Captain Fitz Read online

  Examples from the Returns of the 49th Regiment show the extremes of punishment by the lash: “Deficient of frill, part of his regimental necessaries. Sentenced 100; inflicted. For being deficient of a shirt, part of his regimental necessaries. Sentenced 200; inflicted 75. Drunk before morning parade although confined to barracks. Sentenced 200; 150 inflicted.”

  When possible, Brock commuted the sentence by half. Some of the soldiers were rough, ignorant men with criminal backgrounds, but he never forgot they were human beings. FitzGibbon, who also deplored corporal punishment, watched and learned from Brock how to discipline men without cruelty and how to inspire loyalty.

  For the next five years the small British garrison in the Canadas kept an uneasy eye on the border with United States. By 1812, the threatened invasion from the south was becoming a reality.

  Naval blockades arising from Napoleon’s Berlin Decree and Britain’s answering orders-in-council had ended the peace. Britain’s was searching neutral ships for deserters, which infuriated many Americans. Although the northern states did not want war against the Canadas, the war party in Congress, prodded by western states hungry to usurp Native lands and claiming the British were supporting Native uprisings, proved too strong for the moderates.

  By the spring of 1812 you could taste war all along the frontier. To James FitzGibbon, it was a tangy, exciting taste — here was his long-awaited opportunity for advancement. He resigned the adjutancy of the 49th Regiment and was made a lieutenant in command of a company.

  Chapter 2

  War with America

  Sir George Prevost desires me to inform you that he has this instant received intelligence from Mr. Richardson by an express to the Northwest Company, announcing that the American Government had declared war against Great Britain.

  — Colonel Baynes to Major-General Brock, June 25, 1812[1]

  The brigade of bateaux loaded with soldiers moved slowly into the St. Lawrence River from Lachine. Lieutenant James FitzGibbon filled his lungs with the clean river air. He was delighted to be moving upcountry now that war with the United States was declared. Since his arrival in Quebec, 10 years before, he had travelled this river often and knew it in any mood. He had an uncanny instinct for geography and knew the shoreline from Quebec to Niagara with an accuracy that surprised even Natives and those fur-trader explorers called Voyageurs, who used rivers and lakes to push far inland and send furs home to England.

  FitzGibbon also had a good sense of history — after all, at eight years old he had read The History of Troy’s Destruction. He felt the ghosts of the past moving on this river: Mohawks going west to fight Huron or Ojibway tribes; Champlain pushing into the interior; General Wolfe sailing up to Quebec to meet Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham; North West Company explorers; Loyalists crossing the river after the American Revolution so they could live under the British flag. He knew this river would once again become a highway of war.

  This flat-bottomed bateau, being loaded with provisions, would be sailed, rowed, poled, and dragged upstream from Montreal to Kingston.

  Guillet, 34 (F. Levin).

  He might, of course, be killed fighting this war. But until then, he would have action, excitement, possibly promotion. In the British Army, visions of honour and glory were the motivating forces. Promotion could pave the way. Every officer was ready to die for his country’s cause, as long as he could do it gloriously.

  Fitz had a heavy job getting 24 boatloads of soldiers, arms, ammunition, and provisions up this wild river. The bateaux were 9 to 13 metres long and over a metre-and-a-half wide. The sides rose straight up to a height of 1.2 metres; the sharply pointed bow and stern came up 30 centimetres higher. White oak formed the bottom, light fir the sides. These remarkably adaptable boats could be rowed, poled, and sailed, and they almost never capsized. Best of all, they were flat-bottomed and could slide over the great boulders of the Cedars and Long Sault Rapids.

  On Lac-St.-Louis, the French-Canadian boatmen hoisted their lug sails and the boats sailed before a rare, light east wind. Without a keel and a weather helm, and with crude rigging, bateaux could only sail well before the wind, which usually blew from the west.

  Ahead lay the Cascades, the Cedars, and the Coteau Rapids. The attention of the entire brigade was fastened on the scene before them, as a bateaux and a larger Durham boat came flying down the Cedars and Cascades. These shallow rapids were considered the most dangerous on the St. Lawrence. The two craft, caught up in the furious, churning, white madness, seemed to leap and plunge in the maelstrom. In one place, as James knew well, the long downhill plunge was like a mill race. But he and his soldiers heard the triumphant cries of “Vive Le Roi” as the boats rose out of that run, and his soldiers and boatmen answered with their own cheers of congratulation. It was a drama re-enacted daily, but not always happily — as burial crosses on the shoreline testified.

  FitzGibbon and crew, bound upriver, had a few small locks to help them over the worst places. The first had been cut through limestone at Coteau-du-Lac in 1781. A few more had been crudely constructed to help the Loyalists move upriver, and in 1804 some of the locks had been improved and enlarged by the Royal Engineers. But for hour after hour, poling and tracking were the order of the hot summer days. With the soldiers disembarked, the crew would thrust iron-tipped poles into the channel and work their way up the rocks, or the crewmen would jump into the water, often up to their armpits, and, with loops over their shoulders, haul or track the boats against the current while one oarsman remained on board, steering with a long sweep. When rough terrain made tracking impossible, boats had to be dragged over skidways made of logs.

  Descending the Cascade Rapids was always exciting, sometimes tragic.

  Guillet, 34 (George Heriot).

  The 40 kilometres of Lac St.-François provided calm water again. At night, FitzGibbon’s soldiers and crewmen bivouacked on the shore, but they pressed on again by the early light of midsummer dawn. From the Native village of St. Regis at the foot of the 14.5-kilometre Long Sault Rapids, FitzGibbon kept his brigade against the south shore. This American shoreline was enemy territory where they might be ambushed at any time, but it also provided the easiest, swiftest route through the rapids, the one that his boatmen knew best. Time was important and risk was inevitable in time of war.

  The river remains narrow and swift above the Long Sault, with small villages on either shore. By 1812, the south shore was more bustling and built-up than the north, but even on the Canadian shore the heavy forest was broken by a few well-kept farms, like Crysler’s above the Long Sault; the Loyalists’ huts were being replaced by stout stone houses and small villages like Matilda (Iroquois) and Prescott. There was tension as they passed Prescott, for the St. Lawrence runs narrow there and raids were expected. Above Prescott they could lose themselves in the islands and the soldiers could relax and brag about what they’d do to ’em at Kingston or York or Fort Erie if the Americans came a callin’.

  FitzGibbon’s nimble mind catalogued the countryside, the pretty town just passed on the right, established by Augusta Jones (later to be called Brockville), the pitch pine trees on the island, the flight of wild ducks, herons, kingfishers, a bald eagle once. But another part of his mind staged battles, pondered methods of attack, ambush, surprise! Surprise would be important in small battles. He envisioned a war that would be different from the war he had seen briefly in Europe. It might even be different from anything his senior officers expected or could handle. Except Brock! Brock would know what he was about. The well-loved colonel of the 49th had become Major-General Isaac Brock, commander of the forces in Upper Canada. In the absence of Lieutenant-Governor Gore, Brock was also appointed administrator of Upper Canada.

  St. Lawrence Supply Route

  Canada’s great river flows from Lake Ontario, 1,197 kilometres to the sea. Some even say it begins in the headwaters of Lake Superior, almost 2,000 kilometres to the west. Navigable from the sea to Montreal, explorers found it an open invitation to
the interior of a vast continent. From Montreal to Prescott they found it less inviting, as they had to struggle against the rapids of Lachine and Long Sault. For the next 320 kilometres, ships were replaced by flat-bottomed bateaux, which could be rowed or poled or towed up the rapids, then sailed where the river was calm.

  Above Prescott, the river becomes complacent and scenic as it spreads among the Thousand Islands. At the east end of Lake Ontario, a traveller in 1812 would come to Kingston’s naval yards and could embark on a ship again.

  This was the supply route on which the British Army depended to move all military and naval stores — canvas, rope, cables, anchors, guns and shot, as well as troops. The bateaux trip from Montreal to Kingston could take several weeks. Narrow parts of the river — less than a mile wide at Prescott — exposed the boatmen to gunfire from the American shore.

  The bateaux convoys had voyageur guides and militia escorts. Calvary and militia were spaced along the “front” from Coteau-du-Lac to Kingston. Militiamen were also farmers who had to sow and reap as well as soldier, and were often not found where the action was.

  Sporadic raids kept the bateaux brigades on the alert and caused Governor Sir George Prevost to build Fort Wellington at Prescott and station two companies of the Glengarry Fencibles there. As well, blockhouses were being built at intervals of roughly 80 kilometres to be manned by local militia.

  Americans also used the St. Lawrence route along the 160-kilometre river boundary from French Mills near Cornwall to Sackets Harbor opposite Kingston, but, unlike the British, they had an alternate supply route from New York to Oswego via the Hudson and Mohawk rivers, Lake Oneida, and the Syracuse and Oswego rivers.

  As the war went on and supplies from the countryside became exhausted, clothing, boots, even flour would have to come from England, pork and beef from Ireland, all costing a fortune by the time they reached the troops at Niagara. But to the delight of British officers, cattle were still being driven from U.S. farms to border crossings in the eastern townships. British officers were happy to pay the Yankee farmers a good price and enjoy the joke.

  The St. Lawrence River was Canada’s 401 Highway in 1812.

  Grinning, Fitz recalled the time Brock had thundered at him, “By the Lord Harry, sir, do not tell me it is impossible.” As he moved upriver, Fitz was convinced that a full measure of the impossible lay ahead for the gallant major-general. The country was considered lost, not only in the opinion of aggressive Americans but in the minds of most of its inhabitants. England had her hands full in Europe. While she dealt with Napoleon on the high seas and tried to stop his march by land, she could do little to defend what the French had dubbed a “few arpents of snow” in North America.

  Fitz knew there were only 4,450 regular soldiers in Upper and Lower Canada. The militia amounted to 2,500 men in Lower Canada, 1,800 in Upper Canada. Among the militia there were staunch Loyalists, veterans of the American Revolution who would fight like demons to keep the land British, but most of them were old men; their sons were young and strong, but they were also untried and untrained.

  The task ahead of Brock, and officers like himself, was to occupy forts at Kingston, York (Toronto), Newark (Niagara), Chippawa, Fort Erie, Amherstburg, and St. Joseph. They had to escort convoys up the vulnerable St. Lawrence River, as Fitz was doing. They had to defend 1,300 kilometres of frontier in Upper Canada alone. To the Americans, he knew they looked like a handful of redcoat and homespun that would surrender at the first volley. Henry Clay, speaker of the House of Representatives, looking northward with greedy eyes, had declared it “absurd to suppose we shall not succeed.” Fitz had also heard that General Porter boasted he could take Upper Canada with a corporal and six men to carry a flag, because the majority of Canada’s inhabitants were awaiting the chance to join the United States. President Jefferson had added that it was “a mere matter of marching.” Their remarks were not altogether foolish when one considered that British North America had only a half-million settlers against six million Americans, and that a large portion of the population of Upper Canada was of American origin, and not all of them Loyalists.

  As Fitz talked with the settlers along the shoreline, in Glengarry and Matilda, and from Prescott to Kingston, he sensed the fear and uncertainty, sometimes even a willingness to be defeated, which enraged him. But occasionally he heard a new note of confidence about having a military administrator of the province. The settlers also seemed to sense something about FitzGibbon, as he moved upriver with his robust soldiers. He was so utterly resolute, so eager. The farmer leaning on his hoe, the woman at her cottage door, felt a little better after he had passed.

  Commercial Warfare at Sea

  As Napoleon tightened his fist on Europe he sought to weaken England by economic warfare. His Berlin Decree of 1806 forbade French, allied, or neutral ships from trading with England. Britain responded with orders-in-council forbidding vessels to trade with France. Neutral ships were ordered to call at British ports or risk being seized by Britain.

  America’s trade was hit hard by Britain’s blockade as its ships and cargos were seized for violating the embargo. Britain was also boarding American vessels to supposedly search for British Navy deserters. In fact, the boarders were often impressing American citizens into military service. Between 1800 and 1812, an estimated 3,000 to 7,000 Americans were swooped up to serve on British ships.

  In June 1807, when the HMS Leopard opened fire on the U.S. frigate Chesapeake and forced the impressment of four crew members, Americans clamoured for war. Jefferson, trying to avoid war, clamped an embargo on U.S. trade, which ruined many ship owners and trading firms.

  A final orders-in-council issued in 1811 forbade the U.S. selling of fish to the West Indies. By then the embargos had ruined trade not only in France and America but Britain as well. On June 16, 1812, the orders-in-council were repealed, two days before President Madison declared war. It was too late. News travelled so slowly that word did not reach Madison until 50 days later, on August 12.

  Major-General Isaac Brock, as the new administrator of Upper Canada, could combine the military and administrative authority of the country to move quickly when needed. If the impossible had to be done, at least they had the right man in the right place to do it. Fitz could go up the St. Lawrence to Kingston full of confidence.

  Chapter 3

  Victory at Detroit and Mackinac

  We are engaged in an awful and eventful contest. By unanimity and dispatch in our councils, and by vigour in our operation, we may teach the enemy this lesson — that a country defended by free men, enthusiastically devoted to the cause of their king and constitution, can never be conquered!

  — Major-General Brock to the Legislature at York, July 28, 1812[1]

  As far back as February 1812, Major-General Isaac Brock had written to Governor Sir George Prevost, “Every day hostilities are retarded, the greater the difficulties we shall have to encounter.” But war was not officially declared until June 18, and still, on July 28, as he opened a special session of the legislature, Brock did not know whether the Declaration of War had been passed by Congress. He had a war to fight but he could not get at it — at least, he thought he had a war to fight.

  Aware that he was unequal to any American show of force (the population of the British colonies was half a million against six to eight million Americans), Brock considered his best weapon to be surprise. If he could move before his enemy was ready he might deal a blow that would greatly inconvenience the Americans, delight the Natives, ally them to the British, and convince the faltering settlers that they could resist the Americans.

  His target would be the American Fort Detroit. Detroit and Michilimackinac at the top of Lake Huron were fur-trading posts that controlled the western entrance to Upper Canada. Both had to be in British hands if Brock were to have any hope of holding 1,300 kilometres of frontier with the 1,200 troops he had. On July 12, the American General Hull had arrived at Detroit and crossed the St. Clair River to occupy t
he Canadian village of Sandwich (today’s Windsor).

  On July 28, Brock wrote to Governor Sir George Prevost in Quebec, “My situation is getting each day more critical. I still mean to try and send a force to the relief of Amherstburg [the British fort down the St. Clair River from Sandwich], but almost despair of succeeding.”[2]

  At last, on July 29, Brock received letters from the city of Quebec telling him war was officially declared. Then came the good news that Captain Roberts, stationed at St. Joseph’s Island where Lakes Huron and Michigan meet, had collected 180 Voyageurs along with his 45 regulars, borrowed boats from the North West Company, and swept down to capture Fort Michilimackinac. Four hundred uncommitted Natives went along to watch. The Americans were so surprised that it never occurred to them to fight. Brock chuckled as he pictured the British flag hoisted over the rocks and trees of that far wilderness.

  Then, wonder of wonders, the men of York stirred into action. Brock had just written of them, “A full belief possesses them all that this province must inevitably succumb … Most of the people have lost all confidence … I however speak loud and look big.” Now here was the York militia volunteering their services to any part of the province. “I have selected 100 whom I have directed to proceed without delay to Long Point, where I propose collecting a force for the relief of Amherstburg,”[3] Brock wrote to Sir George Prevost on July 29.

  The York Volunteers

  All able-bodied men between 18 and 60 were required to be part of the Sedentary Militia to be called up when needed. They trained about three days a month. The Incorporated Militia, on the other hand, would serve for the entire war. The York Volunteers were an incorporated militia.