Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (65 page)

ABOARD U.S.S.
MADISON
, OFF YORK, UPPER CANADA, APRIL 26, 1813

In his cabin on the American flagship, Zebulon Montgomery Pike, the American army’s newest brigadier-general, scratches out a letter to his wife, knowing it may be his last.

“We are now standing on and off the harbor of York which we shall attack at daylight in the morning: I shall dedicate these last moments to you, my love.… I have no new injunction, no new charge to give you, nor no new idea to communicate.… Should I fall, defend my memory and only believe, had I lived, I would have aspired to deeds worthy of your husband.…”

Throughout his military life Pike has aspired to deeds of glory that will bring him everlasting renown. Yet, in spite of a flaming ambition, the laurel has eluded him. Although he has been a soldier for nineteen of his thirty-four years, his only action has been an inglorious skirmish on the Canadian border the previous November, stumbling about in the dark through unknown country, his troops shooting at their own men.

He yearns for his nation’s accolade. If he cannot get it in life, he is perfectly prepared to accept a hero’s death. He has already written to his father, another old soldier, that he hopes to be “the happy mortal destined to turn the scale of war.” If not, “may my fall be like Wolfe’s—to sleep in the arms of victory.”

Although he is a good officer he is better known as an explorer, in spite of the fact that his explorations have been inept and his published journals badly written, unrevealing, and inaccurate to the point of dishonesty. Twice hopelessly lost, captured and held prisoner by the Spanish, he has achieved a certain notoriety for a peak in the Rockies which bears his name, even though he did not discover it, did not climb it, did not come within fifteen miles of it. Even that dubious expedition was overshadowed by the journey of Lewis and Clark, of whom Brigadier-General Pike is more than a little jealous.

Qualities that in a civilian might be considered flaws have made him an effective commander. He is bold, even impulsive. Having eloped with his cousin, to the fury of her wealthy father, he dramatically declared, “Whilst I have breath I will never be the slave to any.” Serenely confident in his own ability, he feels destined for greatness. Almost pathologically patriotic, he is a stickler for discipline and morality, lecturing his soldiers on the evils of drink and debauchery.

He is loyal to his friends and heroes, notably his long-time patron, Major-General James Wilkinson, undoubtedly the greatest rogue ever to wear two stars, a man despised and distrusted by almost every other officer save Pike. This commendable if foolhardy fealty has frustrated Pike’s ambitions. In spite of years of politicking, promotion has been maddeningly slow. The war is his opportunity. “If we go into Canada,” he wrote to Wilkinson, “you will hear of my
fame or of my death. For I am determined to seek the ‘Bubble’ even in the cannon’s mouth.”

Who knows what the morrow may hold? Further promotion, perhaps. Pike has been chosen to lead the troops in the attack on York, for his commanding general, Henry Dearborn, is ill, or pretends to be. An indecisive, grotesque pudding of a man, who looks and acts far older than his sixty years, Dearborn longs for retirement. He scarcely inspires confidence in his troops, who call him Granny. At 250 pounds, he is so gross that he has trouble getting about and must be trundled in a two-wheeled device, later to be copied by midwestern farmers and dubbed a “dearborn.”

The fleet stands off the bluffs to the east of the Don River—fourteen sail in all, jammed with fourteen hundred troops. Six hundred are crowded aboard
Madison
, many seasick, all weary of close quarters. Now, after four days of fits and starts, the troops learn that the attack will be made on the Upper Canadian capital and not, as some believed, on Fort George, at the Niagara’s mouth, or on Kingston.

Pike’s orders to his officers are explicit: any man who fires his musket or quits his post is to be instantly put to death. The bayonet is to be used in preference to the bullet. Plunderers of private property will be shot, but public stores may be looted with impunity. The honour of the American army is at stake; the country cannot suffer another defeat; “the disgraces which have recently tarnished our arms” must be wiped clean. Honour—that most precious of all human commodities—must finally be satisfied.

LITTLE YORK, APRIL 26, 1813

As General Pike seals the letter to his wife, Mrs. Grant Powell, dressed in her finest gown, waits nervously in her drawing room on Front Street for the guests she has invited to supper. They are more than fashionably late. The clock ticks off the minutes; finally, one woman arrives; nobody else. What can it all mean? Is Mrs. Powell being snubbed? No; the news is not quite that bad. Her
father-in-law, Mr. Justice William Dummer Powell, arrives breathlessly with the explanation: the American fleet has been sighted; he and all other able-bodied men have been called on to bear arms—everyone between the ages of sixteen and sixty, and even some outside that span. Young Allan MacNab, a mere fourteen but big for his age, has shouldered a musket; so has John Basil, the ancient doorkeeper of the Legislative Council.

Justice Powell, in common with John Strachan, most government officials, British officers, and common soldiers, is convinced that the attack can be repulsed. Major-General Sheaffe may be a weak commander in Strachan’s belief, but at least he is in town, having postponed his departure for Fort George because of a hunch that the Americans are coming. Also, by good fortune, two companies of the British 8th Regiment, known as the King’s, just happen to be passing through York.

Now, as John Strachan leaves his house to seek more details and Mrs. Powell ruefully cancels her supper party, the farmers begin to straggle in, weapons on their shoulders. Some have had militia training. Lieutenant Ely Playter has just reached his farmhouse on Yonge Street after a day at the garrison when he is routed out again, with his brother George, by Major William Allan, a leading merchant now second-in-command of the York Volunteers. Wartime speculation in flour, pork, and rum will make Allan wealthy. The events of this week will help make him powerful as well.

York is a community of fewer than a thousand souls. Now it is abuzz. People rush about, hiding valuables, burying treasure, exchanging news, gawking at soldiers.

Donald McLean, Clerk of the House of Assembly, who has exchanged gown for musket, hurries to the home of the absent inspector general and squirrels away all of the public papers.

The Chief Justice, Thomas Scott, and his fellow jurist, Powell, both members of the province’s executive council, hurry to the home of Prideaux Selby, the Receiver General. Selby is on his deathbed, insensible to all the events of this and future nights. He is beyond help, but the three thousand pounds of public money in his keeping
is not. The pair convinces Selby’s daughter that this fund must be concealed. She hides most of it in an iron chest but secretes a small sum in another container with some public documents, which she takes to Donald McLean’s. The Americans, it is reckoned, will not credit the Clerk of the Assembly with having so much cash.

Major-General Sir Roger Sheaffe cannot be sure where the main attack will come. To resist the invaders he has three hundred regulars, three hundred militia, perhaps one hundred Indians. Most are in the main garrison, close to the Governor’s house commanding the entrance to the harbour west of the town. But Sheaffe cannot be certain the enemy will land there. He has had to divide his force, quartering a company of regulars and some militia at the eastern end of the settlement. Until he has a clearer idea of the enemy’s intention he must protect both entrances to Toronto harbour, hoping to move swiftly to repulse the landing. He will need resolute troops, but the militia are not all as eager as John Strachan believes. Some have been murmuring their discontent for days, planning to go back to their farms as soon as their pay arrives.

When Ely Playter reaches the garrison he finds a whirlwind of activity. Patrols and pickets are being dispatched in all directions for the security of the community. Playter is given a job at once: he is to take two men and search out Major James Givins of the Indian Department. The tribesmen—Chippewa and Mississauga—will be needed on the morrow.

Playter finds Givins with General Sheaffe at the Governor’s house. Here there is no sense of panic. Some will affect to remember the Major-General’s forthright remark on this night—that “it would be a breakfast spell to drive every damned Yankee into the lake.” Now Sheaffe tells Playter that nothing can be done until dawn. At first light, Playter is to take some Indians and patrol eastward to try to spot a possible enemy landing at that end of the town. Until then, Sheaffe says, he might as well snatch some sleep. At that the lieutenant-farmer gratefully stretches out on the floor of the Governor’s dining room and slumbers peacefully until cockcrow.

YORK, UPPER CANADA, APRIL 27, 1813

John Strachan is up at four and astride his horse, galloping westward toward the garrison. The American fleet has come into view, and Strachan cannot stand to be on the perimeter of the action. He must be at the centre, for it is power he seeks—he makes no bones about that—and as the events of the next few days will show, he knows how to seize it. Not for nothing has he educated the sons of the elite, first in Cornwall, now at York. His avowed plan is to place these young men in positions of influence. The weak lower house—the House of Assembly—the only elected body in the province, is composed, in his view, of “ignorant clowns.” He blames that on “the spirit of levelling that seems to pervade the province,” a dangerous Yankee idea. But when he gets his pupils into the assembly, then “I shall have more in my power.” Already his chief protege, John Beverley Robinson, a solemn twenty-one-year-old of good Loyalist stock who fought at Queenston, has been named acting attorney general.

Strachan understands the road to power, knows how to cultivate the aristocracy, how to make the most of opportunity. He has married into power: his pretty little wife, Ann, is the widow of Andrew McGill, brother of James, one of Montreal’s leading fur merchants whose name will one day be enshrined on a famous university. The McGill connection has opened doors to Montreal’s ruling merchant class. A Doctor of Divinity degree, for which Strachan has actively lobbied, adds to his stature. Strachan, the elitist, knows how to make the most of his fellow elitists, for although “there are no distinctions of rank in this country no people are so fond of them. If a fellow gets a commission in the militia however low he will not speak to you under the title of Captain.” But everybody speaks to the Reverend Doctor Strachan.

The Reverend Doctor gazes out onto the lake. He counts fourteen sail, the ships in line, flagship in the van, others behind towing assault craft. As he gallops to the water’s edge, he sees the fleet drop anchor. He raises his spyglass, observes the decks thickly covered with troops, some already clambering into the boats. A question
forms on the lips of the amateur tactician: Where are
our
men? Why are there no troops rushing to the invasion point to repel them? It is a question that Dr. Strachan, protector of York, will ask again when the battle is done, for he has set his sights on the Major-General himself. Roger Sheaffe’s days as Administrator of Upper Canada are numbered.

The whole town has watched the fleet round Gibraltar Point, hesitate, then move on, the morning clear and sunny, no trace of haze, a brisk east wind filling the sails. Ely Playter has already seen it. Rising from the dining-room floor of the Governor’s house, he is off with his Indian scouts, galloping seven miles toward the east to make sure no Americans have landed on the far borders of the town. Satisfied, he and his men double back toward the garrison. As they do, they hear the guns start to fire.

Major-General Sheaffe faces a dilemma, though his features do not betray it. Even his detractors—and he has many—will remark on his absolute coolness in the events that follow. He is a bulky man, a little ponderous, less impulsive than his former commander, Brock, in whose shadow he languishes. It grates on Sheaffe that the dead hero should get the credit for the victory at Queenston. After all, Brock was losing the battle when he incautiously dashed up the heights to his death. The day was saved by Sheaffe’s careful flanking movement, but men like Strachan have made Brock the symbol of Canadian resistance to the invader.

Yet Sheaffe admired, indeed loved, Brock, who once saved him from demotion. Years before, Sheaffe was so hated by his men for his harsh discipline that they plotted to kill him. As Brock put it, “he possesses little knowledge of Mankind.” The mutiny was nipped, and Sheaffe, at Brock’s urging, was kept in his post at Fort George—a good officer if not a great one who, as his superior predicted, learned from his experience.

He has no wish to fight the Americans, has, in fact, asked to be posted elsewhere, for they are his former countrymen. The Revolution split his family: Roger Hale Sheaffe stayed loyal to the Crown, but his sister remained in Boston until her death. Though
New England wants no part of this war, it does not sit easily with Sheaffe that he may be responsible for the deaths of men who know his family.

But he has no time for reflection as the American fleet glides past the garrison. Where do they intend to land? His force is so thin he cannot guess or gamble. The only men he can depend on are his three hundred regulars—the two companies of the King’s (one at the far end of town), a few members of the Newfoundland Fencibles, and a handful of Glengarry Light Infantry. The Indians are unpredictable, most of the militia useless.

One mile to the west of the garrison, opposite a small clearing—the site of an old French fort—the enemy ships attempt to anchor. This is the intended landing place. It is a military axiom that an amphibious landing must be halted at the water’s edge before the enemy can establish a beachhead. The Americans will have to come ashore in waves, sending the boats back for more troops after the first have leaped over the side. In the initial minutes, then, Sheaffe’s force will outnumber the invaders. Now is the time to rush every available man through the woods that separate the garrison from the landing point, with orders to hurl the Americans back.