The American Invasion of Canada

by Pierre Berton

  During this lull, Winfield Scott works furiously with the engineers to prepare a defence of the high ground. The Americans know that British reinforcements are on their way from both Chippawa and Fort George; an American-born militiaman has deserted with that information. Scott would like to attack the Chippawa force, cutting it off from the main army, but has not enough men for the job; nor can he get more. His little force is diminishing. Whole squads of militia slink away into the woods or the brush above the bluffs. Scott posts his remaining men along the ridge with their backs to the village, his left flank resting on the edge of the bluff, his right in a copse of trees and bushes.

  He realizes his danger. Ammunition is running out. He has managed to get a six-pound gun across the river in a larger boat, but there are only a few rounds available for it. In the distance he can see a long column of red-coated regulars marching up the road from Fort George under Brock’s successor, Major-General Roger Sheaffe.

  Now Scott becomes aware of an odd spectacle. Dashing back and forth along the ragged end of the militia is a man in civilian clothes, waving a naked sword, swearing profusely, and exhorting the men to form and fight to the death. This is Brigadier-General William Wadsworth of the New York militia, who has the reputation of being the most eloquently profane officer in the army. He has come across the river on his own, without orders, to try to instil some fighting spirit into his citizen soldiers.

  Scott is nonplussed. Wadsworth outranks him, but he is not a regular. Scott cannot-will not-serve under him.

  “General Wadsworth,” he says, “since you are in command I propose to confine my orders strictly to the regular troops here!”

  To which the militia general replies, quite sensibly and amiably:

  ‘That’s all damned nonsense, sir! You are a regular officer, you know professionally what should be done! Continue your command, sir, I am here simply for the honor of my country and that of the New York Militia!”

  And off he rushes to raise some volunteers for the firing line.

  Scott desperately needs to get the eighteen-pound cannon at the redan into action to protect his rear and cover the landing of the reinforcements that his general has promised him. But Brock has spiked it well: Scott’s men cannot drive or drill the ramrod out. The Lieutenant-Colonel scrambles down the hillside to help, but as he does so a terrifying sound pierces the air. It is the screaming war-whoop of the Mohawk Indians, led by John Norton and his Indian friend, the young chief John Brant. They come swooping out of the woods and hurtling across the fields, brandishing their tomahawks, driving in Scott’s pickets and forcing the trembling troops back. Only Scott’s own presence and voice prevent a general rout. The Indians retire into the woods at the first volley, then work their way around toward the American left. No American soldier has fallen during this brief attack, but the damage is done, for the cries of the Indians have carried across the river and sent a chill through the militiamen on the far side.

  Almost at the same time, two British guns have opened up in the garden of the Hamilton house, effectively barring passage across the river. Scott knows that his chances of getting reinforcements before the final battle are slim. He can see the men he needs-hundreds of them, even thousands, lined up on the far bank like spectators at a prizefight. For all the good they can do him, they might as well be back at their farms, where at this moment most of them fervently wish they were.

  General Van Rensselaer is helpless. He has promised reinforcements and ammunition to the defenders on the heights but can supply neither. He has sent to Brigadier-General Smyth asking for more men, but Smyth again declines. And he cannot budge the troops at the embarkation point. They have been milling about for some hours in the drizzle, watching the boats return with terribly wounded men (and sometimes with deserters), watching other boats founder in the frothing stream, and now, with the screams of the Indians echoing down from the heights, they have no stomach for battle.

  The General, riding a borrowed horse, with Major Lovett at his side, moves through the sulking soldiers, urging them to enter the boats. No one budges. One of their commanders, a Lieutenant-Colonel Bloom, returns from the heights wounded, mounts his horse and, still bleeding, exhorts, swears, prays. The troops refuse to advance. A local judge, Peck by name, appears from somewhere, a large cocked hat on his head, a long sword dangling from his broad belt, preaching and praying to no avail. The troops have broken ranks and assumed the role of witnesses to the coming battle, and there is nothing, under the Constitution, that their officers can do.

  Frustrated to fury and despair, Van Rensselaer starts to compose a note to General Wadsworth:

  “I have passed through my camp; not a regiment, not a company is willing to join you. Save yourselves by a retreat if you can. Boats will be sent to receive you.”

  The promise is hollow. The terrified boatmen refuse to recross the river.

  •

  AT NEWARK, early that morning, Captain James Crooks of the 1st Lincoln Militia, a Canadian unit, notes the inclement weather and decides against turning out. All that summer at daybreak the militiamen have paraded on one of the village streets, protected by intervening buildings from the eyes of the enemy in order to conceal their paucity. The wind and the sleet convince Captain Crooks that for once his subordinates can handle the parade. He turns over in his blankets, is starting to doze off again when a knock comes at his window and a guard reports that the Yankees have crossed the river at Queenston. Crooks is startled; this is the first he has heard of it. Even now he cannot hear the sound of the guns because of the gale blowing off the lake.

  The orders are to rendezvous at the fort. Crooks leaps from his bed, pulls on his uniform, orders his men to form up, noting with pleasure the enthusiasm with which each unit outdoes the others to see which can reach the bastion first. Once there, the men stack their arms and wait. No one knows exactly what is happening, but the word is out that General Brock has already left for Queenston.

  At the fort’s gate, Crooks runs into the artillery commander, Captain William Holcroft, who tells him he is about to open fire on Fort Niagara across the river but is short of men. Crooks supplies him with several including Solomon Vrooman, who is sent to man the twenty-four-pounder on a point a mile away. Vrooman’s big gun, which is never out of action, does incalculable damage and is one reason for the American militia’s refusal to cross the river. From this day on, the emplacement will be known as Vrooman’s Point.

  At the naval yards, Crooks encounters Captain James Richardson, who is thunderstruck at the news of the attack. His ship, at dock loaded with gunpowder, is within point-blank range of the American battery, nine hundred yards across the water. He makes haste to unload his explosive cargo and send it to the fort. This proves fortunate; the powder in the fort’s magazine, which has not seen use since the Revolutionary War, is so old it cannot propel shot more than half-way across the river.

  A deafening artillery battle follows. The Americans heat their cannonballs until they glow red, then fire them into the village and the fort, burning the courthouse, the jail, and fifteen other buildings until, at last, their batteries are reduced by British cannon.

  In the meantime Brock’s express has arrived from Queenston with orders for 130 militiamen to march immediately to the relief of the heights. Captain Crooks is anxious to lead his men, but an older brother in the same company is the senior of the two. Crooks manages to talk him into staying behind, assembles men from five flank companies, forms them into a reinforcement detachment, and marches them off toward the scene of battle. A mile out of Newark he is told of Brock’s death, tries to keep the news from his men, fails, is surprised to find it has little immediate effect. At Brown’s Point, he passes one of the York Volunteers, who asks him where he is going. When he answers, “To Queenston,” the officer tells him he is mad: if he goes any farther all his people will be taken prisoner; the General is dead; his force is completely routed; his aide is mortally wounded; four hundred Yankees are on his fl
ank, moving through the woods to attack Newark. Crooks replies that he has his orders and will keep going. He tells his men to load their muskets and marches on. Shortly afterward he encounters a second officer who repeats almost word for word what he has heard a few minutes before. Crooks ignores him.

  About a mile from town he halts his men at a house owned by a farmer named Durham. It is filled with American and British wounded, including the dying Macdonell. The troops are hungry, having missed their breakfast. He sends them foraging in a nearby garden to dig potatoes. Soon every pot and kettle in the house is bubbling on the fire, but before the potatoes can be eaten General Sheaffe arrives with the remainder of the 41st Regiment and orders the militia to fall in. Off they march to battle, still hungry.

  Sheaffe, a cautious commander, has no intention of repeating Brock’s frontal assault, has planned instead a wide flanking movement to reach the plateau above the village, where Wool’s Americans are preparing for battle. His force will veer off to the right before entering the village, make a half circle around the heights, and ascend under cover of the forest by way of an old road two miles west of Queenston. Here Sheaffe expects to be joined by the second detachment that Brock ordered from Chippawa. In this way he can keep his line of march out of range of the American battery on the heights above Lewiston while the Indians, who have preceded him, act as a screen to prevent the enemy patrols from intercepting him as he forms up for battle.

  Meanwhile, Captain Holcroft of the Royal Artillery has, at great risk, managed to trundle two light guns through the village, across a ravine, and into the garden of the Hamilton house, guided by Captain Alexander Hamilton, who knows every corner of the ground. It is these guns that Winfield Scott hears, effectively blocking the river passage, as Norton and his Mohawks harass his forward positions.

  The Indians, screening Sheaffe’s force, continue to harry the Americans. They pour out of the woods, whooping and firing their muskets, then vanish into the trees, preventing Scott from consolidating his position, driving in the pickets and flank patrols to inhibit contact with the advancing British, and forcing the Americans into a tighter position on the heights. Their nominal chief is John Brant, the eighteen-year-old son of the late Joseph Brant, the greatest of the Mohawk chieftains, whose portrait by Romney will later grace every Canadian school book. But the real leader is the theatrical Norton, a strapping six-foot Scot who thinks of himself as an Indian and aspires to the mantle of his late mentor. He is more Indian than most Indians, has indeed convinced many British leaders (including the English parliamentarian and abolitionist William Wilberforce) that he is a Cherokee. He wears his black hair in a long tail held in place by a scarlet handkerchief into which he has stuck an ostrich feather. Now, brandishing a tomahawk, his face painted for battle, he whoops his way through the woods, terrifying the American militia and confusing the regulars.

  Directly behind the woods on the brow of the heights, hidden by the scarlet foliage and protected by the Mohawks, Roger Sheaffe forms up his troops on Elijah Phelps’s ploughed field. He is in no hurry. He controls the road to Chippawa and is waiting for Captain Richard Bullock to join him with another 150 men from the south. Captain Dennis of the 49th has already joined his company, his body, caked with blood. Exhausted and wounded as a result of the battle at the river’s edge, he refuses to leave the field until the day is won. Now he stands with the others, waiting for the order to advance, while the American gunners pour down fire from across the river. For the unblooded militia the next hour is the longest they have known, as a rain of eighteen-pound balls and smaller shot drops about them.

  At about four o’clock, just as Bullock comes up on the right flank, Sheaffe orders his men to advance in line. He has close to one thousand troops in all. The enemy has almost that number-or had almost that number, but now many of the American militia, with the war cries of the Indians echoing in their ears, have fled into the woods or down the cliff toward the river. When Scott counts his dwindling band he is shocked to discover that it numbers fewer than three hundred. In the distance he sees the scarlet line of British regulars, marching in perfect order, the Indians on one flank, the militia slightly behind, two three-pound grasshopper guns firing.

  Van Rensselaer’s despairing note has just reached Wadsworth: reinforcement is not possible. The Americans call a hurried council and agree to a strategic withdrawal.

  Now the battle is joined. James Crooks, advancing with his militia detachment, has been in many hailstorms but none, he thinks wryly, where the stones fly thick as the bullets on this October afternoon. Little scenes illuminate the battle and remain with him for the rest of his days: the sight of an Indian tomahawking a York militiaman in the belief that he is one of the enemy. The sight of the Americans’ lone six-pounder, abandoned, with the slow match still burning (he turns it about and some of his men fire several rounds across the river). The bizarre spectacle of Captain Robert Runchey’s platoon of black troops-escaped slaves who have volunteered at Newark-advancing on the flank of the Indians. The sight of a companion, his knuckles disabled by a musket ball at the very moment of pulling the trigger. Crooks seizes the weapon and fires off all its spare ammunition, saving the final round for a man in a small skiff in the river whom he takes to be an American fleeing the battle. Fortunately he misses; it is one of his own officers crossing over with a flag of truce to demand General Van Rensselaer’s surrender.

  Scott’s regulars are attempting to cover the American withdrawal. The Colonel himself leaps up on a fallen tree and literally makes a stump speech, calling on his men to die with their muskets in their hands to redeem the shame of Hull’s surrender. They cheer him and face the British, but the advance continues with all the precision of a parade-ground manoeuvre, which, of course, it is. The Americans are trapped between the cliff edge on their left and the cannon fire from Holcroft’s guns in the village below them on their right.

  As the Indians whoop forward once more-the British and Canadian militia advancing behind with fixed bayonets-the American line wavers, then breaks. The troops rush toward the cliffs, some tumbling down the hill, clinging to bushes and outcroppings, others, crazed with fear, leaping to their deaths on the rocks below. Scores crowd the . beach under the shoulder of the mountain, waiting for boats that will never come. Others, badly mangled, drown in the roaring river.

  The three ranking Americans, Scott, Wadsworth, and Chrystie, carried downward by the rush of escaping men, now decide that only a quick surrender will save the entire force from being butchered by the Indians. The problem is how to get a truce party across to the British lines. Two couriers, each carrying a white flag, have tried. The Indians have killed both.’

  At last Winfield Scott determines to go himself.

  There are no white handkerchiefs left among the company, but Totten, the engineering officer, has a white cravat, which Scott ties to his sword point. He will rely on his formidable height and his splendid uniform to suggest authority. These attributes, however, are of little value, for Scott is almost immediately attacked and seized by young Brant and another Indian, who spring from a covert and struggle with him. The American’s life is saved by the timely appearance of John Beverley Robinson and his friend Samuel Jarvis of the York Volunteers, who free him and escort him to Sheaffe.

  The British general accepts Scott’s surrender and calls for his bugler to sound the cease-fire. The Mohawk pay no attention. Enraged at the death of two of their chiefs, they are intent on exterminating all the Americans huddled under the bluff. Scott, seeing his men’s predicament, hotly demands to be returned to share their fate. Sheaffe persuades the future conqueror of Mexico to have patience. He himself is appalled at the carnage, and after the battle is over some of his men will remember their general flinging off his hat, plunging his sword into the ground in a fury, and demanding that his men halt the slaughter or he, Sheaffe, will immediately give up his command and go home. A few minutes later the firing ceases and the battle is over. It is half-past four. Th
e struggle has raged for more than twelve hours.

  Now, to Scott’s mortification and despair, some five hundred militiamen appear from hiding places in the crevices along the cliffs and raise their hands in surrender.

  The British have taken 925 prisoners including a brigadier-general, five lieutenant-colonels, and sixty-seven other officers. One prisoner is allowed to go free-the diminutive sextuagenarian Samuel Stubbs of Boonsboro, Kentucky. Stubbs, expecting to be killed and scalped, discovers that the British look on him as an oddity, as if he had been born with two heads. A British officer takes one look at Stubbs and lets him go. “Old daddy,” he says, “your age and odd appearance induce me now to set you at liberty, return home to your family and think no more of invading us!” Stubbs promises cheerfully to give up fighting, but “I didn’t mean so for I was determined I wouldn’t give up the chase so, but at ‘um again.” And so he will be-all the way from the attack on Fort York to the final bloody battle of New Orleans, where in his sixty-sixth year, he is responsible for the deaths of several British officers.

  In addition, the Americans suffer some 250 casualties. These include the badly mangled Solomon Van Rensselaer, who will eventually recover, and John Lovett, who, though not hit by ball or shrapnel, is incapacitated for life. What began as a lark has for him ended as tragedy. For Lovett, the conversationalist and wit, the world has gone silent. Placed in charge of the big guns on the heights above Lewiston, he has been rendered permanently deaf.

  British casualties, by contrast, are light.

  “God, man,” says the staff surgeon, Dr. Thorne, to James Crooks as the battle ends, “there does not seem to be any of you killed.” “Well, Doctor,” replies the Captain, “it is well it is so but go into that guard house and you’ll find plenty to do for your saws.... “

  The British have lost only fourteen killed and seventy-seven wounded, but there is one loss that cannot be measured and by its nature evens the score at the Battle of Queenston Heights. Isaac Brock is gone. There is no one to fill his shoes.