452 CANADIAN LOCAL HISTORY. 



Comtesse created a great sensation, wholly surpassing everything of the kind that had hitherto 

 been seen by the ladies of Upper Canada. Amboise de Farcy of No. 58 in Vaughan and No. 60 

 in Markhani had also the rank of General. Augustin Boiton of No. 58 in Markham and No. 61 

 in Vaughan was a Lieutenant-Colonel. The Comte de Puisaye of No. 52 in Markham figures 

 conspicuously in the contemporary accounts of the royalist struggle against the Convention. 

 He himself published in London in 1803 five octavo volumes of Memoirs, justificatory of his 

 proceedings in that contest. Carlyle in his " French Kevolution" speaks of de Fuisaye's work, 

 and, referring to the so-called Calvados war, says that those who are curious in such matters 

 may read therein " how our Girondin National forces, i.e., the Moderates, marchmg off with 

 plenty of wind-music, were drawn out about the old Chateau of Brecourt, in the wood-country 

 near Vernon (in Brittany), to meet the Mountain National forces (the Communist) advancing 

 from Paris. How on tlie fifteenth afternoon of July, 1793, they did meet : — and, as it were, 

 shrieked mutually, and took mutually to flight, without loss. How Puisaye thereafter,— for 

 the Mountain Nationals fled first, and we thou.ght ourselves the victors, — was roused from his 

 warm bed in the Castle of Brecourt and had to gallop without boots ; our Nationals in the 

 night-watches having fallen unexpectedly into sa?rae qui pcut." Carlyle alludes again to this 

 misadventure, when approaching the subject of the Quiberon Expedition, two years later, 

 towards tlie close of the La Vendee war. Affecting for the moment a prophetic tone, in his 

 peculiar way, Carlyle proceeds thus, introducing at the close of his sketch, de Puisaye, once 

 more, who was in command of the invading force spoken of, although not individedly so 

 "In the month of July, 1795, English ships," he says, "wOl ride in Quiberon roads. There 

 will be debarkation of cliivalrous Ci-devants, (i.e. ex-noblesse), of volunteer Prisoners-of-war — 

 eager to desert ; of fire-arms, Proclamations, clothes-chests. Royalists and specie. Whereupon 

 also, on the Republican side, there will be rapid siand-to-arms ; with ambuscade-marchings by 

 Quiberon beach, at midnight ; storming of Fort Penthievre ; war-thunder mingling with the 

 roar of the mighty main ; and such a morning light as has seldom dawned : debarkation hurled 

 back into its boats, or into the devouring billows, with wreck and wail ; — in one word, a Ci- 

 devant Puisaye as totally ineffectual here as he was at Calvados, when he rode from Vernon 

 Castle without boots." 



The impression which Carlyle gives of M. de Puisaye is not greatly bettered by what de 

 Lamartine says of him in the History of the Girondists, when speaking of him in connexion 

 with the afl'air near the Chateau of Brecourt. He is there ranked with adventurers rather 

 than heroes. " This man," de Lamartine says, "was at once an orator, a diplomatist, and a 

 soldier, — a character eminently adapted for civil war, which produces more adventurers than 

 heroes." De Lamartine describes how, prior to the repulse at Chateau Brecourt, "M. de 

 Puisaye had passed a whole j'ear concealed in a cavern in the midst of the forests of Brittany, 

 where, by his manoeuvres and correspondence, he kindled the fire of revolt against the republic." 

 He professed to act in the interest of the moderates, believing that, through his influence, they 

 would at last be induced to espouse heartily the cause of constitutional royalty. Thiers in his 

 " History of the French Revolution," vii. 146, speaks in respectful terms of Puisaye. He says 

 that "with great intelligence and extraordinary skill in uniting the elements of a party, he 

 combined extreme activity of body and mind, and vast ambition :" and even after Quiberon, 

 Thiers says " it was certain that Puisaye had done all that lay in his power." De Puisaye 

 ended his days in England, in the neighbourhood of London, in 1827. In one of the letters 

 of Mr. Surveyor Jones we observe some of the improvements of the Oak Ridges spoken of as 

 •■'Puisaye's Town." 



It is possibly to the settlement, then only in contemplation, of emigres here in the Oak 

 Ridges of Yonge Street, that Burke alludes, when in his Reflections on the French Revolution 

 he says : " I hear that there are considerable emigrations from Prance, and that many, quitting 

 that voluptuous climate and that seductive Circean liberty, have taken refuge in the frozen 

 regions, and under the British despotism, of Canada." " The frozen regions of Canada," the 

 great rhetorician's expression in this place, has become a stereotyped phrase with declaimers. 

 The reports of the first settlers at Tadoussac and Quebec made an indelible impression on the 

 European mind. To this day, in transatlantic communities, it is realized only to a limited 

 extent tliat Canada has a spring, summer and autumn as well as a winter, and that her skies 

 wear an aspect not always gloomy and inhospitable. " British despotism" is, of course, ironi- 

 cally said, and means, in reality, British constitutional freedom. 



(To he continued) 



