nd men.

When Hampton moved to Four Corners, Lieut-Colonel De Salaberry, with
the Canadian Voltigeurs, moved in like manner westward to the region
of the Chateauguay and English Rivers. The Voltigeur troops were
French-Canadians with a small sprinkling of British. Their
organization was as follows:--Sir George Prevost, on the approach of
war, May 28th, 1812, ordered the levy of four French volunteer
battalions, to be made up of unmarried men from 18 to 25 years old.
They were to be choice troops, and trained like regulars. Charles
Michel d'Irumberry De Salaberry, then high in the regard of his people
as a military hero, was chosen to rally the recruits, issued a
stirring poster calling the French-Canadians to arms, and acted with
such extraordinary energy that the troops were in hand in two days.

De Salaberry was a perfect type of the old French-Canadian military
gentry, a stock of men of whom very little remains, a breed of leaders
of, on the whole, more vigorous forms, more active temperaments, than
the average--descendants inheriting the qualities of the bravest and
most adventurous individuals of former times. They were the natural
result of the feudal _regime_, with which they have passed away.
Though a gentry, they were a poor one, possessed of little else than
quantities of forest lands. The officers of the Voltigeurs were
selected out of the same class, united with a number of English of
similar stamp. De Salaberry himself was born in the little cottage
manor-house of Beauport, near Quebec, on the 19th of Nov., 1778.[11]
Taking to soldiering like a duck to water when very young, he enrolled
as volunteer in the 44th. At sixteen, the Duke of Kent, who was then
in Canada, and delighted in friendly acts towards the seigneurs, got
him a commission in the 60th, with which regiment he left at once for
the West Indian Isle of Dominica. There he saw terrible service, for
all the men of his battalion except three were killed or wounded
during the seige of Fort Matilda. Nevertheless, the young fellow kept
gay. "Our uniforms," he wrote to his father, "cost very dear; but I
have received L40, and with that I am going to give myself what will
make a fine figure." "This fine large boy of sixteen years," says
Benjamin Sulte in his History of the French-Canadians, "strong as a
Hercules ... with smiling face ... made a furore at parties.... As he
was never sick, they employed him everywhere. Fevers reduced his
battalion to 200