bt, composed of Germans; one wonders to what extent they
fraternized with the French Canadians. It is amusing to read that, when
one of them deserted, he was brought back by a habitant.

In 1781 we find Nairne stationed at Vercheres on the south side of the
St. Lawrence, nearly opposite Montreal. He was now in charge of the
expatriated Loyalists who had found refuge in that part of Canada. A
whole corps of them were billeted in the two parishes of Vercheres and
Contrecoeur--the officers chiefly at Contrecoeur. They lived, of
course, in the cottages with the habitants. On December 16th, 1781,
Nairne writes to General Riedesel, a German officer who played a
conspicuous part on the British side in the Revolutionary war and was
now in command at Sorel, that the Canadians do not mind supplying
firewood for the loyalist officers but that they rather object to having
the same people quartered upon them for two years at a time. Though an
occasional officer had said that the Loyalists were not obedient, he
adds that they were quiet and orderly people. Some of them had large
families and must have crowded uncomfortably their involuntary hosts.
These colonial English living in the households of their old-time
enemies, the French Canadians, make a somewhat pathetic picture. We see
what domestic suffering the Revolutionary War involved. Some were very
old; one "genteel sort of woman," a widow, had four children, the
youngest but four months old; there was another whose husband had been
hanged at Saratoga as a spy. Very large sums passed through Nairne's
hands in behalf of the Loyalists. One account which he renders amounts
to about L20,000.[12]

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