by Mark Zuehlke
By letter, the two bickered over where to cross the river and who would lead the attack. Having had weeks to reconnoitre the British positions, Van Rensselaer and his cousin had concluded that the most likely crossing point was at Queenston Heights, where the defences were weak because of the natural obstacle presented by a section of rapids. Lacking in guile, Van Rensselaer had consequently brought his army up to Lewiston, which faced the heights from the opposite side of the river. But he had then been unable to muster sufficient strength to make the attack. Smyth disdained Van Rensselaer’s strategy, claiming instead that the best crossing was where he was headquartered. Next to Buffalo the Niagara River was more easily crossed, but the British recognized this and so had the opposite shore more heavily defended than at Queenston Heights. With both generals refusing to compromise or conform to the other’s opinion, an entirely American-made stalemate set in on the Niagara front.
Although the rift between the two officers dismayed Madison, the president chose to do nothing about the matter. Instead he left it to Dearborn to sort out, who typically confined himself to gently reminding the generals that such behaviour was “regrettable.”23 Finally, Van Rensselaer decided to carry out the invasion with the 3,000 men under his command. Solomon Van Rensselaer and the other Federalist officers urged the general to use his command authority to coerce Smyth into cooperating with the attack, but Van Rensselaer refused. If the crossing succeeded then he would have upstaged the Virginian Republican, a result that would silence his critics in New York and Washington. Consequently, on October 10, he mustered the troops in Lewiston and ordered them to prepare to cross the turbulent waters in boats after nightfall.
TEN
The Valiant Have Bled
OCTOBER 1812
By the time Gen. Stephen Van Rensselaer finally decided to attack Queenston Heights, Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock was on the scene organizing the defence. The informal armistice and the Army of the Center’s inherent lethargy had provided critical time to enable him to journey from Detroit to Niagara to personally meet the new threat. Had Hull and Van Rensselaer coordinated their assaults on Upper Canada, the British position would have been precarious, with Brock’s command desperately overextended and caught between two mighty pincers. Brock was still concerned. The Niagara front was thirty-six miles long, running across the narrow neck of land separating Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Almost directly in the centre, the great thundering falls prevented boats using the river to pass between the two lakes. To defend this peninsula Brock had 400 regulars, 800 militiamen, and about 200 Indian warriors. The militia had just returned to service after the fall harvest and were weary to the bone. Morale amongst the redcoats, who had been standing guard over the frontier for two long, largely inactive months, was dangerously low. The small garrison from the 49th Foot at Queenston were fed up to the point of near mutiny. Brock realized his forces were stretched dangerously thin, a situation exacerbated by his inability to gauge accurately where the Americans would try to force a crossing, because they were formed into two large bodies—one at Lewiston, the other at Buffalo. The two logical crossing points were both upstream of the falls, so he divided most of his men between Chippawa and Fort Erie to meet these threats. Below the falls a narrow gorge made crossing more difficult all the way to where Lewiston and Queenston glared across at each other. Here the river was only 250 yards wide and could be crossed in ten minutes by rowboat or mere seconds by a musket ball fired from one shore to the other.
Despite the presence of Van Rensselaer’s force in Lewiston, a crossing here seemed less likely than upstream. Brock assumed the Americans gathered here because of the convenience offered by the village rather than for strategic reasons. So he positioned only two companies and about the same number of militia in and around Queenston. The little village of a hundred houses was overshadowed by the towering heights. Near the village the defenders had dug in a tiny, ineffectual three-pound gun. About halfway up the long, gradual slope to the summit, an eighteen-pound cannon was emplaced, while a mile downriver, at Vrooman’s Point, a twenty-four-pound gun covered the river. Brock knew that the Americans in Lewiston were bristling with about 200 to 300 cannon, so every effort was taken to conceal the location of the three small artillery pieces the British had deployed to protect them from counter-battery fire.
Rather than assume the defensive, Brock would have preferred to undertake his own offensive against Lewiston. Deserters had reported the American militia’s poor morale, and Brock believed a sharp attack would bring this rabble of “enraged democrats … who … die very fast” to its knees. An attack would also enable him to hit the Americans with all his strength. But Governor Sir George Prevost would countenance no offensive actions, still believing that the Americans must soon come to their senses and formalize an armistice pending negotiation of a treaty. Fortunately Detroit, which he regretted Brock’s having taken, had been a bloodless victory. But a battle in which much American blood spilled could jeopardize chances of peace, so Brock was to remain on his side of the river and not molest the Americans. Prevost hoped that the Americans would do the same until winter set in and that by the spring this unfortunate war would be an unhappy memory.
Brock thought Prevost plain wrong, but could not openly say as much. “I have implicitly followed Your Excellency’s instructions, and abstained, under great temptation and provocation from every act of hostility,” he said in reply to Prevost’s admonishments. But in a private letter he vented his frustrations. “I am really placed in a most awkward predicament …. My instructions oblige me to adopt defensive measures, and I have evinced greater forbearance than was ever practised on any former occasion. It is thought that, without the aid of the sword, the American people maybe brought to a full sense of their own interests. I firmly believe that I could at this moment sweep everything before me from Fort Niagara to Buffalo.
“It is certainly something singular that we should be upwards of two months in a state of warfare, and that along this widely extended frontier not a single death, either natural or by the sword, should have occurred among the troops under my command, and we have not been together idle, nor has a single desertion taken place.”
Across the river the Americans were obviously gathering strength and likely shuffling toward some offensive act. When they did, Brock intended to meet it head on and either win a decisive victory or go down in bloody defeat. The battle for Upper Canada would be decided here on the banks of the Niagara. He would not willingly surrender ground. To his brother he wrote, “I say decisive, because if I should be beaten, the province is inevitably gone; and should I be victorious, I do not imagine the gentry from the other side will be anxious to return to the charge.”1
That the Americans were coming was confirmed beyond question in his mind by a small party of sailors under command of Lt. Jesse D. Elliott, who had been sent to Lake Erie to organize a naval force capable of disputing British mastery of its waters. On the night of October 8–9, rowing quietly in among the cluster of British vessels tied up under the protective guns of Fort Erie, the sailors scrambled aboard two brigs, Caledonia and Detroit, cut them loose, took them under tow, and started dragging them toward Buffalo. Although they managed to get the two-gun Caledonia away, the larger brig ran aground and had to be burned. This audacious act boosted American morale. It also served warning that the U.S. Navy might in time seriously contest British control of the lakes. As the lakes provided the most efficient means for moving men and supplies around Upper Canada, both sides knew that the initiative lay with whoever mastered their waters.2
Two nights after Elliott’s raid, sentries on Queenston Heights heard a great ruckus across the river at Lewiston. It was a dirty night, thick clouds blocking any star or moonlight, and a cold rain quickly soaked wool uniforms. Across the river yelling and many splashes suggested men were taking to boats for a crossing, but nothing could be seen in the stygian blackness. After about two hours the racket ceased and all fell quiet.
In Lew
iston, 600 sodden, dispirited Americans trudged back to their billets. The attempted crossing had played out like some comic opera. Trudging through heavy mud, Lt. Col. Solomon Van Rensselaer and Capt. John Machesney had led an evenly constituted body of regular and militia troops to the ferry landing where they were to board large boats and row across to the Canadian shore. To their consternation the officers discovered that the boat officer had somehow been swept off in one of the biggest bateaux, on which all the oars for the others had been stored. It took a couple of hours to discover that the bateau had run aground downstream and that the boat officer had wandered into the darkness. Van Rensselaer ordered the attack set back forty-eight hours.3
It was a calamitous start to what he had hoped would be the victorious battle that would salvage his reputation. At three in the morning on Tuesday, October 13, the 600 troops of the first assault wave again returned to the Lewiston ferry landing. This time thirteen boats, all equipped with oars, waited, and the men crowded aboard. Under the cover of an intense artillery bombardment, the soldiers frantically paddled out into the rushing current. The three leading boats, overloaded for the number of oarsmen, were swept helplessly downstream by the swirling waters. Almost 200 men were lost before the fight began. Cannonballs whistling overhead, the others hunkered down in the remaining ten boats as the facing shoreline erupted with the flash of musketry and shot hammered with sharp, splintering cracks into wood or the sickening moist-sounding thud of lead piercing flesh.
A mere forty-six regulars with a handful of militiamen under Capt. James Dennis waited for them on the Canadian shore, but the rate of fire poured out by the British infantrymen was withering. No army in the world could match the British soldier’s rate of musketry. Thick cartridge paper ripped open with powder-blackened teeth, Brown Bess musket primed, frizzen snapped closed, musket upended and butted onto the ground, the powder poured into the barrel, followed by the ball, both rammed home with the thin rod quickly returned to the barrel rings that held it, musket shouldered, doghead pulled back to full cock. The men aimed into the obscuring smoke lingering from earlier shots, remembered to aim low and to wait for the order—conforming to the endless routine drilled into them by hundreds of hours of practice. Then Dennis shouted and the muskets slammed into bruised shoulders and as if by instinct the men began to reload. Each man loosed two rounds a minute.
As Solomon Van Rensselaer leapt ashore with sword brandished, a bullet struck him in the right thigh. In rapid succession, five more balls struck the lieutenant colonel in the legs before he abandoned the attempt to overwhelm the defenders and hobbled with his surviving troops back to the shelter of the steep riverbank. Despite rapid blood loss, Van Rensselaer still looked for some way to turn the tide of battle. The plan for the assault was in tatters; the waves of troops that were supposed to follow the first landing group failed to come across. From halfway up the slope leading to the summit, the eighteen-pound cannon sprayed the helpless troops with canister. Continuing the frontal assault would be suicide. The heights appeared unscalable, making it impossible to flank the British.
Suddenly Capt. John E. Wool, a twenty-three-year-old U.S. 13th Infantry officer, crawled up to where Van Rensselaer lay bleeding. There was a rumour, the young officer said, that fishermen had developed a path down the cliff from the summit. If he could gain the heights then Wool could overrun the gun on the slope. Van Rensselaer agreed he should try, and taking sixty men, Wool set off, hugging the shoreline.4
Meanwhile Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock had been awakened at four by the sound of cannon to the north and immediately realized that the Americans were crossing at Queenston. Before going to bed Brock had written a gloomy report to Prevost that uncharacteristically predicted failure. Lacking “willing, well-disposed characters,” he said, to fill out the ranks of the militia to the 2,000 necessary to ensure Upper Canada’s defence, Brock was forced to take in American immigrants. He distrusted their loyalty and motivation. Consequently, he wrote, “I fear I shall not be able to effect my object [to] defy all their efforts against this part of the Province.”5
Within minutes of waking, Brock and his aide, Lt. Col. John Macdonell, were galloping toward Queenston. Behind them the regulars and militia at the fort were roused and set marching at the double toward the battle about seven miles to their south. Along the way the two officers passed two companies of York Volunteers and shouted for them to follow at the run to Queenston. Arriving with the dawn, Brock saw another wave of American troops crossing by boat and realized the attack was in earnest. Deciding that the light company that was up the slope defending the eighteen-pound cannon was needed to repel this new assault, Brock rode to the gun emplacement. Just as he reached it, Wool and his men emerged from the woods on the summit and descended toward the position. Outnumbered by the better-positioned Americans, Brock ordered the gun spiked and abandoned. The British on the slope retreated quickly to the village below.
With the American second wave beginning to reinforce the remnants of troops still with Van Rensselaer, and Wool in possession of the heights, Brock saw he was badly outnumbered and that the reinforcements coming from Fort George would arrive too late to prevent the British garrison being overrun. The safest thing to do would be to retreat, something Brock would not do. Brock had often declared that he would never send men “where I do not lead them.”6 And he had no intention of doing so now. Jumping off his horse, Brock formed his 100 regulars and an equal number of “tired and dazed” militia into line and ordered the advance. With sword held high he led them up the slope toward Wool’s men. His cocked hat, shining gold epaulettes, dazzling red coat with two rows of gilt buttons on front, sword, and decorative scarf that Tecumseh had given him after the capture of Detroit wound around the waist marked him. But Brock never hesitated, even when a musket ball tore open his wrist. When the regulars suddenly hesitated and several men turned, he shouted, “This is the first time I have ever seen the 49th turn their backs!”7 The soldiers rallied, cheered, pressed on into the fire that scythed men down like hay. Up the steep slope they went, slipping and sliding on the wet grass, cursing, a few pausing to fire up at where the Americans had taken cover behind fallen logs and trees before pressing onward. More Americans clambered up Wool’s path to add to the weight of the fire directed toward the British and Canadians following Brock.
When Brock was about 165 feet from the American line, he shouted for the men to fix bayonets and charge. As he rushed on, just ahead of the advancing line, an American scout rose from behind a bush and took careful aim with his long rifle. The musket cracked and a ball tore into Brock’s chest just above the heart. Fifteen-year-old George Jarvis, a Canadian volunteer serving in the 49th, rushed to his side. “Are you much hurt, Sir?” he asked, before realizing Brock was dead. The moment Brock fell, the charge foundered. Some troops of the 49th quickly gathered up the body of their fallen commander and joined the general retreat.
As the men fell back they were intercepted by Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell, who had a small number of York Volunteers in tow. A brilliant lawyer who in peacetime was Upper Canada’s attorney general, he revered Brock and determined to renew the advance. Macdonell found a willing partner in the 49th’s Capt. John Williams. “Charge them home and they cannot stand you!” Williams bellowed. “Revenge the General,” shouted the 49th’s survivors. Seventy strong, the mixed British and Canadian force headed up the slope behind the mounted Macdonell. Facing them were several hundred Americans. A ball slammed into Macdonell’s horse, causing it to rear and wheel about. A second shot slapped into the officer’s back. Mortally wounded, Macdonell toppled to the ground. Williams was also down, a bloody gouge torn out of his scalp. The attack collapsed.8
Also wounded, Capt. James Dennis gathered the survivors of the two badly reduced 49th companies and militiamen, abandoned Queenston at 10 a.m. and fell back on Vrooman’s Point, where the long twenty-four-pounder still blazed away at the Americans crossing the river. Here they awaited the arrival of Maj. Gen. Ro
ger Sheaffe and the main force from Fort George. Word of Brock’s death spread quickly. Their morale undeflating, the British and Canadian troops vowed to avenge their fallen commander. Shortly thereafter Sheaffe marched in with 300 men of the 41st Regiment of Foot, 250 militiamen—including Capt. Robert Runchey’s Company of Coloured Men from the Niagara Light Dragoons—and an artillery battery drawn by draught horses of local farmers, only to receive the news that he now commanded. Before Brock’s move from Detroit to Niagara, Sheaffe, a forty-nine-year-old Boston-born Loyalist, had been in overall command of the region. A regular army officer with nineteen years of service on the Canadian front, he was Brock’s opposite—a cautious officer, given to deliberate, methodical action. Unlike Prevost, he was not one to shy from a fight.
Taking a good long, hard look at the situation, Sheaffe decided a frontal attack would be doomed. Instead he marched inland, following the grain of the escarpment. He would join battle from the flank and in his own time. Meanwhile, the Vrooman’s Point battery continued to smash American boats plying back and forth across the river. During the march, Sheaffe continued receiving reinforcements. From Chippawa to the south, the garrison of the 41st came in, as did about 300 Mohawks from the Grand River Reserve. Sheaffe now had more than 400 regulars, about as many militia, and the Mohawks. But he knew the Americans holding the high ground were probably more numerous and should now be dug into a highly defensible position. Poor odds, but he was determined to root them out.9
Sheaffe was unaware of how badly disorganized and demoralized the Americans clinging to the heights were. Hundreds of militia at Lewiston still awaited boats to carry them across, but almost half had sunk or been carried off downstream. While some militiamen were anxious to support the men already across, far more refused to budge—the New Yorkers asserting their right to not serve beyond the nation’s borders. No amount of encouragement or disparagement could shift them. Thousands simply sat on the river’s edge to watch the battle like so many spectators.
