Canada: The Empire of the North — From 1812 to 1820, part 3

[Illustration: GENERAL SIR JAMES HENRY CRAIG, GOVERNOR GENERAL OF CANADA, 1807-1811]

Other causes fanned the flame of war.

The United States was now almost the only nation neutral in Napoleon's wars.

To cripple English commerce, Napoleon forbids neutral nations trading at English ports.

By way of retaliation England forbids neutral nations trading with French ports; and the United States strikes back by closing American ports to both nations.

It means blue ruin to American trade, but the United States cannot permit herself to be ground between the upper and nether millstones of two hostile European powers.

Then, sharp as a gamester playing his trump card, Napoleon revokes his embargo in 1810, which leaves England the offender against the United States.

Then Governor Craig of Canada commits an error that must have delighted the heart of Napoleon, who always profited by his enemy's blunders.

Well meaning, but {337} fatally ill and easily alarmed, Craig sends one John Henry from Montreal in 1809 as spy to the United States for the double purpose of sounding public opinion on the subject of war, and of putting any Federalists in favor of withdrawing from the Union in touch with British authorities.

Craig goes home to England to die.

Henry fails to collect reward for his ignoble services, turns traitor, and sells the entire correspondence to the war party in the United States for ,000. That spy business adds fuel to fire.

Then there are other quarrels.

A deserter from the American army is found teaching school near Cornwall in Canada.

He is driven out of the little backwoods schoolhouse, pricked across the field with bayonets, out of the children's view, and shot on Canadian soil by American soldiers, an outrage almost the same in spirit as the British crew's outrage on the _Chesapeake_.

Also, in spite of apologies, the war ships clash again.

The English sloop _Little Belt_ is cruising off Cape Henry in May of 1811, looking for a French privateer, when a sail appears over the sea.

The _Little Belt_ pursues till she sights the commodore's blue flag of the United States frigate _President_, then she turns about; but by this time the _President_ has turned the tables on the little sloop, and is pursuing to find out what the former's conduct meant.

Darkness settles over the two ships beating about the wind.

"What sloop is that?"

shouts an officer through a speaking trumpet from the American's decks.

"What ship is _that_?"

bawls back a voice through the darkness from the little Englander.

Then, before any one can tell who fired first (in fact, each accuses the other of firing first), the cannon are pouring hot shot into each other's hulls till thirty men have fallen on the decks of the _Little Belt_.

Apologies follow, of course, and explanations; but that does not remedy the ill.

In fact, when nations and people want to quarrel, they can always find a cause.

War is declared in June of 1812 by Congress.

It is war against England; but that means war against Canada, though there are not forty-five hundred soldiers from Halifax to Lake Huron.

As for {338} the American forces, they muster an army of some one hundred and fifty thousand; but their generals complain they are "an untrained mob"; and events justified the complaints.

There is nothing for Canada to do but stand up to the war of England's making and fight for hearth and home.

Canada on the defensive, there is nothing for the States to do but invade; and the American generals don't relish the task with their "untrained mob."

[Illustration: WILLIAM HULL] Upper Canada or Ontario has not four hundred soldiers from Kingston to Detroit River; but Major General Isaac Brock calls for volunteers.

The clang of arms, of drill, of target practice, resounds in every hamlet through Canada.

At Kingston, at Toronto, at Fort George (Niagara), at Erie where Niagara River comes from the lake, at Amherstburg, southeast of Detroit, are stationed garrisons to repel invasion, with hastily erected cannon and mortar commanding approach from the American side.

And invasion comes soon enough.

The declaration of war became known in Canada about the 20th of June.

By July 3 General Hull of Michigan is at Detroit with two thousand five hundred men preparing to sweep western Ontario.

July 3 an English schooner captures Hull's provision boat coming up Detroit River, but Hull crosses with his army on July 12 to Sandwich, opposite Detroit, and issues proclamation calling on the people to throw off the yoke of English rule.

How such an invitation fell on United Empire Loyalist ears may be guessed.

Meanwhile comes word that the Northwest {339} Company's voyageurs, with four hundred Indians, have captured Michilimackinac without a blow.

The fall of Michilimackinac, the failure of the Canadians to rally to his flag, the loss of his provision boat, dampen Hull's ardor so that on August 8 he moves back with his troops to Detroit.

Eight days later comes Brock from Niagara with five hundred Loyalists and one thousand Indians under the great chief Tecumseh to join Procter's garrison of six hundred at Amherstburg.

The Canadians have come by open boat up Lake Erie from Niagara through furious rains; but they are fighting for their homes, and with eager enthusiasm follow Brock on up Detroit River to Sandwich, opposite the American fort.

Indians come by night and lie in ambush south of Detroit to protect the Canadians while they cross the river.

Then the cannon on the Canadian side begin a humming of bombs overhead.

While the bombs play over the stream at Sandwich, Brock rushes thirteen hundred men across the river south of Detroit, and before midday of August 16 is marching his men through the woods to assault the fort, when he is met by an officer carrying out the white flag of surrender.

While Brock was crossing the river, something had happened inside the fort at Detroit.

It was one of those curious cases of blind panic when only the iron grip of a strong man can hold demoralized forces in hand.

The American officers had sat down to breakfast in the mess room at day dawn, when a bomb plunged through the roof killing four on the spot and spattering the walls with the blood of the mangled bodies.

Disgraceful stories are told of Hull's conduct.

Ashy with fright and trembling, he dashed from the room, and, before the other officers knew what he was about, had offered to surrender his army, twenty-five hundred arms, thirty-three cannon, an armed brig, and the whole state of Michigan.

The case is probably more an example of nervous hysterics than treason, though the other American officers broke their swords with rage and chagrin, declaring they had been sold for a price.

It was but the first of the many times the lesson was taught in this war, that however well intentioned a volunteer's courage may be, it takes a seasoned man to make war.

{340} Ten minutes later, a boy had climbed the flagstaff and hung out the English flag over Detroit.

Of the captured American army Brock permitted the volunteer privates to go home on parole.

The regulars, including Hull, were carried back prisoners on the boats to Niagara, to be forwarded to Montreal.

At Montreal, Hull was given back to the Americans in exchange for thirty British prisoners.

He was sentenced by court-martial to be shot for treason and cowardice, but the sentence was commuted.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION OF THE MILITARY OPERATIONS ON THE DETROIT RIVER]

At Niagara River, where the main troops of Ontario were centered, Brock's victory was greeted with simply a madness of joy.

From the first it had been plain that the principal fighting in Ontario would take place at Niagara, and along the river Brock had concentrated some sixteen hundred volunteer troops, {341} raw farm hands most of them, with a goodly proportion of descendants from the United Empire Loyalists, who had furbished out their fathers' swords.

But the army was in rags and tatters; many men had no shoes; before Brock captured the guns at Detroit there had not been muskets to go round the men, and there were not cannon enough to mount the batteries cast up along Niagara River facing the American defenses.

As the boats came down Lake Erie and disembarked the American prisoners on August 24, at Fort Erie on the Canadian side, opposite Black Rock and Buffalo, wild yells of jubilation rent the air.

By nightfall every camp on the Canadian side for the whole forty miles of Niagara River's course echoed to shout and counter shout, and a wild refrain which some poet of the haversack had composed on the spot: We 'll subdue the mighty Democrats and pull their dwellings down, And have the States inhabited with subjects of the Crown.

Take a survey of the Niagara region.

South is Lake Erie, north is Lake Ontario, between them Niagara River flowing almost straight north through a steep dark gorge hewn out of the solid rock by the living waters of all the Upper Lakes, crushed and cramped, carving a turbulent way through this narrow canyon.

Midway in the river's course the blue waters begin to race.

The race becomes a dizzy madness of blurred, whirling, raging waters.

Then there is the leap, the plunge, the shattering anger of inland seas hurling their strength over the sheer precipice in resistless force.

Then the foaming whirlpool below, and the shadowy gorge, and the undercurrent eddying away in the swift-flowing waters of the river coming out on Lake Ontario.

On one side are the Canadian forts, on the other the American, slab-walled all of them, with scarcely a stone foundation except in bastions used as powder magazines.

Fort Erie on the Canadian side faces Buffalo and Black Rock on the American side.

Where the old French voyageurs used to portage past the Falls, about halfway on the Canadian side south of the precipice, is the village of Chippewa.

Here Brock has stationed {342} a garrison with cannon.

Then halfway between the Falls and Lake Ontario are high cliffs known as Queenston Heights, in plain view of the American town of Lewiston on the other side.

Cannon line the river cliffs on both sides here.

All about Lewiston the fields are literally white with the tents of General Van Rensselaer's army, now grown from twenty-five hundred to almost eight thousand.

On the Canadian side cannon had been mounted on the cliffs known as Queenston Heights.

Possibly because the two hundred men would make poor showing in tents, Brock has his soldiers here take quarters in the farmhouses.

For the rest it is such a rural scene as one may witness any midsummer,--rolling yellow wheat fields surrounded by the zigzag rail fences, with square farmhouses of stone and the fields invariably backed by the uncleared bush land.

Six miles farther down the river, where the waters join Lake Ontario, is the English post, Fort George, near the old capital, Newark, and just opposite the American fort of Niagara.

With the exception of the Grand Island region on the river, it may be said that both armies are in full view of each other.

Sometimes, when to the tramp--tramp--tramp of the sentry's {343} tread a loud "All's well" echoes across the river from Lewiston to the Canadian side, some wag at Queenston will take up the cry through the dark and bawl back, "All's well here too"; and all night long the two sentries bawl back and forward to each other through the dark.

Sometimes, too, though strictest orders are issued against such ruffian warfare by both Van Rensselaer and Brock, the sentries chance shots at each other through the dark.

Drums beat reveillé at four in the morning, and the rub-a-dub-dub of Queenston Heights is echoed by rat-tat-too of Lewiston, though river mist hides the armies from each other in the morning.

Iron baskets filled with oiled bark are used as telegraph signals, and one may guess how, when the light flared up of a night on the Canadian heights, scouts carried word to the officers on the American side.

One may guess, too, the effect on Van Rensselaer's big untrained army, when, with the sun aglint on scarlet uniform, they saw their fellow-countrymen of Detroit marched prisoners between British lines along the heights of Queenston opposite Lewiston.

Rage, depression, shame, knew no bounds; and the army was unable to vent anger in heroic attack, for England had repealed her embargo laws, and when Brock came back from Detroit he found that an armistice had been arranged, and both sides had been ordered to suspend hostilities till instructions came from the governments.

The truce, it may be added, was only an excuse to enable both sides to complete preparations for the war.

In a few weeks ball and bomb were again singing their shrill songs in mid-air.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION OF THE MILITARY OPERATIONS ON THE NIAGARA FRONTIER]

Brock's victory demoralized the rabble under the American Van Rensselaer.

Desertions increased daily, and discipline was so notoriously bad Van Rensselaer and his staff dared not punish desertion for fear of the army--as one of them put it--"falling to pieces."

Van Rensselaer saw that he must strike, and strike at once, and strike successfully, or he would not have any army left at all.

Two thousand Pennsylvanians had joined him; and on October 9, at one in the morning, Lieutenant Elliott led one hundred men with muffled paddles from the American side to two Canadian ships lying anchored off Fort Erie.

One was the {344} brig captured from Hull at Detroit, the other a sloop belonging to the Northwest Fur Company, loaded with peltries.

Before the British were well awake, Elliott had boarded decks, captured the fur ship with forty prisoners, and was turning her guns on the other ship when Port Erie suddenly awakened with a belch of cannon shot.

The Americans cut the cables and drifted on the captured ship downstream.

The fur ship was worked safely over to the American side, where it was welcomed with wild cheers.

The brig was set on fire and abandoned.

Van Rensselaer decided to take advantage of the elated spirit among the troops and invade Canada at once.

Over on the Canadian side, Brock, at Fort George, wanted to offer an exchange of Detroit prisoners for the voyageurs on the captured fur ship, and Evans was ordered to paddle across to Lewiston with the offer, white handkerchief fluttering as a flag of truce.

Evans could not mistake the signs as he landed on the American shore.

Sentries dashed down to stop his advance at bayonet point.

He was denied speech with Van Rensselaer and refused admittance to the American camp; and the reason was plain.

A score of boats, capable of holding thirty men each, lay moored at the Lewiston shore.

Along the rain-soaked road behind the shore floundered and marched troops, fresh troops joining Van Rensselaer's camp.

It was dark before Evans returned to Queenston Heights and close on midnight when he reached Major General Brock at Fort George.

Brock thought Evans over anxious, and both went to bed, or at least threw themselves down on a mattress to sleep.

At two o'clock they were awakened by a sound which could not be mistaken,--the thunderous booming of a furious cannonade from Queenston Heights.

Brock realized that the two hundred Canadians on the cliff must be repelling an invasion, but he was suspicious that the attack from Lewiston was a feint to draw off attention from Fort Niagara opposite Fort George, and he did not at once order troops to the aid of Queenston Heights.

[Illustration: GENERAL BROCK] Evans' predictions of invasion were only too true.

After one attempt to cross the gorge, which was balked by storm, Van {345} Rensselaer finally got his troops down to the water's edge about midnight of October 12-13. The night was dark, moonless, rainy,--a wind which mingled with the roar of the river drowning all sound of marching troops.

Three hundred men embarked on the first passage of the boats across the swift river, the poor old pilot literally groaning aloud in terror.

Three of the boats were carried beyond the landing on the Canadian side, and had to come back through the dark to get their bearings; but the rest, led by Van Rensselaer, had safely landed on the Canadian side, when the batteries of Queenston Heights flashed to life in sheets of fire, lighting up the dark tide of the river gorge and sinking half a dozen boat loads of men now coming on a second traverse.

Instantly Lewiston's cannon pealed furious answer to the Canadian fire, and in the sheet-lightning flame of the flaring batteries thousands could be seen on the American shore watching the conflict.

As the Americans landed they hugged the rock cliff for shelter, but the mortality on the crossing boats was terrible; and each passage carried back quota of wounded.

Van Rensselaer was shot in the thigh almost as he landed, but still he held his men in hand.

A second shot pierced the same side.

A third struck his knee.

Six wounds he received in as many seconds; and he was carried back in the boats to the Lewiston side.

Then began a mad scramble through the darkness {346} up a fisherman's path steep as trail of mountain goat, sheer against the face of the cliff.

When day dawned misty and gray over the black tide of the rolling river, the Canadian batterymen of Queenston Heights were astounded to see American sharp-shooters mustered on the cliff behind and above them.

A quick rush, and the Canadian batterymen were driven from their ground, the Canadian cannon silenced, and while wild shoutings of triumph rose from the spectators at Lewiston, the American boats continued to pour soldiers across the river.

It was at this stage Brock came riding from Fort George so spattered with mud from head to heel he was not recognized by the soldiers.

One glance was enough.

The Canadians had lost the day.

Sending messengers to bid General Sheaffe hurry the troops from Fort George, and other runners to bring up the troops from Chippewa behind the Americans on Queenston Heights, Brock charged up the hill amid shriek of bombs and clatter of sharpshooters.

He had dismounted and was scrambling over a stone wall.

"Follow me, boys!"

he shouted to the British grenadiers;

then at the foot of the hill, waving his sword: "Now take a breath; you will need it!

Come on!

come on!"

and he led the rush of two hundred men in scarlet coats to dislodge the Americans.

A shot pierced his wrist.

"Push on, York volunteers," he shouted.

His portly figure in scarlet uniform was easy mark for the sharpshooters hidden in the brush of Queenston Heights.

One stepped deliberately out and took aim.

Though a dozen Canadian muskets flashed answer, Brock fell, shot through the breast, dying with the words on his lips, "My fall must not be noticed to stop the victory."

Major Macdonnell led in the charge up the hill, but the next moment his horse plunged frantically, and he reeled from the saddle fatally wounded.

For a second time the British were repulsed, and the Americans had won the Heights, if not the day.