A habitant from l’Isle Jésu brought word of the approach of the troops, and soon Sir John Colborne’s two thousand men stood in the valley which looked made but for the place of peace. The whole force, field pieces, rocket mortar and train waggons, covered two miles of roadway. The advance guard would have reached there with the habitant had not the ice been unsafe, causing the men to make a detour to Ste. Rose, thereby increasing the march by six miles. The water had been open two days before, but to prove that it would bear, Colonel Gugy--“a tall, majestic-looking gentleman who expressed himself in a beautiful manner”--galloped from shore to shore. About noon all had arrived, and as they neared the village and took up position their numbers and character must have impressed the unhappy people with the hopelessness of the coming conflict. The usual desertions began, until Chénier, looking at one road full of his enemies and another full of his retreating countrymen, addressed the few who remained with him: “My brothers, behold advancing before you, to burn and destroy your beautiful homes, the servile mercenaries of the despotic Government which has enslaved your country.” And they in return cried the old cry, “Liberty or Death.”... “We will never desert our wives and little ones.” Officers in charge of divided squads put in a state of defence the manor house, the presbytère, the convent and one villager’s house, while Chénier, in person taking command of from sixty to eighty, many of whom were still without arms, went to the church, where the women and children had already fled. The last, for further safety, he placed in the vaults underneath. The doors were then barricaded, and the windows removed to convert the openings into loopholes. Thus did they await the coming annihilation, “nor,” said a British officer afterwards, “did they quail as our overwhelming force approached; they raised one loud and shrill terrific cheer, and then all was still as death till the cannonading and musketry began.” The field battery opened fire; but there was no reply. At first it was supposed that the place had been abandoned; but as another brigade came down the village street a rattling fire poured from the church. It was evident they meant to show fight. The howitzers tried to batter down the barricaded doors, but without effect. Colonel Jackson, of the artillery, asked for a surrender. The answer “was plucky but idiotic;” they pooh-poohed the offer, and among other preparations took a cannon to the top of the steeple. Then Jackson set his own gun, blew the steeple and all that was in it down, and those below who ran out of the doors were bayoneted. An officer who went into one of the empty houses close by upset a stove and placed on the coals all the combustibles he could find. In a moment the line of fire lengthened, and under cover of the smoke Colonel Wetherall and his men came at the double down the