camp Commandant the only soldier among thousands of armed civilians volunteering for oversea service under a potential, not an actual, state, which could only become a recognised nation as the result of a victory won by the side on which these Jugo-Slavs fought.

 

But perhaps the most appealing of all the non-British events connected with Quebec and this war were two which cannot be classed as strictly war activities at all. The first was the visit, near the end of the war, of the first French soldiers that had ever set foot in Canada since the surrender of New France a hundred and fifty-eight years before. (I am not forgetting the many French sailors between 1860 and the present day). These soldiers were a detachment of the justly famous Chasseurs Alpins, nicknamed "Blue Devils", and the very pick of their kind.

 

The second, and still more thrilling, visit was that paid by Marshal Foch in 1920. Here was the first Maréchal-de-France who ever set foot in Canada. Here was the first generalissimo of British, French, and Americans combined. Here was the first Maréchal-de-France who was also a British Field Marshal. And here, in our famous Citadel, this world-renowned Marshal of both the French and British Armies reviewed the regiment of which he had been made Honorary Colonel, at the request of our Dominion and with the most cordial permission of our King — the Royal 22nd, a regiment of Canadian regulars, lately returned from the British front in France, now garrisoning the City of Champlain and of Montcalm, wearing the British khaki and drilled by English words of command, but also French-speaking French Canadians to a man.

 

B. GARRISONS: Well, they too are unique in all America, where no place whatever, except Quebec, has been garrisoned for more than three whole centuries without a single break: first by Champlain's Frenchmen for 21 years, then by Kirke's Englishmen for 3, then by the French again for 127, then by British Imperials for 112, and finally by Canadian regulars for the last 53. Montmagny, who was Governor from 1636 to 1648, believed in being ready for all eventualities; and the Jesuit Father Lejeune has left us a good description of the garrison in those early days, when, please remember, Quebec was but a village — perhaps I should say hamlet — with only a few hundred souls. "We have some good resolute soldiers. It is a pleasure to see them go through their military exercises and hear the sound of musketry and cannon called forth by every occasion of rejoicing; while our inimitable forests and the encircling hills answer these salutes with echoes like the roll of thunder. The bugle calls us every morning, and we rise to see the sentries take post and the guard turn out in proper style." But it was not till 1665 that the arrival of the famous Régiment de Carignan — the first regiment of regulars that ever came to North America — raised the garrison to a really imposing strength. In 1759 British Imperials began a garrison duty that lasted till 1871, when the first Canadian regulars under the Dominion Government fell in for their first parade.

 

 

C. FORTIFICATIONS. In this respect Quebec is still more remarkable — unique, in fact, throughout the whole New World; for nowhere else is there any place that has been fortified in five successive centuries, from the sixteenth to our own. Of course, Jacques Cartier's tiny stockade beside the Little River (as the St. Charles was called and is — in contrast to the great St. Lawrence) can not be counted as a "fortification", in the stricter sense of the word. But it served its purpose, as did the Abitation de Quebecq, the much more pretentious, but still very small, fortified winter quarters built by Champlain in 1608. Champlain also built the first fort in the Upper Town, on the site of the present Terrace; and Montmagny rebuilt its makeshift "fascines, terres, gazons, et bois" in solid stone. But up to Phipps's attack in 1690 there was nothing more than a stone fort round the Governor's fortified Château in the Upper Town, with a "strong place" in the Lower Town on each side of the present Sous-le-Fort Street. In 1692, twenty years after his first arrival, Frontenac first succeeded in getting the means for building the first walls round Quebec. Frontenac, like Montcalm, was exasperated beyond all endurance by the rascally contractors and bad local workmanship. By the time the last of the dishonest and dilatory work had been completed the first was falling to pieces. Then in 1720 new, but equally bad and even more dishonest, work was begun. From this time till the Conquest nothing but patchwork was ever done. Good French engineers came out and made excellent reports. But the local workmanship was bad, the contractors were worse, and when the infamous Intendant Bigot took charge the Government was worst of all. On the very eve of 1759 the despairing Montcalm wrote home: "Les fortifications sont si ridicules et mauvaises qu'elles seraient prises aussitôt qu'assiégées." "What a country", as he constantly wrote home in private letters, "what a country, where rogues grow rich and honest men are ruined!"

 

British makeshifts replaced French tinkerings till after the American invasion of 1775. Then a temporary British scheme was finished in 1783. The remains of the Cape Diamond works — still palmed off on sentimental tourists as "Old French Works" — date from this time. Forty years later the great fortification was begun. It took nine years (1823-32) and cost over seven millions sterling. This, however, was only a very small part of the more than a hundred millions sterling spent by the patient Imperial taxpayer on military works in Canada; and this, in its turn, was nothing like a quarter of what the Imperial taxpayers of the Mother Country paid for the naval and military forces devoted to the special defence of Canada in peace and war. The walls and Citadel, as they stand to-day, were well and honestly built. Then, just before Canada took over her own defence in 1871 (with exceptions that lasted for another generation on both coasts) the Imperial Government built the three big forts on the heights of Levis. Finally, in 1910, the Dominion built the modern works near Beaumont, eight miles below Quebec and on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, whose ship channel they command. These works were inspected, that same year, at the request of the Canadian Government, by Lord French, the first Commander-in-chief of the first British troops in France during the Great World War.

 

D. MISCELLANEOUS first, or last, or only things connected with Quebec's war history are numerous enough to make a quite effective class of their own. But I shall merely note a few.

 

(1). Charlesbourg, close to Quebec, still has fields divided by fences which stretch out from a common centre like spokes from a hub. The original hub was the local fort, into which the habitants could run most easily when all the neighbouring fields met at one common point. The fort has long since disappeared. But, among the older habitants in the remoter districts, any nearby village is still referred to as le fort, in reminiscence of Iroquois and scalping parties; while here, unique in all America, you still may see the fences running in to one strategic point.

 

(2). Five special points about the Quebec Campaign of 1759 are worth a little emphasis, at all events in naval and military eyes.

 

1). The great Fleet and Convoy, in all, 277 sail (from which Wolfe's little army acted as a landing party) was by far the greatest that had ever come up the St. Lawrence. More than that: despite the vast increase of size in modern vessels, the actual gross tonnage of this great fleet and convoy was never again equalled on the St. Lawrence till the First Canadian Contingent sailed from Quebec to the Great World War in 1914.

 

2). It was at Quebec that Wolfe himself suggested the regimental motto of the famous Royal Americans—Celer et Audax. This regiment, first raised in 1755, and soon numbered as the 60th Foot, was the first four-battalion regiment in the Service, the first to become a Rifle Regiment, and the only one whose uniform became the model of all Canadian Rifles. It is, therefore, quite befitting that the present English-speaking Quebec militia battalion, known as the Royal Rifles of Canada, should be affiliated with the "Old 60th", now known as the King's Royal Rifle Corps.

 

3). It was at Quebec that the Royal Marine Light Infantry first served in a complete battalion ashore in any campaign.

 

4). The thin red line immortalised by Kinglake was antedated by nearly a century at Quebec; for the first two-deep line ever formed by any army in any battle in the world was formed by Wolfe's at Quebec. This statement, first made, from the original evidence, in 1904, has stood the expert researches of the past twenty years.

 

 

5). The father of modern hydrography, the great Captain Cook, began his surveys at Quebec; and it is a rather peculiar coincidence that while the great English circumnavigator Cook was helping Wolfe to get into Quebec the great French circumnavigator Bougainville was trying to keep him out.

 

Three special points about other times are also very well worth noting here.

 

1). To begin with, the first Royal Review ever held in the whole New World was held at Quebec in 1787 in honour of William IV, then quite a junior Naval officer. Rather coincidently, the last Royal Review here was held in honour of our only other sailor King, George V, who attended the Tercentenary of 1908 as his father's representative, and who reviewed British, French, and American forces on the very ground where their predecessors had fought so well and often for the possession of Quebec. This review was also unique on account of the Canadian forces present, being the first at which all arms and branches of all Canadian Services, from every Province in the whole Dominion, had ever met together on one spot.

 

2). The only American Commander who ranked as a General in three different wars in the three different countries of North America was, after Queenston, a prisoner of war in Quebec, where, from his gigantic stature and noble bearing, he soon became known and popular as "the Big Colonel." Winfield Scott was a General commanding a brigade of first-rate regulars at Lundy's Lane in 1814, the Commanding General during the Mexican War of 1846 (when Lee was his Chief-of-Staff, while Grant and Stonewall Jackson were junior officers) and the senior General of the whole U.S. Army at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.

 

3). The Army Bills Act, passed at Quebec in 1812 by the Parliament of Lower Canada (in which French Canadians, then as now, vastly preponderated) was by far the most important financial measure not only of that war but, in a certain sense, of the whole financial history of Canada. These bills were the first Canadian paper money ever redeemed at par, being made "redeemable at this" (the Army Bill) "Office" (17 St. Louis Street) "by Government Bills of Exchange on London, at Thirty Days Sight. By Order of the Commander of the Forces."

 

 

E. THE MISUNDERSTOOD CAMPAIGN OF 1759

 

Even the most gushing publicity department of the most aggressive tourist agency could hardly make the "standard story" of the Battle of the Plains more hackneyed or less truthful than it is. But so deeply grooved are all the old perversions, and so long does it take to get any popular error out of any well-worn grooves, that perhaps I might be excused for making this little critical digression, in order to set before those who do not specialise in history a few of the fundamental facts which make all the difference between theatrical perversions and the really dramatic truth. I should add that although the limits of this paper forbid references to the original evidence — references which, if complete, would fill more space than this whole paper fills — yet the few points mentioned here are based entirely on this evidence, without the slightest regard to any intervening books (the author's own included) and that this evidence (from both sides and from every point of view) is now so nearly final that practically all important matters stand revealed. The Dominion Archives can alone supply any impartial and scientific student with evidence enough to arrive at something very near to what any final judgment ought to be.

 

To begin with a few perversions.

 

(1). To say that Wolfe came here "supported by a fleet" is to put the cart before the horse. British sea-power, both mercantile and naval, was a vastly greater factor in that rightly named "Maritime War" than land-power was or could be, simply because it divided its enemies and united its friends all over the world. British oversea armies could no more work without ships than they could march without legs; and this was especially true at Quebec, where Wolfe's little army was really no more than a most efficient landing party from an overwhelming fleet. Including the crews of all supply and transport vessels, there were three times as many seamen as landsmen on the British side. But this difference in mere numbers by no means shows the vastly greater preponderance of sea-power over land-power in every other way. To begin with, the source of all decisive armed strength was in the warring mother countries, not in America. Consequently, the mother country whose sea-power could make the Atlantic a good road for its own ships but a bad one for its enemy's was certain to win in the end, no matter what the respective armies did. But these respective armies were themselves vitally dependent on sea-power. For the inland waterways were infinitely better than any roads, even the best; and few were even tolerably good in those days. Even to-day, whenever distances are long and heavy transport is concerned, a hundred tons can go by sea as well as ten by train or one by road with horses. What, therefore, must have been the preponderance in favour of the water when trains did not exist and roads were very few and very bad indeed ?

 

But man is a land animal; and he naturally knows little of the sea. So we must expect him to misinterpret amphibious history in terms of his own environment. One might suppose that most readers would appreciate the wonderful navigational feat of bringing 277 sail up the St. Lawrence without any aids to navigation in the way of buoys and lights, without good charts, and (despite the many French-traitor-pilot tales) without any real dependence on the local pilots (who were almost worthless in working up a concentrated fleet). But, except for the "Damn me!" of "Old Killick", they rarely see any account of how the feat was done.

 

(2). Wolfe did not theatrically repeat Gray's Elegy as he came down to the final attack in the same boat with some of the forlorn hope, when silence had been ordered under pain of death ; but he did repeat it, appropriately and dramatically, in another boat, on the afternoon of the day before, when making his final reconnaissance with a few staff officers.

 

(3). Circumstances, both at the time and ever since, conspired to make the Battle of the Plains one of the so-called decisive battles of the world — and, in one sense, it was decisive; for it marked the turn of the tide within its own restricted area. But, in another sense, this term is quite misleading, because the Plains did not decide the conquest of Canada, which required another campaign; also because the conquest was itself determined vastly more by naval and by civil forces, both in a universal and a local sense, than by the actual armies on the spot; and finally because Quiberon not only clinched Quebec but made the next campaign an inevitable triumph for those who were thenceforth free from even challenges at sea. Quiberon, with its universally decisive effect, settled the fate of New France. Quebec was a mere local step by the way.

 

Quebec happened just at the precise psychological moment, and in the perfectly dramatic way, to take the public by storm. 1759 saw the turn of the tide for British arms by land and sea; while each new victory made the deeply apprehended French invasion of the Mother Country more and more unlikely to occur. Things had not been going well in previous years. But now the tide was turning. English-speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic were being drawn together by their interest in the conquest of New France; and Quebec became a word to conjure with. Next, to heighten the effect, the news at first was most discouraging. The joint invasion was apparently about to fail again. Amherst's forces were held up along the line of Lake Champlain for want of local sea-power; while Wolfe's first attack (on Montcalm at Montmorency) was an utter failure, besides being an egregious blunder too.

 

Then, just at the very moment which a supreme publicity agent would have chosen, Wolfe's final plan succeeded. It was no more than a second best, and strategically wrong, as we shall presently see. But it was managed to perfection by as finely worked a combination of naval and military forces as British history can show; and though this consummate combination was, as usual, ignored by the public, all the incidental details happened in just the very way the press and public love; while the false theatrical versions of some truly dramatic stories, like Wolfe and Gray's Elegy, added greatly to the popular effect. The boatwork by night; the scaling of the cliff (popularised not because it was extremely well done as a military feat but because it was misunderstood to have been an astonishingly acrobatic "stunt"); the famous volleys (absurdly misrepresented as having been fired by the whole fine together, instead of having been only single volleys, fired by battalions, and followed by a "general", i.e., collective independent) ; the dashing down of Highland muskets and the charge with Highland claymores (which deranged the line and caused undue Highland losses later on) ; the defeat of greatly exagerated French numbers under the still more exaggerated walls of the "frowning fortress" of Quebec; the death of the supposedly outwitted Montcalm and all his Generals; and, finally, the death of the really noble Wolfe in the very arms of victory — well, what more could press and public want ? Hawke's absolutely decisive victory at Quiberon two months later not only dispelled the real dangers of invasion but settled the fate of New France. Yet, being at sea, and coming after pent-up emotions had already been discharged profusely, it had to be less famous than the Battle of the Plains.

 

Pray let me add that I do not for a moment mean to belittle either Wolfe or his admirably planned and executed manœuvres, fight, and victory. But I do want to draw attention to the popular perversions which, here as elsewhere, distort the relative values of historic events out of all due proportion. Moreover, it would be grossly unfair to the French, and correspondingly belittling to the British, if I failed to stress the many successes which, in a purely military sense, were all the more honourable to the French because adverse sea-power and lack of general resources were forcing them to fight with one arm tied behind their back.

 

Ten years before the Battle of the Plains La Galissonnière revived French strategy along the three great rivers by sending Céloron to make the French claims good to the whole Ohio Valley. Next year (1750) Christopher Gist went there prospecting for the British Ohio Company. For three years more the French and British manoeuvred against each other without drawing sword; while, during the third, George Washington appeared in history for the first time as a surveyor and militia officer sent to assert Virginia's claims. This brought on the inevitable clash of arms at Fort Necessity in 1754, when, on the first memorable 4th of July, Washington was forced to surrender. Next year, though the mother countries were still at peace in Europe, their armies met in America, where Braddock's Defeat in the Ohio Valley was only partially offset by Johnson's victory at Lake George. The British expedition against Niagara never went farther than Oswego, where it left a garrison as a thorn in the side of the French. Then, in 1756, Montcalm came out and won four successive victories in four successive years, as we shall presently see. After his death there was another campaign, when the French, under the gallant Levis, won a salving victory at what might well be called the Second Battle of the Plains; while Vauquelin fought a magnificent rearguard action in L'Atalante against the vanguard of the fleet that forced the whole French army to retire. The arms of France thus left Quebec with all the honours of war, both by land and sea.

 

(4). Now let us hark back for a final glance at Wolfe and Montcalm; and let us take Wolfe first. We have already seen how well the Battle of the Plains lent itself to popular perversion. But this popular perversion, which has lasted to the present day, should never blind us to Wolfe's real merits and very sterling qualities. Only, we must remember that successes happening at times and places which cause the greatest emotional attention then and thereafter need not be correspondingly great in a naval or military way.

 

Three very simple illustrations will prove this to the hilt. First, when Admiral Vernon "took Porto Bello with six ships" (in 1739) both Lords and Commons presented their congratulations to the King. Much greater naval actions than this audacious stroke have attracted far less attention. But that might have been because they had no such tag as Jenkins's Ear had been for some time past; and because they had not been fought by an admiral who was also an M.P. and inventor of the prophetic tag that he would "take Porto Bello with six ships". Secondly, admirers of Mr. Pickwick will remember the portrait of the bareheaded Marquess of Granby, in his famous Warburg attitude, over the inn at Dorking. Now, Granby might or might not have been a great cavalry (or even army) commander if he had had the chance. But the fame he did acquire in 1761 was due mostly to the fact that he was the first Englishmen of his kind to cut a good figure on the European scene in a war which had not been so successful there. And when the real merits of his charge were further impressed on the public by the fact that his hat and wig blew off, why, of course he became a popular hero. Hatless and wigless he soon appeared on tavern signboards all over England. Beer and glory did the rest. Thirdly, Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864 was easily the least difficult among all his masterstrokes of war. He said himself: "Were I to express my measure of the relative importance of the march to the sea, and of that from Savannah northward, I would place the former at one, and the latter at ten — or the maximum". But "Marching through Georgia" happened to catch the public eye while nothing else was on the central stage, and while the whole Northern press was itching to write something up to the very top of its bent.

 

Now, Wolfe's famous battle was a greater naval and military feat than any of these three grossly over-estimated instances; while Wolfe himself was a singularly fine character and a most excellent professional soldier, who might have become a great commander had he enjoyed any future chances. Moreover, as already stated, his plan was very well conceived and executed almost to perfection. So all that can be said in praise of him is fully justifiable—except, and here's the crucial exception, that his plan was only a second best, that while it took Quebec, it failed to take New France, and that this entailed another arduous campaign next year.

 

To make a long story short I should explain (to those who may not have had occasion to follow up the strategy of this whole war) that New France must have fallen if the main French army at Quebec surrendered, that this army would die if it went north into the resourceless wilds, that the British fleet cut if off from the east and the south, and that its one possible line of supply and retreat was to the west, preferably of course by the St. Lawrence, so far as this was feasible, but also by the single upper road which led the whole way west to Montreal. Now, at Quebec itself, and for a good many miles west, there was a lower road, in the valley of the St. Charles, which eventually joined the upper road. If, therefore, Wolfe could entrench astride of this upper road, westward of its junction with the lower road, then, while the fleet barred the river abreast of these entrenchments, Montcalm would have no choice but to fight, starve, or surrender; and both sides knew that Wolfe's army of highly trained picked regulars would, in such a position, be able to prevent at all events the main body of Montcalm's mixed forces from ever getting past.

 

When Wolfe was ill in August he had asked his brigadiers to suggest a plan of their own; and they had suggested a landing at Pointe-aux-Trembles, twenty-two miles above Quebec, at a spot fulfilling the strategical conditions mentioned above. Then, on the 3rd of September, he broke camp on the left bank of the Montmorency, just beyond the Falls, let non-committal manœuvres go on for a week, up towards Pointe-aux-Trembles; and finally, on the 10th, formed his own plan of landing two, instead of twenty-two, miles above Quebec, so as to bring on an immediate action in the open field, across the Plains of Abraham. This second-best plan succeeded to admiration, as all the world knows. But the point is whether, with the almost omnipotent fleet, he could not have feinted here, or elsewhere near Quebec, and then cut off the whole French army, by landing at the better strategic point twenty miles higher—or somewhere else that would serve the same turn — thus ensuring the complete surrender of New France.

 

At this point I beg leave to say that these criticisms of Wolfe come from far higher authorities than I can claim to be. Having been obliged to learn both the ground and the original evidence (both French and British) I have often gone over the Quebec battlefields as guide to naval and military men of great experience, not only in war but sometimes in very high command as well; and I have nearly always found them criticising Wolfe in the foregoing sense.

 

Excluding French and French Canadians, as possibly a little partial — though I know some who are quite as impartial as anyone can be; excluding also Americans and Japanese (whose naval and military men I have also guided) in case they might be over-neutral — though here again I know some who are equally keen and impartial; I come to British experts, men who would naturally think the best about Wolfe; and I take from these none but those who have been themselves Commanders-in-chief afloat or ashore. Two afloat were, first, Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir Edward Seymour, Commander-in-chief in China during the Boxer Rebellion, a very keen student of war history, and one who in his autobiography makes special reference to his tour of the battlefields here; secondly, Admiral-of-the-Fleet Lord Jellicoe, whom all know as the first Commander-in-chief afloat during the Great War. Both thought Wolfe's strategy wrong, as did the late Sir Julian Corbett, the universally known naval historian.

 

But lest anyone might conceivably suppose their opinions were tinged with a little naval prejudice — which is of course absurd — I shall now mention three other Commanders-in-chief, all of whom were soldiers who had led great armies in the field : — Field Marshals Lords Roberts, French, and Wolseley. (Here again, as with the naval historian just mentioned, so with the Honourable John Fortescue, the historian of the British Army: he was and is most critical of Wolfe's plan). Lord Roberts and Lord French said very much the same as the two great Admirals; while Lord Wolseley, who knew Quebec and Canada very well indeed, epitomised his carefully considered judgment in the following written words: — "Wolfe was a first-rate Commanding officer of a Battalion; but, in the only campaign he ever conducted, he did not, according to my views of men who have conducted campaigns, display any originality or any great genius for war."

 

(5). Now let us take our final glance at Montcalm, who came out to Quebec in 1756, at the age of forty-four, with a well earned reputation as one of the rising stars of the whole French Army, and whose really wonderful services in defence of doomed New France certainly raised him to an assured position among the few great Commanders of the whole New World. For if we consider, however hastily, what were the enormous odds against him — not only on the side of his open and honourable enemies but on the part of his backbiting friends — we cannot fail to wonder at all that he accomplished when forced to fight insidious enemies in rear as well as those who, based on a sea-power of overwhelming strength, were bent on the conquest of misgoverned, corrupted, and perishing New France.

 

A word should be said in passing about the original evidence, nearly all the most cogent part of which is now accessible to students, but much of which was not accessible to previous generations, whose writers were naturally apt to fill up the gaps by surmises made in accordance with their own national and individual prejudices. Moreover, the fall of New France was, quite as naturally, no more popular with French and French Canadians than the American Revolution was with the British, or the three abortive American invasions of Canada (Colonial, Revolutionary, and "1812") have hitherto been in the States. So, one way or other, Montcalm never came into his own till the present Dominion Archivist made the first proper bibliography of the original evidence about him; till the first French Canadian who ever did him "knowledgeable" justice was found in the historian who now presides over the Royal Society of Canada; and, finally, till La Section Historique de l'Etat-Major de l'Armée published its admirable monograph on Montcalm au Combat de Carillon in 1909, the very year that Marshal Foch was directing all staff studies as Commandant de l'Ecole Supérieure de Guerre. To this I should like to add that all really expert historians who write in English now see the greatness of Montcalm, and that all the expert naval and military Commanders, British and foreign alike, whom I have accompanied over the fields of battle at Quebec expressed their admiration for him as a master in the art of war.

 

To conclude by trying to make three crucial factors of his dire problem clear: first, the disabling drawbacks on his own side; secondly, the ultimately overwhelming forces of the enemy, mainly due to sea-power ; and thirdly, the desperate nature of the four campaigns in which, unique among the world's commanders, he won four successive victories over those who speak the English tongue.

 

First: the disabling drawbacks on his own side. It used to be thought, and is still either said or tacitly assumed (sometimes by those who ought to know better) that Montcalm was the really supreme Commander of all the forces in New France. Nothing could be further from the truth. New France was an autocracy without a local autocrat. She was as much like a Royal Province in France herself as edictory powers could make her. But in France a Royal Province had its Royal Master (or his Master) close at hand; whereas New France was three thousand miles away, cut off completly for nearly half the year, and changed by environment in many important ways. In order that all provincial leaders should always be dependent on the central power their functions were designed to overlap. Now and then a great Intendant, such as Talon, or a very masterful Governor, like Frontenac, would make the system work. But in Montcalm's dire days the governmental powers in doomed New France were all parts and no whole — no, not even a united whole in battle, if the Governor or the Intendant could serve their own ends better by interfering with Montcalm.

 

Montcalm's own military position, difficult enough at first, became impossible as time went on. He would have gladly resigned on several occasions; and it was only the highest sense of duty to a ruined cause that prevented him from going home after Vaudreuil's contemptible proceedings in 1758 — proceedings which followed Montcalm's great victory at Carillon (that is, Ticonderoga). Technically, Montcalm commanded only les troupes de la terre, that is, the French regulars from France. The French-Canadian regulars (troupes de la marine) and the French-Canadian militiamen (who theoretically included all able-bodied men) were under the Governor-General, who also was in supreme command, if and when he would assume such sole responsibility; but who was likewise told to "defer" as much as possible to Montcalm's "advice" in purely military matters. The French seamen were semi-independent in certain ways. The Indians were under their own chiefs, were told to regard the Governor as their father, but naturally took Montcalm to be the true Great War Chief, and justly resented the way in which they were cheated by the infamous Intendant. Moreover, Vaudreuil, the Governor, was (in every possible military way) a vain and fussy fool, wholly incompetent to conduct a campaign himself, but intensely jealous of Montcalm, bent on thwarting him at every turn, and, though personally honest, equally bent on letting the absolutely corrupt and corrupting Intendant Bigot have a perfectly free hand. Now, Bigot practically controlled all the supply and transport services of all the forces in New France. So here was another incongruous element to help the parts against the whole. To complete the disunion, Vaudreuil, a French Canadian born, set French and French Canadians by the ears; while Bigot, who was French-of-France by birth, was quite impartial as to whom he robbed, traduced, supported, or divided — always supposing that the profits came to him.

 

Let me be perfectly clear about Vaudreuil and Montcalm. First, let me repeat that I am only concerned with their respective values as commanders, and not with their private characters or even their characters as non-military men. Next, let me point out that Montcalm had his human faults, that he lacked the almost superhuman patience of Marlborough or Washington, and that he did not make sufficient allowance for some quite justifiable environmental variations of a purely French-Canadian kind. But here comes the very pointed question whether Marlborough, Washington, and Fabius Maximus, put together, or even triune in a single man, could possibly have harmonised the distracting conditions of New France under Bigot and Vaudreuil. Finally, let me say that Vaudreuil really loved his native country, and that he had some real justification for resenting certain French-of-France assumptions of superiority over French-Canadian things and people. Moreover, his natural pride in French-Canadian prowess was justified by the many gallant feats of arms performed by French Canadians in the century between Dollard's defence of the Long Sault in 1660 and Lévis' attack at Ste. Foy in 1760. But Montcalm did not undervalue the native spirit of the French Canadians; while all his words, plans, and actions bear witness to his military worth.

 

Vaudreuil, on the other hand, was far worse than worthless as a military man. Just read his own most self-condemning words.

 

To sum up: there were two different kinds of French — the French-of-France and French Canadians; and three different overlapping authorities at headquarters — Vaudreuil the fool, Bigot the knave, and Montcalm, who, though the only real expert, commanded only one of the five different forces, could be over-ruled by Vaudreuil, and had to depend on Bigot for all supplies and transport.

 

Secondly, the ultimately overwhelming forces of the enemy, mainly due to sea-power. Of course there was some disunion on the British side, especially among the very dissimilar American Colonies. There also was jealousy on the part of Colonials against Imperials; and there were all the usual misunderstandings when such different forces meet for any common end. But Pitt was both the greatest of all civilian ministers of war and the greatest unifier of the English-speaking peoples. So, with the inestimable advantages of sea-power on his side, he kept the ever-growing forces of invasion at work against the ever-dwindling resources of New France until the inevitable end was reached at Montreal in 1760, when only two thousand French regulars remained to lay down the arms which had kept the British so long and so gallantly at bay. The year before (the fatal 1759) the grand totals on both sides were about 40,000 British against 20,000 French, that is, of all kinds put together, on both sides, and all over the area of operations. But while the British were well supplied the French were half starved already; and all French disabilities were further intensified as time went on.

 

Remembering all this, what are we to think of Montcalm, who, under these terrible conditions, won four successive victories in four successive years: first, at Oswego, thus driving in the British salient and restoring the indispensable French link in the chain between the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi; next, at Fort William Henry, where he did all that could be done to clear this vital flank of New France from its most imminent danger (and where, by the way, he was absolutely guiltless of the massacre which he and his staff risked their lives in stopping) ; then at Ticonderoga, where he defeated four times his own numbers, as impartially told in the French monograph on Carillon; and, lastly, at Montmorency, where he and Levis took immediate advantage of all the British mistakes ? Organiser, strategist, tactician, and every unprejudiced soldier's beau idéal of what a fighting leader ought to be, Montcalm is worthy of a place beside Lee himself and Stonewall Jackson; for, great as their drawbacks were, they had no such disunion among their forces, and never such powerful gangs of criminally false friends to stab them in the rear.

 

But how about the Battle of the Plains, where Montcalm is generally supposed to have contradicted everything else in his whole career ? Well, the original evidence convincingly disproves all these unfounded suppositions, and, what's more, proves that Montcalm's military powers were at their very best before and on this fatal day. For let us remember here that all the disabilities which beset him elsewhere were at their very worst during the Quebec campaign, when Vaudreuil the fool and Bigot the knave were interferingly present all through, when supplies were scarcer than ever before, disunion growing, discontent increasing, and the effective fighting forces decreasing every day by disease and desertion. Moreover, there was the big detachment of regulars which had to be sent to Montreal, because Montreal then, as in the next campaign, was Amherst's first objective.

 

Let anyone who knows anything of war examine the state of the commisariat, transport, and even ordnance branches under Bigot; let him read Vaudreuil's idiotic orders in his own silly words; and then let him remember that Montcalm was the commander, and on sufferance only, of half-a-dozen different forces which never made a single army — French regulars, French-Canadian regulars and militiamen, seamen of various kinds, non-combatant branches of the whole distracted Service, and a few badly cheated and unstable Indians; let him remember that while everything on the French side was known in a very short time on the British, very little on the British side was known on the French, and then it was probably garbled by Vaudreuil, if he heard it first, before he passed it on to Montcalm: finally, let anyone who knows anything of war remember that while the British fleet was overwhelmingly strong afloat it formed an impenetrable screen behind which the British army could manœuvre in perfect secrecy and safety, and that it also served the staff with all the latest news by means of visual signals over the whole thirty miles of river front, from Montmorency up to Pointe-aux-Trembles : let anyone who knows anything of war remember all this, and then let him think out the problem that Montcalm was set to solve.

 

For ten whole nights and days (from the day that Wolfe broke camp at Montmorency on the 3rd of September to when he fought the battle) Montcalm had no means whatever of getting any reliable intelligence in time. Yet, through his own strategic insight, and from the manœuvres of ships and landing parties on the British side, he was led to spare what strength be could for guarding Pointe-aux-Trembles. But this was not all, nor even what was most important; for he actually divined Wolfe's own quite secret plan and did all he could to prevent its execution.

 

On the 5th he sent a battalion of French regulars to guard the heights between Cap Rouge (seven miles above Quebec, where the great bridge stands now) and the famous Plains, just outside the City. On the 7th Vaudreuil withdrew this battalion. On the 10th Wolfe made his secret plan (secret even from his brigadiers) of trying to land at what is now Wolfe's Cove, just beyond the Plains. All ranks and ratings on both sides still had their eyes on Pointe-aux-Trembles, more than twenty miles above Quebec, and on the chief French encampment, from one to seven miles below Quebec, where the only big fight had taken place already, and where feints (which might mask real attacks) were still going on: that is, all ranks and ratings on both sides except the two commanders — Wolfe, who had made the new and secret plan, known only to the few chief naval men concerned, and Montcalm, who had divined it. After the manœuvres on the 11th, masked as they were by the fleet, and of unknown meaning to both sides, Montcalm, on the 12th, ordered the same French regulars to camp at Wolfe's Cove itself. This meant that Vergor, a perfect "rotter" and a friend of Bigot's and Vaudreuil's, would be superseded by a good French colonel with a whole battalion of French regulars — enough to prevent any surprise ascent of the cliffs before Montcalm's main force had reached the Plains. But again Vaudreuil gave counter-orders, this time quite angrily and accompanied by the historic imbecility that "those English haven't got wings—I'll see about it myself to-morrow." Vaudreuil's to-morrow never came; for Wolfe surprised Vergor and gained the heights.

 

"There they are, where they have no right to be!" exclaimed Montcalm, as he ordered out the whole force to the Plains, except a mere camp guard. Vaudreuil then issued counter-orders; and actually told Montcalm to take one hundred men and see what the British were about. (Here, as all through, he stands condemned by his own written words). Montcalm, however, managed to get most of his men to the Plains, where he did not rush them into action, but drew them up properly, and called all seniors to the front, out of sight of the British, to see if anybody had any further and authentic news. Nobody had. Then, as Wolfe's right seemed not yet formed, Montcalm attacked, with the result we know. He was thwarted by his own side to the very last. There were twenty-five field guns available. But he was only allowed the use of three. And so the tale goes on.

 

He has been often blamed for this attack; and Vaudreuil backbit him more than ever after his death. But what else could he do? He could not retreat by the lower road with the British on his flank and with ships and men to stop him where the two roads joined. He could not subsist his force two days inside Quebec, whose rotten walls were worthless. And every hour's delay would strengthen Wolfe's position; for by that evening the naval brigade (usually omitted in the usual books) had hove up all the materials for a siege, including 47 guns, the heaviest weighing 6¼ tons — hove all this up the cliffs, while the army had dug in, impenetrably in, across the Plains and the one good road to Montreal. There was no use in waiting for the detachment from the neighbourhood of Pointe-aux-Trembles, because any additional strength gained by this would be more than offset by Wolfe's own additional strength. Fight, starve, or surrender were the only alternatives. There are other factors in the problem. But they must be studied from the original evidence; and we must stop this over-long discussion here. Might I, however, end by asking the armchair critics of Montcalm what infallible alternative they think he could have followed with success?

 

Wolfe has a fine inscription over the spot on which he breathed his last:

 

HERE DIED WOLFE VICTORIOUS

 

 

Wolfe and Montcalm together have a unique inscription on the monument erected to their joint renown :

 

MORTEM VIRTUS COMMUNEM FAMAM HISTORIA MONUMENTUM POSTERITAS

DEDIT

 

But the Montcalm monument follows perverted history in showing him only in defeat. Some Frenchman or some French Canadian would doubtless compose a far finer inscription in their own expressive tongue. But I hope that if and when they do they will convey the same idea as I endeavoured to convey in what I suggested as an additional inscription over his tomb in the Ursuline Chapel. A suggestion had been made that the Canadian Daughters of the Empire might place crossed colours on Wolfe's hideous monument in beautiful Westminster Abbey (a monument which never looked so well as when half hidden by Canadian colours massed there while the units owning them were fighting at the front). These two colours were to have been the Jack of Queen Anne (as used in Wolfe's day) crossed with the present Union Jack, which should have been "de-faced" with a golden Maple Leaf. On the supporting shield the suggested inscription was to have been this:—

 

COMMEMORATING CANADA IN ARMS BESIDE HER MOTHER COUNTRIES

DURING THE GREAT WAR

 

What I also suggested for the tomb of Montcalm (with simultaneous inauguration) was: crossed Fleurs-de-lys and Tricolore, with these words on the shield:—

 

QUATRE FOIS VICTORIEUX UNE FOIS VAINCU TOUJOURS AU GRAND HONNEUR

DES ARMES DE LA FRANCE

 

V. MISCELLANEOUS

 

1. Language. Suppose you went to a distant part of the world and there you found people speaking English as Shakespeare heard them speak at Warwick Fair: would you think that kind of English particularly bad ? Well, this — of course with many variations from environment — is not unlike what an educated modern Frenchman finds among the French Canadians, whose educated speech is still very reminiscent of Bossuet and Molière and the days of the Grand Monarque. Even the fact that most of them call their native tongue frança's (and not français) is reminiscent of the days when Charlevoix and others found the people of New France speaking without the least outlandish accent. They spoke the French of France in those days; and some educated French Canadians speak, while still more write, the French of France to-day.

 

It is not, however, of the highly educated that I am speaking here, but of the proverbial man in the street and, still more, out on the farm, who, whatever his tongue may be — English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, or what not — sticks to the older forms all the more closely the farther away he lives, both mentally and physically, from the central home of his ancestral tongue. For, as everybody knows, the older forms of all life survive longest in remote communities; linguistic life is no more an exception to this biologic law than any other form; and just as Portuguese is older in the Azores than at Lisbon, Spanish older in South America than at Madrid, and English older in New England than in Old, so, now that New France and Old have lived apart for several generations, we must expect to find the average French Canadians older in their speech than modern Frenchmen are.

 

Nor, if we leave such circles as that formed by our own Section I and by their congeners, and if we keep an open ear among real habitants (and even among their congeners in towns) shall we be disappointed — unless, indeed, we happen to be performing specimens of that kind of English-speaking tourist who can't see why their own "Parisian French" is not the only kind of French worth speaking. The tricks of speech these specimens perform are found offensive now and then. But why? Why should not everyone be pleased? The really perfect specimens themselves are quite delighted to find they speak a kind of French which is absolutely unintelligible to those who speak the "French-Canadian patois," while F.R.S.C.'s and all their congeners in France are too polite not to pretend that they can understand this "pure Parisian French"; and so these perfect specimens go on their way rejoicing. But the offended French Canadians? Well, should not they be happiest of all? For who else enjoys so many opportunities of hearing a kind of noise which even French and French Canadians, put together, could never have invented for themselves?

 

Speech differs of course among all French Canadians, as among ourselves, by social classes, education, locality, or calling. But, taken in a general way, with emphasis on that in which it differs from the general French of France, and with special stress on how it is spoken by the average habitant and by his urban congeners, I would venture to call it a variant made up of excellent materials and subject to peculiar dangers, of which Anglicisms are the worst. It is not, emphatically not, a patois; though it does contain some elements of several dialects current in France two centuries ago. It is, first of all, an elder form of French — and good French too. Next, it contains a fusion (perhaps I should say infusion) of old French dialects, Norman and other cognate forms preponderating. Finally, it has varied from environment : — from daily contact with local conditions, from former contact with the Indians, from contact with naval and military life, from an intimate contact with waterways greatly surpassing that of the stay-at-home French, and from contact with English-speaking people, both in the States and Canada.

 

When, however a habitant says he will acertainer he is not using a bad Anglicism but an excellent obsolete French word. Did not François Premier himself tell the Parlement de Paris, on the 9th of April, 1526, Que Nous sommes duement acertenés? Bachelier and bacon have a similar history; the English words coming from the old French, which are now obsolete in Paris but flourishing in Canada. The emphatic assavoir is still used here; so is fiable, now only expressible in France by some such circumlocution as digne de confiance. People sometimes say cheux eux and ganif; and astonished habitants always exclaim cray-yez? In spite of locks the doors are still barrées. And in a single line of Molière you can find two much more obsolete French words still used in Canada: "Demain, du grand matin, je l'enverrai quérir." Du means dès, and habitants still go in quest of what they want: je va' le q'ri.

 

Norman and cognate dialects preponderating, some northern peculiarities still occur. Such are: a for elle; i for il, ils, lui, or y; amain = hancy; espérer = wait; houiner = whinny; bers = cradle; and escousse as a space of time instead of the spice run in order to make a good jump. Pronunciation of vowels is decidedly broad, with ah for é sounds and aw for ah. There is a sibilant dz for d; and the final d,r,s, and t are often sounded where they are now mute in France.

 

A few military terms are very common in ordinary talk. What we colloquially call our "things" are always known as "booty" — butin. The big round "steamer" on the winter stove is a bombe. A fur cap is a casque. And, as we saw when speaking of the spoke-like fences running out from the village hold of Charlesbourg, the village itself, in remoter districts, is still sometimes called le fort. Naval and nautical terms abound in everyday talk — a very natural thing in an oversea colony that was founded along its waterways. Winter snow roads are marked by buoys — balises; and if you miss the channel between them you'll founder — caler, and become, like a derelict — degradé. You must embarquer into and débarquer out of any sort of vehicle ashore. A mended cart is said to have been "refitted" — radouée. A well-dressed woman is what our own seamen would call "fit to go foreign" — bin gré-yée. Horses are always "moored" — amarrés, enemies reconciled by being ramarrés together, and winter heralded on the 25th of November by a regular broadside of snow — la bordée de la Sainte-Catherine.

 

Indians words are comparatively rare. Tobogane and mocassin are familiar to every one. Others are more recondite: like sassaquaw, "no end of a row"; micouenne, the big wooden spoon for the camp kettle ; ouaouaron, an onomatopoeic name for the bull-frog; and ouannaniche, the land-locked salmon of Lake St. John.

 

The use of English idioms is a very real danger ; and this insidious form of barbarism has already perverted the truer ways of speech. French and English, however excellent apart, make an unhappy mixture; and it is to be regretted that pronunciation, and (to a still greater extent) intonation, are affected by an environment which is displacing the richer modulations of the finest French without even substituting the richer modulations of the finest English. Most of the common Anglicisms are merely bad superfluities forced into use by the closer pressure of modern "Anglo-Saxondom." Steamers and trains being unknown until generations after the old French time we naturally hear of stimeurs, of "boarding" les chars, and even of a traction-engine as une espèce de stime! Un França's de France, who was superintending the erection of the Champlain monument in Quebec, could not get "un cric" till someone thought of un djack-scrou. The habitant will clairer his land, curse with all the English he knows, and sometimes get un blackeye sur le nez. When husband and wife go to town they can enjoy sand-wedges together, and she may buy des gants de kid, while he chooses a pair of trousers from une grande variété de pantings.

 

Canadianisms proper are quite different, and altogether justifiable. In a country of canoes and waterways certain words soon became locally specialized. Aviron is always "paddle"; sauter, to "run" the rapids; bateau, a slow jib-and-main-sail river cargo-boat of some 40 tons. Portage has actually been taken by the Academy, which stooped to conquer an immortality of ridicule as well, by inventing this wonderful example: — "Depuis Québec jusqu'à Montréal, il y a tant de portages!" Refoul is the strong Acadian contraction of refoulement, describing the sudden tumult of subsidence as the mighty ebb rushes out of the Bay of Fundy. Life in the woods has turned brûlé into a noun, meaning a burnt patch. Bois-brûlé, however, is something very different. It means "half-breed," in allusion to the darkening of the "pale-face" complexion. A road through sticky black earth is a pot-à-brai, or sailor's pitch-pot. And "boucan," "the place where hams are smoked," has become boucane, meaning smoke itself, of any kind at all. Lumbering is responsible for the cage — raft, cageux — raftsman, crible — "crib," and glissoire — "shoot." Sugaring has l’érablière — the "sugar-bush" of maple trees; la sucrerie, where sugar is made; dalleaux (nautically "scuppers") — spouts for "tapping" trees; mouvette — a stirabout "paddle" for the brassin—: thickening "syrup"; cassot — tiny birch-bark cornucopia, full of "setting" sugar; and la tire — both the "pulling" of half-hardened sugar and the "pulled" sugar itself. Snow and ice have their own vocabulary. Canadians go to le patinoir, not "le skating-rink" affected by Parisians. Les bordages are shore ice; pont de glace, any stretch of ice capable of bearing traffic across water; croûte, "crust" of snow, good going for raquetteurs — snowshoers. The chief drawbacks to the pleasure of winter driving are the baraudage, "slewing," of the sleighs — carrioles; bourguignon — frozen clots after rain; un chemin boulant, where hoofs "ball up"; and cahots — not the bumpings of the carriage, as in France, but the transverse, gouged-out snow-ruts which cause the bumpings. Frasil, snow hanging suspended in water, is the natural foe of every miller. This "fraw-zee" is from "fraisil"—"coal-dust". Extremes meet in similitude.

 

There are few words to show that the seamy side of life has called for special terms. But the frequent use of zigonner, "to saw a horse's mouth," is one proof of the lamentable fact that habitants, and most other French Canadians too, are among the very worst horse-masters in the world. Unpleasing turns of thought, too, are revealed by the universal word for women — les créatures, by the bogey-name for the Devil — la Gripette, and by the feminine form of "tom-fool" — la bêtasse.

 

But, in spite of these exceptions, and partly by reason of the general contempt for the opposite fault of affected fine language — parler en termes — the habitant's own new-found phraseology will pass with the best. Even his distance de quelques arpents is correct enough, where farms are staked out "on the square," and the side of an acre naturally becomes a fixed measure of length (moreover, he has French precedents to warrant it). Fumez donc is no bad form of inviting you to sit down and spend the evening; nor could people whose axes are worth half a chest of tools describe a penniless but capable man better than by calling him un homme à la hache. And what an old time charm there is in the everyday remark about any honest pair of lovers — le cavalier fréquente sa blonde; in the high road being still le chemin du Roi; and even in the word octroi, the Canadian use of which, in the original sense of "assistance granted," takes us far back to the old largesse of princes. How deeply, too, must the patriarchal lore have touched a popular fancy which saw a yearly manna for the teeming rivers in the infinitude of those flies so aptly called la manne des poissons. And, surely, the name peculiar to Laurencian twilight is drawn from the very source of poetry itself; for, at the chill of sunset, the warmed hill-tops smoke with thickening mist, the afterglow burns through the dusking brown, and then, when darkness and light have met awhile — à la brunante, the Canadian day is over. I venture to think that you will find the French-Canadian forms of French not only peculiar and, in their way, unique — unique throughout the world — but good of their kind and full of interest as well.

 

2. The calèche (pronounced on the tourist-haunted cabstands as calash) is a unique survival of an old French vehicle, now probably extinct everywhere else; and only surviving in Quebec because here, if anywhere, the tourist likes to feel "as he should" — and, still more, "as she should."

 

3. P.Q. is not a Prohibition Province. But it is also not a drunken one. Doubtless there were some "good old days" when it was; though I am inclined to doubt whether there ever was a recognised bar-room query in Quebec such as some old West Indians must often have heard in their youth. "Drink, Sah? Yassah! — Drinky for drunky or drinky for dry ?" However this may be, Quebec certainly had the first of all govern-mentally-licensed inns and bar-rooms in Canada; for in 1648 the Governor-in-Council appointed Jacques Boisdon (bibulous cognomen!) first and only innkeeper for the City of Quebec, "provided always that the said Boisdon settles in the square in front of the Church, so that the people may go there to warm themselves; and that he keeps nobody in his house during High Mass, sermons, catechism, or Vespers."

 

4. The first play ever performed in Canada was Corneille's Le Cid, which was given before the Governor and all the Jesuit Fathers in the store-room belonging to the Cent Associés in 1646.

 

5. The old Intendant's Palais must be unique in having been, first, a brewery, established by Talon in 1671, then his own official residence, (where the Superior Council sat, and where the infamous Bigot revelled while New France was on the road to ruin) then barracks (in which lodged some of Arnold's Americans after their wonderful march from Cambridge to Quebec) then, after 112 years of military possession, Dominion Government property; and now a brewery again.

 

6. Quebec is unique in the whole New World as being the burial place of five Governors-in-chief, from Champlain in 1635 to the Duke of Richmond in 1819. Frontenac's heart, enclosed in a small leaden casket, is said to have been sent to his Comtesse — la Divine. But, so the story goes, and it may well be true, she haughtily refused to keep after death what she could never call her own in life. Consequently, it was returned to Quebec, where, with the rest of that warrior's remains, it has passed through two great fires, one when the Récollet church was burnt in 1796, the other when the Basilica was burnt only the other day.

 

7. From old to new. Quebec lays claim to what, almost forty years ago (1885) was then the longest electrical power-transmission in the world — from Montmorency to Quebec, seven miles by wire. How true this claim may be I won't pretend to say. But we do know that by far the longest suspension span, and by far the heaviest too, in all the world of bridges was successfully raised into its present position in 1917. This Canadian-built central span is 640 feet long, and then made, in every way, the record for the world.

 

8. You will remember that, when describing the rooms of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, I drew special attention to the builder's model and the original picture of the unique Royal William, and promised further particulars about this Quebec-built steamer, which was doubly unique in the history of the whole world as well as several times unique in other ways. With the kind permission of the Messrs. Glasgow, Brook, and Co., Toronto, I therefore quote these particulars here from my own book, All Afloat, which forms a volume in the Chronicles of Canada. This account, first published in 1914, is now corrected in regard to the ambiguous wording of a single point. My original statement, that she crossed the Atlantic "entirely under steam" was incorrect, because she had sails (though only as mere auxiliaries) and she used them too. What I ought to have said was that she crossed steaming the whole way, which she certainly did. With this alteration, and a very slight change of wording elsewhere, the following quotation (from pages 136 to 145) is exactly as written more than ten years ago. The original evidence is to be found in the Transactions of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec: New Series, No. 13, 1877-79 (which contain the original description of the first record-making voyage, written by John M'Dougall, Master of the Royal William) and the same, No. 20, 1889-91 (which contain the whole history, as compiled by the Society, with the concurrence of the Government of Canada).

 

"The Royal William was the first of all seagoing steamers, the first that ever crossed an ocean steaming the whole way, and the first that ever fired a shot in action. But her claims and the spurious counter-claims against her must both be made quite clear. She was not the first steamer that ever put out to sea; for the Yankee Phœnix made the little coasting trip from Hoboken to Philadelphia in 1809. She was not the first steamer in Canadian salt water; for the St. John crossed the Bay of Fundy in 1826. And she was not the first vessel with a steam engine that crossed an ocean, for the Yankee Savannah crossed from Savannah to Liverpool in 1819. The Phœnix and St. John call for no explanation. The Savannah does, especially in view of the claims so freely made and allowed for her as being the first regular steamer to cross an ocean. To begin with, she was not a regular sea-going steamer with auxiliary sails, like the Royal William, but a so-called clipper-built, full-rigged ship, of three hundred tons, with a small auxiliary engine and paddle-wheels made to be let down her sides when the wind failed. She did not even steam against head winds but tacked. She took a month to make Liverpool, and she used steam for only eighty hours altogether. She could not, indeed, have done much more, because she carried only seventy-five tons of coal and twenty-five cords of wood, and she made port with plenty of fuel left. Her original log disproves the whole case mistakenly made out for her by some far too zealous advocates.

 

The claims of the Royal William are proved by ample contemporary evidence, as well as by the subsequent statements of her Master John M'Dougall, her builder James Goudie, and John Henry, the Quebec founder who made some castings for her engines the year after they had been put into her at Montreal. M'Dougall was a seaman of indomitable perseverance, as his famous voyage to England shows. Goudie, though only twenty-one, was a most capable naval architect, born in Canada and taught his profession in Scotland. His father was a naval architect before him and had built several British vessels on the Great Lakes for service against the Americans during the War of 1812. Both Goudie and Henry lived to retell their tale in 1891, when the Canadian government put up a tablet to commemorate what pioneering work the Royal William had done, both for the inter-colonial and inter-imperial connection.

 

The first stimulus to move the promoters of the Royal William was the subsidy of £12,000 offered by the government of Lower Canada in 1830 to the owners of any steamer over five hundred tons that would ply between Quebec and Halifax. Half this amount had been offered in 1825; but the inducement was not then sufficient. The Quebec and Halifax Navigation Company was formed by the leading merchants of Quebec joined with a few in Halifax. The latter included the three Cunard brothers, whose family name has been a household word in transatlantic shipping circles from that day to this. On September 2nd, 1830, Goudie laid the keel of the Royal William in the yard belonging to George Black, a shipbuilder, and his partner, John Saxton Campbell, formerly an officer in the 99th Foot, and at this time a merchant and shipowner in Quebec. The shipyard was situated at Cape Cove, beside the St. Lawrence, a mile above the Citadel, and directly in line with the spot on which Wolfe breathed his last after the Battle of the Plains.

 

The launch took place on Friday afternoon, April 29th, 1831. Even if all the people present had then foreknown the Royal William's career they could not have done more to mark the occasion as one of truly national significance. The leaders among them certainly looked forward to some great results at home. Quebec was the capital of Lower Canada; and every Canadian statesman hoped that the new steamer would become a bond of union between the three different parts of the country — the old French province by the St. Lawrence, the old British provinces down by the sea, and the new British province up by the Lakes.

 

The Mayor of Quebec proclaimed a public holiday, which brought out such a concourse of shipwrights and other shipping experts as hardly any other city in the world could show: that is, in proportion to population. Lord Aylmer was there as Governor-General to represent King William IV, after whom the vessel was to be named the Royal William by Lady Aylmer. This was most appropriate, as the sailor king had been the first member of any royal house to set foot on Canadian soil, which he did at Quebec in 1787, as an officer in H.M.S. Pegasus. The guard and band from the 32nd Foot were drawn up near the ship. The gunners of the Royal Artillery were waiting to fire the salute from the new citadel, which, with the walls, was nearing completion, after the Imperial government had spent thirty-five million dollars in carrying out the plans approved by Wellington. Lady Aylmer took the bottle of wine, which was wreathed in a garland of flowers, and, throwing it against the bows, pronounced the historic formula: 'God bless the Royal William and all who sail in her.' Then, amid the crash of arms and music, the roaring of artillery, and the enthusiastic cheers of all the people, the stately vessel took the water, to begin a career the like of which no other Canadian vessel ever equalled before that time or since.

 

Her engines, which developed more than two hundred horse-power, were made by Bennett and Henderson in Montreal and sent to meet her a few miles below that city, as the vessel towing her up could not stem St. Mary's Current. Her hull was that of a regular sea-going steamer, thoroughly fit to go foreign, and not the hull of an ordinary sailing ship, like the Savannah, with paddles hung over the sides in a calm. Goudie's master, Simmons of Greenock, had built four steamers to cross the Irish Sea; and Goudie probably followed his master's practice when he gave the Royal William two deep 'scoops' to receive the paddle-boxes nearer the bows than the stern. The tonnage by builder's measurement was 1370, though by net capacity of burden only 363. The length over all was 176 feet, on the keel 146. Including the paddle-boxes the beam was 44 feet; and, as each box was 8 feet broad, there were 28 feet clear between them. The depth of hold was 17 feet 9 inches, the draught 14 feet. The rig was that of a three-masted topsail schooner. There were fifty passenger berths and a good saloon.

 

The three trips between Quebec and Halifax in 1831 were most successful. But 1832 was the year of the great cholera, especially in Quebec, and the Royal William was so harassed by quarantine that she had to be laid up there. The losses of that disastrous season decided her owners to sell out next spring for less than a third of her original cost. She was then degraded for a time into a local tug or sometimes an excursion boat. But presently she was sent down to Boston, where the band at Fort Independence played her in to the tune of 'God Save the King,' because she was the first of all steamers to enter a seaport of the United States under the Union Jack.

 

Ill luck pursued her new owners, who, on her return to Quebec, decided to send her to England for sale. She left Quebec on August 5th, 1833, coaled at Pictou, which lies on the Gulf side of Nova Scotia, and took her departure from there on the 18th, for her epoch-making voyage, with the following most prosaic clearance: 'Royal William, 363 tons, 36 men. John M'Dougall, master. Bound to London. British. Cargo: 254 chaldrons of coals [nearly 300 tons], a box of stuffed birds, and six spars, produce of this province. One box and one truck, household furniture, and a harp, all British, and seven passengers.' The fare was fixed at £20, 'not including wines.'

 

The voyage soon became eventful. Nearly three hundred tons of coal was a heavy concentrated cargo for the tremendous storm she encountered on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. She strained; her starboard engine was disabled; she began to leak; and the engineer came up to tell M'Dougall she was sinking. But M'Dougall held his course, started the pumps, and kept her under way for a week with only the port engine going. The whole passage from Pictou, counting the time she was detained at Cowes repairing boilers, took twenty-five days. M'Dougall, a sturdy Scotsman, native of Oban, must have been sorely tempted to 'put the kettle off the boil' and run her under sail. But either the port or starboard engine or both worked her the whole way over, and thus for ever established her claim to priority in transatlantic navigation steaming the whole way.

 

In London she was sold for £10,000, just twice what she had fetched at sheriff's sale in Quebec some months before. She was at once chartered, crew and all, by the Portuguese government, who declined to buy her for conversion into a man-of-war. In 1834, however, she did become a man-of-war, this time under the Spanish flag, though flying the broad pennant of Commodore Henry, who was then commanding the British Auxiliary Steam Squadron against the Carlists in the north of Spain. Two years later, on May 5th, 1836, under her Spanish name, Isabella Segúnda, she made another record. When the British Legion, under Sir de Lacy Evans, was attacking the Carlists in the bay of St. Sebastian, she stood in towards the Carlist flank and thereupon fired the first shot that any steaming man-of-war had ever fired in action.

 

Strangely enough, she cannot be said to have come to any definite end as an individual ship. She continued in the Spanish service till 1840, when she was sent to Bordeaux for repairs. The Spaniards, who are notorious slovens at keeping things shipshape, had allowed her to run down to bare rot after her Britisher-Canadian crew had left her. So the French bought her for a hulk and left her where she was. But the Spaniards took her engines out and put them into a new Isabella Segúnda, which was wrecked in a storm on the Algerian coast in 1860.

 

Her career of record-making is well worth a general summary. The Royal William was the first steamer built to foster inter-colonial trade in Canada; the first Canadian steamer specially designed for work at sea ; the first sea-going steamer to enter a port in the United States under the British flag; the first steam transport in Portugal; the first steam man-of-war in Spain; the first naval steamer that ever fired a shot in action; and the first vessel in the world that ever crossed an ocean steaming the whole way."

 

9. Here I shall stop, not because there is nothing else to say about the first things, last things, and only things that have conspired to make Quebec unique, but because the main points have now, I think, been all conned over; and I do not wish to chronicle small beer.

 

In conclusion I would only beg to congratulate Quebec on the two uniquely auspicious visits she has been fortunate enough to have secured from the Royal Society of Canada; for the first was in 1908, the Tercentennial year of all Quebec, while the present one, in 1924, delightfully occurs during the Centennial year of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, the senior of all the learned societies throughout the British Empire overseas.