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BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

No. MCLXVI.

DECEMBER 1912.

VOL. CXCII.

HOW GENERAL ISAAC BROCK SAVED CANADA.

IT is not always by big battalions that the British Empire has been extended or preserved nor have generals whose names are well remembered always been the saviours of the State. This year we have been celebrating with justifiable pride the centenaries of Wellington's triumphs at Ciudad Rodrigo, at Badajoz, and at Salamanca, but how few of the subjects of George V. on this side of the Atlantic have remembered to praise the exploits of Isaac Brock and his gallant handful of British regulars and Canadian militia. We have noticed no memorial hitherto of their triumphs at Detroit and by the Falls of Niagara, which saved-it is no exaggeration to say-British North America, and determined the future course of all its history. There was a moment, in the autumn of 1812, when nothing seemed more possible than the complete vanishing of the Union Jack from the Great Western Continent.

VOL. CXCII.-NO. MCLXVI.

The war of 1812-1815, between Great Britain and the United States, was one of the most dangerous crises of the British Empire. It ended in a compromise, and a restoration of the status quo, yet at its commencement its possibilities were incalculable. At the moment when President Madison declared war we were at the very crucial point of the great struggle with France. Our implacable enemy, Napoleon, had still an unshaken position-he had just marched out to his Russian expedition, but its disastrous termination was only foreseen by a very few long-sighted men. the majority he still seemed a Colossus bestriding the Old World, and the stubborn resistance of Great Britain to his domination was regarded as forlorn obstinacy by all the Whig politicians, who kept denouncing the Peninsular War as a failure, and Wellington as a venturesome general doomed to ultimate ruin. To

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There was much truth in this view. Looking back to the state of Canada in 1812, it does not seem unreasonable that the Americans should have considered it an easy prey, or that British statesmen should have feared that by the end of the year there would be nothing left unconquered save Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. The United States had a compact population of seven millions at this time: in Lower Canada there were no more than 300,000 British subjects, and they mostly of French origin. In the newly settled Upper Canada there were but 80,000 souls scattered in the wilderness. The military possibilities of defence seemed hopeless: the Ministry at home had made up their minds that war might be averted, as it had been for the last six years, by prolonged negotiations, and by concessions to the Americans whenever their attitude became threatening. In 1811 they had adopted a pacific policy, and shown signs of yielding whenever pressed. That war would come at last they had not thought likely: the Government of the United States had possessed a good casus belli

against Great Britain, and an equally good one against France, ever since the issue of the Berlin Decrees and the retaliatory "Orders in Council." That President Madison would suddenly strike, when all endeavours were being made to conciliate him, had till the last moment been considered improbable. Hence no efforts had been made to reinforce the garrison of Canada, which was at its lowest peace strength. To defend sixteen hundred miles of frontier there were in July 1812 just four battalions of regular troops (the 8th, 41st, 49th, and 100th regiments), one veteran battalion, another of permanent local troops called the Newfoundland Regiment, and two or three companies of artillery. The whole amounted to no more than 4450 men, scattered in forts and posts from the mouth of the St Lawrence to Saint Joseph on Lake Huron. This contemptible total could not be raised to a higher figure for many months, in those days of sailing-ships and slow communications. It would be far into the autumn before the few battalions that could be spared from the West Indies or Bermuda would appear— to send troops from Home would take longer still, and Great Britain was at this time almost drained dry of regular battalions; the last reinforcements to Wellington in Spain had brought the domestic garrison lower than it had been for many a year. It was small wonder, therefore, that President Madison and the war

party in the United States considered that Canada was to be had for the taking, if only they chose to stretch forth the armed hand. They had disregarded the protests of a strong Opposition, which included nearly all the New England States, because they thought that success was inevitable, and that criticism would be silenced by the tidings that York, Montreal, and Quebec had all fallen before the first advance of their armies. Well aware of the weakness of their enemy, they forgot their own drawbacks, and John Calhoun, the eloquent Congressman from South Carolina, was only voicing the general opinion of the warparty when he assumed the prophetic mantle and assured the nation that "in four weeks from the time that a declaration of war is heard on our frontiers, the whole of Upper and a great part of Lower Canada will be in our possession."

The boast sounds like mere "spread-eagle" bombast when subsequent events are considered, but there was more in it than might be conceded by those who are merely wise after the event. The President and his party had been making their preparations; they had, six months before the war began, passed a bill for raising 25,000 additional regular troops, and the new regiments were already mustering. In April Congress had authorised the President to call out 100,000 State Militia if

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In May-a month before the British Minister was sent away from Washington-an army had begun to move up to the farther end of Lake Erie to outflank the British line of defence in Upper Canada. It was ready to strike when the signal came, and meanwhile the Governor at Quebec, Sir George Prevost, was wholly unable to make up his mind whether hostilities were probable or not, and was tinually receiving despatches from London to inform him that all endeavours were being made to avert a breach with the United States by means of concessions, and that meanwhile no reinforcements were being got ready for his benefit. When one Government is secretly resolved to force on war, and the other doubts of the reality of the danger, and makes no adequate preparation to meet it, the party which knows its own mind has an immense advantage.

That Upper Canada was not overrun by the Americans immediately after the declaration of war on June 18, 1812, was due, humanly speaking, to three things. The first was that President Madison and his military advisers appear to have been wholly ignorant of the fact that large numbers of men collected at various distant points, unprovided with transport, and mostly untrained to arms, cannot be made into a field army at a moment's notice by a despatch from headquarters. The second was that the militia of Canada, whose very existence the Americans had

ignored in their schemes of conquest, and whose construction and equipment were as sketchy as that of the levies opposed to them, turned out to be a formidable fighting force, despite of their very modest strength. The third, and to us the most interesting point of the three, was that Upper Canada was at this moment in charge of a soldier of true military genius, one of those unsuspected leaders of men whom an emergency sometimes calls to light-MajorGeneral Isaac Brock.

That Brock was a capable man, and an officer who knew how to make himself loved by his troops, was known to every one who had come into contact with him. That he was a heaven-sent strategist, a true organiser of victory, was a fact that could only emerge on the crucial occasion when he was put to the test. His career down to 1812 had given him no chance of showing the heights to which he could rise in the moment of necessity. Born of an old Guernsey stock in 1769-in the same twelvemonth that saw both Napoleon and Wellington ushered into the world, he had joined the 8th Foot as an ensign in 1785, when he was but sixteen. the chances of regimental service in that corps and in the 49th-into which he exchanged in 1791- had not permitted him to hear a shot fired in anger till 1799. He missed all the early years of the French Revolutionary War, and saw his first campaign in the Duke of York's disastrous and

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ill-managed invasion of North Holland. He was, however, one of the few officers who emerged with an enhanced reputation from that miserable business, and when he came to command the 49th as Lieutenant-colonel, it was said of him by the Commander-inChief that he had made one of the worst battalions in the service into one of the best. After the Dutch campaign he only once again went on active service before 1812, his regiment having been told off to serve as marines on board Sir Hyde Parker's fleet in the spring of 1801. Thus he was present on board the Ganges at Nelson's bombardment of Copenhagen, in which engagement his men, scattered among various line-of-battleships, lost eight killed and twenty wounded. But there was little opportunity for a colonel to distinguish himself in this contest of ships and batteries.

In 1802 the 49th were sent out to Canada, and there abode for the next thirteen years. This was absolutely the only part of the British Empire where, during the great war with Napoleon, a regiment had no chance of seeing active service. Colonel Brock therefore had, during the best years of his ripe manhood, no opportunity to show his military ability. His battalion was told off to the Upper Province, and was scattered in detachments over several forts and outposts, separated from each other by hundreds of miles-8 condition of affairs that told

terribly against regimental efficiency. The Colonel had always to be on the move, and never saw his whole ten companies assembled together on parade. On one occasion he had to quell by his sudden appearance a dangerous mutiny, caused by the senseless and capricious severity of his second-in-command, who had been left alone for some months in charge of the detachment stationed at Fort George, on the Straits of Niagara. The men had plotted to shoot their tyrant, and to abscond in a body to the opposite American shore. Fortunately Brock heard rumours of the prevailing discontent at his distant headquarters, and hurried up from York (the modern Toronto) just in time to prevent the outbreak and to arrest the ringleaders. He came accompanied by by his sergeant-major alone, but his mere presence sufficed to render impossible a crime which would have left a very black spot on the history of the British Army.

Brock became a brigadier in 1808 and a major-general in June 1811: three months later he received a very honourable and arduous commission, which gave him a civil as well as a military status, by being made "President and Administrator of the Government of Upper Canada." This appointment was one of the most profitable nominations ever made in ‘The London Gazette,' since it put the right man in the right place, just nine months before the crisis which was to arise from the outbreak of war with

the United States in June 1812. Brock was given time to settle himself into the saddle, and to familiarise himself with his duties and his responsibilities before the time of trial came. He was already, from ten years' residence in Canada, well acquainted with all the leading men of the Upper Province, official and nonofficial. He knew the land and water ways by which its thinly scattered population communicated with each other. He could gauge exactly its very limited resources in men and money. He could tell where he might expect apathy and where enthusiastic support, when the time of trouble should arrive. Best of all, he had time to impress his own cheery, energetic, resourceful temperament on those who were about him.

All accounts agree that Isaac Brock had a most dominating personality. He was now in his forty-third year, in the full vigour of robust middle age. He was of commanding stature, not less than six feet two inches in height, and was correspondingly broad built. But he was neither heavy nor ungainly. In his youth he had been a noted boxer and swimmer; he was still a great athlete, capable of any endurance of fatigue, on foot or on horseback-though it was not always easy to find a charger up to his weight. He was of a fair and florid complexion, with a high forehead, a full face, a small mouth, and very lively and restless grey - blue eyes.

Several of those who

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