Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (98 page)

This is hardly a
carte blanche
to destroy the village, since McClure has no intention of defending the fort. He argues, however, that the British mean to attack Fort Niagara, the American stronghold across the river. By burning Newark he will deny them comfortable billets.

McClure is not much of a soldier. A Londonderry Irishman, he has been carpenter, miller, contractor, merchant, land speculator, and, above all, a New York State politician. The spoils have included a judgeship and command of the 8th Brigade of state militia, the latter an inconsequential post because there are no militia left to command. Like so many other political appointees to military rank, he is a better boaster than tactician. Chapin, himself a citizen soldier, has little use for him. He censures McClure for countenancing the plundering of buildings and the burning of private homes by the undisciplined militia during an abortive October venture to Twenty Mile Creek; indeed, Chapin suspects that McClure shared in the spoils. On his part, the General hates Chapin, calls him a “damned rascal,” and has been heard to wish that the enemy would capture him.

Does McClure really intend to burn Newark for the reasons he advances to Chapin? If he means to deny the British shelter, why does he not destroy the new barrack buildings at Fort George? Why does he not burn the fifteen hundred new tents that lie within its walls? Is there, perhaps, a second, more emotional reason to visit such misery on the women, children, and non-combatants of Newark?

Behind the bumbling militia general there can be discerned a more intriguing figure, another enemy of Chapin’s and one of McClure’s chief advisers, the turncoat Joseph Willcocks. Now a commissioned lieutenant-colonel in the American army, Willcocks is a former resident of the doomed community. It was from here that he edited his virulent newspaper, the
Upper Canadian Guardian or Freeman’s Journal
. That publication was not designed to placate the true-blue Loyalists who make up the town’s elite and whom the Americans, with memories of the Revolution, still disparage as “Tories.”

Now, as McClure rides through the streets of the Loyalist village at the head of his burning party, torches and lanterns lit, directing his men to various corners of the town to fire houses and public buildings, Willcocks rides beside him, settling old scores and cursing anyone who protests as a Tory.

He is a curious, even baffling specimen, this Willcocks. His motivations are more complex than those of his two chief associates, Benajah Mallory, now his second-in-command, and Abraham Markle. Like so many of their fellow citizens, these two came to Canada from the United States, lured by cheap land and low taxes; in spite of service in the Upper Canadian legislature, their loyalties have never been firm. But Willcocks is not an American. He is the scion of an upper-class British family living in Ireland. He fought for the British at Queenston Heights. Why is he presiding at the destruction of his adopted village?

The answer lies partly in Willcocks’s mercurial personality and partly in his continuing search for a patron—a father figure, perhaps—who can advance his interests. He is a handsome man at forty, reasonably well educated and with an aptitude for making friends, though it is noticed that the friends he makes are generally those who can give him a push up the ladder of his ambition.

His first patron in Upper Canada was a distant cousin, Peter Russell, who, as Administrator of the province, was the most powerful man next to the governor. Russell gave him a job and a home but threw him out when Willcocks made advances to the Administrator’s half-sister.

His next backer was Chief Justice Allcock, with whom he also lived and whose influence secured him a better post as Sheriff of York. When Allcock was moved to Lower Canada, Willcocks sought a new benefactor and found him in the person of the new Puisne Judge of the Court of King’s Bench, Robert Thorpe. That encounter marked a watershed in Joseph Willcocks’s life. Under Thorpe’s dark influence, the model civil servant became a thorn in the side of the government that employed him. Thorpe was aggrieved at not being appointed Chief Justice and shortly became the backer of those opposition elements in the legislature who gathered about the Irish lawyer and malcontent, William Weekes. If Weekes was Thorpe’s tool, so was Willcocks. Having lost his government job and launched his scrappy little newspaper, Willcocks became a member of the lower house. And after Weekes was killed in a duel in 1806, Willcocks became the centre of the opposition forces.

In Willcocks’s resistance to the closed circle of elitists at York can be seen the faint stirrings of a movement, interrupted by war, that a quarter of a century later will burst into open revolt. His Irish upbringing, his re-education under Thorpe and Weekes, his breach with Russell—all these have contributed to a vaguely formed political philosophy that makes him a foe of arbitrary power. In his newspaper, Willcocks hinted so broadly at bribery in the legislature that he was thrown in jail. It did not disconcert him. He fought hard, if vainly, for common school education—an American idea shunned by those who believe that schooling should be reserved for the sons of the privileged. He also opposed the strengthening of the militia. At the war’s outset he successfully blocked Isaac Brock’s call to suspend the laws of
habeas corpus
and to invoke martial law. “I am
flattered at being ranked among the enemies of the King’s Servants in this colony,” he declared. “I glory in the distinction.”

Then, suddenly, he reversed himself to become Isaac Brock’s humble and obedient servant. It is these sudden right-angle turns in Joseph Willcocks’s chequered career that baffle his friends and disconcert his enemies. Brock, who had every reason to hate and despise him, went out of his way to meet him and beg his aid. Among the proud and stiff-necked arbiters of the province’s destiny, Brock must have stood out as a man of exquisite charm and affability. Once again Willcocks found himself in the shadow of an older patron, this time the most powerful man in the province, one who made a point of flattering him. Would he undertake a mission of some delicacy in the interests of his country? Willcocks succumbed and was dispatched to secure the loyalty of the Grand River Indians. Later, still under Brock’s influence, he fought bravely at Queenston where his patron was killed.

Brock’s crusty successor, Roger Sheaffe, no diplomat, had little time for such as Joe Willcocks. But the Americans had. During the second occupation of York, when the Americans seemed to be winning, some of Willcocks’s friends went over to the enemy. Willcocks joined them, and here he is in Newark again, the civil servant-turned-radical-turned-soldier-turned-traitor, riding beside his commander, a green band and a white cockade in his hat identifying him proudly as a Canadian Volunteer, shouting threats and imprecations at his former neighbours.

Many have not heeded McClure’s warning, given early this morning, believing that the threat to burn the town is an empty gesture. Now, roughly turned out into the blowing snow, they see their homes and all their belongings consumed by fire. The able-bodied citizens are with the militia or in prison at Fort Niagara. Only women, children, and sick old men remain. Two babies are born this night in the light of the leaping flames.

Mrs. Alex McKee, whose husband is a prisoner at Niagara, struggles to save what she can. Her family owns seven buildings, including two houses, a well-stocked store, and a soap and candle factory.
They pack fifteen trunks with their most valuable effects and ship them off to Eight Mile Creek to be buried and covered with brushwood. She saves one article—a large teatray—as a sleigh to protect her little daughter’s bare feet from the snow. It is a vain effort; the child’s toes are soon frozen.

Eliza Campbell, widow of the fort major, cannot leave her home because she has three small children to care for. She lives in a handsomely furnished storey-and-a-half building, surrounded by two acres of land with fruit trees and a barn. Now, forced from her house without time to gather anything but money, she watches as the soldiers plunder her furniture and fire the two buildings. A moment later, one of Willcocks’s men takes all her money.

John Rogers, a boy of nine, watches his mother carry a beautiful mantelpiece out into the street before her house is reduced to ashes. His parents have friends and relatives among the American officers but have been told that if their home were to be spared, they would be tagged as disloyal by their neighbours.

Mrs. William Dickson lies ill in bed in her handsome mansion, the first brick house in Newark. Her husband, a brother of the Robert Dickson whom the Sioux call the Red-Haired Man, is a prisoner in Fort Niagara. Like others who are unable to walk, Mrs. Dickson is carried out of her house, bed and all, and plumped down in the snow while Willcocks’s men put the torch to the building, destroying everything—damask curtains, cherry and walnut furniture, a full set of India table china, stores, stoves, clothing, pictures, and, above all, one of the finest libraries in Upper Canada—a thousand books purchased in England at a cost of three thousand dollars. It is surely no coincidence that Dickson has long been an enemy of Joseph Willcocks—ever since the day, seven years before, when he killed Willcocks’s political patron, William Weekes, in a duel.

McClure’s intelligence, much of it based on Willcocks’s exaggerated reports, is faulty. The British as yet have no intention of attacking either Fort George or Fort Niagara. But Colonel Murray, seeing the flames from a distance, decides to ignore his orders, march on the town, and seize the fort. He calls out the militia, instructs Captain
Merritt to commandeer axes and scaling ladders, and puts his column in motion. Refugees are already streaming out of the town seeking shelter. The nearest farmhouse, four miles away, cannot handle them all. Some women and children walk up to ten miles that night through the swirling snow. The spectacle enrages Murray’s men, fuelling a desire for revenge that Murray is in no mood to dampen.

At nine in the evening, Murray’s advance enters the smouldering village. McClure’s troops make a hasty retreat across the ice-choked Niagara River. They have blown up Fort George’s main magazine and spiked the guns but left the new barracks intact, together with a quantity of ammunition and all fifteen hundred tents.

By the time William Merritt enters the town, Newark is a heap of coals, the streets clogged with furniture and only one house still standing—that of his brother-in-law. Ninety-eight houses, barns, and stables have been destroyed. Four hundred people are homeless. All public buildings—jail, court house, library—are in ashes. Two churches have been fired. In McEwen’s smokehouse, the refugees seek what shelter they can. Others crouch against chimneys or in root houses or cellars, hastily roofed with boards.

In the hearts of the homeless and the soldiers there is one common emotion: a desire for retaliation. The senseless burning of Newark will send an echo down the corridors of history, for it is this act, much more than the accidental firing of the legislature at York, that provokes a succession of incendiary raids that will not end until the city of Washington itself is in flames.

ST. DAVIDS, UPPER CANADA, DECEMBER 18, 1813

It is close to midnight as Colonel John Murray looks over the force that is about to march to the river and embark on the attack against Fort Niagara, the American stronghold on the far side. He turns to Captain Thomas Dawson of the grenadiers of the 100th, who will lead the Forlorn Hope:

“What description of men have you got, Dawson, for the advance? Can you rely on them?”

“I can, Colonel. I know every one of them. They can all be depended on.”

“Yes, Dawson, I dare say, but what I mean, are they a desperate set? I want men who have no conscience, for not a soul must live between the landing place and the fort. There must be no alarm.”

“They are just that description of men, Colonel.”

They are, in fact, the flower of Upper Canada. Young Allan MacNab is here, not yet turned sixteen; one day he will be premier. Lieutenant Richard Bullock, one of the few officers who escaped capture at the Thames, is here, and half a dozen officers from the Lincoln Militia—Loyalists with names like Kerby, Ball, Hamilton, and Servos, local gentry burning for revenge after the destruction of Newark.

The secret attack on the American fort has been a week in the planning, ever since McClure’s hasty departure from Fort George. For the past several days, Merritt and his dragoons have been gathering boats for the midnight voyage across the river. Exhausted from lack of sleep and a bout of grippe brought on by fatigue and cold, Merritt finds to his bitter disappointment that he can no longer stand upright and must miss the night’s excitement.

Lieutenant-General Gordon Drummond—De Rottenburg’s replacement as commander in Upper Canada and as Prevost’s second-in-command—has come down from Little York to St. Davids to mastermind Murray’s attack. A bolder and more innovative leader than his predecessor, he has left nothing to chance. The force of 562 men is taken from the 100th Regiment, the Royal Scots, and the veteran 41st. The Forlorn Hope will dispose of the American advance guard. One body will storm the main gate of the fort; another will attack the southern salient; a third will scale the eastern bastion. One officer, Daniel Servos, carries a stick of cordwood to jam into the gate if necessary. A party of axemen has been detailed to chop down the pickets and open the way to the fort’s rear. Silence is essential. Oars are to be muffled, muskets carried at the shoulder, unloaded, bayonets fixed, to prevent the clash of arms. The troops have all been warned that any sound will bring instant death. The
killing is to be silent. “The bayonet is the weapon on which the success of the attack must depend,” Drummond declares.

The boats slip across the narrow river in just fifteen minutes, landing two and a half miles above the fort. It is intensely cold, the night moonless, a soft blanket of snow muffling the sound of marching feet.

At Youngstown, Captain Dawson and his enormous sergeant, Andrew Spearman, spot an American soldier posted outside a tavern door. This must be the advance guard. Spearman creeps up on the shivering sentry, chokes him into silence, demands the official countersign, then dispatches him with a single bayonet thrust.