STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 089
An Impasse Across the River
11. An Impasse Across the River (8)
The capitulation came just in time, for already heavy reinforcements for Hull were on their way from Ohio: the leading column of 2,500 regulars and militia, under General Winchester, would have been up to the fort in September, if it had not heard of the disaster at Detroit, and stayed its march. In short, if Brock had not seized the psychological moment for his bold advance, he would have been overwhelmed a few weeks later by forces three or four times outnumbering his own! But for the present the Detroit frontier was safe, and the victor could return to the other point of danger, the Niagara frontier, where—for all he knew—untoward events might have been happening during his absence. By August 20th he was at sea again on Lake Erie, bringing back with him the militia volunteers who had accompanied him to the West and part of the 41st Foot. By the 24th he was once more at Fort George, on the Niagara river.
He found that in his absence Prévost and General Dearborn, two opponents who each realized his own weakness, and did not think of his adversary’s straits, had concluded a truce, on the pretence that negotiations at Washington might yet lead to a peace. The delay was more profitable to the American, since his resources and reinforcements lay much closer to hand than did those of the British general. When President Madison refused to ratify the suspension of arms, and declared the continuance of war inevitable, the American reserves had begun to come up, but Prévost had not yet received any reinforcements from England, nor could he do so for many a day.
On September 4th Brock received, at Kingston, the news that the truce was at an end, and two days later he was back on the Niagara frontier, preparing to receive the inevitable attack. He had at his disposition four companies of the 41st and six of the 49th, which Prévost had recently sent to him from the Lower Province, together with the militia of the counties of York, Lincoln, and Norfolk, the whole amounting to a little over 2,000 bayonets. In addition between 200 and 300 Indians had joined him. With this force he had to guard the whole length of the Niagara river, some thirty-six miles from lake to lake, of which only the central portion, along the precipices above and below the Great Falls, could be considered impracticable to the enemy. At each end of the broad river was a small British post, Fort George on Lake Ontario, Fort Erie on the lake of the same name. All save the small space covered by their guns had to be watched by Brock’s little army.
Opposite him the Americans had concentrated numbers rather more than double his own, including a brigade of 1,600 regulars under Major-General Alexander Smyth, at or near Buffalo, which faces Fort Erie across the water, and another regular regiment and some 2,300 New York Militia at Lewiston and Fort Niagara, at the other end of the river, below the Falls. Here the senior officer was Major-General Stephen van Rensselaer, commanding the New York contingent: the total force on the frontier was over 6,000 men. Fortunately for Brock, the two American generals were bitter enemies: they belonged to opposite political parties, and Smyth, as an officer of the regular army, treated Van Rensselaer, as a mere militia general, with contempt. They quarrelled as to the point at which it would be best to cross the Niagara river, each holding that his own end of the line offered the best opportunities: Smyth would force a passage above the Falls, Van Rensselaer below.
Finally, as the autumn was wearing on, and the militia growing discontented and beginning to demand that they should either be employed in action or sent home for the winter, Van Rensselaer resolved that he would cross on his own responsibility. He was heartened up by a false report, brought by a spy, that Brock had again departed to Detroit. After an abortive attempt at a start on the night of October 10th, which miscarried owing to a blunder about guides and oars, he made his stroke after dark on the 12th, using his own division alone, though he had sent to Smyth what he in his dispatch calls “orders”, but what Smyth treated as a negligible suggestion, to bring up the three regiments from Buffalo to his support. It may be remembered that the regular general showed himself, in a later month of the campaign, as incapable in the position of commander-in-chief as he now showed himself disloyal in the position of colleague. He never stirred to help the effort on his right.
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