Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (90 page)

The Battle of the Thames

“Damn them! Charge them!” says Harrison, and changes the order of battle on the spot.

It is a measure, Harrison will later declare, “not sanctioned by anything that I had seen or heard of.” But he is convinced that this unorthodox charge will catch the British unprepared.

Now Stucker comes back with welcome news. He has found a way through the intervening swamp. It will not be easy, for the ground is bad. Johnson turns to his brother, James, his second-in-command.

“Brother, take my place at the head of the first battalion. I will cross the swamp and fight the Indians at the head of the second battalion.” He explains his reason: “You have a family, I have none.”

In the brief lull that follows, one of Harrison’s colonels, John Calloway, rides out in front of his regiment and in a stentorian voice, shouts:

“Boys, we must either whip these British and Indians or they will kill and scalp every one of us. We cannot escape if we lose. Let us all die on the field or conquer.”

Procter’s repeated threat—that he cannot control the Indians—has been turned against him. He has so convinced the Americans that a massacre will follow a British victory that they are prepared, if necessary, for a suicidal attack.

The bugle sounds the charge. Seated on his horse halfway between the two British lines, Procter hears the sound and asks his brigade major, John Hall, what it means. The bugle sounds again, closer.

“It’s the advance, Sir,” Hall tells him.

An Indian scout, Campeaux, fires his musket. Without orders, the entire British front line discharges a ragged volley at the advancing horsemen.

In spite of their training, the horses recoil in confusion.

Procter looks toward the six-pounder on his left. “Damn that gun,” he says. “Why doesn’t it fire?”

But the British horses have also been startled by the volley. They rear back, become entangled in the trees, taking the six-pounder with them.

James Johnson rallies his men and charges forward as the second line of British defenders opens fire.

“Charge them, my brave Kentuckians!” Harrison cries in his florid fashion as the volunteers dash forward, yelling and shouting.

“Remember the Raisin!” someone shouts, and the cry ripples across the lines:
“Remember the Raisin! Remember the Raisin!”

The volunteers hit the left of the British line. It crumbles. Captain Peter Chambers, one of the heroes of the siege of Fort Meigs, sees his men tumbling in all directions, tries vainly to rally them, finds himself swept back by the force of the onslaught.

“Stop, 41st, stop!” Procter shouts. “Why do you not form? What are you about? For shame. For shame on you!”

The force of the charge has taken Johnson’s horsemen right through both British lines. Now they wheel to their left to roll up the British right, which is still holding.

“For God’s sake, men, stand and fight!” cries a sergeant of the 41st. Private Shadrach Byfield, in the act of retreating, hears the cry, turns about, gets off a shot from his musket, then flees into the woods.

Not far away stands John Richardson, an old soldier at sixteen, survivor of three bloody skirmishes. A fellow officer points at one of the mounted riflemen taking aim at a British foot soldier. Richardson raises his musket, leans against a tree for support, and before the mounted man can perfect his aim drops him from his horse. Now he notes an astonishing spectacle on his right. He sees one of the Delaware chiefs throw a tomahawk at a wounded Kentuckian with such precision and force that it opens his skull, killing him instantly. The Delaware pulls out the hatchet, cuts an expert circle around the scalp; then, holding the bloody knife in his teeth, he puts his knee on the dead man’s back, tears off the scalp, and thrusts it into his bosom, all in a matter of moments. This grisly scene is no sooner over than the firing through the woods on Richardson’s left ends suddenly, and the order comes to retreat.

Procter, too, is preparing to make off. The gun crew has fled; the Americans have seized the six-pounder. Hall warns him that unless they move swiftly they will both be shot.

“Clear the road,” Hall orders, but the road is clogged with fleeing redcoats. He suggests to the General that they should take to the woods; but Procter, stunned by the suddenness of defeat, does not appear to hear him. No more than five minutes have passed since Harrison’s bugle sounded.

“This way, General, this way,” says Hall patiently, like a parent leading a child. The General follows obediently. A little later he finds his voice:

“Do you not think we can join the Indians?” For Tecumseh’s force on the right of the shattered British line is still fighting furiously.

“Look there, Sir,” says Hall, pointing to the advancing Americans. “There are mounted men betwixt you and them.” James Johnson’s charge has cut Procter’s army in two.

They are on the road, riding faster now, for the Americans are in hot pursuit. Procter is desperate to escape the wrath of the Kentucky volunteers, whose reputation is as savage as that of the Potawatomi who slaughtered their countrymen at the River Raisin. For all he knows they may flay him alive before Harrison can stop them.

As Captain Thomas Coleman of the Provincial Dragoons catches up, the General gasps out that he is afraid he will be captured. Coleman reassures him: some of his best men will be detailed to guard him. The General gallops on with the sound of Tecumseh’s Indians, still holding, echoing in his ears.

As James Johnson’s men drive the British before them, his brother’s battalion plunges through the decaying trees and tangled willows of the small swamp that separates the Indians from their white allies. Richard Johnson’s plan is brutal. He has called for volunteers for what is, in effect, a suicide squad—a “Forlorn Hope,” in the parlance of both the British and the American armies. This screen of twenty bold men will ride ahead of the main body to attract the Indians’ fire. Then, while the tribesmen are reloading, the main body will sweep down upon them.

There is no dearth of volunteers. The grizzled Whitley, a fresh scalp still dangling from his belt, will lead the Forlorn Hope. And Johnson will ride with them.

Off they plunge into the water and mud, into a hail of musket balls. Above the shattering dissonance of the battle another sound is heard—clear, authoritative, almost melodic—the golden voice of Tecumseh, urging his followers on to victory. Johnson’s tactic is working: the Indians have concentrated all their fire on the Forlorn Hope, and with devastating results—fifteen of the twenty, including William Whitley, are dead or mortally wounded.

But Johnson faces a problem. The mud of the swamp has risen to the saddle girth of the horses. His men cannot charge. Bleeding from four wounds, he orders them to dismount and attack. An Indian behind a tree fires again, the ball striking a knuckle of Johnson’s left hand, coming out just above the wrist. He grimaces in pain as his hand swells, becomes useless. The Indian advances, tomahawk raised. Johnson, who has loaded his pistol with one ball and three buckshot, draws his weapon and fires, killing his assailant instantly. Not far away lies the corpse of William Whitley, riddled with musket balls.

Beyond the protecting curtain of gunsmoke, the battle with the Indians rages on as Shelby moves his infantry forward to support
the dismounted riflemen. Oliver Hazard Perry, carrying one of Harrison’s dispatches to the left wing, performs a remarkable feat of horsemanship as his black steed plunges to its breast in the swamp. The Commodore presses his hands to the saddle, springs over the horse’s head to dry land; the horse, freed of its burden, heaves itself out of the swamp with a mighty snort; as it bounds forward, Perry clutches its mane and vaults back into the saddle without checking its speed or touching bridle or stirrup.

Word spreads that Richard Johnson is dead. An old friend, Major W.T. Barry, riding up from the rear echelon to examine the corpse, meets a group of soldiers bearing the Colonel back in a blanket.

“I will not die, Barry,” Johnson assures him. “I am mightily cut to pieces, but I think my vitals have escaped.” One day he will be vice-president.

Behind him, the cacophony of battle continues to din into his ears as Shelby’s force presses forward through the trees. The volume rises in intensity: the advancing Kentuckians shouting their vengeful battle cry; the Indians shrieking and whooping; wounded men groaning and screaming; horses neighing and whinnying; muskets and rifles shattering ear drums; bugles sounding; cannon firing.

The smoke of battle lies thickly over forest and swamp, making ghosts of the dim, painted figures who appear for an instant from the cover of a tree to fire a weapon or hurl a tomahawk, then vanish into the gloom. They are not real, these Indians, for their faces can be seen only in death. Which are the leaders, which the followers? One man, the Kentuckians know, is in charge: they can hear Tecumseh’s terrible battle cry piercing the ragged wall of sound. For five years they have heard its echo, ever since the Shawnee first made his presence felt in the Northwest. Yet that presence has always been spectral; no Kentuckian on the field this day—no white American, in fact, save Harrison—has ever seen the Shawnee chief or heard his voice until this moment. He is a figure of legend, his origins clouded in myth, his persona a reflection of other men’s perception. Johnson’s riders, firing blindly into the curtain of trees, hating their adversary and at the same time admiring him, are tantalized by his invisibility.

Suddenly comes a subtle change in the sound. Private Charles Wickliffe, who has been timing the battle, notices it: something is missing. Wickliffe, groping for an answer, comes to realize that he can no longer discern that one clear cry, which seemed to surmount the dissonance. The voice of Tecumseh, urging on his followers, has been stilled. The Shawnee has fallen.

The absence of that clarion sound is as clear as a bugle call. Suddenly the battle is over as the Indians withdraw through the underbrush, leaving the field to the Kentuckians. As the firing trails off, Wickliffe takes out his watch. Exactly fifty-five minutes have elapsed since Harrison ordered the first charge.

As the late afternoon shadows gather, a pall rises over the bodies of the slain. There are redcoats here, their tunics crimsoned by a darker stain, and Kentuckians in grotesque attitudes that can only be described as inhuman, and Indians, staring blankly at the sky, including several minor chieftains, one dispatched by Johnson, another by Whitley.

But one corpse is missing. Elusive in life, Tecumseh remains invisible in death. No white man has ever been allowed to draw his likeness. No white man will ever display or mutilate his body. No headstone, marker, or monument will identify his resting place. His followers have spirited him away to a spot where no stranger, be he British or American, will ever find him—his earthly clay, like his own forlorn hope, buried forever in a secret grave.

John Richardson, fleeing from James Johnson’s riders, charges through the woods with his comrades, loses his way, finds himself unexpectedly on the road now clogged with wagons, discarded stores and clothing, women and children. Five hundred yards to his right he sees the main body of his regiment, disarmed and surrounded by the enemy. Instinctively, he and the others turn left, only to run into a body of American cavalry, the men dismounted, walking their horses.

Their leader, a stout elderly officer dressed like his men in a Kentucky hunting jacket, sees them, gallops forward brandishing his sword and shouting in a commanding voice:

“Surrender, surrender! It’s no use resisting. All your people are taken and you’d better surrender.”

This is Shelby. Richardson, whose attitude towards all Americans is snobbishly British Canadian, thinks him a vulgar man who looks more like one of the army’s drovers than the governor of a state—certainly not a bit like the chief magistrate of one of His Majesty’s provinces.

He swiftly buries his musket in the deep mud to deny it to the enemy and surrenders. As the troops pass by, one tall Kentuckian glances over at the diminutive teenager and says: “Well, I guess now, you tarnation little Britisher, who’d calculate to see such a bit of a chap as you here?” Richardson never forgets that remark, which illustrates the language gulf between the two English-speaking peoples who share the continent.

Shadrach Byfield at this moment, having fled into the woods at the same time as Richardson, has encountered a party of British Indians who tell him Tecumseh is dead. They want to know whether the enemy has also taken Moraviantown and ask Byfield whether he can hear American or British accents up ahead. At the forest’s edge, Byfield hears a distinctive American voice cry, “Come on, boys!” The party retreats at once. Terrified that the Indians will kill him, he gives away what tobacco he has in his haversack and prepares to spend the night in the woods.

Major Eleazer Wood is in full pursuit of Procter, but the General eludes him, stopping only briefly at Moraviantown and pressing on to Ancaster, so fatigued he cannot that evening write a coherent account of the action. Wood has to be content with capturing his carriage containing his sword, hat, trunk, and all his personal papers, including a packet of letters from his wife, written in an exquisite hand.