Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (30 page)

Abraham Hull ties a handkerchief to a pike and gives it to Snelling, who declares he’ll be damned if he’ll disgrace his country by taking it out of the fort. Young Hull takes it himself and crosses the river, only to discover that Brock is on the American side. When he returns, Snelling is persuaded to seek out the British general.

Outside the fort, Jesup, seeking to take command of the dragoons to meet Brock’s expected attack, finds the whole line breaking up, the men marching back toward the fort by platoons. Baffled, he asks what on earth is going on. An officer riding by tells him: “Look to the fort!” Jesup for the first time sees the white flag.

He rides back, accosts Hull, demands to know if surrender is being considered. Hull’s reply is unintelligible. Jesup urges Hull to hold out at least until McArthur and Cass return. But all Hull can exclaim is, “My God, what shall I do with these women and children?”

Hull has ordered the Ohio volunteers to retreat into the fort. Their commander, Colonel Findlay, now rides up in a rage and asks, “What the hell am I ordered here for?” Hull replies, in a trembling
voice, that several men have been killed and that he believes he can obtain better terms from Brock if he capitulates now than if he waits for a storm or a siege.

“Terms!” shouts Findlay. “Damnation! We can beat them on the plain. I did not come here to capitulate; I came here to fight!”

He seeks out the ailing Miller.

“The General talks of surrender,” says Findlay. “Let us put him under arrest.”

But Lieutenant-Colonel Miller, a regular officer, is no mutineer: “Colonel Findlay, I am a soldier; I shall obey my superior officer.” By now the shelling has ceased. Hidden in the ravine, Brock’s men are enjoying breakfast provided by William Forsyth, one of 120 British males who refused to change their allegiance when Detroit became an American community in 1796. Forsyth’s house lies in the ravine, and its owner, who has been plundered by Hull, is glad to open his doors to Brock’s officers and the contents of pantry and cellar to his troops, who manage in this brief period to consume twenty-four gallons of brandy, fifteen gallons of madeira and nine of port.

In the midst of this unexpected revel, some of the men spot Brock’s two aides, Glegg and Macdonell, moving toward the fort with a flag of truce. A buzz of excitement: is it all to be over so quickly? Some—especially the younger officers—hope against hope that Hull will not give in. They thirst for glory and for promotion, which can only be gained in the smoke of battle and (a thought swiftly banished) the death or incapacity of their superiors. In this they resemble Tecumseh’s young men, who have flocked to his side also seeking glory and hoping, some of them, to gain precedence over the older chiefs who try to dissuade them from rashness. But most of Brock’s followers breathe a little more freely. Charles Askin, a seasoned son of the frontier, wishes for a ceasefire for the sake of the women and children who, he believes, will be massacred by the Indians once the action commences.

Hull wants a truce, has asked for three days. Brock gives him three hours: after that he will attack.

After this no-nonsense ultimatum it becomes clear that Hull is prepared for a full surrender. He will give up everything—the fort, its contents, all the ordnance, all supplies, all the troops, even those commanded by the absent Cass and McArthur and by Captain Henry Brush at the River Raisin.
Everything
. When Hull tries tentatively to make some provision for those Canadian deserters who have come over to his side, Macdonell replies with a curt “Totally inadmissible.” Hull makes no further remonstrance. The surrender details he leaves to Elijah Brush and Miller, actually to Brush alone, since Miller, trembling with ague, is now prostrate on the ground. But sick or not, he is in no mood to sign any surrender document and does so only reluctantly.

Two more signatures are required—those of Hull and Brock. The British general now rides into the fort accompanied by a fife and drum corps playing “The British Grenadiers” and by his advance guard, which includes John Beverley Robinson, the future chief justice of Upper Canada, Samuel Peters Jarvis, whose family will give its name to one of Toronto’s best-known streets, and two members of the Askin family, Charles and his fifteen-year-old nephew, John Richardson. Askin, for one, has never felt so proud as at this moment.

The advance guard, however, has advanced a little too quickly. The articles of surrender stipulate that the Americans must leave the fort before the British enter. A confused melee follows. The American soldiers are in a turmoil, some crying openly, a few of the officers breaking their swords and some of the soldiers their muskets rather than surrender them. Others cry “Treason!” and “Treachery!” and heap curses and imprecations on their general’s head. One of the Ohio volunteers tries to stab Macdonell before the advance guard moves back across the drawbridge.

Within the fort, Abraham Hull wakens in his quarters from a sound sleep, doubtless brought on by his earlier inebriation, to discover enemy soldiers entering the fort. He breaks through a window and, hatless, rushes up to a British officer to demand his business there with his “redcoat rascals.” The officer raises his sword and is
about to run him through when an American runs up to explain that the General’s son is temporarily deranged.

Finally the tangle is straightened out. The Americans stack their arms and move out of the fort. The 4th Regiment of regulars, its members in despair and in tears, gives up its colours, sewn by a group of Boston ladies and carried through the Battle of Tippecanoe. Charles Askin, watching them shamble past, wonders at the legend of their invincibility. To him they look like the poorest set of soldiers he has seen in a long time, their situation and their ragged clothing making them appear as sick men.

Now the British and Canadians officially enter the fort, the regulars in the lead, followed first by the uniformed militia, then by those not in uniform and, bringing up the rear, Tecumseh’s followers led by the chiefs and the officers of the British Indian Department, themselves dressed and painted as Indians.

Down comes the Stars and Stripes. A bluejacket from one of the gunboats has tied a Union Jack around his body in preparation for this moment. It is hoisted high to the cheers of the troops. John Richardson, whose musket is taller than himself, is one of those chosen to mount the first guard at the flagstaff. He struts up and down his post, peacock proud, casting his eyes down at the vanquished Americans on the esplanade below the fort. Almost at this moment, in Kentucky, Henry Clay is predicting the fall of Fort Amherstburg and the speedy conquest of Upper Canada.

As the flag goes up, the Indians pour through the town, cheering, yelling, firing off their guns and seizing American horses. There is looting but no savagery; Tecumseh keeps his promise to Brock that his people will not molest the prisoners. As the two ride together through the fort, the general seems larger than life in his black cocked hat—his crimson uniform and gilt epaulettes contrasting sharply with the fringed buckskin of his lither Shawnee ally. It is a moment for legend: a story will soon spring up that Brock has torn off his military sash and presented it to Tecumseh. If so, Tecumseh is not seen to wear it. Perhaps, as some say, he has turned it over to Roundhead, who as senior member of the senior tribe of Wyandot
is held by the Shawnee to be more deserving. Perhaps Tecumseh feels the gaudy silk is too much out of character for the plain deerskin garb that, in a kind of reverse vanity, he has made his trademark. Perhaps. The incident becomes part of the myth of Tecumseh, the myth of Brock.

Brock has one more symbolic act to perform. He goes directly to the guardroom to release John Dean, the British regular who struggled to hold the bridge during the first engagement at the River aux Canards. He releases him personally, shakes his hand, and in the presence of his men, his voice breaking a little with emotion, tells Dean he is an honour to his military calling.

These and other formalities observed, he turns the command of the captured territory over to Lieutenant-Colonel Procter and prepares to leave for York, where he will be hailed as the saviour of the province. In just nineteen days he has met the legislature, arranged the public affairs of Upper Canada, travelled three hundred miles to invade the invader, captured an entire army and a territory as large as the one he governs. Now he must hurry back to the capital and return the bulk of his troops as swiftly as possible to the sensitive Niagara frontier, under threat of imminent attack.

On this triumphant journey across the lake he makes a remark to a captain of the York Volunteers, Peter Robinson, that is both self-revealing and prophetic.

“If this war lasts, I am afraid I shall do some foolish thing,” says General Brock, “for I know myself, there is no want of courage in my nature—I hope I shall not get into a scrape.”

ONCE THE SURRENDER IS
accomplished, Hull emerges from his catatonic state like a man coming out of an anaesthetic. Scarcely able to speak or act that morning, he is now both lucid and serene. “I have done what my conscience directed,” he declares. “I have saved Detroit and the Territory from the horrors of an Indian massacre.” He knows that his country will censure him (though he cannot yet
comprehend the magnitude of that censure), knows that he has “sacrificed a reputation dearer to me than life,” but he is by no means downcast. A prisoner of the British, he no longer carries on his shoulders the crushing burden of command. As his former friend Lieutenant-Colonel Bâby remarks to him in his captivity—echoing Hull’s own brittle comment of the previous month—
“Well, General, circumstances are changed now indeed.”

Of his surrender, Hull says, “My heart approves the act.” His colleagues are of a different mind. McArthur and Cass, trotting to the relief of Detroit, their exhausted and famished troops riding two to a horse after a forced march of twenty-four miles, have heard the cannonade cease at 10
A.M
. and are convinced that Hull has repulsed the British. The astonishing sight of the Union Jack flying over the fort changes their minds, and they move back several miles. Their men have had nothing to eat for forty-eight hours except green pumpkins and unripe corn garnered in the fields. Now they spy an ox by the roadside, slaughter and roast it. In the midst of this feast they are accosted by two British officers bearing a flag of truce who inform them that by the terms of their commander’s surrender they are all prisoners.

“Traitor!” cries Cass. “He has disgraced his country,” and seizing his sword from its sheath proceeds to break it in two.

It does not, apparently, occur to either of these commanders, so eager now to have at the enemy, that they might make their way back to Urbana without much fear of pursuit. Tired and dispirited, they meekly lay down their weapons and are marched into captivity.

Captain Henry Brush, at the River Raisin, is an officer of different mettle. When Matthew Elliott’s son William, a militia captain, arrives to inform him of the surrender, Brush denounces the document of capitulation as a forgery, calls Elliott an imposter and spy, places him under arrest, and with all of his men except the sick decamps to the Rapids of the Maumee and thence through the Black Swamp to Urbana, where his followers disperse in small groups to their homes in Chillicothe. Tecumseh gives chase with three hundred mounted Indians, but Brush’s men are too far in the lead to be captured. It
makes little difference: the war still has rules of a sort, and under the terms of the surrender document, the United States officially recognizes Brush’s men as prisoners. They cannot fight again until they are exchanged for an equal number of captured British.

Hull, who is worth thirty privates in a prisoner exchange, is shipped off to Quebec with his officers and the regular troops of Miller’s 4th Infantry. Some of these men, hungry and emaciated, do not survive the journey. One regular, the enterprising Robert Lucas, has no intention of making it. The instant the British flag replaces the Stars and Stripes over the fort, he slips out of his uniform, hides his sword in his brother’s trunk, and disguised as a civilian volunteer boards the vessel that is taking the Ohio militia on parole to Cleveland. Twenty years from now the Democratic party of Ohio will nominate him for governor over his only rival—Colonel James Findlay, his fellow prisoner.

Tecumseh knows many of the American prisoners by sight and greets them in Detroit without apparent rancour. This is his supreme moment. One of the militia engineers, Lieutenant George Ryerson (older brother of the great educator, Egerton) sees the buckskin-clad Shawnee chief shortly after the surrender, sitting with his brother, the Prophet, smoking his pipe “with his face perfectly calm, but with the greatest satisfaction beaming in his eye.”

Now, in the aftermath of the bloodless victory, a number of tales are added to the legend of Tecumseh.

There is, for instance, the story of Father Gabriel Richard, the priest of Ste Anne’s parish, who refuses to take the oath of allegiance to the British Crown because, he says, he has already sworn an oath to support the American Constitution. Procter, whom Brock has left in charge, imprisons the priest at Sandwich. When Tecumseh insists upon his release, Procter snubs him. Tecumseh swiftly assembles his followers, warns Procter that he will return to the Wabash if the priest is not freed. The Colonel gives in. It is the first but not the last time that he will clash with the Shawnee.