The Invasion of Canada (28 page)

INSIDE THE PALISADE, William Hull appears on the edge of nervous collapse. Except for Colonel Findlay, he has no battalion commanders to fall back on. Cass and McArthur have not yet returned. Miller is too ill to stand up. Hull’s son and aide, Abraham, is not only drunk but has picked a fight with a senior officer, in his father’s presence, and challenged him to a duel. A dozen Michigan volunteers on picket duty at the rear of the fort have allowed themselves to be captured by Tecumseh’s Indians. Elijah Brush, in charge of the Michigan militia, believes that if attack comes his men will flee. The fort itself is so jammed with soldiers, civilians, and cattle, all seeking refuge from the bombardment, that it is difficult to manoeuvre.

The cannonade has unnerved Hull. He saw blood enough in his Revolutionary days, but now he is transfixed by a spectacle so horrifying that it reduces him to jelly. Lieutenant Porter Hanks, relieved for the moment of appearing at his court of inquiry, has come into the fort to visit an old friend and is standing in the doorway of the officers’ mess with several others when a sixteen-pound cannonball comes bouncing over the parapet and skipping across the open space. It strikes Hanks in the midriff, cutting him in two, then tears both legs off Cass’s surgeon’s mate, Dr. James Reynolds, instantly killing him and mangling a second man with the appropriately grisly name of Blood.

A second cannonball dispatches two more soldiers. Blood and
brains spatter the walls and the gowns of some women who have sought refuge nearby. One drops senseless to the ground; others begin to scream. Hull cannot be sure from a distance who is dead, but a frightful thought crosses his mind: can it be his own buxom daughter, Betsey? It is more than possible. She and her child have taken refuge in the fort with most of the civilians, all of whom Hull knows as well as his own family.

Something very odd is happening to Hull: he is becoming catatonic; his brain, overloaded by too much information, refuses to function. It has happened before to better commanders when events crowded in too quickly, to Washington at the Battle of Brandywine, for one, and it will happen again – to Napoleon at Waterloo, to Stonewall Jackson at White Oak Swamp, to Douglas MacArthur at Manila.

Hull’s brigade major, Jesup, finds his commander half-seated, half-crouched on an old tent that is lying on the ground, his back to the ramparts under the curtain of the fort that faces the enemy. Save for the movement of his jaws he seems comatose. He is chewing tobacco at a furious rate, filling his mouth with it, absently adding quid after quid, sometimes removing a piece, rolling it between his fingers and then replacing it, so that his hands run with spittle while the brown juice dribbles from the corners of his mouth, staining his neckcloth, his beard, his cravat, his vest. He chews as if the fate of the army depended upon the movement of his jaws, rubbing the lower half of his face from time to time until it, too, is stained dark brown. Jesup, who has reconnoitred the British position, asks for permission to move up some artillery and attack their flank with dragoons. Hull nods, but he is clearly not in control. All he can say, as much to himself as to Jesup, is that a cannonball has killed four men.

It is the future as much as the present that renders him numb. A procession of ghastly possibilities crowds his mind; his troops deserting pell-mell to the enemy; the women and children starving through a long siege; cannon fire dismembering more innocent bystanders; and finally-the ultimate horror-the Indians released by Brock and Tecumseh, bent on revenge for Tippecanoe and all that came before it, ravaging, raping, burning, killing. He sees his daughter scalped, his grandchild mutilated, his friends and neighbours butchered. He believes himself outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, his plea for reinforcements unheeded. Sooner or later, he is convinced, defeat is inevitable. If he postpones it, the blood of innocent people will be on his hands. If he accepts it now, before the battle is joined, he can save
hundreds of lives. He can, of course, fight on to the last man and go into the history books as a hero. But can he live with himself, however briefly, if he takes the hero’s course?

There is another thought, too, a guilty thought, lurking like a vagrant in the darker recesses of that agitated mind. The memory of the notorious proclamation has returned to haunt him. He himself has threatened no quarter to any of the enemy who fight beside the Indians. Can he or his charges, then, expect mercy in a prolonged struggle? Might the enemy not use his own words to justify their allies’ revenge?

The shells continue to scream above his head and explode. Six men are now dead, several more wounded, the fort in a turmoil. Hull determines to ask for a cease-fire and a parley with Brock, scrawls a note, hands it to his son, asks him to have Major Snelling take it across the river. (Incredibly, it does not occur to him that Brock may be with his troops outside the palisade.) At the same time he orders a white tablecloth hung out of a window where Dixon, the British artillery commander on the Canadian shore, can see it. He will not fight to the last man; in the future metropolis of Detroit there will be no Hull Boulevard, no Avenue of the Martyrs.

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 cease-fire 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.”