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Murder Was The Case:

The Plot To Kill King Henry VIII

 

By Chris Oakley

 

 

Part 3

 

 

From Chapter 5 of Winters Of Our Discontent:

The British Social Republic brooked no opposition of any kind, whether from dissidents within its own borders or foreign powers alarmed at London’s warlike and expansionist policies toward continental Europe. With the exception of Oliver Cromwell’s ill-fated campaign in what is now the Austro-Bavarian Union, the Locksleyite regime had usually been successful in crushing its foes up until the North American War of Liberation. But British military doctrine, designed for waging battle on the open plains of western and central Europe, wasn’t fully equipped to deal with the new realities of the guerrilla war the British army was being forced to fight in the mountains and woodlands of North America. Nor did it take into account the American insurgents’ determination to throw off the shackles of Locksleyite rule...

 

From the TV documentary Independence: The North American War of Liberation, copyright 1977-84 Royal American Public Broadcasting Network:

The sacking of Philadelphia by George Grenville’s army in June of 1779 was one of the most brutal such atrocities perpetrated against a city since the Romans destroyed Carthage during the Second Punic War. British troops displayed no qualms about the mass slaughter of unarmed civilians or the torching of houses; one British army field commander, in fact, actually gained a promotion for his participation in the massacre...

London thought that by destroying Philadelphia they might break the American rebels’ spirit, but their gambit backfired to the tenth power. If anything, the carnage would only serve to incite the insurgent armies to further resistance against the British forces. And when word of the Philadelphia massacre reached Canada, it incited anti-British factions there to redouble their efforts to break the Locksleyite regime’s grip on the Canadian masses; many historians trace the origins of the Quebec Revolution of 1780 to popular outrage among the Quebecois over the brutally repressive conduct of British colonial authorities in places like Philadelphia and fears that Grenville’s sacking of the famous Pennsylvania "peace colony" could be repeated at Montreal, which was then a major hotbed of pro-independence sentiment in Canada...

 

From The McClaren’s Junior High Scholastic Canadian History Reader, Volume 2, copyright 1979 McClaren Juvenile Publishing:

In April of 1780 a group of Quebecois determined to resist Locksleyite brutality banded together with some of their English-speaking neighbors to form what we now know as the Quebec Free State. This was an important early step towards building what later became the Principality of Canada, which in turn became one of the charter members of the United Kingdom of America and Canada....

 

From The Official History Of The Royal American Army, volume 2:

When the Quebec Free State was established, the American rebel army-- by then largely in control of the New England territories --hastened to organize an expeditionary force to assist the Quebeçois in their struggle to drive the British out of the Quebec region. Grenville’s armies, having already discovered themselves to be ill-suited for guerrilla warfare, would shortly discover that their capacity to wage conventional battles was also deteriorating...

 

From Chapter 4 of A Monarchy Shattered:

One of the most despicable lies bandied about by the UKAC is the myth of "innocent" civilians being massacred at Philadelphia in 1779. All objective students of history know that the sub-human louts who inhabited that town were in fact enemies of Britain who richly deserved their fate. Allowed to survive, these so-called "pacifists" would have sooner or later poisoned the soul of our great nation with their cowardly ideology...

 

From the archives of the UKAC Bureau of External Defense:

May 5th, 1780

Sirs:

Our plight here in Montreal is a grave one indeed. The butchers of Grenville’s army have drawn much closer to our city gates, and there is a great fear that they may yet put our homes and other buildings to the torch. We are in urgent need of any men you can spare to aid us in the defense of our homes against the invader...

 

From an exhibit at the Canadian Liberation Museum in Toronto:

The defense of Montreal was one of the most critical of the early battles in the struggle for Canada’s independence from British rule. Had the British army succeeded in its efforts to capture the city, the Quebec Free State might have died in its infancy and Canada remained under British control for generations to come; it’s even possible that America’s own revolution against the Locksleyite tyranny might have been crushed....

 

From the July 10th, 1880 edition of the Montreal Daily Mail:

It has been fully one hundred years since our forebears made their historic stand in defense of this city against the armies of the British tyrant Grenville. Although the men who lived through those harrowing days have long since passed from the earth, the memory of their heroism will live for centuries to come...

 

From Chapter 7 of Winters Of Our Discontent:

The Canadian rebel victory at Montreal was perhaps the worst setback yet for the British armies in North America. Had Grenville’s troops been successful in capturing the Quebec Free State capital, it would have been an incalculable boost to the political and military prestige of the Locksleyite government; instead, the British army found itself wrestling with doubts over its ability to even prosecute wars, much less win them...

 

From McClaren’s History Reader, Volume 2:

Following their hard-fought victory in the defense of Montreal, the Canadian rebel forces began preparations for a bold offensive to liberate the British-occupied city of Halifax, Nova Scotia’s provincial capital. Joining the Canadian army in its assault were a group of disaffected ex-British Army foot soldiers who’d deserted to the rebel side in disgust with the excesses and atrocities of the Locksleyite regime. Some of the defectors had once served with the occupation garrison in Halifax, and they provided intelligence to the Canadians which proved highly useful once the assault began in earnest...

 

From the documentary film Crucible: The Battle of Halifax, copyright 1963 by the Nova Scotia Royal Historical Society:

On September 1st, 1780 the Canadian rebel army began its attack on the main British garrison at Halifax with a cannon bombardment that shook the garrison’s walls to their foundations. While the British Army battled rebel artillery units, rebel infantry and cavalry executed a flanking maneuver designed to exploit gaps in the garrison’s defenses....

 

From a letter dated September 3rd, 1780 and stored in the North American War of Liberation Museum archives:

Our main garrison is down to less than a hundred men. One of our auxiliary garrisons has fallen into rebel hands...

 

To Be Continued

 

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