Captain Fitz

by Enid Mallory

  The young men who joined it were untried and untrained but they were sons or grandsons of Loyalists, steeped in the lore of war and staunchly anti-American. Most of them had been educated and indoctrinated at Reverend John Strachan’s Cornwall school, which by then had moved to York. Brock soon discovered that these young men were a valuable resource.

  Five hundred men volunteered for the trek to Amherstburg. Brock chose 250 and added a few more at Niagara and Long Point. Their names read like a list of Who’s Who in Upper Canada as many who survive the war go on to fame and fortune. Alexander Hamilton will become sheriff of the Niagara District and member of the legislative council; William Hamilton Merritt will be known as promoter of the Welland Canal; Archibald McLean will become chief justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench; George Ridout will align himself with reformers in the House of Assembly, while his brother Thomas becomes first manager of the Bank of Upper Canada; George Ryerson will become a prominent oculist and surgeon; William Allan will become president of the Bank of Upper Canada; Samuel Jarvis, a lawyer, will be famous for the duel in which he killed John Jarvis, while his brother George becomes a judge and member of the House of Assembly. John Beverly Robinson will become attorney general, while his brother Peter will bring 2,500 Irish settlers to found the town of Peterborough.

  These are the men around whom the myth about Brock’s last words, “Push on, brave York Volunteers!” grew. True or not, it would be reported in the Kingston Gazette the day following his death. (Most likely, the words were heard by the men marching up the Portage Road as Brock flew past on his horse.) In any case, that slogan would later help to convince many a York volunteer that the militia won the war.

  After the war those names will become synonymous with loyalty to Britain and mistrust of democracy, entrenched power of position, and opposition to reform; they will become the Family Compact. Just now they are young men learning how to fight a war.

  As Brock made preparations to move toward Detroit, his mind also moved along the St. Lawrence and Niagara frontiers, reviewing the pitifully inadequate means of defence. In the months past he had done what he could with the little he had. A system of convoy, with FitzGibbon bringing the first one, would move regiments and war supplies up the St. Lawrence as soon as they could be spared from Quebec City and Montreal. During the spring they had recruited in Glengarry for a Glengarry Light Infantry Regiment; by May 14, Colonel Baynes could report it complete to 400 rank and file.

  An inspecting field officer had moved through the line of settlements to check on the militia and set their quotas. Between Glengarry and Kingston, Brock had urged every man capable of bearing a musket to be prepared to act, and had noted the need for a stronghold in the vicinity of Prescott. FitzGibbon’s soldiers waved at carpenters building the new fortification to be known as Fort Wellington. Farmers with heavy teams were drawing timbers and stones for the construction. It cheered the soldiers to know there would be protection if there was a raid from Ogdensburg.

  Men of Glengarry

  In 1803, Father Alexander McDonell brought Highland Scots to be settled in the eastern corner of Upper Canada. These Irish Catholics were to be a buffer between French Catholics in Lower Canada and the German Protestants who were to be a buffer between them and the English Protestants farther west.

  Many of the Scots were soldiers from the disbanded Glengarry Fencible Corp. When war became imminent, these Glengarries were quick to form militia battalions. The Glengarry Light Infantry was raised by the Macdonells. Colonel John Macdonell, a lawyer in York and acting attorney general, became aide-de-camp to Isaac Brock in 1812 and died with him on Queenston Heights. The Glengarry Regiment took part in the defence of York in 1813 and fought the battles at Châteauguay, Crysler’s Farm, and Lundy’s Lane. This is the regiment that Fitz joined in January 1814, when he was promoted to captain.

  Meanwhile, at York and Niagara, Brock had called out flank companies of militia who would be drilled much like regular soldiers and used in heavy fighting. This produced a force of 800 men, all in need of blankets, haversacks, kettles, and tents. From Fort George he wrote, “The militia assembled in a wretched state in regard to clothing; many were without shoes, an article which can scarcely be provided in the country.”[4] These 800 untested soldiers without shoes would have the task of defending the Niagara River line until enough British soldiers could be moved up from Quebec and Kingston. And that depended on regiments being spared from the colossal fight that Britain was engaged in against Napoleon in Europe.

  Then there was the question of food. Back in February, Brock had written that he had directed the assistant deputy commissary-general at Amherstburg to purchase 2,000 bushels of Indian corn, “Corn will be absolutely necessary in the event of war.” Shrewdly he added, “It is to be procured, if possible, on the American side, that our own stock may remain undiminished.”[5]

  An American spy, writing to his superiors, expressed envious admiration at Brock’s preparation:

  General Brock has paid attention to every particular that can relate to the future resources of the Province. The harvest has been got in tolerably well and greater preparation is making for sowing grain than was ever made before. The militia duty is modified as much as possible to suit the circumstances of the people and measures taken to prevent them from feeling the burden of the war. The women work in the field, encouragement being given for the purpose.[6]

  But Brock knew it was not enough. Only a bold stroke could weld British soldier, settler, and Native into a fighting force that would not blow to pieces in the first wind from the south. On August 6, he left York with the York Volunteers for Burlington Bay where they set out overland to Long Point on Lake Erie. There, he picked up the Norfolk Militia under George Ryerson and embarked 260 militia and 40 soldiers of the 41st Regiment in a collection of leaky boats. At Port Talbot, they were joined by Peter Robinson and his riflemen.

  James FitzGibbon longed to be with them. He would have enjoyed the 300-kilometre trip along the Lake Erie shore, with excitement guaranteed at the end. Instead, the young men of York County, untried militia, were the ones who swept this unique flotilla along at the rapid pace Brock set from his bateaux headquarters. Stormy weather beat upon the men and drenched them as they battled rough water under the red clay cliffs on the north shore. In the night there was no rest for men weary at the oars; the light they followed at the bow of Brock’s bateau kept bobbing rapidly over the water, pressing westward.

  Left: This portrait of Brock was made in Canada between 1807 and 1810, by artist Gerritt Schipper.

  Right: This portrait of Tecumseh is based on a drawing by fur trader Pierre Le Dru.

  Left: C.W. Jefferys, Vol. 2, 157., Right: Lossing, 283.

  As Brock moved through the Lake Erie night, his mind played on some American documents he had had the good luck to read. General William Hull and his weary, nervous American army of 2,500 men had marched through swampy country to the shores of Lake Erie, where Hull had hired the schooner Cayahoga to take their heavy baggage, medical stores, and musical instruments to Fort Detroit. But the Cayahoga had been captured by the British brig, General Hunter, and Hull’s official correspondence to the secretary of war found on board. It was swiftly carried to Brock at Fort George, and it had shown in Hull a despondency and want of initiative, which cheered Brock’s heart.

  When Brock arrived at Amherstburg, just before midnight on August 13, he found more pleasant reading, this time brought in by Tecumseh, the Shawanese chief. With 25 warriors, Tecumseh had ambushed a party of 200 Americans sent out from Detroit to escort supplies; he had captured the provisions bound for Hull as well as another batch of Hull’s letters, still full of doubt and fear.

  The meeting of Brock and Tecumseh, as it comes to us through the pen and paintbrush of those who watched, is one of the dramatic moments in Canadian history. Each had heard of the other. The general stood six-foot-three and broad-shouldered in his scarlet tunic and white pants, his eyes blue and steady in a strong
but amiable face framed by fair hair; the Shawanese chief was smaller but supple and perfectly built. His copper face was oval, his hair shining black over dark, piercing eyes that took the measure of Brock. Born within a year of one another, but with backgrounds worlds apart, fate was joining their destinies and they both seemed to know it. (They would die within a year of each other, too.) From the moment of their meeting a unique rapport was evident between them. Tecumseh smiled and said to one of his party in his mother tongue, “This is a man!” On a later occasion, Tecumseh’s perceptive admiration of Brock’s character was expressed in terse, simple words, “Other chiefs say, ‘Go’ — General Brock says, ‘Come.’”[7]

  The day after their first meeting, Brock put his feelings for Tecumseh in a letter to Lord Liverpool, British secretary of state for war.

  He who most attracted my attention was a Shawnee Chief, Tecumseh, the brother of The Prophet, who for the last two years had carried on, contrary to our remonstrances, an active war against the United States. A more sagacious or a more gallant warrior does not, I believe, exist. He was the admiration of everyone who conversed with him.[8]

  It was Tecumseh who supplied Brock with details of the terrain around Fort Detroit. (Hull had withdrawn from Sandwich across the river into his fort on August 7.) On a roll of bark, Tecumseh’s scalping knife drew the river, then the hills, the clearings, the muskeg and forest, and network of trails that would serve Brock’s little army. But that night, in private council, Brock was unable to convince Colonel Henry Procter and his other officers to attack. Procter had 250 regulars at Amherstburg and 150 militia. Altogether they would have 300 regulars and 400 militia. Suddenly, Brock stopped the useless arguing and announced that he had made a decision. They would cross the river and attack Fort Detroit.

  Tecumseh’s People

  Tecumseh’s father was a Shawnee but the Natives he led were of many tribes: Kickapoo, Potawatomie, Wyandot, Creek, Delaware, Sauk, and Winnebago. With his brother, Tenskwatawa, known as “The Prophet,” Tecumseh sought to organize the tribes into a confederacy to resist White encroachment on their lands.

  The brothers travelled from tribe to tribe urging a return to traditional ways and a rejection of White culture, especially liquor, which they saw destroying village life.

  In 1811, Tecumseh’s own village on the Tippecanoe River had about 700 warriors. William Henry Harrison, the Indiana territorial governor, led his troops onto Native land to attack while Tecumseh was away preaching to Creek tribes in the south.

  After coming home to find his village wiped out, a bitter and angry Tecumseh led his people north into Canada. After his warriors took part in the victories at Detroit and Fort Meigs, more tribes joined him, until he had 3,000 Natives ready to fight for the British cause.

  But when Procter gave up Fort Meigs and moved back into Canada, many of these newcomers slipped away home. As Procter retreated farther inland, Tecumseh talked him into a stand on the Thames River — it was there that Tecumseh was killed.

  Only 700 of Tecumseh’s men followed the retreating British Army to Burlington Heights and Niagara. These disheartened tribesmen did little fighting and were an added burden on army rations.

  When the Natives were told of his decision, Tecumseh remarked that their great father, King George, had awakened out of a long sleep. Tecumseh’s hatred of the Americans knew no bounds and the men of the 5th U.S. Regiment, who were holding Fort Detroit, were his special enemies. Less than a year before, under General Harrison, they had slaughtered Tecumseh’s half-armed band of 600 men and women on the banks of the Tippecanoe River while he and his warriors were away.

  That afternoon, Brock moved to Sandwich, opposite Fort Detroit, and occupied the mansion of Colonel Baby. Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonell and Major J.B. Glegg, his two aides-de-camp, were sent off to Hull with a dispatch demanding immediate surrender. “It is far from my intention to join in a war of extermination,” Brock had written, “but you must be aware that the numerous body of Indians who have attached themselves to my troops will be beyond control the moment the contest commences.”[9] In actual fact, Brock had a promise from Tecumseh that the scalping knife would not be used the next day, and Tecumseh was rare among North American chiefs in that he did not use torture.

  The trails north of Sandwich, visible from Fort Detroit, were alive with marching men. They were the same men, marching back and forth, crossing and re-crossing — Brock’s few soldiers and Tecumseh’s braves attempting to make their army look double its actual size. Major Thomas Evans had craftily clothed the western militia in cast-off uniforms of the 41st Regiment, giving them twice the number of regulars in the eyes of the Americans.

  During the previous week, soldiers had worked under dark of night to set up a battery in a grove of oak trees opposite Fort Detroit. By the time Brock received Hull’s answer that he would not surrender, the battery was ready. On the night of August 15, the trees were cut down. The next morning, Brock’s force of 330 regulars and 400 militia, with 600 Natives under Tecumseh, crossed the Detroit River. Slowly, the columns were formed, and the steady tramp of determined men sounded on the trails to Fort Detroit. Two 24-pounders that Hull had placed in their path, and the long heavy guns of Fort Detroit, looked them in the eyes and waited.

  At Fort Detroit Brock marched his men along paths and through woods over and over again to make their numbers look big.

  Enid Mallory.

  Meanwhile, the batteries, revealed to the Americans by the morning light, opened fire. The first shot fired in the War of 1812 crashed into the American fort and killed an American officer who was a close friend of the British artillerymen who trained the gun. Now Hull’s 24-pounders answered the British guns and shells, and round shot flew in both directions across the river. An 18-pound shell from one of the British guns crashed through an embrasure in the officers’ mess and killed four men. Hull made up his mind.

  The British troops, expecting grapeshot and hellfire at any second as they advanced, saw instead a white flag. Simultaneously, another white flag was crossing the river to silence the Sandwich battery. It was over. Hull was surrendering his army of 2,500 to 330 British, 400 militia, and 600 Natives.

  Chapter 4

  Queenston Heights

  Every three or four miles, on every eminence, Brock has erected a snug battery, the last saucy argument of kings, poking their white noses and round black nostrils right upon your face, ready to spit fire and brimstone in your very teeth, if you were to offer to turn squatter on John Bull’s land.

  — John Lovett (General Van Rensselaer’s military secretary) to Joseph Alexander, Lewiston, 1812[1]

  After the victory at Detroit, Captain Glegg carried dispatches and the colour of the 4th U.S. Regiment to Sir George Prevost in the city of Quebec. As he passed, people in the streets of York, Kingston, and Montreal walked a little taller. There was rowdy laughter in the barrack rooms at Niagara and Kingston. Lieutenant George Ryerson, bearing the news to the Talbot settlement, stopped for the night in a Native camp where aged warriors and women chanted songs of victory all night. And on the St. Lawrence the rhythm of the bateaux was halted as men threw their arms in the air and cheers resounded over the water.

  From Fort George, an urgent message was sent to Kingston asking for three companies of the 49th Regiment and a detachment of the Newfoundland Regiment. The hourly expected arrival of the prisoners from Detroit might place Fort George in the awkward position of having more prisoners than soldiers.

  The Niagara frontier.

  Fort George, situated on the west bank of the Niagara River about two kilometres from Lake Ontario and opposite the American Fort Niagara, consisted of six small bastions connected by picket fencing 3.5 metres high, with room for 220 men and a spacious officers’ quarters. The town of Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) nestled against its rather dubious protection. Vessels of over 45 tonnes could sail past Newark up the Niagara River as far as Queenston, where the portage around Niagara Falls began. Even without war, this
portage road was a bustling street with salt pork and flour and trading goods arriving, while North West Company furs from the west as well as wheat, corn, oats, and fruit from the Niagara farms, moved down.

  But on August 25 a parade of victory came down the Queenston road as the Detroit expedition returned. We can see it most clearly from the American side where no one described it better than John Lovett, secretary to General Van Rensselaer. Lovett always turned the light of humour on those pompous British across the river. He shone an equally brilliant searchlight on the humiliation of his fellow Americans.

  It [yesterday] was a day of turmoil, mortification and humiliation through out our camp. Such a flood as the consequences of Gen. Hull’s surrender poured in upon us that it required considerable nerve to meet everything … Yesterday the first we saw was a guard of about 50 men passing with some wagons on the opposite shore; it was the victorious Brock returning to Fort George. He sent over Col. McDonald [Macdonell], his aide-de-camp, and Major Evans, two strapping lads in scarlet, gold and arms, to make a communication to General Van Rensselaer.

  I was ever proud of my country, and as an American could look any man of any nation at least horizontally in the face. But yesterday my eyes seemed to have acquired a new attachment to the ground.

  … Before and behind, on the right and on the left, their proud victors gleamed in arms and their heads erect in the pride of victory … I think the line, including wagons, pleasure carriages, etc., was half a mile long, scattered. The sensation this scene produced in our camp were inexpressible, mortification, indignation, fearful apprehension, suspicion, jealousy, dismay, rage, madness.[2]