Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (66 page)

Sheaffe will not gamble. Already he has waited overlong. Now he dispatches his troops piecemeal: Major Givins and the Indians first, to oppose the landing, then a company of Glengarries to support them. He would like to send the militia, but not being disciplined they are still straggling in and have yet to form up in the ravine near the garrison. In their place he sends the grenadier company of the King’s, under its elegant captain, Neal McNeale, and the Newfoundland Fencibles. He sends for the second company of the King’s, beyond the eastern end of town. Then, when the militia is finally formed, he dispatches them under their adjutant general, Aeneas Shaw, to protect his right flank along the Dundas road. Sheaffe also has two six-pounders at his disposal, but he does not believe these can be trundled through the woods and so does not commit them.

At this point, things begin to go wrong for Roger Sheaffe. Shaw is supposed to know every foot of the ground between the garrison
and the old fort, but somehow—nobody can explain how—he takes the Glengarries with him on his flanking movement. They lose their way, retrace their steps along a maze of paths, and arrive late at the landing. By this time the American advance troops are ashore, the green-clad riflemen threading their way into the woods, cutting down the tardy defenders.

The Capture of Little York

General Pike cannot stand the inaction. From his position on the foredeck of
Madison
he can see Captain Benjamin Forsyth’s rifle corps pulling for the Canadian shore. A stiff east wind blows them past the chosen landing place and, as the soldiers struggle with the oars, the painted forms of Givins’s Indians emerge from the woods and open fire.

“Rest on your oars,” says Forsyth in a low voice as the musket balls rattle into the boats. “Prime!”

His men shake black powder from horn to pan, ram in their cartridges, return the fire.

This is Pike’s moment. The glory he seeks lies directly ahead; the Indians are already scattering into the woods.

“By God!” cries the General, “I can’t stand here any longer.”

Turns to his staff: “Come, jump into the boat.”

Off he goes, surrounded by his suite, directly toward the centre of the fray, a square, serene figure in blue and an obvious target for the balls that whistle around his head but leave him untouched.

Forsyth’s men are ashore, seeking the protection of the woods, the natural habitat of American sharpshooters, hiding behind trees and logs, covering the main landing of the infantry, skirmishing with the redcoats.

Pike wades ashore with his men, forms the infantry into platoons under the high bank, orders them to scale the incline and charge across the field with the bayonet. At this moment, Neal McNeale’s grenadiers pour out of the forest and down the bank, forcing the
Americans to the water’s edge. Several light-draft schooners move in at close range to spray the British with grape-shot. The heavy balls, bursting from their sacs, do terrible damage. Neal McNeale falls dead; so does Donald McLean, Clerk of the Assembly, who saved the public accounts the night before. The Indians, their morale shattered by the shower of grape, vanish from the scene.

Caught in a crossfire between the naval barrage and Forsyth’s sharpshooters, the regulars stumble back into the woods. Used to the broad plains and open warfare of Europe, they are unaccustomed to frontier skirmishing; in their scarlet jackets they make easy targets for the riflemen concealed between logs and trees.

“Show us our enemy! Show us our enemy!” they cry, but disciplined for a different kind of battle, they disdain the natural protection of the forest and drop like grouse on a highland shoot. Of 119 grenadiers, only 30 survive the ordeal. Two, it is believed, fall through the rotting ice of a deep pond, which will be known to future generations as Grenadier Pond. Another, both legs shattered, survives in the woods for more than three days by drinking water from a muddy pool, only to expire as he is rescued.

Yet it does not occur to the grenadiers to retreat, any more than it occurs to them to seek cover until, after a futile attempt to dislodge the Americans, their surviving officers lead them back toward the Western Battery that guards the lake road. By now the din in the woods is deafening—the shouts of the combatants, the warwhoops of the Indians, the roar of cannon and musket, and above all this the piercing notes of Forsyth’s bugler indicating success.

The naval guns continue to pour a hail of grape and canister shot into the woods as Pike forms his men into columns and, with the fife and drum corps playing “Yankee Doodle,” marches them toward York through the woods along the road that hugs the lake.

Ely Playter, back from his reconnaissance at the eastern end of town, arrives just as the first of the retreating British stagger out of the woods. Above the sound of music he can hear the cheers of the American sailors as six ships, beating against a brisk east wind, move up toward the Western Battery. Here Sheaffe intends to make
a stand. It will not be easy, for the battery is already jammed with men, all jostling each other and harassing the gunners who are doing their best to return the fire from the lake. The six American vessels can throw more than two hundred pounds of iron at the battery in a single volley. The twelve British gunners, working largely with old, condemned cannon whose trunnions have broken off, have scarcely one-third the firepower. Pike’s men have managed to haul two field guns through the woods—a feat that Sheaffe believed impossible. Now they advance upon the battery, arms at the trail.

Before the Americans can fling themselves at the battery, a dreadful accident brutally shatters the defenders’ morale. In the cramped quarters, somebody jostles one of the gunners. Behind him is a portable wooden magazine, crammed with cartridges and powder. A spark from a gunner’s slow match falls into the box, causing an explosion, killing more than a dozen men, scorching others horribly, and tearing away the gun platform.

A twelve-year-old boy, Patrick Finan, standing at the garrison gate, sees the maimed and burned men emerge, faces coal black, hair frizzled, clothing charred. He will never forget the spectacle or the unbearable odour of roasting flesh. One man is brought out in a wheelbarrow, so badly battered that Finan thinks every bone in his body must be broken. He lies in a heap, shaking with every movement, his legs dangling from his body as if held by the merest thread, his shrieks adding to the hullabaloo.

John Strachan has not been still all this time. He has galloped back to town, left his horse at home to prevent its capture, hastened back to the garrison on foot, encountered the stream of wounded emerging from the woods, and helped some of them reach medical aid. Now he experiences the shock of the explosion and thinks an enemy ship has been blown up. A glance at the carnage of the battery and the fleeing militiamen disabuses him. He decides to head back to town to see to the safety of his wife and the other women.

The regulars, meanwhile, are struggling to remount the big gun. The militia are fleeing. Nobody seems to know exactly what is to be done. The General himself is not at the battery. Outnumbered, he
has decided that the town cannot be defended and is laying plans to save his regulars and deny the public stores to the enemy.

Pike’s force advances with little opposition, seizes the Western Battery, moves on to the so-called Halfmoon Battery, which, being unarmed, is no battery at all, and pushes on along the lake toward Government House and the garrison.

The retreating militia have lost all semblance of order. Many are already across the creek that separates Government House from the blockhouse and barracks on the eastern bank. But Ely Playter and several others cling to the right bank, having exchanged their officer’s swords for muskets. Up comes Major Allan, who orders them to rally the militia and make a stand, but the fire from the ships is so hot that all seek the protection of the garrison battery. A further attempt is made to form the militia in a small hollow, but when the citizen soldiers see the beaten regulars retreating they refuse orders.

Playter realizes that the garrison is about to be evacuated. He does not know that Sheaffe and his officers have already decided to pull out and blow up the main magazine on the waterfront below Government House. Within this underground fort are at least two hundred barrels of gunpowder—perhaps five hundred—together with a vast quantity of cartridges, shells, round shot. Sheaffe, concerned only with saving his regulars, gives little attention to the straggling militia, several dozen of whom are within a whisper of the magazine.

The fuse is burning. Playter and his men have already been ordered to march off. But the young farmer has left his coat in his quarters. He runs to retrieve it, warning another straggler, a cook named Mrs. Chapman, to make haste away as the Americans are coming. Somebody else is inside the post—Matthias Saunders, struggling to remove a portable magazine from behind one of the twelve-pound guns. He, too, is unaware that the magazine is about to blow.

Zebulon Montgomery Pike is within four hundred yards of the garrison, having halted his column and ordered his men to hug the ground while he brings up the six-pounder and the howitzer which
his gunners have dragged through the mud and stumps. He is on the verge of victory and knows it. At any moment he expects to see a white flag rise from the blockhouse ahead. When that happens he will have the honour of receiving the sword of the ranking British general and accepting the surrender of close to a thousand men. It will be the first victory of American arms after ten months of bitter defeat. For lesser exploits in this disappointing war men of lower rank have received ceremonial swords and the thanks of Congress, their names toasted the breadth of the land, their profiles engraved on medals of solid gold. How sweet the prospect!

He sits down on a stump, awaiting the final attack. One of his men has captured a Canadian militia sergeant, and the Brigadier-General with his two aides, Lieutenant Donald Fraser and Captain John Nicholson, prepares to question him.

At this instant the ground shakes and the world turns dazzling white. A prodigious roar splits the ears of the attackers as a gigantic cloud spurts from the blazing magazine to blossom in the sky. From this vast canopy there bursts in all directions an eruption of debris—great chunks of masonry, broken beams, gigantic boulders, rocks and stones of every size. This terrifying hail pours down upon the attackers, covering the ground for a thousand feet in every direction, killing or maiming more than a hundred men, striking off arms and legs, crushing chests, decapitating bodies.

Ely Playter, who has retrieved his coat and reached the barrack gate, has an appalling close-up view. Miraculously, he is untouched. He sees huge boulders dropping all around him, some skipping across the ground, others burying themselves in the mud. He sees Matthias Saunders’s leg smashed to a pulp. He sees a boulder kill the horse of Sheaffe’s aide, Captain Robert Loring. He sees the oldest volunteer of all, the doorkeeper of the legislature, John Basil, struck twice in head and knee. The British casualties run to forty, most of them militia. But the Americans suffer more than five times that number. Their General is among the dying.