Flashman and Madison's War

by Robert Brightwell

  At either end of the Niagara River there are two forts, one on the British shore and one on the American one. At the southern end of the river the Americans had a fort at Buffalo while on the British bank we had Fort Erie. Word soon came that the Americans were crossing the river at its southern end in a determined attack on Fort Erie.

  Everyone seemed to think that the British garrison would hold out for at least a few days and so General Riall summoned his forces to march south to relieve it. Riall had around two thousand regular soldiers, but they were scattered all over the peninsula. He gathered them together by the Chippawa River, which was the first major obstacle that the Americans would face if they headed north from Fort Erie.

  The meeting point was the bridge over the Chippawa River, it was just a couple of miles south from our camp and so we were one of the first ones there. A small village had grown up around the bridge and soon it was filling with members of the three regiments that made up Riall’s command. None of these were Peninsular War veterans; instead they were regiments that had been fighting in Canada since the outbreak of hostilities – which meant that they had considerably more experience than their commander. Riall arrived early the next morning with a large body of men that included a group of Indians from the western tribes. While Norton went off to meet this other war band, I slipped on my officer’s uniform and went to report to Riall.

  He had ridden over the bridge and with several of his staff officers had gone to survey a large expanse of clear land bordered by the Niagara River on the left and thick forest to the right.

  “Ah, Major Flashman, it is good to see you,” he called as I rode up. “Are your warriors here and ready for battle?”

  “My compliments, General and yes they most certainly are. Are we expecting a battle here, sir? I thought we were to march to relieve Fort Erie?”

  “Ah, we may have to fight here first.” Riall beamed at the prospect and seemed in an ebullient mood. “Some of their fellows seem to have marched north to head us off. Look you can see some of the rascals at the far end of the clearing. They probably wanted to capture the bridge before we got here.”

  I gazed across the clearing and saw perhaps a hundred men moving about in front of the trees. They were wearing short light grey jackets instead of the long navy coats of the regular army. I had not seen soldiers in grey before. I raised my glass just in time to see another file of these strange troops appear. With immaculate precision they wheeled around to their left to form up in a line facing us. “They are wearing strange coats; do we know what kind of troops they are?”

  “Well they are not wearing blue, so they must be militia,” stated Riall firmly. “They will put up little resistance to our regulars. I suspect that most of their best troops will still be trying to capture Fort Erie, so we should have the advantage of numbers as well.”

  “Well they march as well as any guardsman in London,” I pointed out. “Their drilling would not be out of place on the parade ground at Horseguards.”

  “They threw our advance guard back pretty smartly too, according to its commander,” commented a familiar voice from behind. When I looked around I saw Fforbes still watching the grey troops though his own glass.

  “Perhaps the advance guard are just making excuses to cover their own tardy performance,” responded Riall tartly. “I tell you, gentlemen, that these are militia, they have to be, dressed like that. I have seen militia march very smartly in the West Indies. They will probably have some rich colonel who likes his men well turned out. You should be grateful that he has spent his money on their uniforms and drilling rather than cannon, for I have yet to see any artillery.”

  “With respect, sir,” started Fforbes, “we don’t know precisely who they are or how many troops the enemy has. It would be prudent to wait until our scouts can get more information.”

  The general wheeled his horse around so that he could glare at the knot of officers behind him. “I sometimes wonder how you ever won a battle before I got here,” he sneered. “You are like a huddle of timid old women. I tell you again, their best troops will be surrounding Fort Erie. This is just a regiment of some hick militia trying to get in our way. It seems that I have to remind you that our duty is to sweep this enemy away so that we can march on the fort to relieve the siege without delay.”

  “Yes sir,” we all chorused awkwardly.

  Riall snapped his glass closed to signal that the discussion was over. Then he turned to me. “Now, Major, whoever those troops are, I would like you to take your warriors down the edge of the forest so that you can attack their flank. Fforbes here tells me that is how your warriors like to fight.”

  “Yes sir,” I confirmed smartly. Then remembering the debacle of Moraviantown I thought I would risk his ire by asking a further question. “Do we know if the Americans have any cavalry?”

  Evidently Riall was not sure and so he just glared at Fforbes for an answer.

  “No, those watching the river reported that they have brought hardly any horsemen across the Niagara so far.”

  “Excellent,” I sighed with relief. Turning to Riall I added, “Rest assured, sir, that my men will do an excellent job of ambushing those soldiers. Whoever they are, I doubt that they would be foolish enough to follow the warriors into the trees.”

  “Well said, Major. That is the kind of positive response I expect from all my commanders.” Riall glared pointedly at his other staff officers before adding, “I am sending the other Indians and some militia light troops down there as well. We will see how the Americans cope with you attacking their left flank and the rest of our force attacking their front.” He rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. “I think we can confidently anticipate a solid victory, gentlemen.”

  I rode away feeling well pleased with myself. Riall had placed the Iroquois exactly where I would have chosen. If those strange grey-jacketed soldiers were militia, they would never stand a chance when attacked on two fronts and even regulars would struggle. Either way any infantry would know better than to chase Indians into a forest and besides, there was a huge expanse of woodland to retreat back into if necessary. I just needed to tell Norton but I could not see how he could possibly object. But when I galloped back to the Indian camp there was no sign of our Iroquois war chief. Several people told me that they had seen him riding into the woods with some scouts, but an hour later he had still not reappeared. The first of the militia and men from the western tribes were already making their way into position down the edge of the forest. I doubted that the Iroquois warriors would obey my command – I was not one of their chiefs – but if we did not advance soon Riall would be sending messages to ask why.

  I was just on the verge of asking Black Eagle who the tribe would view as second in command when Norton came galloping out from the trees looking worried.

  “Where have you been?” I called. “The general wants the Iroquois down at the edge of the forest with the western tribesmen.”

  “That is the last place we should be,” announced Norton quietly, checking over his shoulder to make sure that we were not being overheard. “I have just been talking to a friend among the American Iroquois. Five hundred of them came across the river with the Americans and at least three hundred and fifty of those are with the Americans in front of us.”

  “Will they attack us?” I asked feeling a sudden chill in the air.

  “Tell me, Flashman, if you were the American commander, where would you send your Iroquois warriors in the coming battle?”

  The answer was obvious; the warriors would never stand in line like other troops and no one would be better at chasing skirmishers away from the edge of the forest than other Indians. “I would send them into the trees to come up behind those shooting from the edge of the forest,” I told him. “Then those poor devils at the edge of the trees would be trapped between American warriors behind and American regular troops in front.”

  “Exactly,” agreed Norton, “and their leader Red Jacket is no fool. That is p
recisely what he is bound to do. So we will have to give him a taste of his own medicine.”

  “What do you mean? And anyway, most of the militia and the Indians from the western tribes are already moving down to the forest edge. Should we call them back?”

  “No, leave them,” said Norton, grinning now. “We will go into the forest, but deeper into the trees. With luck we will come up behind Red Jacket’s men. Then they will be trapped between our warriors and our skirmishers at the edge of the battleground.” He turned to go and organise the war band for the attack, but after a couple of paces he looked back, frowning. “You are not planning to wear that uniform in the woods, are you? That scarlet will be easily spotted and there is still a price on your head, remember.” With that he walked off leaving me staring after him with a growing sense of horror.

  I had been planning to fight in uniform because I had thought it would be perfectly safe. Riall was confident of victory and that had rubbed off on me. I had imagined us blazing away from the edge of the trees, with boundless forest to run through at the first sign of danger. Now that the forest was potentially full of hostile warriors, it put rather a different light on things. Suddenly the last place I wanted to be was in that woodland and I racked my brains for an excuse to get out of the venture altogether. I was skewered by my new rank: I had to keep Riall on side to get home and he saw me as commander of the Iroquois. He would therefore expect me to be with the warriors when they emerged, hopefully triumphant, from the trees. I had no choice but to follow the war band, but I would make damn sure I was not at the front of any attack.

  A short while later I reappeared dressed in my buckskin trousers and tunic, only to discover that I still fell far short of the sartorial standards required of an Iroquois warrior . A group of them surveyed me with the steely disapproval of a dowager duchess at a debutantes’ ball.

  “You still look like a white man,” declared Morag critically. To make sure she had my full attention she added, “If you are caught they will hang you if they still have those wanted posters.”

  “Yes, you should look more like me,” agreed Black Eagle. That seemed unlikely; the giant was a foot taller and broader than I was, covered in war paint and weapons, and it would be the deuce of a hot day before I went to war dressed in just a leather loin cloth.

  “Well I am not taking off my trousers,” I insisted emphatically and possibly for the first time.

  “At least lose the tunic,” ordered Morag, “and we will need to do something with your face and hair.” Within a moment there were several of them round me, pulling and primping to their hearts’ content while the object of their endeavours had very little say in what was happening. My tunic was pulled off and as I only just managed to stop them shaving me a top knot, they relented with a scarf around my head. Several feathers were tucked into it while Black Eagle got to work on my war paint. Soon I had a wide red stripe over my eyes and a black one over my jaw, like the other warriors. Mine, though, were probably crooked as I was not exactly a willing canvas. Morag and the others got involved painting swirls on my body, which, apart from making me squirm as they went on, were supposed to make me harder to spot in the trees. They wanted me to leave my sword behind too as it was not a typical warrior’s weapon but I dug my heels in there. My sword was a lucky talisman that had been with me many years – and it was a damn good job I did. I was not the only one to be carrying additional weapons; while we all had muskets or rifles and tomahawks, a few also carried bows and arrows as they had at Queenston. More than a handful had vicious spears for close quarter fighting. None of the warriors carried bayonets as most used their tomahawks in hand to hand combat.

  Soon the war band was ready with warrior Flashy to the fore.

  “That is much better,” claimed Norton when he saw me, failing to hide his amusement at my appearance. “Be silent and watchful,” he shouted as he led the way into the trees. “Let’s show them how the Grand River warriors fight!”

  Chapter 30

  We advanced through the trees in a single column for about half a mile. I was at its head with Norton, Black Eagle and Smoke Johnson, while the rest of the warriors trailed silently behind us. Compared to my clumsy approach through the woods at Queenston over a year before, I had now become quite competent at stalking quietly through the trees; but even with my best efforts, the trees were not silent. There was the distant crackle of small arms from the warriors and troops at the edge of the forest. I pitied the poor devils who were still ignorant of the horrors creeping up behind them, not that I was in any rush to find those horrors myself. When Norton signalled a halt the whole line turned to its left and began to move towards the edge of the trees in a long extended line. We had barely gone a hundred yards in the new direction when we heard distant war whoops and a cacophony of screams and yells.

  “That will be the American tribesmen attacking those at the forest edge,” whispered Norton. Some of the warriors began to go faster then, anxious to find the enemy, but I was content to continue my slow cautious approach. To my surprise, Norton and around thirty warriors at my end of the line, kept to my pace. I wondered if he and some of the others were simply reluctant to spill Indian blood. I did not care as long as all the fighting had finished by the time I got to the clearing.

  I was feeling surprisingly relaxed until Norton whispered again. “It is good of you to stay back with me, Flashman.”

  I felt a prickle of alarm at that. I had thought I was shirking my place in an attack but Norton, a notoriously brave warrior, seemed to think I was doing him some favour. “Yes, err, why are we going slowly then?” I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  “I told you that Red Jacket is no fool. I am worried that he will have sent out his own flank guard of warriors. Certainly now most of our warriors have run forward to attack; he will know a war band was here.”

  “You mean that there could be another band of American Iroquois hunting us at this very moment?” I hissed at him feeling my heart rate quicken.

  “Almost certainly, he replied calmly. “But your guess is as good as mine as to how many there are in it. There could be a dozen or a hundred. I have sent two scouts ahead so we should have some warning.” His painted face gave me a grotesque grin before he added, “But don’t worry I am sure we will be able to handle them.”

  Don’t worry? My mind screamed the words in disbelief as I stared wildly around, suspecting every tree trunk to be hiding an enemy. We could be being tracked by a hundred hostile warriors, which seemed every reason to worry to me. For a second I considered whether now might be a good time to make an excuse and run for it. But there was one thing more terrifying than being part of a group in a forest of hostile Iroquois, and that is being alone in a forest of hostile Iroquois. When I looked around the enemy could be anywhere. It would be just my luck to blunder into them on my own. I looked down our shortened line of thirty warriors and prayed that by some miracle we would miss the American war bands.

  I noticed that the noise of battle had increased now. Instead of a crackle of fire there was now the steady crash of musket volleys and from the frequency, both sides were putting up a stout rate of fire. We were getting closer to the edge of the forest and if there was going to be an attack it would be soon. I felt a bead of sweat run down my brow despite the cool shade under the trees. Twice I had jumped and snatched my gun round on what I had thought was a hidden warrior, only to find it was just a dappled shadow of leaves as the sun shone through the canopy above. My nerves were as frayed as a pauper’s shawl when Black Eagle reached out from my right and grabbed my arm.

  “Down, Little Father,” he whispered. “That is the signal from our scouts.” I had not heard a thing but I dropped to one knee and then edged forward until I was crouched behind a knot of ferns. Norton moved away down the line and I saw Smoke Johnson on my left edging into cover while he scanned the trees ahead. We must have crouched silently for no more than a minute, but it seemed a lifetime. Every eye was probing
the undergrowth in front of us for any sign of movement. I don’t know about the others but I did not see a damn thing. In fact it was as I leaned my head towards Black Eagle to whisper that I thought no one was there, that the nightmare finally arrived. I had not yet uttered a sound but as I bent towards the big warrior I heard a slight ‘thock’ sound behind me and saw his eyes widen in alarm. I twisted round just in time to see the feathers still vibrating at the end of an arrow, now embedded in a tree trunk behind where my head had been a moment before.

  A lot happened in the next few seconds. I flung myself to the ground so that I was out of sight of the unseen bowman. Any hope that there might have been just a few warriors was dashed by what could only be described as a wall of sound coming from the trees ahead. It sounded like there were thousands of the devils all yelling their fearsome war whoops from just yards away. Some of the Grand River warriors responded in kind, but all your correspondent could manage was a rather more Anglo-Saxon string of profanities, interspersed with pleas to the Almighty to preserve my cringing carcass. As the war cry contest subsided, the musket fire began. I saw both Smoke Johnson and Black Eagle take aim and fire through the trees, but I did not even dare look up through the ferns, never mind take aim. I don’t think I have ever been so scared, and I speak from considerable experience. The dreadful war cries seared through to my very soul, turning my blood to ice and my guts to water. I was frozen in terror, unable to think or act. Then I heard the running feet and knew that they were coming towards us.

  It is hard to remember now, everything happened so quickly, but I was vaguely aware that Smoke Johnson was wrestling with two of the devils to my left and Black Eagle had two facing him to my right. The American tribesmen had run right through our line like a wave, chasing and hunting down those behind. I am sure that two ran right past me without noticing the body lying prone in the ferns, or perhaps they just assumed I was dead. My imagination was filled with an image of my broken and scalped body lying among the undergrowth and then it seemed as though the thought was a premonition. I looked up to see a warrior running towards me. He was looking directly at my horror-struck face and he was grinning wolfishly. He must have already fired his gun as he was gripping it by the barrel and raising the butt over his head. For a moment I remained transfixed by the awful vision of my impending death, but as he started to bring the brass bound butt of the gun down to dash out my brains, the spell that bound me was finally broken.