The Battle of Saint-Charles was fought on 25 November 1837 between the Government of Lower Canada, supported by the United Kingdom, and Patriote rebels. Following the opening Patriote victory of the Lower Canada Rebellion at the Battle of Saint-Denis, British troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Wetherall advanced from the south on the Patriote stronghold of Saint-Charles in the Richelieu valley. On 25 November 1837 they engaged the Patriote forces under the command of Thomas Storrow Brown. After a two-hour battle, the Government of Lower Canada was victorious. Background Within twenty years of the establishment of Lower Canada in 1791, new tracts of land were set aside for settlement by peoples other than French Canadians. The French remained predominantly on the seigneuries located by rivers and the new areas were settled largely by English-speaking British immigrants. The new English-speaking immigrants reaped greater benefits than the existing French communities under the British government. Those French Canadians who were elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada were mainly of the elite educated at Catholic colleges as social movement was restricted by the British who monopolized commerce and government postings. The French Canadian habitants faced diminishing lands to give to their children and competed with the English for the new lands on English terms, with British bureaucracy placing immigrant claims ahead of those of the habitants. Furthermore, outbreaks in dysentery, typhus and cholera swept through the colony in the mid-1830s, brought by arriving immigrants. Additionally, farms in the Beauce, Chaudière and Richelieu regions (and to a lesser extent, the area around Montreal) were devastated by wheat fly, grasshopper and caterpillar infestations, reducing the food available. Efforts by the French within the Legislative Assembly, led by Louis-Joseph Papineau, the elected leader of the Parti Patriote, to control government spending, were thwarted by the English-dominated Legislative Council of Lower Canada. Further discontent was stimulated when two journalist supporters of Papineau were arrested and jailed after disparaging the Legislative Council in their newspapers. The ensuing riot on 21 May 1832 was quashed when the garrison was called out, ending with three dead. With the parliamentary route blocked, Papineau and his allies argued for armed rebellion at an open-air meeting at Saint-Charles and published a declaration of independence. The supporters of Papineau formed para-military groups and visible support was seen in Montreal and villages to the east of the city. Sir John Colborne, commander