Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (21 page)

In the name of my
Country
and by the authority of my Government I promise you protection to your
persons, property, and rights
, Remain at your homes, Pursue your peaceful and customary avocations. Raise not your hands against your brethern, many of your fathers fought for the freedom &
Indepennce
we now enjoy Being children therefore of the same family with us, and heirs to the same Heritage, the arrival of an army of Friends must be hailed by you with a cordial welcome, You will be emancipated from Tyranny and oppression and restored to the dignified status of freemen.… If contrary to your own interest & the just expectation of my country, you should take part in the approaching contest, you will be considered and treated as enemies and the horrors, and calamities of war will Stalk before you.

If the barbarous and Savage policy of Great Britain be pursued, and the savages are let loose to murder our Citizens and butcher our women and children, this war, will be a war of extermination.

The first stroke with the Tomahawk the first attempt with the Scalping Knife will be the Signal for one indiscriminate scene of desolation,
No white man found fighting by the Side of an Indian will be taken prisoner
Instant destruction will be his Lot …

I doubt not your courage and firmness; I will not doubt your attachment to Liberty. If you tender your services voluntarily they will be accepted readily.

The United State offers you
Peace, Liberty
, and
Security
your choice lies between these, &
War, Slavery, and destruction
, Choose then, but choose wisely; and may he who knows the justice of our cause, and who holds in his hand the fate of Nations, guide you to a result the most compatible, with your rights and interests, your peace and prosperity.

WM. HULL

The General, who is afraid of the Indians, hopes that this document will force his opposite number at Fort Amherstburg to follow
the lead of the United States and adopt a policy of native neutrality, at least temporarily. At the very minimum it ought to frighten the settlers and militia into refusing to bear arms. That is its immediate effect. In Brock’s phrase, “the disaffected became more audacious, and the wavering more intimidated.” The proclamation terrifies the militia. Within three days the force of newly recruited soldiers has been reduced by half as the farm boys desert to their homes.

Yet Hull has overstated his case. These are farmers he is addressing, not revolutionaries. The colonial authoritarianism touches very few. They do not feel like slaves; they already have enough peace, liberty, and security to satisfy them. This tax-free province is not America at the time of the Boston Tea Party. Why is Hull asking them to free themselves from tyranny? In the words of one, if they had been under real tyranny, “they could at any time have crossed the line to the United States.”

Hull has made another error. He threatens that anyone found fighting beside the Indians can expect no quarter. That rankles.
Everybody
will be fighting with the Indians; it will not be a matter of choice. Some of the militiamen who secretly hoped to go over to Hull in the confusion of battle have a change of heart. What is the point of deserting if the Americans intend to kill them on capture?

Precipitate action does not fit the Upper Canadian mood. This is a pioneer society, not a frontier society. No Daniel Boones stalk the Canadian forests, ready to knock off an Injun with a Kentucky rifle or do battle over an imagined slight. The Methodist circuit riders keep the people law abiding and temperate; prosperity keeps them content. The Sabbath is looked on with reverence; card playing and horse racing are considered sinful diversions; the demon rum has yet to become a problem. There is little theft, less violence. Simple pastimes tied to the land—barn raisings, corn huskings, threshing bees—serve as an outlet for the spirited. The new settlers will not volunteer to fight. But most are prepared, if forced, to bear arms for their new country and to march when ordered. In the years that follow some will even come to believe that they were the real saviours of Upper Canada.

MONTREAL, LOWER CANADA
, July 4, 1812. Sir George Prevost has moved up from his capital at Quebec to be closer to the scene of action. An American army is gathering at Albany, New York, poised to attack Montreal by the traditional invasion route of the Lake Champlain water corridor. If it succeeds, Sir George is perfectly prepared to abandon all of Upper Canada and withdraw to the fortress of Quebec.

At this moment, however, the Captain-General, Governor-in-Chief, Vice-Admiral, Lieutenant-General and Commanding Officer of His Majesty’s Forces in Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Cape Breton, Newfoundland and the Bermudas is faced with a crisis on his own doorstep. A riot has broken out at Lachine over the Militia Law, which provides for the drafting of two thousand bachelors for three months’ training. Some of the men from the parish at Pointe Claire have refused to go, believing—or pretending to believe—that the act has not been properly passed and the government is simply seizing an excuse to turn young French Canadians into soldiers.

When the army tries force, a mob resists and marches off to Lachine to seize a flotilla of boats in which the draftees hope to escape. The Riot Act is read; shots whistle over the insurgents’ heads and are returned; two civilians are killed. Four hundred and fifty soldiers invade the community and begin taking prisoners—so many, indeed, that they are finally released on the promise that they will “implore the pardon of His Excellency the Governor.”

His Excellency is a suave diplomat whose forte is conciliation. He has learned that delicate art as governor of St. Lucia and later of Dominica, French-speaking islands in the Caribbean wrested from the mother country by the British but soothed into passivity by a man who has none of the hauteur of a British colonial bureaucrat. Born of a Swiss father and perfectly at home in the French language, Prevost has the exact qualifications needed to win over a race who also consider themselves a conquered people.

Now, before some three hundred insurgents, the Great Conciliator appears and turns on his considerable charm.

“His Excellency expostulated with them as a Father and pointed out to them the danger of their situation in a style truly honourable to his own feelings, assuring them of his forgiveness on delivering up those who had been promoters of the insurrection … which they cheerfully agreed to do.…”

Thus with the crisis defused and the approving comment of the Montreal
Herald
putting the seal on his actions, the Governor General can turn to graver matters. He is resolved to fight a defensive war only; he does not have the resources to go on the attack, even if he wished to. But he does not wish to. His own natural caution has been sustained by specific instructions from Lord Liverpool, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, to do nothing rash.

Rashness is not Sir George’s style. He finds it difficult to countenance it in others. Surely the United States will do nothing rash! He is half convinced that the Americans do not actually mean to fight; that some accommodation can be made with them; that the war is not a real war; and that, in any event, it cannot possibly last for more than a few weeks. “Prudent” is a word that slips comfortably into his correspondence. He considers it “prudent and politic to avoid any measure which can in its effect have a tendency to unite the people in the American States,” for “whilst disunion prevails among them, their attempts on these provinces will be feeble.” Therefore it is important not to anger the enemy. Brock, specifically, is enjoined from “committing any act which may even by construction tend to unite the Eastern and Southern states.”

Brock, with his reputation for dash and daring, worries Prevost. The impetuous subordinate is more than a week away by express courier and a month away by post. His audacity is legendary. Prevost has certainly heard the stories. One goes all the way back to Brock’s early days, when his regiment, the 49th, was stationed at Bridgetown in Barbados. There was in that company a confirmed braggart and duellist whose practice was to insult fellow officers and finish them off at twelve paces. Brock, when accosted, accepted the challenge
but refused to fire at the regulation distance. Instead, he produced a handkerchief and demanded that both men fire across it at point-blank range, thus equalling the odds and making the death of at least one of them a virtual certainty. His adversary panicked, refused to fire, and thus shamed was forced to leave the regiment.

There are other tales: Brock in the saddle, insisting on riding to the very pinnacle of Mount Hillaby, twelve hundred feet above the Caribbean—a feat most horsemen consider impossible; or, in 1803, personally leading an eight-hour chase in an open boat across Lake Ontario to apprehend six deserters, a venture that brought him a reprimand.

To a prudent commander, Brock’s presence can be disquieting, even alarming. He is known as a man who believes that “nothing should be impossible to a soldier; the word impossible should not be found in a soldier’s dictionary!” Will Brock attempt the impossible in Upper Canada? Prevost is determined that he shall not.

The contrast between the two commanders can be seen in their official portraits. At forty-four, Prevost is a handsome man, his lean face framed by dark sideburns; yet even in his painted likeness there is a furtiveness. The eyes swivel back as if to watch the artist; little furrows crease the brow. There is a slackness of mouth, a hesitancy of stance, none of the knife-edge sharpness that distinguishes the features of his subordinate who, in his portraits, looks off resolutely and serenely into the middle distance.

If Prevost is more diplomat than soldier, Brock is more soldier than diplomat. He remains disdainful of civilians, though he has learned to curb in public the tactlessness that once marked his dealings with the administration in Quebec. Prevost on the other hand has, in less than a year, worked a miracle in Lower Canada by managing to conciliate the French Canadians whose loyalty to the Crown had been placed in jeopardy by the racial arrogance of his predecessor. Under Sir James Craig, the Québécois found themselves shut out of all important government posts.

In contrast to Craig, who believed the French Canadians disloyal, Prevost is convinced they will fight to retain their land. The bombast
in Washington prophesying the easy conquest of the Canadas will, he believes, help swell the ranks of the militia. Nonetheless, diplomacy will be needed: “The Canadians in general are grossly ignorant, it will therefore require vigilance and circumspection to prevent the proposed changes from being attended by any circumstance prejudicial to the tranquillity of the colony.”

Circumspection Prevost has in quantity; but circumspection does not win wars. In material supplies he is hopelessly deficient. He has no coin with which to pay his troops and will have to persuade the legislature to issue paper money. He is embarrassed that he cannot supply the militia with enough rifles, let alone other equipment. A ship has set out from Bermuda to Halifax with six thousand stands of arms; apparently it has foundered in a storm. The mother country’s priorities are Wellington’s; she can supply Prevost with little to repel invasion—neither money, nor arms, nor men. He is short of officers; there are only two generals in Lower Canada, himself and Baron Francis de Rottenburg, and in Upper Canada two more: Roger Sheaffe and Isaac Brock.

Brock!
In many ways he is worth five generals; Prevost admires and likes him. But—one can see the pursed lips, the furrowed brow—how to keep him in check? Overall British strategy does not envisage the seizure of American territory. Prevost does not wish to provoke the enemy. There is only one way to contain Brock, dictated as much by circumstance as by design, and that is to keep his regular force to a minimum. Upper Canada will get five hundred reinforcements, no more. And Brock must be convinced that these numbers will not “justify offensive operations being undertaken,
unless they were solely calculated to strengthen a defensive attitude.”

The italics are not Prevost’s. But the phrase is one that undoubtedly burns its way into the mind of the military commander of Upper Canada. When the moment comes, he will place the broadest possible interpretation on Sir George Prevost’s cautious instructions.