The remaining operations of 1812 are of quite minor importance. No more than two are worthy of being mentioned between the greater events before and after them. Both were abortive attempts at invasion—one across the upper Niagara, the other across the frontier south of Montreal.
After the battle of Queenston Heights Sheaffe succeeded Brock in command of the British, and Smyth succeeded Van Rensselaer in command of the Americans. Sheaffe was a harsh martinet and a third-rate commander. Smyth, a notorious braggart, was no commander at all. He did, however, succeed in getting Sheaffe to conclude an armistice that fully equalled Prevost's in its disregard of British interests. After making the most of it for a month he ended it on November 19, and began manoeuvring round his headquarters at Black Rock near Buffalo. After another eight days he decided to attack the British posts at Red House and Frenchman's Creek, which were respectively two and a half and five miles from Fort Erie. The whole British line of the upper Niagara, from Fort Erie to Chippawa, a distance of seventeen miles by the road along the river, was under the command of an excellent young officer, Colonel Bisshopp, who had between five and six hundred men to hold his seven posts. Fort Erie had the largest garrison—only a hundred and thirty men. Some forty men of the 49th and two small guns were stationed at Red House; while the light company of the 41st guarded the bridge over Frenchman's Creek. About two o'clock in the morning of the 28th one party of Americans pulled across to the ferry a mile below Fort Erie, and then, sheering off after being fired at by the Canadian militia on guard, made for Red House a mile and a half lower down. There they landed at three and fought a most confused and confusing action in the dark. Friend and foe became mixed up together; but the result was a success for the Americans. Meanwhile, the other party landed near Frenchman's Creek, reached the bridge, damaged it a little, and had a fight with the 41st, who could not drive the invaders back till reinforcements arrived. At daylight the men from Chippawa marched into action, Indians began to appear, and the whole situation was re-established. The victorious British lost nearly a hundred, which was more than a quarter of those engaged. The beaten Americans lost more; but, being in superior numbers, they could the better afford it.
Smyth was greatly disconcerted. But he held a boat review on his own side of the river, and sent over a summons to Bisshopp demanding the immediate surrender of Fort Erie 'to spare the effusion of blood.' Bisshopp rejected the summons. But there was no effusion of blood in consequence. Smyth planned, talked, and manoeuvred for two days more, and then tried to make his real effort on the 1st of December. By the time it was light enough for the British to observe him he had fifteen hundred men in boats, who all wanted to go back, and three thousand on shore, who all refused to go forward. He then held a council of war, which advised him to wait for a better chance. This closed the campaign with what, according to Porter, one of his own generals, was 'a scene of confusion difficult to describe: about four thousand men without order or restraint discharging their muskets in every direction.' Next day 'The Committee of Patriotic Citizens' undertook to rebuke Smyth. But he retorted, not without reason, that the affair at Queenston is a caution against relying on crowds who go to the banks of the Niagara to look at a battle as on a theatrical exhibition.'
The other abortive attempt at invasion was made by the advance-guard of the commander-in-chief's own army. Dearborn had soon found out that his disorderly masses at Greenbush were quite unfit to take the field. But, four months after the declaration of war, a small detachment, thrown forward from his new headquarters at Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, did manage to reach St Regis, where the frontier first meets the St Lawrence, near the upper end of Lake St Francis, sixty miles south-west of Montreal. Here the Americans killed Lieutenant Rototte and a sergeant, and took the little post, which was held by a few voyageurs. Exactly a month later, on November 23, these Americans were themselves defeated and driven back again. Three days earlier than this a much stronger force of Americans had crossed the frontier at Odelltown, just north of which there was a British blockhouse beside the river La Colle, a muddy little western tributary of the Richelieu, forty-seven miles due south of Montreal. The Americans fired into each other in the dark, and afterwards retired before the British reinforcements. Dearborn then put his army into winter quarters at Plattsburg, thus ending his much-heralded campaign against Montreal before it had well begun.
The American government was much disappointed at the failure of its efforts to make war without armies. But it found a convenient scapegoat in Hull, who was far less to blame than his superiors in the Cabinet. These politicians had been wrong in every important particular —wrong about the attitude of the Canadians, wrong about the whole plan of campaign, wrong in separating Hull from Dearborn, wrong in not getting men-of-war afloat on the Lakes, wrong, above all, in trusting to untrained and undisciplined levies. To complete their mortification, the ridiculous gunboats, in which they had so firmly believed, had done nothing but divert useful resources into useless channels; while, on the other hand, the frigates, which they had proposed to lay up altogether, so as to save themselves from 'the ruinous folly of a Navy,' had already won a brilliant series of duels out at sea.
There were some searchings of heart at Washington when all these military and naval misjudgments stood revealed. Eustis soon followed Hull into enforced retirement; and great plans were made for the campaign of 1813, which was designed to wipe out the disgrace of its predecessor and to effect the conquest of Canada for good and all.
John Armstrong, the new war secretary, and William Henry Harrison, the new general in the West, were great improvements on Eustis and Hull. But, even now, the American commanders could not decide on a single decisive attack supported by subsidiary operations elsewhere. Montreal remained their prime objective. But they only struck at it last of all. Michilimackinac kept their enemy in touch with the West. But they left it completely alone. Their general advance ought to have been secured by winning the command of the Lakes and by the seizure of suitable positions across the line. But they let the first blows come from the Canadian side; and they still left Lake Champlain to shift for itself. Their plan was undoubtedly better than that of 1812. But it was still all parts and no whole.
The various events were so complicated by the overlapping of time and place all along the line that we must begin by taking a bird's-eye view of them in territorial sequence, starting from the farthest inland flank and working eastward to the sea. Everything west of Detroit may be left out altogether, because operations did not recommence in that quarter until the campaign of the following year.
In January the British struck successfully at Frenchtown, more than thirty miles south of Detroit. They struck unsuccessfully, still farther south, at Fort Meigs in May and at Fort Stephenson in August; after which they had to remain on the defensive, all over the Lake Erie region, till their flotilla was annihilated at Put-in Bay in September and their army was annihilated at Moravian Town on the Thames in October. In the Lake Ontario region the situation was reversed. Here the British began badly and ended well. They surrendered York in April and Fort George, at the mouth of the Niagara, in May. They were also repulsed in a grossly mismanaged attack on Sackett's Harbour two days after their defeat at Fort George. The opposing flotillas meanwhile fought several manoeuvring actions of an indecisive kind, neither daring to risk battle and possible annihilation. But, as the season advanced, the British regained their hold on the Niagara peninsula by defeating the Americans at Stoney Creek and the Beaver Dams in June, and by clearing both sides of the Niagara river in December. On the upper St Lawrence they took Ogdensburg in February. They were also completely successful in their defence of Montreal. In June they took the American gunboats at Isle-aux-Noix on the Richelieu; in July they raided Lake Champlain; while in October and November they defeated the two divisions of the invading army at Chateauguay and Chrystler's Farm. The British news from sea also improved as the year wore on. The American frigate victories began to stop. The Shannon beat the Chesapeake. And the shadow of the Great Blockade began to fall on the coast of the Democratic South.
The operations of 1813 are more easily understood if taken in this purely territorial way. But in following the progress of the war we must take them chronologically. No attempt can be made here to describe the movements on either side in any detail. An outline must suffice. Two points, however, need special emphasis, as they are both markedly characteristic of the war in general and of this campaign in particular. First, the combined effect of the American victories of Lake Erie and the Thames affords a perfect example of the inseparable connection between the water and the land. Secondly, the British victories at the Beaver Dams and Chateauguay are striking examples of the inter-racial connection among the forces that defended Canada so well. The Indians did all the real fighting at the Beaver Dams. The French Canadians fought practically alone at Chateauguay.
The first move of the invaders in the West was designed to recover Detroit and cut off Mackinaw. Harrison, victorious over the Indians at Tippecanoe in 1811, was now expected to strike terror into them once more, both by his reputation and by the size of his forces. In midwinter he had one wing of his army on the Sandusky, under his own command, and the other on the Maumee, under Winchester, a rather commonplace general. At Frenchtown stood a little British post defended by fifty Canadians and a hundred Indians. Winchester moved north to drive these men away from American soil. But Procter crossed the Detroit from Amherstburg on the ice, and defeated Winchester's thousand whites with his own five hundred whites and five hundred Indians at dawn on January 22, making Winchester a prisoner. Procter was unable to control the Indians, who ran wild. They hated the Westerners who made up Winchester's force, as the men who had deprived them of their lands, and they now wreaked their vengeance on them for some time before they could be again brought within the bounds of civilized warfare. After the battle Procter retired to Amherstburg; Harrison began to build Fort Meigs on the Maumee; and a pause of three months followed all over the western scene.
But winter warfare was also going on elsewhere. A month after Procter's success, Prevost, when passing through Prescott, on the upper St Lawrence, reluctantly gave Colonel Macdonell of Glengarry provisional leave to attack Ogdensburg, from which the Americans were forwarding supplies to Sackett's Harbour, sending out raiding parties, and threatening the British line of communication to the west. No sooner was Prevost clear of Prescott than Macdonell led his four hundred regulars and one hundred militia over the ice against the American fort. His direct assault failed. But when he had carried the village at the point of the bayonet the garrison ran. Macdonell then destroyed the fort, the barracks, and four vessels. He also took seventy prisoners, eleven guns, and a large supply of stores.
With the spring came new movements in the West. On May 9 Procter broke camp and retired from an unsuccessful siege of Fort Meigs (now Toledo) at the south-western corner of Lake Erie. He had started this siege a fortnight earlier with a thousand whites and a thousand Indians under Tecumseh; and at first had seemed likely to succeed. But after the first encounter the Indians began to leave; while most of the militia had soon to be sent home to their farms to prevent the risk of starvation. Thus Procter presently found himself with only five hundred effectives in face of a much superior and constantly increasing enemy. In the summer he returned to the attack, this time against the American position on the lower Sandusky, nearly thirty miles east of Fort Meigs. There, on August 2, he tried to take Fort Stephenson. But his light guns could make no breach; and he lost a hundred men in the assault.
Meanwhile Dearborn, having first moved up from Plattsburg to Sackett's Harbour, had attacked York on April 27 with the help of the new American flotilla on Lake Ontario. This flotilla was under the personal orders of Commodore Chauncey, an excellent officer, who, in the previous September, had been promoted from superintendent of the New York Navy Yard to commander-in-chief on the Lakes. As Chauncey's forte was building and organization, he found full scope for his peculiar talents at Sackett's Harbour. He was also a good leader at sea and thus a formidable enemy for the British forces at York, where the third-rate Sheaffe was now in charge, and where Prevost had paved the way for a British defeat by allowing the establishment of an exposed navy yard instead of keeping all construction safe in Kingston. Sheaffe began his mistakes by neglecting to mount some of his guns before Dearborn and Chauncey arrived, though he knew these American commanders might come at any moment, and though he also knew how important it was to save a new British vessel that was building at York, because the command of the lake might well depend upon her. He then made another mistake by standing to fight in an untenable position against overwhelming odds. He finally retreated with all the effective regulars left, less than two hundred, burning the ship and yard as he passed, and leaving behind three hundred militia to make their own terms with the enemy. He met the light company of the 8th on its way up from Kingston and turned it back. With this retreat he left the front for good and became a commandant of bases, a position often occupied by men whose failures are not bad enough for courts-martial and whose saving qualities are not good enough for any more appointments in the field.
The Americans lost over two hundred men by an explosion in a British battery at York just as Sheaffe was marching off. Forty British had also been blown up in one of the forts a little while before. Sheaffe appears to have been a slack inspector of powder-magazines. But the Americans, who naturally suspected other things than slack inspection, thought a mine had been sprung on them after the fight was over. They consequently swore revenge, burnt the parliament buildings, looted several private houses, and carried off books from the public library as well as plate from the church. Chauncey, much to his credit, afterwards sent back all the books and plate he could recover.
Exactly a month later, on May 27, Chauncey and Dearborn appeared off Fort George, after a run back to Sackett's Harbour in the meantime. Vincent, Sheaffe's successor in charge of Upper Canada, had only a thousand regulars and four hundred militia there. Dearborn had more than four times as many men; and Perry, soon to become famous on Lake Erie, managed the naval part of landing them. The American men-of-war brought the long, low, flat ground of Mississauga Point under an irresistible cross-fire while three thousand troops were landing on the beach below the covering bluffs. No support could be given to the opposing British force by the fire of Fort George, as the village of Newark intervened. So Vincent had to fight it out in the open. On being threatened with annihilation he retired towards Burlington, withdrawing the garrison of Fort George, and sending orders for all the other troops on the Niagara to follow by the shortest line. He had lost a third of the whole force defending the Niagara frontier, both sides of which were now possessed by the Americans. But by nightfall on May 29 he was standing at bay, with his remaining sixteen hundred men, in an excellent strategical position on the Heights, half-way between York and Fort George, in touch with Dundas Street, the main road running east and west, and beside Burlington Bay, where he hoped to meet the British flotilla commanded by Yeo.
Captain Sir James Lucas Yeo was an energetic and capable young naval officer of thirty, whom the Admiralty had sent out with a few seamen to take command on the Lakes under Prevost's orders. He had been only seventeen days at Kingston when he sailed out with Prevost, on May 27, to take advantage of Chauncey's absence at the western end of the lake. Arrived before Sackett's Harbour, the attack was planned for the 29th. The landing force of seven hundred and fifty men was put in charge of Baynes, the adjutant-general, a man only too well fitted to do the 'dirty work' of the general staff under a weak commander-in-chief like Prevost. All went wrong at Sackett's Harbour. Prevost was 'present but not in command'; Baynes landed at the wrong place. Nevertheless, the British regulars scattered the American militiamen, pressed back the American regulars, set fire to the barracks, and halted in front of the fort. The Americans, thinking the day was lost, set fire to their stores and to Chauncey's new ships. Then Baynes and Prevost suddenly decided to retreat. Baynes explained to Prevost, and Prevost explained in a covering dispatch to the British government, that the fleet could not co-operate, that the fort could not be taken, and that the landing party was not strong enough. But, if this was true, why did they make an attack at all; and, if it was not true, why did they draw back when success seemed to be assured?
Meanwhile Chauncey, after helping to take Fort George, had started back for Sackett's Harbour; and Dearborn, left without the fleet, had moved on slowly and disjointedly, in rear of Vincent, with whom he did not regain touch for a week. On June 5 the Americans camped at Stoney Creek, five miles from the site of Hamilton. The steep zigzagging bank of the creek, which formed their front, was about twenty feet high. Their right rested on a mile-wide swamp, which ran down to Lake Ontario. Their left touched the Heights, which ran from Burlington to Queenston. They were also in superior numbers, and ought to have been quite secure. But they thought so much more of pursuit than of defence that they were completely taken by surprise when '704 firelocks' under Colonel Harvey suddenly attacked them just after midnight. Harvey, chief staff officer to Vincent, was a first-rate leader for such daring work as this, and his men were all well disciplined. But the whole enterprise might have failed, for all that. Some of the men opened fire too soon, and the nearest Americans began to stand to their arms. But, while Harvey ran along re-forming the line, Major Plenderleath, with some of Brock's old regiment, the 49th, charged straight into the American centre, took the guns there, and caused so much confusion that Harvey's following charge carried all before it. Next morning, June 6, the Americans began a retreat which was hastened by Yeo's arrival on their lakeward flank, by the Indians on the Heights, and by Vincent's reinforcements in their rear. Not till they reached the shelter of Fort George did they attempt to make a stand.
The two armies now faced each other astride of the lake-shore road and the Heights. The British left advanced post, between Ten and Twelve Mile Creeks, was under Major de Haren of the 104th, a regiment which, in the preceding winter, had marched on snow-shoes through the woods all the way from the middle of New Brunswick to Quebec. The corresponding British post inland, near the Beaver Dams, was under Lieutenant FitzGibbon of the 49th, a cool, quick-witted, and adventurous Irishman, who had risen from the ranks by his own good qualities and Brock's recommendation. Between him and the Americans at Queenston and St David's was a picked force of Indian scouts with a son of the great chief Joseph Brant. These Indians never gave the Americans a minute's rest. They were up at all hours, pressing round the flanks, sniping the sentries, worrying the outposts, and keeping four times their own numbers on the perpetual alert. What exasperated the Americans even more was the wonderfully elusive way in which the Indians would strike their blow and then be lost to sight and sound the very next moment, if, indeed, they ever were seen at all. Finally, this endless skirmish with an invisible foe became so harassing that the Americans sent out a flying column of six hundred picked men under Colonel Boerstler on June 24 to break up FitzGibbon's post at the Beaver Dams and drive the Indians out of the intervening bush altogether.
But the American commanders had not succeeded in hiding their preparations from the vigilant eyes of the Indian scouts or from the equally attentive ears of Laura Secord, the wife of an ardent U. E. Loyalist, James Secord, who was still disabled by the wounds he had received when fighting under Brock's command at Queenston Heights. Early in the morning of the 23rd, while Laura Secord was going out to milk the cows, she overheard some Americans talking about the surprise in store for FitzGibbon next day. Without giving the slightest sign she quietly drove the cattle in behind the nearest fence, hid her milk-pail, and started to thread her perilous way through twenty miles of bewildering bypaths to the Beaver Dams. Keeping off the beaten tracks and always in the shadow of the full-leaved trees, she stole along through the American lines, crossed the no-man's-land between the two desperate enemies, and managed to get inside the ever-shifting fringe of Indian scouts without being seen by friend or foe. The heat was intense; and the whole forest steamed with it after the tropical rain. But she held her course without a pause, over the swollen streams on fallen tree-trunks, through the dense underbrush, and in and out of the mazes of the forest, where a bullet might come from either side without a moment's warning. As she neared the end of her journey a savage yell told her she was at last discovered by the Indians. She and they were on the same side; but she had hard work to persuade them that she only wished to warn FitzGibbon. Then came what, to a lesser patriot, would have been a crowning disappointment. For when, half dead with fatigue, she told him her story, she found he had already heard it from the scouts. But just because this forestalment was no real disappointment to her, it makes her the Anglo-Canadian heroine whose fame for bravery in war is worthiest of being remembered with that of her French-Canadian sister, Madeleine de Vercheres. [Footnote: For Madeleine de Vercheres see The fighting Governor in this Series.]
Boerstler's six hundred had only ten miles to go in a straight line. But all the thickets, woods, creeks, streams, and swamps were closely beset by a body of expert, persistent Indians, who gradually increased from two hundred and fifty to four hundred men. The Americans became discouraged and bewildered; and when FitzGibbon rode up at the head of his redcoats they were ready to give in. The British posts were all in excellent touch with each other; and de Haren arrived in time to receive the actual surrender. He was closely followed by the 2nd Lincoln Militia under Colonel Clark, and these again by Colonel Bisshopp with the whole of the advanced guard. But it was the Indians alone who won the fight, as FitzGibbon generously acknowledged: 'Not a shot was fired on our side by any but the Indians. They beat the American detachment into a state of terror, and the only share I claim is taking advantage of a favourable moment to offer protection from the tomahawk and scalping knife.'
June was a lucky month for the British at sea as well as on the land; and its 'Glorious First,' so called after Howe's victory nineteen years before, now became doubly glorious in a way which has a special interest for Canada. The American frigate Chesapeake was under orders to attack British supply-ships entering Canadian waters; and the victorious British frigate Shannon was taken out of action and into a Canadian port by a young Canadian in the Royal Navy.
The Chesapeake had a new captain, Lawrence, with new young officers. She carried fifty more men than the British frigate Shannon. But many of her ship's company were new to her, on recommissioning in May; and some were comparatively untrained for service on board a man-of-war. The frigates themselves were practically equal in size and armament. But Captain Broke had been in continuous command of the Shannon for seven years and had trained his crew into the utmost perfection of naval gunnery. The vessels met off Boston in full view of many thousands of spectators. Not one British shot flew high. Every day in the Shannon's seven years of preparation told in that fight of only fifteen minutes; and when Broke led his boarders over the Chesapeake's side her fate had been sealed already. The Stars and Stripes were soon replaced by the Union Jack. Then, with Broke severely wounded and his first lieutenant killed, the command fell on Lieutenant Wallis, who sailed both vessels into Halifax. This young Canadian, afterwards known as Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir Provo Wallis, lived to become the longest of all human links between the past and present of the Navy. He was by far the last survivor of those officers who were specially exempted from technical retirement on account of having held any ship or fleet command during the Great War that ended on the field of Waterloo. He was born before Napoleon had been heard of. He went through a battle before the death of Nelson. He outlived Wellington by forty years. His name stood on the Active List for all but the final decade of the nineteenth century. And, as an honoured centenarian, he is vividly remembered by many who were still called young a century after the battle that brought him into fame.
The summer campaign on the Niagara frontier ended with three minor British successes. Fort Schlosser was surprised on July 5. On the 11th Bisshopp lost his life in destroying Black Rock. And on August 24 the Americans were driven in under the guns of Fort George. After this there was a lull which lasted throughout the autumn.
Down by the Montreal frontier there were three corresponding British successes. On June 3 Major Taylor of the 100th captured two American gunboats, the Growler and the Eagle, which had come to attack Isle-aux-Noix in the Richelieu river, and renamed them the Broke and the Shannon. Early in August Captains Pring and Everard, of the Navy, and Colonel Murray with nine hundred soldiers, raided Lake Champlain. They destroyed the barracks, yard, and stores at Plattsburg and sent the American militia flying home. But a still more effective blow was struck on the opposite side of Lake Champlain, at Burlington, where General Hampton was preparing the right wing of his new army of invasion. Stores, equipment, barracks, and armaments were destroyed to such an extent that Hampton's preparations were set back till late in the autumn. The left wing of the same army was at Sackett's Harbour, under Dearborn's successor, General Wilkinson, whose plan was to take Kingston, go down the St Lawrence, meet Hampton, who was to come up from the south, and then make a joint attack with him on Montreal.
In September the scene of action shifted to the West, where the British were trying to keep the command of Lake Erie, while the Americans were trying to wrest it from them. Captain Oliver Perry, a first-rate American naval officer of only twenty-eight, was at Presqu'isle (now Erie) completing his flotilla. He had his troubles, of course, especially with the militia garrison, who would not do their proper tour of duty. 'I tell the boys to go, but the boys won't go,' was the only report forthcoming from one of several worthless colonels. A still greater trouble for Perry was getting his vessels over the bar. This had to be done without any guns on board, and with the cumbrous aid of 'camels,' which are any kind of air-tanks made fast to the sides low down, in order to raise the hull as much as possible. But, luckily for Perry, his opponent, Captain Barclay of the Royal Navy, an energetic and capable young officer of thirty-two, was called upon to face worse troubles still. Barclay was, indeed, the first to get afloat. But he had to give up the blockade of Presqu'isle, and so let Perry out, because he had the rawest of crews, the scantiest of equipment, and nothing left to eat. Then, when he ran back to Amherstburg, he found Procter also facing a state of semi-starvation, while thousands of Indian families were clamouring for food. Thus there was no other choice but either to fight or starve; for there was not the slightest chance of replenishing stores unless the line of the lake was clear.
So Barclay sailed out with his six little British vessels, armed by the odds and ends of whatever ordnance could be spared from Amherstburg and manned by almost any crews but sailors. Even the flagship Detroit had only ten real seamen, all told. Ammunition was likewise very scarce, and so defective that the guns had to be fired by the flash of a pistol. Perry also had a makeshift flotilla, partly manned by drafts from Harrison's army. But, on the whole, the odds in his favour were fairly shown by the number of vessels in the respective flotillas, nine American against the British six.
Barclay had only thirty miles to make in a direct south-easterly line from Amherstburg to reach Perry at Put-in Bay in the Bass Islands, where, on the morning of September 10, the opposing forces met. The battle raged for two hours at the very closest quarters till Perry's flagship Lawrence struck to Barclay's own Detroit. But Perry had previously left the Lawrence for the fresh Niagara; and he now bore down on the battered Detroit, which had meanwhile fallen foul of the only other sizable British vessel, the Queen Charlotte. This was fatal for Barclay. The whole British flotilla surrendered after a desperate resistance and an utterly disabling loss. From that time on to the end of the war Lake Erie remained completely under American control.
Procter could hardly help seeing that he was doomed to give up the whole Lake Erie region. But he lingered and was lost. While Harrison was advancing with overwhelming numbers Procter was still trying to decide when and how to abandon Amherstburg. Then, when he did go, he carried with him an inordinate amount of baggage; and he retired so slowly that Harrison caught and crushed him near Moravian Town, beside the Thames, on the 5th of October. Harrison had three thousand exultant Americans in action; Procter had barely a thousand worn-out, dispirited men, more than half of them Indians under Tecumseh. The redcoats, spread out in single rank at open order, were ridden down by Harrison's cavalry, backed by the mass of his infantry. The Indians on the inland flank stood longer and fought with great determination against five times their numbers till Tecumseh fell. Then they broke and fled. This was their last great fight and Tecumseh was their last great leader.
The scene now shifts once more to the Montreal frontier, which was being threatened by the converging forces of Hampton from the south and Wilkinson from the west. Each had about seven thousand men; and their common objective was the island of Montreal. Hampton crossed the line at Odelltown on September 20. But he presently moved back again; and it was not till October 21 that he began his definite attack by advancing down the left bank of the Chateauguay, after opening communications with Wilkinson, who was still near Sackett's Harbour. Hampton naturally expected to brush aside all the opposition that could be made by the few hundred British between him and the St Lawrence. But de Salaberry, the commander of the British advanced posts, determined to check him near La Fourche, where several little tributaries of the Chateauguay made a succession of good positions, if strengthened by abattis and held by trained defenders.
The British force was very small when Hampton began his slow advance; but 'Red George' Macdonell marched to help it just in time. Macdonell was commanding a crack corps of French Canadians, all picked from the best 'Select Embodied Militia,' and now, at the end of six months of extra service, as good as a battalion of regulars. He had hurried to Kingston when Wilkinson had threatened it from Sackett's Harbour. Now he was urgently needed at Chateauguay. 'When can you start?' asked Prevost, who was himself on the point of leaving Kingston for Chateauguay. 'Directly the men have finished their dinners, sir!' 'Then follow me as quickly as you can!' said Prevost as he stepped on board his vessel. There were 210 miles to go. A day was lost in collecting boats enough for this sudden emergency. Another day was lost en route by a gale so terrific that even the French-Canadian voyageurs were unable to face it. The rapids, where so many of Amherst's men had been drowned in 1760, were at their very worst; and the final forty miles had to be made overland by marching all night through dense forest and along a particularly difficult trail. Yet Macdonell got into touch with de Salaberry long before Prevost, to whom he had the satisfaction of reporting later in the day: 'All correct and present, sir; not one man missing!'
The advanced British forces under de Salaberry were now, on October 25, the eve of battle, occupying the left, or north, bank of the Chateauguay, fifteen miles south of the Cascade Rapids of the St Lawrence, twenty-five miles south-west of Caughnawaga, and thirty-five miles south-west of Montreal. Immediately in rear of these men under de Salaberry stood Macdonell's command; while, in more distant support, nearer to Montreal, stood various posts under General de Watteville, with whom Prevost spent that night and most of the 26th, the day on which the battle was fought.
As Hampton came on with his cumbrous American thousands de Salaberry felt justifiable confidence in his own well-disciplined French-Canadian hundreds. He and his brothers were officers in the Imperial Army. His Voltigeurs were regulars. The supporting Fencibles were also regulars, and of ten years' standing. Macdonell's men were practically regulars. The so-called 'Select Militia' present had been permanently embodied for eighteen months; and the only real militiamen on the scene of action, most of whom never came under fire at all, had already been twice embodied for service in the field. The British total present was 1590, of whom less than a quarter were militiamen and Indians. But the whole firing line comprised no more than 460, of whom only 66 were militiamen and only 22 were Indians. The Indian total was about one-tenth of the whole. The English-speaking total was about one-twentieth. It is therefore perfectly right to say that the battle of Chateauguay was practically fought and won by French-Canadian regulars against American odds of four to one.
De Salaberry's position was peculiar. The head of his little column faced the head of Hampton's big column on a narrow front, bounded on his own left by the river Chateauguay and on his own right by woods, into which Hampton was afraid to send his untrained men. But, crossing a right-angled bend of the river, beyond de Salaberry's left front, was a ford, while in rear of de Salaberry's own column was another ford which Hampton thought he could easily take with fifteen hundred men under Purdy, as he had no idea of Macdonell's march and no doubt of being able to crush de Salaberry's other troops between his own five thousand attacking from the front and Purdy's fifteen hundred attacking from the rear. Purdy advanced overnight, crossed to the right bank of the Chateauguay, by the ford clear of de Salaberry's front, and made towards the ford in de Salaberry's rear. But his men lost their way in the dark and found themselves, not in rear of, but opposite to, and on the left flank of, de Salaberry's column in the morning. They drove in two of de Salaberry's companies, which were protecting his left flank on the right, or what was now Purdy's, side of the river; but they were checked by a third, which Macdonell sent forward, across the rear ford, at the same time that he occupied this rear ford himself. Purdy and Hampton had now completely lost touch with one another. Purdy was astounded to see Macdonell's main body of redcoats behind the rear ford. He paused, waiting for support from Hampton, who was still behind the front ford. Hampton paused, waiting for him to take the rear ford, now occupied by Macdonell. De Salaberry mounted a huge tree-stump and at once saw his opportunity. Holding back Hampton's crowded column with his own front, which fought under cover of his first abattis, he wheeled the rest of his men into line to the left and thus took Purdy in flank. Macdonell was out of range behind the rear ford; but he played his part by making his buglers sound the advance from several different quarters, while his men, joined by de Salaberry's militiamen and by the Indians in the bush, cheered vociferously and raised the war-whoop. This was too much for Purdy's fifteen hundred. They broke in confusion, ran away from the river into the woods under a storm of bullets, fired into each other, and finally disappeared. Hampton's attack on de Salaberry's first abattis then came to a full stop; after which the whole American army retired beaten from the field.
Ten days after Chateauguay dilatory Wilkinson, tired of waiting for defeated Hampton, left the original rendezvous at French Creek, fifty miles below Sackett's Harbour. Like Dearborn in 1812, he began his campaign just as the season was closing. But, again like Dearborn, he had the excuse of being obliged to organize his army in the middle of the war. Four days later again, on November 9, Brown, the successful defender of Sackett's Harbour against Prevost's attack in May, was landed at Williamsburg, on the Canadian side, with two thousand men, to clear the twenty miles down to Cornwall, opposite the rendezvous at St Regis, where Wilkinson expected to find Hampton ready to join him for the combined attack on Montreal. But Brown had to reckon with Dennis, the first defender of Queenston, who now commanded the little garrison of Cornwall, and who disputed every inch of the way by breaking the bridges and resisting each successive advance till Brown was compelled to deploy for attack. Two days were taken up with these harassing manoeuvres, during which another two thousand Americans were landed at Williamsburg under Boyd, who immediately found himself still more harassed in rear than Brown had been in front.
This new British force in Boyd's rear was only a thousand strong; but, as it included every human element engaged in the defence of Canada, it has a quite peculiar interest of its own. Afloat, it included bluejackets of the Royal Navy, men of the Provincial Marine, French-Canadian voyageurs, and Anglo-Canadian boatmen from the trading-posts, all under a first-rate fighting seaman, Captain Mulcaster, R.N. Ashore, under a good regimental leader, Colonel Morrison—whose chief staff officer was Harvey, of Stoney Creek renown—it included Imperial regulars, Canadian regulars of both races, French-Canadian and Anglo-Canadian militiamen, and a party of Indians.
Early on the 11th Brown had arrived at Cornwall with his two thousand Americans; Wilkinson was starting down from Williamsburg in boats with three thousand more, and Boyd was starting down ashore with eighteen hundred. But Mulcaster's vessels pressed in on Wilkinson's rear, while Morrison pressed in on Boyd's. Wilkinson then ordered Boyd to turn about and drive off Morrison, while he hurried his own men out of reach of Mulcaster, whose armed vessels could not follow down the rapids. Boyd thereupon attacked Morrison, and a stubborn fight ensued at Chrystler's Farm. The field was of the usual type: woods on one flank, water on the other, and a more or less flat clearing in the centre. Boyd tried hard to drive his wedge in between the British and the river. But Morrison foiled him in manoeuvre; and the eight hundred British stood fast against their eighteen hundred enemies all along the line. Boyd then withdrew, having lost four hundred men; and Morrison's remaining six hundred effectives slept on their hard-won ground.
Next morning the energetic Morrison resumed his pursuit. But the campaign against Montreal was already over. Wilkinson had found that Hampton had started back for Lake Champlain while the battle was in progress; so he landed at St Regis, just inside his own country, and went into winter quarters at French Mills on the Salmon river.
In December the scene of strife changed back again to the Niagara, where the American commander, McClure, decided to evacuate Fort George. At dusk on the 10th he ordered four hundred women and children to be turned out of their homes at Newark into the biting midwinter cold, and then burnt the whole settlement down to the ground. If he had intended to hold the position he might have been justified in burning Newark, under more humane conditions, because this village undoubtedly interfered with the defensive fire of Fort George. But, as he was giving up Fort George, his act was an entirely wanton deed of shame.
Meanwhile the new British general, Gordon Drummond, second in ability to Brock alone, was hurrying to the Niagara frontier. He was preceded by Colonel Murray, who took possession of Fort George on the 12th, the day McClure crossed the Niagara river. Murray at once made a plan to take the American Fort Niagara opposite; and Drummond at once approved it for immediate execution. On the night of the 18th six hundred men were landed on the American side three miles up the river. At four the next morning Murray led them down to the fort, rushing the sentries and pickets by the way with the bayonet in dead silence. He then told off two hundred men to take a bastion at the same time that he was to lead the other four hundred straight through the main gate, which he knew would soon be opened to let the reliefs pass out. Everything worked to perfection. When the reliefs came out they were immediately charged and bayoneted, as were the first astonished men off duty who ran out of their quarters to see what the matter was. A stiff hand-to-hand fight followed. But every American attempt to form was instantly broken up; and presently the whole place surrendered. Drummond, who was delighted with such an excellent beginning, took care to underline the four significant words referring to the enemy's killed and wounded—all with the bayonet. This was done in no mere vulgar spirit of bravado, still less in abominable bloody-mindedness. It was the soldierly recognition of a particularly gallant feat of arms, carried out with such conspicuously good discipline that its memory is cherished, even to the present day, by the 100th, afterwards raised again as the Royal Canadians, and now known as the Prince of Wales's Leinster regiment. A facsimile of Drummond's underlined order is one of the most highly honoured souvenirs in the officers' mess.
Not a moment was lost in following up this splendid feat of arms. The Indians drove the American militia out of Lewiston, which the advancing redcoats burnt to the ground. Fort Schlosser fell next, then Black Rock, and finally Buffalo. Each was laid in ashes. Thus, before 1813 ended, the whole American side of the Niagara was nothing but one long, bare line of blackened desolation, with the sole exception of Fort Niagara, which remained secure in British hands until the war was over.
In the closing phase of the struggle by land and sea the fortunes of war may, with the single exception of Plattsburg, be most conveniently followed territorially, from one point to the next, along the enormous irregular curve of five thousand miles which was the scene of operations. This curve begins at Prairie du Chien, where the Wisconsin joins the Mississippi, and ends at New Orleans, where the Mississippi is about to join the sea. It runs easterly along the Wisconsin, across to the Fox, into Lake Michigan, across to Mackinaw, eastwards through Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, down the St Lawrence, round to Halifax, round from there to Maine, and thence along the whole Atlantic coast, south and west—about into the Gulf of Mexico.
The blockade of the Gulf of Mexico was an integral part of the British plan. But the battle of New Orleans, which was a complete disaster for the British arms, stands quite outside the actual war, since it was fought on January 8, 1815, more than two weeks after the terms of peace had been settled by the Treaty of Ghent. This peculiarity about its date, taken in conjunction with its extreme remoteness from the Canadian frontier, puts it beyond the purview of the present chronicle.
All the decisive actions of the campaign proper were fought within two months. They began at Prairie du Chien in July and ended at Plattsburg in September. Plattsburg is the one exception to the order of place. The tide of war and British fortune flowed east and south to reach its height at Washington in August. It turned at Plattsburg in September.
Neither friend nor foe went west in 1813. But in April 1814 Colonel McDouall set out with ninety men, mostly of the Newfoundland regiment, to reinforce Mackinaw. He started from the little depot which had been established on the Nottawasaga, a river flowing into the Georgian Bay and accessible by the overland trail from York.
After surmounting the many difficulties of the inland route which he had to take in order to avoid the Americans in the Lake Erie region, and after much hard work against the Lake Huron ice, he at last reached Mackinaw on the 18th of May. Some good fighting Indians joined him there; and towards the end of June he felt strong enough to send Colonel McKay against the American post at Prairie du Chien. McKay arrived at this post in the middle of July and captured the whole position—fort, guns, garrison, and a vessel on the Mississippi.
Meanwhile seven hundred Americans under Croghan, the American officer who had repulsed Procter at Fort Stephenson the year before, were making for Mackinaw itself. They did some private looting at the Sault, burnt the houses at St Joseph's Island, and landed in full force at Mackinaw on the 4th of August. McDouall had less than two hundred men, Indians included. But he at once marched out to the attack and beat the Americans back to their ships, which immediately sailed away. The British thenceforth commanded the whole three western lakes until the war was over.
The Lake Erie region remained quite as decisively commanded by the Americans. They actually occupied only the line of the Detroit. But they had the power to cut any communications which the British might try to establish along the north side of the lake. They had suffered a minor reverse at Chatham in the previous December. But in March they more than turned the tables by defeating Basden's attack in the Longwoods at Delaware, near London; and in October seven hundred of their mounted men raided the line of the Thames and only just stopped short of the Grand River, the western boundary of the Niagara peninsula.
The Niagara frontier, as before, was the scene of desperate strife. The Americans were determined to wrest it from the British, and they carefully trained their best troops for the effort. Their prospects seemed bright, as the whole of Upper Canada was suffering from want of men and means, both civil and military. Drummond, the British commander-in-chief there, felt very anxious not only about the line of the Niagara but even about the neck of the whole peninsula, from Burlington westward to Lake Erie. He had no more than 4,400 troops, all told; and he was obliged to place them so as to be ready for an attack either from the Niagara or from Lake Erie, or from both together. Keeping his base at York with a thousand men, he formed his line with its right on Burlington and its left on Fort Niagara. He had 500 men at Burlington, 1,000 at Fort George, and 700 at Fort Niagara. The rest were thrown well forward, so as to get into immediate touch with any Americans advancing from the south. There were 300 men at Queenston, 500 at Chippawa, 150 at Fort Erie, and 250 at Long Point on Lake Erie.
Brown, the American general who had beaten Prevost at Sackett's Harbour and who had now superseded Wilkinson, had made his advanced field base at Buffalo. His total force was not much more than Drummond's. But it was all concentrated into a single striking body which possessed the full initiative of manoeuvre and attack. On July 3 Brown crossed the Niagara to the Canadian side. The same day he took Fort Erie from its little garrison; and at once began to make it a really formidable work, as the British found out to their cost later on. Next day he advanced down the river road to Street's Creek. On hearing this, General Riall, Drummond's second-in-command, gathered two thousand men and advanced against Brown, who had recommenced his own advance with four thousand. They met on the 5th, between Street's Creek and the Chippawa river. Riall at once sent six hundred men, including all his Indians and militia, against more than twice their number of American militia, who were in a strong position on the inland flank. The Canadians went forward in excellent style and the Americans broke and fled in wild confusion. Seizing such an apparently good chance, Riall then attacked the American regulars with his own, though the odds he had to face here were more than three against two. The opposing lines met face to face unflinchingly. The Americans, who had now been trained and disciplined by proper leaders, refused to yield an inch. Their two regular brigadiers, Winfield Scott and Ripley, kept them well in hand, manoeuvred their surplus battalions to the best advantage, overlapped the weaker British flank, and won the day. The British loss was five hundred, or one in four: the American four hundred, or only one in ten.
Brown then turned Riall's flank, by crossing the Chippawa higher up, and prepared for the crowning triumph of crushing Drummond. He proposed a joint attack with Chauncey on Forts Niagara and George. But Chauncey happened to be ill at the time; he had not yet defeated Yeo; and he strongly resented being made apparently subordinate to Brown. So the proposed combination failed at the critical moment. But, for the eighteen days between the battle of Chippawa on the 5th of July and Brown's receipt of Chauncey's refusal on the 23rd, the Americans carried all before them, right up to the British line that ran along the western end of Lake Ontario, from Fort Niagara to Burlington. During this period no great operations took place. But two minor incidents served to exasperate feelings on both sides. Eight Canadian traitors were tried and hanged at Ancaster near Burlington; and Loyalists openly expressed their regret that Willcocks and others had escaped the same fate. Willcocks had been the ring-leader of the parliamentary opposition to Brock in 1812; and had afterwards been exceedingly active on the American side, harrying every Loyalist he and his raiders could lay their hands on. He ended by cheating the gallows, after all, as he fell in a skirmish towards the end of the present campaign on the Niagara frontier. The other exasperating incident was the burning of St David's on July 19 by a Colonel Stone; partly because it was a 'Tory village' and partly because the American militia mistakenly thought that one of their officers, Brigadier-General Swift, had been killed by a prisoner to whom he had given quarter.
When, on the 23rd of July, Brown at last received Chauncey's disappointing answer, he immediately stopped manoeuvring along the lower Niagara and prepared to execute an alternative plan of marching diagonally across the Niagara peninsula straight for the British position at Burlington. To do this he concentrated at the Chippawa on the 24th. But by the time he was ready to put his plan into execution, on the morning of the 25th, he found himself in close touch with the British in his immediate front. Their advanced guard of a thousand men, under Colonel Pearson, had just taken post at Lundy's Lane, near the Falls. Their main body, under Riall, was clearing both banks of the lower Niagara. And Drummond himself had just arrived at Fort Niagara. Neither side knew the intentions of the other. But as the British were clearing the whole country up to the Falls, and as the Americans were bent on striking diagonally inland from a point beside the Falls, it inevitably happened that each met the other at Lundy's Lane, which runs inland from the Canadian side of the Falls, at right angles to the river, and therefore between the two opposing armies.
When Drummond, hurrying across from York, landed at Fort Niagara in the early morning of the fateful 25th, he found that the orders he had sent over on the 23rd were already being carried out, though in a slightly modified form. Colonel Tucker was marching off from Fort Niagara to Lewiston, which he took without opposition. Then, first making sure that the heights beyond were also clear, he crossed over the Niagara to Queenston, where his men had dinner with those who had marched up on the Canadian side from Fort George. Immediately after dinner half the total sixteen hundred present marched back to garrison Forts George and Niagara, while the other half marched forward, up-stream, on the Canadian side, with Drummond, towards Lundy's Lane, whither Riall had preceded them with reinforcements for the advanced guard under Colonel Pearson. In the meantime Brown had heard about the taking of Lewiston, and, fearing that the British might take Fort Schlosser too, had at once given up all idea of his diagonal march on Burlington and had decided to advance straight against Queenston instead. Thus both the American and the British main bodies were marching on Lundy's Lane from opposite sides and in successive detachments throughout that long, intensely hot, midsummer afternoon.
Presently Riall got a report saying that the Americans were advancing in one massed force instead of in successive detachments. He thereupon ordered Pearson to retire from Lundy's Lane to Queenston, sent back orders that Colonel Hercules Scott, who was marching up twelve hundred men from near St Catharine's on Twelve Mile Creek, was also to go to Queenston, and reported both these changes to Drummond, who was hurrying along the Queenston road towards Lundy's Lane as fast as he could. While the orderly officers were galloping back to Drummond and Hercules Scott, and while Pearson was getting his men into their order of march, Winfield Scott's brigade of American regulars suddenly appeared on the Chippawa road, deployed for attack, and halted. There was a pause on both sides. Winfield Scott thought he might have Drummond's whole force in front of him. Riall thought he was faced by the whole of Brown's. But Winfield Scott, presently realizing that Pearson was unsupported, resumed his advance; while Pearson and Riall, not realizing that Winfield Scott was himself unsupported for the time being, immediately began to retire.
At this precise moment Drummond dashed up and drew rein. There was not a minute to lose. The leading Americans were coming on in excellent order, only a musket-shot away; Pearson's thousand were just in the act of giving up the key to the whole position; and Drummond's eight hundred were plodding along a mile or so in rear. But within that fleeting minute Drummond made the plan that brought on the most desperately contested battle of the war. He ordered Pearson's thousand back again. He brought his own eight hundred forward at full speed. He sent post-haste to Colonel Scott to change once more and march on Lundy's Lane. And so, by the time the astonished Americans were about to seize the key themselves, they found him ready to defend it.
Too long for a hillock, too low for a hill, this key to the whole position in that stern fight has never had a special name. But it may well be known as Battle Rise. It stood a mile from the Niagara river, and just a step inland beyond the crossing of two roads. One of these, Lundy's Lane, ran lengthwise over it, at right angles to the Niagara. The other, which did not quite touch it, ran in the same direction as the river, all the way from Fort Erie to Fort George, and, of course, through both Chippawa and Queenston. The crest of Battle Rise was a few yards on the Chippawa side of Lundy's Lane; and there Drummond placed his seven field-guns. Round these guns the thickest of the battle raged, from first to last. The odds were four thousand Americans against three thousand British, altogether. But the British were in superior force at first; and neither side had its full total in action at any one time, as casualties and reinforcements kept the numbers fluctuating.
It was past six in the evening of that stifling 25th of July when Winfield Scott attacked with the utmost steadiness and gallantry. Though the British outnumbered his splendid brigade, and though they had the choice of ground as well, he still succeeded in driving a wedge through their left flank, a move which threatened to break them away from the road along the river. But they retired in good order, re-formed, and then drove out his wedge.
By half-past seven the American army had all come into action, and Drummond was having hard work to hold his own. Brown, like Winfield Scott, at once saw the supreme importance of taking Battle Rise; so he sent two complete battalions against it, one of regulars leading, the other, of militia, in support. At the first salvo from Drummond's seven guns the American militia broke and ran away. But Colonel Miller worked some of the American regulars very cleverly along the far side of a creeper-covered fence, while the rest engaged the battery from a distance. In the heat of action the British artillerymen never saw their real danger till, on a given signal, Miller's advanced party all sprang up and fired a point-blank volley which killed or wounded every man beside the guns. Then Miller charged and took the battery. But he only held it for a moment. The British centre charged up their own side of Battle Rise and drove the intruders back, after a terrific struggle with the bayonet. But again success was only for the moment. The Americans rallied and pressed the British back. The British then rallied and returned. And so the desperate fight swayed back and forth across the coveted position; till finally both sides retired exhausted, and the guns stood dumb between them.
It was now pitch-dark, and the lull that followed seemed almost like the end of the fight. But, after a considerable pause, the Americans—all regulars this time—came on once more. This put the British in the greatest danger. Drummond had lost nearly a third of his men. The effective American regulars were little less than double his present twelve hundred effectives of all kinds and were the fresher army of the two. Miller had taken one of the guns from Battle Rise. The other six could not be served against close-quarter musketry; and the nearest Americans were actually resting between the cross-roads and the deserted Rise. Defeat looked certain for the British. But, just as the attackers and defenders began to stir again, Colonel Hercules Scott's twelve hundred weary reinforcements came plodding along the Queenston road, wheeled round the corner into Lundy's Lane, and stumbled in among these nearest Americans, who, being the more expectant of the two, drove them back in confusion. The officers, however, rallied the men at once. Drummond told off eight hundred of them, including three hundred militia, to the reserve; prolonged his line to the right with the rest; and thus re-established the defence.
Hardly had the new arrivals taken breath before the final assault began. Again the Americans took the silent battery. Again the British drove them back. Again the opposing lines swayed to and fro across the deadly crest of Battle Rise, with nothing else to guide them through the hot, black night but their own flaming musketry. The Americans could not have been more gallant and persistent in attack: the British could not have been more steadfast in defence. Midnight came; but neither side could keep its hold on Battle Rise. By this time Drummond was wounded; and Riall was both wounded and a prisoner. Among the Americans Brown and Winfield Scott were also wounded, while their men were worn out after being under arms for nearly eighteen hours. A pause of sheer exhaustion followed. Then, slowly and sullenly, as if they knew the one more charge they could not make must carry home, the foiled Americans turned back and felt their way to Chippawa.
The British ranks lay down in the same order as that in which they fought; and a deep hush fell over the whole, black-shrouded battlefield. The immemorial voice of those dread Falls to which no combatant gave heed for six long hours of mortal strife was heard once more. But near at hand there was no other sound than that which came from the whispered queries of a few tired officers on duty; from the busy orderlies and surgeons at their work of mercy; and from the wounded moaning in their pain. So passed the quiet half of that short, momentous, summer night. Within four hours the sun shone down on the living and the dead—on that silent battery whose gunners had fallen to a man—on the unconquered Rise.
The tide of war along the Niagara frontier favoured neither side for some time after Lundy's Lane, though the Americans twice appeared to be regaining the initiative. On August 15 there was a well-earned American victory at Fort Erie, where Drummond's assault was beaten off with great loss to the British. A month later an American sortie was repulsed. On September 21 Drummond retired beaten; and on October 13 he found himself again on the defensive at Chippawa, with little more than three thousand men, while Izard, who had come with American reinforcements from Lake Champlain and Sackett's Harbour, was facing him with twice as many. But Yeo's fleet had now come up to the mouth of the Niagara, while Chauncey's had remained at Sackett's Harbour. Thus the British had the priceless advantage of a movable naval base at hand, while the Americans had none at all within supporting distance. Every step towards Lake Ontario hampered Izard more and more, while it added corresponding strength to Drummond. An American attempt to work round Drummond's flank, twelve miles inland, was also foiled by a heavy skirmish on October 19 at Cook's Mills; and Izard's definite abandonment of the invasion was announced on November 5 by his blowing up Fort Erie and retiring into winter quarters. This ended the war along the whole Niagara.
The campaign on Lake Ontario was very different. It opened two months earlier. The naval competition consisted rather in building than in fighting. The British built ships in Kingston, the Americans in Sackett's Harbour; and reports of progress soon travelled across the intervening space of less than forty miles. The initiative of combined operations by land and water was undertaken by the British instead of by the Americans. Yeo and Drummond wished to attack Sackett's Harbour with four thousand men. But Prevost said he could spare them only three thousand; whereupon they changed their objective to Oswego, which they took in excellent style, on May 6. The British suffered a serious reverse, though on a very much smaller scale, on May 30, at Sandy Creek, between Oswego and Sackett's Harbour, when a party of marines and bluejackets, sent to cut out some vessels with naval stores for Chauncey, was completely lost, every man being either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.
From Lake Ontario down to the sea the Canadian frontier was never seriously threatened; and the only action of any consequence was fought to the south of Montreal in the early spring. On March 30 the Americans made a last inglorious attempt in this direction. Wilkinson started with four thousand men to follow the line of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu river, the same that was tried by Dearborn in 1812 and by Hampton in 1813. At La Colle, only four miles across the frontier, he attacked Major Handcock's post of two hundred men. The result was like a second Chateauguay. Handcock drew in three hundred reinforcements and two gunboats from Isle-aux-Noix. Wilkinson's advanced guard lost its way overnight. In the morning he lacked the resolution to press on, even with his overwhelming numbers; and so, after a part of his army had executed some disjointed manoeuvres, he withdrew the whole and gave up in despair.
From this point of the Canadian frontier to the very end of the five-thousand-mile loop, that is, from Montreal to Mexico, the theatre of operations was directly based upon the sea, where the British Navy was by this time undisputedly supreme. A very few small American men-of-war were still at large, together with a much greater number of privateers. But they had no power whatever even to mitigate the irresistible blockade of the whole coast-line of the United States. American sea-borne commerce simply died away; for no mercantile marine could have any independent life when its trade had to be carried on by a constantly decreasing tonnage; when, too, it could go to sea at all only by furtive evasion, and when it had to take cargo at risks so great that they could not be covered either by insurance or by any attainable profits. The Atlantic being barred by this Great Blockade, and the Pacific being inaccessible, the only practical way left open to American trade was through the British lines by land or sea. Some American seamen shipped in British vessels. Some American ships sailed under British colours. But the chief external American trade was done illicitly, by 'underground,' with the British West Indies and with Canada itself. This was, of course, in direct defiance of the American government, and to the direct detriment of the United States as a nation. It was equally to the direct benefit of the British colonies in general and of Nova Scotia in particular. American harbours had never been so dull. Quebec and Halifax had never been so prosperous. American money was drained away from the warlike South and West and either concentrated in the Northern States—which were opposed to the war—or paid over into British hands.
Nor was this all. The British Navy harried the coast in every convenient quarter and made effective the work of two most important joint attacks, one on Maine, the other on Washington itself. The attack on Maine covered two months, altogether, from July 11 to September 11. It began with the taking of Moose Island by Sir Thomas Hardy, Nelson's old flag-captain at Trafalgar, and ended with the surrender, at Machias, of 'about 100 miles of sea-coast,' together with 'that intermediate tract of country which separates the province of New Brunswick from Lower Canada.' On September 21 Sir John Sherbrooke proclaimed at Halifax the formal annexation of 'all the eastern side of the Penobscot river and all the country lying between the same river and the boundary of New Brunswick.'
The attack on Maine was meant, in one sense at least, to create a partial counterpoise to the American preponderance on Lake Erie. The attack on Washington was made in retaliation for the burning of the old and new capitals of Upper Canada, Newark and York.
The naval defence of Washington had been committed to Commodore Barney, a most expert and gallant veteran of the Revolution, who handled his wholly inadequate little force with consummate skill and daring, both afloat and ashore. He was not, strictly speaking, a naval officer, but a privateersman who had made the unique record of taking eleven prizes in ten consecutive days with his famous Baltimore schooner Rossie. The military defence was committed to General Winder, one of the two generals captured by Harvey's '704 firelocks' at Stoney Creek the year before. Winder was a good soldier and did his best in the seven weeks at his disposal. But the American government, which had now enjoyed continuous party power for no less than thirteen years, gave him no more than four hundred regulars, backed by Barney's four hundred excellent seamen and the usual array of militia, with whom to defend the capital in the third campaign of a war they had themselves declared. There were 93,500 militiamen within the threatened area. But only fifteen thousand were got under arms; and only five thousand were brought into action.
In the middle of August the British fleet under Admirals Cochrane and Cockburn sailed into Chesapeake Bay with a detachment of four thousand troops commanded by General Ross. Barney had no choice but to retire before this overwhelming force. As the British advanced up the narrowing waters all chance of escape disappeared; so Barney burnt his boats and little vessels and marched his seamen in to join Winder's army. On August 24 Winder's whole six thousand drew up in an exceedingly strong position at Bladensburg, just north of Washington; and the President rode out with his Cabinet to see a battle which is best described by its derisive title of the Bladensburg Races. Ross's four thousand came on and were received by an accurate checking fire from the regular artillery and from Barney's seamen gunners. But a total loss of 8 killed and 11 wounded was more than the 5,000 American militia could stand. All the rest ran for dear life. The deserted handful of regular soldiers and sailors was then overpowered; while Barney was severely wounded and taken prisoner. He and they, however, had saved their honour and won the respect and admiration of both friend and foe. Ross and Cockburn at once congratulated him on the stand he had made against them; and he, with equal magnanimity, reported officially that the British had treated him 'just like a brother.'
That night the little British army of four thousand men burnt governmental Washington, the capital of a country with eight millions of people. Not a man, not a woman, not a child, was in any way molested; nor was one finger laid on any private property. The four thousand then marched back to the fleet, through an area inhabited by 93,500 militiamen on paper, without having so much as a single musket fired at them.
Now, if ever, was Prevost's golden opportunity to end the war with a victory that would turn the scale decisively in favour of the British cause. With the one exception of Lake Erie, the British had the upper hand over the whole five thousand miles of front. A successful British counter-invasion, across the Montreal frontier, would offset the American hold on Lake Erie, ensure the control of Lake Champlain, and thus bring all the scattered parts of the campaign into their proper relation to a central, crowning triumph.