John Graves Simcoe, 1752-1806

by Mary Beacock Fryer

  Major Edward Drewe

  From time to time, mail from home caught up with John Graves Simcoe. Jeremiah Milles had married an heiress, and seemed well pleased with himself. A wealthy wife, Simcoe had to admit, was just what an aspiring officer needed for faster promotions. Milles was lucky indeed. Distressing was word about Edward Drewe, now recovered from the wounds he had received at Boston, and promoted major of the 35th Regiment. He as now on duty in the West Indies, where his frankness, or just plain disobedience, had got him into deep trouble. Either way, he found scant sympathy among his fellow officers.

  Drewe’s satirical “Military Sketches” had so upset the establishment that he was court martialled, probably on a flimsy excuse. Among other sins, he had lampooned a uniform, that had a soldier

  screwed into a jacket of such excessive tightness that not a sinew had room to play, and the whole body resembled much the form of a rabbit; its legs were jammed into two long cases of black linen, so excessively strait as to vie with the French torture of Brodequin; its head was loaded with a quantity of flour, and dragged back upon its shoulders by the weight of an enormous queue made of sheep’s wool, and on the head was perched a hat which seemed to be the manufacture of Lilliput.13

  Verses published in Exeter in 1792 by Drewe and Simcoe’s friend, Richard Polwhele include “An Elegaic Epistle Addressed to a Friend, on my leaving Boston in 1775, for the cure of my Wounds sustained at Bunker’s Hill.” Polwhele concluded that Drewe referred to Simcoe, who had been “reported killed in battle, and was much bewailed …” and who was now safe.

  On learning of his friend’s predicament, Simcoe wrote a character reference for Drewe and sent it to be used in his defense. Drewe was convicted at his court martial, and cashiered.14 Of importance was evidence that Drewe had influenced Simcoe to select practical clothing for his Rangers, and for himself. The court martial took place at St. Lucia in May 1780. Whether Simcoe sent his testimonial from New York, or his next posting, is not clear.

  With General Benedict Arnold to Virginia

  Lord Cornwallis resolved to move his campaign northward, leaving a garrison behind in Charleston. Both he and Clinton agreed that their troops were spread too thin. If Cornwallis moved to Virginia, Clinton could give him limited help, while still holding Washington at bay in New Jersey. Clinton decided to make use of his new general, Benedict Arnold, by sending him in command of troops to harass rebel strong points, destroy supplies and buildings, and to follow Cornwallis’s orders on what else should be done. Clinton assigned a strong detachment of Queen’s Rangers infantry and Hussars to the expedition. Arnold would take his new regiment, the Loyal American Legion, while Simcoe would be his subordinate. Oddly enough, neither in Simcoe’s Journal nor in his more frank Appendix, did he hint at any dislike of the man whose name would become synonymous in American history with “traitor” and despite Arnold’s hand in the betrayal of Major André.

  Cornwallis planned to leave the garrison at Charleston under Colonel Nisbet Balfour, until Clinton could send more troops. The reinforcement for Charleston, was 2,500 men under the command of General Alexander Leslie. Part of Leslie’s force would be Simcoe’s captain, John Saunders, and his troop of Hussars. Saunders was not pleased with the posting; he preferred to operate in Virginia, his home territory. His cornet was Thomas Merritt, of a New York family, who had served with Emmerich’s Chasseurs before transferring to the Queen’s Rangers.15

  Arnold’s expedition sailed from Sandy Hook on 21 December, a few days ahead of Leslie’s, and reached Chesapeake Bay on the 30th, 1780. From there the transports sailed into the James River as far as Hood’s Point, where an enemy gun battery barred further progress. Simcoe landed 130 Rangers and two companies from the 80th Regiment, circled round the enemy flank and forced them to abandon the gun battery. Thomas Jefferson, in command of Virginia militia, was a mere thirty miles away, in Richmond.

  Arnold had only 800 men ashore; other transports were still on the way, but Simcoe persuaded him to attack Jefferson’s force immediately. At the outskirts of Richmond, Simcoe’s infantry dislodged the rebels from their strong position on a hill, and Captain David Shank and Lieutenant George Spencer led their Hussars in pursuit, driving them from the town. Returning to Richmond, to rejoin the rest of Arnold’s force, they brought captured horses and prisoners.

  From Richmond, the Rangers continued to Westham, to deal with a foundry and an arsenal of cannon, muskets and ammunition. Simcoe’s men took what they could carry, set fire to the buildings, destroyed the remaining weapons and ammunition, and retired to Richmond. They celebrated on captured rum, and moved back to Westover for a rest. Simcoe’s force had fought two battles and marched seventy-two miles in three days.

  On 8 January 1781, Simcoe was patrolling with Captain Shank and some forty Ranger Hussars when they learned that 800 rebel militiamen were at Charles City Court House, only a few miles from Westover. A friendly black man led them by little-used roads. Near the court house, the Rangers dispersed the militiamen by their spirited, surprise attack.

  Simcoe could be alarmed, but rarely deterred: In saving three armed militia men from the fury of the soldiers, Lt. Col. Simcoe ran a great risque [sic] as their pieces were loaded, pointed at his breast, and in their timidity they might have discharged them.16

  While the Rangers continued patrolling and skirmishing, the main army moved to Portsmouth, at the mouth of the James River, and commenced improving the defences. Portsmouth would be a strategic place for the receipt of supplies. There, Arnold was superceded as commander of the expedition by General William Phillips, an artillery officer who had served with Burgoyne. Following his parole and exchange Phillips had returned to duty. He proceeded to capture Williamsburg, and he sent Simcoe to secure Burrell’s Landing, a defensive position on the James River.

  Simcoe prepared a feint, a supposed frontal assault, while one company attacked the rebel flank. After a brief exchange of shots the enemy withdrew. With about forty of his Hussars, Simcoe continued on to Yorktown where he surprised and captured most of the rebel garrison, before rejoining Phillips at Williamsburg.

  The army next attacked Petersburg, on the Appomattox River where it flows into the James. The Queen’s Rangers, with other light troops, formed the vanguard. Two miles from Petersburg they confronted a rebel force led by Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a German who had done much to improve the training of the Continental Army. While the main army under Phillips planned a frontal attack, Simcoe and his Rangers rapidly flanked von Steuben. After a short exchange, the rebels fled across the Appomattox and withdrew to Chesterfield Court House.

  On 25 April, Phillips moved on to Chesterfield. The Rangers, with detachments of the 76th and 80th Regiments, moved to Osborne’s House, on the James River, where fifteen enemy armed ships were anchored. After firing 6-pounder guns from the shore and considerable musketry, the ships began to surrender, although some crews attempted escape in small boats. Two Ranger officers and a dozen men rowed out and seized one of the ships. Some of the Rangers remained while others rowed on and captured a second ship, turning its guns on ships still in rebel hands. They captured the entire fleet, except for some that were scuttled by their own crews. On 2 May when the British troops moved down the river, detachments of Rangers were manning the captured ships. Lord Cornwallis was steadily moving troops from the Carolinas into Virginia, and he sent an order to General Phillips to congregate his force at Petersburg. Phillips reached Petersburg in time to forestall the town being occupied by the Marquis de Lafayette, the young French aristocrat who had joined Washington’s army. Lafayette who was in command of about 3,000 troops; a mixed force of Continental regulars and militia, retired to Osborne House, about twenty miles from Petersburg. Simcoe then received orders to take his cavalry, locate Cornwallis and lead him to Petersburg. He found the army thirty miles away, and Cornwallis reached the town on 20 May. Arnold had been in command before Cornwallis appeared. General Phillips had died of typhoid fever only a week before, on
the 13th.

  Cornwallis’s first priority was the destruction of Lafayette’s force, which had retreated, first to Richmond, then across the South Anna River. The timing was vital; General Anthony Wayne was en route with reinforcements from Pennsylvania. Unwilling to move his whole army too far from the supply base at Portsmouth, Cornwallis ordered Tarleton’s Legion to attack Charlottesville, the state capital where the Virginia Assembly was sitting. Simcoe was to lead a force to Point of Forks, farther up the James River where Baron von Steuben, with about 400 troops, was guarding a depot of vital military stores.

  Simcoe could muster at most 300 Rangers because so many were sick or recovering from wounds. Moreover, fifty were in effect barefoot, owing to the worn condition of their boots or shoes. Cornwallis added 200 men of the 71st Regiment Fraser Highlanders to join them. Knowing how poorly some of the men felt, Simcoe offered them the chance to stay with the main army, but “There was not a man who would remain behind the corps.”17

  Simcoe’s men covered nearly sixty miles in two days, so that they were upon von Steuben’s position before he was aware of their approach. Rangers who reconnoitred discovered that the enemy force was twice as large as intelligence had reported, and that the German officer was removing supplies from a depot and across the river. The Rangers and the others had been moving west, and Simcoe circled von Steuben’s position and moved close to the river from the north. He found himself at Napier’s Ford, over the South Anna River, north of the Forks. Lieutenant George Spencer went on patrol with two of his Hussars, proceeding cautiously to Napier’s house, on high ground. He planned to spend the night and to recommend, at daybreak, an ambush of a ford below the house.

  Spencer then approached a second house, that of a rebel Colonel Thompson, which was surrounded by very high fences. Dismounting, he faced Thompson, who had four militiamen with him. Spencer enquired the way to Baron von Steuben’s camp. Suspicious, Thompson, although armed, ran with three of his men. The fourth, seeing that the two Hussars could not get over the fence or assist Spencer, “presented a double barrel piece within five yards of his breast”:

  Lt. Spencer, with great presence of mind, immediately threatened to have him flogged on his arrival at the Baron’s camp, and, pulling some papers from his packet, told him, that they were his despatches from M. Fayette: at the same time he moved gently towards him, intending if possible, to seize the muzzle of his firelock, but, as the one advanced, the other retreated, keeping his piece still presented, until, getting over a fence at the back of the house, he ran towards the river.

  Spencer could have shot him with a pocket pistol, but recalling that Simcoe thought the enemy had a post at Napier’s Ford, two miles lower, “he prudently permitted him to escape, rather than make an alarm: these people left five good horses behind them.”18,19 Spencer investigated the ford, and met two mounted rebel militiamen who, unsuspecting, told him that von Steuben was at the Forks. Simcoe directed his force to proceed there.

  Intending to convince the rebels he was Cornwallis’s vanguard, Simcoe directed the red-coated men of the 71st to approach on a height, to suggest large numbers. A 3-pounder gun fired, denoting the threat of artillery. Ranger-style they spread out along the woods. Simcoe’s men bivouacked for the night, and at dawn they found no sign of von Steuben. Deceived by Simcoe’s ruse, von Steuben had evacuated his position and was marching his 900-strong force towards Cumberland Court House, thirty miles inland.

  Simcoe’s force secured a large haul of military stores, muskets, gunpowder, entrenching tools, sail cloth and several types of heavy guns. They ferried some of the loot by raft down the James River. Watchful for a counter attack, they destroyed on land or sank in the river everything they could not carry. The Rangers and the men of the 71st rejoined Cornwallis who, in their absence, had marched nearer to the Point of Forks, where Colonel Tarleton soon arrived. With 250 cavalry he had ridden to Charlottesville, but forewarned, the members of the Virginia Assembly had escaped. Tarleton had to make do by destroying all the stores he found there.

  Cornwallis now ordered a withdrawal towards Richmond. During the march, the Queen’s Rangers formed the rear guard Reaching Richmond on 16 June, Cornwallis ordered a few days rest, but the Rangers were as busy as ever, patrolling, trying to establish the exact location of Lafayette and Wayne. The French officer had moved south once he discovered that he was not being pursued, and Anthony Wayne arrived from Pennsylvania to reinforce him. As the British army was moving again, towards Williamsburg, Cornwallis instructed Simcoe and his Rangers, with a detachment of German riflemen — Jaegers under Captain Johann Ewald — to follow at a distance of two days march, as a rearguard to watch out for Lafayette and Wayne. Cornwallis intended to move his army close to Portsmouth, where he could not be cut off from Sir Henry Clinton and the British garrison at New York, his source of fresh troops.

  By 25 June, Simcoe was at Cooper’s Mills, some twenty miles up the James River from Williamsburg. He did not know exactly where the enemy was, nor their strength, but he was determined not to be surprised. He promised a local man, known as a rebel sympathiser, a generous reward if he would go to Lafayette’s camp and report back by seven o’clock the following morning, knowing full well that his “spy” would promptly spill everything he had heard to the French general. As soon as the man had departed, Simcoe’s men set to work, and at two o’clock in the morning his infantry and baggage began to leave, while the Hussars prepared to follow. As Simcoe wrote in his Journal “The next advantage to receiving good information is to deceive the enemy with that which is false.” As expected, at dawn, General Wayne attacked the now vacant Ranger camp, and found no sign of life.

  Simcoe, meanwhile, approached Spencer’s Ordinary, closer to Williamsburg, for his first completely independent command.

  SIX

  SPENCER’S ORDINARY

  The fight at Spencer’s Ordinary was fairly minor, important mainly to John Graves Simcoe. His rebel opponent was Colonel Richard Butler, one of General Anthony Wayne’s subordinates. Simcoe’s force numbered little more than 400, Butler’s some 570. The site for the encounter was a T junction. A road led south from Norwal’s Mills and ended at an east-west road, which led east to Williamsburg, and west to Jamestown. Many hills offered concealment, as did woods, but part of the site was ploughed fields where either side would be vulnerable to attack from cover. Simcoe included a map in his Journal, with an attempt at showing sequence, but it does not enlighten exactly how the various positions changed.

  Simcoe had been foraging for cattle and food, and making a reconnaissance towards the Chickahominy River. On 25 June, Lord Cornwallis’s army was at Williamsburg. Simcoe’s men had been subsisting on some Indian corn which an enemy commissary had left. The mission was disappointing because they found little to destroy. He was leading Rangers, some cavalry, some infantry, notably the Highland company under Captain John McKay. Also with him were two small detachments of German Jaegers, under Captains Ewald and Althaus[e]. (Althaus later transferred to the New York Volunteers as John Althouse and after the war he settled in New Brunswick.)

  Jaegers had been recruited from among huntsmen, gamekeepers and foresters of Hesse-Cassel. Detachments from several companies served as sharpshooters with many units of the British Army. Like the Rangers, the Jaegers wore green. Their heavy rifles had short barrels, frequently octagonal, which could not take bayonets. Simcoe complained several times that his own rifle-equipped men, while useful as marksmen, could not partake in the bayonet charge so useful in dispersing an enemy.

  When his little army arrived at Cooper’s Mills, they were twenty miles from Williamsburg, where Cornwallis was halted temporarily. The Rangers found precious little to forage; Cornwallis’s “waggons” had been at the mills the day before and had taken all the flour. Simcoe was feeling very insecure. He had not found any information on the enemy’s movements, except that rebels were hurrying to General Wayne’s standard, and clearly the enemy intended to follow Cornwallis “as fa
r towards the neck of Williamsburg as with safety they could.” He had not received any messages from Cornwallis, and he was certain that the commander’s intelligence was very bad: “he [Simcoe] and Major Armstrong agreed with Capt. Ewald, that the slightest reliance was not to be placed on any patroles from His Lordship’s Army.”1

  Major Armstrong, with Jaegers, infantry and their cannon, was approaching Spencer’s Ordinary near dawn on 26 June. Simcoe followed with the cavalry, at a later hour. Spencer’s Ordinary was little more than a tavern at the forks of the road between Williamsburg and Jamestown. Also with the expedition was a convoy of cattle, which a Captain Branson and some North Carolina Loyalists had collected. Near Spencer’s Ordinary, Simcoe ordered fences to be torn down. He then rode into the open ground and inspected his surroundings, as was his custom. He remarked to his officers “that it was an admirable place for ‘the chicanery of action.” Lieutenant William Digby Lawler, sent to direct the infantry on to Williamsburg, returned and informed Simcoe that he had counted nearly 100 head of cattle in the neighbourhood. Captain Branson was detailed to round them up, and Captain Shank, commanding the cavalry, went to feed his horses at nearby Lee’s farm.

  Suddenly two shots rang out from the direction of the Highland company, which was posted as a “picquet” beside the road. Sentinels had given the alarm, and Simcoe saw Captain Shank galloping across the open field towards the woods, in pursuit of enemy cavalry. The rebels had passed through the downed fences and had arrived at Lee’s farm in pursuit of the people collecting the cattle. Then Trumpeter Barney, stationed as a “vidette” (sentinel at an outpost) sounded the alarm and galloped off so as to lead the enemy away from the spot where the cavalry were watering their horses and collecting forage. He shouted, “Draw your swords Rangers, the rebels are coming.”