STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 085
An Impossible Defense
11. An Impossible Defense (4)
Such a chief as Brock was much needed on the frontier in 1812, for his superior, the Governor-General at Quebec, Sir George Prévost, was not the man to save an empire. A politician rather than a soldier, irresolute and down-hearted, with no confidence in himself and small military skill, he might have lost Canada if he had not been blessed with vigorous subordinates. His only saving virtue was that, as American-born and of French descent, he was popular among the habitam of the province of Quebec, whom he managed with some skill, and who followed him with more loyalty than they might, perhaps, have shown to an un-sympathetic English governor. But he was no great strategist, and ended his career by a failure so tiresome that he was superseded and sent home to England to be tried by court-martial. He died just after the war had ended, a few days before the date appointed for his trial. Anything might have happened in 1812, if Prévost had been represented in the Upper Province by a lieutenant no more capable than himself.
When the Americans declared war in June, and proceeded a few days later to cross the Canadian frontier, Brock had only 1,500 regular troops under his command—one complete battalion, the 41st Foot, 900 strong, and five companies each of the 10th Veteran Battalion and the Newfoundland Regiment, with one company of field artillery. His own loved 49th Foot was at this time at Montreal, in the Lower Province, and not at his disposition. To defend 1,300 miles of frontier, on lake and land, with this handful of regulars would have been impossible even to a man of Brock’s energy. His one hope lay in the newly organized local militia, with which he had to supplement his British troops. From the first threatenings of war onward, he had been hard at work in constructing cadres for the new battalions and companies, choosing officers for them, and indenting at Quebec for arms and ammunition.
Fortunately the great bulk of the population with which he had to deal was loyal and trustworthy, and responded eagerly to his call. There were but 80,000 souls in all within the province, and he could not hope to embody more than 4,000 or 5,000 men at the best. But Upper Canada had been originally settled with the exiled “United Empire Loyalists”, the gallant remnant of the “Tory” party in the revolted American Colonies, who, in 1783, had preferred to follow the old flag to a strange land rather than to accept citizenship of the United States. The memory of their bitter strife with the Republican party during the Revolutionary War, and of the cruelty and insult with which they had been treated in the hour of defeat, was still strong in the old generation, and their children had been brought up to hate the Stars and Stripes, and the much-abused name of Liberty, with a perfect hatred. King George had no more loyal subjects than the descendants of the heroic emigrants who had pitched their habitation in the remote unsettled North, and had hewn out their clearings in the wilderness. The call to resist American invasion was welcomed without hesitation by the bulk of the population of the province.
It was true that there were weak points—the French or half-French hunters and fishers along the western lakes, who clustered particularly thick on the peninsula facing Detroit, were little interested in the strife between two sets of English-speaking aliens, and were rather inclined to take a neutral attitude. In this same direction there were also a certain amount of American settlers, who had drifted in from Ohio, and who were of course in sympathy with their brethren across the border. Hence the militia levy of the county of Essex, the extreme western district of the Upper Province, was unsatisfactory to a great extent.
On the other hand, the people of the counties more to the east, about the Niagara Peninsula, and the newly settled towns of York and Kingston, were enthusiastic loyalists, and gave all the help that Brock demanded, even raising for him (what could hardly have been expected) some troops of cavalry, and a volunteer battery of light artillery. Of this the men and horses were drawn from a transport column, the “Car Brigade”, whose members insisted on taking a more active part than that of wagoners in the strife. The militia out of whom the General got most service were those of the three counties of York, Lincoln, and Norfolk, on the Niagara frontier. But those of Stormont, Glengarry, Dundas, and the other eastern counties of the Upper Province, were all doing good duty in watching the line of the St. Lawrence, between Kingston and Montreal.
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