The American Invasion of Canada

by Pierre Berton

  •

  ALL OF CANADA is stunned by Brock’s loss. His own soldiers, the men of the 49th who were with him in Holland and at Copenhagen, are prostrated by the news. Of all the scenes of sorrow and despair that day, the most affecting is the one reported by Lieutenant Driscoll of the 100th Regiment, who had come up from Fort Erie to help direct artillery fire against the American battery at Black Rock. At two that afternoon Driscoll looks up to see a provincial dragoon gallop up, dishevelled, without sword or helmet, his horse bathed in foam, his own body spattered with mud.

  One of Brock’s veterans, a man named Clibborn, speaks up:

  “Horse and man jaded, sir; depend upon it, he brings bad news.” Driscoll sends the veteran across to discover what message the dragoon has brought. The soldier doubles over to the rider but returns at a funereal pace, and Driscoll realizes that something dreadful has occurred. He calls out:

  “What news, Clibborn? What news, man? Speak out.” Clibborn walks slowly toward the battery, which is still maintaining a brisk fire at the Americans across the river. Musket balls plough into the ground around him; he does not seem to see them. He cannot speak, can only shake his head. At last he slumps down on the gun platform, his features dead white, his face a mask of sorrow.

  Driscoll cannot stand the silence, shakes Clibborn by the shoulder:

  “For heaven’s sake, tell us what you know.”

  Clibborn answers at last, almost choking:

  “The General is killed; the enemy has possession of Queenston Heights.”

  At those words, every man in the battery becomes paralysed. The guns cease firing. These are men of the 49th, all of whom have served under Brock in Europe; they are shattered by the news. Some weep openly. Others mourn in silence. Several begin to curse in frustration. The sound of enemy cheers, drifting across the river, rouses them to their duty. In a helpless rage over the death of their general, they become demonic, loading, traversing, and firing the heavy guns as if they were light field pieces, flinging round after round across the river in an attempt to avenge their former chief.

  All over the province, similar expressions of grief are manifest. Glegg, Brock’s military aide, calls it “a public calamity.” Young George Ridout of the York Volunteers writes to his brother that “were it not for the death of General Brock and Macdonell our victory would have been glorious...but in losing our man...is an irreparable loss.” Like many others, Ridout is convinced that Brock was the only man capable of leading the divided province. Samuel Jarvis crosses the lake to bring the news of the tragedy to York where “the thrill of dismay... was something indescribable.”

  In Quebec, an old friend, Anne Ubert, who once volunteered to embroider some handkerchiefs for the bachelor general so the laundresses wouldn’t steal them, writes to an acquaintance that “the conquest of half the United States would not repay us for his loss...by the faces of the people here you would judge that we had lost everything, so general is the regret everyone feels for this brave man, the victory is completely swallowed up in it.” She fears for the future, wonders what the troops will do under another commander, suspects that Upper Canada will fall to the Americans before winter’s end. “This is the first real horror of war we have experienced. God send it may not lead to a train of others.”

  Prevost, when he learns of his general’s death, is so badly shaken that he can scarcely hold the pen with which to report the tragedy to Sir John Sherbrooke in Halifax. Yet he mentions the matter only briefly in that letter. And later, when a dispatch reaches him quoting the Prince Regent at some length on Brock’s heroism and ability, he publishes in the Quebec Gazette the first non-committal sentence only, omitting phrases about “an able and meritorious officer...who... displayed qualities admirably adapted to awe the disloyal, to reconcile the wavering, and animate the great mass of the inhabitants against successive attempts by the enemy to invade the province.... “

  Meanwhile, Sheaffe concludes an immediate armistice with the Americans, “the most ruinous policy that ever was or could have been adopted for the country,” to quote a nineteen-year-old subaltern, William Hamilton Merritt, the future builder of the Welland Canal. Brock, who has been knighted for the capture of Detroit (posthumously, as it develops), would certainly have pursued Van Rensselaer’s badly shaken force across the river to attack Fort Niagara and seize the northern half of New York state, but Sheaffe is a more cautious commander-Prevost’s kind of general.

  Brock’s body, brought back to Newark, lies in state for three days. His funeral, in George Ridout’s words, is “the grandest and most solemn that I have ever witnessed or that has been seen in Upper Canada.” Brock’s casket and Macdonell’s are borne through a double line of Indians and militia-five thousand men resting on reversed arms. The twin coffins are buried in the York bastion of the fort. Guns boom every minute during the procession while across the river, at both Niagara and Lewiston, the Americans fire a salute to their old enemy. Sheaffe, on hearing the American guns, is overcome and says in a choked voice to one of his officers that “noble minded as General Brock was, he would have ordered the same had a like disaster befallen the Enemy.”

  Upper Canada is numb, its people drawn closer by a common tragedy that few outsiders can comprehend. In the United States, attention is quickly diverted by another naval skirmish in which the American frigate Wasp, having incapacitated and captured the British sloop of war Frolic, is herself taken by the enemy.

  Europe is far more interested in the fate of Moscow, under attack by Napoleon, who at the very moment of the naval skirmish on October 18 is preparing to withdraw his army from the charred and deserted Russian capital. This bitter decision, still unknown to most of the world, marks the beginning of the end of the war with France. Had Madison foreseen it, the invasion of Canada, scarcely yet underway, would never have been attempted.

  With Brock’s burial, the myth takes over from the man. The following day, the Kingston Gazette reports “the last words of the dying Hero.”

  General Brock, watchful as he was brave, soon appeared in the midst of his faithful troops, ever obedient to his call, and whom [he] loved with the adoration of a father; but, alas! whilst collecting, arranging, forming, and cheering his brave followers, that great commander gloriously fell when preparing for victory- “Push on brave York ‘Volunteers,” being then near him, they were the last words of the dying Hero-Inhabitants of Upper Canada, in the day of battle remember BROCK.

  If Brock ever uttered these words it could only have been when he passed the York Volunteers on the road to Queenston. It was the 49th, his old battalion, that surrounded him at the moment of his fall. Nor do dead men utter school-book slogans. Nonetheless, the gallant injunction passes into common parlance to become almost as well known as “Don’t give up the ship,” uttered in the same war by an American naval commander whose men, on his death, did give up the ship. The phrase will be used in future years to support a further myth-that the Canadian militia really won the war. In December, the York Gazette gushes that “it must afford infinite satisfaction to every Loyal Bosom that on every occasion, the Militia of the Province has distinguished itself with an alacrity & spirit worthy of Veteran Troops.” It is not an assessment with which the dead general would have agreed, but it is a fancy that will not die. John Strachan, future bishop of Toronto, leader of the Family Compact and mentor of the young officers who formed the backbone of the York Volunteers, helps to keep it green. In Strachan’s belief, the militia “without the assistance of men or arms except a handful of regular troops” repelled the invasion.

  The picture of Brock storming the heights at Queenston, urging on the brave York Volunteers, and saving Canada in the process is the one that will remain with the fledgling nation. He is the first Canadian war hero, an Englishman who hated the provincial confines of the Canadas, who looked with disdain on the civilian leaders, who despised democracy, the militia, and the Indians, and who could hardly wait to shake the Canadian mud from his boots and bid g
oodbye forever to York, Fort George, Quebec, and all the stuffy garrison towns between. None of this matters.

  His monument will be erected on the ridge, not far from where he fell, by the leaders of a colonial aristocracy intent on shoring up power against republican and democratic trends seeping across the border. This Tuscan pillar, 135 feet high, becomes the symbol of that power-of the British way of life: the Loyalist way as opposed to the Yankee way. In 1840, a disaffected Irish Canadian named Benjamin Lett, one of William Lyon Mackenzie’s followers in his failed rebellion against an elitist autocracy, determines on one last act of defiance and chooses the obvious site: he blows up Brock’s monument. The Family Compact cannot do without its symbol, mounts a long public campaign, raises fifty thousand dollars, builds a more splendid monument, half as high again as its predecessor-taller, it is said, than any in the world save for Wren’s pillar marking London’s Great Fire. John Beverley Robinson, Strachan’s protege and the Compact’s chief justice, is on hand, of course, at the dedication, and so is his successor and fellow subaltern in the Brave York Volunteers, Mr. Justice Archibald McLean. Robinson’s spectacular career dates from Queenston Heights when, a mere law student of twenty-one, he is named acting attorney-general of the province to replace the mortally wounded Macdonell. (“I had as much thought of being made Bey of Tunis,” he recalled.) By Confederation the field on which he and McLean did battle has become, in the words of the Canadian Monthly, “one of Canada’s sacred places” and the battle, in the description of the Canadian nationalist George Denison, is “Canada’s glorious Thermopylae.”

  So Brock in death is as valuable to the ruling class as Brock in life. He will not be remembered for his real contribution to the country: his military prescience, his careful preparation for war during the years of peace, his astonishing bloodless capture of an American stronghold. When Canadians hear his name, as they often will over the years, the picture that will form in their minds will be of that final impetuous dash, splendidly heroic but tragically foolish, up the slippery heights of Queenston on a gloomy October morning.

  7

  BLACK ROCK

  Opera Bouffe on the Niagara

  Hearts of War! Tomorrow will

  be memorable in the annals

  of the United States.

  –Brigadier-General Alexander Smyth,

  November 29, 1812.

  Buffalo, NEW YORK, November 17, 1812. Brigadier-General Alexander Smyth is putting the finishing touches to a proclamation, which, like Hull’s, will return to haunt him.

  “Soldiers” he writes, underlining the word. “You are amply prepared for war. You are superior in number to the enemy. Your personal strength and activity are greater. Your weapons are longer. The regular soldiers of the enemy are generally old men, whose best years have been spent in the sickly climate of the West Indies. They will not be able to stand before you when you charge with the bayonet.

  “You have seen Indians, such as those hired by the British to murder women and children, and kill and scalp the wounded. You have seen their dances and grimaces, and heard their yells. Can you fear them ? No. You hold them in the utmost contempt.”

  Smyth warms to his task. Having stiffened the backs of the regular troops he will now imbue the recalcitrant militia with a fighting spirit:

  “VOLUNTEERS!” he prints in large, bold capitals. “I esteem your generous and patriotic motives. You have made sacrifices on the altar of your country. You will not suffer the enemies of your fame to mislead you from the path of duty and honor, and deprive you of the esteem of a grateful country. You will shun the eternal infamy that awaits the man, who having come within sight of the enemy, basely shrinks in the moment of trial.

  “SOLDIERS OF EVERY CORPS! It is in your power to retrieve the honor of your country; and to cover yourselves with glory. Every man who performs a gallant action, shall have his name made known to the nation. Rewards and honors await the brave. Infamy and contempt are reserved for cowards. Companions in arms! You came to vanquish a valiant foe. I know the choice you will make. Come on my heroes! And when you attack the enemy’s batteries, let your rallying word be ‘The cannon lost at Detroit–or death.”‘

  Out it goes among the troops and civilians, most of whom greet it with derision. To this Smyth is absolutely oblivious, for he is a prisoner of his ego. The word “vanity” hardly does justice to his own concept of himself. He is wholly self-centred. His actions and words, which others find bizarre and ridiculous, are to him the justifiable responses of a supreme commander who sees himself as the saviour of the nation. The newspapers scoff at him as “Alexander the Great” and “Napoleon II.” Smyth is the kind of general who takes that satire as a compliment.

  If words were bullets and exclamation points cannonballs, Smyth might cow the enemy through the force of his verbiage. A master of the purple passage, he bombards his own countrymen with high-flown phrases:

  Men of New York: The present is the hour of renown. Have you not a wish for fame? Would you not choose to be one of those who, imitating the heroes whom Montgomery led, have in spite of the seasons, visited the tomb of the chief and conquered the country where he lies? Yes-You desire your share of fame. Then seize the present moment. If you do not, you will regret it....

  Advance, then, to our aid. I will wait for you a few days. I cannot give you the day of my departure. But come on, come in companies, half companies, pairs or singly. I will organize you for a short tour. Ride to this place, if the distance is far, and send back your horses. But remember that every man who accompanies us places himself under my command, and shall submit to the salutary restraints of discipline.

  Smyth is now in total charge of the Niagara campaign. Stephen Van Rensselaer has resigned in his favour. (He will run for governor in the spring, to be beaten by the craftier Tompkins.) His cousin Solomon is recovering from his wounds and dandling his new son on his lap; he will not fight again. Smyth, who never came face to face with either, reigns supreme.

  On paper, the new commander’s qualifications seem suitable enough. He is an Irishman whose father, a parish rector, brought him to Virginia at the age of ten. A member of his state’s bar, he has also been an elected representative in the lower house. As the colonel of a rifle regiment, he was ordered to Washington in x8n “to prepare a system of discipline for the army.” Within eighteen days of the declaration of war he was promoted to inspector general and ordered to the Niagara frontier.

  “I must not be defeated,” he declares on taking over from Van Rensselaer; and he enters into a flurry of boat building, for he intends, he says, to land more than four thousand men on the Canadian shore. This is bombast: more than half his force is in no condition to fight. The bulk of the regulars are raw recruits who have never fired a musket. The militia continue to desert-one hundred in a single night. Hundreds more clog the hospitals suffering from measles, dysentery, grippe. The cemetery behind the camp, where men are buried four to a grave, has expanded to two acres. The ill-clothed army has not yet been paid; two regular regiments and one militia company have already mutinied on this account; the captain of another volunteer company warns that his men will not cross the river until they receive pay and clothing allowances. The troops of Fort Niagara are starving for want of bread, and there is considerable doubt whether the eighteen hundred Pennsylvania volunteers due to arrive in mid-November will agree to fight on foreign soil.

  Nonetheless, on November 9 the General announces that he will invade Canada in fifteen days. So loudly does he boast about his intentions that the British are well prepared for any attack; on November 17 they launch a heavy bombardment of Smyth’s headquarters at Black Rock, burning the east barrack, exploding the magazine, and destroying a quantity of the furs captured from Caledonia. Just as the Quartermaster General, Peter B. Porter, is sitting down to dinner, a twenty-four-pound cannonball crashes through the roof of his home, a disaster not calculated to improve a digestion already thrown out of kilter by Smyth’s bizarre and inconclus
ive orders. Another cannonade begins at dawn on the twenty-first opposite Fort Niagara. The British pour two thousand rounds of red-hot shot into the American fort, which replies in kind. Buildings burn; guns blow up; men die; nothing is settled.

  On November 25, Smyth issues orders for the entire army to be ready to march “at a moment’s warning.” Two days later he musters forty-five hundred men at Black Rock for the impending invasion.

  “Tell the brave men under your command not to be impatient,” he writes to Porter, who is in charge of the New York volunteers. “See what harm impatience did at Queenston. Let them be firm, and they will succeed.”

  At three on the morning of the twenty-eighth, Smyth sends an advance force of some four hundred men across the river to destroy the bridge at Frenchman’s Creek (thus cutting British communications between Fort Erie and Chippawa) and to silence the battery upstream. The British are waiting. Boats are lost, destroyed, driven off. In the darkness there is confusion on both sides, with men mistaking enemies for friends and friends for enemies. In spite of this the Americans seize the battery and spike its guns while a second force reaches the bridge, only to discover that they have left their axes in the boats and cannot destroy it before the British counterattack. In the end some of the advance party are captured for lack of boats in which to escape. The remainder cross to the safety of the American camp with little accomplished.

  An incredible spectacle greets the British next morning. Lining their own shore in increasing numbers, they watch the American attempt at embarkation as if it were a sideshow. Smyth himself does not appear but leaves the arrangements to his subordinates. The operation moves so ponderously that the afternoon shadows are lengthening before all the troops are in the boats. Some have been forced to sit in their craft for hours, shivering in the late November weather-a light snow is falling and the river is running with ice.