of the German contingent. The baron was kept very busy with his new responsibilities and a month passed before he found time to report to Lord George Germain (the British Secretary for the American Colonies) that he had brought to Quebec 970 Brunswick and Hanau troops (like himself, they had been exchanged as part of the Convention Army) and recruits from Anhalt-Zerbst. This body of men landed at the same time as a recruit transport from Hesse-Hanau arrived with men for the Jäger corps and the infantry.
The Riedesels’ house, presently the Maison des Gouverneurs. Purchased by Haldimand for the Riedesel family at Sorel, the governor had several improvements made before their occupation.
In addition to commanding the German troops, Riedesel assumed responsibility for Sorel District. He was headquartered just outside of the town of Sorel, which, after Quebec City and Montreal, had become the third most important centre in the lower province. Haldimand had quickly determined that the baron was a man of keen intellect and dedicated professionalism. He had been instantly charmed upon meeting the general’s wife, Baroness Frederika Riedesel, and her children and had a new spacious house prepared for them, in which the lady kept a special room for his visits. Haldimand sustained a brisk social discourse with Riedesel, as well as a detailed, often confidential, military one, until the latter returned to Europe in 1783. As a fellow foreign-born officer, the baron and family were to become Haldimand’s closest friends to such a degree that the baroness later wrote, “I have hardly ever seen a man who was more amiable and friendly to those to whom he had once given friendship; and we flattered ourselves that we were included in that number.”
From Haldimand’s pre-war experience in Canada, he was entirely aware of Sorel’s critical strategic location and, soon after his arrival in 1778, he had informed Germain that, due to the vulnerability of Isle aux Noix, St. John’s, and Montreal, he intended to move a large proportion of his stores there. In preparation, he improved the fortifications and had fifty barracks and warehouses constructed. Over the next several years, Sorel became headquarters for several British and German regiments and the remnants of Burgoyne’s loyalist corps and, in the fall of 1781, came under Riedesel’s command.2
Undoubtedly, similar instructions and codes were issued to scouts from Lachine, Kanehsatake, Oswegatchie, Carleton Island, and Fort Niagara. No doubt, these cryptic messages caused unrest when discovered by rebel patrols.
On October 19, Riedesel reported to the governor regarding arrangements he had made for the employment of two detachments over the winter. Three officers and twenty-four men from the King’s Rangers and Fraser’s Independent Company had been chosen for the duty. Two of the officers and sixteen men would be posted at the Upper Yamaska Blockhouse on the river of the same name and a third officer and eight men would operate from the Loyal Blockhouse at Dutchman’s Point at Longe Isle on Lake Champlain. An officer and eight men would patrol south from Yamaska to the Bayley-Hazen Road, and another party would cover ground from the Loyal Blockhouse eastward along the Missisquoi River. They were “to observe very carefully all Tracks as well as those which go out of the Province as those which come in to it, and when they find any fresh to follow them; they are not always to take the same route, but they must strike some part of Hazen’s Road, and they are to make particular marks at certain distances for which the Officers commanding at each Post have rec’d instructions.”3
John Stuart, the Anglican priest who had been the missionary to the Fort Hunter Mohawk castle and its nearby European community, had been one of Haldimand’s most useful spies. When the priest realized he was in imminent danger of exposure, he obtained permission from New York’s governor, George Clinton, to remove his family to Canada and, after enduring an arduous journey, the Stuarts arrived in Montreal on October 13. The priest wrote of his experiences to his superiors at the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, reporting that the rebels had first set up a tavern in his church and dispensed liquor from its reading desk. Next, they converted the building into a stable and, in 1781, into a fort, “to protect a Set of as great Villains as ever disgraced Humanity.” As Stuart had been forced to come away without the protection of a flag of truce, he had left behind the mission’s books and its silver plate with a trusted friend in Schenectady.
After Burgoyne’s defeat, his Mohawk congregation relocated at Lachine, seven miles from Montreal, and, when Stuart arrived in the city, they enthusiastically greeted him and requested that he reside with them at their new settlement. But, Stuart had a family to support and his personal property had been so thoroughly looted that he was without resources and was therefore compelled to take employment as chaplain of the second battalion, King’s Royal Regiment of New York (2KRR).4
The same day that Stuart wrote to the SPG, Montreal district’s commander, Brigadier Ernst de Speth, former commander of Riedesel’s Musketeer regiment, reported a revolt of the rebel prisoners at Coteau-du-Lac where an offshore island prison held the most intransigent captives. He had immediately reinforced the garrison with a detachment of Sir John’s first battalion (1KRR). Complicating this affair was a collection of forty-seven new prisoners that was to be sent to the island from Fort St. John’s in the next few days.5
A week later, Royal Yorker major, James Gray, wrote that the report of a revolt had been groundless and described his battalion’s garrison at the post; on the island he had a subaltern and thirty men and, on the mainland, a captain, subaltern, and fifty men.
Another week passed and the post’s commandant, Captain Joseph Anderson, apprised Gray about a fire in the Prison Island’s joiner’s shop and the prisoners’ barracks. He did not say if the prisoners had had a hand in the incident, but to judge from earlier strife, the blaze was likely set as cover for another escape attempt. It seems that Gray had been indulging in another cover-up to protect the reputation of his captain and battalion. Earlier in the year, a similar “game” had infuriated the district’s previous brigadier, Allan Maclean, RHE.6
Captain Georg Pausch of the Hesse-Hanau artillery, who had seen praiseworthy service under Burgoyne in 1777, had returned to Quebec with Riedesel. He wrote to his Crown Prince on October 16 reporting that the Hanau Jägers were on an expedition under St. Leger, “which supposedly is to cross Lakes Champlain and Ontario, in the region of Niagara and Detroit.” For someone who had earlier been in Canada for well over a year, Pausch had as little understanding of the country’s geography as his fellow Hessian, Lieutenant-Colonel von Kreutzbourg, revealed in his personal journals.
The captain described the material state of his artillery company, noting that, in obedience to the prince’s orders, the men were without firelocks. They had bayonets with sheaths mounted on their cartridge pouch straps, but why they had either item of equipment without the requisite long arms is a matter of conjecture. With some difficulty, he had purchased a small wooden drum similar to that used by the English on which
