turned towards the Montreal frontier, whence the American
invasion threatened to overspread the whole country and
make this opening session the last that might ever be
held. Most of the members were soon called away from the
council-chamber to the field. No further session could
be held either that year or the next; and Carleton was
obliged to nominate the judges himself. The fifteen years
of peace were over, and Canada had once more become an
object of contention between two fiercely hostile forces.

The War of the American Revolution was a long and
exceedingly complicated struggle; and its many varied
fortunes naturally had a profound effect on those of
Canada. But Canada was directly engaged in no more than
the first three campaigns, when the Americans invaded
her in 1775 and '76, and when the British used her as
the base from which to invade the new American Republic
in 1777. These first three campaigns formed a purely
civil war within the British Empire. On each side stood
three parties. Opponents were ranged against each other
in the mother country, in the Thirteen Colonies, and in
Canada. In the mother country the king and his party
government were ranged against the Opposition and all
who held radical or revolutionary views. Here the strife
was merely political. But in the Thirteen Colonies the
forces of the Crown were ranged against the forces of
the new Continental Congress. The small minority of
colonists who were afterwards known as the United Empire
Loyalists sided with the Crown. A majority sided with
the Congress. The rest kept as selfishly neutral as they