When on that memorable morning in June 1837 the young Princess Victoria was awakened from her slumber and told that she had become mistress of the British Empire, far away, in one part of the Empire, two men were plotting to overthrow the new Queen's authority. Canada was again beset by disloyalty and rebellion. By this time that portion of the country which Champlain had founded and Frontenac ruled, now called Lower Canada, was filled with industrious, God-fearing peasantry, tilling their farms, pursuing the peaceful, wholesome life of the village and countryside. Westward to them lay Upper Canada and the towns and homesteads of the Loyalists, into which many more thousands of settlers had poured since the days of King George III. Amongst both these people a host of agitators arose, restless lawyer-politicians for the most part, who cried out for liberty and a republic. We have seen these crafty-eyed men, with their loud voices and sardonic smile, stalking all through the pages of New World history. They were the successors of the renegades who revolted against Champlain, just as 150 years before that there were the jealous {288} malcontents who revolted against Christopher Columbus and brought him in sorrow to the grave. Frontenac faced them, and with an effort he put them down; the gallant Lasalle met his death at their hands; under Samuel Adams they achieved a triumph in New England which led to the loss of the thirteen American colonies. A noisy, reckless faction of this kind it was which had forced America into the shameful, useless war of 1812. Now the revolutionists stalked rampant in Canada, and it was high time their leaders were overthrown and crushed. In the English part of Canada, the Upper Provinces, the revolutionaries were led by a rash and impulsive Scotchmen named William Mackenzie. In Lower Canada, which was chiefly peopled by French Canadians, the rebels looked to Louis Papineau as their leader. When Lord Gosford, the Governor, warned the people of the peril they ran in listening to the counsels of the demagogues who would ruin them, they only met in the streets shouting "Long live Papineau, our deliverer!" Daring bands of rebels, called "Sons of Liberty," tore down the Governor's proclamation. In a few weeks Papineau gave the signal and his followers flew to arms. It was the time of harvest; the grain had ripened and was ready for the reaper, but the English settlers in Lower Canada, loyal to their young Queen, dared not use their scythes and sickles for fear of the loaded muskets of the French Canadian rebels. They fled for refuge to Montreal, where the first skirmish in the rebellion took place. Then the rebels set upon a small body of loyal cavalry marching from St. John's, on the {289} Richelieu River. Amongst them was a young officer, Lieutenant Weir, the bearer of despatches from Colonel Gore. He was made prisoner and placed in the custody of some of the