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Updated: July 12, 2025
The later history of the Patriotes falls outside the scope of this little book, but a few lines may be added to trace their varying fortunes. Some of them never returned to Canada. Robert Nelson took up his abode in New York, and there practised surgery until his death in 1873.
He had raised the wind, but he could not ride the whirlwind. As the autumn of 1837 wore on, the situation in Lower Canada began to assume an aspect more and more threatening. In spite of a proclamation from the governor forbidding such meetings, the Patriotes continued to gather for military drill and musketry exercises.
Our uniform was not unlike that of the troops of the line in the French army, so we were taken by the crowd for deserters, and hailed with 'Ah, les bon garçons! Ah, les bons patriotes! and we shouted back in turn with all our might, 'Vive la Commune! Vive la République! Those words were in my mouth the whole of the next three days.
'Our only hope, announced La Minerve, 'is to elect our governor ourselves, or, in other words, to cease to belong to the British Empire. A manifesto of some of the younger spirits of the Patriote party, issued on October 1, 1837, spoke of 'proud designs, which in our day must emancipate our beloved country from all human authority except that of the bold democracy residing within its bosom. To add point to these opinions, there sprang up all over the country volunteer companies of armed Patriotes, led and organized by militia officers who had been dismissed for seditious utterances.
The grandson's social tastes and affiliations might have led one to expect that he would have been found in the ranks of the loyalists; but the arbitrary policy of the Russell Resolutions had driven him into the arms of the extreme Patriotes. Arrested for disloyalty at the outbreak of the rebellion, he had been admitted to bail and had escaped.
Some of their leaders, it is true, had been laying plans for a revolt. So much is known from the correspondence which passed between the leading Patriotes in Lower Canada and William Lyon Mackenzie, the leader of the rebellion in Upper Canada.
In both it was merely a flash in the pan. In Lower Canada there had been latterly much use of the phrases of revolution and some drilling, but rebellion was neither definitely planned nor carefully organized. The more extreme leaders of the Patriotes simply drifted into it, and the actual outbreak was a haphazard affair.
All over the province the Patriotes met together to protest against what they called 'coercion. As a rule the meetings were held in the country parishes after church on Sunday, when the habitants were gathered together.
Two alternatives were now open to the British ministers either to make a complete capitulation to the demands of the Patriotes, or to deal with the situation in a high-handed way. They chose the latter course, though with some hesitation and perhaps with regret.
In spite, however, of the uneasiness of the English official element, and the obduracy of the extreme Patriotes, it is barely possible that Gosford, with his bonhomie and his Burgundy, might have effected a modus vivendi, had there not occurred, about six months after Gosford's arrival in Canada, one of those unfortunate and unforeseen events which upset the best-laid schemes of mice and men.
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