At sunrise Colonel FitzGibbon rode out to reconnoitre the position of the invaders, and reported that they numbered some five hundred men, a half-armed rabble without competent leader or discipline--a fit sequel to that “volume of shreds and patches,” the grievance book; a set of stragglers in an unfortified position. At eight, Sir Francis and his comrades at the City Hall, after a nap taken on the floor, rose to inspect and to be inspected, a group almost as sorry in military appearance as the one reported on by FitzGibbon. The Governor had a short double-barrelled gun in his belt and another on his shoulder; as a kind of twin or complement to him, the Chief-Justice was armed with thirty rounds of ball cartridge. Sir Francis made a brief but animated address, to which the assemblage returned three cheers. A few days before he had “requested an officer” to strengthen the fort lying west of the city; accordingly, its earthworks were surrounded by a double line of palisades, the barracks were loopholed, the magazine stockaded, and a company of Toronto militia lodged there. But as “a commander without troops,” the market-house--full of men, with its two six-pounders “completely filled with grape shot,” furnished with four thousand stand of arms, bayonets, belts and ball cartridge, brought from the depot at Kingston shortly before--was more to Sir Francis’ mind than the empty fort would have been. Besides which, he states in his own account, in the moral combat in which he was about to engage, he would have been out of his proper element in a fort. “The truth is,” he concludes, after disposing of many ill-natured remarks made about him by persons unversed in even the rudiments of war, “if Mr. Mackenzie had conducted his gang within pistol-shot of the market-house, the whole of the surprise would have belonged to him.”
The “officer” who was “requested” to strengthen the fort was no doubt Colonel Foster, Assistant Adjutant-General and Commander of the Forces for some years before the Rebellion broke out. His name unaccountably has been omitted from many of the chronicles of those times. He began his military career in the 52nd Oxfordshire Regiment of Foot, and during his colonial service he enjoyed the confidence of Lord Dalhousie and Sir John Colborne. When the latter sent his celebrated request for troops, Foster remonstrated, as it was well known to him, at any rate, that a rebellion in Upper Canada was imminent. Foster was then left in command “of the sentries, sick soldiers, and women and children remaining in the fort.” A captain in the 96th at Lundy’s Lane, he was no novice in Canadian requirements, and the letter quoted from Sir John Colborne shows how he fulfilled his duty: