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DeSalaberry, with his Voltigeurs, also moved upon the Chateauguay. He was ordered, by the Commander of the Forces, to proceed to the enemy's camp at Four Corners, at the head of Chateauguay, create an alarm, and, if possible, surprise and dislodge him. He had only with him one hundred and fifty Voltigeurs, the light company of the Canadian Fencibles, and a hundred Indians, in charge of Mr.
A Chaussegros de Lery had been an engineer in the royal colonial corps; a Lanaudière had been an officer in the Carignan regiment in 1652; a Salaberry was a captain in the royal navy, and his family won further honours on the field of Chateauguay in the war of 1812-15, when the soil of Lower Canada was invaded. A Taschereau had been a royal councillor in 1732.
In September Hampton had led his forces, recruited to four thousand infantry and a few dragoons, from Lake Champlain to the Canadian border in faithful compliance with his instructions to join the movement against Montreal. His line of march was westward to the Chateauguay River where he took a position which menaced both Montreal and that vital artery, the St. Lawrence.
In that war, in which Canada was repeatedly invaded by American armies, French-Canadian militiamen under French-Canadian officers fought shoulder to shoulder with their English-speaking fellow-countrymen on several stricken fields of battle; and in one engagement, fought at Châteauguay in the French province of Lower Canada, the day was won for British arms by the heroic prowess of Major de Salaberry and his French-Canadian soldiers.
The American position at Chateauguay was not less perilous than that of Harrison on the Maumee and far more so than that which had cost Dearborn so many disasters at Niagara. Hampton moved forward half-heartedly. He had received a message from the War Department that his troops were to prepare winter quarters and these orders confirmed his suspicions that no attempt against Montreal was intended.
Wilkinson pushed on for a few days, but when word came that Hampton had also met disaster he withdrew into winter quarters. Hampton had found Colonel de Salaberry, with less than sixteen hundred troops, nearly all French Canadians, making a stand on the banks of the Chateauguay, thirty-five miles south of Montreal.
"The Honorable Chateauguay drew this up at the time of my marriage," he began. "The whole tree is mine then?" I ventured, surveying it. "Yes," he cried, "and these are brave and honorable names! The wish of my heart has been that you preserve their record. See: the first marriage is a Mlle.
Although the seigniorial tenure disappeared from the social system of French Canada nearly half a century ago, we find enduring memorials of its existence in such famous names as these: Nicolet, Verchères, Lotbinière, Berthier, Rouville, Joliette, Terrebonne, Sillery, Beaupré, Bellechasse, Portneuf, Chambly, Sorel, Longueuil, Boucherville, Chateauguay, and many others which recall the seigniors of the old régime.
The Americans had decided to make an attack on Montreal by two forces one coming by the St. Lawrence and the other by Lake Champlain which were to form a junction at Châteauguay on Lake St. Louis. General Wilkinson, with eight thousand men, descended the river from Sackett's Harbour, landed below Prescott, and then proceeded towards Cornwall.
DeSalaberry returned to Chateauguay, breaking up the road in his rear, and having ascertained the road by which Hampton was determined to advance, he judiciously took up a position in a thick wood, on the left bank of the river Chateauguay, two leagues above its confluence with English river. Here, he threw up breastworks of logs, and his front and right flanks were covered by extended abattis.
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