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Updated: June 7, 2025
Then, believing from the noises that filled the forest in every direction that they were to be attacked in front and rear by an overwhelming force, they broke and fled tumultuously. Salaberry and the Canadians had won a victory that has only a few parallels in warlike annals. Hampton retreated as rapidly as possible to Plattsburg, while Wilkinson found his way to Salmon River.
A combined movement on Montreal was now made by the forces of the United States; it was mainly owing to the loyalty of the French Canadians that they were repulsed. General Hampton advancing from the south with a force 7,000 strong was defeated at the river Chateauguay on October 26, by 900 men belonging to the Canadian militia, commanded by Colonel McDonnell and Colonel de Salaberry.
Three hundred French Canadian Voltigeurs and Fencibles formed the front of the line, and when the former gave way to the onslaught of the four thousand men who advanced against them Salaberry held his ground with a bugler, a mere lad, and made him sound lustily.
Quebec had four representatives, two of whom were of French extraction and two, apparently of Scottish descent. Montreal was similarly represented. If there were as representatives of Quebec a Grant and a Panet, a Young and a De Salaberry, Montreal was represented by a Richardson and a Mondelet, a McGill and a Chaboillez.
The intrepid party was comprised of a few Glengarry Fencibles and three hundred French-Canadian Voltigeurs. Colonel de Salaberry was a trained soldier, and he now displayed brilliant courage and resourcefulness. Two American divisions attacking him were unable to carry his breastworks and were driven along the river bank and routed.
Chambly was long a military post occupied at times by men famous alike in French and English annals. It is also the birthplace of Albam, the famous Canadian singer, and here are buried the remains of de Salaberry, the Canadian Leonidas, in whose honour a statue has lately been erected. Mr.
Hampton, leading an army of probably seven thousand men, had been routed near the junction of the Châteauguay and Outarde rivers by an insignificant force of Canadian Fencibles and Voltigeurs under Colonel de Salaberry, a French Canadian in the English military service, with the aid of Colonel McDonnell, in command of seven companies of Lower Canadian militia.
The people of Canada will always hold in grateful recollection the names of those men who did such good service for their country during these momentous years from 1812 to 1815. Brock, Tecumseh, Morrison, Salaberry, McDonnell, Fitzgibbon, and Drummond are among the most honourable names in Canadian history.
The Dominion Government had at length, been awakened to the danger. Divided counsels still prevailed. Two Commissioners, Grand Vicar Thibault and Col. De Salaberry, arrived at Fort Garry, but they were safely quartered at the Bishop's palace at St. Boniface, and as they professed to have no authority, Riel cavalierly set them aside.
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.
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