“Most of the people have lost confidence,” he wrote to one of his brothers. “I, however, speak loud and look big.” 3
Isaac Brock was a natural leader with a reputation for boldness and quick thinking. His ability to bluff was legendary. In his youth, he had been challenged to a duel. He had accepted, stating that he would fight the duel, but not at the usual 30 paces. Instead, he and his opponent would fire at each other over a handkerchief. His opponent had quickly backed down. This kind of quick thinking helped Brock to even the odds against the Americans before the first volley had even been fired. As soon as he heard that war had been declared, Brock passed the news Amherstburg, more than 300 kilometres away at the northwest end of Lake Erie. Shortly after Brock’s courier arrived at the quiet fort on the banks of the Detroit River, the American schooner Cuyahoga Packet blithely sailed past, on its way to Fort Detroit, Michigan. A young French Canadian lieutenant at the fort, Frederic Rolette, ordered a British captain and six sailors into a longboat. The men calmly approached the Cuyahoga Packet, boarded her, and told the captain and crew they were prisoners of war. The Americans were stunned — they’d had no idea that war had even been declared.
The capture of the Cuyahoga Packet had provided Brock with some critical information. The boat had been carrying correspondence from William Hull, an American general who was slogging his way through the forests of western Michigan, en route to Fort Detroit. Hull, it turned out, was also oblivious of his country’s declaration of war.
The correspondence found on the Cuyahoga Packet confirmed what Brock had already suspected. Once Hull reached Fort Detroit, he would launch an attack on the village of Sandwich, near Fort Amherstburg. The correspondence also revealed that Hull felt he had greatly overestimated his enemy’s strength, and that he was terrified at the prospect of fighting the Native warriors who were aligned with the British. Further, his army was small and demoralized. Brock estimated it would take Hull at least four weeks to reach Fort Detroit, and he planned to pay him a visit there. But first he arranged to deliver a blow to the Americans on another frontier. During the tedious years before the war, Brock had been quietly placing his men in strategic areas so they would be ready for the Americans’ opening move. Since that war had been declared, he sent a missive to Robert Dickson, one of his leaders. Dickson, a Scott known as “the red-haired man,” had married a Sioux woman. His loyalties were with the Native peoples who had accepted him as one of their own. He considered himself a Sioux warrior.
Dickson and his 250 warriors had already joined a group of pensioned British soldiers at St. Joseph Island in the northern arm of Lake Huron. When they received word from Brock on July 17, the warriors and old soldiers, accompanied by a handful of fur traders, immediately followed his orders. Under cover of darkness, they silently paddled across Lake Huron to Michilimackinac Island. The island, which had been reluctantly abandoned by the British following the American War of Independence, had been crucial to the western fur trade — and would be again. After quietly waking the villagers and taking them to safety, the old soldiers, along with Dickson and his men, confronted Porter Hanks, the American commander. Terrified at the sight of the Native warriors, Hanks immediately surrendered the fort.
For Brock, it was an important moral victory, albeit a bloodless one. The British had won the first battle. It also sent a clear message to the Native peoples: the British were willing to fight and able to win. The distribution of spoils from the capture sent another message: there were rewards to be had if one sided with the British. Despite orders from his superiors to act defensively only, Brock immediately attempted to provoke a fight with General Hull. On August 15, he ordered an artillery barrage of Fort Detroit. Then he audaciously demanded that the Americans surrender. Safe within the walls of the fort with a large contingent of soldiers, Hull, not surprisingly, refused.
Later that night, after the guns had faded into silence, Brock sent the Shawnee war chief Tecumseh and 500 of his warriors across the Detroit River. Once across, they silently surrounded the fort and stayed hidden in the dense forest. With 500 Native warriors, 7000 local militia, and barely 300 regular soldiers,4 Brock knew his men were hopelessly outnumbered. To compensate, he used the two strategies that he became famous for. First, he ordered the British soldiers to give the militia their spare uniforms. There were not enough uniforms to go around, so they shared them — a bright red jacket here, a pair of white breeches there. Then he invoked the second part of the plan. On the morning of August 16, after leading this ragtag army across the river, Brock organized the men into columns and ordered them to march at twice the usual distance from one another. To the Americans watching from the fort, Brock’s troops seemed twice as numerous as they really were.
Brock rode at the head of the line, his great height and red and gold uniform making him an easy target. When an aide suggested that Brock would be safer somewhere within the column, he refused. He would not, he said, ask his men to go where he was not willing to lead.5 Just as the British came within range of the American guns, Brock veered off and led his men into the safety of a nearby ravine. Remembering Hull’s fear of Native warriors, Brock had ordered Tecumseh to parade his troops across a field in full view of the fort immediately after the army and militia had taken refuge in the ravine. The warriors crossed the field, disappeared into the forest, and doubled back to the place where they had begun their march. Then they marched again — and again. General Hull was convinced he was facing 1,500 warriors and over a thousand British regulars.
The Death of Brock at Queenston Heights.
The terrified Hull, who had his daughter and grandson inside the fort, asked for a three-day truce. Brock gave him three hours, then frightened the hapless general even more by telling him the lie that the Native warriors would “be beyond control the moment the contest commences.”6 Hull immediately surrendered. Brock and Tecumseh rode into the fort side by side. Brock was resplendent in his uniform, and wore a beaded sash — a gift from Tecumseh — tied around his waist. Tecumseh, in his far simpler fringed buckskin, looked equally impressive.
Brock had, it is said, gifted Tecumseh with his own military sash. But Tecumseh, with a customary lack of conceit, had given it to another chief, Walk in Water, whom he considered of higher rank than himself.
Brock had won another decisive victory. But such victories would soon be harder to come by. The United States military commanders decided to focus their next attacks on the Niagara Region and in a hard fought battle there, Brock was killed leading his men in a charge up the infamous Queenston Heights. His men rallied at his death and managed to turn the battle around just in time. By that time, the commander was so well respected that men on both sides of the border attended his funeral.
After that, the longest undefended border in the world erupted in flames. Raids were launched and battles fought in numerous towns and forts along the border: Fort Erie, Frenchman’s Creek, River Raisin, Brockville, and Ogdensburg. In a victory more symbolic than strategic, the Americans burned down the Canada East capital of York. A few months later, the British and Canadians would launch a retaliatory raid of their own on the American capital of Washington D.C., burning down the White House and forcing the president to flee.
Ordinary Canadians, many of whom had only recently fled the American Revolution as Loyalists, were drawn into the war effort. Homes and farms were looted and served as battlegrounds. In one small house in Brockville, the Americans barged in and demanded to be fed supper. While they ate, the young mistress of the house listened avidly to their conversation and then trudged 32 kilometres through swampy terrain to warn the Canadian commander, Lieutenant James Fitzgibbon, of an impending American attack. Laura Secord is credited with ensuring the success of the Canadian forces at Beaver Dams against a much larger American force.
As the war dragged on, the violence became more pronounced. Atrocities were committed on both sides. In one horrifying incident the entire town of Newark was destroyed in a raid lead by t
he Canadian traitor, Joseph Willcocks.
At dusk on December 10, 1813, Willcocks and his men, accompanied by a few American militiamen, rode into the town of Newark. They were incensed that the American commanders had earlier called a retreat across the Niagara River.
The Battle of Lundy’s Lane.
As Willcocks and his men surveyed the town, the townspeople were warned to take what they could from their homes and leave. It had been snowing all day and it was bitterly cold. Willcocks started the burn at the home of an old political foe, a Loyalist by the name of William Dickson who had already been arrested. Willcocks carried the firebrand himself. He went upstairs to find the elderly Mrs. Dickson in bed. She was too ill to walk, so he ordered two of his men to carry her outside. The men wrapped the old woman in blankets and set her in a snowdrift. She watched in anguish as Willcocks burned her home to the ground.
There were other, equally horrific stories from that night. One young widow with three small children was turned out of her home with nothing but a few coins. After Willcocks’s men plundered and torched her home, they took her money as well. In all, 400 women, children, and elderly men were turned out into the snow that night.
William Merritt, the captain of the Provincial Dragoons cavalry unit, had been on an assignment in Beaver Dams that day with British Force Commander Colonel Murray. As they were making their way back home, they saw the eerie orange glow of the fires in Newark. They guessed what had happened and raced to the scene, but they were already too late. Of all the horrifying scenes Merritt had witnessed during this war that was the worst. All that was left of Newark were glowing embers and charred buildings. Of the 150 homes in the town, only one remained standing. The townspeople had crowded into every room until the house could hold no more. Those left outside huddled in the drifts and beneath makeshift shelters. Some, terrified there might be more attacks, had stumbled off into the freezing night to seek shelter at outlying farms.
The streets were scattered with the remnants of a once prosperous town. Furniture, clothing, dishes, and personal treasures were everywhere, all abandoned by people too cold to carry them. The next morning, Merritt and his men found the frozen bodies of the women and children who had been seeking shelter outside the town. They had lost their way in the blackness of the night. As many as 100 women and children had perished that night in Newark — Willcocks had certainly had his revenge. Soldiers and civilians were equally horrified at this atrocity. The burning of Newark, more than any other action in the war, united the Canadian and British troops and the civilians.
On the Atlantic coast the British maintained a tight blockade and Canadian privateers harried the coast, but it was the Americans who dominated the inland water. By 1813, the Americans had Lake Erie in a stranglehold, with a seemingly unbreakable blockade at Amherstburg on the Detroit River. When Sir James Yeo sailed into Lake Ontario to assume his new position as commodore and commander in chief of the British Navy in the Canadian Great Lakes, he immediately decided that he needed to concentrate his attention on Lake Ontario. Lake Erie was expendable, Lake Ontario, which served as a vital supply line for troops on the Niagara frontier, was not. That philosophy left the Lake Erie force chronically short of ships, men, and supplies. The American blockade made the situation much worse. Food supplies at Amherstburg were running out and there was no more money to pay the army. Sailors had been put at half-rations.
The first major attempt by the British to regain control of the lakes ended in defeat at Sackets Harbour. With the American Navy preoccupied with supporting a raid on Fort George, the British commanders saw an opportunity to attack the American naval base at Sackets Harbour. Then they would burn the newly completed American frigate USS General Pike. The British lay anchor several kilometres offshore and the soldiers quickly climbed into flat bottom boats to make their way to shore. They’d gone only a little way before Lieutenant-Governor Prevost thought he saw ships in the distance and, fearing the return of the main American fleet, called the men back. It was a false alarm, but Prevost still refused to call on the attack and they waited until morning. This gave the Americans time to call out the militia. What was supposed to be a quick and easy victory for the British had turned into a complete rout.
Finally, the British naval and army commanders at Fort Erie, Robert Barclay and Henry Proctor, felt that they had no choice. Barclay suggested that waiting was still the more prudent approach but Proctor was adamant: they had to break through the American blockade. The battle of Lake Erie raged for four violent hours, with devastating losses on both sides, before the British finally surrendered.
For the first time in the over 300 year history of the British Navy, it had been handed a complete defeat of one of its fleets. The American response to the victory was surprisingly understated. “We have met the enemy,” wrote Oliver Hazard Perry, “and they are ours.” The defeat forced the British and Canadians to abandon Fort Amherstburg, leaving the field open to Indiana Governor William Henry Harrison, who quickly launched an invasion and pursued Proctor all the way up the Thames River. For months to come, the Americans would dominate Lake Erie.
Terrified of losing the Native alliance, the British tried to convince Tecumseh that the British had won the battle of Lake Erie. Tecumseh was no fool. He knew the British had been defeated, and he suspected they were planning to retreat. Retreating from the Americans was unthinkable to the proud chief. But since he was in an alliance with the British he had no choice. On October 5, 1813, while covering the British retreat up the Thames River with the Canadian militia, Tecumseh decided to make his last stand. He positioned his warriors on the far edge of a great swamp, and placed Proctor and his men to the left on some high ground between the Thames River and the swamp. He told the militia to take up a position between the two groups. Reviewing the position of the British, Tecumseh cautioned Proctor to stand firm. Then he returned to the swamp to wait. There was no trace of the compassionate, literate man. With war paint on his face, and hate in his eyes, he was the quintessential warrior. The American troops arrived at the battleground. The two armies faced each other for several hours, barely 275 metres apart, while the Americans formed their lines. Finally, they were ready for combat. One battalion charged the British, and then a group of Kentucky militiamen advanced towards Tecumseh. The hardened men yelled, “Remember River Raisin” — the site of a British-Native victory and a subsequent scalping earlier in the war — as they spurred their horses forward. As Tecumseh had predicted, the horses got bogged down in the thick marsh, and the Americans were forced to continue on foot. Tecumseh’s warriors cut them down.
The respite did not last long. The British line had broken and Proctor’s soldiers were running for their lives. Tecumseh and his men had been abandoned. Harrison’s troops closed in. When the warriors ran out of ammunition they fought on with their tomahawks. Tecumseh’s chilling war cry echoed through the forest; then it was silenced. The great chief was never found. It is generally believed the warriors took his body with them when they retreated. There is no official record of Tecumseh’s death and no official marker over his final resting place. But to this day the Shawnee elders say they know where he is buried and that the location of his grave has been passed down from one generation of select leaders to the next.
Wherever Tecumseh lies, the hopes of a Native peoples’ confederacy were buried with him. The grand alliance between the Native peoples and the British was finished. The last of the nations made peace with the Americans, and the lands that Tecumseh had fought to keep free were sold to settlers. The Native peoples of Tecumseh’s generation lived the rest of their lives on small parcels of reserved lands.
In the spring of 1813, with their advance into Upper Canada at a standstill, the Americans turned their attention to the less heavily defended Lower Canada. Their aim was to capture Montreal and cut-off the critical British supply line from the Atlantic. They discussed their plans in detail, unaware that Canadian spies were eavesdropping and taking the information
back to a young lieutenant-colonel in the British Army. This officer, a French Canadian aristocrat with the imposing name of Charles-Michel d’Irumberry de Salaberry, was aware of every move the Americans made.
The French Canadians were the wild card in the British deck of support. No one was really certain where their loyalty would lie in the coming conflict. The Americans were counting on the French Canadians to support them. They felt the French Canadians were repressed under the British and would be anxious to escape from British “tyranny.” But they were wrong. Most French Canadians disliked and distrusted American-style democracy. They were eager to protect their religion, culture, and language and the British had promised that those would all be protected under their administration.
In late September, the Americans began moving their troops into Lower Canada. This time, they had a sophisticated strategy: a two-pronged attack on Montreal. The plan was for one army to march along the banks of the Châteauguay River, while a second, larger force made its way up the St. Lawrence River by boat. The two rivers run parallel to each other: the Châteauguay runs slightly to the south and joins the St. Lawrence a few kilometres south of Montreal. The two armies met near Kahnawake, about 30 kilometres south of Montreal, to converge on the city. The invasion force was huge — there were more than 10,000 soldiers.
Spies During the War of 1812
During the War of 1812 both the Canadians and Americans relied heavily on spies from both sides of the border. The Canadian “traitor” Joseph Willcocks was one of the most valuable tools in the American spy arsenal. A member of parliament, Willcocks became convinced that Canada was about to fall to the Americans. He offered his services to the American Secretary of War and began to feed him infor-mation about British troop movements. Eventually, Willcocks left Canada to join the American Army as a colonel. He recruited a force of Canadians to accompany him and in 1814, 15 of those men were captured by the Canadians and eight were eventually sentenced to hang. After the hanging, they were decapitated and their heads put on display as a warning to other potential traitors. Willcocks was still safely fighting for the Americans. Toward the end of the war he led the Americans in an attack on the undefended village of Newark, which he had previously represented in the legislature. The village was burned to the ground in one of the worst atrocities of the war.
Canada Under Attack Page 9
