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'■' ';> ' > i v- ■^^ L«ddres8ing you thk eveniag, I shall omit all re« fereace to those Irish matters with Which you are as well acquainted as I am, and which can add nothing to your knowledge of the facts, of to your love of the old land ; but striking out into regions hitherto unexplored^ I shall open up to your gasse some few pages of Canadian History shaped by Irish minds, illumined by Irish geniusj or mad« famous by Irish valor. I shall begin the History of a now forgotten Irish OoU ony oii the banks of the 8t. Lawrence, leaving to other hands the task of completing what I shall have begun. It is not generally known, that long before Wolfe had scaled the Heights of Abraham, a large Irish element had settled down in Oanad% intermarried with the French^ and had become absorbed in the French population of this coun* try; and I almost fancy that I tee iKHne of my ■TK, hearers politely lift their eyebrows, and smile incredulously at my assertion, that the closing scenes of the French wars in Canada witnessed more than one wild Irish hui^zah, at some new triumph) on American soil, of the Irish Brigade of glorious memory. When my atten* lion was drawn to this subject by the venerable O'Gallaghan's statement that the Beam Regi« ment is supposed to have been a portion of the Irish Brigade serving in Canada, I felt inclined to doubt the statement, because neither Forman nor O'Connor make any mention of the fact. Subsequent researches made by me have, how- ever, convinced me that the ''Brigade served here; and I thought that I could not better employ the half hour allotted to me for my ad- dress this evening, than by endeavouring to do a tardy act of justice to that Irish worth which had helped to hew down the mighty forests of this fair Province^ than by rescuing from obli-* Tion that Irish valor, which if it had, at length, flailed to conquer vastly superior numbers, yet had several bright days, and among them one that rivals in glory the never to be forgotten Fontenoy. My task this evening, then, shall be to show that a considerable portion of the French speaking population of this Province is 5 of Irish extraction, and that such Franco-Irish element was still farther increased, at tbe con- quest, by the absorption of the sheltered rem- nants of the Irish Brigade, then serving in Canada; and I shall conclude with a brief sketch of the services of the Brigade on Ameri- can soil. If any gentleman, in the course of my re- marks, detires to sift the accuracy of my asser- tions, I shall be happy to oblige him ; for I have here with me for reference most of the books, and extracts from the public documents which go to prove my statements. In this work, just issued from the press, an(^ compiled by the Reverend Father Tanguay from the Parish Registers of Lower Canada, we have a complete record of every marriage, birth and death, that has taken place, among the Catholic settlers, from the first settlement of the country down to our own days. Of the 2;500 families that made up tbe popu-; lation of Lower Canada, at the close of the seventeenth century, well nigh one hundred families are shewn by this book to be natives of Ireland ; and, in about thirty other cases, either the husband or the wife is also shewn to be of Irish origin. In most cases, as I shall presently shew by illustration, the worthy old Prencb Priests, who hare made the entries in the Re- gisters, have so gallicized the orthography of the Irish names as to render them undistin- guishable from the French settlers proper ; and my statement of this evening would not be susceptible of proof, were it not for the state- ments in the entries themselves that the persons therein mentioned were natives of Ireland. In eome cases the good old Cur€ seems to hare hopelessly abandoned the attempt to spell the Irish name, and he merely entered the baptismal name, just adding after it, the word '* Irlandais/' or '^ Irlandaise," as the case might be. For in- stance, who would have dreamt that ^< Thimot^ Sylvain" was intended for " Timothy O'Sulli- van," son of Cornelius Daniel O'SuUivan, Connty of Eillarney, and of Elizabeth McCarthy, his wife, both citizens of Cork, in Ireland. Yet such is the case ; for, in January, 1720, Timothy O'SuUivan, then practising as a Surgeon, was married at Pointe aux Trembles, near Quebec, to Marie Gautier, widow of Christophe Dufros de la Jemmerais, and mother of Madame d' You- ville, foundress of the General Hospital or Grey Nuns of this city ; and to remove all doubt as to his Irish birUi, O'SuIlivan has taken «ar^ to fulrhish posterity With & e^rtifieate sign- ed by Fitz James, Duke of Barwick, Lord Clare, Mr. Rute^ Mr. Duglas, Mr. Gouq, all Colonels of Irish Regiments iu the service of J^rance, and &11 attesting the nobility of O'Sallivan's descent. And his parentage, as I have given them above, And relating his sixteen year's seiirice as Gap- tain of Dragoons in the trlsh Brigade ; the eet- tifieate farther states that, having sailed fbr Ireland, to recruit for his regiment, he was taken prisoner by pirates, and brought to Kew England, whence he escaped to Canada ; his wife was the daughter of the Governor of Three Rivers ; a few particulars of his life are given in the Abb6 Faillon's Life of Madame dTouville. In like manner, who could guess that '< Tec Corneille Aubry," married at Quebec, on the 1 0th September, 1670, was an Irishman? Yet the Register leaves no room for doubt upon the subject ; he was the son, says the Register, of '^ Connor O'Brennan," and of Honorah Jane- hour, of St. Patrick's (Diasonyoen) Ireland, his real name being " Teague Cornelius O'Brennali.^' In this connection, I may mention that, When I was pursuing my studies in the College at Quebec, our Rector was the ReV. Dr. Aubry, a 8 worthy and pious Divine, and one of three brothers in the Priesthood in Lower Canada, and the uncles of two other young Canadian clergy- men. Dr. Aubry, until quite recently, lived in the firm belief that he was of purely French extraction ; in fact, if my memory serves me right, h6 used playfully, at times, to pull my little ears for being, as he used playful- ly to say, such a wicked little Irlandaia, Now the researches of Father Tanguay in the musty old Church Registers of Lower Canada have revealed the astounding fact that Dr. Aubry is, after all, a countryman of our own, an Irland* aiSy a lineal descendant of that Teague Corne- lius O'Brennan ; another of his descendants is Parish Priest m the Town of St. Johns, neap this city, Montreal. Who, again, I ask, but one able to answer the sphinx, could fancy that John Houssye dit Bellerose was an Irishman. He was so never- theless ; was married here on the 11th October, 1571 ; and as the Register attests, he was born in the Parish of St. Lawrence O'Toole, Dublin, and he was the son of Matthew Hussey and of Elizabeth Hogan, his wife, both Dubliners and both under the protection of that very Irish saint, O'Toole. If I mistake not, Mr. ry fiellerose, the member for Laval, can traco back his pedigree to our friend. Jack Hussey, from Dublin. Thus also we find Jean Baptiste Riel, married at Isle du Pads, on the 2l3t January, 1704 ; he is surnamed *' iJansouciy^ which we may trans- late either " careless^^ or " De'il may care,'' as we please; this ^*Riel" is described in the Regis- ter as having been a native of St. Peter's Parish, in the city of Limerick in Ireland; from the closeness of the dates, 1698 and 1704, from the singular n2cA;-name (sansouci) he bore with his comrades, and from the consonance, '^ Riel" and Reilly, I should be inclined to think that our Isle du Pads friend was Jack Reilly, the de'il-may-care, all the way from Limerick, and that he must have given and taken some hard knocks under Sarsfield. This "Riel" or Reilly, as he should be called, is the direct an- cestor of " Louis Riel" of Red River fame ; and this fact may serve to account for the close friendship subsisting between Riel and O'Dono- hoe. Again, Louis de Buade, Count de Frontenac, while Governor here had a trusty servant nimed *^ Pierre Lehait," as chamberlain; and at the same time, there lived in Quebec, a man, 10 who was married at Quebec dn tbe 9th Bep* tember, 1699, as " Jean Lehays" ; and yet the Registers shew that these two men were brothers, named John and Peter Leahey, re- flpectively, kind that they were the Irifth sons of Thomas Leahey and Catherine Williams, of iht Gounty ot Wieklow, in Ireland. Thus it is with John, Daniel and Joseph Thomas, sons of Sdward Tnomae and Cather- ine Casey ; and t^^jis, also, it is with John Ed- munds and his wife, Mary Kelly, and thus it id with the 130 couples I ha^e mentioned; the Church Registers unmistakably show, and state in so many words, that those parties were natives of Ireland. In some cases besides these, there are a few persons described as being Scotch, who were undoubtedly Irish; for in- stance^ I find the burial of a nun of the Hotel- Dieu of Quebec, SSoeur Marie de la Concep- tion, by tbe nair.e of Marie Hirouin / and by other entries I find her real name to have been Mary Kirwan, She came to Canada in '643, and was buried in 1687; she is stated to have been the daughter of a Scotch noble ; but this is evi- dently a mistake, for who ever heard of a Scotch Kirwan f ■ I could thus go through the list of unmistak- 1 11 ably Irish Bettlers in Lower Canada during the first century of its history ; but I have mention- ed enough of them for the purpose in yiew, and what I have shown in connection with the fact that the disbanded soldiers of the Carignan Regiment settled in the neighborhood of Que- bec, makes it highly probable that, in tne ori- ginal owners of the lands fronting the St. Law- rence near Quebec, are to be found the de- scendants of the " Wild Geese" ; indeed, if an extreme resemblance, nay ia many cases a per- fect agreement of the names in sound in both languages, be a safe criterion, one may readily trace in the French Canadian Martins, Nolans, Nolins, Halles, Barrettes, MorinS; Gu6rins, and Bourkes on the south shore opposite Quebec, the old Celtic Martins, Nolans, Healeys, Barretts, Morans, Qearans and Burkes ; indeed, the bat* .le-field of Wolfe and Montcalm derives its name, the Plains of Abraham, from the former owner of the field, an old Irish sailor and pilot, named Abraham Martin, wrongly surnamed I'Ecossais by his neighbors, precisely as the Irish nun, Mary Kirwan, is stated to have been of Scotch descent. It requires, moreover, but little elSbrt of the invagination to discover in the Alaries, Alainsi 12 Mainguys, Moreaus and Binettes on the north shore near Quebec, the time-honored Irish Pa- tronymics of O'Leary, Allan, Magee, Barry, O'Brien, O'Dea, McMorrogh, and Bennett. With the permission of the Prothonotary at Quebec, I have searched through the Registers of the Quebec Cathedral for the first half of the last century, both before and shortly after the Conquest, and I find in the following names which abound there for that period, a most re- markable Irish ring, namely: Caissy, Massy, Harnois, Cahey, Cahel, d'Alot, Mally, Kery, Lanan, Barden dit Lafontaine, Jacson, Janson ditLa Palme, Obaurette, Maclure, Delan6 dit Laliberte, Deniou, Deniau,0'Neil, Carel, Travers, Mony. Molloye, Grefin, De Gannes, Hilli Gourlee, Gourdon, Duffy dit C barest, Graton, Couc dit Montour, Couc dit Lafleur, Griffon, Guer6, Belet, Boilan, Trehet, Martin, L6ret. Apart from the remarkable agreement of the names in sonnd, three striking circumstances tend to strengthen the belief that those names are of Irish origin, and these circumstances are: Firstly,— That in searching through the Re- gisters, I have found the persons bearing those 13 lorth Pa- ixy, names intermarried more frequently with each ether than with persons bearing other names. Secondly,~That they generally assist as groomsmen and bridesmaids at the weddings of each other ; and Thirdly, — That, after the Conquest, when the Irishmaii^ fresh from the sod, drops into Quebec, the Registers show him to be best man or god father, on every available occasion, among the families bearing those names. It would seem, indeed, as if the persons bear- ing those names had long formed a sort of colony apart, and were drawn more closely together and irresistably attracted towards every fresh Irish arrival by some common, and very strong, bond of union. A few examples drawn from the Registers of the Parish of Quebec, about the time of the Conquest, will serve to make this quite plain. On the 19th February, 1759, before the Con- quest, a soldier of the Regiment of Berry is married, and his best man is Sergeaat Noel Francois Nicholas Finegan (Finegan), of the same regiment. On the same day, Pierre B61et (Bailey), is married, and his best man is Nicholas Martin (Martin), another soldier in Boishebert's Company. On the following day, Martin in his turn mftfried) and his beet man is Antoitie «fae- son (Jackson), but whether civilian or soldief^ the Register does not state. On the 26th Feb.^ 1759, Pien^e Louis Helleine dit La Jeanesse (evidently an Allan), a soldier, is married, and his best man is Nicholas Devin (Devin). On the 23rd April, 1759, Louis Nicholas Lachai]:c dit LaGrenade, a soldier in Montresson's Com«^ pany, ib married to Elizabeth Donlan, (Donnel^ Ian), the best man being Pierre Boillan (Boylan)i Oorporal in the same Company, and one of the invited witnesses, who signs the Register, is Captain Delaine, of the same Company. On the 24th June, 1760, after the Conquest, Martin Echenner, who may or may not have been a Shanahy, is married, and the three witnesses to his marriage are Duffy dit Charest, Barthelemi Hill, and Guillaume DuBarry ; that entry speaks for itself. On the 7th of August, 1761, Mrs. Janson is godmother to Massey's child4 On the 21st of September of the same year, Thomas Caret (Carey) is married to a Moran j on the 27th of September, of the same year, Louis Langlois and Charlotte Moran are sponsors for the child of Jean Langlois. On the 7th of November of the same year, the undoubtedly 15 friah Smne* JIMth^to* and Miss Janson dit La JPalmef are sponsors for a daughter of Delzennes ; on tJtv) 23rd of NoTember of thet same jear, Jean Jamn is married to Fran^oise Gu4ry ; on the 25th of November of the same year, Charles Martin is godfather to the daughter of Michel J<mrdain (Jordan). On the 1st February^ 1762, Charles Orion dit Cham" pagnsf (evidently an O^JRyan} is married, and the witnessed are Francois Belet^ Joseph DalaiSf and three '^ Maclures/' (the father and two sons,) whose Irish origin I have ascertained beyond all doubty as I shall presently state. It is also a very striking fact that all the families bearing the Irish names I have men^^ tioned, exhibit an exuberant fondness for the Christian names of Bridget and Judith^ there i» a Bridget in every family of them, and a Judith in everj third or fourth family ; and although I have found none of the male cbiU dren christened by the name of Patricki that circumstance has but little weight ; because, on perusing the list of officers of James' army, and of the Brigade, I find but one " Patrick " among them, the Barl of Lucan, Patrick Sarsfield. Another strongly corioborative cireumstance 16 as to the existence of the Irish Colony I' speak of, is to be found in the name " Trou de^ St. Patrice," St. Patrick^s Hole, borne by a small, but very safe, anchorage ground at the Island of Orleans, 16 miles below Quebec ; that very significant name was not given to the place yesterday, nor yet the day before yester- day ; for a French manuscript, over a hundred years old, the Hartwell Library manuscript, a copy of which is to be found in the library of the Quebec Historical Society, gives an account of the siege of Quebec by "Wolfe, and speaks of that anchorage ground by its name of '< Trou de St. Patrice," as if the place, long before that time, had borne that name. Again, Governor de la Gallisioniere, in writing from Canada to the French War Minister 'on the 28th of May, 1746, says, " Mr. de la Orois, a returned French prisoner, had heard Generals Shirley and Warren mention Tadousac Cove and St. Patrick's Hole as places where the British fleet might anchor on moving up against Quebec," Father Ferland, the historian of Canada, more- over informpus that the harbor in question bore the name of " St. Patrick's Hole" fully seventy years before the Conquest. Such exceptional devotion in a French coun- 17 1) tfy to an Irfoh Saiikt can^ ha'Te had itsr rise in ojxQ source only, and is the strongest possible corroboration Of the statements I have been makine. The year after the conquest three Irishmen—^ nnmistakeably Irish (for the Registers state they were bom in Ireland) appear in Quebec ; their names are Daniel Donne, William Our- tain and Jeremiah Duggan; Duggan is the barber mentioned by Smith, the historian, as having joined the Irish American General, Mont* gomery, at the siege of Quebec, in 1775^ at the head of 500 Canadians. As soon as Donne, Cur» tain and Duggan appear on the stage, scarcely a christening or wedding takes place among the families bearing the Irish names I haye men-^ tioned without the signature of one of the tiiiree in the Register, as godfather, best man or witness; and Duggan eventually marries ai granddaughter of old Abraham Martin, and Onrtain marries a niece of on€i'//an^^ot« whose name denotes him to have been of Snglish-speak- ing oriijin. Among those whose names I have mentioned above, there are two families which deserve especial notice at my hands, they are the Mao- lures and O'Neills. Viom fisbiniiy papers in the B 18 possession of Hon. M. de L^ry of Quebec, it appears that the Maclures had come from Ire- land to Canada forty years before the conquest ; and, on the extinction of the name here, the family property amassed here, consisting of Dexter's (now Mills') Hotel, Quebec, passed to collateral heirs, now residing in Letterkenny, Ireland, and drawing their rents through 1^. Hossack, of Quebec. ^ ' n :UC, - . i^ uw With regard to O'Neill, when Wolfe was thundering with his cannon at the gates of Quebec, ii^ 1751/, this man, O'Neill, had occasion to have a cnild baptized ; and, whether he had reason to f 3ar the operation of British laws as to treason, or whether he had a wholesome recollection of the English Statute, awarding the penalty of death for treason to any one as- suming the name of O'Neill, I know not, — but, certain it is, that, on signing the act of baptism as the father, he wrote his name Onelle in one word, without the apostrophe, and with a min- uscule n; and, after the Conquest, as year after year rolled by, and he saw nobody hurt, his Irish orthography improved, until, on the 24th November, 1761, when, being a witness to the marriage of his niece, he signed the Register in genuine Irish style, " P. O'Neill." 19 lec, it a Ire- Luest ; e, the ng of }ed to tenny, rh Mr. i. uU Q was sites of icasion he had Eiws as lesome aiding )ne as- t,— but, )aptism in one amin- 8 year y hurt, on the ness to Register I could multiply examples of such entries, which haye brought conviction to my mind that many of the 400,00Q Irishmen, who are proved by the records of the war office in Paris to have served in the armies of France from 1645, and their descendants must have been r> warded with grants of farms in Lower Canada ; and the number of Irish families thus settled in this country, and mustering several hundreds, with one century for expansion, must have formed a very large proportion of che 60,000 souls, who passed with Canada, in 1759 under the British Flag. ' I^ay be asked how have those Irish names dis- appeared, — the answer is simple ; many of them have not disappeared ; others of them have dis- appeared, I shall show how. The Abbe Faillon tells us that, with reference to all English speaking persons, the French being unable to pronounce their names, used the Christian name, and added BAnglois after it ; he tells us, more- over, that Dr. Timothy O'SuUivan was called Sylvain by the French who could not pronounce the name; and that the Doctor acquiesced in the change, corresponded in that name with the French authorities, and received from the French king a diploma as surgeon by the name 20 of Syt^am. In like manner, since the Oonqnest I have "^und «F6remiah>Duggan's name changed to JSrSmie I)e Gannee, William Curtain^ % name changed to Ouillaume Cotonne^ Edmond to Rougementf Edmonds to Haimond^ Leahy to De la Haye^ Daly to DalaiSy Permy to PinS^ J^itsh nmmons to Simon and Shallaw to CMli; tat these changes I refer to entries to be found in the Quebec Parish Church Register in Februa- ry, 1762. Oomparatiyely large as that Irish colony must have been, it received a large accession from the shattered remnants of the Irish Bri- gade, who, after having sery^ed through the war, settled in this country after the Conquest; But, before noticing the brilliant achiere- meats of the Brigade here, it is fitting that I shot Id briefly state the evidence we have of this important fact in the history of Canada^ Unfortunately the records of the War ofl8ce in Paris from 1736, which would have settled the question beyond all doubt, are missing ; some scattering papers only remain; enough, how« ever, remains to convince any unprejudiced person of this great and hitherto unknown feature of Canadian History. The scattered documents remaining have been compiled and 21 pubUshed by the yenerable Dr. O^Gallagban (once a fellow-townsman of yours,) under the auspices of the State Legislature of New York. From those papers, to be found in the tenth volume of that work ofO'Gallaghan's, and from other sources that I shall cite, as I proceed, I shall draw convincing proof that the Irish Brigade served 5 years in Canada, from 1765 to 1760. In volume X. of that work, page 368, of the published documents drawn from the Archives of Paris, we find a letter to the Count d' Argenson, the French Minister of War, from the French Commissary General, Doreil (whom, from Uie name, I more than suspect to have been an O'Reilly); that letter contuns the following passage ; <' I regard, then, as certain, my Lord, tiiat the king will send some reinforcements next year. In that case, permit me an observa- tion, whereupon I have conferred with Mr. de Vaudreuil, who agrees with me in opinion* Among the number of Battalions, that you will order over, I think it would be well to send over one Irish Battauon, the rather as it would possess all the necessary resources to recruit, itself." At page 925 of the same volume, we find a w 22 i I SI ' if i:^ J' ■ ! ill!'' Memoir withoat date, but supposed to bave been presented in 1754 to the Kinpf by the min- ister D'Argenson, acting upon that suggestion, and recommending that Irish troops b6 sent to Canada. ' ^ • In volume VII., page 270, of the same work and in volume I., page 494, of another work the Documentary History of New York, we find, copied from the London Archives^ the sworn declaration of a soldier of Shirley's Regiment, made before Sir Charles Hardy, and transmitted by him in 1756 to the Lords of Trade in Eng- land. That affidavit states : " Claude Fr6d6ric de Hutenac, of Major General Shirley's Regiment declares that on Monday, the ninth of Augnst, a Prowgalley went out of the Harbour of Os- wego, and discovered the French Camp about a mile from the Fort." After describing the siege of Fort Oswego, a Council of War that was held, and the hoisting of the white flag by ^ British as a signal of surrender, this soldier, was a deserter from the French, and must .sequently have known the Brigade, goes on to say : " upon which this Declarant said to Colonel Littlehales, if you are going to give up the Fort, you must suflFer me, who am a deser- fer from the French, to make the best of my 23 way, because they will laave no mercy upon me ; the Colonel gave me and seven otber deserters leave ; but, before we got quite clear, we saw the French from the opposite side of the har- bour getting into boats, and among them some clothed with red faced with green, who belong to the Irish Brigade." In reference to that affidavit, I feel some curiosity to know why Sir Charles Hardy deemed the presence of the Brigade here a fact of sufficient importance to establish it by affida- vit for the information of his government, un- less some treaty to which the neutral powers were parties, prohibited the employment of the Brigade against England ; the existence of such a treaty would explain the sort of veil that has been thrown over the presence of the Brigade here, and would also explain the disappearance of the Paris Archives. Again in his Journal of the Capture of Fort Oswego, to be found at page 494 of volume I of O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New York, de Montcalm goes out of his way to in- form the King that two of the Regiments made prisoners there, namely,Shirle/s and PeppereVs, had been engaged (on the British side, of course) in the Battle of Fontenoy. It is difficult to sup- I 84 po0e thflit this «piL ode in de MmitcftlB]^ JonmA WM fragi^egted bj aoTthing else than the vecol- leetton of thAt new triumph of the Brigade oTer their hereditary foes. To that diiect evidenoe of the eamet^t appeal! Of the Gommissarj for Irish soidiere, that oon^ corrence of the minister in the suggestion, and Uiat prool df their actual pre^enee at Oswego, in 1756, 1 may add the testimony of the author of the Irish JBettiers in America, to the efifect that Dr, Edmund Hand, who afterwards rose to the post or Adjutant General under Washington, had originally come out to Canada with 1^ Brigade, and served liiere with them, as sufgeon, until the dose of the war. Apart from all that we have, at pag&s tSO and t59 of Tolume X. of the Documents relating to the Histoty of New York, two lists of the officers of the French army killed and wounded at the 1)attle of Ticonderoga, or Carillon, as the French term it, a majority of them are nnmis*^ takably Insfa, for instance : *' Acffutant de Macarii (MacCartiby eyidentiy), Captain de Patrice (the nan Q^JPalnclj, evidently a Fitzpatriek), Duglaa (most likely the officer who sigoed CSullivan's certificate), Adjutant Carlnn (evidently Garth' lan)f de [MiMran (evidently Mwan}^ Fwtet (a 25 faKf^)f deHareimeB (crv1d«itl70'fieani),«tid Deaiaa (evidently O'Donobue). Besides that list of killed and woanded, we meet freqi^ently with meD.tion by de Montcalm to the king, of the great brayery and eminent services of such officers as de la Paure (Power), d'Herte (Hart), de Barotte (Barreitt), de Lac (Lake), de Coni (Cooney), de Hughes (son of Hngh, eyideintly a KcHugh), Belcombe, Ploid, D^alet, (Daley), all names to be found in the list of officers of the Brigade, as given by McG^oghegan and O^Ooi!l«* nor; Vi'^i fU' *^rMmf^'^}- "--^^^it 'm^^.iM: ^.fvM^ihmmsim.: rft^'^^ Thus, also, at pages 401 and 406, of the X. vol- 4 itee of the Documents relating to the History of New York, we find Mr. de Klerec (an O'Oleary) writing to the minister that he has news fi!om Mr. de Maoarti (evidently another McOarthy) commanding the French troops, In the Illinois country'; and further on, at page 410 of the same volume, we have the command- ant of Fort Duquesne, writing to this last McOarthy, relating that the Epglish have cut off his supplies from Canada, and asking Mc- Carthy to send him some provisions, which McCarthy immediately despatcl^s to him from his own very ^canty store. ^ ' r/ * ;>f '^ ;^ This McOarthy, whose aame all Uirough tho I- S; '3 '!: 5; i i 26 other French despatches is spelt as de MMarti^ is at length styled by his genuine Iriah name of MacCarthy^ in a despatch, p. 1081 of the same volume, from de Vaudreuil, at Montreal, shortly before the capitulation of Montreal. In that despatch de Vaudreuil informs the King that MacGarthy, commandant of Illinois, still holds out in the fort de Chartres. And MacGarthy did hold out for a year after the capitulation of Montreal, and only surrendered the fortress on an express order from the French King ; and, in this connection, I have much pleasure in inform- ing French Ganadian Historians, who, for one reason or another, have ignored the services of the Brigade, that the last defended of the French strongholds in America was defended by Irish arms, and that the last cannon discharged for French honor on this continent was fired by that Irishman, MacGarthy. ^ Besides all that, there are many incidents in the history or those days that are obscure by themselves, and that can be explained on the iupposition only of the presence of the Brigade in Ganada. For instance, we find in de Mont- calm Journal, p. 494 of the first volume of the History of New York, that de la Paure (Power) is the officer sent by Montcalm to revise 27 the articles of capitulation of Fort Oswego. What else prompted de Montcalm but de la Paure's knowledge of English, and the natural desire on de Montcalm's part to gratify his Irish soldiers by allowing an Irish officer to receive the swords' of the Commanders of Shirly's and Pepperel's Regiments, twice beaten by the Bri- gade ? Again, when the capitulation of Montreal Tras about to take place, the 6th article sub- mitted by de Vaudreuil (Smith's History, vol. I., p. 363) ran thus : *^ The subjects of His Britannic Majesty, and '< of His Most Christian Majesty, soldiers, militia " or seamen, who shall have deserted, or left " the service of their sovereign, or carried arms " in North America, shall be pardoned." That article was refused by General Amherst. Smith informs us that de Vaudreuil sent de Bougainville, and Captain de Lac, of the Queen's Regiment, to General Amherst, three several times, but without success, to obtain a modification of the articles on this head. A last attempt, in the same direction, was made by cfe LSvis who sent de la Paure^ with a letter to Amherst, but all to no purpose. De Levis was so enraged at this, says Garneau, that he was deterred by de Yaadreuil's positive orders only 28 m from withdrawing to St. Hden'8 Island, and there defending himself to tlie last extremity with the remnant of the French troops. What other portion of the French army, I ask, than the Irish soldiers, thus threatened with summary military rengeance for high treason, <sould have been interested in that article? Who but Colonel Power, Captain Lake, and their Irish comrades, had reason to fear the consequences ? J - The incident, too, of de Vaudreuil and do L^vis having been required by Haldimand to aflSrm on their honors, that the colours of the French regiments had been destroyed when the troops first came here, and this as a reason for not delivering them np— that incident, I say, coupled with Colonel Enox'S sneer, in his Hi«;torical Journal, that the colours must have been destroyed since the battle of the PUuns at Abraham-^for he had, he says, seen them there — makes it probable that the troops who did not give up their colours must have been actuated by some such motive as the fear of discovery. Knox, at pages 339 and 378, says that the traitors had been sent off to Louisiana, and that they were commanded by Johnson, an outlawed •fny.m'Kf^ 29 rebel,— be' meant, of course, the Ghevailier Mon* treuil. With all respect for Colonel Knox, I do not think they went to Louisiana. GarneaU) in his History, says that only 2500 men, women and children embarked for France ; he is mistaken ; those who left the colony then numbered 1740 only. Garneau adds : '^ The smi^lness of this number proved at once the cruel ravages of the war, the paucity of embar- kations sent f):om France, and the great numer- ical superiority of the victors." With all due respect for M. Q«rneau*s opinion, it proves nothing of the sort. All who were willing to go were sent in English not French, vessels, and de L6vis in a despatch to the French minister, gives the true reason of the number being so few ; de L6vis said in that despatch that the remainder of the troops, hav- ing formed connections in the country, had re- solved on remaining here. It proves to my mind, in connection with the very large num- ber of Irish sounding names to be found entered in the parochial Church registers from that period, that indemnity and pardon having been refused the Irish soldiers then in arms against England, they scattered, as so many disbanded militia men, to the French Canadian hearths m rt'' s.i 30 I: in the raral districts, and, from their perfect knowledge of the French language, became undistinguishable from the French settlers, and eventually became absorbed in the French popu- lation of this country. And now, like the absent-minded Paschal, I might perhaps close this address by saying : " Pardon the length of this letter, for I hadn't time to make it shorter f but I feel that you will bear with me a few moments longer, while I give a very brief sketch of the career of the Irish Brigade in Canada. ? > « '^f t * ? By de Vaudreuil's Journal, p. 297 of the X. volume of the New York Documents, we find that the Brigade sailed from Brest, on the 3rd May, 1755, under convoy of a fleet commanded by Admiral MacNamara^ and two of the Cap- tains under him were two Irishmen, Cannon of the frigate La Valeur, and Darragh of the frigate VHeureux, It is of this Cannon that Commissary Voreil says, in 1758, to the French Minister, p. 756 of volume X. of the New York Documents, " The King's frigate. La Valeur commanded by M, Cannon, a famous cruiser, will bring you this despatch." Cannon is also the intrepid man who alone had courage, after the death of de Montcalm, to volunteer to run ;!lif,1iwi|j 31 perfect >ecame rs, and popu- chal| I lying: hadn^t at you , while of the theX. re find ^he 3rd landed e Oap- \non of of the »n that French rYork ValeuT iruiser, is also i, after :o run the gauntlet of the British fleet, with despatches for the French Minister, and the skill to pass with his vessel^ unnoticed, through a swarm of British cruisers. The Brigade landed in Quebec, on the 26th June, 1755 ; on the 30th June, they set out on the March to Montreal, where they arrived on the 9th July ; two regiments were forwarded to Oataraquoi, now Kingston, and the remainder were stationed on the frontier near Lake Cham- plain. The first collision that those Irish soldiers had with the British was on the 8th September, 1755 ; Dieskau, on that day, had with him four companies of Grenadiers, 220 men in all, of the Queen's and another regiment, together with 600 Canadians, and about as many Indians ; his second in command was Johnson, the Cheva- lier de Montreuil, spoken of by Enox. Dies- kau's force suddenly met with a British force 1000 strong, under Colonel Williams, sent out by General Johnson, to ambuscade Dieskau. At the first dash Williams' force were utterly routed, and fled in confusion towards the en- trenched camp where General William Johnson was stationed with the main body 2,000 strong. The brave but rash Dieskau, without artillery I ! 32 I ,:}: of atfy kind, resolved at oiice to storih the en- trenched works; and^ patting himself at the bead of his 220 Grenadiers, he gave the order to assault the place ; the Canadians and Indians did not second him. Nothing daunted, Dieskau rushed up against his foes and was met by a perfect hail of mu^etiy and grape. An English officer of Johnson's army has described that assault by saying in a letter to a friend : " The attack was boldly made and bravely sustained ; nothing but our breastworks saved us." Three times those Grenadiers dashed at the works, mowed down each time by 20 pieces of cannon and by the fire of 3,000 muskets, until Dieakau, stricken down beyond all hope of recovery, and surrounded by the dead bodies of 160 of his Grena- diers, reluctantly gave orders to the Chevalier do Montreuil to retreat with the survivors^ Ao- Oustomed as the English hitherto had been to the cowardly system of fighting then in vogue by dodging behind trees to secure their precious persons, they T7ereso dazzled and intimidated by the unusual bravery of those soldiers with the green facings that General Johnson did not dare molest that little handful of Grenadiers, as they slowly retired^ bearing away their wounded. 33 And those 3000 troops of General Johnson's became so demoralized, that ' the General did not d ire to move forward for months, and his troops were eventually disbanded and replaced by another corps. ? i ... : . .. , ,.. : That heroic little band, bearding 3000 men entrenched within a fortress, jou may say, and breasting for two hours a perfect hurricane of fire, and disabling of the enemy three times their own number^ equal, if they do not surpass, Leonidas and his 300 iSpartons at Thermopylae. That battle of Lake George, a defeat though it was in military parlance, had all the conse- quences ofayiotory for the French ; for it re- tarded for one year the threatened invasion oC Canada. .-m • »- •* i m »•-::. •...-•■rr.-f • .:. Well did the brigade, afterwards, and under a more prudent Captain, wipe out that defeat ; on the 9th August, 1756, when they were recog- nized by the French deserter c^e Hutenac; they numbered only 1350, and, with the assistance of 1200 Canadians, and 250 Indians, they per- formed the feat, deemed impossible at the time, of wading through a quaking morass, half a mile in length, where they sank to the waist at every step, and dragging their artillery after them, and finally, to the great astonishment of • ■• •:-■. • . • . ••■.0 -• i , ;;;:■: : .. : r m 1 I 34 the English, planting their siege train on the wealiest side, within 200 yards of the worlds ; and on the 14th August, 1756, after a three day's siege, they captured 3 English Regiments, Schuyler's, Shirley's and Pepperel's Regiments, the two latter Regiments having once already gone down before their headlong charge at Fon- tenoy ; they captured at the same time a very large quantity of military stores and a very res- pectable military chest. Well might de Mont- calm write to the Minister, exclaiming : "Never before did 3000 men, with a scanty artillery, besiege and capture 1800, there being 2000 other enemies within call, the party attack- ed having also a superior fleet on Lake On« tario.'* On the 14th August, 1757, the Brigade assisted by a small number of French Canadians and Indians, reduced Fort William Henry and cap- tured 2400 prisoners, with an immense amount of war material, while de Levis, at the head of the Canadians, held at bay a superior force that had been sent under Webb to raise the siege. But the crowning glory of the Brigade was on the memorable day of Ticonderoga or Carillon,a3 the French are wont to call it. On that day, 8th July, 1758, three thousand men of the Brigade 35 assisted by 450 French Canadians, utterly de- feated 15,000 of the very best troops in the Bri- tish regular army ; on that occasion they with- stood for six successive hours the headlong fury of five times their own number, repelling seven successive charges of the entire body of the enemy, and killing or wounding 4000 of the enemy, with a loss to themselves of 30 oflBcers and 340 men only. It was at this battle that the Irish officers, whose names I mentioned to you, received their wounds ; their names are taken from the official returns sent after the battle by de Montcalm to the French Minister and to Governor deVaudreuil. The names of such brave men deserve to bo embalmed in Irish hearts ; and I therefore take the liberty of repeating them ; they are ^IcCarthy^Fitzpatrick^DouglasSjCarolan O^Moran, Forsythj (yHearn and O'Donohoe, The other officers killed and wounded on the French side bear French names ; but this does not weak- en the evidence I have adduced of the Regi- ments themselves being Irish ; for it was the custom, in those days, for Irishmen to assume French names, the better to hide their origin in case of capture by the English, just as Johnson, who had been outlawed for the part he had taken in favor of the Pretender, in 1745 assumed r.< m ! II 36 the name of the Chevalier de Montreuil ; the honor, too, of commanding such brave troops Was eagerly sought after by Frenchmen. De Montcalm, in his despatches, frequently awards the highest praise to officers bearing Irish names ; and he tells the French Minister that the great vie tory of Ticonderoga or Carillon, was entirely due to the incredible bravery displayed by both offi- cers and men ; and singularly enough it is to that commissary Doreilj who had suggested their em- ployment, and as if to justify the latter's foresight that de Montcalm, in a touching letter written on the battlefield, the night after the battle, addresses this glowing testimony to the mettle of the Bri- gade. " The army, the too small army of the " King," wrote de Montcalm to Doreil, " has "just beaten his enemies. What a day, for the " honor of France I Had I had two hundred << savages to serve for the van of a thousand "chosen troopsledby de L6vis, nol many of the " fleeing enemy would have escaped. Ah ! such " troops as ours, my dear Doreil j I never saw " their match T' ^ The following year's campaign saw the most gigantic preparations made to subdue this colo- ny ; British armies outnumbering the whole population of men, women and children in il; tbe 1 troops jn. De awards names ; rreatvic rely due )oth offi- L3 to that their em- foresight Titten on addresses f the Bri- ly of the ill, "has y, for the hundred thousand my of the Ah I such lever saw the most this colo- le whole lildren in 37 Canada at tbe time, were set in motion to assail it on all sides ; the chances were all agains t de Montcalm ; with a force inferior in numbers, and composed of inferior colonial troops, and without awaiting the arrival of de Bougain- ville and de Levis, de Montcalm rashly attacked the British on the Plains of Abraham, and lost the battle and his life, and yet no one can ven- ture the assertion that the result of that battle would have been the same, if de Montcalm had but awaited the arrival of de L6vis and de Bou- gainville, with their trained Irish soldiers ; for when again, on the 28th April, 1760, on the ' heights of Sillery and Ste. Foye, the Brigade met the British in the shock of battle, an expiring ray of glory was shed on Irish valor, and this time it was not the French who ran. In conclusion, we all must feel some pride in knowing that our race has filled so large a space in the brightest pages of Canadian history ; it is also time that others should be made to feel that Irishmen cannot be considered aliens, or ostracized as such, on a soil made famous by their deeds, and hallowed by their blood. The Lecturer sat down amid much applause. m m i it' I