11. How General Isaac Brock Saved Canada (1)
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. In 1912 we celebrated 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 remembered to praise the exploits of Isaac Brock and his gallant handful of British regulars and Canadian militia. We noticed no memorial 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.
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. To 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 such thinkers the declaration of war by the United States was the final blow which must overthrow the British Empire—the “stab in the back”, as it was sometimes called, which must be fatal to the combatant whose whole attention was absorbed in the endless and exhausting struggle with Bonaparte.
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 1,600 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 4,450 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 war party 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”.
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