The Invasion of Canada

by Pierre Berton

  On August II, the weather again turns capricious. The wind drops. The men, wet and exhausted from lack of sleep, are forced to row in relays for hours. Then a sudden squall forces the flotilla once more in to shore. That night the weather clears, and the impatient general makes another attempt to get underway, this time in the dark, his boat leading with a lantern in the stern. They sail all night, the boats too crowded for the men to lie down. The following day they hear that Hull has re-crossed the river to Detroit and that there has been a skirmish (Maguaga) on the American side. At Point Pelee that afternoon, some of the men boil their pork; others drop exhausted onto the beach. Early next morning they set off again and at eight in the forenoon straggle into Amherstburg, exhausted from rowing, their faces peeling from sunburn.

  Brock’s Passage to Amherstburg

  Brock has preceded them. Unable to rest, the General and a vanguard of troops have departed the previous afternoon and reached their objective shortly before midnight on August 13. Lieutenant-Colonel Procter and Matthew Elliott are waiting on the quayside. Across the water from Bois Blanc Island comes the rattle of musketry. It startles Brock. When Elliott explains that the Indians, bivouacked on the island, are expressing their joy at the arrival of reinforcements, the General expresses concern over the waste of ammunition: “Do, pray, Elliott, fully explain my wishes and motives, and tell the Indians that I will speak to them to-morrow on this subject.”

  Midnight has passed. But before Brock can sleep he must read the dispatches and mail captured at Brownstown. He sits in Elliott’s study with his aide, Major J.B. Glegg, the yellow light from tallow candles flickering across a desk strewn with maps and papers. Suddenly the door opens and Elliott stands before him accompanied by a tall Indian dressed in a plain suit of tanned deerskin, fringed at the seams, and wearing leather moccasins heavily ornamented with porcupine quills. This is clearly a leader of stature. In his nose he wears three silver ornaments in the shape of coronets, and from his neck is hung, on a string of coloured wampum, a large silver medallion of George III. The Indian is beaming. Glegg gets an instant impression of energy and decision. This must be Tecumseh.

  Brock rises, hand outstretched to his ally. The contrast is striking: the British general – fair, large-limbed, blue-eyed, impeccable in his scarlet jacket, blue-and-white riding trousers, and Hessian boots – towers over the lithe figure of the Shawnee. Brief salutations follow. Brock explains about the waste of ammunition. Tecumseh agrees. Each man has taken the other’s measure and both are impressed. Brock will write to Lord Liverpool that “a more sagacious and gallant Warrior does not I believe exist. He was the admiration of every one who conversed with him.…” Tecumseh’s comment, delivered to his followers, is blunter. “This,” says Tecumseh, “is a man!”

  Brock calls a council of his officers, asks for a military appreciation. Tecumseh urges an immediate attack on Detroit, unrolls a strip of elm bark, pulls his scalping knife from his belt, and proceeds to scratch out an accurate map of the fort and its surroundings.

  Brock points out that the British and Indians will be outnumbered by the Americans: “We are committed to a war in which the enemy will always surpass us in numbers, equipment and resources.” One by one his officers are polled. One by one they opt for caution: a crossing is too dangerous to attempt. Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Procter, who will one day clash with Tecumseh over tactics, is particularly cautious. Only one man, Colonel Robert Nichol, the diminutive ex-storekeeper who has just been named quartermaster general of the militia, supports Brock. Nichol has lived in Detroit, knows every cranny of town and fort, boasts that he can lead the troops to any point that Brock wants to attack. He and the commander are old friends, their acquaintance going back to 1804 when Brock commanded at Fort Erie and Nichol ran a general store. Nichol’s sudden appointment to field rank has offended some of the political higher-ups, but Brock knows his man. It is said that Nichol would follow his general into Vesuvius if need be.

  At this midnight council the contrast between Brock and Hull is starkly clear. Brock listens carefully to his subordinates’ reservations, then speaks: nothing, he says, can be gained by delay. “I have decided on crossing, and now, gentlemen, instead of any further advice, I entreat of you to give me your cordial and hearty support.”

  The following morning, standing beneath a great oak on the outskirts of the fort, he addresses several hundred Indians representing more than a dozen tribes on both sides of the border. (Even the recalcitrant Iroquois are here, though only thirty in number.) He has come, says Brock, to battle the Long Knives who have invaded the country of the King, their father. The Long Knives are trying to force both the British and the Indians from their lands. If the Indians will make common cause with the British, the combined forces will soon drive the enemy back to the boundaries of Indian territory.

  Tecumseh rises to reply. This polyglot assembly is of his making – the closest he will ever get to achieving the confederacy of which he dreams. The hazel eyes flash, the oval face darkens as he conjures up the memory of Tippecanoe:

  “They suddenly came against us with a great force while I was absent, and destroyed our village and slew our warriors.”

  All the bitterness against the land-hunger of the frontier settlers is revived:

  “They came to us hungry and cut off the hands of our brothers who gave them corn. We gave them rivers of fish and they poisoned our fountains. We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum and trinkets and a grave!”

  Brock does not intend to reveal the details of his attack plan to such a large assembly. The oratory finished, he invites Tecumseh and a few older chiefs to meet at Elliott’s house. Here, through interpreters, he explains his strategy as the chiefs nod approval. The General is concerned, however, about alcohol: can Tecumseh prevent his followers from drinking to excess? The Shawnee replies that before his people left the Wabash they promised to abstain from all spirits until they had humbled the Long Knives. Brock responds with satisfaction: “If this resolution be persevered in, you must conquer.”

  He has one further act of diplomacy before he leaves for Sandwich. He issues a general order intended to heal the wounds caused by Hull’s divisive proclamation:

  “The major-general cannot avoid expressing his surprise at the numerous desertions which have occurred from the ranks of the militia, to which circumstance the long stay of the enemy on this side of the river must in great measure be ascribed. He is willing to believe that their conduct proceeded from an anxiety to get in their harvest, and not from any predilection for the principles or government of the United States.”

  This pretty fiction serves its purpose of uniting the people behind him. Hull has deserted them: Brock, by implication, has promised an amnesty. As he rides that same afternoon past the ripening apple trees to Sandwich he knows he is passing through friendly country.

  DETROIT, MICHIGAN TERRITORY, August 12, 1812. Colonel Lewis Cass is seething with frustration over what he conceives to be the inadequacies and follies of his commander. He can contain himself no longer and finds a temporary outlet for his anger in a letter to his brother-in-law:

  “Our situation is become critical. If things get worse, you will have a letter from me giving you a particular statement of this business. As bad as you may think of our situation it is still worse than you believe. I cannot descend into particulars for fear this should fall into the hands of the enemy.”

  From the outset he has thought of Hull as a weak old man. Now other, more sinister epithets begin to form in his mind. Cass is contemplating something very close to treason, a word he will shortly apply to his commanding officer.

  His style is as blunt as his body. He has powerful arms and legs and a trunk like an ox. Nobody would call him handsome. Long, unruly hair dominates a coarse face. A later official portrait shows him scowling blackly at the artist, one hand thrust into his tunic, Napoleon-fashion. At thirty, he has the re
sonant voice of a frontier lawyer, toughened on the court circuit, his endurance tested by years spent on horseback on old Indian trails or on pitching flatboats in wilderness rivers, arguing and pleading in primitive courthouses where the judge, on occasion, has been known to descend from the bench to wrestle a pugnacious spectator into submission.

  He is an ambitious man, Cass. He has been a member of the Ohio House, a state marshal, a brigadier-general in the militia. He loves the military life, likes to wear splendid uniforms (his officer’s plume is the highest of any), insists on parading his men whenever the opportunity allows, believes in regular, arduous drilling. For all that he is popular, for his is the easy camaraderie of the circuit court. He mixes freely with his men, who respect him in spite of a certain humourlessness. Unlike Hull, Cass conveys an air of absolute conviction; he knows he is right; and the fact that Hull, in Cass’s view, is wrong drives him to distraction. In spite of his ponderous appearance he has all the nervous energy of a tomcat – not the kind of man to sit quietly by and watch the enemy preparing for an assault.

  Cass’s disillusionment with Hull is shared by his fellow officers and has filtered down through the ranks. On this same day (the very day on which Wellington’s forces enter Madrid), the scout Robert Lucas is writing to a friend in Portsmouth, Ohio, in much the same vein:

  “Never was there a more Patriotic army … neither was there ever an army that had it more completely in their power to have accomplished every object of their Desire than the Present, And must now be sunk into Disgrace for want of a General at their head–

  “Never was there officers … more united than our Patriotic Colonels … to promote the Public good neither was there ever men of talents as they are so shamefully opposed by an imbesile or Treacherous Commander as they have been.… Would to God Either of our Colonels had the command, if they had, we might yet wipe off the foul stain that has been brought upon us.…”

  The army is close to mutiny. A round robin is circulating among the troops urging that Hull be replaced by McArthur. Cass, Findlay, and McArthur meet with Miller and offer to depose Hull if he will take command. Miller refuses but agrees to unite with the others to oppose Hull and give the command to McArthur. McArthur, who has already said privately that Hull will not do, also refuses-nobody wants to bell the cat. All three turn to Cass, who agrees to write secretly to Governor Meigs of Ohio, urging him to march at once with two thousand men. The assumption is that Meigs will depose Hull.

  “From causes not fit to be put on paper but which I trust I shall live to communicate to you, this army has been reduced to a critical and alarming situation,” Cass writes. When he finishes the letter, he, McArthur, Gaylor (the Quartermaster General), and Elijah Brush of the Michigan state militia all affix their signatures to a cryptic postscript:

  “Since the other side of this letter was written, new circumstances have arisen. The British force is opposite, and our situation has nearly reached its crisis. Believe all the bearer will tell you. Believe it, however it may astonish you; as much as if told by one of us. Even a c———is talked of by the———! The bearer will supply the vacancy. On you we depend.”

  The missing words are “capitulation” and “commanding officer.” The signature of Lieutenant-Colonel Miller, the career officer, is conspicuously absent.

  Hull by this time knows of the incipient plot against him but hesitates to arrest the ringleaders, fearing perhaps a general uprising. He has, however, the perfect excuse for ridding himself temporarily of the leading malcontents. Captain Henry Brush, still pinned down at the River Raisin, has discovered a back-door route to Detroit; it is twice as long as the river road but hidden from Fort Amherstburg. When he asks again for an escort for his supply train, Hull is only too pleased to dispatch both Cass and McArthur with 350 men for this task. They leave Detroit at noon on August 14.

  The General has, of course, weakened his own garrison in spite of strong evidence that the British, now directly across the river at Sandwich, are planning an attack. What is in Hull’s mind? Has he already given up? He has in his possession a letter, intercepted from a British courier, written by Lieutenant-Colonel Procter to Captain Roberts at Michilimackinac, informing him that the British force facing Detroit is so strong that he need send no more than five thousand Indians to support it!

  It is a sobering revelation. Brock and Tecumseh face Hull across the river; now at his rear he sees another horde of painted savages.

  He cannot know that the letter is a fake, purposely planted by Brock and Procter, who already have an insight into his troubled state of mind through captured documents. There are only a few hundred Indians at Mackinac, and on August 12 they are in no condition to go anywhere, being “as drunk as Ten Thousand Devils” in the words of John Askin, Jr. But Brock well knows that the threat of the Indians is as valuable as their presence and a good deal less expensive.

  Many months later, when his peers sit in judgement upon him, Hull will swear to his firm belief that the British had no intention of attacking Detroit. He believes their conduct of the war will be entirely defensive. He has put himself in Prevost’s shoes but certainly not in those of Isaac Brock who, contrary to all instructions, is preparing to invade the United States.

  Brock is completing the secret construction of a battery directly across from Detroit – one long eighteen-pound gun, two long twelve-pounders, and a couple of mortars – hidden for the moment behind a building and a screen of oak. Lieutenant James Dalliba of Hull’s ordnance department suspects what is going on. Dalliba, who has twenty-eight heavy guns and has constructed his own battery in the centre of town, asks Hull if he may open fire.

  “Sir, if you will give permission, I will clear the enemy on the opposite shore from the lower batteries.”

  Dalliba will not soon forget Hull’s reply:

  “Mr. Dalliba, I will make an agreement with the enemy that if they will never fire on me I will never fire on them,” and rides off, remarking that “those who live in glass houses must take care how they throw stones.”

  The following morning, to the army’s astonishment, Hull has a large marquee, striped red and blue, pitched in the centre of camp, just south of the walls of the fort. It is a measure of the army’s low morale and lack of confidence in their general that many believe Hull is in league with the British and that the coloured tent is intended as a signal.

  In a barrack room, a court of inquiry under the ailing Lieutenant-Colonel Miller is investigating Porter Hanks’s surrender of Mackinac. Hanks has asked for a hearing to clear his name. But part way through the testimony an officer looking out onto the river spies a boat crossing from the opposite shore under a white flag. Miller adjourns the hearing. It will never be reopened.

  Up the bank come Brock’s two aides, Major J.B. Glegg and Lieutenant-Colonel John Macdonell, with a message for Hull. They are blindfolded and confined to a house in the town near the fort while Hull ponders Brock’s ultimatum:

  “The force at my disposal authorizes me to require of you the immediate surrender of Fort Detroit.…”

  The force at his disposal! Brock has at most thirteen hundred men; Hull has more than two thousand. Brock is proposing to attack a fortified position with an inferior force, an adventure that Hull, in declining Amherstburg, has said would require odds of two to one.

  But Brock has studied his man, knows his vulnerable spot:

  “It is far from my intention to join in a war of extermination; but you must be aware that the numerous body of Indians who have attached themselves to my troops will be beyond my control the moment the contest commences.… Lieutenant-Colonel M’Donnell and major Glegg are fully authorised to conclude any arrangement that may lead to prevent the unnecessary effusion of blood.”

  What Brock is threatening is a war of extermination-a bloody battle in which, if necessary, he is quite prepared to accept the slaughter of prisoners and of innocent civilians, including women and children. He is, in short, contemplating total war more than
a century before the phrase comes into common use. The war is starting to escalate as all wars must; a zeal for victory clouds compassion; the end begins to justify the means.

  Like other commanders, Brock salves his conscience with the excuse that he cannot control his native allies; nonetheless he is quite happy, in fact eager, to use them. It is sophistry to say they have “attached themselves” to his troops; he and his colleagues have actively and consistently enlisted their support. The Americans are equally hypocritical; they pompously upbraid the British for waging uncivilized warfare, but their own men take scalps indiscriminately. The conflict, which began so softly and civilly, is beginning to brutalize both sides. The same men who censure the Indians for dismembering non-combatants with tomahawks are quite prepared to blow the limbs off soldiers and civilians alike with twenty-four-pound can-nonballs. Though it may offer some comfort to the attacker, the range of the weapon makes little difference to its victim.

  Hull mulls over Brock’s extraordinary document for more than three hours while the General’s two aides fidget behind their blindfolds. At last he summons up an answer:

  “… I have no other reply than to inform you, that I am prepared to meet any force which may be at your disposal, and any consequences which may result from any exertion of it you may think proper to make.”

  At about three that afternoon, Major Josiah Snelling of Miller’s 4th Infantry steps out onto the street to see the General’s son and aide, Captain Abraham Hull, heading off with his father’s reply in his pocket. The little village is alive with people running toward the fort carrying their family possessions or burying their valuables. Snelling picks up his glass and sees that the British across the river are chopping down the oaks and removing the building that masks their battery. He forms up his men, marches them through the gates of the fort, and, on Hull’s orders, mans the ramparts.