The air was insufferable, but in spite of it loot and pillage went on. At Montreal, in the clear atmosphere of a Canadian December night, the bright belt of illuminated sky told as plainly as telegraph that the expedition had been a success. “Such a scene,” wrote a correspondent to the press, “was never witnessed. It must prove an awful example. The artillery opened fire at half-past one. Everything was over, except the shooting of a few fugitives, by half-past three.”
Quite a different view of the case is found in official despatches. Sir John Colborne writes to Lord Glenelg, 30th March, ’38: “On the evening in which the troops took possession of St. Eustache, the loyal inhabitants of that village and neighbourhood, anxious to return to their homes and to protect the remainder of their property, followed the troops; and I believe it is not denied that the houses which were burnt, except those that were necessarily destroyed in driving the rebels from the fortified church, were set on fire by the Loyalists of St. Eustache and Rivière du Chêne, who had been driven from the country in October and November.” And in a despatch from Glenelg to Lord Durham, June 2nd, ’38, we find: “Having laid that despatch before the Queen, Her Majesty has commanded me to desire Your Lordship to signify to Sir J. Colborne, that while she deeply laments that any needless severities should have been exercised by one class of Her Majesty’s subjects against another, Her Majesty is gratified to learn, as she fully anticipated, that her troops are in no degree responsible for any of the excesses which unhappily attended the defeat of the insurgents at St. Benoit and St. Charles, but that in the harassing service in which they were engaged they maintained unimpaired their high character for discipline and training.”
Certainly some of her officers did their best to make up for “needless severity.” Colonel Gugy and Colonel Griffin afterwards were unwearied, and in a measure successful, in their mediations between exasperated nationalities. The former persuaded many at the time to return to their houses, and priest and layman alike commended him in his rôle of pacificator. Colborne appointed Colonel Griffin military magistrate, with civil powers, in the County of Two Mountains, and in that office he protected the weak, raised the fallen, and did much to assuage the necessary horrors of civil war.