Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (109 page)

“You will have a battle!” cries Brown, and quickly outlines the situation. Scott is sceptical. He will march and drill his brigade, he says, but he does not believe he will encounter five hundred of the enemy.

Nonetheless, he moves his men at a smart double across the Street’s Creek bridge. To his discomfiture, he discovers that the British have placed nine field guns on the far side. Fortunately, the grape and cannonballs pass harmlessly over the heads of the jogging soldiers. The drummer, Jarvis Hanks, watches them skip across the surface of the creek. Nathan Towson, perhaps the best
artillery officer in the American army, has already brought his own guns down and is replying to the British volleys.

From his position in front of Chippawa Creek, Riall, the British commander, sees Scott’s brigade advancing and is deceived by their uniforms. Unable to obtain regulation U.S. Army blue cloth, Scott has had to outfit his men in grey.

“Why,” exclaims Riall, “it is nothing but a body of Buffalo militia!” (warm memories of the rout at Black Rock the previous December).

Scott forms his troops into line and, because he believes a commander should appear a little arrogant before a battle, roars out a rallying cry to his troops. Independence Day is over but:

“Let us make a new anniversary for ourselves!”

As the Americans, dressing smartly by the right, begin a steady advance under British artillery fire, Riall revises his opinion.

“Why, those are regulars!” the little Irishman exclaims, with an oath.

The months of parade-ground toil are paying off. Scott’s men move inexorably forward, halting, loading, firing in unison. Young Hanks stands by the side of Sergeant Elias Bond, drum slung over one shoulder, holding the sergeant’s ramrod in his other hand, saving so much time that the sergeant manages to get off sixteen rounds before advancing.

Scott’s line comes on in perfect order, Towson’s battery of twelve-pounders covering his right. On his left flank, Major Thomas Jesup with the 25th Regiment, pushing through the woods only just vacated by Porter’s fleeing militia, manages to outflank the British. Noting this, Scott decides upon a difficult manoeuvre, holding back his centre and advancing his wings so that they extend beyond the British flanks, half surrounding the columns. Cannonballs tear into the advancing line, but the Americans close up the ranks with the steadiness of veterans.

Brown now orders Eleazar Ripley’s brigade forward to support Scott. In the 21st Battalion a brand-new private marches in the ranks, musket on shoulder. He is Captain Joseph Treat, victim of the morning’s encounter with Brown, still smarting from the unfairness of his dismissal.

Scott has no idea where Ripley’s brigade is—or Porter’s. He continues to move back and forth around his U-shaped formation, encouraging his men. Towson’s accurate fire has all but silenced the British cannon. A shot strikes the British magazine, reducing the British stock of ammunition, throwing the gunners into confusion. Towson now begins to belabour the British columns with canister.

The British, only two hundred yards from the American line, attempt a charge through the deep furrows and three-foot grass of the meadow. They are beaten back. Gordon, the colonel of the Royals, falls, shot in the mouth, unable to speak. The Eighth Marquis of Tweeddale, riding at the head of his regiment, is forced to dismount. The fire from Towson’s canister is now so heavy—the big iron balls spraying in every direction—that both British regiments come to a standstill. Lord Tweeddale calls to the captain of his grenadier company to resume the advance, but even as the order is given, the officer is killed. He calls to a lieutenant, who at that moment is grievously wounded. He calls to his next in line, a young subaltern; he, too, is killed. A ball ploughs into Tweeddale’s game leg, cutting his Achilles tendon; he cannot move. His men hoist him onto his horse and begin to take down a fence to let him through to the rear. Up rides a squadron of American cavalry, their commander demanding Tweeddale’s surrender. The imperturbable peer retorts that he will order his men to shoot the officer and fire on his squadron if he does not retire on the instant. As the Americans turn back, Tweeddale turns over his command to the only officer remaining on his feet, and rides away.

The British line is breaking. Winfield Scott, preparing for a bayonet charge, rides out in front of the 11th Infantry and cries:

“The enemy says the Americans are good at long shot but cannot stand the cold iron. I call upon you instantly to give the lie to the slander.
Charge!”

It is all but over. Riall, who has exposed himself fearlessly, riding out in front of his troops during the entire encounter almost as if he were courting death, realizes he must withdraw. He calls upon the King’s Regiment, held in reserve, to cover the retreating troops as they move across the Chippawa bridge, ripping up the planking as
they go. Miraculously he is unscratched, though his cloak is riddled with bullet holes. He leaves behind mounds of dead, among them some of his bravest officers. In little more than two hours he has lost almost one-third of his effective force.

The Americans do not pursue. Riall is too well entrenched, his guns too well positioned. A light rain sweeps across the battlefield as Scott’s men trudge back through the mud. As dusk falls the two armies occupy the identical positions they did the previous evening, with one difference: more than eight hundred men are dead, wounded, or missing.

Captain Samuel White, herded as a prisoner through the woods and fields, continues to ask himself why he and his fellow Pennsylvanian, Major Galloway, are still alive. His captor slips in a furrow, falls, but never relaxes his grip. For an instant the American contemplates escape, but realizes that that would mean instant death. Ahead, he can see the last of the British retreating across the Chippawa bridge. The Indians push White forward with such violence that he almost falls. They gain the bridge with the last of the rearguard, the American cannonballs rolling after them, one shot falling within yards of White himself. A moment later, the bridge is destroyed.

Now, thinks White, I’m safe. The British will protect me.

To his indignation, they do nothing of the sort but urge the Indians to run the prisoners still farther:

Who have we got there—a damn Yankee? Well, damn him, run him well, he’s not half run yet
.

White is almost at the end of his tether. It’s impossible, he thinks; I cannot run twenty rods farther. But run he must; mouth agape, breath coming in hoarse gasps—and not for twenty rods but for more than a mile to the Indian encampment, poked in the back whenever he slackens pace.

At last, at the rear of the camp, he is halted and allowed to collapse. It is some time before he can find his voice to ask for water.

Eventually, a group of Canadian officers arrive. The Indians disperse, and White is taken to the British camp, where he is reunited with Major Galloway. The two are taken to Riall’s headquarters, where the testy general peppers them with questions, few of which seem relevant.

Riall asks the size of Brown’s army, but when White replies that it numbers five thousand, Riall refuses to believe him.

“That is not true, sir, you know it is not, you have more than double that number.”

Commanders do not like to be beaten except by an overwhelming force, and Riall, the wishful thinker, is no exception.

The prisoners sleep that night on bare ground. Soaked with sweat after his exertions, Captain White shivers with cold until the sergeant in charge lends him his coat and a kerchief to cover his head. Equally welcome is a tot of rum. The sergeant himself has been a prisoner, knows what it is like, remembers that he was well treated by his American captors. But he is not allowed to draw rations for his charges and so must feed them from his own supply.

On the afternoon of the third day White sees a British horseman racing down the banks of the Chippawa at full speed to report that the Americans are bridging the creek upstream and are about to outflank the British position.

The camp comes alive. Horses are hitched to gun tumbrels; baggage wagons are heaped with supplies; cannons roar on both sides as the British artillery covers Riall’s retirement. Soon the army is in full retreat along the road toward Queenston as Winfield Scott, swimming the Chippawa at the head of his brigade, occupies the abandoned camp.

White and three fellow prisoners march at the rear of the retiring army, watching with amusement as camp kettles tumble out of the escaping wagons, rattling at high speed along the river road. Riall, who realizes at last that he is outnumbered, decides to retreat to Fort George. There he will try to hold on until his superior, Gordon Drummond, can arrive with reinforcements. Drummond, at Kingston, makes plans to leave immediately for the head of the lake, pushing on the 89th Regiment (victors at Crysler’s Farm) and the
Glengarry Light Infantry. But it will be some time before these can reach the Niagara frontier. Meanwhile, Riall’s situation is critical. The Americans occupy Queenston Heights. Fort George cannot hold out long against enemy bombardment. If Chauncey’s fleet arrives from Sackets Harbor it can blast these crumbling defences into rubble with its naval guns. Once again, the peninsula is in peril.

All this is of no consequence to Captain Samuel White and his fellow prisoners. Before reaching Fort George they are marched to a large brick house surrounded by British troops. From the windows, White can see wounded officers being carried toward Newark, each in a blanket held by four men. The prisoners have no rations—the entire garrison is close to starvation from lack of supplies. When at last they are given beef, they eat it raw, being too ravenous to wait to cook it.

A few days later they are herded aboard a schooner bound for York, so crowded with wounded men that they are forced to remain on deck for the entire journey. Luckily, one of the officers gives them a bottle of rum. It is the last liquor White will see until the following March when, with the war over and after many hardships, he finds himself safely home in Adams County, Pennsylvania.

QUEENSTON, UPPER CANADA, JULY 10, 1814

Second-Lieutenant David Bates Douglass has just arrived on the Niagara frontier, fresh from West Point, with a company of young engineers. Here, on the heights above the town, almost at the very spot where Brock fell, he looks down on the American camp and feels a surge of emotion.

On the horizon, five miles distant, he can see the silvery surface of Lake Ontario. Three hundred feet below, cutting through a jungle of foliage, the Niagara plunges out of the turmoil of the rapids and wriggles toward open water. He gazes down with pounding heart on the village of Queenston, surrounded by an open plain, white with American tents. He can see long lines of troops under arms, columns in motion, cavalry galloping about, gunners drilling—no
fancy plumage, no glitter, only hundreds of men in close-buttoned grey tunics and plain white belts, wielding Brown Bess muskets. (These distinctive uniforms, Winfield Scott’s makeshifts, will soon be adopted permanently for the cadets at West Point in recognition of the victory at Chippawa.) In the distance, near the river’s mouth, Douglass spots a flash of colour—the Union Jack waving over the two forts, Niagara and George—and, here and there, as the sun’s rays catch it, the glitter of an enemy bayonet.

His company descends the heights and enters the vast semicircle of tents. The troops are in good spirits, some splashing about in the river. Jarvis Hanks disports himself by leaping from the third storey of a dockside warehouse, thirty feet above the swirling Niagara, thinking of the mill pond back home in the green mountains of Vermont.

Jacob Brown has no time for such frivolity. A dozen problems occupy the American commander’s mind. He has lost confidence in one of his brigade commanders, Eleazar Ripley, who has disapproved of the campaign from the start. Can this force of fewer than five thousand actually hope to conquer the Niagara peninsula and hold Upper Canada? Ripley thinks not; such an action can only lead to a senseless effusion of blood. To the impetuous Brown, Ripley is far too cautious. Brown prefers Scott’s panache. The big brigadier’s tactics may occasionally be questionable—he took a long chance at Chippawa, advancing so swiftly that his flanks were unprotected—but his very audacity makes up for it.

Brown has reason for his impatience. He has rushed his army to Queenston because he believes he has a rendezvous this day with Commodore Chauncey and the fleet. With Chauncey’s ships transporting men and guns from Sackets Harbor, Brown is confident he can take Fort George and then move up the peninsula, seizing Burlington Heights, York, and finally Kingston, effectively ending the war.

But there is no sign of Chauncey. For three days, Brown waits and frets. On July 13, he dispatches a letter by express:

I have looked for your fleet with the greatest anxiety since the 10th.… For God’s sake let me see you … at all events have the
politeness to let me know what aid I am to expect from the fleet of Lake Ontario.

But there is no unified command among the U.S. forces, no chief of combined operations. The navy is a law unto itself, jealous of its prerogatives. What Brown does not know is that Chauncey lies so ill with fever that he can scarcely make a decision. One thing, however, is clear: the ailing commodore has no intention of turning his spanking new vessels over to a second-in-command; nor does he intend to use them as mere transports for the army. These are
fighting
ships, not barges! In his myopia, Chauncey conceives that his only duty is to do battle with the British fleet—in his own time. And there is nothing anybody can do about that—not Brown, not Armstrong, not even the President.