The Battle of Saint-Eustache was a decisive battle in the Lower Canada Rebellion in which government forces defeated the principal remaining Patriotes camp at Saint-Eustache on December 14, 1837.
After the victory at Saint-Charles, the government forces were in a position to prepare attacks on Patriote camps to the north, including those at Saint-Benoît and Saint-Eustache. The government force, led by John Colborne, numbered 1,280 regular soldiers from the 1st and 32nd Regiments of Foot and reinforced by the newly arrived 83rd Regiment of Foot, supported by artillery and 220 Loyalist volunteers. The Patriote organization was primitive; many members did not even have firearms. They thought they could get 800 combatants, but eventually fielded only 201 men, led by Jean-Olivier Chénier and Amury Girod. They lay barricaded in the convent, the church, the rectory and the manor in the centre of the village.
Amury Girod left as the skirmish was sparked, supposedly to get reinforcements at Saint-Benoît. Suspected of treason, fellow Patriotes went after him, and he would eventually commit suicide.[1]
Defenders take refuge in the church of Saint-Eustache (F.S. Coburn illustration from The Habitant and Other Poems by William Henry Drummond)
Battle
At the battle site, Colborne placed his troops around the village and had his soldiers advance systematically to tighten the vice on the defenders. Towards noon, he ordered the artillery to open fire on the centre of the village and then to advance up the main street and break down the doors of the church, where many Patriotes had taken refuge. Two companies of the 1st Regiment of Foot were able to take the rectory nearby, and they set it on fire so that the smoke would make it difficult for those defending the church to see. The grenadiers of the 1st Regiment of Foot then took the manor and set it on fire as well. They were then able to enter the church through the vestry, which they also torched prior to withdrawing under the fire of the Patriotes in the balcony. Caught in the burning church, the Patriotes tried to get out by jumping from the windows, where Jean-Olivier Chénier finally attempted an escape. However, he was swiftly killed. The government forces fired at the rebels as they jumped out the windows to escape the fire. At this point the government troops made a final assault in a merciless struggle. This disastrous battle for the Patriotes lasted at least 4 hours; 70 Patriotes were killed, against only three government soldiers.[1]
Aftermath
In the days that followed, soldiers and volunteers scoured the county of Deux-Montagnes. Saint-Eustache and Saint-Benoît were burned in a fire. In Saint-Joachim, Sainte-Scholastique and Sainte-Thérèse, the army burned the houses of the rebellion's leaders.
The church was burnt and destroyed, except for the facade, which still exists. The rest of the church has been rebuilt. The facade still shows the marks of British cannon impacts.
The Lower Canada Rebellion, commonly referred to as the Patriots' War in French, is the name given to the armed conflict in 1837–38 between rebels and the colonial government of Lower Canada. Together with the simultaneous rebellion in the neighbouring colony of Upper Canada, it formed the Rebellions of 1837–38.
Saint-Eustache is an off-island suburb of Montreal, in western Quebec, Canada, west of Montreal on the north shore of the Rivière des Mille Îles. It is located 35 km (22 mi) northwest of Montreal.
This section of the Timeline of Quebec history concerns the events in British North America relating to what is the present day province of Quebec, Canada between the time of the Constitutional Act of 1791 and the Act of Union 1840.
Wolfred Nelson was the mayor of Montreal, Quebec, from 1854 to 1856.
Events from the year 1837 in Canada.
Field Marshal John Colborne, 1st Baron Seaton, was a British Army officer and colonial governor. After taking part as a junior officer in the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland, Sir Ralph Abercromby's expedition to Egypt and then the War of the Third Coalition, he served as military secretary to Sir John Moore at the Battle of Corunna. He then commanded the 2nd Battalion of the 66th Regiment of Foot and, later, the 52nd Regiment of Foot at many of the battles of the Peninsular War. At the Battle of Waterloo, Colborne on his own initiative brought the 52nd Regiment of Foot forward, took up a flanking position in relation to the French Imperial Guard and then, after firing repeated volleys into their flank, charged at the Guard so driving them back in disorder.
The 32nd Regiment of Foot was an infantry regiment of the British Army, raised in 1702. Under the Childers Reforms it amalgamated with the 46th Regiment of Foot to form the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in 1881.
The Chénier Cell, also known as the South Shore Gang, was a Montreal-based Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) terrorist cell responsible for the bombing, armed robbery and kidnapping that led to the October Crisis in 1970.
Field Marshal Sir William Shearman Rowan, was a British Army officer. He served in the Peninsular War and then the Hundred Days, fighting at the Battle of Waterloo and taking part in an important charge led by Sir John Colborne against the Imperial Guard when he was wounded. He later assisted Colborne in Colborne's new role as Acting Governor General of British North America during the rebellions by the Patriote movement in 1837. Rowan returned to Canada as Commander-in-Chief, North America in which role he made an important conciliatory speech in response to the burning of the Parliament Buildings in Montreal by an angry mob in April 1849.
The Battle of Saint-Denis was fought on November 23, 1837, between British colonial authorities under Lieutenant-Colonel Gore and Patriote rebels in Lower Canada as part of the Lower Canada Rebellion. The Patriotes were led by Wolfred Nelson. Gore was sent to quell the uprising in the Richelieu River valley in conjunction with a force led by Lieutenant-Colonel George Wetherall. Gore was the first to arrive at a Patriote-held site. Nelson had organized the defence with most of the well-armed rebels within a stone house that overlooked the road. Gore, accompanied by only one cannon, attempted to take the stone house three times, with the cannon providing ineffective fire. Another attempt to flank the house to the left failed when Gore's soldiers encountered the less well-armed militia. Running out of ammunition, the British retreated. This marked the only Patriote victory in 1837, as this battle was followed by two defeats at Saint-Charles and Saint-Eustache.
The Battle of Saint-Charles was fought on 25 November 1837 between the Government of Lower Canada, supported by the United Kingdom, and Patriote rebels. Following the opening Patriote victory of the Lower Canada Rebellion at the Battle of Saint-Denis, British troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Wetherall advanced from the south on the Patriote stronghold of Saint-Charles in the Richelieu valley. On 25 November 1837 they engaged the Patriote forces under the command of Thomas Storrow Brown. After a two-hour battle, the Government of Lower Canada was victorious.
General Sir George Augustus Wetherall, was a senior British Army officer.
Charles John Forbes was an official in the Commissariat Department of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. He later was posted to Lower Canada, where he was responsible for supplying the British Army units there, as well as obtaining the supplies necessary for the construction of the canal system on the Ottawa River, including the Carillon Canal. After he retired from the Commissariat Department in 1836, Forbes and his family settled in Lower Canada, where he bought a large estate at Carillon.
Jean-Olivier Chénier was a physician in Lower Canada. Born in Lachine. During the Lower Canada Rebellion, he commanded the Patriote forces in the Battle of Saint-Eustache. Trapped with his men in a church by the government troops who set flames to the building, he was killed while attempting to escape through a window. He died to shouts of "Remember Weir!", a reference to George Weir, a government spy executed by the Patriotes. The government forces mutilated Chénier's corpse to intimidate the remaining Patriote supporters:
The Patriote flag was used by the Patriote movement in Lower Canada between 1832 and 1838.
Jacques Labrie was a physician and political figure in Lower Canada.
The Iroquois community of Kahnawake played a unique role in the Lower Canada Rebellions, part of the greater Rebellions of 1837.
Lieutenant-Colonel Maximilien Globensky was a French-Canadian who fought for the British in the War of 1812 and for the loyalists in the Rebellions of 1837.
The following is an incomplete bibliography of the 1837-1838 insurrections in Lower Canada in the English and French languages, by publication date and document type.
Île Sainte-Thérèse is an island of the Saint Lawrence River, located northeast of Island of Montreal. Administratively attached to the municipality of Varennes, located in the Marguerite-D'Youville Regional County Municipality, in Montérégie, in the province of Quebec, in Canada.
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