d
and forty men to St Johns, while calling for volunteers
to follow. The seigneurial class came forward at once.
But all attempts to turn out the militia en masse_ proved
utterly futile. Fourteen years of kindly British rule
had loosened the old French bonds of government and the
habitants were no longer united as part of one people
with the seigneurs and the clergy. The rebels had been
busy spreading insidious perversions of the belated Quebec
Act, poisoning the minds of the habitants against the
British government, and filling their imaginations with
all sorts of terrifying doubts. The habitants were
ignorant, credulous, and suspicious to the last degree.
The most absurd stories obtained ready credence and ran
like wildfire through the province. Seven thousand Russians
were said to be coming up the St Lawrence--whether as
friends or foes mattered nothing compared with the awful
fact that they were all outlandish bogeys. Carleton was
said to have a plan for burning alive every habitant he
could lay his hands on. Montgomery's thousand were said
to be five thousand, with many more to follow. And later
on, when Arnold's men came up the Kennebec, it was
satisfactorily explained to most of the habitants that
it was no good resisting dead-shot riflemen who were
bullet-proof themselves. Carleton issued proclamations.
The seigneurs waved their swords. The clergy thundered
from their pulpits. But all in vain. Two months after
the American exploits on Lake Champlain Carleton gave a
guinea to the sentry mounted in his honour by the local
militia colonel, M. de Tonnancour, because this man was
the first genuine habitant he had yet seen armed in the
whole district of Three Rivers. What must Carleton have
felt when the home government authorized him to raise
six thousand of His Majesty's loyal French-Canadian
subjects for immediate service and informed him that the
arms and equipment for the first three thousand were
already on the way to Canada! Seven years earlier it
might still have been possible to raise French-Canadian
counterparts of those Highland regiments which Wolfe had
recommended and Pitt had so cordially approved. Carleton
himself had recommended this excellent scheme at the
proper time. But, though the home government even then
agreed with him, they thought such a measure would raise
more parliamentary and public clamour than they could
safely face. The chance once lost was lost for ever.

Carleton had done wh