A habitant from l’Isle Jésu brought word of the approach of the troops, and soon Sir John Colborne’s two thousand men stood in the valley which looked made but for the place of peace. The whole force, field pieces, rocket mortar and train waggons, covered two miles of roadway. The advance guard would have reached there with the habitant had not the ice been unsafe, causing the men to make a detour to Ste. Rose, thereby increasing the march by six miles. The water had been open two days before, but to prove that it would bear, Colonel Gugy--“a tall, majestic-looking gentleman who expressed himself in a beautiful manner”--galloped from shore to shore. About noon all had arrived, and as they neared the village and took up position their numbers and character must have impressed the unhappy people with the hopelessness of the coming conflict. The usual desertions began, until Chénier, looking at one road full of his enemies and another full of his retreating countrymen, addressed the few who remained with him: “My brothers, behold advancing before you, to burn and destroy your beautiful homes, the servile mercenaries of the despotic Government which has enslaved your country.” And they in return cried the old cry, “Liberty or Death.”... “We will never desert our wives and little ones.” Officers in charge of divided squads put in a state of defence the manor house, the presbytère, the convent and one villager’s house, while Chénier, in person taking command of from sixty to eighty, many of whom were still without arms, went to the church, where the women and children had already fled. The last, for further safety, he placed in the vaults underneath. The doors were then barricaded, and the windows removed to convert the openings into loopholes. Thus did they await the coming annihilation, “nor,” said a British officer afterwards, “did they quail as our overwhelming force approached; they raised one loud and shrill terrific cheer, and then all was still as death till the cannonading and musketry began.” The field battery opened fire; but there was no reply. At first it was supposed that the place had been abandoned; but as another brigade came down the village street a rattling fire poured from the church. It was evident they meant to show fight. The howitzers tried to batter down the barricaded doors, but without effect. Colonel Jackson, of the artillery, asked for a surrender. The answer “was plucky but idiotic;” they pooh-poohed the offer, and among other preparations took a cannon to the top of the steeple. Then Jackson set his own gun, blew the steeple and all that was in it down, and those below who ran out of the doors were bayoneted. An officer who went into one of the empty houses close by upset a stove and placed on the coals all the combustibles he could find. In a moment the line of fire lengthened, and under cover of the smoke Colonel Wetherall and his men came at the double down the street; cavalry and still another regiment surrounded the village to prevent chance of escape, with a further precaution of a corps of volunteers spread out on the ice to pick off any unfortunate should he get through such a double line. The envelopment of fire was completed. The church and houses were now all ablaze. Driven by the flames the unhappy defenders abandoned one position for another, only to find the second worse. At the back of the church a small door leading into the sacristy had been forced, and the soldiers, groping their way through smoke and darkness, led by Colonel Gugy, were shot at by the few who remained. Gugy was one of those wounded. The staircase was gone, and another officer lighted a fire beneath the altar, got his men out, and the cessation of shots within told the success of his work. The simultaneous fire pouring on the French from all sides was liking boiling water on an anthill. Men half-roasted, with bullets already lodged in their miserable bodies, women creeping from the crypt, found that what flame and bullet had spared the bayonet could finish. Chénier and the few remaining, mad with despair, leaped from the windows into the graveyard, and fought there anew with all the desperation of a forlorn hope. A ball brought the leader down; but rallying his sinking strength he rose, to be again shot, until, with the fourth bullet, he rose no more--the blackened semblance of a man. He died “comme un héros digne de la Grèce antique.” In the mêlée a few managed to escape, but for a moment only; those who made for the ice were picked off there, and those who fell on their knees and begged for quarter heard “Jock Weir, remember Jock Weir.” By half-past four the work was finished.