Tecumseh and Brock

by James Laxer

  York’s defences were only partially developed, with Fort York still under construction. At the time of the attack, two 12-pounders were mounted in the fort. Sentries on the Scarborough Bluffs, located in what is now the east end of Toronto, sighted a fleet of fifteen American vessels, carrying about two thousand U.S. regular troops, close to the Lake Ontario shore. On the evening of April 26, 1813, the sentries flashed the warning by semaphore that York was about to be attacked.

  Adverse weather delayed the American landing until the morning of April 27, by which time a strong east wind had carried the U.S. force more than ten kilometres to the west, placing them adjacent to a point now called Sunnyside, in the west end of Toronto. The landing area was heavily wooded but its long beach made it an ideal place to come ashore.

  The best chance for the British to parry the attack was to meet the invaders at the water’s edge. There they could take them out in detail and prevent them from concentrating and taking advantage of their superior numbers. But Sheaffe sent only about sixty Glengarry Fencibles and about twenty-five native warriors to counter the Americans at the beach. Some of his forces arrived after the main landing had been carried out, and some of his men were posted uselessly farther back. Later, Sheaffe was heavily criticized for his tepid initial response to the attack.12

  Leading the Americans into combat was Brigadier General Zebulon Montgomery Pike, a career soldier who had been named after his father, a veteran of the War of Independence. Earlier in his career, the young Pike had been put in charge of expeditions to explore the source of the Mississippi River, and later to attempt to locate the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers in the territory acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. During this latter exploration, Pike and his party came upon a great mountain range that soared above the plains. Decades later, the grand peak that had fascinated the young officer was named Pike’s Peak.

  The night before setting out on the expedition to attack York, Pike wrote to his father, “I embark tomorrow in the fleet, at Sackett’s [sic] Harbor, at the head of a column of 1,500 choice troops, on a secret expedition. Should I be the happy mortal destined to turn the scale of war, will you not rejoice, oh my father? May heaven be propitious, and smile on the cause of my country. But if we are destined to fall, may my fall be like Wolfe’s — to sleep in the arms of victory.”13

  Pike’s troops, to whom he had lectured that the inhabitants of Canada were innocent victims of the war and that any looting of their belongings would be punishable by death, came ashore following the landing of a party of U.S. riflemen. Briefly, a British counterattack pushed the Americans back. But the U.S. troops used their greater numbers to regain the initiative. As the British retreated, some of the native warriors abandoned the fight. Pike’s three companies pushed the 8th’s Grenadier Company back in the direction of Fort York.

  Although historians differ about the size of the American expeditionary force, it likely numbered about two thousand soldiers, which, when added to the crews of the vessels, brought the aggregate force to just under 2,800 men.14 Along for the attack was General Dearborn, the top U.S. soldier in this theatre of war.

  The defenders of Fort York mounted a half-hearted defence, soon giving up the fight there and running for cover at nearby Government House, General Sheaffe’s dwelling. Sheaffe huddled with his senior officers and concluded that he could not hold York. He decided to retreat to Kingston. The British had lost sixty-two men, and ninety-four were wounded. Before pulling the British regulars out of York, Sheaffe set fire to the warship Sir Isaac Brock to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemy. In the aftermath of the battle, the inhabitants of York complained bitterly that Sheaffe had failed to inspire the troops to defend the town. Although York was not populous, it was the provincial capital, already inhabited by influential men who were beginning to develop the town that would grow into a Canadian metropolis.

  Although Sheaffe had decided to withdraw from York, the Union Jack still flew above the fort, signalling that the fight was not yet over. General Pike was sitting on a stump nearby, questioning a wounded British sergeant who had been captured in the woods, when a huge explosion erupted from the remains of the fort.15 The retreating British had set alight the underground powder magazine, which contained two hundred barrels of gunpowder and shot. The stone structure blew apart, catapulting chunks of rock into the air. Pike’s prisoner died instantly. Bending forward to protect himself, the general was struck by a boulder. In a letter to his wife, U.S. General George Howard reported that Pike had been hit “on the forehead [with a blow] that Stamped him for the Grave.”16

  Pike was carried to the lake and taken on board the USS Madison. In great agony and uttering not a word of complaint, the brigadier general was laid down with his head on a captured Union Jack, the fruit of the day’s victory, and that is where he died.17

  Next to the fallen general, Dr. William Beaumont, the expedition’s surgeon, “waded in blood cutting off arms, legs and trepanning [drilling holes in skulls to relieve excruciating pressure],” as he later recalled. “My God!” he wrote after forty-eight hours of non-stop ministering to the maimed. “Who can think of the shocking scene where his fellow creatures lye [sic] mashed & mangled in every part, with a leg — an arm — a head, or a body ground to pieces without having his heart pierced with the acutest sensibility & his blood chilled in his veins.”18

  Following the explosion, a young boy named Patrick Finan later recounted the arrival of the wounded at the hospital: “One man in particular presented an awful spectacle: he was brought in a wheelbarrow, and from his appearance I should be inclined to suppose that almost every bone in his body was broken; he was lying in a powerless heap, shaking with every motion of the barrow from which his legs hung dangling down, as if only connected with his body by the skin while his cries and groans were of the most heart rending description!”19 The explosion, and the subsequent death of General Pike, infuriated the Americans, who saw the action as an act of treachery.¶¶20

  One resident of York needed no weapons to express his wrath to the Americans for their behaviour during their occupation of the town. Reverend John Strachan was already becoming a pillar of the Upper Canadian establishment. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1778, he was the youngest of six children; their father was a quarry worker.Strachan emigrated to Kingston in Upper Canada in 1799. On the eve of the War of 1812, he moved to York, where he became the rector of St. James Cathedral and headmaster of the Home District Grammar School.

  In a lengthy letter to his friend Dr. James Brown in St. Andrews, Scotland, Strachan described in detail his experience during the American occupation of the town. He started writing the letter on April 26, on the eve of the attack, and did not complete it until June 14, nearly six weeks after the American invaders had departed.

  Strachan got up at 4:00 a.m. on April 27, the morning of the American attack, sighted the U.S. ships, mounted his horse, and rode to the location of the British garrison. From there he advanced toward the point, about three kilometres away, where the ships were approaching the shore. He counted fourteen vessels, and through a spyglass he could see that their decks were “thickly covered with troops — from which I infer, that they are come prepared to land in great force.”

  His letter goes on to excoriate the lacklustre, poorly planned defence of the town. Hearing two explosions, the second — the detonation of the powder magazine — vaster than the first, Strachan went home to “find that Mrs. Strachan had been terrified by the explosion” and had “run with the children to one of the Neighbours.”

  After sending his wife to the home of a friend a short distance out of town, Strachan headed back toward the British garrison, where he came upon General Sheaffe and his troops, holed up in a ravine. Members of the militia were scattering, and the general had decided to retreat with the regulars to Kingston. Strachan told the general that he was willing to help negotiate �
�the best possible conditions . . . for the town” with the enemy.

  Over the next few days, Strachan devoted his efforts to trying to win the release of the militiamen being held prisoner, and at every opportunity he complained to the American commanders about the plunder and destruction being unleashed in York by U.S. troops. He demanded to be taken aboard the principal U.S. ship to discuss the terms of surrender directly with General Dearborn. As it happened, he met the U.S. general, who was clearly in a furious state of mind, just as he was coming ashore. Strachan presented Dearborn with a copy of the articles of capitulation, requested “to know when he will parole the officers & men,” and demanded “leave to take away our sick & wounded.” According to Strachan, Dearborn read the articles “without deigning an answer.” “He treats me with great harshness,” he wrote, and “tells me . . . not to follow him as he had business of much more importance to attend to.”

  Strachan then turned his attention to Commodore Chauncey and accused the Americans of holding up their signature of the capitulation “to give the riflemen time to plunder.” The officers and men in the Canadian militia were eventually released on their own parole. But then U.S. troops ransacked the church and set fire to the provincial parliament and Government House. The invaders took with them provisions and military supplies and 2,500 pounds from the treasury. Although they did not manage to capture the British ship Brock, they did take the dismantled parts of the Duke of Gloucester. The invaders also carried off books from the library. Chauncey returned most of the books, some of them later that year and some after the war. The government mace, also taken by the looters, was not returned until 1934.21 Strachan wrote that when he confronted Dearborn with the facts of these depredations, the general was “greatly embarrassed.”

  Penelope Beikie, a York resident, recalled that “every house they found deserted was completely sacked.” Another resident, Ely Playter, wrote that the “Town thronged with the Yankees, many busy getting off the public stores. The Council office with every window broke & pillaged of every thing that it contained. The Government building, the Block House and the building adjacent all burned to ashes.”22 Local York residents also participated in the looting.

  Strachan, furious at the British commanders for their failure to defend York and Upper Canada with greater vigour, concluded his letter with the retort that, “If this country” were to fall, “Sir Geo Prevost & he only is to blame.”23

  General Prevost, in his report to London on the Battle of York, made it clear that the military consequences would be serious. “The ordnance, ammunition and other stores for the service on Lake Erie,” he wrote, “were either destroyed or fell into enemy hands when York was taken.”24

  Sheaffe was not a target of criticism in Prevost’s report to London, but Prevost showed his displeasure by transferring him to Montreal within a few weeks of the fall of York. Baron Francis de Rottenburg replaced Sheaffe as commander-in-chief and administrator of Upper Canada.25 Again Strachan’s voice, along with those of six other prominent residents of York, was heard in a stinging rebuke they wrote of Sheaffe’s conduct during the battle. Their letter to Prevost played a role in the dismissal of Sheaffe, who was recalled to Britain in November 1813.

  The Americans did not plan a lengthy occupation of York. They intended to leave the despoiled capital to carry out the next in their series of attacks — on Fort George at Niagara.

  Just after the fall of York, Sir James Yeo arrived at Quebec. A former commander of the frigate Southampton, Yeo had been appointed commodore and commander-in-chief of British naval forces in the Canadas. He set out at once for Kingston, where he energetically undertook the task of fitting out and manning British ships to take on the Americans on Lakes Ontario and Erie.26

  While the Americans were fully engaged with their offensive against York and then Fort George, the British seized the chance to carry out an attack of their own against the U.S. base at Sackets Harbor. General Prevost oversaw the operation in conjunction with Yeo, who ran the naval side of the affair. On May 29, the British landed 750 soldiers west of Sackets Harbor. From there, they intended to go after the U.S. force at Fort Tompkins after laying waste the shipyard. The plan was thwarted, however, by a quick-thinking brigadier general in the New York State Militia. Jacob Brown swiftly assembled four hundred U.S. regulars and five hundred militiamen, spreading them out in the forest adjacent to the British beachhead. From there, the Americans poured a withering fire on the attackers, forcing them to retreat to their ships. Prevost’s command to withdraw the British forces brought considerable criticism down on him for being excessively cautious.27 Yeo, who opposed breaking off the attack, disapproved of Prevost’s decision to retreat. The two men loathed each other ever after.28

  The American victory was soured, however, by an event behind the lines. Believing that the British attack was going to succeed, a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy ordered the demolition of the naval stores and provisions that had been captured at York.29

  While the British attacked Sackets Harbor, the Americans were busy at the other end of the lake. A fierce gale held up the departure of the ships under Chauncey’s command from York. When his schooners did set sail, there were so many U.S. soldiers on board that only half of them could get below decks to seek shelter from the tempest. The bedraggled American force arrived off Fort George on May 8.30

  Three weeks were consumed by the Americans’ sending their wounded back to Sackets Harbor and bringing reinforcements forward to join in the assault on Fort George.31 On May 27, General Winfield Scott, who had been released in a prisoner exchange following his capture at Queenston Heights, led four hundred Americans onto the Canadian shore of the Niagara River just west of Fort George, hoping to succeed where Van Rensselaer had failed the previous October. Several thousand U.S. troops on the American shore were waiting to follow up the initial foray.

  Brigadier General John Vincent was in command of a force of about 1,100 British regulars and Canadian militia inside Fort George. He had a further 750 regulars and 200 militiamen on the ground along the Niagara River from Fort George to Fort Erie. Vincent’s attempt to contain the American beachhead failed when fire from Chauncey’s vessels drove back his men. That retreat sealed the fate of Fort George, which fell into American hands following demolition of the powder in the fort’s magazines.32 From there the British retreated upriver toward Fort Erie, which also fell to U.S. forces.

  Once the Americans were installed on the Canadian shore of the Niagara Frontier, parties of officers and soldiers visited local farms to carry out a security check on the male residents. Those who seemed peaceably inclined were let off with a simple parole, and those who seemed unhappy with the American presence were warned that at the first sign of opposition they would be transported across the Niagara River and jailed.33

  Once Scott’s force had taken Fort George, Chauncey sailed his fleet away from the western end of Lake Ontario to return to Sackets Harbor, to secure that base against further British attacks from Kingston. While General Prevost was lambasted for his weak effort at Sackets Harbor, his failed attack did have the effect of drawing Chauncey away from the fighting near Niagara. Now it was the turn of the British to bring their naval assets into the fight.

  With U.S. Commodore Isaac Chauncey’s Lake Ontario fleet back in Sackets Harbor, the British fleet sailed up the lake from Kingston to bring pressure to bear on the U.S. forces on the western shore of Lake Ontario. Commodore Yeo’s ships carried close to 220 British regulars of the 8th Regiment, as well as provisions and ammunition to reinforce and outfit Brigadier General John Vincent’s soldiers stationed at Burlington.34

  On June 5, 1813, after reconnoitering the American position at nearby Stoney Creek, Lieutenant Colonel John Harvey alerted Vincent that, “the Enemy having dared to pursue this Division by moving a Corps of 3,500 Men with 4 Field Guns and 150 Cavalry to Stoney Creek,” the conditions were right for the British to “ma
ke a forward movement for the purpose of beating up this encampment.” Harvey informed Vincent that the Americans had posted few sentries, and those few were badly placed.

  Vincent concurred with the proposed attack and outfitted Harvey with seven hundred regulars of the 8th and 49th Regiments, close to half his force. The surprise nighttime attack began well for the British, who had learned the American password and used it to approach and bayonet the sentries, and then to burst into the camp. U.S. Brigadier General William H. Winder and a colleague of the same rank, John Chandler, were taken prisoner. General Dearborn had dispatched the two inexperienced generals, who had been appointed to their rank for political rather than military reasons, to the fight. At dawn Harvey ordered his men to retire into the woods. In addition to capturing the two brigadier generals, he came away with one hundred additional prisoners of all ranks, three cannon, and a brass howitzer.35

  Following the fight at Stoney Creek, U.S. Colonel James Burn ordered his troops to fall back to their former position at Forty Mile Creek. But the next day, that fort was bombarded by Sir James Yeo’s naval squadron, which intercepted a large shipment of supplies being transported from Niagara. The Americans were forced to fall back to Fort George.

  Vincent advanced with his troops to Forty Mile Creek. There, in his words, he hoped to “give encouragement to the Militia and Yeomanry of the Country who are everywhere rising upon the fugitive Americans, making them Prisoners & withholding all Supplies from them and lastly (and perhaps chiefly) for the purpose of sparing the resources of the Country in our rear and drawing the Supplies of the Army as long as possible from the Country immediately in the Enemy’s possession.”36