Brock's victory demoralized the rabble under the American Van Rensselaer. Desertions increased daily, and discipline was so notoriously bad Van Rensselaer and his staff dared not punish desertion for fear of the army—as one of them put it—"falling to pieces." Van Rensselaer saw that he must strike, and strike at once, and strike successfully, or he would not have any army left at all. Two thousand Pennsylvanians had joined him; and on October 9, at one in the morning, Lieutenant Elliott led one hundred men with muffled paddles from the American side to two Canadian ships lying anchored off Fort Erie. One was the brig captured from Hull at Detroit, the other a sloop belonging to the Northwest Fur Company, loaded with peltries. Before the British were well awake, Elliott had boarded decks, captured the fur ship with forty prisoners, and was turning her guns on the other ship when Port Erie suddenly awakened with a belch of cannon shot. The Americans cut the cables and drifted on the captured ship downstream. The fur ship was worked safely over to the American side, where it was welcomed with wild cheers. The brig was set on fire and abandoned.
Van Rensselaer decided to take advantage of the elated spirit among the troops and invade Canada at once.
Over on the Canadian side, Brock, at Fort George, wanted to offer an exchange of Detroit prisoners for the voyageurs on the captured fur ship, and Evans was ordered to paddle across to Lewiston with the offer, white handkerchief fluttering as a flag of truce. Evans could not mistake the signs as he landed on the American shore. Sentries dashed down to stop his advance at bayonet point. He was denied speech with Van Rensselaer and refused admittance to the American camp; and the reason was plain. A score of boats, capable of holding thirty men each, lay moored at the Lewiston shore. Along the rain-soaked road behind the shore floundered and marched troops, fresh troops joining Van Rensselaer's camp. It was dark before Evans returned to Queenston Heights and close on midnight when he reached Major General Brock at Fort George. Brock thought Evans over anxious, and both went to bed, or at least threw themselves down on a mattress to sleep. At two o'clock they were awakened by a sound which could not be mistaken,—the thunderous booming of a furious cannonade from Queenston Heights. Brock realized that the two hundred Canadians on the cliff must be repelling an invasion, but he was suspicious that the attack from Lewiston was a feint to draw off attention from Fort Niagara opposite Fort George, and he did not at once order troops to the aid of Queenston Heights.
Evans' predictions of invasion were only too true. After one attempt to cross the gorge, which was balked by storm, Van Rensselaer finally got his troops down to the water's edge about midnight of October 12-13. The night was dark, moonless, rainy,—a wind which mingled with the roar of the river drowning all sound of marching troops. Three hundred men embarked on the first passage of the boats across the swift river, the poor old pilot literally groaning aloud in terror. Three of the boats were carried beyond the landing on the Canadian side, and had to come back through the dark to get their bearings; but the rest, led by Van Rensselaer, had safely landed on the Canadian side, when the batteries of Queenston Heights flashed to life in sheets of fire, lighting up the dark tide of the river gorge and sinking half a dozen boat loads of men now coming on a second traverse. Instantly Lewiston's cannon pealed furious answer to the Canadian fire, and in the sheet-lightning flame of the flaring batteries thousands could be seen on the American shore watching the conflict. As the Americans landed they hugged the rock cliff for shelter, but the mortality on the crossing boats was terrible; and each passage carried back quota of wounded. Van Rensselaer was shot in the thigh almost as he landed, but still he held his men in hand. A second shot pierced the same side. A third struck his knee. Six wounds he received in as many seconds; and he was carried back in the boats to the Lewiston side. Then began a mad scramble through the darkness up a fisherman's path steep as trail of mountain goat, sheer against the face of the cliff. When day dawned misty and gray over the black tide of the rolling river, the Canadian batterymen of Queenston Heights were astounded to see American sharp-shooters mustered on the cliff behind and above them. A quick rush, and the Canadian batterymen were driven from their ground, the Canadian cannon silenced, and while wild shoutings of triumph rose from the spectators at Lewiston, the American boats continued to pour soldiers across the river.
It was at this stage Brock came riding from Fort George so spattered with mud from head to heel he was not recognized by the soldiers. One glance was enough. The Canadians had lost the day. Sending messengers to bid General Sheaffe hurry the troops from Fort George, and other runners to bring up the troops from Chippewa behind the Americans on Queenston Heights, Brock charged up the hill amid shriek of bombs and clatter of sharpshooters. He had dismounted and was scrambling over a stone wall. "Follow me, boys!" he shouted to the British grenadiers; then at the foot of the hill, waving his sword: "Now take a breath; you will need it! Come on! come on!" and he led the rush of two hundred men in scarlet coats to dislodge the Americans. A shot pierced his wrist. "Push on, York volunteers," he shouted. His portly figure in scarlet uniform was easy mark for the sharpshooters hidden in the brush of Queenston Heights. One stepped deliberately out and took aim. Though a dozen Canadian muskets flashed answer, Brock fell, shot through the breast, dying with the words on his lips, "My fall must not be noticed to stop the victory." Major Macdonnell led in the charge up the hill, but the next moment his horse plunged frantically, and he reeled from the saddle fatally wounded. For a second time the British were repulsed, and the Americans had won the Heights, if not the day.
The invaders were resting on their arms, snatching a breakfast of biscuit and cheese about midday, when General Sheaffe arrived from Fort George with troops breathless from running. A heart-shattering huzza from the village warned the Americans that help had come, and they were to arms in a second; but Sheaffe had swept round the Heights, Indians on one side of the hill, soldiers on the other, and came on the surprised Americans as from the rear. There was a wild whoop, a dash up the hill, a pause to fire, when the air was splinted by nine hundred instantaneous shots. Then through the smoke the British rushed the Heights at bayonet point. For three hours the contest raged in full sight of Lewiston, a hand-to-hand butchery between Sheaffe's fresh fighters and the Americans, who had been on their feet since midnight. Indian tomahawk played its part, but it is a question if the scalping knife did as deadly work as the grenadier's long bayonets. Cooped up between the enemy and the precipice, the American sharpshooters waited for the help that never came. In vain Van Rensselaer's officers prayed and swore and pleaded with the volunteer troops on the Lewiston side. The men flatly refused to cross; for boat loads of mangled bodies were brought back at each passage. Discipline fell to pieces. It was the old story of volunteers, brave enough at a spurt, going to pieces in panic under hard and continued strain. Driven from Queenston Heights, the invaders fought their way down the cliff path by inches to the water side, and there … there were no boats! Pulling off his white necktie, an officer held it up on the point of his sword as signal of surrender. It was one of the most gallant fights on both sides in Canadian history, though officers over on the Lewiston shore were crying like boys at the sight of nine hundred Americans surrendering.
Truce was then arranged for the burial of the dead. The bodies of Brock and Macdonnell were laid on a gun wagon and conveyed between lines of sorrowing soldiers, with arms reversed, to the burial place outside Fort George. As the regimental music rang out the last march of the two dead officers, minute guns were fired in sympathy all along the American shore. "He would have done as much for us," said the American officers of the gallant Brock.
Van Rensselaer at once resigns. "Proclamation" Smyth, whose addresses resemble Fourth of July backwoods orations, succeeds as commander of the American army; but "Proclamation" Smyth makes such a mess of a raid on Fort Erie, retreating with a haste suggestive of Hull at Detroit, that he is mobbed when he returns to the United States shore. But what the United States lose by land, they retrieve by sea. England's best ships are engaged in the great European war. From June to December, United States vessels sweep the sea; but this is more a story of the English navy than of Canada. The year of 1812 closes with the cruisers of Lake Ontario chasing each other through many a wild snowstorm.
As the year 1812 proved one of jubilant victory for Canada, so 1813 was to be one of black despair. With the exception of four brilliant victories wrested in the very teeth of defeat, the year passes down to history as one of the darkest in the annals of the country. The population of the United States at this time was something over seven millions, and it was not to be thought for one moment that a nation of this strength would remain beaten off the field by the little province of Ontario (Upper Canada), whose population numbered barely ninety thousand. General Harrison hurries north from the Wabash with from six to eight thousand men to retrieve the defeat of Detroit. At Presqu' Isle, on Lake Erie, hammer and mallet and forging iron are heard all winter preparing the fleet for Commodore Perry that is to command Lake Erie and the Upper Lakes for the Americans. At Sackett's Harbor similar preparations are under way on a fleet for Chauncey to sweep the English from Lake Ontario; and all along both sides of the St. Lawrence, as winter hedged the waters with ice, lurk scouts,—the Americans, for the most part, uniformed in blue, the Canadians in Lincoln green with gold braid,—watching chance for raid and counter raid during the winter nights. The story of these thrilling raids will probably pass into the shadowy realm of legend handed down from father to son, for few of them have been embodied in the official reports.
From being hard pressed on the defensive, Canada has suddenly sprung into the position of jubilant victor, and if Brock had lived, she would probably have followed up her victories by aggressive invasion of the enemy's territory; but all effort was literally paralyzed by the timidity and vacillation of the governor general, Sir George Prevost. Prevost's one idea seems to have been that as soon as the obnoxious embargo laws were revoked by England, the war would stop. When the embargo was revoked and the armistice of midsummer simply terminated in a resumption of war, this idea seems to have been succeeded by the single aim to hold off conclusions with the United States till England could beat Napoleon and come to the rescue. All winter long scouts and bold spirits among the volunteers craved the chance to raid the anchored fleets of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, but Prevost not only forbade the invasion of the enemy's territory, but before the year was out actually advocated the abandonment of Ontario. If his advice had been followed, it is no idle supposition to infer that the fate of Ontario would have been the same as the destiny of the Ohio and Michigan.
One night in February the sentry at the village of Brockville, named after the dead hero, was surprised by two hundred American raiders dashing up from the frozen river bed. Before bugles could sound to arms, jails had been opened, stores looted, houses plundered, and the raiders were off and well away with fifty-two prisoners and a dozen sleigh loads of provisions. Gathering some five hundred men together from the Kingston region, M'Donnell and Jenkins of the Glengarrys prepared to be revenged. Cannon were hauled out on the river from the little village of Prescott to cross the ice to Ogdensburg. The river here is almost two miles wide, and as it was the 23d of February, the ice had become rotten from the sun glare of the coming spring. As the cannon were drawn to mid-river, though it was seven in the morning, the ice began to heave and crack with dire warning. To hesitate was death; to go back as dangerous as to go forward. With a whoop the men broke from quick march to a run, unsheathing musket and fixing bayonet blades as they dashed ahead to be met with a withering cross fire as they came within range of the American batteries. In places, the suck of the water told where the ice had given behind. Then bullets were peppering the river bed in a rain of fire, Jenkins and M'Donnell to the fore, waving their swords. Then bombs began to ricochet over the ice. If the range of the Ogdensburg cannon had been longer, the whole Canadian force might have been sunk in mid-river; but the men were already dashing up the American shore whooping like fiends incarnate. First a grapeshot caught Jenkins' left arm, and it hung in bloody splinters. Then a second shot took off his right arm. Still he dashed forward, cheering his men, till he dropped in his tracks, faint from loss of blood. No answer came back to the summons to surrender, and, taking possession of an outer battery, the Canadians turned its cannon full on the village. Under cover of the battery fire, and their own cannon now in position, the whole force of Canadians immediately rushed the town at bayonet point. Now the bayonet in a solid phalanx of five hundred men is not a pleasant weapon to stand up against. As the drill sergeants order, you not only stick the bayonet into your enemy, but you turn it round "to let the air in" so he will die; and before the furious onslaught of bayonets, the defenders of Ogdensburg broke, and fled for the woods. Within an hour the Canadians had burnt the barracks, set fire to two schooners iced up, and come off with loot of a dozen cannon, stores of all sorts, and with prisoners to the number of seventy-four.
The ice had left Lake Ontario early this year, and by mid-April Commander Chauncey slipped out of Sackett's Harbor with sixteen vessels, having on board seventeen hundred troops, besides the crews. It will be remembered that the capital of Ontario had been moved from Niagara (Newark) to York (Toronto) on the north side of Lake Ontario, then a thriving village of one thousand souls on the inner shore of Humber Bay. On the sand reef known as the Island, in front of the harbor, had been constructed a battery with cannon. The main village lay east of the present city hall. Westward less than a mile was Government House, on the site of the present residence. Between Government House and the village was not a house of any sort, only a wood road flanking the lake, and badly cut up by ravines. Just west of Government House, and close to the water, was a blockhouse or tower used as powder magazine, mounted with cannon to command the landing from the lake. Some accounts speak of yet another little outer battery or earthwork farther westward. North of the Government House road, or what is now King Street, were dense woods. General Sheaffe, who had succeeded Brock at Queenston Heights, chanced to be in Toronto in April with some six hundred men. Just where the snug quarters of the Toronto Hunt Club now stand you may look out through the green foliage of the woods fringing the high cliffs of Lake Ontario, and there lies before your view the pure sky-blue surface of an inland sea washing in waves like a tide to the watery edge of the far sky line. Early in the morning of April 27 a forest ranger, dressed in the customary Lincoln green, was patrolling the forested edge of Scarborough Heights above the lake. The trees had not yet leafed out, but were in that vernal state when the branches between earth and sky take on the appearance of an aerial network just budding to light and color; and in the ravines still lay patches of the winter snow. The morning was hazy, warm, odoriferous of coming summer, with not a breath of wind stirring the water. As the sun came up over the lake long lines of fire shot through the water haze. Suddenly the scout paused on his parade. Something was advancing shoreward through the mist, advancing in a circling line like the ranks of wild birds flying north, with a lap—lap—lap of water drip and a rap—rap—rap of rowlocks from a multitude of sweeps. The next instant the forest rang to a musket shot, for the scout had discovered Commodore Chauncey's fleet of sixteen vessels being towed forward by rowers through a dead calm. The musket shot was heard by another scout nearer the fort. The signal was repeated by another shot, and another for the whole twelve miles, till General Sheaffe, sitting smoking a cigar in Government House, sprang to his feet and rushed out, followed by his officers, to scan the harbor of Humber Bay from the tops of the fort bastions. Sure enough! there was the fleet, led by Chauncey's frigate with twenty-four cannon poking from its sides, a string of rowboats in tow behind to land the army, coming straight across the harbor over water calm as silk. It has been told how the fleet made the mistake of passing beyond the landing, but the chances are the mistake was intentional for the purpose of avoiding the cannon of the fort bastions. At all events the report may be believed that the most of Toronto people forgot to go back to breakfast that morning. A moment later officers were on top of the bastion towers, directing battery-men to take range for their cannon. A battalion variously given as from fifty to one hundred, along with some Indians, was at once dispatched westward to ambush the Americans landing. Another division was posted at the battery beyond Government House. Sheaffe saw plainly from the number of men on deck that he was outnumbered four to one, and the flag on the commodore's boat probably told him that General Dearborn, the commander in chief, was himself on board to direct the land forces. Sheaffe has been bitterly blamed for two things,—for not invading Niagara after the victory on Queenston Heights, and for his conduct at Toronto. He now withdrew the main forces to a ravine east of the fort, plainly preparatory for retreat. Not thus would Brock have acted.
Meanwhile time has worn on to nine o'clock. The American ships have anchored. The Canadian cannon are sending the bombs skipping across the water. The rowboats are transferring the army from the schooners, and the ambushed sharpshooters are picking the bluecoats off as they step from ships to boats.
"By the powers!" yells Forsyth, an American officer, "I can't stand seeing this any longer. Come on, boys! jump into our boats!" and he bids the bugles blow till the echoes are dancing over Humber waters. Dearborn and Chauncey stay on board. Pike leads the landing, and Chauncey's cannon set such grape and canister flying through the woods as clear out those ambushed shooters, the Indians flying like scared partridges, and the advance is made along Government House road at quick march. Just west of the Government House battery the marchers halt to send forward demand for surrender. Firing on both sides ceases. The smoke clears from the churned-up waters of the bay, and Commander Pike has seated himself on an old cannon, when, before answer can come back to the demand, a frightful accident occurs that upsets all plans. Waiting for the signal to begin firing again, a batteryman in the near bastion was holding the lighted fuse in his right hand, ready for the cannon, when something distracted his attention, and he wheeled with the lighted match behind him. It touched a box of explosives. If any proof were needed that the tragedy was not designed, it is to be found in the fact that English officers were still on the roof of the blockhouse, and the apartment below crowded with Canadians. A roar shook the earth. A cloud of black flame shot into mid-air, and the next minute the ground for half a mile about was strewn with the remains, mangled to a pulp, of more than three hundred men, ninety of whom were Canadians, two hundred and sixty Americans, including Brigadier Pike fatally wounded by a rock striking his head. In the horror of the next few moments, defense was forgotten. Wheelbarrows, trucks, gun wagons, were hurried forward to carry wounded and dead to the hospital. Leaving his officers to arrange the terms of surrender, at 2 P.M. Sheaffe retreated at quick march for Kingston, pausing only to set fire to a half-built ship and some naval stores. Lying on a stretcher on Chauncey's ship, Pike is roused from unconsciousness by loud huzzas.
"What is it?" he asks.
"They are running up the stars and stripes, sir."
A smile passed over Pike's face. When the surgeon looked again, the commander was dead. For twenty-four hours the haggle went on as to terms of capitulation. Within that time, two or three things occurred to inflame the invading troops. They learned that Sheaffe had slipped away; as the American general's report put it, "They got the shell, but the kernel of the nut got away." They learned that stores had been destroyed after the surrender had been granted. Without more restraint, and in defiance of orders, the American troops gave themselves up to plunder all that night. In their rummaging through the Parliament buildings they found hanging above the Speaker's chair what Canadian records declare was a wig, what American reports say was a human scalp sent in by some ranger from the west. From what I have read in the private papers of fur traders in that period regarding international scalping, I am inclined to think that wig may have been an American scalp. Certainly, the fur traders of Michilimackinac wrapped no excuses round their savagery when the canoes all over the coasts of Lake Superior, in lieu of flags, had American scalps flaunting from their prows. At all events, word went out that an American scalp had been found above the Speaker's chair. It was night. The troops were drunk with success and perhaps with the plunder of the wine shops. All that night and all the next day and night the skies were alight with the flames of Toronto's public buildings on fire. Also, the army chest with ten thousand dollars in gold, which Sheaffe had forgotten, was dug up on pain of the whole town being fired unless the money were delivered. Private houses were untouched. Looted provisions which the fleet cannot carry away, Chauncey orders distributed among the poor. Then, leaving some four hundred prisoners on parole not to serve again during the war, Chauncey sails away for Niagara.
It is a month later. Down at Fort George on the Canadian side General Vincent knows well what has happened at Toronto and is on the lookout for the enemy's fleet. On the American side of the Niagara River, from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, are seven thousand troops eager to wipe out the stain of last year's defeat. On the Canadian side, from Fort George to Chippewa and Erie, are twenty-three hundred men, mostly volunteers from surrounding farms, and powder is scarce and provisions are scarce, for Chauncey's fleet has cut off help from St. Lawrence and Kingston way. All the last two weeks of May, heavy hot fog lay on the lake and on the river between the hostile lines, but there was no mistaking what Chauncey's fleet was about. Red-hot shot showers on Fort George in a perfect rain. Standing on the other side of the river are thousands of spectators, among them one grand old swashbuckler fellow in a cocked hat, whose fighting days are past, taking snuff after the fashion of a former generation and wearing an air of grand patronage to the American troops because he has seen service in Europe.
"No, sir," says the grand old fighting cock pompously to his auditors, "can't be done! Have seen it tried on the Continent, and you can't do it! Lay a wager you can't do it! Can't possibly set fire to a fort by red-hot shot!"
Then at night time, when the lurid glare of flame lights up the foggy darkness, the old gentleman is put to his trumps. "See!" they say; "Fort George is on fire"; and over at Fort George the bucket brigade works hard as the cannoneers. But the fog is too good a chance to be missed by Chauncey; rowing out with muffled oars all the nights of May 24 and 25, he has his men sounding … sounding … sounding in silence the channel, right within pistol shot of Fort George. The night of the 26th troops and marines are bidden breakfast at two in the morning, and be ready for action with a single blanket and rations for one day. That is all they are told. They embark at four. The waters are dead calm, the morning of the 27th gray as wool with fog. Sweeps out Chauncey's fleet, circles up to Fort George with one hundred scows in tow, carrying fifty soldiers each. Vincent takes his courage in his teeth and gathers his one thousand men inside the walls. Then the cannon of the frigates split fog and air and earth, and, under cover of the fire, the scows gain the land by 9 A.M. First, Vincent's sharpshooters sally from the fort and fire; then they fire from the walls; then they overturn guns, retreat from the walls, throw what powder they cannot carry into the water, and retreat, fighting, behind stone walls and ditches. The contest of one thousand against six thousand is hopeless. Vincent sends coureurs riding like the wind to Chippewa and Queenston and Erie, ordering the Canadians to retire to the Back Country. By four o'clock in the afternoon Americans are in possession of the Canadian side from Fort George to Erie. Vincent retreats at quick march along the lake shore towards what is now Hamilton. June 1 General Dearborn sends his officers, Chandler and Winder, in hot pursuit with thirty-five hundred men.
Vincent's soldiers have less than ninety rounds of powder to a man. He has only one thousand men, for the garrisons of Chippewa and Queenston Heights and Erie have fallen back in a circle to the region of St. David's. June 5, Vincent's Canadians are in camp at Burlington Bay. Only seven miles away, at Stony Creek, lies the American army, out sentries posted at a church, artillery on a height commanding a field, officers and men asleep in the long grass. Humanly speaking, nothing could prevent a decisive battle the next day. The two American officers, Chandler and Winder, sit late into the night, candles alight over camp stools, mapping out what they think should be the campaign. It is a hot night,—muggy, with June showers lighted up by an occasional flash of sheet lightning. Then all candles out, and pitch darkness, and silence as of a desert! The American army is asleep,—in the dead sleep of men exhausted from long, hard, swift marching. The artillerymen on the hillocks, the sentries, the outposts at the church,—they, too, are sound asleep!
But the Canadians, too, know that, humanly speaking, nothing can prevent a decisive battle on the morrow. The stories run—I do not vouch for their truth, though facts seem to point to some such explanation—that Harvey, a Canadian officer, had come back to the American army that night disguised as a Quaker peddling potatoes, and noted the unguarded condition of the exhausted troops; also that Fitzgibbons, the famous scout, came through the American lines dressed as a rustic selling butter. Whether these stories are true or not, or whether, indeed, the Canadians knew anything about the American camp, they plucked resolution from desperation. If they waited for the morrow's battle, they would be beaten. Harvey proposed to Vincent that seven hundred picked men go back through the dark and raid the American camp. Vincent left the entire matter to Harvey. Setting out at 11.30 along what is now Main Street, Hamilton, the Canadians marched in perfect silence. Harvey had given orders that not a shot should be fired, not a word spoken, the bayonet alone to be used. By two in the morning of June 6 the marchers came to the church where the sentries were posted. Two were stabbed to death before they awakened. The third was compelled to give the password, then bayoneted in turn. The Canadian raiders might have come to the very midst of the American army if it had not been for the jubilant hilarity of some young officers, who, capturing a cannon, uttered a wild huzza. On the instant, bugles sounded alarm; drums beat a crazy tattoo, and every man leaped from his place in the grass, hand on pistol. The next second the blackness of the night was ablaze with musketry; the soldiers were firing blindly; officers were shouting orders that nobody heard; troops were dashing here, there, everywhere, lost in the darkness, the heavy artillery horses breaking tether ropes and stampeding over the field. Major Plenderleath with a company of young Canadians suddenly found himself in the midst of the American camp. One of the young raiders stabbed seven Americans to death; a brother bayoneted four, and before daylight betrayed the smallness of their forces the raiders came safely off with three guns and one hundred prisoners, including the two American officers, Winder and Chandler. The loss to the British was one hundred and fifteen killed and wounded; but there would be no battle the next day. The battle of Stony Creek sent the Americans retreating back down the lake front to Fort George, harried by the English fleet under Sir James Yeo from Kingston. A hundred episodes might be related of the Stony Creek raid. For years it was to be the theme of camp-fire yarns. For instance, in the flare of musketry fire a Canadian found himself gazing straight along the blade of an American's bayonet. "Sir, the password," demanded the American sentry. Luckily the scout, instead of wearing an English red coat, had on a blue jacket resembling that of the American marines, and he instantly took his cue. "Rascal," he thundered back, "what do you mean, off your line? Go back to your post!" The sentry's bayonet dropped; there was momentary darkness, and the Canadian literally bolted. Then ludicrous ill luck befell all the generals. Vincent had accompanied the raiders on horseback. When the bugles sounded "retire," he gave his horse the bit, and in the pitch darkness the brute carried him pellmell along the wrong road, over fences and hayfields, some fifteen miles into the Back Country. Next day, when Vincent was missing, under flag of truce messengers went to the retreating American army to find if he were among the dead. At four in the afternoon his horse came limping into the Canadian camp. Chandler, the American officer, on awakening had sprung on horseback and spurred over the field shouting commands. In the darkness his horse fell and threw him. When Chandler came to himself he was prisoner among the Canadians. Winder's ill luck was equally bad. By the flare of the firing he saw what he thought was a group of artillerymen deserting a gun. Dashing up, he laid about him with his pistol, shouting, "Come on! come on!" Another flare of fire, and he found himself surrounded by a circle of Canadian bayonets. "Drop your pistol, sir, or you are a dead man," ordered a young Canadian, and Winder surrendered.
It will be recalled that the garrisons of Queenston below the Falls, and Chippewa above, and Erie at the head of the river, had retreated from the invading Americans to the Back Country now traversed by Welland Canal. From different posts beyond what was known as the Black Swamp, these bands of the dispersed Canadian army swooped down on the American outposts, harrying the whole American line from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. Of all the raiders none was more daring than Lieutenant Fitzgibbons, posted beyond the Beaver Dams, at a stone house near De Ceu's Falls. Space forbids more than one episode of his raids. Once, while riding along Lundy's Lane alone, he was recognized by the wife of a Canadian captain, who dashed from the cottage, warning him to retreat, as a hundred and fifty Americans had just passed that way. Standing in front of the roadside inn was the cavalry horse of an American. Fitzgibbons could n't resist the temptation for a bout with the foe, and dismounting, was entering the door when a soldier in blue dashed at him with leveled musket. Naturally not keen to create alarm, Fitzgibbons knocked the weapon from the man's hand, and without a sound had thrown him on the ground, when another American rifleman dashed from behind. Strong as a lion, Fitzgibbons threw the first man violently against the second, and was holding both at bay beneath his leveled rifle when one of the downed men snatched the Irishman's sword from the scabbard. He was in the very act of thrusting the sword point into Fitzgibbons, when the innkeeper's wife, with a dexterous kick, sent the weapon whirling out of his hand. Fitzgibbons disarmed the men, tied them, threw them across his horse, and himself mounting, galloped to the woods with a laugh, though one hundred and fifty Americans were within a quarter of a mile.
The American commanders at Niagara determined to clean out this nest of raiders from the Back Country, and Lieutenant Boerstler was ordered to march from Fort George with some six hundred men. Leaving Fort George secretly at night, Boerstler came to Queenston at eleven on the night of June 23. Here all Canadian soldiers free on parole were seized, to prevent word of the attack reaching the Back Country. The troops were not even permitted to light camp fire or candles. The great secrecy of the American marchers at once roused suspicion among the Canadians between Queenston and the village of St. David's that the expedition was directed against Fitzgibbons' scouts. At his home, between Queenston and St. David's, dwelt a United Empire Loyalist, James Secord, recovering from dangerous wounds received in the battle of Queenston Heights. He was too weak himself to go by night and forewarn Fitzgibbons, but his wife, Laura Ingersoll, a woman of some thirty years, was also of the old United Empire Loyalist stock. She immediately set out alone for the Back Country to warn Fitzgibbons. Many and contradictory stories are told of her march. Whether she tramped two nights and two days, or only one night and one day, whether her march led her twenty or only twelve miles, matters little. She succeeded in passing the first sentry on the excuse she was going out to milk a cow, and she eluded a second by telling him she wished to visit a wounded brother, which was true. Then she struck away from the beaten path through what was known as the Black Swamp. It had rained heavily. The cedar woods were soggy with moisture, the swamp swollen, and the streams running a mill race. Through the summer heat, through the windfall, over the quaking forest bog, tramped Laura Secord. It may be supposed that the most of wild animals had been frightened from the woods by the heavy cannonading for almost a year; but the hoot of screech owl, the eldritch scream of wild cat, the far howl of the wolf pack hanging on the trail of the armies for carrion, were not sounds quieting to the nerves of a frightened woman flitting through the forest by moonlight. It was clear moonlight when she came within range of Beaver Dam and De Ceu's house. She had just emerged in an open field when she was assailed with unearthly yells, and a thousand ambushed Indians rose from the grass.
"Woman! A woman! What does a white woman here?" demanded the chief, seizing her arm. She answered that she was a friend and it was matter of life and death for her to see Fitzgibbons at once. So Laura Secord delivered her warning and saved the Canadian army. The episode has gone down to history one of the national legends, like the story of Madeline Verchères on the St. Lawrence. Fitzgibbons posts his forty men in place, and Ducharme, commander of the Indians, scatters his one thousand redskins in ambush along the trail. Also, word is sent for two other detachments to come with all speed.
June 24, at seven in the morning, Boerstler is moving along a narrow forest trail through the beech woods of Beaver Dams. The men are advancing single file, mounted infantrymen first with muskets slouched across saddle pommels, then the heavy wagons, then cavalry to rear. The timber is heavy, the trail winding. Here the long line deploys out from the trail to avoid jumping windfall; there halt is made to cut a way for the wagons; then the long line moves sleepily forward, yellow sunlight shafted through the green foliage across the riders' blue uniforms. Suddenly a shot rings out, and another, and another! The forest is full of unseen foes, before, behind, on all sides, the cavalry forces breaking rank and dashing forward among the wagons. Boerstler sees it will be as unsafe to retreat as to go on. Sending messengers back to Fort George for aid, he pushes forward into an open wheat field. Fifty-six men have fallen, and the bullets are still raining from an invisible foe. Looking back he sees mounted men in green coats passing and repassing across his trail, filing and refiling. It is a trick of Fitzgibbons to give an impression he has ten times forty men, but the Americans do not know. There is no retreat, and Indians are to the fore. In the midst of confusion Fitzgibbons comes forward with a white handkerchief on his sword point and begs Boerstler to prevent bloodshed by instant surrender. Boerstler demands to see the number of his enemies. Fitzgibbons says he will repeat the request to his commanding officer. Luck is with Fitzgibbons, for just as he goes back a small party of reënforcements arrives, and one of its captains acts the part of commanding officer, telling Boerstler's messenger haughtily that the demand to see the enemy is an insult, and answer must be given in five minutes or the Canadians will not be responsible for the Indians. The fight has lasted three hours. Boerstler surrenders with his entire force. Such was the battle of Beaver Dams.
Ever since Brock had captured Detroit in 1812, General Procter, with twenty-five hundred Canadians, had been holding the western part of Ontario; and the defeat of the English at Fort George had placed him in a desperate position. His men had been without pay for months; their clothes were in tatters, and now, with the Americans in possession of Niagara region, there was danger of Procter's food supply being cut off. Procter himself had not been idle these six months. In fact, he had been too active for the good of his supplies. Space forbids a detailed account of the raids directed by him and carried out with the aid of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee chief. January of 1813 saw a detachment of Procter's men up Raisin River, west of Detroit, where they defeated General Winchester and captured nearly five hundred prisoners, to be set free on parole. Harrison, the American general, is on his way to Lake Erie to rescue Detroit. Procter hastens in May to meet him with one thousand Canadians and fifteen hundred Indians. The clash takes place at a barricade known as Fort Meigs on Maumee River, south of Lake Erie, when again, by the aid of Tecumseh, Procter captures four hundred and fifty prisoners. It was on this occasion that the Indians broke from control and tomahawked forty defenseless American prisoners. August sees Procter raiding Sandusky; but the Americans refuse to come out and battle, and the axes of the Canadians are too dull to cut down the ironwood pickets, and when at night Procter's bugles sound retreat, he has lost nearly one hundred men. At last, in September, the fleets being built for the Canadians at Amherstburg and for the Americans at Presqu' Isle are completed. Whichever side commands Lake Erie will control supplies; and though Captain Barclay, the Canadian, is short of men, Procter cannot afford to delay the contest for supremacy any longer. He orders Barclay to sail out and seek Commodore Perry, the American, for decisive battle.
On Barclay's boats are only such old land guns as had been captured from Detroit. His crews consist of lake sailors and a few soldiers, in all some three hundred and eighty-four men on six vessels. September 10, at midday, at Put-in-Bay, Barclay finds Perry's fleet of seven vessels with six hundred and fifty men. For two hours the furious cannonading could be heard all the way up to Amherstburg. Space forbids details of the fight so celebrated in the annals of the American navy. After broadsides that tore hulls clean of masts and decks, setting sails in flame and the waters seething in mountainous waves, the two fleets got within pistol shot of each other, and Perry's superior numbers won. One third of Barclay's officers were killed and one third of his men. The Canadian fleet on Lake Erie was literally exterminated before three in the afternoon.
Procter's position was now doubly desperate. He was cut off from supplies. At a council with the Indians, though Tecumseh, the chief, was for fighting to the bitter death, it was decided to retreat up the Thames to Vincent's army near modern Hamilton. All the world knows the bitter end of that retreat. Procter seems to have been so sure that General Harrison would not follow, that the Canadian forces did not even pause to destroy bridges behind them; and behind came Harrison, hot foot, with four thousand fighters from the Kentucky backwoods. October first the Canadians had retreated far as Chatham, provisions and baggage coming in boats or sent ahead on wagons. Procter's first intimation of the foe's nearness was a breathless messenger with word the Americans just a few miles behind had captured the provision boats. Sending on his family and the women with a convoy of two hundred and fifty soldiers, Procter faced about on the morning of October the 5th, to give battle. On the left was the river Thames, on the right a cedar swamp, to rear on the east the Indian mission of Moraviantown. The troops formed in line across a forest road. Procter seems to have lost both his heart and his head, for he permitted his fatigued troops to go into the fight without breakfast. Not a barricade, not a hurdle, not a log was placed to break the advance of Harrison's cavalry. The American riders came on like a whirlwind. Crack went the line of Procter's men in a musketry volley! The horses plunged, checked up, reared, and were spurred forward. Another volley from the Canadians! But it was too late. Harrison's fifteen hundred riders had galloped clean through the Canadian lines, slashing swords as they dashed past. Now they wheeled and came on the Canadians' rear. Indians and Canadians scattered to the woods before such fury, like harried rabbits, poor Tecumseh in the very act of tomahawking an American colonel when a pistol shot brought him down. The brave Indian chief was scalped by the white backwoodsmen and skinned and the body thrown into the woods a prey to wolves. Flushed with victory and without Harrison's permission, the Kentucky men dashed in and set fire to Moraviantown, the Indian mission. As for Procter, he had mounted the fleetest horse to be found, and was riding in mad flight for Burlington Heights. It is almost a pity he had not fallen in some of his former heroic raids, for he now became a sorry figure in history, reprimanded and suspended from the ranks of the army. The only explanation of Procter's conduct at Moraviantown is that he was anxious for the safety of his wife and daughters, perhaps needlessly fearing that the rough backwoodsmen would retaliate on them for the treachery of the Indians tomahawking American prisoners of war.
And it had fared almost as badly with the Canadian fleet on Lake Ontario. The boats under Sir James Yeo, the young English commander, were good only for close-range fighting, the boats under Commodore Chauncey best for long-range firing. All July and August the fleets maneuvered to catch each other off guard. Between times each raided the coast of the other for provisions, Chauncey paying a second visit to Toronto, Yeo swooping down on Sodus Bay. All September the game of hide and seek went on between the two Ontario squadrons. Sunday night, the 8th of September, in a gale, two of Chauncey's ships sank, with all hands but sixteen. Two nights later in a squally wind, by the light of the moon, two more of his slow sailers, unable to keep up with the rest of the fleet, were snapped up by the English off Niagara with one hundred captives. Again, on September 27, at eight in the evening, six miles off Toronto harbor, Chauncey came up with the English, and the two fleets poured broadsides into each other. Then Yeo's crippled brigs limped into Toronto harbor, while Chauncey sailed gayly off to block all connection with Montreal and help to convoy troops from Niagara down the St. Lawrence for the master stroke of the year. The way was now clear for the twofold aim of the American staff,—to starve out Ontario and concentrate all strength in a signal attack on Montreal.