Flashman and Madison's War

by Robert Brightwell

  Flashman and Madison’s War

  This book is dedicated to the memory of those of all nations

  who fought in the now largely forgotten conflict known as

  the War of 1812.

  Copyright © Robert Brightwell 2015

  Published in 2015 by Grinning Bandit Books

  http://grinningbandit.webnode.com

  Smashwords Edition

  Robert Brightwell asserts the moral right

  to be identified as the author of this work.

  This ebook may not be reproduced or copied

  except for the use of the original purchaser.

  Introduction

  This is the fifth instalment in the memoirs of the Georgian Englishman Thomas Flashman, which were recently discovered on a well-known auction website. Thomas is the uncle of the notorious Victorian rogue Harry Flashman, whose memoirs have already been published, edited by George MacDonald Fraser.

  This book finds Thomas, a British army officer, landing on the shores of the United States at the worst possible moment – just when the United States has declared war with Britain! Having already endured enough with his earlier adventures, he desperately wants to go home but finds himself drawn inexorably into this new conflict. He is soon dodging musket balls, arrows and tomahawks as he desperately tries to keep his scalp intact and on his head.

  It is an extraordinary tale of an almost forgotten war, with inspiring leaders, incompetent commanders, a future American president, terrifying warriors (and their equally intimidating women), brave sailors, trigger-happy madams and a girl in a wet dress who could have brought a city to a standstill. Flashman plays a central role and reveals that he was responsible for the disgrace of one British general, the capture of another and for one of the biggest debacles in British military history.

  As editor I have restricted myself to checking the historical accuracy of the scarcely credible facts detailed in the book and adding a series of notes at the end to provide more information on the characters and events featured. Flashman often uses the term ‘Indian’ to refer to Native Americans/First Nation people, which I have not amended. To change to modern terminology would jar with the rest of the book and cause confusion, for example the Iroquois referred to themselves as the Six Nations and native peoples fought on both sides in this conflict.

  The memoirs of Thomas’ more famous nephew, Harry Flashman, edited by George MacDonald Fraser, are as always strongly recommended.

  RDB

  Lake Erie Map

  Niagara River Map

  Chapter 1 – Queenston Canada, 13th of October 1812

  I stumbled over a root. When I put my foot down a twig snapped with a sound that seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silent forest. The man to my right glanced over at me. It was probably a look of disapproval, but it was hard to tell in that nightmare of a face. Peering around, I saw dozens of the sinister figures flitting through the trees in absolute silence. Even though they were supposed to be on my side, they still made the hair on the back of my neck prickle in alarm. My companion gently grabbed my elbow and steered me towards a trail of moss patches that I could cross without making any further noise. He was naked but for a deerskin loin cloth and his tanned body was covered in painted patterns and swirls, but it was not his torso that drew your tremulous gaze. The skin over both jaws was painted black while another wide red stripe was coloured across his face from his eyebrows to the bridge of his nose. Above that his head was shaved apart from a tufted topknot, which was adorned with feathers, scraps of cloth and what looked like a silver hatpin.

  The black part of his face split to reveal two smiling rows of yellow teeth. “We will soon be up to them,” my companion whispered. “And then we will avenge the Great Father.” The most incongruous thing was that the savage spoke in perfect English. His accent would not have been out of place in the English court. Indeed, I had just discovered that he had attended royalty in London and counted the Duke of Northumberland amongst his particular friends. Quite what His Grace would have made of the man’s current appearance beggared belief; mind you they are wild sorts up in Northumberland.

  The ‘Great Father’ he spoke off was Britain’s best general in Canada, Isaac Brock, the man who had recently captured Detroit and proved that Britain could defend itself in this strange war against the United States. He was the man who had ordered me to stay with the savages and he was very clear that he did not trust my companion.

  “Watch your back, Flashman,” Brock had warned. “Even though they say that they are fighting on our side, I don’t doubt that they would stick a knife in your back and scalp you if there was a profit in it.” Oh he was a cheery motivator of men was General Brock, not that it did him any good. For at dawn that day the Americans had launched their invasion of Canada, crossing the River Niagara at Queenston. Initially the British had held most of them off, with a gun on the heights bombarding their boats. Brock had ordered the company of men guarding the battery on the heights to come down into the town to help with the hand to hand fighting against the invaders. He did not think that the Americans would find a way up the cliffs in the half-light, but he was wrong. Some wily American regulars ascended the steep slope and the British gun crew barely had time to spike the gun before they ran for their lives. The heights were the commanding position of the battlefield and had to be recaptured. As American reinforcements gathered on the hilltop, Brock personally led two hundred men from the town up the open ground facing the American position. The Yankee sharpshooters with their rifles were deadly and Brock was the obvious leader of the attack in his cocked hat and gold epaulets. He got nowhere near the American position before he was shot down and killed.

  When I arrived on the scene two hours later with my new native comrades, they seemed genuinely puzzled as to why the Great Father would have charged headlong towards a large, well-entrenched enemy over ground with no cover. They shook their heads in dismay and muttered among themselves before starting to melt away into the nearby forest. It looked like they were going home already.

  Brock had told me that when he had attacked Detroit, their war chief had demanded gifts and money for hundreds of warriors, but had only arrived with sixty. Of those, half had refused to fight and the rest had been of little use. He had been contemptuous of these Iroquois Indians, claiming that they were far inferior to the western Indian tribes led by their chief, Tecumseh.

  “The Iroquois won’t fight but we need them with the army,” he had told me. “If they are left on their Grand River reservation then my militia soldiers will be worrying about the Indians raiding their homesteads while they are serving with their regiments.” He gave a snort of disgust before adding, “You are an Indian man, you must understand.”

  It took me a moment to work out why Brock had thought I was an expert in Native American affairs. I had only just arrived for the first time in Canada and if someone had told me to look for a Mohawk I would have been searching the skies for a bird. But then I remembered that the letter of introduction I had carried from the governor general had mentioned, as well as my peninsular service, that I had also served in India. Perhaps Brock thought that all Indians were alike. I was about to correct him when I remembered his claim that the Indians would not fight. I had suffered enough for my country and had been looking forward to going home before I had been shanghaied into this new conflict. If my duties were going to be nurse-maiding a bunch of natives that were allowed to shirk away from every danger, well that was just nuts to me. I was no stranger to the art of shirking danger myself and if I could do it with official sanction, then so much the better.

  “Well it has been a while since I served with Indian soldiers, sir,” I told Brock, slapping m
y hand around the gold-hilted sword that I had won during a battle in India. “But I will do my best not to let you down.”

  Of course that was before I had even met an Iroquois warrior, and a damned alarming sight they were when I did clap eyes on them. I’ll own that I did not feel that sorry to see them drifting off into the forest once they learned that Brock was dead. I know the war paint was designed to frighten their enemies but I can tell you that on brief acquaintance, it was more than a bit unnerving for their allies too.

  Another relief force of British and Canadian militia was already on its way. They would try to dislodge the Americans from the heights, but it would be hot work. Once the Americans got a foothold on the Canadian shore, their militia would pour across. It looked like the doom mongers amongst the Canadian officials I had spoken to would be proved right: the Americans would easily invade Canada. Certainly one British officer would make no difference. With the general dead and the Indians apparently abandoning the scene, I was minded to follow their example. There was bound to be confusion over the coming hours, and in all probability a rout and retreat. It made sense to get a head start.

  I felt no loyalty then to Canada and its arbitrarily drawn border and certainly none to those strange savages. I thought that if I could get back to Quebec without being overtaken by the American militia, I might still get a ship home. I was just walking back to my horse when I heard a voice call my name. It was the war chief, the Indian with the red and black stripes over his face. He had a long unpronounceable Indian name that started with a ‘T’; mercifully he also had an English name: John Norton.

  “Flashman,” he called again. “Come on; leave your horse, we need to get moving.”

  “Where are you going?” I replied.

  “Going?” repeated Norton and then he gestured with his musket up the hill towards the American position. “We are going to war!”

  Chapter 2

  It was one of the strangest conflicts that I have ever fought in. It is now known as the War of 1812, which is typically misleading as most of the fighting took place in 1813 and 1814. I started it as a prisoner of the United States and I am sure that that most Americans and Canadians did not want to fight. The citizens of New England and Nova Scotia certainly didn’t. They largely managed to ignore the war completely and continued to trade with each other throughout the conflict. The Americans supplied grain that was used to feed Canadian and British forces, while in return the Canadians supplied manufactured goods including Sheffield steel blades. Merchants on both sides saw no reason to lose profits when there were ready markets to supply. Their representatives had not voted for the war and they did not want it.

  “Even if we invade Canada we do not have the men to hold it,” my Boston gaoler told me. “When the British war with France ends they will turn on us with all their veteran troops, and their ships will blockade our ports.”

  The American merchant captain who had rescued me from France and inadvertently delivered me to a new captivity agreed. Several times he visited me in prison and was adamant that the war would be a disaster for his country. “Even now the Royal Navy must have over fifty vessels in our waters compared to our navy of just five frigates fit for sea. They will be able to bankrupt the country by cutting off our trade.”

  When I eventually got into Canada on one of those trading ships I found that the British and Canadians were similarly pessimistic. There were just two British regiments of regular soldiers then in Canada, and they were demoralised as they had been due to return home. The rest of the Canadian forces were militia, more interested in farming than fighting. Many had moved to Canada from America and had no great loyalty to their new country. Against this meagre force the Americans had passed acts to increase their army first to thirty-five thousand and then fifty thousand men. In addition state governors were required to raise a further eighty thousand as militia.

  Britain was already fighting France and that conflict would have the first call on available troops and ships. The Canadian authorities were told that they would simply have to manage with what they had. At any moment they expected swarms of American soldiers to come pouring over the border. To make matters worse the one area where the British had expected to do well, fighting at sea, had also gone against them. Early naval engagements had all been won by the Americans, with the USS Constitution smashing HMS Guerriere to matchwood.

  But the strangest thing about the war was that no one seemed entirely clear on why the countries were fighting at all. The main grievance of the Americans was the way that the British navy intercepted their shipping and removed any crew that they judged were deserters from the Royal Navy. I’ll admit that the British took a high handed approach here. In 1807 HMS Leopard even intercepted an American frigate in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, and after a brief engagement, removed some of her crew. The Americans welcomed British deserters as United States citizens and issued thousands of protection papers, which were also forged and traded among British sailors awaiting the opportunity to jump ship. The British navy was not willing to let its prime seamen escape so easily and generally disregarded these identity documents. If a man looked like a Jack Tar and spoke like a Jack Tar, he was bound for a flogging and a hammock in one of His Majesty’s ships.

  Tragically the British parliament took a fraction too long to consider the American complaints. The ship from London carrying the message that various restrictions on US shipping had been repealed passed another ship in the Atlantic going in the opposite direction, containing the declaration of war. When news of the British concessions was announced even the American army commander thought that it was enough to end the war and a cessation to hostilities was agreed. That was when my Boston gaolers took the opportunity to rid themselves of their prisoner. I was put on a grain ship to the Canadian port of Halifax, which carried papers protecting it from any action by the Royal Navy.

  When I arrived on Canadian soil I had fully expected to be able to catch a passage back to Britain on the next available ship. After all I had not been home for over three years and had suffered enough in the Peninsular War, not to mention my recent exploits in Paris. No, a safe berth and a warm bed was what I deserved. Instead, I was told that no army officer of my experience could possibly be allowed home until the American president had ratified the end of hostilities. I fretted impatiently for several weeks waiting for confirmation that this brief war was over. The Americans had got most of what they wanted and their President Madison was being congratulated for his skill in forcing Britain to negotiate. Then to everyone’s amazement, word came through that the daft bastard wanted to continue the fight.

  There was much speculation as to the reasons why, what was then known as ‘Madison’s War,’ would continue. To this day few make much sense. Some claimed that the British concessions over interference with American trade had not gone far enough. Other high minded northern liberals compared naval impressment with slavery and there was much rhetoric about lifting the fetters of oppression. Yet more suggested that it was opportunism; as Bonaparte would crush the British once he had defeated the Russians. But there were also claims that the British were supporting Indians in their raids on American citizens. Invade Canada, it was maintained, and you would cut off the Indians from their British support. Curiously though, it was the states from New York northwards, along the Canadian border, who voted against war. The vote was seventy-nine to forty-nine in favour of hostilities, with those from Pennsylvania southwards the most belligerent.

  In the end it was probably politics that continued the conflict. Having announced the confrontation with much fanfare, those in favour of the war in Washington, known as the ‘war hawks,’ were reluctant to stop it. They knew that the British government’s concessions had been granted before it even knew that the war had started. Perhaps more could be obtained once hostilities were underway. There were also American elections coming up; Madison needed the support of the war hawks and no one wanted to lose face.

  The loca
l merchants on both sides of the border were appalled at the decision, but their dismay was nothing to mine. I found myself embarked on a ship up the St Lawrence River, bound for Quebec, where I was to report for duty. It was a journey that led to that wooded hillside on the Queenston Heights.

  The wood ran up the spine of the hill that approached the river and ended at the abandoned gun position. If I could have seen through the trees, the town of Queenston was to my left at the bottom of the hill on the river bank. Sporadic shooting indicated that this was still being contested by the British and American forces. To my right the strip of forest that we were walking through ended in more open ground facing the Americans. A sudden crash of cannon fire indicated that British guns in the town were still exchanging fire with the American guns across the river.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the rest of the relief force before we go any further?” I had whispered the words to John Norton, but the burst of cannon fire had nearly drowned them out.

  “No, we will fight them the Indian way, not like the white man’s fighting.” He grinned and added, “If we make the warriors wait they will drift off; their blood is up for a fight now.” I still found that hideously painted face unnerving, but I nodded in understanding. In fact I did not really comprehend his meaning at all. I had no idea what the Indian way of fighting was, but I was about to find out.

  We pressed on through the trees, the Iroquois advancing in six long files of men, well spaced out. There were over two hundred warriors in the group and they moved silently through the woodland. We must have covered several hundred yards when suddenly we heard something or someone crashing through the trees towards us. Norton grabbed my arm and pulled me down amongst the scrub. I lay listening to whatever was approaching. It was making far too much noise for an animal; it was human. Several running men, I guessed. We tensed for the ambush and then there was a partly muffled shriek and several thuds as bodies hit the floor. Norton got up and ran over to where several men were struggling desperately against their Indian captors. One had already pissed himself in terror and looking at the nightmare figures holding them down, I did not blame him. As I appeared their wide eyes stared at my British officer’s red coat in a mute appeal for clemency, while their captors kept hands firmly over their mouths.