Summary of the Military Events
In Lower Canada, the Patriotes faced a tough opponent. Sir John Colborne, former lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada and one of Wellington's colonels, commanded only eight week battalions in situation where virtually every Canadien responded emotionally to Papineau's nationalist arguments. From November 16, when civil authorities finally issued warrants for the arrest of Papineau and his associates, it took Colborne less than a month to crush resistance in the Richelieu Valley and in the Deux Montagnes region of Montreal. It was not painless for either side. Years of peacetime routine had allowed British regulars to forget the need for planning and administrative competence. The defeat of Colonel Gore's half-frozen, exhausted soldiers at St. Denis (at the hands of Canadiens led by war-seasoned veterans like Wolfred Nelson and Charles Jalbert) could have been a signal for province-wide revolt. Euphoria vanished when an equally ill-equipped British column captured St. Charles two days later. British regulars crushed the last Patriote stronghold, St. Eustache, on December 14 but undisciplined loyalist volunteers from Montreal earned Colborne his name of "Vieux Brűlot" by burning St. Benoit and pillaging farms on the triumphal march home.
In Upper Canada, the bravado of Sir Francis Bond Head in sending the single British battalion to Montreal encouraged Mackenzie to summon followers to seize unguarded arms at Toronto. Word of St. Denis brought hundres more of the ill-armed volunteers to Mackenzie's side. While bond Head dithered between over-confidence and panic, resistance was organized by the aging veteran of Beaver Dams, Colonel James Fitzgibbon. He and the much younger Colonel Allan MacNab mustered and armed a ragtsag army and, on December 7, led it north to an almost bloodless encounter. The rebels fled.
So far, Upper Canada's rebellion had been opéra boufe; the comedy was now over. Contrasting sharply with Lower Canada, where the harshest judicial penalties were short-lived exile in Bermuda, two of Mackenzie's lieutenants were hanged, another died in jail, and many more were sent to Australian penal colonies.
pp 73-74, A MilitaryHistory of Canada, Desmond Morton, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992.