Hitherto the military in Canada had been left unsupported by their own authorities. Colborne felt them to be something after the pattern of the standing army in the Isle of Champagne, which consisted of two, who always sat down; and he proceeded to make those under him stand up. He asked for reinforcements from home, his policy being of the kind which dictated the display of the British fleet in Delagoa Bay but lately--to frighten, overawe, to show the case to be hopeless, and so save further demonstration from the disaffected. By his detractors he has been accused of taking measures to force premature revolt, knowing that to allow the movement to ripen it would become a grand combination of force which he would be unable to resist. Calumny of this kind was common and not confined to one side of politics, as witness the theory that Mackenzie was in the pay of the British Government to stir up rebellion. It was a master-stroke of policy, said the cavillers, to force the first encounter in Montreal; and thence was traced the line of disaster which followed. Among the scuffles--“troubles sérieux”--was the famous one between the Doric Club and the Sons of Liberty. Warrants against the chief malcontents followed, including Papineau, Morin, O’Callaghan and Nelson. Arrests in the rural districts were resisted strongly. After the Governor (Gosford) had proclaimed martial law, the clash of arms began to be heard. Lieutenant Ermatinger of the Royal Volunteer Cavalry and some twenty men were despatched to St. John’s, _via_ Longueuil and Chambly, to arrest Davignon and Demarais, two noted malcontents. Ermatinger did his work quietly, put irons on their hands and feet and ropes about their necks, and after placing them in agonizing positions on the boards of the waggon in which they were to be conveyed to Montreal, began his return. Their appearance of complete defeat struck the young lieutenant as possibly a wholesome lesson to others; so instead of returning by a direct route he took them where the display would not be lost. Near Longueuil he was warned by a woman that a rescue party awaited him on the road. Disregarding her, he went on till some three hundred men, armed with the usual long guns, in a field on their right, and protected by the high fences, proved her to be correct. Shots were exchanged, Ermatinger himself was wounded in face and shoulder with duck-shot, and a plucky little Surgeon-Major of Hussars (Sharp) in the leg. Some half-dozen others of the Loyalists were disabled, and they began to make good their retreat. Sharp, in spite of his wounds, managed to cover it. The waggon upset prisoners and constables, and as there was neither time nor inclination to pack them in again, the escape was due rather to accident than to rescue. Meantime a party of regulars awaited Ermatinger’s return at the ferry, ready to escort the expected prisoners to gaol; the civil force was so inadequate that he and his men had in fact been doing the work of