<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<div style="height: 8em;">
<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/></div>
<h1> CHRONICLES OF CANADA </h1>
<h2> Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton </h2>
<h3> In thirty-two volumes </h3>
<h4>
Volume 14
</h4>
<h3> THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES </h3>
<h4>
A Chronicle of 1812
</h4>
<h2> By WILLIAM WOOD </h2>
<h4>
TORONTO, 1915
</h4>
<hr />
<p><b>CONTENTS</b></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I — OPPOSING CLAIMS </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II — OPPOSING FORCES </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III — 1812: OFF TO THE FRONT </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV — 1812: BROCK AT DETROIT AND
QUEENSTON HEIGHTS </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V — 1813: THE BEAVER DAMS, LAKE
ERIE, AND CHATEAUGUAY </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI — 1814: LUNDY'S LANE,
PLATTSBURG, AND THE GREAT BLOCKADE </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0007"> BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE </SPAN></p>
<p><br/><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </SPAN></p>
<br/>
<h2> CHAPTER I — OPPOSING CLAIMS </h2>
<p>International disputes that end in war are not generally questions of
absolute right and wrong. They may quite as well be questions of opposing
rights. But, when there are rights on both sides; it is usually found that
the side which takes the initiative is moved by its national desires as
well as by its claims of right.</p>
<p>This could hardly be better exemplified than by the vexed questions which
brought about the War of 1812. The British were fighting for life and
liberty against Napoleon. Napoleon was fighting to master the whole of
Europe. The United States wished to make as much as possible out of
unrestricted trade with both belligerents. But Napoleon's Berlin Decree
forbade all intercourse whatever with the British, while the British
Orders-in-Council forbade all intercourse whatever with Napoleon and his
allies, except on condition that the trade should first pass through
British ports. Between two such desperate antagonists there was no safe
place for an unarmed, independent, 'free-trading' neutral. Every one was
forced to take sides. The British being overwhelmingly strong at sea,
while the French were correspondingly strong on land, American shipping
was bound to suffer more from the British than from the French. The French
seized every American vessel that infringed the Berlin Decree whenever
they could manage to do so. But the British seized so many more for
infringing the Orders-in-Council that the Americans naturally began to
take sides with the French.</p>
<p>Worse still, from the American point of view, was the British Right of
Search, which meant the right of searching neutral merchant vessels either
in British waters or on the high seas for deserters from the Royal Navy.
Every other people whose navy could enforce it had always claimed a
similar right. But other peoples' rights had never clashed with American
interests in at all the same way. What really roused the American
government was not the abstract Right of Search, but its enforcement at a
time when so many hands aboard American vessels were British subjects
evading service in their own Navy. The American theory was that the flag
covered the crew wherever the ship might be. Such a theory might well have
been made a question for friendly debate and settlement at any other time.
But it was a new theory, advanced by a new nation, whose peculiar and most
disturbing entrance on the international scene could not be suffered to
upset the accepted state of things during the stress of a life-and-death
war. Under existing circumstances the British could not possibly give up
their long-established Right of Search without committing national
suicide. Neither could they relax their own blockade so long as Napoleon
maintained his. The Right of Search and the double blockade of Europe thus
became two vexed questions which led straight to war.</p>
<p>But the American grievances about these two questions were not the only
motives impelling the United States to take up arms. There were two deeply
rooted national desires urging them on in the same direction. A good many
Americans were ready to seize any chance of venting their anti-British
feeling; and most Americans thought they would only be fulfilling their
proper 'destiny' by wresting the whole of Canada from the British crown.
These two national desires worked both ways for war—supporting the
government case against the British Orders-in-Council and Right of Search
on the one hand, while welcoming an alliance with Napoleon on the other.
Americans were far from being unanimous; and the party in favour of peace
was not slow to point out that Napoleon stood for tyranny, while the
British stood for freedom. But the adherents of the war party reminded
each other, as well as the British and the French, that Britain had
wrested Canada from France, while France had helped to wrest the Thirteen
Colonies from the British Empire.</p>
<p>As usual in all modern wars, there was much official verbiage about the
national claims and only unofficial talk about the national desires. But,
again as usual, the claims became the more insistent because of the
desires, and the desires became the more patriotically respectable because
of the claims of right. 'Free Trade and Sailors' Rights' was the popular
catchword that best describes the two strong claims of the United States.
'Down with the British' and 'On to Canada' were the phrases that best
reveal the two impelling national desires.</p>
<p>Both the claims and the desires seem quite simple in themselves. But, in
their connection with American politics, international affairs, and
opposing British claims, they are complex to the last degree. Their
complexities, indeed, are so tortuous and so multitudinous that they
baffle description within the limits of the present book. Yet, since
nothing can be understood without some reference to its antecedents, we
must take at least a bird's-eye view of the growing entanglement which
finally resulted in the War of 1812.</p>
<p>The relations of the British Empire with the United States passed through
four gradually darkening phases between 1783 and 1812—the phases of
Accommodation, Unfriendliness, Hostility, and War. Accommodation lasted
from the recognition of Independence till the end of the century.
Unfriendliness then began with President Jefferson and the Democrats.
Hostility followed in 1807, during Jefferson's second term, when
Napoleon's Berlin Decree and the British. Orders-in-Council brought
American foreign relations into the five-year crisis which ended with the
three-year war.</p>
<p>William Pitt, for the British, and John Jay, the first chief justice of
the United States, are the two principal figures in the Accommodation
period. In 1783 Pitt, who, like his father, the great Earl of Chatham, was
favourably disposed towards the Americans, introduced a temporary measure
in the British House of Commons to regulate trade with what was now a
foreign country 'on the most enlarged principles of reciprocal benefit' as
well as 'on terms of most perfect amity with the United States of
America.' This bill, which showed the influence of Adam Smith's principles
on Pitt's receptive mind, favoured American more than any other foreign
trade in the mother country, and favoured it to a still greater extent in
the West Indies. Alone among foreigners the Americans were to be granted
the privilege of trading between their own ports and the West Indies, in
their own vessels and with their own goods, on exactly the same terms as
the British themselves. The bill was rejected. But in 1794, when the
French Revolution was running its course of wild excesses, and the British
government was even less inclined to trust republics, Jay succeeded in
negotiating a temporary treaty which improved the position of American
sea-borne trade with the West Indies. His government urged him to get
explicit statements of principle inserted, more especially anything that
would make cargoes neutral when under neutral flags. This, however, was
not possible, as Jay himself pointed out. 'That Britain,' he said, 'at
this period, and involved in war, should not admit principles which would
impeach the propriety of her conduct in seizing provisions bound to
France, and enemy's property on board neutral vessels, does not appear to
me extraordinary.' On the whole, Jay did very well to get any treaty
through at such a time; and this mere fact shows that the general attitude
of the mother country towards her independent children was far from being
unfriendly.</p>
<p>Unfriendliness began with the new century, when Jefferson first came into
power. He treated the British navigation laws as if they had been invented
on purpose to wrong Americans, though they had been in force for a hundred
and fifty years, and though they had been originally passed, at the zenith
of Cromwell's career, by the only republican government that ever held
sway in England. Jefferson said that British policy was so perverse, that
when he wished to forecast the British line of action on any particular
point he would first consider what it ought to be and then infer the
opposite. His official opinion was written in the following words: 'It is
not to the moderation or justice of others we are to trust for fair and
equal access to market with our productions, or for our due share in the
transportation of them; but to our own means of independence, and the firm
will to use them.' On the subject of impressment, or 'Sailors' Rights,' he
was clearer still: 'The simplest rule will be that the vessel being
American shall be evidence that the seamen on board of her are such.' This
would have prevented the impressment of British seamen, even in British
harbours, if they were under the American merchant flag—a principle
almost as preposterous, at that particular time, as Jefferson's suggestion
that the whole Gulf Stream should be claimed 'as of our waters.'</p>
<p>If Jefferson had been backed by a united public, or if his actions had
been suited to his words, war would have certainly broken out during his
second presidential term, which lasted from 1805 to 1809. But he was a
party man, with many political opponents, and without unquestioning
support from all on his own side, and he cordially hated armies, navies,
and even a mercantile marine. His idea of an American Utopia was a
commonwealth with plenty of commerce, but no more shipping than could be
helped:</p>
<p>I trust [he said] that the good sense of our country<br/>
will see that its greatest prosperity depends on a<br/>
due balance between agriculture, manufactures, and<br/>
commerce; and not on this protuberant navigation,<br/>
which has kept us in hot water since the commencement<br/>
of our government... It is essentially necessary for<br/>
us to have shipping and seamen enough to carry our<br/>
surplus products to market, but beyond that I do not<br/>
think we are bound to give it encouragement... This<br/>
exuberant commerce brings us into collision with other<br/>
Powers in every sea.<br/></p>
<p>Notwithstanding such opinions, Jefferson stood firm on the question of
'Sailors' Rights.' He refused to approve a treaty that had been signed on
the last day of 1806 by his four commissioners in London, chiefly because
it provided no precise guarantee against impressment. The British
ministers had offered, and had sincerely meant, to respect all American
rights, to issue special instructions against molesting American citizens
under any circumstances, and to redress every case of wrong. But, with a
united nation behind them and an implacable enemy in front, they could not
possibly give up the right to take British seamen from neutral vessels
which were sailing the high seas. The Right of Search was the acknowledged
law of nations all round the world; and surrender on this point meant
death to the Empire they were bound to guard.</p>
<p>Their 'no surrender' on this vital point was, of course, anathema to
Jefferson. Yet he would not go beyond verbal fulminations. In the
following year, however, he was nearly forced to draw the sword by one of
those incidents that will happen during strained relations. In June 1807
two French men-of-war were lying off Annapolis, a hundred miles up
Chesapeake Bay. Far down the bay, in Hampton Roads, the American frigate
<i>Chesapeake</i> was fitting out for sea. Twelve miles below her
anchorage a small British squadron lay just within Cape Henry, waiting to
follow the Frenchmen out beyond the three-mile limit. As Jefferson quite
justly said, this squadron was 'enjoying the hospitality of the United
States.' Presently the <i>Chesapeake</i> got under way; whereupon the
British frigate <i>Leopard</i> made sail and cleared the land ahead of
her. Ten miles out the <i>Leopard</i> hailed her, and sent an officer
aboard to show the American commodore the orders from Admiral Berkeley at
Halifax. These orders named certain British deserters as being among the
<i>Chesapeake's</i> crew. The American commodore refused to allow a
search; but submitted after a fight, during which he lost twenty-one men
killed and wounded. Four men were then seized. One was hanged; another
died; and the other two were subsequently returned with the apologies of
the British government.</p>
<p>James Monroe, of Monroe Doctrine fame, was then American minister in
London. Canning, the British foreign minister, who heard the news first,
wrote an apology on the spot, and promised to make 'prompt and effectual
reparation' if Berkeley had been wrong. Berkeley was wrong. The Right of
Search did not include the right to search a foreign man-of-war, though,
unlike the modern 'right of search,' which is confined to cargoes, it did
include the right to search a neutral merchantman on the high seas for any
'national' who was 'wanted.' Canning, however, distinctly stated that the
men's nationality would affect the consideration of restoring them or not.
Monroe now had a good case. But he made the fatal mistake of writing
officially to Canning before he knew the details, and, worse still, of
diluting his argument with other complaints which had nothing to do with
the affair itself. The result was a long and involved correspondence, a
tardy and ungracious reparation, and much justifiable resentment on the
American side.</p>
<p>Unfriendliness soon became Hostility after the <i>Chesapeake</i> affair
had sharpened the sting of the Orders-in-Council, which had been issued at
the beginning of the same year, 1807. These celebrated Orders simply meant
that so long as Napoleon tried to blockade the British Isles by enforcing
his Berlin Decree, just so long would the British Navy be employed in
blockading him and his allies. Such decisive action, of course, brought
neutral shipping more than ever under the power of the British Navy, which
commanded all the seaways to the ports of Europe. It accentuated the
differences between the American and British governments, and threw the
shadow of the coming storm over the exposed colony of Canada.</p>
<p>Not having succeeded in his struggle for 'Sailors' Rights,' Jefferson now
took up the cudgels for 'Free Trade'; but still without a resort to arms.
His chosen means of warfare was an Embargo Act, forbidding the departure
of vessels from United States ports. This, although nominally aimed
against France as well, was designed to make Great Britain submit by
cutting off both her and her colonies from all intercourse with the United
States. But its actual effect was to hurt Americans, and even Jefferson's
own party, far more than it hurt the British. The Yankee skipper already
had two blockades against 'Free Trade.' The Embargo Act added a third. Of
course it was evaded; and a good deal of shipping went from the United
States and passed into Canadian ports under the Union Jack. Jefferson and
his followers, however, persisted in taking their own way. So Canada
gained from the embargo much of what the Americans were losing. Quebec and
Halifax swarmed with contrabandists, who smuggled back return cargoes into
the New England ports, which were Federalist in party allegiance, and only
too ready to evade or defy the edicts of the Democratic administration.
Jefferson had, it is true, the satisfaction of inflicting much temporary
hardship on cotton-spinning Manchester. But the American cotton-growing
South suffered even more.</p>
<p>The American claims of 'Free Trade and Sailors' Rights' were opposed by
the British counter-claims of the Orders-in-Council and the Right of
Search. But 'Down with the British' and 'On to Canada' were without exact
equivalents on the other side. The British at home were a good deal
irritated by so much unfriendliness and hostility behind them while they
were engaged with Napoleon in front. Yet they could hardly be described as
anti-American; and they certainly had no wish to fight, still less to
conquer, the United States. Canada did contain an anti-American element in
the United Empire Loyalists, whom the American Revolution had driven from
their homes. But her general wish was to be left in peace. Failing that,
she was prepared for defence.</p>
<p>Anti-British feeling probably animated at least two-thirds of the American
people on every question that caused international friction; and the
Jeffersonian Democrats, who were in power, were anti-British to a man. So
strong was this feeling among them that they continued to side with France
even when she was under the military despotism of Napoleon. He was the
arch-enemy of England in Europe. They were the arch-enemy of England in
America. This alone was enough to overcome their natural repugnance to his
autocratic ways. Their position towards the British was such that they
could not draw back from France, whose change of government had made her a
more efficient anti-British friend. 'Let us unite with France and stand or
fall together' was the cry the Democratic press repeated for years in
different forms. It was strangely prophetic. Jefferson's Embargo Act of
1808 began its self-injurious career at the same time that the Peninsular
War began to make the first injurious breach in Napoleon's Continental
System. Madison's declaration of war in 1812 coincided with the opening of
Napoleon's disastrous campaign in Russia.</p>
<p>The Federalists, the party in favour of peace with the British, included
many of the men who had done most for Independence; and they were all, of
course, above suspicion as patriotic Americans. But they were not unlike
transatlantic, self-governing Englishmen. They had been alienated by the
excesses of the French Revolution; and they could not condone the tyranny
of Napoleon. They preferred American statesmen of the type of Washington
and Hamilton to those of the type of Jefferson and Madison. And they were
not inclined to be more anti-British than the occasion required. They were
strongest in New England and New York. The Democrats were strongest
throughout the South and in what was then the West. The Federalists had
been in power during the Accommodation period. The Democrats began with
Unfriendliness, continued with Hostility, and ended with War.</p>
<p>The Federalists did not hesitate to speak their mind. Their loss of power
had sharpened their tongues; and they were often no more generous to the
Democrats and to France than the Democrats were to them and to the
British. But, on the whole, they made for goodwill on both sides; as well
as for a better understanding of each other's rights and difficulties; and
so they made for peace. The general current, however, was against them,
even before the <i>Chesapeake</i> affair; and several additional incidents
helped to quicken it afterwards. In 1808 the toast of the President of the
United States was received with hisses at a great public dinner in London,
given to the leaders of the Spanish revolt against Napoleon by British
admirers. In 1811 the British sloop-of-war <i>Little Belt</i> was
overhauled by the American frigate <i>President</i> fifty miles off-shore
and forced to strike, after losing thirty-two men and being reduced to a
mere battered hulk. The vessels came into range after dark; the British
seem to have fired first; and the Americans had the further excuse that
they were still smarting under the <i>Chesapeake</i> affair. Then, in
1812, an Irish adventurer called Henry, who had been doing some
secret-service work in the United States at the instance of the Canadian
governor-general, sold the duplicates of his correspondence to President
Madison. These were of little real importance; but they added fuel to the
Democratic fire in Congress just when anti-British feeling was at its
worst.</p>
<p>The fourth cause of war, the desire to conquer Canada, was by far the
oldest of all. It was older than Independence, older even than the British
conquest of Canada. In 1689 Peter Schuyler, mayor of Albany, and the
acknowledged leader of the frontier districts, had set forth his 'Glorious
Enterprize' for the conquest and annexation of New France. Phips's
American invasion next year, carried out in complete independence of the
home government, had been an utter failure. So had the second American
invasion, led by Montgomery and Arnold during the Revolutionary War,
nearly a century later. But the Americans had not forgotten their long
desire; and the prospect of another war at once revived their hopes. They
honestly believed that Canada would be much better off as an integral part
of the United States than as a British colony; and most of them believed
that Canadians thought so too. The lesson of the invasion of the
'Fourteenth Colony' during the Revolution had not been learnt. The
alacrity with which Canadians had stood to arms after the <i>Chesapeake</i>
affair was little heeded. And both the nature and the strength of the
union between the colony and the Empire were almost entirely
misunderstood.</p>
<p>Henry Clay, one of the most warlike of the Democrats, said: 'It is absurd
to suppose that we will not succeed in our enterprise against the enemy's
Provinces. I am not for stopping at Quebec or anywhere else; but I would
take the whole continent from them, and ask them no favours. I wish never
to see peace till we do. God has given us the power and the means. We are
to blame if we do not use them.' Eustis, the American Secretary of War,
said: 'We can take Canada without soldiers. We have only to send officers
into the Provinces, and the people, disaffected towards their own
Government, will rally round our standard.' And Jefferson summed it all up
by prophesying that 'the acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the
neighbourhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching.' When the
leaders talked like this, it was no wonder their followers thought that
the long-cherished dream of a conquered Canada was at last about to come
true.</p>
<p><br/><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </SPAN></p>
<br/>
<h2> CHAPTER II — OPPOSING FORCES </h2>
<p>An armed mob must be very big indeed before it has the slightest chance
against a small but disciplined army.</p>
<p>So very obvious a statement might well be taken for granted in the history
of any ordinary war. But '1812' was not an ordinary war. It was a
sprawling and sporadic war; and it was waged over a vast territory by
widely scattered and singularly heterogeneous forces on both sides. For
this reason it is extremely difficult to view and understand as one
connected whole. Partisan misrepresentation has never had a better chance.
Americans have dwelt with justifiable pride on the frigate duels out at
sea and the two flotilla battles on the Lakes. But they have usually
forgotten that, though they won the naval battles, the British won the
purely naval war. The mother-country British, on the other hand, have made
too much of their one important victory at sea, have passed too lightly
over the lessons of the other duels there, and have forgotten how long it
took to sweep the Stars and Stripes away from the Atlantic. Canadians
have, of course, devoted most attention to the British victories won in
the frontier campaigns on land, which the other British have heeded too
little and Americans have been only too anxious to forget. Finally,
neither the Canadians, nor the mother-country British, nor yet the
Americans, have often tried to take a comprehensive view of all the
operations by land and sea together.</p>
<p>The character and numbers of the opposing forces have been even less
considered and even more misunderstood. Militia victories have been freely
claimed by both sides, in defiance of the fact that the regulars were the
really decisive factor in every single victory won by either side, afloat
or ashore. The popular notions about the numbers concerned are equally
wrong. The totals were far greater than is generally known. Counting every
man who ever appeared on either side, by land or sea, within the actual
theatre of war, the united grand total reaches seven hundred thousand.
This was most unevenly divided between the two opponents. The Americans
had about 575,000, the British about 125,000. But such a striking
difference in numbers was matched by an equally striking difference in
discipline and training. The Americans had more than four times as many
men. The British had more than four times as much discipline and training.</p>
<p>The forces on the American side were a small navy and a swarm of
privateers, a small regular army, a few 'volunteers,' still fewer
'rangers,' and a vast conglomeration of raw militia. The British had a
detachment from the greatest navy in the world, a very small 'Provincial
Marine' on the Lakes and the St Lawrence, besides various little
subsidiary services afloat, including privateers. Their army consisted of
a very small but latterly much increased contingent of Imperial regulars,
a few Canadian regulars, more Canadian militia, and a very few Indians.
Let us pass all these forces in review.</p>
<p><i>The American Navy</i>. During the Revolution the infant Navy had begun
a career of brilliant promise; and Paul Jones had been a name to conjure
with. British belittlement deprived him of his proper place in history;
but he was really the founder of the regular Navy that fought so gallantly
in '1812.' A tradition had been created and a service had been formed.
Political opinion, however, discouraged proper growth. President Jefferson
laid down the Democratic party's idea of naval policy in his first
Inaugural. 'Beyond the small force which will probably be wanted for
actual service in the Mediterranean, whatever annual sum you may think
proper to appropriate to naval preparations would perhaps be better
employed in providing those articles which may be kept without waste or
consumption, and be in readiness when any exigence calls them into use.
Progress has been made in providing materials for 74-gun ships.'
[Footnote: A ship-of the-line, meaning a battleship or man-of war strong
enough to take a position in the line of battle, was of a different
minimum size at different periods. The tendency towards increase of size
existed a century ago as well as to-day. 'Fourth-rates,' of 50 and 60
guns, dropped out of the line at the beginning of the Seven Years' War. In
1812 the 74-gun three-decker was the smallest man-of-war regularly used in
the line of battle.] This 'progress' had been made in 1801. But in 1812,
when Jefferson's disciple, Madison, formally declared war, not a single
keel had been laid. Meanwhile, another idea of naval policy had been
worked out into the ridiculous gunboat system. In 1807, during the crisis
which followed the Berlin Decree, the Orders-in-Council, and the <i>Chesapeake</i>
affair, Jefferson wrote to Thomas Paine: 'Believing, myself; that gunboats
are the only water defence which can be useful to us, and protect us from
the ruinous folly of a navy, I am pleased with everything which promises
to improve them.' Whether 'improved' or not, these gunboats were found
worse than useless as a substitute for 'the ruinous folly of a navy.' They
failed egregiously to stop Jefferson's own countrymen from breaking his
Embargo Act of 1808; and their weatherly qualities were so contemptible
that they did not dare to lose sight of land without putting their guns in
the hold. No wonder the practical men of the Navy called them 'Jeffs.'</p>
<p>When President Madison summoned Congress in 1811 war was the main topic of
debate. Yet all he had to say about the Navy was contained in twenty-seven
lukewarm words. Congress followed the presidential lead. The momentous
naval vote of 1812 provided for an expenditure of six hundred thousand
dollars, which was to be spread over three consecutive years and strictly
limited to buying timber. Then, on the outbreak of war, the government,
consistent to the last, decided to lay up the whole of their sea-going
navy lest it should be captured by the British.</p>
<p>But this final indignity was more than the Navy could stand in silence.
Some senior officers spoke their minds, and the party politicians gave
way. The result was a series of victories which, of their own peculiar
kind, have never been eclipsed. Not one American ship-of-the-line was ever
afloat during the war; and only twenty-two frigates or smaller naval craft
put out to sea. In addition, there were the three little flotillas on
Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Champlain; and a few minor vessels elsewhere. All
the crews together did not exceed ten thousand men, replacements included.
Yet, even with these niggard means, the American Navy won the command of
two lakes completely, held the command of the third in suspense, won every
important duel out at sea, except the famous fight against the <i>Shannon</i>,
inflicted serious loss on British sea-borne trade, and kept a greatly
superior British naval force employed on constant and harassing duty.</p>
<p><i>The American Privateers</i>. Besides the little Navy, there were 526
privately owned vessels which were officially authorized to prey on the
enemy's trade. These were manned by forty thousand excellent seamen and
had the chance of plundering the richest sea-borne commerce in the world.
They certainly harassed British commerce, even in its own home waters; and
during the course of the war they captured no less than 1344 prizes. But
they did practically nothing towards reducing the British fighting force
afloat; and even at their own work of commerce-destroying they did less
than one-third as much as the Navy in proportion to their numbers.</p>
<p><i>The American Army</i>. The Army had competed with the Navy for the
lowest place in Jefferson's Inaugural of 1801. 'This is the only
government where every man will meet invasions of the public order as his
own personal concern... A well-disciplined militia is our best reliance
for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them.' The Army
was then reduced to three thousand men. 'Such were the results of Mr
Jefferson's low estimate of, or rather contempt for, the military
character,' said General Winfield Scott, the best officer the United
States produced between '1812' and the Civil War. In 1808 'an additional
military force' was authorized. In January 1812, after war had been
virtually decided on, the establishment was raised to thirty-five
thousand. But in June, when war had been declared, less than a quarter of
this total could be called effectives, and more than half were still
wanting to complete.' The grand total of all American regulars, including
those present with the colours on the outbreak of hostilities as well as
those raised during the war, amounted to fifty-six thousand. Yet no
general had six thousand actually in the firing line of any one
engagement.</p>
<p><i>The United States Volunteers</i>. Ten thousand volunteers were raised,
from first to last. They differed from the regulars in being enlisted for
shorter terms of service and in being generally allowed to elect their own
regimental officers. Theoretically they were furnished in fixed quotas by
the different States, according to population. They resembled the regulars
in other respects, especially in being directly under Federal, not State,
authority.</p>
<p><i>The Rangers</i>. Three thousand men with a real or supposed knowledge
of backwoods life served in the war. They operated in groups and formed a
very unequal force—good, bad, and indifferent. Some were under the
Federal authority. Others belonged to the different States. As a distinct
class they had no appreciable influence on the major results of the war.</p>
<p><i>The Militia</i>. The vast bulk of the American forces, more than
three-quarters of the grand total by land and sea, was made up of the
militia belonging to the different States of the Union. These militiamen
could not be moved outside of their respective States without State
authority; and individual consent was also necessary to prolong a term of
enlistment, even if the term should come to an end in the middle of a
battle. Some enlisted for several months; others for no more than one.
Very few had any military knowledge whatever; and most of the officers
were no better trained than the men. The totals from all the different
States amounted to 456,463. Not half of these ever got near the front; and
not nearly half of those who did get there ever came into action at all.
Except at New Orleans, where the conditions were quite abnormal, the
militia never really helped to decide the issue of any battle, except,
indeed, against their own army. 'The militia thereupon broke and fled'
recurs with tiresome frequency in numberless dispatches. Yet the
consequent charges of cowardice are nearly all unjust. The
fellow-countrymen of those sailors who fought the American frigates so
magnificently were no special kind of cowards. But, as a raw militia, they
simply were to well-trained regulars what children are to men.</p>
<p><i>American Non-Combatant Services</i>. There were more than fifty
thousand deaths reported on the American side; yet not ten thousand men
were killed or mortally wounded in all the battles put together. The
medical department, like the commissariat and transport, was only
organized at the very last minute, even among the regulars, and then in a
most haphazard way. Among the militia these indispensable branches of the
service were never really organized at all.</p>
<p>Such disastrous shortcomings were not caused by any lack of national
resources. The population o the United States was about eight millions, as
against eighteen millions in the British Isles. Prosperity was general; at
all events, up to the time that it was checked by Jefferson's Embargo Act.
The finances were also thought to be most satisfactory. On the very eve of
war the Secretary of the Treasury reported that the national debt had been
reduced by forty-six million dollars since his party had come into power.
Had this 'war party' spent those millions on its Army and Navy, the war
itself might have had an ending more satisfactory to the United States.</p>
<p>Let us now review the forces on the British side.</p>
<p>The eighteen million people in the British Isles were naturally anxious to
avoid war with the eight millions in the United States. They had enough on
their hands as it was. The British Navy was being kept at a greater
strength than ever before; though it was none too strong for the vast
amount of work it had to do. The British Army was waging its greatest
Peninsular campaign. All the other naval and military services of what was
already a world-wide empire had to be maintained. One of the most
momentous crises in the world's history was fast approaching; for
Napoleon, arch-enemy of England and mightiest of modern conquerors, was
marching on Russia with five hundred thousand men. Nor was this all. There
were troubles at home as well as dangers abroad. The king had gone mad the
year before. The prime minister had recently been assassinated. The strain
of nearly twenty years of war was telling severely on the nation. It was
no time to take on a new enemy, eight millions strong, especially one who
supplied so many staple products during peace and threatened both the sea
flank of the mother country and the land flank of Canada during war.</p>
<p>Canada was then little more than a long, weak line of settlements on the
northern frontier of the United States. Counting in the Maritime
Provinces, the population hardly exceeded five hundred thousand—as
many people, altogether, as there were soldiers in one of Napoleon's
armies, or Americans enlisted for service in this very war. Nearly
two-thirds of this half-million were French Canadians in Lower Canada, now
the province of Quebec. They were loyal to the British cause, knowing they
could not live a French-Canadian life except within the British Empire.
The population of Upper Canada, now Ontario, was less than a hundred
thousand. The Anglo-Canadians in it were of two kinds: British immigrants
and United Empire Loyalists, with sons and grandsons of each. Both kinds
were loyal. But the 'U.E.L.'s' were anti-American through and through,
especially in regard to the war-and-Democratic party then in power. They
could therefore be depended on to fight to the last against an enemy who,
having driven them into exile once, was now coming to wrest their second
New-World home from its allegiance to the British crown. They and their
descendants in all parts of Canada numbered more than half the
Anglo-Canadian population in 1812. The few thousand Indians near the scene
of action naturally sided with the British, who treated them better and
dispossessed them less than the Americans did. The only detrimental part
of the population was the twenty-five thousand Americans, who simply used
Canada as a good ground for exploitation, and who would have preferred to
see it under the Stars and Stripes, provided that the change put no
restriction on their business opportunities.</p>
<p><i>The British Navy</i>. About thirty thousand men of the British Navy,
only a fifth of the whole service, appeared within the American theatre of
war from first to last. This oldest and greatest of all navies had
recently emerged triumphant from an age-long struggle for the command of
the sea. But, partly because of its very numbers and vast heritage of
fame, it was suffering acutely from several forms of weakness. Almost
twenty years of continuous war, with dull blockades during the last seven,
was enough to make any service 'go stale.' Owing to the enormous losses
recruiting had become exceedingly and increasingly difficult, even
compulsory recruiting by press-gang. At the same time, Nelson's victories
had filled the ordinary run of naval men with an over-weening confidence
in their own invincibility; and this over-confidence had become more than
usually dangerous because of neglected gunnery and defective shipbuilding.
The Admiralty had cut down the supply of practice ammunition and had
allowed British ships to lag far behind those of other nations in material
and design. The general inferiority of British shipbuilding was such an
unwelcome truth to the British people that they would not believe it till
the American frigates drove it home with shattering broadsides. But it was
a very old truth, for all that. Nelson's captains, and those of still
earlier wars, had always competed eagerly for the command of the better
built French prizes, which they managed to take only because the
superiority of their crews was great enough to overcome the inferiority of
their ships. There was a different tale to tell when inferior British
vessels with 'run-down' crews met superior American vessels with
first-rate crews. In those days training and discipline were better in the
American mercantile marine than in the British; and the American Navy, of
course, shared in the national efficiency at sea. Thus, with cheap
materials, good designs, and excellent seamen, the Americans started with
great advantages over the British for single-ship actions; and it was some
time before their small collection of ships succumbed to the grinding
pressure of the regularly organized British fleet.</p>
<p><i>The Provincial Marine</i>. Canada had a little local navy on the Lakes
called the Provincial Marine. It dated from the Conquest, and had done
good service again during the Revolution, especially in Carleton's victory
over Arnold on Lake Champlain in 1776. It had not, however, been kept up
as a proper naval force, but had been placed under the
quartermaster-general's department of the Army, where it had been mostly
degraded into a mere branch of the transport service. At one time the
effective force had been reduced to 132 men; though many more were
hurriedly added just before the war. Most of its senior officers were too
old; and none of the juniors had enjoyed any real training for combatant
duties. Still, many of the ships and men did well in the war, though they
never formed a single properly organized squadron.</p>
<p><i>British Privateers</i>. Privateering was not a flourishing business in
the mother country in 1812. Prime seamen were scarce, owing to the great
number needed in the Navy and in the mercantile marine. Many, too, had
deserted to get the higher wages paid in 'Yankees'—'dollars for
shillings,' as the saying went. Besides, there was little foreign trade
left to prey on. Canadian privateers did better. They were nearly all
'Bluenoses;' that is, they hailed from the Maritime Provinces. During the
three campaigns the Court of Vice-Admiralty at Halifax issued letters of
marque to forty-four privateers, which employed, including replacements,
about three thousand men and reported over two hundred prizes.</p>
<p><i>British Commissariat and Transport</i>. Transport, of course, went
chiefly by water. Reinforcements and supplies from the mother country came
out under convoy, mostly in summer, to Quebec, where bulk was broken, and
whence both men and goods were sent to the front. There were plenty of
experts in Canada to move goods west in ordinary times. The best of all
were the French-Canadian voyageurs who manned the boats of the Hudson's
Bay and North-West Companies. But there were not enough of them to carry
on the work of peace and war together. Great and skilful efforts, however,
were made. Schooners, bateaux, boats, and canoes were all turned to good
account. But the inland line of communications was desperately long and
difficult to work. It was more than twelve hundred miles from Quebec to
Amherstburg on the river Detroit, even by the shortest route.</p>
<p><i>The British Army</i>. The British Army, like the Navy, had to maintain
an exacting world-wide service, besides large contingents in the field, on
resources which had been severely strained by twenty years of war. It was
represented in Canada by only a little over four thousand effective men
when the war began. Reinforcements at first came slowly and in small
numbers. In 1813 some foreign corps in British pay, like the Watteville
and the Meuron regiments, came out. But in 1814 more than sixteen thousand
men, mostly Peninsular veterans, arrived. Altogether, including every man
present in any part of Canada during the whole war, there were over
twenty-five thousand British regulars. In addition to these there were the
troops invading the United States at Washington and Baltimore, with the
reinforcements that joined them for the attack on New Orleans—in
all, nearly nine thousand men. The grand total within the theatre of war
was therefore about thirty-four thousand.</p>
<p><i>The Canadian Regulars</i>. The Canadian regulars were about four
thousand strong. Another two thousand took the place of men who were lost
to the service, making the total six thousand, from first to last. There
were six corps raised for permanent service: the Royal Newfoundland
Regiment, the New Brunswick Regiment, the Canadian Fencibles, the Royal
Veterans, the Canadian Voltigeurs, and the Glengarry Light Infantry. The
Glengarries were mostly Highland Roman Catholics who had settled Glengarry
county on the Ottawa, where Ontario marches with Quebec. The Voltigeurs
were French Canadians under a French-Canadian officer in the Imperial
Army. In the other corps there were many United Empire Loyalists from the
different provinces, including a good stiffening of old soldiers and their
sons.</p>
<p><i>The Canadian Embodied Militia</i>. The Canadian militia by law
comprised every able-bodied man except the few specially exempt, like the
clergy and the judges. A hundred thousand adult males were liable for
service. Various causes, however, combined to prevent half of these from
getting under arms. Those who actually did duty were divided into
'Embodied' and 'Sedentary' corps. The embodied militia consisted of picked
men, drafted for special service; and they often approximated so closely
to the regulars in discipline and training that they may be classed, at
the very least, as semi-regulars. Counting all those who passed into the
special reserve during the war, as well as those who went to fill up the
ranks after losses, there were nearly ten thousand of these highly
trained, semi-regular militiamen engaged in the war.</p>
<p><i>The Canadian Sedentary Militia</i>. The 'Sedentaries' comprised the
rest of the militia. The number under arms fluctuated greatly; so did the
length of time on duty. There were never ten thousand employed at any one
time all over the country. As a rule, the 'Sedentaries' did duty at the
base, thus releasing the better trained men for service at the front. Many
had the blood of soldiers in their veins; and nearly all had the priceless
advantage of being kept in constant touch with regulars. A passionate
devotion to the cause also helped them to acquire, sooner than most other
men, both military knowledge and that true spirit of discipline which,
after all, is nothing but self-sacrifice in its finest patriotic form.</p>
<p><i>The Indians</i>. Nearly all the Indians sided with the British or else
remained neutral. They were, however, a very uncertain force; and the
total number that actually served at the front throughout the war
certainly fell short of five thousand.</p>
<p>This completes the estimate of the opposing forces-of the more than half a
million Americans against the hundred and twenty-five thousand British;
with these great odds entirely reversed whenever the comparison is made
not between mere quantities of men but between their respective degrees of
discipline and training.</p>
<p>But it does not complete the comparison between the available resources of
the two opponents in one most important particular—finance. The Army
Bill Act, passed at Quebec on August 1, 1812, was the greatest single
financial event in the history of Canada. It was also full of political
significance; for the parliament of Lower Canada was overwhelmingly
French-Canadian. The million dollars authorized for issue, together with
interest at six per cent, pledged that province to the equivalent of four
years' revenue. The risk was no light one. But it was nobly run and well
rewarded. These Army Bills were the first paper money in the whole New
World that never lost face value for a day, that paid all their statutory
interest, and that were finally redeemed at par. The denominations ran
from one dollar up to four hundred dollars. Bills of one, two, three, and
four dollars could always be cashed at the Army Bill Office in Quebec.
After due notice the whole issue was redeemed in November 1816. A special
feature well worth noting is the fact that Army Bills sometimes commanded
a premium of five per cent over gold itself, because, being convertible
into government bills of exchange on London, they were secure against any
fluctuations in the price of bullion. A special comparison well worth
making is that between their own remarkable stability and the equally
remarkable instability of similar instruments of finance in the United
States, where, after vainly trying to help the government through its
difficulties, every bank outside of New England was forced to suspend
specie payments in 1814, the year of the Great Blockade.</p>
<p><br/><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </SPAN></p>
<br/>
<h2> CHAPTER III — 1812: OFF TO THE FRONT </h2>
<p>President Madison sent his message to Congress on the 1st of June and
signed the resultant 'war bill' on the 18th following. Congress was as
much divided as the nation on the question of peace or war. The vote in
the House of Representatives was seventy-nine to forty-nine, while in the
Senate it was nineteen to thirteen. The government itself was 'solid.' But
it did little enough to make up for the lack of national whole-heartedness
by any efficiency of its own. Madison was less zealous about the war than
most of his party. He was no Pitt or Lincoln to ride the storm, but a
respectable lawyer-politician, whose forte was writing arguments, not
wielding his country's sword. Nor had he in his Cabinet a single statesman
with a genius for making war. His war secretary, William Eustis, never
grasped the military situation at all, and had to be replaced by John
Armstrong after the egregious failures of the first campaign. During the
war debate in June, Eustis was asked to report to Congress how many of the
'additional' twenty-five thousand men authorized in January had already
been enlisted. The best answer he could make was a purely 'unofficial
opinion' that the number was believed to exceed five thousand.</p>
<p>The first move to the front was made by the Navy. Under very strong
pressure the Cabinet had given up the original idea of putting the ships
under a glass case; and four days after the declaration of war orders were
sent to the senior naval officer, Commodore Rodgers, to 'protect our
returning commerce' by scattering his ships about the American coast just
where the British squadron at Halifax would be most likely to defeat them
one by one. Happily for the United States, these orders were too late.
Rodgers had already sailed. He was a man of action. His little squadron of
three frigates, one sloop, and one brig lay in the port of New York, all
ready waiting for the word. And when news of the declaration arrived, he
sailed within the hour, and set out in pursuit of a British squadron that
was convoying a fleet of merchantmen from the West Indies to England. He
missed the convoy, which worked into Liverpool, Bristol, and London by
getting to the north of him. But, for all that, his sudden dash into
British waters with an active, concentrated squadron produced an excellent
effect. The third day out the British frigate <i>Belvidera</i> met him and
had to run for her life into Halifax. The news of this American squadron's
being at large spread alarm all over the routes between Canada and the
outside world. Rodgers turned south within a few hours' sail of the
English Channel, turned west off Madeira, gave Halifax a wide berth, and
reached Boston ten weeks out from Sandy Hook. 'We have been so completely
occupied in looking out for Commodore Rodgers,' wrote a British naval
officer, 'that we have taken very few prizes.' Even Madison was
constrained to admit that this offensive move had had the defensive
results he had hoped to reach in his own 'defensive' way. 'Our Trade has
reached our ports, having been much favoured by a squadron under Commodore
Rodgers.'</p>
<p>The policy of squadron cruising was continued throughout the autumn and
winter of 1812. There were no squadron battles. But there was unity of
purpose; and British convoys were harassed all over the Atlantic till well
on into the next year. During this period there were five famous duels,
which have made the <i>Constitution</i> and the <i>United States</i>, the
<i>Hornet</i> and the <i>Wasp</i>, four names to conjure with wherever the
Stars and Stripes are flown. The <i>Constitution</i> fought the first,
when she took the <i>Guerriere</i> in August, due east of Boston and south
of Newfoundland. The <i>Wasp</i> won the second in September, by taking
the <i>Frolic</i> half-way between Halifax and Bermuda. The <i>United
States</i> won the third in October, by defeating the <i>Macedonian</i>
south-west of Madeira. The <i>Constitution</i> won the fourth in December,
off Bahia in Brazil, by defeating the <i>Java</i>. And the <i>Hornet</i>
won the fifth in February, by taking the <i>Peacock</i>, off Demerara, on
the coast of British Guiana.</p>
<p>This closed the first period of the war at sea. The British government had
been so anxious to avoid war, and to patch up peace again after war had
broken out, that they purposely refrained from putting forth their full
available naval strength till 1813. At the same time, they would naturally
have preferred victory to defeat; and the fact that most of the British
Navy was engaged elsewhere, and that what was available was partly held in
leash, by no means dims the glory of those four men-of-war which the
Americans fought with so much bravery and skill, and with such
well-deserved success. No wonder Wellington said peace with the United
States would be worth having at any honourable price, 'if we could only
take some of their damned frigates!' Peace was not to come for another
eighteen months. But though the Americans won a few more duels out at sea,
besides two annihilating flotilla victories on the Lakes, their coast was
blockaded as completely as Napoleon's, once the British Navy had begun its
concerted movements on a comprehensive scale. From that time forward the
British began to win the naval war, although they won no battles and only
one duel that has lived in history. This dramatic duel, fought between the
<i>Shannon</i> and the <i>Chesapeake</i> on June 1, 1813, was not itself a
more decisive victory for the British than previous frigate duels had been
for the Americans. But it serves better than any other special event to
mark the change from the first period, when the Americans roved the sea as
conquerors, to the second, when they were gradually blockaded into utter
impotence.</p>
<p>Having now followed the thread of naval events to a point beyond the other
limits of this chapter, we must return to the American movements against
the Canadian frontier and the British counter-movements intended to
checkmate them.</p>
<p>Quebec and Halifax, the two great Canadian seaports, were safe from
immediate American attack; though Quebec was the ultimate objective of the
Americans all through the war. But the frontier west of Quebec offered
several tempting chances for a vigorous invasion, if the American naval
and military forces could only be made to work together. The whole life of
Canada there depended absolutely on her inland waterways. If the Americans
could cut the line of the St Lawrence and Great Lakes at any critical
point, the British would lose everything to the west of it; and there were
several critical points of connection along this line. St Joseph's Island,
commanding the straits between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, was a vital
point of contact with all the Indians to the west. It was the British
counterpoise to the American post at Michilimackinac, which commanded the
straits between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Detroit commanded the
waterway between Lake Huron and Lake Erie; while the command of the
Niagara peninsula ensured the connection between Lake Erie and Lake
Ontario. At the head of the St Lawrence, guarding the entrance to Lake
Ontario, stood Kingston. Montreal was an important station midway between
Kingston and Quebec, besides being an excellent base for an army thrown
forward against the American frontier. Quebec was the general base from
which all the British forces were directed and supplied.</p>
<p>Quick work, by water and land together, was essential for American success
before the winter, even if the Canadians were really so anxious to change
their own flag for the Stars and Stripes. But the American government put
the cart before the horse—the Army before the Navy—and
weakened the military forces of invasion by dividing them into two
independent commands. General Henry Dearborn was appointed
commander-in-chief, but only with control over the north-eastern country,
that is, New England and New York. Thirty years earlier Dearborn had
served in the War of Independence as a junior officer; and he had been
Jefferson's Secretary of War. Yet he was not much better trained as a
leader than his raw men were as followers, and he was now sixty-one. He
established his headquarters at Greenbush, nearly opposite Albany, so that
he could advance on Montreal by the line of the Hudson, Lake Champlain,
and the Richelieu. The intended advance, however, did not take place this
year. Greenbush was rather a recruiting depot and camp of instruction than
the base of an army in the field; and the actual campaign had hardly begun
before the troops went into winter quarters. The commander of the
north-western army was General William Hull. And his headquarters were to
be Detroit, from which Upper Canada was to be quickly overrun without
troubling about the co-operation of the Navy. Like Dearborn, Hull had
served in the War of Independence. But he had been a civilian ever since;
he was now fifty-nine; and his only apparent qualification was his having
been governor of Michigan for seven years. Not until September, after two
defeats on land, was Commodore Chauncey ordered 'to assume command of the
naval force on Lakes Erie and Ontario, and use every exertion to obtain
control of them this fall.' Even then Lake Champlain, an essential link
both in the frontier system and on Dearborn's proposed line of march, was
totally forgotten.</p>
<p>To complete the dispersion of force, Eustis forgot all about the military
detachments at the western forts. Fort Dearborn (now Chicago) and
Michilimackinac, important as points of connection with the western
tribes, were left to the devices of their own inadequate garrisons. In
1801 Dearborn himself, Eustis's predecessor as Secretary of War, had
recommended a peace strength of two hundred men at Michilimackinac,
usually known as 'Mackinaw.' In 1812 there were not so many at Mackinaw
and Chicago put together.</p>
<p>It was not a promising outlook to an American military eye—the cart
before the horse, the thick end of the wedge turned towards the enemy,
three incompetent men giving disconnected orders on the northern frontier,
and the western posts neglected. But Eustis was full of self-confidence.
Hull was 'enthusing' his militiamen. And Dearborn was for the moment
surpassing both, by proposing to 'operate, with effect, at the same
moment, against Niagara, Kingston, and Montreal.'</p>
<p>From the Canadian side the outlook was also dark enough to the trained
eye; though not for the same reasons. The menace here was from an enemy
whose general resources exceeded those in Canada by almost twenty to one.
The silver lining to the cloud was the ubiquitous British Navy and the
superior training and discipline of the various little military forces
immediately available for defence.</p>
<p>The Maritime Provinces formed a subordinate command, based on the strong
naval station of Halifax, where a regular garrison was always maintained
by the Imperial government. They were never invaded, or even seriously
threatened. It was only in 1814 that they came directly into the scene of
action, and then only as the base from which the invasion of Maine was
carried out.</p>
<p>We must therefore turn to Quebec as the real centre of Canadian defence,
which, indeed, it was best fitted to be, not only from its strategical
situation, but from the fact that it was the seat of the governor-general
and commander-in-chief, Sir George Prevost. Like Sir John Sherbrooke, the
governor of Nova Scotia, Prevost was a professional soldier with an
unblemished record in the Army. But, though naturally anxious to do well,
and though very suavely diplomatic, he was not the man, as we shall often
see, either to face a military crisis or to stop the Americans from
stealing marches on him by negotiation. On the outbreak of war he was at
headquarters in Quebec, dividing his time between his civil and military
duties, greatly concerned with international diplomacy, and always full of
caution.</p>
<p>At York (now Toronto) in Upper Canada a very different man was meanwhile
preparing to checkmate Hull's 'north-western army' of Americans, which was
threatening to invade the province. Isaac Brock was not only a soldier
born and bred, but, alone among the leaders on either side, he had the
priceless gift of genius. He was now forty-two, having been born in
Guernsey on October 6, 1769, in the same year as Napoleon and Wellington.
Like the Wolfes and the Montcalms, the Brocks had followed the noble
profession of arms for many generations. Nor were the De Lisles, his
mother's family, less distinguished for the number of soldiers and sailors
they had been giving to England ever since the Norman Conquest. Brock
himself, when only twenty-nine, had commanded the 49th Foot in Holland
under Sir John Moore, the future hero of Corunna, and Sir Ralph
Abercromby, who was so soon to fall victorious in Egypt. Two years after
this he had stood beside another and still greater man at Copenhagen,
'mighty Nelson,' who there gave a striking instance of how a subordinate
inspired by genius can win the day by disregarding the over-caution of a
commonplace superior. We may be sure that when Nelson turned his blind eye
on Parker's signal of recall the lesson was not thrown away on Brock.</p>
<p>For ten long years of inglorious peace Brock had now been serving on in
Canada, while his comrades in arms were winning distinction on the
battlefields of Europe. This was partly due to his own excellence: he was
too good a man to be spared after his first five years were up in 1807;
for the era of American hostility had then begun. He had always been
observant. But after 1807 he had redoubled his efforts to 'learn Canada,'
and learn her thoroughly. People and natural resources, products and means
of transport, armed strength on both sides of the line and the best plan
of defence, all were studied with unremitting zeal. In 1811 he became the
acting lieutenant-governor and commander of the forces in Upper Canada,
where he soon found out that the members of parliament returned by the
'American vote' were bent on thwarting every effort he could make to
prepare the province against the impending storm. In 1812, on the very day
he heard that war had been declared, he wished to strike the unready
Americans hard and instantly at one of their three accessible points of
assembly-Fort Niagara, at the upper end of Lake Ontario, opposite Fort
George, which stood on the other side of the Niagara river; Sackett's
Harbour, at the lower end of Lake Ontario, thirty-six miles from Kingston;
and Ogdensburg, on the upper St Lawrence, opposite Fort Prescott. But Sir
George Prevost, the governor-general, was averse from an open act of war
against the Northern States, because they were hostile to Napoleon and in
favour of maintaining peace with the British; while Brock himself was soon
turned from this purpose by news of Hull's American invasion farther west,
as well as by the necessity of assembling his own thwarting little
parliament at York.</p>
<p>The nine days' session, from July 27 to August 5, yielded the
indispensable supplies. But the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, as a
necessary war measure, was prevented by the disloyal minority, some of
whom wished to see the British defeated and all of whom were ready to
break their oath of allegiance whenever it suited them to do so. The
patriotic majority, returned by the votes of United Empire Loyalists and
all others who were British born and bred, issued an address that echoed
the appeal made by Brock himself in the following words: 'We are engaged
in an awful and eventful contest. By unanimity and despatch in our
councils and by vigour in our operations we may teach the enemy this
lesson: That a country defended by free men, enthusiastically devoted to
the cause of their King and Constitution, can never be conquered.'</p>
<p>On August 5, being at last clear of his immediate duties as a civil
governor, Brock threw himself ardently into the work of defeating Hull,
who had crossed over into Canada from Detroit on July 11 and issued a
proclamation at Sandwich the following day. This proclamation shows
admirably the sort of impression which the invaders wished to produce on
Canadians.</p>
<p>The United States are sufficiently powerful to afford<br/>
you every security consistent with their rights and<br/>
your expectations. I tender you the invaluable blessings<br/>
of Civil, Political, and Religious Liberty... The<br/>
arrival of an army of Friends must be hailed by you<br/>
with a cordial welcome. You will be emancipated from<br/>
Tyranny and Oppression and restored to the dignified<br/>
station of Freemen... If, contrary to your own interest<br/>
and the just expectation of my country, you should<br/>
take part in the approaching contest, you will be<br/>
considered and treated as enemies and the horrors and<br/>
calamities of war will Stalk before you. If the<br/>
barbarous and Savage policy of Great Britain be pursued,<br/>
and the savages let loose to murder our Citizens and<br/>
butcher our women and children, this war will be a<br/>
war of extermination. The first stroke with the<br/>
Tomahawk, the first attempt with the Scalping Knife,<br/>
will be the Signal for one indiscriminate scene of<br/>
desolation. No white man found fighting by the Side<br/>
of an Indian will be taken prisoner. Instant destruction<br/>
will be his Lot...<br/></p>
<p>This was war with a vengeance. But Hull felt less confidence than his
proclamation was intended to display. He knew that, while the American
government had been warned in January about the necessity of securing the
naval command of Lake Erie, no steps had yet been taken to secure it. Ever
since the beginning of March, when he had written a report based on his
seven years' experience as governor of Michigan, he had been gradually
learning that Eustis was bent on acting in defiance of all sound military
advice. In April he had accepted his new position very much against his
will and better judgment. In May he had taken command of the assembling
militiamen at Dayton in Ohio. In June he had been joined by a battalion of
inexperienced regulars. And now, in July, he was already feeling the ill
effects of having to carry on what should have been an amphibious campaign
without the assistance of any proper force afloat; for on the 2nd ten days
before he issued his proclamation at Sandwich, Lieutenant Rolette, an
enterprising French-Canadian officer in the Provincial Marine, had cut his
line of communication along the Detroit and had taken an American schooner
which contained his official plan of campaign, besides a good deal of
baggage and stores.</p>
<p>There were barely six hundred British on the line of the Detroit when Hull
first crossed over to Sandwich with twenty-five hundred men. These six
hundred comprised less than 150 regulars, about 300 militia, and some 150
Indians. Yet Hull made no decisive effort against the feeble little fort
of Malden, which was the only defence of Amherstburg by land. The distance
was nothing, only twelve miles south from Sandwich. He sent a sort of
flying column against it. But this force went no farther than half-way,
where the Americans were checked at the bridge over the swampy little
Riviere aux Canards by the Indians under Tecumseh, the great War Chief of
whom we shall soon hear more.</p>
<p>Hull's failure to take Fort Malden was one fatal mistake. His failure to
secure his communications southward from Detroit was another. Apparently
yielding to the prevalent American idea that a safe base could be created
among friendly Canadians without the trouble of a regular campaign, he
sent off raiding parties up the Thames. According to his own account,
these parties 'penetrated sixty miles into the settled part of the
province.' According to Brock, they 'ravaged the country as far as the
Moravian Town.' But they gained no permanent foothold. By the beginning of
August Hull's position had already become precarious. The Canadians had
not proved friendly. The raid up the Thames and the advance towards
Amherstburg had both failed. And the first British reinforcements had
already begun to arrive. These were very small. But even a few good
regulars helped to discourage Hull; and the new British commander, Colonel
Procter of the 41st, was not yet to be faced by a task beyond his
strength. Worse yet for the Americans, Brock might soon be expected from
the east; the Provincial Marine still held the water line of communication
from the south; and dire news had just come in from the west.</p>
<p>The moment Brock had heard of the declaration of war he had sent orders
post-haste to Captain Roberts at St Joseph's Island, either to attack the
Americans at Michilimackinac or stand on his own defence. Roberts received
Brock's orders on the 15th of July. The very next day he started for
Michilimackinac with 45 men of the Royal Veterans, 180 French-Canadian
voyageurs, 400 Indians, and two 'unwieldy' iron six-pounders. Surprise was
essential, to prevent the Americans from destroying their stores; and the
distance was a good fifty miles. But 'by the almost unparalleled exertions
of the Canadians who manned the boats, we arrived at the place of
Rendezvous at 3 o'clock the following morning.' One of the iron
six-pounders was then hauled up the heights, which rise to eight hundred
feet, and trained on the dumbfounded Americans, while the whole British
force took post for storming. The American commandant, Lieutenant Hanks,
who had only fifty-seven effective men, thereupon surrendered without
firing a shot.</p>
<p>The news of this bold stroke ran like wildfire through the whole
North-West. The effect on the Indians was tremendous, immediate, and
wholly in favour of the British. In the previous November Tecumseh's
brother, known far and wide as the 'Prophet,' had been defeated on the
banks of the Tippecanoe, a river of Indiana, by General Harrison, of whom
we shall hear in the next campaign. This battle, though small in itself,
was looked upon as the typical victory of the dispossessing Americans; so
the British seizure of Michilimackinac was hailed with great joy as being
a most effective counter-stroke. Nor was this the only reason for
rejoicing. Michilimackinac and St Joseph's commanded the two lines of
communication between the western wilds and the Great Lakes; so the
possession of both by the British was more than a single victory, it was a
promise of victories to come. No wonder Hull lamented this 'opening of the
hive,' which 'let the swarms' loose all over the wilds on his inland flank
and rear.</p>
<p>He would have felt more uneasy still if he had known what was to happen
when Captain Heald received his orders at Fort Dearborn (Chicago) on
August 9. Hull had ordered Heald to evacuate the fort as soon as possible
and rejoin headquarters. Heald had only sixty-six men, not nearly enough
to overawe the surrounding Indians. News of the approaching evacuation
spread quickly during the six days of preparation. The Americans failed to
destroy the strong drink in the fort. The Indians got hold of it, became
ungovernably drunk, and killed half of Heald's men before they had gone a
mile. The rest surrendered and were spared. Heald and his wife were then
sent to Mackinaw, where Roberts treated them very kindly and sent them on
to Pittsburg. The whole affair was one between Indians and Americans
alone. But it was naturally used by the war party to inflame American
feeling against all things British.</p>
<p>While Hull was writing to Fort Dearborn and hearing bad news from
Michilimackinac, he was also getting more and more anxious about his own
communications to the south. With no safe base in Canada, and no safe line
of transport by water from Lake Erie to the village of Detroit, he decided
to clear the road which ran north and south beside the Detroit river. But
this was now no easy task for his undisciplined forces, as Colonel Procter
was bent on blocking the same road by sending troops and Indians across
the river. On August 5, the day Brock prorogued his parliament at York,
Tecumseh ambushed Hull's first detachment of two hundred men at
Brownstown, eighteen miles south of Detroit. On the 7th Hull began to
withdraw his forces from the Canadian side. On the 8th he ordered six
hundred men to make a second attempt to clear the southern road. But on
the 9th these men were met at Maguaga, only fourteen miles south of
Detroit, by a mixed force of British-regulars, militia, and Indians. The
superior numbers of the Americans enabled them to press the British back
at first. But, on the 10th, when the British showed a firm front in a new
position, the Americans retired discouraged. Next day Hull withdrew the
last of his men from Canadian soil, exactly one month after they had first
set foot upon it. The following day was spent in consulting his staff and
trying to reorganize his now unruly militia. On the evening of the 13th he
made his final effort to clear the one line left, by sending out four
hundred picked men under his two best colonels, McArthur and Cass, who
were ordered to make an inland detour through the woods.</p>
<p>That same night Brock stepped ashore at Amherstburg.</p>
<p><br/><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </SPAN></p>
<br/>
<h2> CHAPTER IV — 1812: BROCK AT DETROIT AND QUEENSTON HEIGHTS </h2>
<p>The prorogation which released Brock from his parliamentary duties on
August 5 had been followed by eight days of the most strenuous military
work, especially on the part of the little reinforcement which he was
taking west to Amherstburg. The Upper Canada militiamen, drawn from the
United Empire Loyalists and from the British-born, had responded with
hearty goodwill, all the way from Glengarry to Niagara. But the population
was so scattered and equipment so scarce that no attempt had been made to
have whole battalions of 'Select Embodied Militia' ready for the beginning
of the war, as in the more thickly peopled province of Lower Canada. The
best that could be done was to embody the two flank companies—the
Light and Grenadier companies—of the most urgently needed
battalions. But as these companies contained all the picked men who were
readiest for immediate service, and as the Americans were very slow in
mobilizing their own still more unready army, Brock found that, for the
time being, York could be left and Detroit attacked with nothing more than
his handful of regulars, backed by the flank-company militiamen and the
Provincial Marine.</p>
<p>Leaving York the very day he closed the House there, Brock sailed over to
Burlington Bay, marched across the neck of the Niagara peninsula, and
embarked at Long Point with every man the boats could carry—three
hundred, all told, forty regulars of the 41st and two hundred and sixty
flank-company militiamen. Then, for the next five days, he fought his way,
inch by inch, along the north shore of Lake Erie against a persistent
westerly storm. The news by the way was discouraging. Hull's invasion had
unsettled the Indians as far east as the Niagara peninsula, which the
local militia were consequently afraid to leave defenceless. But once
Brock reached the scene of action, his insight showed him what bold skill
could do to turn the tide of feeling all along the western frontier.</p>
<p>It was getting on for one o'clock in the morning of August 14 when
Lieutenant Rolette challenged Brock's leading boat from aboard the
Provincial Marine schooner <i>General Hunter</i>. As Brock stepped ashore
he ordered all commanding officers to meet him within an hour. He then
read Hull's dispatches, which had been taken by Rolette with the captured
schooner and by Tecumseh at Brownstown. By two o'clock all the principal
officers and Indian chiefs had assembled, not as a council of war, but
simply to tell Brock everything they knew. Only Tecumseh and Colonel
Nichol, the quartermaster of the little army, thought that Detroit itself
could be attacked with any prospect of success. Brock listened
attentively; made up his mind; told his officers to get ready for
immediate attack; asked Tecumseh to assemble all the Indians at noon; and
dismissed the meeting at four. Brock and Tecumseh read each other at a
glance; and Tecumseh, turning to the tribal chiefs, said simply, 'This is
a man,' a commendation approved by them all with laconic, deep 'Ho-ho's!'</p>
<p>Tecumseh was the last great leader of the Indian race and perhaps the
finest embodiment of all its better qualities. Like Pontiac, fifty years
before, but in a nobler way, he tried to unite the Indians against the
exterminating American advance. He was apparently on the eve of forming
his Indian alliance when he returned home to find that his brother the
Prophet had just been defeated at Tippecanoe. The defeat itself was no
great thing. But it came precisely at a time when it could exert most
influence on the unstable Indian character and be most effective in
breaking up the alliance of the tribes. Tecumseh, divining this at once,
lost no time in vain regrets, but joined the British next year at
Amherstburg. He came with only thirty followers. But stray warriors kept
on arriving; and many of the bolder spirits joined him when war became
imminent. At the time of Brock's arrival there were a thousand effective
Indians under arms. Their arming was only authorized at the last minute;
for Brock's dispatch to Prevost shows how strictly neutral the Canadian
government had been throughout the recent troubles between the Indians and
Americans. He mentions that the chiefs at Amherstburg had long been trying
to obtain the muskets and ammunition 'which for years had been withheld,
agreeably to the instructions received from Sir James Craig, and since
repeated by Your Excellency.'</p>
<p>Precisely at noon Brock took his stand beneath a giant oak at Amherstburg
surrounded by his officers. Before him sat Tecumseh. Behind Tecumseh sat
the chiefs; and behind the chiefs a thousand Indians in their war-paint.
Brock then stepped forward to address them. Erect, alert,
broad-shouldered, and magnificently tall; blue-eyed, fair-haired, with
frank and handsome countenance; he looked every inch the champion of a
great and righteous cause. He said the Long Knives had come to take away
the land from both the Indians and the British whites, and that now he
would not be content merely to repulse them, but would follow and beat
them on their own side of the Detroit. After the pause that was usual on
grave occasions, Tecumseh rose and answered for all his followers. He
stood there the ideal of an Indian chief: tall, stately, and commanding;
yet tense, lithe, observant, and always ready for his spring. He the
tiger, Brock the lion; and both unflinchingly at bay.</p>
<p>Next morning, August 15, an early start was made for Sandwich, some twelve
miles north, where a five-gun battery was waiting to be unmasked against
Detroit across the river. Arrived at Sandwich, Brock immediately sent
across his aide-de-camp, Colonel Macdonell, with a letter summoning Hull
to surrender. Hull wrote back to say he was prepared to stand his ground.
Brock at once unmasked his battery and made ready to attack next day. With
the men on detachment Hull still had a total of twenty-five hundred. Brock
had only fifteen hundred, including the Provincial Marine. But Hull's men
were losing what discipline they had and were becoming distrustful both of
their leaders and of themselves; while Brock's men were gaining
discipline, zeal, and inspiring confidence with every hour. Besides, the
British were all effectives; while Hull had over five hundred absent from
Detroit and as many more ineffective on the spot; which left him only
fifteen hundred actual combatants. He also had a thousand non-combatants—men,
women, and children—all cowering for shelter from the dangers of
battle, and half dead with the far more terrifying apprehension of an
Indian massacre.</p>
<p>Brock's five-gun battery made excellent practice during the afternoon
without suffering any material damage in return. One chance shell produced
a most dismaying effect in Detroit by killing Hanks, the late commandant
of Mackinaw, and three other officers with him. At twilight the firing
ceased on both sides.</p>
<p>Immediately after dark Tecumseh led six hundred eager followers down to
their canoes a little way below Sandwich. These Indians were told off by
tribes, as battalions are by companies. There, in silent, dusky groups,
moving soft-foot on their moccasins through the gloom, were Shawnees and
Miamis from Tecumseh's own lost home beside the Wabash, Foxes and Sacs
from the Iowan valley, Ottawas and Wyandots, Chippewas and Potawatomis,
some braves from the middle prairies between the Illinois and the
Mississippi, and even Winnebagoes and Dakotahs from the far North-West.
The flotilla of crowded canoes moved stealthily across the river, with no
louder noise than the rippling current made. As secretly, the Indians
crept ashore, stole inland through the quiet night, and, circling north,
cut off Hull's army from the woods. Little did Hull's anxious sentries
think that some of the familiar cries of night-birds round the fort were
signals being passed along from scout to scout.</p>
<p>As the beautiful summer dawn began to break at four o'clock that fateful
Sunday morning, the British force fell in, only seven hundred strong, and
more than half militia. The thirty gunners who had served the Sandwich
battery so well the day before also fell in, with five little
field-pieces, in case Brock could force a battle in the open. Their places
in the battery were ably filled by every man of the Provincial Marine whom
Captain Hall could spare from the <i>Queen Charlotte</i>, the flagship of
the tiny Canadian flotilla. Brock's men and his light artillery were soon
afloat and making for Spring Wells, more than three miles below Detroit.
Then, as the <i>Queen Charlotte</i> ran up her sunrise flag, she and the
Sandwich battery roared out a challenge to which the Americans replied
with random aim. Brock leaped ashore, formed front towards Hull, got into
touch with Tecumseh's Indians on his left, and saw that the British land
and water batteries were protecting his right, as prearranged with Captain
Hall.</p>
<p>He had intended to wait in this position, hoping that Hull would march out
to the attack. But, even before his men had finished taking post, the
whole problem was suddenly changed by the arrival of an Indian to say that
McArthur's four hundred picked men, whom Hull had sent south to bring in
the convoy, were returning to Detroit at once. There was now only a moment
to decide whether to retreat across the river, form front against
McArthur, or rush Detroit immediately. But, within that fleeting moment,
Brock divined the true solution and decided to march straight on. With
Tecumseh riding a grey mustang by his side, he led the way in person. He
wore his full-dress gold-and-scarlet uniform and rode his charger Alfred,
the splendid grey which Governor Craig had given him the year before, with
the recommendation that 'the whole continent of America could not furnish
you with so safe and excellent a horse,' and for the good reason that 'I
wish to secure for my old favourite a kind and careful master.'</p>
<p>The seven hundred redcoats made a gallant show, all the more imposing
because the militia were wearing some spare uniforms borrowed from the
regulars and because the confident appearance of the whole body led the
discouraged Americans to think that these few could only be the vanguard
of much greater numbers. So strong was this belief that Hull, in sudden
panic, sent over to Sandwich to treat for terms, and was astounded to
learn that Brock and Tecumseh were the two men on the big grey horses
straight in front of him. While Hull's envoys were crossing the river and
returning, the Indians were beginning to raise their war-whoops in the
woods and Brock was reconnoitring within a mile of the fort. This looked
formidable enough, if properly defended, as the ditch was six feet deep
and twelve feet wide, the parapet rose twenty feet, the palisades were of
twenty-inch cedar, and thirty-three guns were pointed through the
embrasures. But Brock correctly estimated the human element inside, and
was just on the point of advancing to the assault when Hull's white flag
went up.</p>
<p>The terms were soon agreed upon. Hull's whole army, including all
detachments, surrendered as prisoners of war, while the territory of
Michigan passed into the military possession of King George. Abundance of
food and military stores fell into British hands, together with the <i>Adams</i>,
a fine new brig that had just been completed. She was soon rechristened
the <i>Detroit</i>. The Americans sullenly trooped out. The British
elatedly marched in. The Stars and Stripes came down defeated. The Union
Jack went up victorious and was received with a royal salute from all the
British ordnance, afloat and ashore. The Indians came out of the woods,
yelling with delight and firing their muskets in the air. But, grouped by
tribes, they remained outside the fort and settlement, and not a single
outrage was committed. Tecumseh himself rode in with Brock; and the two
great leaders stood out in front of the British line while the colours
were being changed. Then Brock, in view of all his soldiers, presented his
sash and pistols to Tecumseh. Tecumseh, in turn, gave his many-coloured
Indian sash to Brock, who wore it till the day he died.</p>
<p>The effect of the British success at Detroit far exceeded that which had
followed the capture of Mackinaw and the evacuation of Fort Dearborn.
Those, however important to the West, were regarded as mainly Indian
affairs. This was a white man's victory and a white man's defeat. Hull's
proclamation thenceforth became a laughing-stock. The American invasion
had proved a fiasco. The first American army to take the field had failed
at every point. More significant still, the Americans were shown to be
feeble in organization and egregiously mistaken in their expectations.
Canada, on the other hand, had already found her champion and men quite
fit to follow him.</p>
<p>Brock left Procter in charge of the West and hurried back to the Niagara
frontier. Arrived at Fort Erie on August 23 he was dismayed to hear of a
dangerously one-sided armistice that had been arranged with the enemy.
This had been first proposed, on even terms, by Prevost, and then eagerly
accepted by Dearborn, after being modified in favour of the Americans. In
proposing an armistice Prevost had rightly interpreted the wishes of the
Imperial government. It was wise to see whether further hostilities could
not be averted altogether; for the obnoxious Orders-in-Council had been
repealed. But Prevost was criminally weak in assenting to the condition
that all movements of men and material should continue on the American
side, when he knew that corresponding movements were impossible on the
British side for lack of transport. Dearborn, the American
commander-in-chief, was only a second-rate general. But he was more than a
match for Prevost at making bargains.</p>
<p>Prevost was one of those men who succeed half-way up and fail at the top.
Pure Swiss by blood, he had, like his father, spent his life in the
British Army, and had risen to the rank of lieutenant-general. He had
served with some distinction in the West Indies, and had been made a
baronet for defending Dominica in 1805. In 1808 he became governor of Nova
Scotia, and in 1811, at the age of forty-four, governor-general and
commander-in-chief of Canada. He and his wife were popular both in the
West Indies and in Canada; and he undoubtedly deserved well of the Empire
for having conciliated the French Canadians, who had been irritated by his
predecessor, the abrupt and masterful Craig. The very important Army Bill
Act was greatly due to his diplomatic handling of the French Canadians,
who found him so congenial that they stood by him to the end. His native
tongue was French. He understood French ways and manners to perfection;
and he consequently had far more than the usual sympathy with a people
whose nature and circumstances made them particularly sensitive to real or
fancied slights. All this is more to his credit than his enemies were
willing to admit, either then or afterwards. But, in spite of all these
good qualities, Prevost was not the man to safeguard British honour during
the supreme ordeal of a war; and if he had lived in earlier times, when
nicknames were more apt to become historic, he might well have gone down
to posterity as Prevost the Pusillanimous.</p>
<p>Day after day Prevost's armistice kept the British helpless, while
supplies and reinforcements for the Americans poured in at every
advantageous point. Brock was held back from taking either Sackett's
Harbour, which was meanwhile being strongly reinforced from Ogdensburg, or
Fort Niagara, which was being reinforced from Oswego, Procter was held
back from taking Fort Wayne, at the point of the salient angle south of
Lake Michigan and west of Lake Erie—a quite irretrievable loss. For
the moment the British had the command of all the Lakes. But their golden
opportunity passed, never to return. By land their chances were also
quickly disappearing. On September 1, a week before the armistice ended,
there were less than seven hundred Americans directly opposed to Brock,
who commanded in person at Queenston and Fort George. On the day of the
battle in October there were nearly ten times as many along the Niagara
frontier.</p>
<p>The very day Brock heard that the disastrous armistice was over he
proposed an immediate attack on Sackett's Harbour. But Prevost refused to
sanction it. Brock then turned his whole attention to the Niagara
frontier, where the Americans were assembling in such numbers that to
attack them was out of the question. The British began to receive a few
supplies and reinforcements. But the Americans had now got such a long
start that, on the fateful 13th of October, they outnumbered Brock's men
four to one—4,000 to 1,000 along the critical fifteen miles between
the Falls and Lake Ontario; and 6,800 to 1,700 along the whole Niagara
river, from lake to lake, a distance of thirty-three miles. The factors
which helped to redress the adverse balance of these odds were Brock
himself, his disciplined regulars, the intense loyalty of the militia, and
the 'telegraph.' This 'telegraph' was a system of visual signalling by
semaphore, much the same as that which Wellington had used along the lines
of Torres Vedras.</p>
<p>The immediate moral effects, however, were even more favourable to the
Americans than the mere physical odds; for Prevost's armistice both galled
and chilled the British, who were eager to strike a blow. American
confidence had been much shaken in September by the sight of the prisoners
from Detroit, who had been marched along the river road in full view of
the other side. But it increased rapidly in October as reinforcements
poured in. On the 8th a council of war decided to attack Fort George and
Queenston Heights simultaneously with every available man. But Smyth, the
American general commanding above the Falls, refused to co-operate. This
compelled the adoption of a new plan in which only a feint was to be made
against Fort George, while Queenston Heights were to be carried by storm.
The change entailed a good deal of extra preparation. But when Lieutenant
Elliott, of the American Navy, cut out two British vessels at Fort Erie on
the 9th, the news made the American troops so clamorous for an immediate
invasion that their general, Van Rensselaer, was afraid either to resist
them or to let their ardour cool.</p>
<p>In the American camp opposite Queenston all was bustle on the 10th of
October; and at three the next morning the whole army was again astir,
waiting till the vanguard had seized the landing on the British side. But
a wrong leader had been chosen; mistakes were plentiful; and confusion
followed. Nearly all the oars had been put into the first boat, which,
having overshot the mark, was made fast on the British side; whereupon its
commander disappeared. The troops on the American shore shivered in the
drenching autumn rain till after daylight. Then they went back to their
sodden camp, wet, angry, and disgusted.</p>
<p>While the rain came down in torrents the principal officers were busy
revising their plans. Smyth was evidently not to be depended on; but it
was thought that, with all the advantages of the initiative, the four
thousand other Americans could overpower the one thousand British and
secure a permanent hold on the Queenston Heights just above the village.
These heights ran back from the Niagara river along Lake Ontario for sixty
miles west, curving north-eastwards round Burlington Bay to Dundas Street,
which was the one regular land line of communication running west from
York. Therefore, if the Americans could hold both the Niagara and the
Heights, they would cut Upper Canada in two. This was, of course, quite
evident to both sides. The only doubtful questions were, How should the
first American attack be made and how should it be met?</p>
<p>The American general, Stephen Van Rensselaer, was a civilian who had been
placed at the head of the New York State militia by Governor Tompkins,
both to emphasize the fact that expert regulars were only wanted as
subordinates and to win a cunning move in the game of party politics. Van
Rensselaer was not only one of the greatest of the old 'patroons' who
formed the landed aristocracy of Dutch New York, but he was also a
Federalist. Tompkins, who was a Democrat, therefore hoped to gain his
party ends whatever the result might be. Victory would mean that Van
Rensselaer had been compelled to advance the cause of a war to which he
objected; while defeat would discredit both him and his party, besides
providing Tompkins with the excuse that it would all have happened very
differently if a Democrat had been in charge.</p>
<p>Van Rensselaer, a man of sense and honour, took the expert advice of his
cousin, Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer, who was a regular and the chief of
the staff. It was Solomon Van Rensselaer who had made both plans, the one
of the 8th, for attacking Fort George and the Heights together, and the
one of the 10th, for feinting against Fort George while attacking the
Heights. Brock was puzzled about what was going to happen next. He knew
that the enemy were four to one and that they could certainly attack both
places if Smyth would co-operate. He also knew that they had boats and men
ready to circle round Fort George from the American 'Four Mile Creek' on
the lake shore behind Fort Niagara. Moreover, he was naturally inclined to
think that when the boats prepared for the 11th were left opposite
Queenston all day long, and all the next day too, they were probably
intended to distract his attention from Fort George, where he had fixed
his own headquarters.</p>
<p>On the 12th the American plan was matured and concentration begun at
Lewiston, opposite Queenston. Large detachments came in, under perfect
cover, from Four Mile Creek behind Fort Niagara. A smaller number marched
down from the Falls and from Smyth's command still higher up. The camps at
Lewiston and the neighbouring Tuscarora Village were partly concealed from
every point on the opposite bank, so that the British could form no safe
idea of what the Americans were about. Solomon Van Rensselaer was
determined that the advance-guard should do its duty this time; so he took
charge of it himself and picked out 40 gunners, 300 regular infantry, and
300 of the best militia to make the first attack. These were to be
supported by seven hundred regulars. The rest of the four thousand men
available were to cross over afterwards. The current was strong; but the
river was little more than two hundred yards wide at Queenston and it
could be crossed in less than ten minutes. The Queenston Heights
themselves were a more formidable obstacle, even if defended by only a few
men, as they rose 345 feet above the landing-place.</p>
<p>There were only three hundred British in Queenston to meet the first
attack of over thirteen hundred Americans; but they consisted of the two
flank companies of Brock's old regiment, the 49th, supported by some
excellent militia. A single gun stood on the Heights. Another was at
Vrooman's Point a mile below. Two miles farther, at Brown's Point, stood
another gun with another detachment of militia. Four miles farther still
was Fort George, with Brock and his second-in-command, Colonel Sheaffe of
the 49th. About nine miles above the Heights was the little camp at
Chippawa, which, as we shall see, managed to spare 150 men for the second
phase of the battle. The few hundred British above this had to stand by
their own posts, in case Smyth should try an attack on his own account,
somewhere between the Falls and Lake Erie.</p>
<p>At half-past three in the dark morning of the 13th of October, Solomon Van
Rensselaer with 225 regulars sprang ashore at the Queenston ferry landing
and began to climb the bank. But hardly had they shown their heads above
the edge before the grenadier company of the 49th, under Captain Dennis,
poured in a stinging volley which sent them back to cover. Van Rensselaer
was badly wounded and was immediately ferried back. The American supports,
under Colonel Christie, had trouble in getting across; and the immediate
command of the invaders devolved upon another regular, Captain Wool.</p>
<p>As soon as the rest of the first detachment had landed, Wool took some
three hundred infantry and a few gunners, half of all who were then
present, and led them up-stream, in single file, by a fisherman's path
which curved round and came out on top of the Heights behind the single
British gun there. Progress was very slow in this direction, though the
distance was less than a mile, as it was still pitch-dark and the path was
narrow and dangerous. The three hundred left at the landing were soon
reinforced, and the crossing went on successfully, though some of the
American boats were carried down-stream to the British post at Vrooman's,
where all the men in them were made prisoners and marched off to Fort
George.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, down at Fort George, Brock had been roused by the cannonade
only three hours after he had finished his dispatches. Twenty-four
American guns were firing hard at Queenston from the opposite shore and
two British guns were replying. Fort Niagara, across the river from Fort
George, then began to speak; whereupon Fort George answered back. Thus the
sound of musketry, five to seven miles away, was drowned; and Brock waited
anxiously to learn whether the real attack was being driven home at
Queenston, or whether the Americans were circling round from their Four
Mile Creek against his own position at Fort George. Four o'clock passed.
The roar of battle still came down from Queenston. But this might be a
feint. Not even Dennis at Queenston could tell as yet whether the main
American army was coming against him or not. But he knew they must be
crossing in considerable force, so he sent a dragoon galloping down to
Brock, who was already in the saddle giving orders to Sheaffe and to the
next senior officer, Evans, when this messenger arrived. Sheaffe was to
follow towards Queenston the very instant the Americans had shown their
hand decisively in that direction; while Evans was to stay at Fort George
and keep down the fire from Fort Niagara.</p>
<p>Then Brock set spurs to Alfred and raced for Queenston Heights. It was a
race for more than his life, for more, even, than his own and his army's
honour: it was a race for the honour, integrity, and very life of Canada.
Miles ahead he could see the spurting flashes of the guns, the British two
against the American twenty-four. Presently his quick eye caught the
fitful running flicker of the opposing lines of musketry above the
landing-place at Queenston. As he dashed on he met a second messenger,
Lieutenant Jarvis, who was riding down full-speed to confirm the news
first brought by the dragoon. Brock did not dare draw rein; so he beckoned
Jarvis to gallop back beside him. A couple of minutes sufficed for Brock
to understand the whole situation and make his plan accordingly. Then
Jarvis wheeled back with orders for Sheaffe to bring up every available
man, circle round inland, and get into touch with the Indians. A few
strides more, and Brock was ordering the men on from Brown's Point. He
paused another moment at Vrooman's, to note the practice made by the
single gun there. Then, urging his gallant grey to one last turn of speed,
he burst into Queenston through the misty dawn just where the grenadiers
of his own old regiment stood at bay.</p>
<p>In his full-dress red and gold, with the arrow-patterned sash Tecumseh had
given him as a badge of honour at Detroit, he looked, from plume to spur,
a hero who could turn the tide of battle against any odds. A ringing cheer
broke out in greeting. But he paused no longer than just enough to wave a
greeting back and take a quick look round before scaling the Heights to
where eight gunners with their single eighteen-pounder were making a
desperate effort to check the Americans at the landing-place. Here he
dismounted to survey the whole scene of action. The Americans attacking
Queenston seemed to be at least twice as strong as the British. The
artillery odds were twelve to one. And over two thousand Americans were
drawn up on the farther side of the narrow Niagara waiting their turn for
the boats. Nevertheless, the British seemed to be holding their own. The
crucial question was: could they hold it till Sheaffe came up from Fort
George, till Bullock came down from Chippawa, till both had formed front
on the Heights, with Indians on their flanks and artillery support from
below?</p>
<p>Suddenly a loud, exultant cheer sounded straight behind him, a crackling
fire broke out, and he saw Wool's Americans coming over the crest and
making straight for the gun. He was astounded; and well he might be, since
the fisherman's path had been reported impassable by troops. But he
instantly changed the order he happened to be giving from 'Try a longer
fuse!' to 'Spike the gun and follow me!' With a sharp clang the spike went
home, and the gunners followed Brock downhill towards Queenston. There was
no time to mount, and Alfred trotted down beside his swiftly running
master. The elated Americans fired hard; but their bullets all flew high.
Wool's three hundred then got into position on the Heights; while Brock in
the village below was collecting the nearest hundred men that could be
spared for an assault on the invaders.</p>
<p>Brock rapidly formed his men and led them out of the village at a fast run
to a low stone wall, where he halted and said, 'Take breath, boys; you'll
need it presently!' on which they cheered. He then dismounted and patted
Alfred, whose flanks still heaved from his exertions. The men felt the
sockets of their bayonets; took breath; and then followed Brock, who
presently climbed the wall and drew his sword. He first led them a short
distance inland, with the intention of gaining the Heights at the enemy's
own level before turning riverwards for the final charge. Wool immediately
formed front with his back to the river; and Brock led the one hundred
British straight at the American centre, which gave way before him. Still
he pressed on, waving his sword as an encouragement for the rush that was
to drive the enemy down the cliff. The spiked eighteen-pounder was
recaptured and success seemed certain. But, just as his men were closing
in, an American stepped out of the trees, only thirty yards away, took
deliberate aim, and shot him dead. The nearest men at once clustered round
to help him, and one of the 49th fell dead across his body. The Americans
made the most of this target and hit several more. Then the remaining
British broke their ranks and retired, carrying Brock's body into a house
at Queenston, where it remained throughout the day, while the battle raged
all round.</p>
<p>Wool now re-formed his three hundred and ordered his gunners to drill out
the eighteen-pounder and turn it against Queenston, where the British were
themselves re-forming for a second attack. This was made by two hundred
men of the 49th and York militia, led by Colonel John Macdonell, the
attorney-general of Upper Canada, who was acting as aide-de-camp to Brock.
Again the Americans were driven back. Again the gun was recaptured. Again
the British leader was shot at the critical moment. Again the attack
failed. And again the British retreated into Queenston.</p>
<p>Wool then hoisted the Stars and Stripes over the fiercely disputed gun;
and several more boatloads of soldiers at once crossed over to the
Canadian side, raising the American total there to sixteen hundred men.
With this force on the Heights, with a still larger force waiting
impatiently to cross, with twenty-four guns in action, and with the heart
of the whole defence known to be lying dead in Queenston, an American
victory seemed to be so well assured that a courier was sent post-haste to
announce the good news both at Albany and at Dearborn's headquarters just
across the Hudson. This done, Stephen Van Rensselaer decided to confirm
his success by going over to the Canadian side of the river himself.
Arrived there, he consulted the senior regulars and ordered the troops to
entrench the Heights, fronting Queenston, while the rest of his army was
crossing.</p>
<p>But, just when the action had reached such an apparently victorious stage,
there was, first, a pause, and then a slightly adverse change, which soon
became decidedly ominous. It was as if the flood tide of invasion had
already passed the full and the ebb was setting in. Far off, down-stream,
at Fort Niagara, the American fire began to falter and gradually grow
dumb. But at the British Fort George opposite the guns were served as well
as ever, till they had silenced the enemy completely. While this was
happening, the main garrison, now free to act elsewhere, were marching out
with swinging step and taking the road for Queenston Heights. Near by, at
Lewiston, the American twenty-four-gun battery was slackening its noisy
cannonade, which had been comparatively ineffective from the first; while
the single British gun at Vrooman's, vigorous and effective as before, was
reinforced by two most accurate field-pieces under Holcroft in Queenston
village, where the wounded but undaunted Dennis was rallying his
disciplined regulars and Loyalist militiamen for another fight. On the
Heights themselves the American musketry had slackened while most of the
men were entrenching; but the Indian fire kept growing closer and more
dangerous. Up-stream, on the American side of the Falls, a half-hearted
American detachment had been reluctantly sent down by the egregious Smyth;
while, on the other side, a hundred and fifty eager British were pressing
forward to join Sheaffe's men from Fort George.</p>
<p>As the converging British drew near them, the Americans on the Heights
began to feel the ebbing of their victory. The least disciplined soon lost
confidence and began to slink down to the boats; and very few boats
returned when once they had reached their own side safely. These slinkers
naturally made the most of the dangers they had been expecting—a
ruthless Indian massacre included. The boatmen, nearly all civilians,
began to desert. Alarming doubts and rumours quickly spread confusion
through the massed militia, who now perceived that instead of crossing to
celebrate a triumph they would have to fight a battle. John Lovett, who
served with credit in the big American battery, gave a graphic description
of the scene: 'The name of Indian, or the sight of the wounded, or the
Devil, or something else, petrified them. Not a regiment, not a company,
scarcely a man, would go.' Van Rensselaer went through the disintegrating
ranks and did his utmost to revive the ardour which had been so impetuous
only an hour before. But he ordered, swore, and begged in vain.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the tide of resolution, hope, and coming triumph was rising fast
among the British. They were the attackers now; they had one distinct
objective; and their leaders were men whose lives had been devoted to the
art of war. Sheaffe took his time. Arrived near Queenston, he saw that his
three guns and two hundred muskets there could easily prevent the two
thousand disorganized American militia from crossing the river; so he
wheeled to his right, marched to St David's, and then, wheeling to his
left, gained the Heights two miles beyond the enemy. The men from Chippawa
marched in and joined him. The line of attack was formed, with the Indians
spread out on the flanks and curving forward. The British in Queenston,
seeing the utter impotence of the Americans who refused to cross over,
turned their fire against the Heights; and the invaders at once realized
that their position had now become desperate.</p>
<p>When Sheaffe struck inland an immediate change of the American front was
required to meet him. Hitherto the Americans on the Heights had faced
down-stream, towards Queenston, at right angles to the river. Now they
were obliged to face inland, with their backs to the river. Wadsworth, the
American militia brigadier, a very gallant member of a very gallant
family, immediately waived his rank in favour of Colonel Winfield Scott, a
well-trained regular. Scott and Wadsworth then did all that men could do
in such a dire predicament. But most of the militia became unmanageable,
some of the regulars were comparatively raw; there was confusion in front,
desertion in the rear, and no coherent whole to meet the rapidly
approaching shock.</p>
<p>On came the steady British line, with the exultant Indians thrown well
forward on the flanks; while the indomitable single gun at Vrooman's Point
backed up Holcroft's two guns in Queenston, and the two hundred muskets
under Dennis joined in this distracting fire against the American right
till the very last moment. The American left was in almost as bad a case,
because it had got entangled in the woods beyond the summit and become
enveloped by the Indians there. The rear was even worse, as men slank off
from it at every opportunity. The front stood fast under Winfield Scott
and Wadsworth. But not for long. The British brought their bayonets down
and charged. The Indians raised the war-whoop and bounded forward. The
Americans fired a hurried, nervous, straggling fusillade; then broke and
fled in wild confusion. A very few climbed down the cliff and swam across.
Not a single boat came over from the 'petrified' militia. Some more
Americans, attempting flight, were killed by falling headlong or by
drowning. Most of them clustered among the trees near the edge and
surrendered at discretion when Winfield Scott, seeing all was lost, waved
his handkerchief on the point of his sword.</p>
<p>The American loss was about a hundred killed, two hundred wounded, and
nearly a thousand prisoners. The British loss was trifling by comparison,
only a hundred and fifty altogether. But it included Brock; and his
irreparable death alone was thought, by friend and foe alike, to have more
than redressed the balance. This, indeed, was true in a much more pregnant
sense than those who measure by mere numbers could ever have supposed. For
genius is a thing apart from mere addition and subtraction. It is the
incarnate spirit of great leaders, whose influence raises to its utmost
height the worth of every follower. So when Brock's few stood fast against
the invader's many, they had his soaring spirit to uphold them as well as
the soul and body of their own disciplined strength.</p>
<p>Brock's proper fame may seem to be no more than that which can be won by
any conspicuously gallant death at some far outpost of a mighty empire. He
ruled no rich and populous dominions. He commanded no well-marshalled
host. He fell, apparently defeated, just as his first real battle had
begun. And yet, despite of this, he was the undoubted saviour of a British
Canada. Living, he was the heart of her preparation during ten long years
of peace. Dead, he became the inspiration of her defence for two momentous
years of war.</p>
<p><br/><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </SPAN></p>
<br/>
<h2> CHAPTER V — 1813: THE BEAVER DAMS, LAKE ERIE, AND CHATEAUGUAY </h2>
<p>The remaining operations of 1812 are of quite minor importance. No more
than two are worthy of being mentioned between the greater events before
and after them. Both were abortive attempts at invasion—one across
the upper Niagara, the other across the frontier south of Montreal.</p>
<p>After the battle of Queenston Heights Sheaffe succeeded Brock in command
of the British, and Smyth succeeded Van Rensselaer in command of the
Americans. Sheaffe was a harsh martinet and a third-rate commander. Smyth,
a notorious braggart, was no commander at all. He did, however, succeed in
getting Sheaffe to conclude an armistice that fully equalled Prevost's in
its disregard of British interests. After making the most of it for a
month he ended it on November 19, and began manoeuvring round his
headquarters at Black Rock near Buffalo. After another eight days he
decided to attack the British posts at Red House and Frenchman's Creek,
which were respectively two and a half and five miles from Fort Erie. The
whole British line of the upper Niagara, from Fort Erie to Chippawa, a
distance of seventeen miles by the road along the river, was under the
command of an excellent young officer, Colonel Bisshopp, who had between
five and six hundred men to hold his seven posts. Fort Erie had the
largest garrison—only a hundred and thirty men. Some forty men of
the 49th and two small guns were stationed at Red House; while the light
company of the 41st guarded the bridge over Frenchman's Creek. About two
o'clock in the morning of the 28th one party of Americans pulled across to
the ferry a mile below Fort Erie, and then, sheering off after being fired
at by the Canadian militia on guard, made for Red House a mile and a half
lower down. There they landed at three and fought a most confused and
confusing action in the dark. Friend and foe became mixed up together; but
the result was a success for the Americans. Meanwhile, the other party
landed near Frenchman's Creek, reached the bridge, damaged it a little,
and had a fight with the 41st, who could not drive the invaders back till
reinforcements arrived. At daylight the men from Chippawa marched into
action, Indians began to appear, and the whole situation was
re-established. The victorious British lost nearly a hundred, which was
more than a quarter of those engaged. The beaten Americans lost more; but,
being in superior numbers, they could the better afford it.</p>
<p>Smyth was greatly disconcerted. But he held a boat review on his own side
of the river, and sent over a summons to Bisshopp demanding the immediate
surrender of Fort Erie 'to spare the effusion of blood.' Bisshopp rejected
the summons. But there was no effusion of blood in consequence. Smyth
planned, talked, and manoeuvred for two days more, and then tried to make
his real effort on the 1st of December. By the time it was light enough
for the British to observe him he had fifteen hundred men in boats, who
all wanted to go back, and three thousand on shore, who all refused to go
forward. He then held a council of war, which advised him to wait for a
better chance. This closed the campaign with what, according to Porter,
one of his own generals, was 'a scene of confusion difficult to describe:
about four thousand men without order or restraint discharging their
muskets in every direction.' Next day 'The Committee of Patriotic
Citizens' undertook to rebuke Smyth. But he retorted, not without reason,
that the affair at Queenston is a caution against relying on crowds who go
to the banks of the Niagara to look at a battle as on a theatrical
exhibition.'</p>
<p>The other abortive attempt at invasion was made by the advance-guard of
the commander-in-chief's own army. Dearborn had soon found out that his
disorderly masses at Greenbush were quite unfit to take the field. But,
four months after the declaration of war, a small detachment, thrown
forward from his new headquarters at Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, did
manage to reach St Regis, where the frontier first meets the St Lawrence,
near the upper end of Lake St Francis, sixty miles south-west of Montreal.
Here the Americans killed Lieutenant Rototte and a sergeant, and took the
little post, which was held by a few voyageurs. Exactly a month later, on
November 23, these Americans were themselves defeated and driven back
again. Three days earlier than this a much stronger force of Americans had
crossed the frontier at Odelltown, just north of which there was a British
blockhouse beside the river La Colle, a muddy little western tributary of
the Richelieu, forty-seven miles due south of Montreal. The Americans
fired into each other in the dark, and afterwards retired before the
British reinforcements. Dearborn then put his army into winter quarters at
Plattsburg, thus ending his much-heralded campaign against Montreal before
it had well begun.</p>
<p>The American government was much disappointed at the failure of its
efforts to make war without armies. But it found a convenient scapegoat in
Hull, who was far less to blame than his superiors in the Cabinet. These
politicians had been wrong in every important particular —wrong
about the attitude of the Canadians, wrong about the whole plan of
campaign, wrong in separating Hull from Dearborn, wrong in not getting
men-of-war afloat on the Lakes, wrong, above all, in trusting to untrained
and undisciplined levies. To complete their mortification, the ridiculous
gunboats, in which they had so firmly believed, had done nothing but
divert useful resources into useless channels; while, on the other hand,
the frigates, which they had proposed to lay up altogether, so as to save
themselves from 'the ruinous folly of a Navy,' had already won a brilliant
series of duels out at sea.</p>
<p>There were some searchings of heart at Washington when all these military
and naval misjudgments stood revealed. Eustis soon followed Hull into
enforced retirement; and great plans were made for the campaign of 1813,
which was designed to wipe out the disgrace of its predecessor and to
effect the conquest of Canada for good and all.</p>
<p>John Armstrong, the new war secretary, and William Henry Harrison, the new
general in the West, were great improvements on Eustis and Hull. But, even
now, the American commanders could not decide on a single decisive attack
supported by subsidiary operations elsewhere. Montreal remained their
prime objective. But they only struck at it last of all. Michilimackinac
kept their enemy in touch with the West. But they left it completely
alone. Their general advance ought to have been secured by winning the
command of the Lakes and by the seizure of suitable positions across the
line. But they let the first blows come from the Canadian side; and they
still left Lake Champlain to shift for itself. Their plan was undoubtedly
better than that of 1812. But it was still all parts and no whole.</p>
<p>The various events were so complicated by the overlapping of time and
place all along the line that we must begin by taking a bird's-eye view of
them in territorial sequence, starting from the farthest inland flank and
working eastward to the sea. Everything west of Detroit may be left out
altogether, because operations did not recommence in that quarter until
the campaign of the following year.</p>
<p>In January the British struck successfully at Frenchtown, more than thirty
miles south of Detroit. They struck unsuccessfully, still farther south,
at Fort Meigs in May and at Fort Stephenson in August; after which they
had to remain on the defensive, all over the Lake Erie region, till their
flotilla was annihilated at Put-in Bay in September and their army was
annihilated at Moravian Town on the Thames in October. In the Lake Ontario
region the situation was reversed. Here the British began badly and ended
well. They surrendered York in April and Fort George, at the mouth of the
Niagara, in May. They were also repulsed in a grossly mismanaged attack on
Sackett's Harbour two days after their defeat at Fort George. The opposing
flotillas meanwhile fought several manoeuvring actions of an indecisive
kind, neither daring to risk battle and possible annihilation. But, as the
season advanced, the British regained their hold on the Niagara peninsula
by defeating the Americans at Stoney Creek and the Beaver Dams in June,
and by clearing both sides of the Niagara river in December. On the upper
St Lawrence they took Ogdensburg in February. They were also completely
successful in their defence of Montreal. In June they took the American
gunboats at Isle-aux-Noix on the Richelieu; in July they raided Lake
Champlain; while in October and November they defeated the two divisions
of the invading army at Chateauguay and Chrystler's Farm. The British news
from sea also improved as the year wore on. The American frigate victories
began to stop. The <i>Shannon</i> beat the <i>Chesapeake</i>. And the
shadow of the Great Blockade began to fall on the coast of the Democratic
South.</p>
<p>The operations of 1813 are more easily understood if taken in this purely
territorial way. But in following the progress of the war we must take
them chronologically. No attempt can be made here to describe the
movements on either side in any detail. An outline must suffice. Two
points, however, need special emphasis, as they are both markedly
characteristic of the war in general and of this campaign in particular.
First, the combined effect of the American victories of Lake Erie and the
Thames affords a perfect example of the inseparable connection between the
water and the land. Secondly, the British victories at the Beaver Dams and
Chateauguay are striking examples of the inter-racial connection among the
forces that defended Canada so well. The Indians did all the real fighting
at the Beaver Dams. The French Canadians fought practically alone at
Chateauguay.</p>
<p>The first move of the invaders in the West was designed to recover Detroit
and cut off Mackinaw. Harrison, victorious over the Indians at Tippecanoe
in 1811, was now expected to strike terror into them once more, both by
his reputation and by the size of his forces. In midwinter he had one wing
of his army on the Sandusky, under his own command, and the other on the
Maumee, under Winchester, a rather commonplace general. At Frenchtown
stood a little British post defended by fifty Canadians and a hundred
Indians. Winchester moved north to drive these men away from American
soil. But Procter crossed the Detroit from Amherstburg on the ice, and
defeated Winchester's thousand whites with his own five hundred whites and
five hundred Indians at dawn on January 22, making Winchester a prisoner.
Procter was unable to control the Indians, who ran wild. They hated the
Westerners who made up Winchester's force, as the men who had deprived
them of their lands, and they now wreaked their vengeance on them for some
time before they could be again brought within the bounds of civilized
warfare. After the battle Procter retired to Amherstburg; Harrison began
to build Fort Meigs on the Maumee; and a pause of three months followed
all over the western scene.</p>
<p>But winter warfare was also going on elsewhere. A month after Procter's
success, Prevost, when passing through Prescott, on the upper St Lawrence,
reluctantly gave Colonel Macdonell of Glengarry provisional leave to
attack Ogdensburg, from which the Americans were forwarding supplies to
Sackett's Harbour, sending out raiding parties, and threatening the
British line of communication to the west. No sooner was Prevost clear of
Prescott than Macdonell led his four hundred regulars and one hundred
militia over the ice against the American fort. His direct assault failed.
But when he had carried the village at the point of the bayonet the
garrison ran. Macdonell then destroyed the fort, the barracks, and four
vessels. He also took seventy prisoners, eleven guns, and a large supply
of stores.</p>
<p>With the spring came new movements in the West. On May 9 Procter broke
camp and retired from an unsuccessful siege of Fort Meigs (now Toledo) at
the south-western corner of Lake Erie. He had started this siege a
fortnight earlier with a thousand whites and a thousand Indians under
Tecumseh; and at first had seemed likely to succeed. But after the first
encounter the Indians began to leave; while most of the militia had soon
to be sent home to their farms to prevent the risk of starvation. Thus
Procter presently found himself with only five hundred effectives in face
of a much superior and constantly increasing enemy. In the summer he
returned to the attack, this time against the American position on the
lower Sandusky, nearly thirty miles east of Fort Meigs. There, on August
2, he tried to take Fort Stephenson. But his light guns could make no
breach; and he lost a hundred men in the assault.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Dearborn, having first moved up from Plattsburg to Sackett's
Harbour, had attacked York on April 27 with the help of the new American
flotilla on Lake Ontario. This flotilla was under the personal orders of
Commodore Chauncey, an excellent officer, who, in the previous September,
had been promoted from superintendent of the New York Navy Yard to
commander-in-chief on the Lakes. As Chauncey's forte was building and
organization, he found full scope for his peculiar talents at Sackett's
Harbour. He was also a good leader at sea and thus a formidable enemy for
the British forces at York, where the third-rate Sheaffe was now in
charge, and where Prevost had paved the way for a British defeat by
allowing the establishment of an exposed navy yard instead of keeping all
construction safe in Kingston. Sheaffe began his mistakes by neglecting to
mount some of his guns before Dearborn and Chauncey arrived, though he
knew these American commanders might come at any moment, and though he
also knew how important it was to save a new British vessel that was
building at York, because the command of the lake might well depend upon
her. He then made another mistake by standing to fight in an untenable
position against overwhelming odds. He finally retreated with all the
effective regulars left, less than two hundred, burning the ship and yard
as he passed, and leaving behind three hundred militia to make their own
terms with the enemy. He met the light company of the 8th on its way up
from Kingston and turned it back. With this retreat he left the front for
good and became a commandant of bases, a position often occupied by men
whose failures are not bad enough for courts-martial and whose saving
qualities are not good enough for any more appointments in the field.</p>
<p>The Americans lost over two hundred men by an explosion in a British
battery at York just as Sheaffe was marching off. Forty British had also
been blown up in one of the forts a little while before. Sheaffe appears
to have been a slack inspector of powder-magazines. But the Americans, who
naturally suspected other things than slack inspection, thought a mine had
been sprung on them after the fight was over. They consequently swore
revenge, burnt the parliament buildings, looted several private houses,
and carried off books from the public library as well as plate from the
church. Chauncey, much to his credit, afterwards sent back all the books
and plate he could recover.</p>
<p>Exactly a month later, on May 27, Chauncey and Dearborn appeared off Fort
George, after a run back to Sackett's Harbour in the meantime. Vincent,
Sheaffe's successor in charge of Upper Canada, had only a thousand
regulars and four hundred militia there. Dearborn had more than four times
as many men; and Perry, soon to become famous on Lake Erie, managed the
naval part of landing them. The American men-of-war brought the long, low,
flat ground of Mississauga Point under an irresistible cross-fire while
three thousand troops were landing on the beach below the covering bluffs.
No support could be given to the opposing British force by the fire of
Fort George, as the village of Newark intervened. So Vincent had to fight
it out in the open. On being threatened with annihilation he retired
towards Burlington, withdrawing the garrison of Fort George, and sending
orders for all the other troops on the Niagara to follow by the shortest
line. He had lost a third of the whole force defending the Niagara
frontier, both sides of which were now possessed by the Americans. But by
nightfall on May 29 he was standing at bay, with his remaining sixteen
hundred men, in an excellent strategical position on the Heights, half-way
between York and Fort George, in touch with Dundas Street, the main road
running east and west, and beside Burlington Bay, where he hoped to meet
the British flotilla commanded by Yeo.</p>
<p>Captain Sir James Lucas Yeo was an energetic and capable young naval
officer of thirty, whom the Admiralty had sent out with a few seamen to
take command on the Lakes under Prevost's orders. He had been only
seventeen days at Kingston when he sailed out with Prevost, on May 27, to
take advantage of Chauncey's absence at the western end of the lake.
Arrived before Sackett's Harbour, the attack was planned for the 29th. The
landing force of seven hundred and fifty men was put in charge of Baynes,
the adjutant-general, a man only too well fitted to do the 'dirty work' of
the general staff under a weak commander-in-chief like Prevost. All went
wrong at Sackett's Harbour. Prevost was 'present but not in command';
Baynes landed at the wrong place. Nevertheless, the British regulars
scattered the American militiamen, pressed back the American regulars, set
fire to the barracks, and halted in front of the fort. The Americans,
thinking the day was lost, set fire to their stores and to Chauncey's new
ships. Then Baynes and Prevost suddenly decided to retreat. Baynes
explained to Prevost, and Prevost explained in a covering dispatch to the
British government, that the fleet could not co-operate, that the fort
could not be taken, and that the landing party was not strong enough. But,
if this was true, why did they make an attack at all; and, if it was not
true, why did they draw back when success seemed to be assured?</p>
<p>Meanwhile Chauncey, after helping to take Fort George, had started back
for Sackett's Harbour; and Dearborn, left without the fleet, had moved on
slowly and disjointedly, in rear of Vincent, with whom he did not regain
touch for a week. On June 5 the Americans camped at Stoney Creek, five
miles from the site of Hamilton. The steep zigzagging bank of the creek,
which formed their front, was about twenty feet high. Their right rested
on a mile-wide swamp, which ran down to Lake Ontario. Their left touched
the Heights, which ran from Burlington to Queenston. They were also in
superior numbers, and ought to have been quite secure. But they thought so
much more of pursuit than of defence that they were completely taken by
surprise when '704 firelocks' under Colonel Harvey suddenly attacked them
just after midnight. Harvey, chief staff officer to Vincent, was a
first-rate leader for such daring work as this, and his men were all well
disciplined. But the whole enterprise might have failed, for all that.
Some of the men opened fire too soon, and the nearest Americans began to
stand to their arms. But, while Harvey ran along re-forming the line,
Major Plenderleath, with some of Brock's old regiment, the 49th, charged
straight into the American centre, took the guns there, and caused so much
confusion that Harvey's following charge carried all before it. Next
morning, June 6, the Americans began a retreat which was hastened by Yeo's
arrival on their lakeward flank, by the Indians on the Heights, and by
Vincent's reinforcements in their rear. Not till they reached the shelter
of Fort George did they attempt to make a stand.</p>
<p>The two armies now faced each other astride of the lake-shore road and the
Heights. The British left advanced post, between Ten and Twelve Mile
Creeks, was under Major de Haren of the 104th, a regiment which, in the
preceding winter, had marched on snow-shoes through the woods all the way
from the middle of New Brunswick to Quebec. The corresponding British post
inland, near the Beaver Dams, was under Lieutenant FitzGibbon of the 49th,
a cool, quick-witted, and adventurous Irishman, who had risen from the
ranks by his own good qualities and Brock's recommendation. Between him
and the Americans at Queenston and St David's was a picked force of Indian
scouts with a son of the great chief Joseph Brant. These Indians never
gave the Americans a minute's rest. They were up at all hours, pressing
round the flanks, sniping the sentries, worrying the outposts, and keeping
four times their own numbers on the perpetual alert. What exasperated the
Americans even more was the wonderfully elusive way in which the Indians
would strike their blow and then be lost to sight and sound the very next
moment, if, indeed, they ever were seen at all. Finally, this endless
skirmish with an invisible foe became so harassing that the Americans sent
out a flying column of six hundred picked men under Colonel Boerstler on
June 24 to break up FitzGibbon's post at the Beaver Dams and drive the
Indians out of the intervening bush altogether.</p>
<p>But the American commanders had not succeeded in hiding their preparations
from the vigilant eyes of the Indian scouts or from the equally attentive
ears of Laura Secord, the wife of an ardent U. E. Loyalist, James Secord,
who was still disabled by the wounds he had received when fighting under
Brock's command at Queenston Heights. Early in the morning of the 23rd,
while Laura Secord was going out to milk the cows, she overheard some
Americans talking about the surprise in store for FitzGibbon next day.
Without giving the slightest sign she quietly drove the cattle in behind
the nearest fence, hid her milk-pail, and started to thread her perilous
way through twenty miles of bewildering bypaths to the Beaver Dams.
Keeping off the beaten tracks and always in the shadow of the full-leaved
trees, she stole along through the American lines, crossed the
no-man's-land between the two desperate enemies, and managed to get inside
the ever-shifting fringe of Indian scouts without being seen by friend or
foe. The heat was intense; and the whole forest steamed with it after the
tropical rain. But she held her course without a pause, over the swollen
streams on fallen tree-trunks, through the dense underbrush, and in and
out of the mazes of the forest, where a bullet might come from either side
without a moment's warning. As she neared the end of her journey a savage
yell told her she was at last discovered by the Indians. She and they were
on the same side; but she had hard work to persuade them that she only
wished to warn FitzGibbon. Then came what, to a lesser patriot, would have
been a crowning disappointment. For when, half dead with fatigue, she told
him her story, she found he had already heard it from the scouts. But just
because this forestalment was no real disappointment to her, it makes her
the Anglo-Canadian heroine whose fame for bravery in war is worthiest of
being remembered with that of her French-Canadian sister, Madeleine de
Vercheres. [Footnote: For Madeleine de Vercheres see <i>The fighting
Governor</i> in this Series.]</p>
<p>Boerstler's six hundred had only ten miles to go in a straight line. But
all the thickets, woods, creeks, streams, and swamps were closely beset by
a body of expert, persistent Indians, who gradually increased from two
hundred and fifty to four hundred men. The Americans became discouraged
and bewildered; and when FitzGibbon rode up at the head of his redcoats
they were ready to give in. The British posts were all in excellent touch
with each other; and de Haren arrived in time to receive the actual
surrender. He was closely followed by the 2nd Lincoln Militia under
Colonel Clark, and these again by Colonel Bisshopp with the whole of the
advanced guard. But it was the Indians alone who won the fight, as
FitzGibbon generously acknowledged: 'Not a shot was fired on our side by
any but the Indians. They beat the American detachment into a state of
terror, and the only share I claim is taking advantage of a favourable
moment to offer protection from the tomahawk and scalping knife.'</p>
<p>June was a lucky month for the British at sea as well as on the land; and
its 'Glorious First,' so called after Howe's victory nineteen years
before, now became doubly glorious in a way which has a special interest
for Canada. The American frigate <i>Chesapeake</i> was under orders to
attack British supply-ships entering Canadian waters; and the victorious
British frigate <i>Shannon</i> was taken out of action and into a Canadian
port by a young Canadian in the Royal Navy.</p>
<p>The <i>Chesapeake</i> had a new captain, Lawrence, with new young
officers. She carried fifty more men than the British frigate <i>Shannon</i>.
But many of her ship's company were new to her, on recommissioning in May;
and some were comparatively untrained for service on board a man-of-war.
The frigates themselves were practically equal in size and armament. But
Captain Broke had been in continuous command of the <i>Shannon</i> for
seven years and had trained his crew into the utmost perfection of naval
gunnery. The vessels met off Boston in full view of many thousands of
spectators. Not one British shot flew high. Every day in the Shannon's
seven years of preparation told in that fight of only fifteen minutes; and
when Broke led his boarders over the Chesapeake's side her fate had been
sealed already. The Stars and Stripes were soon replaced by the Union
Jack. Then, with Broke severely wounded and his first lieutenant killed,
the command fell on Lieutenant Wallis, who sailed both vessels into
Halifax. This young Canadian, afterwards known as Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir
Provo Wallis, lived to become the longest of all human links between the
past and present of the Navy. He was by far the last survivor of those
officers who were specially exempted from technical retirement on account
of having held any ship or fleet command during the Great War that ended
on the field of Waterloo. He was born before Napoleon had been heard of.
He went through a battle before the death of Nelson. He outlived
Wellington by forty years. His name stood on the Active List for all but
the final decade of the nineteenth century. And, as an honoured
centenarian, he is vividly remembered by many who were still called young
a century after the battle that brought him into fame.</p>
<p>The summer campaign on the Niagara frontier ended with three minor British
successes. Fort Schlosser was surprised on July 5. On the 11th Bisshopp
lost his life in destroying Black Rock. And on August 24 the Americans
were driven in under the guns of Fort George. After this there was a lull
which lasted throughout the autumn.</p>
<p>Down by the Montreal frontier there were three corresponding British
successes. On June 3 Major Taylor of the 100th captured two American
gunboats, the <i>Growler</i> and the <i>Eagle</i>, which had come to
attack Isle-aux-Noix in the Richelieu river, and renamed them the <i>Broke</i>
and the <i>Shannon</i>. Early in August Captains Pring and Everard, of the
Navy, and Colonel Murray with nine hundred soldiers, raided Lake
Champlain. They destroyed the barracks, yard, and stores at Plattsburg and
sent the American militia flying home. But a still more effective blow was
struck on the opposite side of Lake Champlain, at Burlington, where
General Hampton was preparing the right wing of his new army of invasion.
Stores, equipment, barracks, and armaments were destroyed to such an
extent that Hampton's preparations were set back till late in the autumn.
The left wing of the same army was at Sackett's Harbour, under Dearborn's
successor, General Wilkinson, whose plan was to take Kingston, go down the
St Lawrence, meet Hampton, who was to come up from the south, and then
make a joint attack with him on Montreal.</p>
<p>In September the scene of action shifted to the West, where the British
were trying to keep the command of Lake Erie, while the Americans were
trying to wrest it from them. Captain Oliver Perry, a first-rate American
naval officer of only twenty-eight, was at Presqu'isle (now Erie)
completing his flotilla. He had his troubles, of course, especially with
the militia garrison, who would not do their proper tour of duty. 'I tell
the boys to go, but the boys won't go,' was the only report forthcoming
from one of several worthless colonels. A still greater trouble for Perry
was getting his vessels over the bar. This had to be done without any guns
on board, and with the cumbrous aid of 'camels,' which are any kind of
air-tanks made fast to the sides low down, in order to raise the hull as
much as possible. But, luckily for Perry, his opponent, Captain Barclay of
the Royal Navy, an energetic and capable young officer of thirty-two, was
called upon to face worse troubles still. Barclay was, indeed, the first
to get afloat. But he had to give up the blockade of Presqu'isle, and so
let Perry out, because he had the rawest of crews, the scantiest of
equipment, and nothing left to eat. Then, when he ran back to Amherstburg,
he found Procter also facing a state of semi-starvation, while thousands
of Indian families were clamouring for food. Thus there was no other
choice but either to fight or starve; for there was not the slightest
chance of replenishing stores unless the line of the lake was clear.</p>
<p>So Barclay sailed out with his six little British vessels, armed by the
odds and ends of whatever ordnance could be spared from Amherstburg and
manned by almost any crews but sailors. Even the flagship <i>Detroit</i>
had only ten real seamen, all told. Ammunition was likewise very scarce,
and so defective that the guns had to be fired by the flash of a pistol.
Perry also had a makeshift flotilla, partly manned by drafts from
Harrison's army. But, on the whole, the odds in his favour were fairly
shown by the number of vessels in the respective flotillas, nine American
against the British six.</p>
<p>Barclay had only thirty miles to make in a direct south-easterly line from
Amherstburg to reach Perry at Put-in Bay in the Bass Islands, where, on
the morning of September 10, the opposing forces met. The battle raged for
two hours at the very closest quarters till Perry's flagship <i>Lawrence</i>
struck to Barclay's own <i>Detroit</i>. But Perry had previously left the
<i>Lawrence</i> for the fresh <i>Niagara</i>; and he now bore down on the
battered <i>Detroit</i>, which had meanwhile fallen foul of the only other
sizable British vessel, the <i>Queen Charlotte</i>. This was fatal for
Barclay. The whole British flotilla surrendered after a desperate
resistance and an utterly disabling loss. From that time on to the end of
the war Lake Erie remained completely under American control.</p>
<p>Procter could hardly help seeing that he was doomed to give up the whole
Lake Erie region. But he lingered and was lost. While Harrison was
advancing with overwhelming numbers Procter was still trying to decide
when and how to abandon Amherstburg. Then, when he did go, he carried with
him an inordinate amount of baggage; and he retired so slowly that
Harrison caught and crushed him near Moravian Town, beside the Thames, on
the 5th of October. Harrison had three thousand exultant Americans in
action; Procter had barely a thousand worn-out, dispirited men, more than
half of them Indians under Tecumseh. The redcoats, spread out in single
rank at open order, were ridden down by Harrison's cavalry, backed by the
mass of his infantry. The Indians on the inland flank stood longer and
fought with great determination against five times their numbers till
Tecumseh fell. Then they broke and fled. This was their last great fight
and Tecumseh was their last great leader.</p>
<p>The scene now shifts once more to the Montreal frontier, which was being
threatened by the converging forces of Hampton from the south and
Wilkinson from the west. Each had about seven thousand men; and their
common objective was the island of Montreal. Hampton crossed the line at
Odelltown on September 20. But he presently moved back again; and it was
not till October 21 that he began his definite attack by advancing down
the left bank of the Chateauguay, after opening communications with
Wilkinson, who was still near Sackett's Harbour. Hampton naturally
expected to brush aside all the opposition that could be made by the few
hundred British between him and the St Lawrence. But de Salaberry, the
commander of the British advanced posts, determined to check him near La
Fourche, where several little tributaries of the Chateauguay made a
succession of good positions, if strengthened by abattis and held by
trained defenders.</p>
<p>The British force was very small when Hampton began his slow advance; but
'Red George' Macdonell marched to help it just in time. Macdonell was
commanding a crack corps of French Canadians, all picked from the best
'Select Embodied Militia,' and now, at the end of six months of extra
service, as good as a battalion of regulars. He had hurried to Kingston
when Wilkinson had threatened it from Sackett's Harbour. Now he was
urgently needed at Chateauguay. 'When can you start?' asked Prevost, who
was himself on the point of leaving Kingston for Chateauguay. 'Directly
the men have finished their dinners, sir!' 'Then follow me as quickly as
you can!' said Prevost as he stepped on board his vessel. There were 210
miles to go. A day was lost in collecting boats enough for this sudden
emergency. Another day was lost <i>en route</i> by a gale so terrific that
even the French-Canadian voyageurs were unable to face it. The rapids,
where so many of Amherst's men had been drowned in 1760, were at their
very worst; and the final forty miles had to be made overland by marching
all night through dense forest and along a particularly difficult trail.
Yet Macdonell got into touch with de Salaberry long before Prevost, to
whom he had the satisfaction of reporting later in the day: 'All correct
and present, sir; not one man missing!'</p>
<p>The advanced British forces under de Salaberry were now, on October 25,
the eve of battle, occupying the left, or north, bank of the Chateauguay,
fifteen miles south of the Cascade Rapids of the St Lawrence, twenty-five
miles south-west of Caughnawaga, and thirty-five miles south-west of
Montreal. Immediately in rear of these men under de Salaberry stood
Macdonell's command; while, in more distant support, nearer to Montreal,
stood various posts under General de Watteville, with whom Prevost spent
that night and most of the 26th, the day on which the battle was fought.</p>
<p>As Hampton came on with his cumbrous American thousands de Salaberry felt
justifiable confidence in his own well-disciplined French-Canadian
hundreds. He and his brothers were officers in the Imperial Army. His
Voltigeurs were regulars. The supporting Fencibles were also regulars, and
of ten years' standing. Macdonell's men were practically regulars. The
so-called 'Select Militia' present had been permanently embodied for
eighteen months; and the only real militiamen on the scene of action, most
of whom never came under fire at all, had already been twice embodied for
service in the field. The British total present was 1590, of whom less
than a quarter were militiamen and Indians. But the whole firing line
comprised no more than 460, of whom only 66 were militiamen and only 22
were Indians. The Indian total was about one-tenth of the whole. The
English-speaking total was about one-twentieth. It is therefore perfectly
right to say that the battle of Chateauguay was practically fought and won
by French-Canadian regulars against American odds of four to one.</p>
<p>De Salaberry's position was peculiar. The head of his little column faced
the head of Hampton's big column on a narrow front, bounded on his own
left by the river Chateauguay and on his own right by woods, into which
Hampton was afraid to send his untrained men. But, crossing a right-angled
bend of the river, beyond de Salaberry's left front, was a ford, while in
rear of de Salaberry's own column was another ford which Hampton thought
he could easily take with fifteen hundred men under Purdy, as he had no
idea of Macdonell's march and no doubt of being able to crush de
Salaberry's other troops between his own five thousand attacking from the
front and Purdy's fifteen hundred attacking from the rear. Purdy advanced
overnight, crossed to the right bank of the Chateauguay, by the ford clear
of de Salaberry's front, and made towards the ford in de Salaberry's rear.
But his men lost their way in the dark and found themselves, not in rear
of, but opposite to, and on the left flank of, de Salaberry's column in
the morning. They drove in two of de Salaberry's companies, which were
protecting his left flank on the right, or what was now Purdy's, side of
the river; but they were checked by a third, which Macdonell sent forward,
across the rear ford, at the same time that he occupied this rear ford
himself. Purdy and Hampton had now completely lost touch with one another.
Purdy was astounded to see Macdonell's main body of redcoats behind the
rear ford. He paused, waiting for support from Hampton, who was still
behind the front ford. Hampton paused, waiting for him to take the rear
ford, now occupied by Macdonell. De Salaberry mounted a huge tree-stump
and at once saw his opportunity. Holding back Hampton's crowded column
with his own front, which fought under cover of his first abattis, he
wheeled the rest of his men into line to the left and thus took Purdy in
flank. Macdonell was out of range behind the rear ford; but he played his
part by making his buglers sound the advance from several different
quarters, while his men, joined by de Salaberry's militiamen and by the
Indians in the bush, cheered vociferously and raised the war-whoop. This
was too much for Purdy's fifteen hundred. They broke in confusion, ran
away from the river into the woods under a storm of bullets, fired into
each other, and finally disappeared. Hampton's attack on de Salaberry's
first abattis then came to a full stop; after which the whole American
army retired beaten from the field.</p>
<p>Ten days after Chateauguay dilatory Wilkinson, tired of waiting for
defeated Hampton, left the original rendezvous at French Creek, fifty
miles below Sackett's Harbour. Like Dearborn in 1812, he began his
campaign just as the season was closing. But, again like Dearborn, he had
the excuse of being obliged to organize his army in the middle of the war.
Four days later again, on November 9, Brown, the successful defender of
Sackett's Harbour against Prevost's attack in May, was landed at
Williamsburg, on the Canadian side, with two thousand men, to clear the
twenty miles down to Cornwall, opposite the rendezvous at St Regis, where
Wilkinson expected to find Hampton ready to join him for the combined
attack on Montreal. But Brown had to reckon with Dennis, the first
defender of Queenston, who now commanded the little garrison of Cornwall,
and who disputed every inch of the way by breaking the bridges and
resisting each successive advance till Brown was compelled to deploy for
attack. Two days were taken up with these harassing manoeuvres, during
which another two thousand Americans were landed at Williamsburg under
Boyd, who immediately found himself still more harassed in rear than Brown
had been in front.</p>
<p>This new British force in Boyd's rear was only a thousand strong; but, as
it included every human element engaged in the defence of Canada, it has a
quite peculiar interest of its own. Afloat, it included bluejackets of the
Royal Navy, men of the Provincial Marine, French-Canadian voyageurs, and
Anglo-Canadian boatmen from the trading-posts, all under a first-rate
fighting seaman, Captain Mulcaster, R.N. Ashore, under a good regimental
leader, Colonel Morrison—whose chief staff officer was Harvey, of
Stoney Creek renown—it included Imperial regulars, Canadian regulars
of both races, French-Canadian and Anglo-Canadian militiamen, and a party
of Indians.</p>
<p>Early on the 11th Brown had arrived at Cornwall with his two thousand
Americans; Wilkinson was starting down from Williamsburg in boats with
three thousand more, and Boyd was starting down ashore with eighteen
hundred. But Mulcaster's vessels pressed in on Wilkinson's rear, while
Morrison pressed in on Boyd's. Wilkinson then ordered Boyd to turn about
and drive off Morrison, while he hurried his own men out of reach of
Mulcaster, whose armed vessels could not follow down the rapids. Boyd
thereupon attacked Morrison, and a stubborn fight ensued at Chrystler's
Farm. The field was of the usual type: woods on one flank, water on the
other, and a more or less flat clearing in the centre. Boyd tried hard to
drive his wedge in between the British and the river. But Morrison foiled
him in manoeuvre; and the eight hundred British stood fast against their
eighteen hundred enemies all along the line. Boyd then withdrew, having
lost four hundred men; and Morrison's remaining six hundred effectives
slept on their hard-won ground.</p>
<p>Next morning the energetic Morrison resumed his pursuit. But the campaign
against Montreal was already over. Wilkinson had found that Hampton had
started back for Lake Champlain while the battle was in progress; so he
landed at St Regis, just inside his own country, and went into winter
quarters at French Mills on the Salmon river.</p>
<p>In December the scene of strife changed back again to the Niagara, where
the American commander, McClure, decided to evacuate Fort George. At dusk
on the 10th he ordered four hundred women and children to be turned out of
their homes at Newark into the biting midwinter cold, and then burnt the
whole settlement down to the ground. If he had intended to hold the
position he might have been justified in burning Newark, under more humane
conditions, because this village undoubtedly interfered with the defensive
fire of Fort George. But, as he was giving up Fort George, his act was an
entirely wanton deed of shame.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the new British general, Gordon Drummond, second in ability to
Brock alone, was hurrying to the Niagara frontier. He was preceded by
Colonel Murray, who took possession of Fort George on the 12th, the day
McClure crossed the Niagara river. Murray at once made a plan to take the
American Fort Niagara opposite; and Drummond at once approved it for
immediate execution. On the night of the 18th six hundred men were landed
on the American side three miles up the river. At four the next morning
Murray led them down to the fort, rushing the sentries and pickets by the
way with the bayonet in dead silence. He then told off two hundred men to
take a bastion at the same time that he was to lead the other four hundred
straight through the main gate, which he knew would soon be opened to let
the reliefs pass out. Everything worked to perfection. When the reliefs
came out they were immediately charged and bayoneted, as were the first
astonished men off duty who ran out of their quarters to see what the
matter was. A stiff hand-to-hand fight followed. But every American
attempt to form was instantly broken up; and presently the whole place
surrendered. Drummond, who was delighted with such an excellent beginning,
took care to underline the four significant words referring to the enemy's
killed and wounded—<i>all with the bayonet</i>. This was done in no
mere vulgar spirit of bravado, still less in abominable bloody-mindedness.
It was the soldierly recognition of a particularly gallant feat of arms,
carried out with such conspicuously good discipline that its memory is
cherished, even to the present day, by the 100th, afterwards raised again
as the Royal Canadians, and now known as the Prince of Wales's Leinster
regiment. A facsimile of Drummond's underlined order is one of the most
highly honoured souvenirs in the officers' mess.</p>
<p>Not a moment was lost in following up this splendid feat of arms. The
Indians drove the American militia out of Lewiston, which the advancing
redcoats burnt to the ground. Fort Schlosser fell next, then Black Rock,
and finally Buffalo. Each was laid in ashes. Thus, before 1813 ended, the
whole American side of the Niagara was nothing but one long, bare line of
blackened desolation, with the sole exception of Fort Niagara, which
remained secure in British hands until the war was over.</p>
<p><br/><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </SPAN></p>
<br/>
<h2> CHAPTER VI — 1814: LUNDY'S LANE, PLATTSBURG, AND THE GREAT BLOCKADE </h2>
<p>In the closing phase of the struggle by land and sea the fortunes of war
may, with the single exception of Plattsburg, be most conveniently
followed territorially, from one point to the next, along the enormous
irregular curve of five thousand miles which was the scene of operations.
This curve begins at Prairie du Chien, where the Wisconsin joins the
Mississippi, and ends at New Orleans, where the Mississippi is about to
join the sea. It runs easterly along the Wisconsin, across to the Fox,
into Lake Michigan, across to Mackinaw, eastwards through Lakes Huron,
Erie, and Ontario, down the St Lawrence, round to Halifax, round from
there to Maine, and thence along the whole Atlantic coast, south and west—about
into the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
<p>The blockade of the Gulf of Mexico was an integral part of the British
plan. But the battle of New Orleans, which was a complete disaster for the
British arms, stands quite outside the actual war, since it was fought on
January 8, 1815, more than two weeks after the terms of peace had been
settled by the Treaty of Ghent. This peculiarity about its date, taken in
conjunction with its extreme remoteness from the Canadian frontier, puts
it beyond the purview of the present chronicle.</p>
<p>All the decisive actions of the campaign proper were fought within two
months. They began at Prairie du Chien in July and ended at Plattsburg in
September. Plattsburg is the one exception to the order of place. The tide
of war and British fortune flowed east and south to reach its height at
Washington in August. It turned at Plattsburg in September.</p>
<p>Neither friend nor foe went west in 1813. But in April 1814 Colonel
McDouall set out with ninety men, mostly of the Newfoundland regiment, to
reinforce Mackinaw. He started from the little depot which had been
established on the Nottawasaga, a river flowing into the Georgian Bay and
accessible by the overland trail from York.</p>
<p>After surmounting the many difficulties of the inland route which he had
to take in order to avoid the Americans in the Lake Erie region, and after
much hard work against the Lake Huron ice, he at last reached Mackinaw on
the 18th of May. Some good fighting Indians joined him there; and towards
the end of June he felt strong enough to send Colonel McKay against the
American post at Prairie du Chien. McKay arrived at this post in the
middle of July and captured the whole position—fort, guns, garrison,
and a vessel on the Mississippi.</p>
<p>Meanwhile seven hundred Americans under Croghan, the American officer who
had repulsed Procter at Fort Stephenson the year before, were making for
Mackinaw itself. They did some private looting at the Sault, burnt the
houses at St Joseph's Island, and landed in full force at Mackinaw on the
4th of August. McDouall had less than two hundred men, Indians included.
But he at once marched out to the attack and beat the Americans back to
their ships, which immediately sailed away. The British thenceforth
commanded the whole three western lakes until the war was over.</p>
<p>The Lake Erie region remained quite as decisively commanded by the
Americans. They actually occupied only the line of the Detroit. But they
had the power to cut any communications which the British might try to
establish along the north side of the lake. They had suffered a minor
reverse at Chatham in the previous December. But in March they more than
turned the tables by defeating Basden's attack in the Longwoods at
Delaware, near London; and in October seven hundred of their mounted men
raided the line of the Thames and only just stopped short of the Grand
River, the western boundary of the Niagara peninsula.</p>
<p>The Niagara frontier, as before, was the scene of desperate strife. The
Americans were determined to wrest it from the British, and they carefully
trained their best troops for the effort. Their prospects seemed bright,
as the whole of Upper Canada was suffering from want of men and means,
both civil and military. Drummond, the British commander-in-chief there,
felt very anxious not only about the line of the Niagara but even about
the neck of the whole peninsula, from Burlington westward to Lake Erie. He
had no more than 4,400 troops, all told; and he was obliged to place them
so as to be ready for an attack either from the Niagara or from Lake Erie,
or from both together. Keeping his base at York with a thousand men, he
formed his line with its right on Burlington and its left on Fort Niagara.
He had 500 men at Burlington, 1,000 at Fort George, and 700 at Fort
Niagara. The rest were thrown well forward, so as to get into immediate
touch with any Americans advancing from the south. There were 300 men at
Queenston, 500 at Chippawa, 150 at Fort Erie, and 250 at Long Point on
Lake Erie.</p>
<p>Brown, the American general who had beaten Prevost at Sackett's Harbour
and who had now superseded Wilkinson, had made his advanced field base at
Buffalo. His total force was not much more than Drummond's. But it was all
concentrated into a single striking body which possessed the full
initiative of manoeuvre and attack. On July 3 Brown crossed the Niagara to
the Canadian side. The same day he took Fort Erie from its little
garrison; and at once began to make it a really formidable work, as the
British found out to their cost later on. Next day he advanced down the
river road to Street's Creek. On hearing this, General Riall, Drummond's
second-in-command, gathered two thousand men and advanced against Brown,
who had recommenced his own advance with four thousand. They met on the
5th, between Street's Creek and the Chippawa river. Riall at once sent six
hundred men, including all his Indians and militia, against more than
twice their number of American militia, who were in a strong position on
the inland flank. The Canadians went forward in excellent style and the
Americans broke and fled in wild confusion. Seizing such an apparently
good chance, Riall then attacked the American regulars with his own,
though the odds he had to face here were more than three against two. The
opposing lines met face to face unflinchingly. The Americans, who had now
been trained and disciplined by proper leaders, refused to yield an inch.
Their two regular brigadiers, Winfield Scott and Ripley, kept them well in
hand, manoeuvred their surplus battalions to the best advantage,
overlapped the weaker British flank, and won the day. The British loss was
five hundred, or one in four: the American four hundred, or only one in
ten.</p>
<p>Brown then turned Riall's flank, by crossing the Chippawa higher up, and
prepared for the crowning triumph of crushing Drummond. He proposed a
joint attack with Chauncey on Forts Niagara and George. But Chauncey
happened to be ill at the time; he had not yet defeated Yeo; and he
strongly resented being made apparently subordinate to Brown. So the
proposed combination failed at the critical moment. But, for the eighteen
days between the battle of Chippawa on the 5th of July and Brown's receipt
of Chauncey's refusal on the 23rd, the Americans carried all before them,
right up to the British line that ran along the western end of Lake
Ontario, from Fort Niagara to Burlington. During this period no great
operations took place. But two minor incidents served to exasperate
feelings on both sides. Eight Canadian traitors were tried and hanged at
Ancaster near Burlington; and Loyalists openly expressed their regret that
Willcocks and others had escaped the same fate. Willcocks had been the
ring-leader of the parliamentary opposition to Brock in 1812; and had
afterwards been exceedingly active on the American side, harrying every
Loyalist he and his raiders could lay their hands on. He ended by cheating
the gallows, after all, as he fell in a skirmish towards the end of the
present campaign on the Niagara frontier. The other exasperating incident
was the burning of St David's on July 19 by a Colonel Stone; partly
because it was a 'Tory village' and partly because the American militia
mistakenly thought that one of their officers, Brigadier-General Swift,
had been killed by a prisoner to whom he had given quarter.</p>
<p>When, on the 23rd of July, Brown at last received Chauncey's disappointing
answer, he immediately stopped manoeuvring along the lower Niagara and
prepared to execute an alternative plan of marching diagonally across the
Niagara peninsula straight for the British position at Burlington. To do
this he concentrated at the Chippawa on the 24th. But by the time he was
ready to put his plan into execution, on the morning of the 25th, he found
himself in close touch with the British in his immediate front. Their
advanced guard of a thousand men, under Colonel Pearson, had just taken
post at Lundy's Lane, near the Falls. Their main body, under Riall, was
clearing both banks of the lower Niagara. And Drummond himself had just
arrived at Fort Niagara. Neither side knew the intentions of the other.
But as the British were clearing the whole country up to the Falls, and as
the Americans were bent on striking diagonally inland from a point beside
the Falls, it inevitably happened that each met the other at Lundy's Lane,
which runs inland from the Canadian side of the Falls, at right angles to
the river, and therefore between the two opposing armies.</p>
<p>When Drummond, hurrying across from York, landed at Fort Niagara in the
early morning of the fateful 25th, he found that the orders he had sent
over on the 23rd were already being carried out, though in a slightly
modified form. Colonel Tucker was marching off from Fort Niagara to
Lewiston, which he took without opposition. Then, first making sure that
the heights beyond were also clear, he crossed over the Niagara to
Queenston, where his men had dinner with those who had marched up on the
Canadian side from Fort George. Immediately after dinner half the total
sixteen hundred present marched back to garrison Forts George and Niagara,
while the other half marched forward, up-stream, on the Canadian side,
with Drummond, towards Lundy's Lane, whither Riall had preceded them with
reinforcements for the advanced guard under Colonel Pearson. In the
meantime Brown had heard about the taking of Lewiston, and, fearing that
the British might take Fort Schlosser too, had at once given up all idea
of his diagonal march on Burlington and had decided to advance straight
against Queenston instead. Thus both the American and the British main
bodies were marching on Lundy's Lane from opposite sides and in successive
detachments throughout that long, intensely hot, midsummer afternoon.</p>
<p>Presently Riall got a report saying that the Americans were advancing in
one massed force instead of in successive detachments. He thereupon
ordered Pearson to retire from Lundy's Lane to Queenston, sent back orders
that Colonel Hercules Scott, who was marching up twelve hundred men from
near St Catharine's on Twelve Mile Creek, was also to go to Queenston, and
reported both these changes to Drummond, who was hurrying along the
Queenston road towards Lundy's Lane as fast as he could. While the orderly
officers were galloping back to Drummond and Hercules Scott, and while
Pearson was getting his men into their order of march, Winfield Scott's
brigade of American regulars suddenly appeared on the Chippawa road,
deployed for attack, and halted. There was a pause on both sides. Winfield
Scott thought he might have Drummond's whole force in front of him. Riall
thought he was faced by the whole of Brown's. But Winfield Scott,
presently realizing that Pearson was unsupported, resumed his advance;
while Pearson and Riall, not realizing that Winfield Scott was himself
unsupported for the time being, immediately began to retire.</p>
<p>At this precise moment Drummond dashed up and drew rein. There was not a
minute to lose. The leading Americans were coming on in excellent order,
only a musket-shot away; Pearson's thousand were just in the act of giving
up the key to the whole position; and Drummond's eight hundred were
plodding along a mile or so in rear. But within that fleeting minute
Drummond made the plan that brought on the most desperately contested
battle of the war. He ordered Pearson's thousand back again. He brought
his own eight hundred forward at full speed. He sent post-haste to Colonel
Scott to change once more and march on Lundy's Lane. And so, by the time
the astonished Americans were about to seize the key themselves, they
found him ready to defend it.</p>
<p>Too long for a hillock, too low for a hill, this key to the whole position
in that stern fight has never had a special name. But it may well be known
as Battle Rise. It stood a mile from the Niagara river, and just a step
inland beyond the crossing of two roads. One of these, Lundy's Lane, ran
lengthwise over it, at right angles to the Niagara. The other, which did
not quite touch it, ran in the same direction as the river, all the way
from Fort Erie to Fort George, and, of course, through both Chippawa and
Queenston. The crest of Battle Rise was a few yards on the Chippawa side
of Lundy's Lane; and there Drummond placed his seven field-guns. Round
these guns the thickest of the battle raged, from first to last. The odds
were four thousand Americans against three thousand British, altogether.
But the British were in superior force at first; and neither side had its
full total in action at any one time, as casualties and reinforcements
kept the numbers fluctuating.</p>
<p>It was past six in the evening of that stifling 25th of July when Winfield
Scott attacked with the utmost steadiness and gallantry. Though the
British outnumbered his splendid brigade, and though they had the choice
of ground as well, he still succeeded in driving a wedge through their
left flank, a move which threatened to break them away from the road along
the river. But they retired in good order, re-formed, and then drove out
his wedge.</p>
<p>By half-past seven the American army had all come into action, and
Drummond was having hard work to hold his own. Brown, like Winfield Scott,
at once saw the supreme importance of taking Battle Rise; so he sent two
complete battalions against it, one of regulars leading, the other, of
militia, in support. At the first salvo from Drummond's seven guns the
American militia broke and ran away. But Colonel Miller worked some of the
American regulars very cleverly along the far side of a creeper-covered
fence, while the rest engaged the battery from a distance. In the heat of
action the British artillerymen never saw their real danger till, on a
given signal, Miller's advanced party all sprang up and fired a
point-blank volley which killed or wounded every man beside the guns. Then
Miller charged and took the battery. But he only held it for a moment. The
British centre charged up their own side of Battle Rise and drove the
intruders back, after a terrific struggle with the bayonet. But again
success was only for the moment. The Americans rallied and pressed the
British back. The British then rallied and returned. And so the desperate
fight swayed back and forth across the coveted position; till finally both
sides retired exhausted, and the guns stood dumb between them.</p>
<p>It was now pitch-dark, and the lull that followed seemed almost like the
end of the fight. But, after a considerable pause, the Americans—all
regulars this time—came on once more. This put the British in the
greatest danger. Drummond had lost nearly a third of his men. The
effective American regulars were little less than double his present
twelve hundred effectives of all kinds and were the fresher army of the
two. Miller had taken one of the guns from Battle Rise. The other six
could not be served against close-quarter musketry; and the nearest
Americans were actually resting between the cross-roads and the deserted
Rise. Defeat looked certain for the British. But, just as the attackers
and defenders began to stir again, Colonel Hercules Scott's twelve hundred
weary reinforcements came plodding along the Queenston road, wheeled round
the corner into Lundy's Lane, and stumbled in among these nearest
Americans, who, being the more expectant of the two, drove them back in
confusion. The officers, however, rallied the men at once. Drummond told
off eight hundred of them, including three hundred militia, to the
reserve; prolonged his line to the right with the rest; and thus
re-established the defence.</p>
<p>Hardly had the new arrivals taken breath before the final assault began.
Again the Americans took the silent battery. Again the British drove them
back. Again the opposing lines swayed to and fro across the deadly crest
of Battle Rise, with nothing else to guide them through the hot, black
night but their own flaming musketry. The Americans could not have been
more gallant and persistent in attack: the British could not have been
more steadfast in defence. Midnight came; but neither side could keep its
hold on Battle Rise. By this time Drummond was wounded; and Riall was both
wounded and a prisoner. Among the Americans Brown and Winfield Scott were
also wounded, while their men were worn out after being under arms for
nearly eighteen hours. A pause of sheer exhaustion followed. Then, slowly
and sullenly, as if they knew the one more charge they could not make must
carry home, the foiled Americans turned back and felt their way to
Chippawa.</p>
<p>The British ranks lay down in the same order as that in which they fought;
and a deep hush fell over the whole, black-shrouded battlefield. The
immemorial voice of those dread Falls to which no combatant gave heed for
six long hours of mortal strife was heard once more. But near at hand
there was no other sound than that which came from the whispered queries
of a few tired officers on duty; from the busy orderlies and surgeons at
their work of mercy; and from the wounded moaning in their pain. So passed
the quiet half of that short, momentous, summer night. Within four hours
the sun shone down on the living and the dead—on that silent battery
whose gunners had fallen to a man—on the unconquered Rise.</p>
<p>The tide of war along the Niagara frontier favoured neither side for some
time after Lundy's Lane, though the Americans twice appeared to be
regaining the initiative. On August 15 there was a well-earned American
victory at Fort Erie, where Drummond's assault was beaten off with great
loss to the British. A month later an American sortie was repulsed. On
September 21 Drummond retired beaten; and on October 13 he found himself
again on the defensive at Chippawa, with little more than three thousand
men, while Izard, who had come with American reinforcements from Lake
Champlain and Sackett's Harbour, was facing him with twice as many. But
Yeo's fleet had now come up to the mouth of the Niagara, while Chauncey's
had remained at Sackett's Harbour. Thus the British had the priceless
advantage of a movable naval base at hand, while the Americans had none at
all within supporting distance. Every step towards Lake Ontario hampered
Izard more and more, while it added corresponding strength to Drummond. An
American attempt to work round Drummond's flank, twelve miles inland, was
also foiled by a heavy skirmish on October 19 at Cook's Mills; and Izard's
definite abandonment of the invasion was announced on November 5 by his
blowing up Fort Erie and retiring into winter quarters. This ended the war
along the whole Niagara.</p>
<p>The campaign on Lake Ontario was very different. It opened two months
earlier. The naval competition consisted rather in building than in
fighting. The British built ships in Kingston, the Americans in Sackett's
Harbour; and reports of progress soon travelled across the intervening
space of less than forty miles. The initiative of combined operations by
land and water was undertaken by the British instead of by the Americans.
Yeo and Drummond wished to attack Sackett's Harbour with four thousand
men. But Prevost said he could spare them only three thousand; whereupon
they changed their objective to Oswego, which they took in excellent
style, on May 6. The British suffered a serious reverse, though on a very
much smaller scale, on May 30, at Sandy Creek, between Oswego and
Sackett's Harbour, when a party of marines and bluejackets, sent to cut
out some vessels with naval stores for Chauncey, was completely lost,
every man being either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.</p>
<p>From Lake Ontario down to the sea the Canadian frontier was never
seriously threatened; and the only action of any consequence was fought to
the south of Montreal in the early spring. On March 30 the Americans made
a last inglorious attempt in this direction. Wilkinson started with four
thousand men to follow the line of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu river,
the same that was tried by Dearborn in 1812 and by Hampton in 1813. At La
Colle, only four miles across the frontier, he attacked Major Handcock's
post of two hundred men. The result was like a second Chateauguay.
Handcock drew in three hundred reinforcements and two gunboats from
Isle-aux-Noix. Wilkinson's advanced guard lost its way overnight. In the
morning he lacked the resolution to press on, even with his overwhelming
numbers; and so, after a part of his army had executed some disjointed
manoeuvres, he withdrew the whole and gave up in despair.</p>
<p>From this point of the Canadian frontier to the very end of the
five-thousand-mile loop, that is, from Montreal to Mexico, the theatre of
operations was directly based upon the sea, where the British Navy was by
this time undisputedly supreme. A very few small American men-of-war were
still at large, together with a much greater number of privateers. But
they had no power whatever even to mitigate the irresistible blockade of
the whole coast-line of the United States. American sea-borne commerce
simply died away; for no mercantile marine could have any independent life
when its trade had to be carried on by a constantly decreasing tonnage;
when, too, it could go to sea at all only by furtive evasion, and when it
had to take cargo at risks so great that they could not be covered either
by insurance or by any attainable profits. The Atlantic being barred by
this Great Blockade, and the Pacific being inaccessible, the only
practical way left open to American trade was through the British lines by
land or sea. Some American seamen shipped in British vessels. Some
American ships sailed under British colours. But the chief external
American trade was done illicitly, by 'underground,' with the British West
Indies and with Canada itself. This was, of course, in direct defiance of
the American government, and to the direct detriment of the United States
as a nation. It was equally to the direct benefit of the British colonies
in general and of Nova Scotia in particular. American harbours had never
been so dull. Quebec and Halifax had never been so prosperous. American
money was drained away from the warlike South and West and either
concentrated in the Northern States—which were opposed to the war—or
paid over into British hands.</p>
<p>Nor was this all. The British Navy harried the coast in every convenient
quarter and made effective the work of two most important joint attacks,
one on Maine, the other on Washington itself. The attack on Maine covered
two months, altogether, from July 11 to September 11. It began with the
taking of Moose Island by Sir Thomas Hardy, Nelson's old flag-captain at
Trafalgar, and ended with the surrender, at Machias, of 'about 100 miles
of sea-coast,' together with 'that intermediate tract of country which
separates the province of New Brunswick from Lower Canada.' On September
21 Sir John Sherbrooke proclaimed at Halifax the formal annexation of 'all
the eastern side of the Penobscot river and all the country lying between
the same river and the boundary of New Brunswick.'</p>
<p>The attack on Maine was meant, in one sense at least, to create a partial
counterpoise to the American preponderance on Lake Erie. The attack on
Washington was made in retaliation for the burning of the old and new
capitals of Upper Canada, Newark and York.</p>
<p>The naval defence of Washington had been committed to Commodore Barney, a
most expert and gallant veteran of the Revolution, who handled his wholly
inadequate little force with consummate skill and daring, both afloat and
ashore. He was not, strictly speaking, a naval officer, but a
privateersman who had made the unique record of taking eleven prizes in
ten consecutive days with his famous Baltimore schooner <i>Rossie</i>. The
military defence was committed to General Winder, one of the two generals
captured by Harvey's '704 firelocks' at Stoney Creek the year before.
Winder was a good soldier and did his best in the seven weeks at his
disposal. But the American government, which had now enjoyed continuous
party power for no less than thirteen years, gave him no more than four
hundred regulars, backed by Barney's four hundred excellent seamen and the
usual array of militia, with whom to defend the capital in the third
campaign of a war they had themselves declared. There were 93,500
militiamen within the threatened area. But only fifteen thousand were got
under arms; and only five thousand were brought into action.</p>
<p>In the middle of August the British fleet under Admirals Cochrane and
Cockburn sailed into Chesapeake Bay with a detachment of four thousand
troops commanded by General Ross. Barney had no choice but to retire
before this overwhelming force. As the British advanced up the narrowing
waters all chance of escape disappeared; so Barney burnt his boats and
little vessels and marched his seamen in to join Winder's army. On August
24 Winder's whole six thousand drew up in an exceedingly strong position
at Bladensburg, just north of Washington; and the President rode out with
his Cabinet to see a battle which is best described by its derisive title
of the Bladensburg Races. Ross's four thousand came on and were received
by an accurate checking fire from the regular artillery and from Barney's
seamen gunners. But a total loss of 8 killed and 11 wounded was more than
the 5,000 American militia could stand. All the rest ran for dear life.
The deserted handful of regular soldiers and sailors was then overpowered;
while Barney was severely wounded and taken prisoner. He and they,
however, had saved their honour and won the respect and admiration of both
friend and foe. Ross and Cockburn at once congratulated him on the stand
he had made against them; and he, with equal magnanimity, reported
officially that the British had treated him 'just like a brother.'</p>
<p>That night the little British army of four thousand men burnt governmental
Washington, the capital of a country with eight millions of people. Not a
man, not a woman, not a child, was in any way molested; nor was one finger
laid on any private property. The four thousand then marched back to the
fleet, through an area inhabited by 93,500 militiamen on paper, without
having so much as a single musket fired at them.</p>
<p>Now, if ever, was Prevost's golden opportunity to end the war with a
victory that would turn the scale decisively in favour of the British
cause. With the one exception of Lake Erie, the British had the upper hand
over the whole five thousand miles of front. A successful British
counter-invasion, across the Montreal frontier, would offset the American
hold on Lake Erie, ensure the control of Lake Champlain, and thus bring
all the scattered parts of the campaign into their proper relation to a
central, crowning triumph.</p>
<p>On the other hand, defeat would mean disaster. But the bare possibility of
defeat seemed quite absurd when Prevost set out from his field
headquarters opposite Montreal, between La Prairie and Chambly, with
eleven thousand seasoned veterans, mostly 'Peninsulars,' to attack
Plattsburg, which was no more than twenty-five miles across the frontier,
very weakly fortified, and garrisoned only by the fifteen hundred regulars
whom Izard had 'culled out' when he started for Niagara.</p>
<p>The naval odds were not so favourable. But, as they could be decisively
affected by military action, they naturally depended on Prevost, who, with
his overwhelming army, could turn them whichever way he chose. It was true
that Commodore Macdonough's American flotilla had more trained seamen than
Captain Downie's corresponding British force, and that his crews and
vessels possessed the further advantage of having worked together for some
time. Downie, a brave and skilful young officer, had arrived to take
command of his flotilla at the upper end of Lake Champlain only on
September 2, that is, exactly a week before Prevost urged him to attack,
and nine days before the battle actually did take place. He had a fair
proportion of trained seamen; but they consisted of scratch drafts from
different men-of-war, chosen in haste and hurried to the front. Most of
the men and officers were complete strangers to one another; and they made
such short-handed crews that some soldiers had to be wheeled out of the
line of march and put on board at the very last minute. There would have
been grave difficulties with such a flotilla under any circumstances. But
Prevost had increased them tenfold by giving no orders and making no
preparations while trying his hand at another abortive armistice—one,
moreover, which he had no authority even to propose.</p>
<p>Yet, in spite of all this, Prevost still had the means of making Downie
superior to Macdonough. Macdonough's vessels were mostly armed with
carronades, Downie's with long guns. Carronades fired masses of small
projectiles with great effect at very short ranges. Long guns, on the
other hand, fired each a single large projectile up to the farthest ranges
known. In fact, it was almost as if the Americans had been armed with
shot-guns and the British armed with rifles. Therefore the Americans had
an overwhelming advantage at close quarters, while the British had a
corresponding advantage at long range. Now, Macdonough had anchored in an
ideal position for close action inside Plattsburg Bay. He required only a
few men to look after his ground tackle; [Footnote: Anchors and cables.]
and his springs [Footnote: Ropes to hold a vessel in position when hauling
or swinging in a harbour. Here, ropes from the stern to the anchors on the
landward side.] were out on the landward side for 'winding ship,' that is,
for turning his vessels completely round, so as to bring their fresh
broadsides into action. There was no sea-room for manoeuvring round him
with any chance of success; so the British would be at a great
disadvantage while standing in to the attack, first because they could be
raked end-on, next because they could only reply with bow fire—the
weakest of all—and, lastly, because their best men would be engaged
with the sails and anchors while their ships were taking station.</p>
<p>But Prevost had it fully in his power to prevent Macdonough from fighting
in such an ideal position at all. Macdonough's American flotilla was well
within range of Macomb's long-range American land batteries; while
Prevost's overwhelming British army was easily able to take these land
batteries, turn their guns on Macdonough's helpless vessels—whose
short-range carronades could not possibly reply—and so either
destroy the American flotilla at anchor in the bay or force it out into
the open lake, where it would meet Downie's long-range guns at the
greatest disadvantage. Prevost, after allowing for all other duties, had
at least seven thousand veterans for an assault on Macomb's second-rate
regulars and ordinary militia, both of whom together amounted at most to
thirty-five hundred, including local militiamen who had come in to
reinforce the 'culls' whom Izard had left behind. The Americans, though
working with very creditable zeal, determined to do their best, quite
expected to be beaten out of their little forts and entrenchments, which
were just across the fordable Saranac in front of Prevost's army. They had
tried to delay the British advance. But, in the words of Macomb's own
official report, 'so undaunted was the enemy that he never deployed in his
whole march, always pressing on in column'; that is, the British veterans
simply brushed the Americans aside without deigning to change from their
column of march into a line of battle. Prevost's duty was therefore
perfectly plain. With all the odds in his favour ashore, and with the
power of changing the odds in his favour afloat, he ought to have captured
Macomb's position in the early morning and turned both his own and
Macomb's artillery on Macdonough, who would then have been forced to leave
his moorings for the open lake, where Downie would have had eight hours of
daylight to fight him at long range.</p>
<p>What Prevost actually did was something disgracefully different. Having
first wasted time by his attempted armistice, and so hindered preparations
at the base, between La Prairie and Chambly, he next proceeded to cross
the frontier too soon. He reported home that Downie could not be ready
before September 15. But on August 31 he crossed the line himself, only
twenty-five miles from his objective, thus prematurely showing the enemy
his hand. Then he began to goad the unhappy Downie to his doom. Downie's
flagship, the <i>Confiance</i>, named after a French prize which Yeo had
taken, was launched only on August 25, and hauled out into the stream only
on September 7. Her scratch crew could not go to battle quarters till the
8th; and the shipwrights were working madly at her up to the very moment
that the first shot was fired in her fatal action on the 11th. Yet Prevost
tried to force her into action on the 9th, adding, 'I need not dwell with
you on the evils resulting to both services from delay,' and warning
Downie that he was being watched: 'Captain Watson is directed to remain at
Little Chazy until you are preparing to get under way.'</p>
<p>Thus watched and goaded by the governor-general and commander-in-chief,
whose own service was the Army, Downie, a comparative junior in the Navy,
put forth his utmost efforts, against his better judgment, to sail that
very midnight. A baffling head-wind, however, kept him from working out.
He immediately reported to Prevost, giving quite satisfactory reasons. But
Prevost wrote back impatiently: 'The troops have been held in readiness,
since six o'clock this morning [the 10th], to storm the enemy's works at
nearly the same time as the naval action begins in the bay. I ascribe the
disappointment I have experienced to the unfortunate change of wind, and
shall rejoice to learn that my reasonable expectations have been
frustrated by no other cause.' '<i>No other cause</i>.' The innuendo, even
if unintentional, was there. Downie, a junior sailor, was perhaps
suspected of 'shyness' by a very senior soldier. Prevost's poison worked
quickly. 'I will convince him that the Navy won't be backward,' said
Downie to his second, Pring, who gave this evidence, under oath, at the
subsequent court-martial. Pring, whose evidence was corroborated by that
of both the first lieutenant and the master of the <i>Confiance</i>, then
urged the extreme risk of engaging Macdonough inside the bay. But Downie
allayed their anxiety by telling them that Prevost had promised to storm
Macomb's indefensible works simultaneously. This was not nearly so good as
if Prevost had promised to defeat Macomb first and then drive Macdonough
out to sea. But it was better, far better, than what actually was done.</p>
<p>With Prevost's written promise in his pocket Downie sailed for Plattsburg
in the early morning of that fatal 11th of September. Punctually to the
minute he fired his preconcerted signal outside Cumberland Head, which
separated the bay from the lake. He next waited exactly the prescribed
time, during which he reconnoitred Macdonough's position from a boat. Then
the hour of battle came. The hammering of the shipwrights stopped at last;
and the ill-starred <i>Confiance</i>, that ship which never had a chance
to 'find herself,' led the little squadron into Prevost's death-trap in
the bay. Every soldier and sailor now realized that the storming of the
works on land ought to have been the first move, and that Prevost's idea
of simultaneous action was faulty, because it meant two independent
fights, with the chance of a naval disaster preceding the military
success. However, Prevost was the commander-in-chief; he had promised
co-operation in his own way; and Downie was determined to show him that
the Navy had stopped for '<i>no other cause</i>' than the head-wind of the
day before.</p>
<p>Did <i>no other cause</i> than mistaken judgment affect Prevost that fatal
morning? Did he intend to show Downie that a commander-in-chief could not
suffer the 'disappointment' of 'holding troops in readiness' without
marking his displeasure by some visible return in kind? Or was he no worse
than criminally weak? His motives will never be known. But his actions
throw a sinister light upon them. For when Downie sailed in to the attack
Prevost did nothing whatever to help him. Betrayed, traduced, and goaded
to his ruin, Downie fought a losing battle with the utmost gallantry and
skill. The wind flawed and failed inside the bay, so that the <i>Confiance</i>
could not reach her proper station. Yet her first broadside struck down
forty men aboard the <i>Saratoga</i>. Then the <i>Saratoga</i> fired her
carronades, at point-blank range, cut up the cables aboard the <i>Confiance</i>,
and did great execution among the crew. In fifteen minutes Downie fell.</p>
<p>The battle raged two full hours longer; while the odds against the British
continued to increase. Four of their little gunboats fought as well as
gunboats could. But the other seven simply ran away, like their commander
afterwards when summoned for a court-martial that would assuredly have
sentenced him to death. Two of the larger vessels failed to come into
action properly; one went ashore, the other drifted through the American
line and then hauled down her colours. Thus the battle was fought to its
dire conclusion by the British <i>Confiance</i> and <i>Linnet</i> against
the American <i>Saratoga</i>, <i>Eagle</i>, and <i>Ticonderoga</i>. The
gunboats had little to do with the result; though the odds of all those
actually engaged were greatly in favour of Macdonough. The fourth American
vessel of larger size drifted out of action.</p>
<p>Macdonough, an officer of whom any navy in the world might well be proud,
then concentrated on the stricken <i>Confiance</i> with his own <i>Saratoga</i>,
greatly aided by the <i>Eagle</i>, which swung round so as to rake the <i>Confiance</i>
with her fresh broadside. The <i>Linnet</i> now drifted off a little and
so could not help the <i>Confiance</i>, both because the American galleys
at once engaged her and because her position was bad in any case.
Presently both flagships slackened fire; whereupon Macdonough took the
opportunity of winding ship. His ground tackle was in perfect order on the
far, or landward, side; so the <i>Saratoga</i> swung round quite easily.
The <i>Confiance</i> now had both the <i>Eagle's</i> and the <i>Saratoga's</i>
fresh carronade broadsides deluging her battered, cannon-armed broadside
with showers of deadly grape. Her one last chance of keeping up a little
longer was to wind ship herself. Her tackle had all been cut; but her
master got out his last spare cables and tried to bring her round, while
some of his toiling men fell dead at every haul. She began to wind round
very slowly; and, when exactly at right angles to Macdonough, was raked
completely, fore and aft. At the same time an ominous list to port, where
her side was torn in over a hundred places, showed that she would sink
quickly if her guns could not be run across to starboard. But more than
half her mixed scratch crew had been already killed or wounded. The most
desperate efforts of her few surviving officers could not prevent the
confusion that followed the fearful raking she now received from both her
superior opponents; and before her fresh broadside could be brought to
bear she was forced to strike her flag. Then every American carronade and
gun was turned upon Pring's undaunted little <i>Linnet</i>, which kept up
the hopeless fight for fifteen minutes longer; so that Prevost might yet
have a chance to carry out his own operations without fear of molestation
from a hostile bay.</p>
<p>But Prevost was in no danger of molestation. He was in perfect safety. He
watched the destruction of his fleet from his secure headquarters, well
inland, marched and countermarched his men about, to make a show of
action; and then, as the <i>Linnet</i> fired her last, despairing gun, he
told all ranks to go to dinner.</p>
<p>That night he broke camp hurriedly, left all his badly wounded men behind
him, and went back a great deal faster than he came. His shamed, disgusted
veterans deserted in unprecedented numbers. And Macomb's astounded army
found themselves the victors of an unfought field.</p>
<p>The American victory at Plattsburg gave the United States the absolute
control of Lake Champlain; and this, reinforcing their similar control of
Lake Erie, counterbalanced the British military advantages all along the
Canadian frontier. The British command of the sea, the destruction of
Washington, and the occupation of Maine told heavily on the other side.
These three British advantages had been won while the mother country was
fighting with her right hand tied behind her back; and in all the elements
of warlike strength the British Empire was vastly superior to the United
States. Thus there cannot be the slightest doubt that if the British had
been free to continue the war they must have triumphed. But they were not
free. Europe was seething with the profound unrest that made her statesmen
feel the volcano heaving under their every step during the portentous year
between Napoleon's abdication and return. The mighty British Navy, the
veteran British Army, could not now be sent across the sea in overwhelming
force. So American diplomacy eagerly seized this chance of profiting by
British needs, and took such good advantage of them that the Treaty of
Ghent, which ended the war on Christmas Eve, left the two opponents in
much the same position towards each other as before. Neither of the main
reasons for which the Americans had fought their three campaigns was even
mentioned in the articles.</p>
<p>The war had been an unmitigated curse to the motherland herself; and it
brought the usual curses in its train all over the scene of action. But
some positive good came out of it as well, both in Canada and in the
United States.</p>
<p>The benefits conferred on the United States could not be given in apter
words than those used by Gallatin, who, as the finance minister during
four presidential terms, saw quite enough of the seamy side to sober his
opinions, and who, as a prominent member of the war party, shared the
disappointed hopes of his colleagues about the conquest of Canada. His
opinion is, of course, that of a partisan. But it contains much truth, for
all that:</p>
<p>The war has been productive of evil and of good; but<br/>
I think the good preponderates. It has laid the<br/>
foundations of permanent taxes and military<br/>
establishments, which the Republicans [as the<br/>
anti-Federalist Democrats were then called] had deemed<br/>
unfavorable to the happiness and free institutions of<br/>
the country. Under our former system we were becoming<br/>
too selfish, too much attached exclusively to the<br/>
acquisition of wealth, above all, too much confined<br/>
in our political feelings to local and state objects.<br/>
The war has renewed the national feelings and character<br/>
which the Revolution had given, and which were daily<br/>
lessening. The people are now more American. They feel<br/>
and act more as a nation. And I hope that the permanency<br/>
of the Union is thereby better secured.<br/></p>
<p>Gallatin did not, of course, foresee that it would take a third conflict
to finish what the Revolution had begun. But this sequel only strengthens
his argument. For that Union which was born in the throes of the
Revolution had to pass through its tumultuous youth in '1812' before
reaching full manhood by means of the Civil War.</p>
<p>The benefits conferred on Canada were equally permanent and even greater.
How Gallatin would have rejoiced to see in the United States any approach
to such a financial triumph as that which was won by the Army Bills in
Canada! No public measure was ever more successful at the time or more
full of promise for the future. But mightier problems than even those of
national finance were brought nearer to their desirable solution by this
propitious war. It made Ontario what Quebec had long since been—historic
ground; thus bringing the older and newer provinces together with one
exalting touch. It was also the last, as well as the most convincing,
defeat of the three American invasions of Canada. The first had been led
by Sir William Phips in 1690. This was long before the Revolution. The
American Colonies were then still British and Canada still French. But the
invasion itself was distinctively American, in men, ships, money, and
design. It was undertaken without the consent or knowledge of the home
authorities; and its success would probably have destroyed all chance of
there being any British Canada to-day. The second American invasion had
been that of Montgomery and Arnold in 1775, during the Revolution, when
the very diverse elements of a new Canadian life first began to defend
their common heritage against a common foe. The third invasion—the
War of 1812—united all these elements once more, just when Canada
stood most in need of mutual confidence between them. So there could not
have been a better bond of union than the blood then shed so willingly by
her different races in a single righteous cause.</p>
<p><br/><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </SPAN></p>
<br/>
<h2> BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE </h2>
<p>Enough books to fill a small library have been written about the
'sprawling and sporadic' War of 1812. Most of them deal with particular
phases, localities, or events; and most of them are distinctly partisan.
This is unfortunate, but not surprising. The war was waged over an immense
area, by various forces, and with remarkably various results. The
Americans were victorious on the Lakes and in all but one of the naval
duels fought at sea. Yet their coast was completely sealed up by the Great
Blockade in the last campaign. The balance of victory inclined towards the
British side on land. Yet the annihilating American victories on the Lakes
nullified most of the general military advantages gained by the British
along the Canadian frontier. The fortunes of each campaign were followed
with great interest on both sides of the line. But on the other side of
the Atlantic the British home public had Napoleon to think of at their
very doors; and so, for the most part, they regarded the war with the
States as an untoward and regrettable annoyance, which diverted too much
force and attention from the life-and-death affairs of Europe.</p>
<p>All these peculiar influences are reflected in the different patriotic
annals. Americans are voluble about the Lakes and the naval duels out at
sea. But the completely effective British blockade of their coast-line is
a too depressingly scientific factor in the problem to be welcomed by a
general public which would not understand how Yankee ships could win so
many duels while the British Navy won the war. Canadians are equally
voluble about the battles on Canadian soil, where Americans had decidedly
the worst of it. As a rule, Canadian writers have been quite as
controversial as Americans, and not any readier to study their special
subjects as parts of a greater whole. The British Isles have never had an
interested public anxious to read about this remote, distasteful, and
subsidiary war; and books about it there have consequently been very few.</p>
<p>The two chief authors who have appealed directly to the readers of the
mother country are William James and Sir Charles Lucas. James was an
industrious naval historian; but he was quite as anti-American as the
earlier American writers were anti-British. Owing to this perverting bias
his two books, the <i>Naval</i> and the <i>Military Occurrences of the
late War between Great Britain and the United States</i>, are not to be
relied upon. Their appendices, however, give a great many documents which
are of much assistance in studying the real history of the war. James
wrote only a few years after the peace. Nearly a century later Sir Charles
Lucas wrote <i>The Canadian War of 1812</i>, which is the work of a man
whose life-long service in the Colonial Office and intimate acquaintance
with Canadian history have both been turned to the best account. The two
chief Canadian authors are Colonel Cruikshank and James Hannay. Colonel
Cruikshank deserves the greatest credit for being a real pioneer with his
<i>Documentary History of the Campaigns upon the Niagara Frontier</i>.
Hannay's <i>History of the War of 1812</i> shows careful study of the
Canadian aspects of the operations; but its generally sound arguments are
weakened by its controversial tone.</p>
<p>The four chief American authors to reckon with are, Lossing, Upton,
Roosevelt, and Mahan. They complement rather than correspond with the four
British authors. The best known American work dealing with the military
campaigns is Lossing's <i>Field-Book of the War of 1812</i>. It is an
industrious compilation; but quite uncritical and most misleading. General
Upton's <i>Military Policy of the United States</i> incidentally pricks
all the absurd American militia bubbles with an incontrovertible array of
hard and pointed facts. <i>The Naval War of 1812</i>, by Theodore
Roosevelt, is an excellent sketch which shows a genuine wish to be fair to
both sides. But the best naval work, and the most thorough work of any
kind on either side, is Admiral Mahan's <i>Sea Power in its Relations to
the War of 1812</i>.</p>
<p>A good deal of original evidence on the American side is given in
Brannan's <i>Official Letters of the Military and Naval Officers of the
United States during the War with Great Britain in the Years 1812 to 1815</i>.
The original British evidence about the campaigns in Canada is given in
William Wood's <i>Select British Documents of the Canadian War of 1812</i>.
Students who wish to see the actual documents must go to Washington,
London, and Ottawa. The Dominion Archives are of exceptional interest to
all concerned.</p>
<p>The present work is based entirely on original evidence, both American and
British.</p>
<h3> END </h3>
<div style="height: 6em;">
<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/></div>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />