For Honour's Sake (22 page)

With the American second wave beginning to reinforce the remnants of troops still with Van Rensselaer, and Wool in possession of the heights, Brock saw he was badly outnumbered and that the reinforcements coming from Fort George would arrive too late to prevent the British garrison being overrun. The safest thing to do would be to retreat, something Brock would not do. Brock had often declared that he would never send men “where I do not lead them.”
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And he had no intention of doing so now. Jumping off his horse, Brock formed his 100 regulars and an equal number of “tired and dazed” militia into line and ordered the advance. With sword held high he led them up the slope toward Wool's men. His cocked hat, shining gold epaulettes, dazzling red coat with two rows of gilt buttons on front, sword, and decorative scarf that Tecumseh had given him after the capture of Detroit wound around the waist marked him. But Brock never hesitated, even when a musket ball tore open his wrist. When the regulars suddenly hesitated and several men turned, he shouted, “This is the first time I have ever seen the 49th turn their backs!”
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The soldiers rallied, cheered, pressed on into the fire that scythed men down like hay. Up the steep slope they went, slipping and sliding on the wet grass, cursing, a few pausing to
fire up at where the Americans had taken cover behind fallen logs and trees before pressing onward. More Americans clambered up Wool's path to add to the weight of the fire directed toward the British and Canadians following Brock.

When Brock was about 165 feet from the American line, he shouted for the men to fix bayonets and charge. As he rushed on, just ahead of the advancing line, an American scout rose from behind a bush and took careful aim with his long rifle. The musket cracked and a ball tore into Brock's chest just above the heart. Fifteen-year-old George Jarvis, a Canadian volunteer serving in the 49th, rushed to his side. “Are you much hurt, Sir?” he asked, before realizing Brock was dead. The moment Brock fell, the charge foundered. Some troops of the 49th quickly gathered up the body of their fallen commander and joined the general retreat.

As the men fell back they were intercepted by Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell, who had a small number of York Volunteers in tow. A brilliant lawyer who in peacetime was Upper Canada's attorney general, he revered Brock and determined to renew the advance. Macdonell found a willing partner in the 49th's Capt. John Williams. “Charge them home and they cannot stand you!” Williams bellowed. “Revenge the General,” shouted the 49th's survivors. Seventy strong, the mixed British and Canadian force headed up the slope behind the mounted Macdonell. Facing them were several hundred Americans. A ball slammed into Macdonell's horse, causing it to rear and wheel about. A second shot slapped into the officer's back. Mortally wounded, Macdonell toppled to the ground. Williams was also down, a bloody gouge torn out of his scalp. The attack collapsed.
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Also wounded, Capt. James Dennis gathered the survivors of the two badly reduced 49th companies and militiamen, abandoned Queenston at 10 a.m. and fell back on Vrooman's Point, where the long twenty-four-pounder still blazed away at the Americans crossing the river. Here they awaited the arrival of Maj. Gen. Roger Sheaffe and the main force from Fort George. Word of Brock's death spread quickly. Their morale undeflating, the British and Canadian troops vowed to avenge their fallen commander. Shortly thereafter Sheaffe marched in with 300 men of the 41st Regiment of Foot, 250 militiamen—including Capt. Robert
Runchey's Company of Coloured Men from the Niagara Light Dragoons—and an artillery battery drawn by draught horses of local farmers, only to receive the news that he now commanded. Before Brock's move from Detroit to Niagara, Sheaffe, a forty-nine-year-old Boston-born Loyalist, had been in overall command of the region. A regular army officer with nineteen years of service on the Canadian front, he was Brock's opposite—a cautious officer, given to deliberate, methodical action. Unlike Prevost, he was not one to shy from a fight.

Taking a good long, hard look at the situation, Sheaffe decided a frontal attack would be doomed. Instead he marched inland, following the grain of the escarpment. He would join battle from the flank and in his own time. Meanwhile, the Vrooman's Point battery continued to smash American boats plying back and forth across the river. During the march, Sheaffe continued receiving reinforcements. From Chippawa to the south, the garrison of the 41st came in, as did about 300 Mohawks from the Grand River Reserve. Sheaffe now had more than 400 regulars, about as many militia, and the Mohawks. But he knew the Americans holding the high ground were probably more numerous and should now be dug into a highly defensible position. Poor odds, but he was determined to root them out.
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Sheaffe was unaware of how badly disorganized and demoralized the Americans clinging to the heights were. Hundreds of militia at Lewiston still awaited boats to carry them across, but almost half had sunk or been carried off downstream. While some militiamen were anxious to support the men already across, far more refused to budge—the New Yorkers asserting their right to not serve beyond the nation's borders. No amount of encouragement or disparagement could shift them. Thousands simply sat on the river's edge to watch the battle like so many spectators.

Across the river, some militiamen had also taken shelter in Queenston, fearing that to go up the heights would cut them off from the boats in the event of a retreat. Captain Wool had been badly wounded during Macdonell's attack, Solomon Van Rensselaer evacuated in an unconscious state. Brig. Gen. Stephen Van Rensselaer sent Lt. Col. Winfield Scott, the young Virginian officer who in a fit of patriotic fervour had taken a party of British sailors prisoner after the
Chesapeake
incident, to assume command. With Scott was a party of engineers to fortify the position on the heights, but their entrenching tools were left behind so there was little that could be done to prepare the position. Ammunition, water, and food were in short supply. After deducting casualties, the New Yorkers refusing to come out of the village, and pickets necessary to protect his flanks, Scott had 350 regulars and 250 militiamen to defend the heights.

He was still sizing up his defences when, at about three in the afternoon, Mohawk skirmishers struck the Americans from the west. Moments later an extended line of British and Canadian troops advanced out of the woods toward Scott's left flank. Completely surprised, backs to the river, the Americans had no time to wheel about before Sheaffe halted his men. With brisk efficiency the soldiers shouldered their muskets, loosed a shattering volley, and then at Sheaffe's command charged with fixed bayonets. Within seconds the Americans broke. Although Scott jumped up on a log to rally them with a dramatic harangue to turn about and redeem the honour lost by Hull's surrender, he was ignored. Some fled the hill, hoping to reach the river and escape. A few hurled themselves off the cliffs, choosing to die that way rather than be scalped. Others huddled in a mass at the cliff edge, terrified that the Mohawks would murder them, until Scott signalled surrender by waving a white cravat.
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What should have been an easy American victory had turned into another disastrous defeat. Sheaffe's troops rounded up 958 prisoners. More than 300 Americans were killed or wounded. British losses were only 14 killed, 77 wounded, and 21 missing for the entire one-day battle.
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But among the dead was Brock, and with his loss the British lost the man who could most effectively defend Canada.

When Van Rensselaer proposed a three-day armistice to allow for exchange of prisoners and burial of the dead, Sheaffe agreed because the prisoners taken outnumbered his regular troops. He resolved the problem by paroling the New York militiamen and keeping only regular officers and soldiers as prisoners. These were marched off to join Hull's contingent in a camp near Quebec. Sheaffe would be awarded a baronetcy, while Brock had recently been raised to Knight of the Bath for the capture of Detroit—an honour he died unaware of.

Brock's body was taken back to Government House in Niagara (now Niagara-on-the-Lake), a small village just north of Fort George, where it lay in state for three days. There then followed a funeral described by one attendee as “the grandest and most solemn that I have ever witnessed or that has been seen in Upper Canada.”
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The funeral was actually for two fallen commanders—Brock and Macdonell. Pallbearers carried their caskets between a double line of militia and Indians. The 5,000 militiamen stood solemnly with muskets reversed while several cannon fired a salute every minute during the course of the procession. Across the river, the batteries at both Fort Niagara and Lewiston thundered salvoes in honour of the fallen general. After the funeral, the two caskets were interred in a bastion deep inside Fort George.

The next day, the October 17 issue of the Kingston
Gazette
carried a fanciful account of Brock's death that began the process that would transform soldier into mythical Canadian icon forever twinned with another myth born at Queenston Heights—that of the pre-eminent role played by the militia in repelling the invasion. Here was Brock in the midst of militiamen who were “ever obedient to his call, and whom [he] loved with the adoration of a father.” A Brock who fell in the midst of their ranks, his last dying words,
“Push on brave York Volunteers.
”
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Throughout Upper Canada the story was told, the legend recast and embellished until everyone—save perhaps the British regulars who fought at Queenston and buried their dead there—believed the militia carried the
day.
That Brock had considered them at best barely competent and had distrusted their loyalty was forgotten. Brock, an Englishman who desired nothing more than to quit North American service to seek glory on the European battlefields where careers were made, was quickly anointed a hero whom all Canadians, whether English, French, or American Loyalists, could claim as their own.

Previously English Canadians had esteemed Gen. James Wolfe, whose death on the Plains of Abraham during the pivotal battle that decided the outcome of the battle for Quebec in 1759 had elevated him to near-martyrdom both in English Canada and at home in Great Britain. But that same battle had claimed the life of Marquis Louis Joseph de Montcalm, commander of French forces in Canada, and signalled the
end of New France. So Wolfe's stature in Canada remained ambiguous, a hero only half of the colony could claim. Such was not the case for Brock.

His death and the Queenston Heights victory had another immediate outcome as the defeatist talk that had pervaded Upper Canada and the low turnout of volunteer militia dissipated. Sheaffe soon reported to Prevost that he was no longer plagued by militiamen leaving the field at the slightest excuse. Further, the militia serving in the Niagara area were “very alert at their several posts and continue generally to evince the best disposition.”
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This contrasted starkly with the situation south of the border, where the New York militia was almost in open rebellion. Predictably the outcome of the Battle of Queenston Heights had brought disgrace rather than accolades to the officers involved. At first Stephen Van Rensselaer attempted to shift the blame to others, including Smyth, who he maintained should have come to his aid. But the real culprits, the general reported to Secretary of War Dr. William Eustis, were the New York militiamen who refused to cross the river and cost Van Rensselaer the battle. “I can only add that the victory was really won, but lost for the want of a small reinforcement: one-third part of the idle men might have saved all.”
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His excuses mattered not; it was obvious the man's military career was washed up. Realizing this, Van Rensselaer bowed to the inevitable and requested retirement rather than waiting to be relieved. General Dearborn readily accepted and then wrote a letter to the president placing responsibility for the failure squarely on the Dutchman's shoulders. He then gave Gen. Alexander Smyth command of the Army of the Center. Smyth quickly purged the Federalist officers from the ranks and made a clumsy attempt to escape being subordinate to Dearborn. “Give me here
a clear stage,
men, and
money,
and I will retrieve your affairs or perish,” Smyth advised War Secretary Eustis. Recognizing Smyth's intention in contacting him directly, Eustis icily replied: “You are too well acquainted with service to require to be informed that all communications respecting your command should be directed to that officer.”
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Despite the bluster, the defeat had shaken Smyth, and he faced the same problems Van Rensselaer had—the lack of enthusiasm that permeated
the ranks of the New Yorkers. Smyth tried to bolster morale by issuing a proclamation that blamed the defeat on Van Rensselaer and the officers he had disposed of and assured that within days regular troops under his command would “plant the American standard in Canada.” But, he acknowledged, success would depend on the militiamen pitching in. “The present is the hour of renown,” Smyth declared. “Have you not a wish for fame? … Then seize the present moment; if you do not you will regret it and say: ‘The valiant have bled in vain, the friends of my country fell and I was not there.'

“Advance, then, to our aid. I will wait for a few days. I cannot give you the day of my departure, but come on. Come in companies, half companies, pairs or singly. I will organize you for a short tour.”
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The New Yorkers were in no mood to credit Smyth's bluster. All about the Army of the Center was cracking at the seams. Having not been paid for weeks, two regular regiments mutinied. Hundreds of militiamen refused to obey orders until their barrack conditions were improved. Dysentery and pneumonia were rampant in the ranks. There was a desperate shortage of meat rations, and winter clothing was entirely lacking while temperatures were dropping rapidly. Many—militia and regulars both—were barefoot. A group of barrack lawyers declared themselves spokesmen for the Men of New York and responded to Smyth's appeal in writing. “Go, General, if you will. Should you ever reach the walls of Quebec … and when you fall, the men of New York will lament that folly has found new victims.”
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