During wartime all captured deserters were shot to death. In his Events of a Military Life... (London: William Pickering, 1843) Walter Henry describes a scene similar to the one by an anonymous artist reproduced here:
We had one execution, the extreme penalty of desertion, in the QuÄbec garrison in 1829; for the crime had been attended with circumstances of violence and an attempt at murder. At five o'clock on a beautiful June morning, the whole garrison of QuÄbec was assembled in the ditch of the citadel to witness the awful ceremony. When the time arrived, the prisoner, attired in white, and supported by two Roman Catholic clergymen with the coffin carried before him moved slowly out of the gate of the fortress into the fosse, and proceeded past the long line of troops, whilst the band played a funeral dirge, and the firing party brought up the rear of the melancholy procession. When the sentence of the Court Martial had been read, and the last religious rites were concluded, the poor wretch knelt on his coffin, two yards from the muzzles of a dozen loaded muskets. The priests slowly retired, the word "Fire" was uttered, and the lifeless corpse lay doubled across the coffin! Yet one man, who stood within thirty yards of the deceased, deserted the same night!
