” Oh ! This scaffold, despite its brutal name / Was not a gibbet, it was a pedestal! » — Louis Frechette
They faced one of the greatest military powers in history. They did so under threat of excommunication. Their guns were no match and they knew it. They hoped for an American intervention, it did not come. They hoped for the support of the aboriginals, they did not have it. They got up anyway. Defeated for the first time in 1837, they rose again in 1838, twice, in February, then in November. Beaten again.
Only deep convictions, immense hopes, powerful ideas can give birth to such courage.
Military history records their defeat. The great History, that of ideas, consecrated their victory.
For what ideas were they fighting so fiercely1 ?
Democracy
For the establishment, on the American model, of a republic where the people and not the king would be sovereign.
For the separation of Church from State.
For the protection of the freedom and independence of the press.
For the holding of elections by secret ballot.
For the abolition of the seigneurial regime.
For a constitution by and for the people.
For the establishment of universal male suffrage (yes, they could have done better).
For the recognition of the same civic rights for natives as for other citizens (look for another political party, at that time, which proposed the same thing!).
Justice
For the elimination of the corruption of the colonial government, that is to say for an honest civil service, impartial judges, a state at the service of the local economy.
For the end of the economic, social and cultural exclusion of Quebecers.
For the granting to the French and English languages of the same right of citizenship.
For the establishment of jury trials.
For the abolition of imprisonment for debt.
For the abolition of the death penalty for all crimes except murder.
For the transfer of Crown and clergy lands to the public domain.
For the creation of a banking system in which ethics would be more important than profit.
education
For general and public education. At the beginning of the XIXe century, 93% of children did not have access to school. In 1829, the patriots adopted a system of public schools, four years before France and ten years before England. Their system quickly supplanted the schools run by the Church and those under English control. In 1836, the colonial regime abolished this system: 70% of the 1462 existing schools had to close.
The values carried by the patriots, sometimes as precursors, were inspired by the Enlightenment.
These values were going to upset the whole XIXe century: public and compulsory education, secularism, fight against colonialism, democracy, justice for all, linguistic and religious tolerance, etc. The ideas of the patriots had roots all over our territory: in the last elections before the uprisings, they won 77 of the 88 seats at stake.
If the Patriot Rebellion had succeeded, our society would have been ahead of its time in many areas. Their horizons were universal2.
They were hanged.
The British repression was extremely brutal. Imprisonments by the hundreds, hangings, condemnation to exile and forced labor, desecrated churches, burned houses (including the whole village of Saint-Benoît, a village which had already surrendered).
The Durham report, published four days before Chevalier de Lorimier ascended the scaffold, would today be called a racist pamphlet. He announces the establishment of a fierce policy of assimilation and minoritization of Francophones. Lower Canada, then Quebec, will sink into a defeat that will last, in many respects, almost a century.
Between 1830 and 1844 alone, 40,000 Quebecers left Canada to escape misery, a misery that was not evenly distributed: from 1820 to 1850, 850,000 Britons entered Canada. There will be a hundred years of anti-French law. The Métis and their leaders, who were also revolted, suffered the same fate as the Quebecers – who, moreover, were the only ones to mourn the death of Louis Riel.
The sacrifice of the patriots gives us all a duty to remember, but above all, a requirement of transmission.
As Canadians celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria, the very one who reigned over the British Empire in 1837, let’s reread Chevalier de Lorimier’s letters. The day before his hanging, he wrote this to his children: “Your father’s crime is failure. If success had accompanied his attempts, his actions would have been honored with a respectable mention. Crime brings shame and not the scaffold3. »
Let us transmit today to our own children what de Lorimier was unable to transmit to his, that is to say, the judgment of History. The ideals for which de Lorimier and his companions were hanged, for which so many families suffered, finally prevailed. This is what makes patriots the true victors of history.
1. Drawn largely from the 1838 Declaration of Independence, the 92 resolutions cast an even wider net.
3. “Crime brings shame and not the scaffold” is an alexandrine by the author Thomas Corneille, brother of Pierre Corneille. De Lorimier, a notary, had studied classical. Source: February 15, 1839, Letters from a Patriot Condemned to Death. Ed. prepared by Marie-Frédérique Desbiens and Jean-François Nadeau. Co-edition, Agone. 2001