For Honour's Sake (40 page)

Morrison had 600 regulars of the 49th and 89th regiments behind the fenceline, with the 89th standing closest to the woods. Between the two gullies, by the King's Highway, 240 men commanded by Lt. Col. Thomas Pearson were positioned. This was a mixed force of two companies of the 49th, three companies of Canadian Voltigeurs, a detachment of Canadian Fencibles, and the score of militia gunners who served the six-pounder gun. Out as far as the ravine more Voltigeurs and some Indian warriors formed a thin skirmish line. They were not to stand and fight. Rather, Morrison's instruction to the skirmishers was that they draw the Americans toward his centre by luring them into a running fight.
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It was not until two that wet, dreary Thursday afternoon that the Voltigeurs—almost invisible in a grey light coloured much like their
uniforms—spotted advancing infantry. When the Americans were in range the Voltigeurs popped up from behind shrubs and out of folds in the ground to loose a light volley of balls. Quickly another volley followed and then the men fired at will. The Americans hesitated, those in the lead turning to withdraw, those behind pressing forward. Officers shouted, the line stiffened, came on. The Canadian skirmishers gave ground quickly, pausing to fire, reloading on the run at times, turning again to fire, until they were back inside the British lines.

The Americans put a brace of cannon close by the river so that they could pound Pearson's men, knock out the little six-pounder, and force this forward group back. Boyd then massed his infantry by brigades into three columns about 250 feet apart with the leftward column following a line that would turn Pearson's flank. Each column moved toward Morrison's regulars at the fence, coming on in a deep, closely grouped formation with one line of men treading closely behind the next. This was a formation favoured by Napoleon's Grande Armée, one that required great discipline and fearlessness under fire. Stumbling through the mud, it was also hard for each man to maintain his interval.

And then Morrison's regulars opened fire with a continuous rain of volleys, while Pearson's men opened from closer range. The Americans pushed into the hail of balls until they were almost parallel with the first gully, close to Pearson's flank, but then halted and each column widened out. Standing in the field, the Americans returned the British volleys with their own. The cannon were dragged up alongside the column closest to the river and the Americans engaged the six-pounder at a range of less than 1,000 feet.

Boyd, realizing his infantry could not gain the British main line unaided, ordered Brig. Gen. Robert Swartwout's brigade to cut alongside the edge of the woods and turn the flank of the regulars holding the fenceline. Once in the British rear the column would roll the redcoats up by driving them toward the river.

Morrison realized the threat Swartwout posed the moment he appeared. Remain as he was and the battle would be lost. But the regulars were well trained and the battle being fought was one that allowed for parade-ground manoeuvres. He ordered the 89th to wheel a full 90
degrees to meet the threat. Officers and sergeants barked commands and each company in unison stepped crisply back from the fence, the man closest to the wood becoming a virtual pivot point, the rest moving like an opening door until they faced north rather than east. It all happened quickly. Suddenly a line of men in long scarlet coats massed before the advancing Americans where none had previously been. Then the British muskets fired and Swartwout's advance collapsed, the soldiers reeling back across the field.

Meanwhile, two companies of the 49th charged from Pearson's position toward the closest cannon. Momentarily checked by a cavalry countercharge, they soon drove the horsemen off and seized the gun. It was a few minutes past four, the battle two hours old. And the Americans abandoned the field. The Battle of Crysler's Farm cost Morrison dearly: 22 dead, 148 wounded, 9 missing. But he had held the field, and strewn in the mud were the bodies of 102 Americans. Another 237 had been wounded. The British rounded up more than 100 prisoners.
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Downriver from Crysler's farm Major General Wilkinson received Boyd's report grimly. How could he continue toward Montreal after this? How could he not? The advance had gone well enough this day. They were positioned to shoot the Long Sault Rapids in the morning. But there was this defeat, and the sure knowledge that Morrison's pursuit would continue. Through the night he brooded.

At dawn, the American boats easily shot the rapids. On the other side, Wilkinson learned of Hampton's whereabouts. Earlier, Wilkinson, asserting his position as commander of the whole northern army, had imperiously ordered Hampton and his army to rendezvous with him at St. Regis, on the south bank of the St. Lawrence across from Cornwall. Having passed through the rapids, Wilkinson could easily reach St. Regis the following day. Hampton's message was brief. Hampton would not come; his army was taking its winter quarters. Relief mixed with indignation at this blatant disobedience. Wilkinson's breathless response, copied to Armstrong, sought to shift to Hampton blame for abandoning the Montreal offensive. Such lack of “resolution defeats the grand objects of the campaign in this quarter, which, before the receipt of your letter, were thought to be completely within our
power, no suspicion being entertained that you would decline the junction directed.”
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Abandoning most of his boats, Wilkinson crossed the American border and established winter quarters at French Mills on the Salmon River. There would be no further American offensive action in 1813.

But there would be another defeat. On the Niagara Peninsula, Brig. Gen. George McClure's New York militia were increasingly hard pressed by the little 8th Regiment detachment led by Col. John Murray. Less interested in fighting than looting, the militiamen who had not yet marched homeward were increasingly on edge. Murray's men seemed to crop up anywhere at any time. McClure decided he had too few men to hold the Canadian side of the river, but he was loath to just hand everything back to the British. So on his own initiative—but claiming a letter from Armstrong had authorized him to destroy Niagara, if necessary—he decided to burn the peninsula's main community. On December 10, he informed its inhabitants that their town was to be torched. Everyone was stunned. For the most part the townspeople, with a fort on either side of them, had meticulously striven to offend neither the British nor the Americans. It was obvious that they could easily be on one side of the front lines or another at almost any moment.

Niagara was a pleasant, prosperous town of more than 300 buildings. It was the peninsula's commercial and government centre, with a public library and two churches. No appeal to reason could sway McClure's resolve, but he also left the dirty work to Joseph Willcocks and his Canadian irregulars. While McClure abandoned Fort George in favour of Fort Niagara across the river, Willcocks's men kindled fires among the houses. At least 130 buildings were destroyed and almost 400 hundred residents, mostly women and children, were “exposed to all the severities of deep snow and a frosty sky, almost in a state of nakedness,” as one shocked New York newspaper editor put it. “How many perished by the inclemency of the weather, it is, at present, impossible to ascertain.”

In Upper Canada news of Niagara's burning caused immediate demands for reprisal. Colonel Murray was instructed to take Fort Niagara and exact revenge on the Americans. On the night of December 18, Murray led 500 men in a swift attack. With scaling ladders and axes
the men climbed or hacked their way through the walls. Completely surprised, the Americans were quickly overwhelmed. At a cost of 6 killed and 5 wounded, Fort Niagara was taken. Only 20 Americans escaped. The remaining 422 officers and men were either killed or captured, but McClure escaped.

The capture of Fort Niagara failed to quell the Upper Canadian desire for vengeance. Buffalo, Black Rock, and Lewiston were all carried by British raiders and torched. In every case most of the inhabitants of these communities had fled before the soldiers arrived, and McClure's militia made only a token attempt at defence. By year's end the entire Niagara frontier on the American side was a scene of desolation. Everyone involved in the December fighting there noted that the war had taken on a new shape. Scalping was common, private property looted without regard to the hardship its loss might cause civilians, buildings similarly burned. There were fewer prisoners. Soldiers, militiamen, and Indians fought to the death. The manner in which the fighting of 1813 closed portended the way of the war in the year to follow.
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In Washington consternation greeted the failure of the campaign against Montreal. Presiding over the second session of the Thirteenth Congress, Henry Clay bemoaned that he had been “waiting to bear … the tidings of the reduction of Montreal. That event was wanted to enable the President to give to his message a finishing stroke, & why it was not permitted to him to announce it I confess has not been satisfactorily explained.”
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There was no end of unconvincing excuses offered by the principals involved. Secretary of War Armstrong and Generals Wilkinson and Hampton blamed each other, with Hampton hung out to dry by the others. His earlier resignation rendered Hampton almost powerless to fight back. Although Wilkinson's competency was publicly questioned, he retained command. Both he and Armstrong guaranteed the next campaign would prove more successful.
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Lack of military success made an unpopular war more so, a fact reflected by the fall elections. While the Republicans won the lower houses in the state legislatures of Maryland and Vermont, the Federalists gained control of both senates. Vermont's new governor,
Martin Chittenden, recalled the state militia from Canadian frontier service, effectively removing it from the war.
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On the international front there was nothing to suggest that the British were inclined by events to seek negotiation. Over three days in October an allied Austrian, Russian, Prussian, and Swedish army of 320,000 had mauled Napoleon's 185,000 troops near Leipzig in Saxony. The French lost 68,000 men and with them control of any lands east of the Rhine. Napoleon's continental empire was torn asunder.

Tsar Alexander I had been in the field with his army during those fateful days, bent on bringing Napoleon down. So preoccupied, he gradually became less concerned with playing mediator. Inside his court, the influence of the mediation proposal's architect, Count Rumyantsev, waned while that of competitor Count Vasilievich Nesselrode rose. The latter sought good relations with Britain and saw no coin to be gained from facilitating negotiations.

When Albert Gallatin and James Bayard concluded their long voyage by arriving at St. Petersburg on July 21, they had learned that the British government was “discouraging arbitration altogether.” Gallatin confided to his son James, the “English Government resent the offer of mediation.” He feared “the President was a little hasty in sending the mission.” On July 29, young Gallatin lamented: “Our position is a very embarrassing one. We plainly see we are not wanted.”
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Hoping to revive the mediation offer and regain his status at court by doing so, Rumyantsev was at pains to make the newcomers feel welcome. At endless banquets they were fêted by high society and spent long days touring the city's grand sights. Rendered ill by the local water, Bayard alternately gushed about all he saw and experienced or longed for home—mood dependent on the ebb and flow of bowels.

On August 1, Gallatin and Bayard met with Rumyantsev. Adams was not invited, an oversight that irritated him. He did not feel treated as a colleague in the negotiations. The British, the count told them, considered “the pretensions of the U[nited] States were of such a nature that the intervention of a third Power however friendly to both Parties must necessarily fail of a successful issue.” Impressment remained the irresolvable issue, but Rumyantsev still believed that mediation could bear
fruit. After all, the Americans were here, empowered to negotiate, and there was nothing unequivocal about the British position. It was worth renewing the offer.
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Not knowing what other course to take, the Americans agreed.

Rumyantsev had not been honest. Lord Cathcart, Britain's Russian minister, had emphatically rejected the proposal in a July 6 letter to Alexander.
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In conversation with the tsar, Cathcart added that cabinet had twice considered Russia's mediation offer, unanimously rejecting it each time. There was no future in the proposal. But the count refused to give up, and to keep the Americans in the game he held back the fact that Cathcart had indicated that if they were willing to negotiate directly with a British peace commission then Viscount Castlereagh would approve this course.

Independently Gallatin had concluded that direct negotiation was the only path to peace. He wanted to go directly to London and ask Castlereagh to negotiate. Privately he opened a line of communication through Alexander Baring, the London banker who handled the U.S. government's accounts in Europe (and viewed the fact that his nation was at war with a favoured client with dismay), to test the waters. Baring had tried earlier to get Castlereagh to accept Russia's mediation offer, without success. Such a process, the foreign secretary declared, would enable America “to mix directly or indirectly her maritime interests with those of another state.”
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Knowing that Gallatin was considering either coming to England or returning to the United States, Baring argued that if America's negotiators were “desirous of endeavouring, by mutual explanation and concession, to consult the security and apprehension of both countries,” such an approach would “find a corresponding disposition here” that led him to “anticipate every reasonable degree of success from the joint efforts of yourselves and those persons whom our government will be prepared to appoint to meet you.” Baring urged Gallatin “not to return to America without at least making an experiment in the manner most likely to lead to success.”
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