Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (38 page)

As his aide and friend John Lovett describes it, “the impetuosity of not only men but his first officers became such that he was absolutely compelled to go to battle or risk such consequences as no man could endure.” It is not possible to wait, even though there is no proper plan of attack. He must strike the blow at once, this very night.

FORT GEORGE, UPPER CANADA
, October 11, 1812. As Brock’s brigade major, Thomas Evans, rises from his dinner at the officers’ mess, his commander hands him an alarming note. It comes from Captain James Dennis, commanding one of the flank companies of the 49th at Queenston. Dennis’s detachment is in a state of mutiny. The men have threatened to shoot their officers.

“Evans,” says Brock, “you will proceed early in the morning and investigate this business, and march as prisoners in here half a dozen of the most culpable and I will make an example of them.”

There can be little doubt what that example will be. Years before, Brock literally pounced on Fort George and in a few minutes seized and shackled a group of mutineers plotting to shoot their commander, Roger Sheaffe. The ringleaders were taken to Quebec, court-martialled, and shot by a firing squad in the presence of the entire company, a demonstration that shook everyone including Brock himself, who was seen to wipe the tears from his eyes as the order was executed.

Brock has a second instruction for Major Evans:

“You can also cross the river and tell Van Rensselaer I expect he will immediately exchange the prisoners taken in the
Detroit
and
Caledonia
for an equal number of Americans I released after the capture of Detroit.”

Thus, on the very eve of the most famous battle on Canadian soil, a British officer will enter and reconnoitre the enemy camp.

Evans reaches Queenston the following morning to find the guardhouse gutted and Dennis in a state of alarm. The two repair to Dennis’s quarters in the largest home in the village, a handsome stone edifice on the high bank above the river, built by the best-known trader on the frontier, the late Robert Hamilton. It is owned now by his son Alexander, sheriff of Queenston, member of the Legislative Council, and a lieutenant-colonel in the militia. Alexander is another of the many grandsons of John Askin of Amherstburg.

Just as Evans is about to leave the Hamilton house to arrest the ringleaders of the mutiny, he hears a scatter of musket fire from the opposite shore. A ball whizzes through the room, passing directly between the two officers. Evans is outraged and demands to know the meaning of “such unusual insolence.” Dennis replies that sporadic firing has been going on for some days, making it hazardous to use the door on the river side of the building.

Evans decides to cross the river at once, musket balls or no, and orders Dennis to corral the prisoners for his return. Then, with the balls still hurtling past his ears, he walks over to the home of a militia captain, Thomas Dickson, the brother of Robert, the Red-Haired Man, and—such are the close-knit relationships of the frontier trade—a cousin of the late Robert Hamilton.

Evans asks Mrs. Dickson for a white kerchief to serve as a flag of truce and invites Dickson to join him in the river crossing. Mrs. Dickson expostulates. Others in the house join her: the venture is far too dangerous; the enemy is in a temper; they will no longer respect a white flag.

At this, Evans seizes Dickson by one hand, takes the flag in the other, descends the steep steps to a canoe at the water’s edge, and starts off across the two-hundred-yard stream in an unceasing shower of musket balls. The canoe, battered by the eddies and filling with water, becomes unmanageable and seems about to founder when the American fire suddenly ceases and the two men are able to reach the far shore.

As Evans is about to leap to the ground, an American with a bayonet stops him. The Major asks to see the Adjutant-General, Solomon Van Rensselaer, but is told that Solomon is too ill to receive him. He replies that he carries an important message from Brock and is prepared to see either the General himself or somebody deputized by him. Eventually, Major Lovett appears, and Evans presents his request about the prisoner exchange. Lovett’s reply is abrupt and curiously evasive. Nothing can be done, he says, “till the day after tomorrow.”

Evans is instantly on the alert. What have the Americans planned for the morrow? When he presses his case, Lovett remains evasive. Evans urges him to consult the General. Lovett agrees and goes off.

It appears to Evans that Lovett is trying to delay his return to the Canadian side—it is already past midday. Lovett does not come back for two hours. He explains that the prisoners have been sent on to Albany and cannot quickly be brought back, but all will be settled “the day after tomorrow.”

This constant harping on the morrow confirms Evans in his suspicions that the enemy is planning an immediate attack. Now he is anxious to get away and report to Brock. He has kept his eyes open and notices that the Americans’ numbers have been “prodigiously swelled by a horde of half-savage troops from Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.” (The prevailing British opinion is that the American militia and volunteers consist of uncivilized wild men.) Even more significant, Evans spots more than a dozen boats half-hidden in fissures in the bank and partially covered with brush. This convinces him that “an attack on our shores could not be prudently delayed for a single day.”

He and Dickson paddle swiftly to their own shore. Dickson’s first task is to remove his family from their house on the river bank, clearly the site of any future battle. Evans, meanwhile, rushes to warn the 49th flank companies and the militia stationed at Queenston. It is now past three. Fort George is six miles away. Every man will be needed to defend the town, including the mutinous prisoners. On his own responsibility, Evans liberates them “on the specious plea of their offence proceeding from a too free indulgence in drink,” appealing to their loyalty and courage, which he has no doubt will be tested by the following day.

Then, after making sure a fresh supply of ammunition has been distributed and “infusing all the spirit and animation in my power to impart,” the harried brigade major sets off at a gallop for Fort George, alerting the various posts along the route to the coming danger. He reaches the fort at six, having been exposed for thirteen hours “to wet feet and extreme heat without refreshment of any kind.” He is so exhausted he cannot speak. He takes some food, recovers his breath, and is ushered into the dining room before Brock and his senior officers.

At first they do not believe him, charge him with overreaction, offer to place bets against his predictions of an attack on the following day. Brock himself appears doubtful, then changes his mind as Evans talks on. With a grave face he asks Evans to follow him into his office where he questions him carefully on the day’s occurrences. At last he is convinced. The two men return to the dining room where the General issues orders calling in all the militia in the neighbourhood that very evening; others in outlying districts are told to report as swiftly as possible. He thanks Evans, who is ordered to make all necessary preparations at headquarters to meet the coming assault. Brock then returns to his office to work late into the night.
Evans toils until eleven, then slumps onto a mattress. A few hours later, his slumber is disturbed by the rumble of distant guns.

LEWISTON, NEW YORK
, October 13, 1812. At 3
A.M
. General Stephen Van Rensselaer opens the attack on Queenston, after some unfortunate skirmishing between his regular and militia officers on the touchy subject of seniority. Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott refuses to serve under Solomon Van Rensselaer, who has been deputed to lead the first wave. Lieutenant-Colonel John Chrystie, another regular, also demurs. A solution is worked out that gives Chrystie a command equal to but separate from Solomon’s. Chrystie will command the three hundred regular troops during the crossing; Solomon will be in charge of an equal number of militia—men picked carefully from the best-drilled battalions. Not all of the regulars are as touchy as Scott and Chrystie. Lieutenant-Colonel John Fenwick is so anxious to get into the battle that he drops his rank and puts himself under the command of the militia.

Stephen Van Rensselaer’s attack plan and his preparations for the assault are both faulty. He has already lost the advantage of surprise; now he proposes to make the first crossing with only a handful of bateaux: two large boats, each holding eighty men, and a dozen smaller ones, each holding twenty-five. His initial attack force, which will cross in two waves, consists of some six hundred men, half of them militia. A few miles upriver are more boats, which could easily be floated down, but the General does not take advantage of these, believing that once the boats are emptied on the opposite shore they can quickly return for reinforcements. Half a dozen trips may serve to ferry the entire force across the river. It is a serious miscalculation.

Nor does Stephen Van Rensselaer think to make use of Jesse Elliott’s bluejackets at Black Rock, men who might be considered experienced boatmen. His own militia, of course, know this part of the river well; they have been staring across it, sometimes navigating it under flags of truce, for some six weeks. But those who have just joined his force from Buffalo, Black Rock, and Fort Niagara are strangers to the area.

There are other problems. Van Rensselaer has failed to distribute enough ammunition. He has not insisted strongly enough on making use of Smyth’s regular forces at Buffalo. Nobody has thought to find boats large enough to transport heavy field pieces across the river; the bateaux cannot handle cannon or caissons. Nor have the various commands been assigned to specific objectives. The orders are general: get across, seize the village, gain the heights.

It is still dark when the first boats push off in the teeth of a chill, sleety drizzle. To oppose the landing, the British have fewer than three hundred men in and about Queenston. But the defenders are on the alert. John Lovett, who has been placed in charge of the American battery at Fort Grey on the heights above Lewiston, notes that the Canadian shore is an incessant blaze of musketry and that his friend Solomon lands in what seems to be a sheet of fire. His own guns—eighteen-pounders—open up to cover the attack, aided by two six-pounders and a mortar on the Lewiston shore, the cannon-balls and shells whistling over the heads of the troops in the bateaux.

At that moment, the British open fire. Half-way up the heights, in an arrow-shaped emplacement known as a redan, a single cannon begins to lob eighteen-pound balls down on the boats. Darkness is banished as bombs burst and muskets flash. At Brown’s Point, half-way between Queenston and Fort George, young Lieutenant John Beverley Robinson of the York Volunteers (the future chief justice) sees all of the village lit by gun fire.

In one of the boats approaching the shore sits the oldest volunteer in the American army, an extraordinary Kentucky frontiersman named Samuel Stubbs, sixty-two years old and scarcely five feet in height, gripping the rifle with which, in just three months, he has killed forty-five deer. Peering into the gloom illuminated now by the flash of cannon, Stubbs sees the opposite shore lined with redcoats “as thick as bees upon a sugar maple.” In a few minutes he is ashore under heavy fire, “the damned redcoats cutting us up like slain venison,” his companions dropping “like wild pigeons” while
the musket balls whistle around him “like a northwest wind through a dry cane break.”

Colonel Van Rensselaer’s attack force has dwindled. Three of the boats, including the two largest containing almost two hundred men, have drifted downriver and turned back. On the bank above, Captain Dennis with forty-six British regulars and a handful of militia is keeping up a withering fire. Solomon Van Rensselaer is no sooner out of his boat than a ball strikes him in the right thigh. As he thrusts forward, waving his men on, a second ball enters his thigh—the British are purposely firing low to inflict maximum damage. As the Colonel continues to stumble forward, a third shot penetrates his calf and a fourth mangles his heel, but he does not stop. Two more strike him in the leg and thigh. Weak from loss of blood, his men pinned down by the killing fire, he totters back with the remnant of his force to the shelter of the steep bank above the river and looks around weakly for his fellow commander. Where is Chrystie? He is supposed to be in charge of the regulars. But Chrystie is nowhere to be seen.