The Field Of Battle

“Too thin the line that charged the Heights and scrambled in the clay. Too thin the Eastern Highland Scot who showed them all the way. And perhaps had you not fallen, you might be what Brock became, but not one in ten thousand knows your name. To say the name MacDonnell, it brings no bugle call, but the redcoats stayed beside you when they saw the General fall.” ~ Stan Rogers, MacDonnell On The Heights

This year marks the bicentennial of the outbreak of the War of 1812, which went on two years (well, into 1815, but by the time the last battle was fought early that year, the peace treaty had already been signed). It is a war pivotal to the history of my country (hence Darth Stephen Harper, Dark Lord Of The Sith and current occupant of the Prime Minister’s Office is going out of his way to pay homage to it). It’s a war that has many interpretations. The Americans, who sought to remove the British from North America and bring Canada into the fold as part of the Union, seem to think they won, despite not achieving their objectives. The Canadian nation today, having not been annexed into the United States, know that we won (oh yes we did). The Native peoples of the time know they lost; never again did they wield influence and the status of partnership that they had at the time. And the British, who were tangling with the Americans at the same time that they had a few other issues to deal with, seem to have forgotten the war entirely.

With good reason, mind you. At the time, they were involved in another war across the sea, with a short fellow named Napoleon (you may have heard of him) who tended to compensate for his hobbit-like height with an overblown ego and a tendency to pick ill advised fights with half the world. Sort of like the Tom Cruise of the early 19^th Century, you might say. So for the British, the War of 1812 was a sideshow to the main show, fought by regulars, colonial militia, and Native allies against Yankee invaders.

October 13^th, 2012 is the two hundredth anniversary of one of the battles of that war. Queenston lies in the heart of one of the most fiercely contested battlegrounds of the war, the Niagara Peninsula. American commanders tried time and again to push into the region, and a number of battles and engagements were fought in this place throughout the war. Stephen Van Rensselaer, an American general tasked with command of the area, got the bright idea to send troops across the Niagara River to Queenston, which lies in the shadow of the Niagara Escarpment, with the objective of taking the Heights and attacking the nearby Fort George. His counterpart, a British general named Isaac Brock, fresh off a victory capturing Detroit, arrived in the area in the weeks beforehand and promptly started reinforcing his troops.

Sir Isaac Brock

The American forces under Van Rensselaer started to move across the river during the night, and the Battle of Queenston Heights broke out at dawn on the 13^th, with the Americans finding a route up onto the heights. Brock personally led a charge to retake the heights- and was gunned down by a sharpshooter, dying almost instantly. Much the same fate awaited his aide de camp, John MacDonnell (mentioned in that quoted song up above).

Stephen Van Rensselaer

Reinforcements arrived from Fort George under the command of General Sheaffe, at the same time as American militia still across the river found themselves refusing to cross- deeming an invasion of a foreign nation to be outside their obligations. The final, decisive part of the equation was the arrival of Native forces; Teyoninhokovrawen, also known as John Norton, and his Six Nations warriors moved through the woodlands from the west, flanked the Americans on the Heights, pinning them in place and allowing Sheaffe to move troops up to trap the Yankees. The troops that had crossed the river and occupied the Heights found themselves between a rock, a hard place, and a cliff, and running out of ammunition, offered up surrender.

Teyoninhokovrawen (John Norton)

The battle of Queenston Heights is one of the definitive moments of the war. Of the American invaders, a thousand were taken prisoner, while three hundred were killed or wounded. Van Rensselaer himself took some of the blame for the failure of the attack- though not enough to dissuade him from later ending up in political office (one might argue that in and of itself constitutes a punishment). One of the American prisoners, later exchanged, was a young Lieutenant Colonel named Winfield Scott, who years later would lead an army to war in Mexico, and would go on to devise the plan that would ultimately bring the Confederacy to its knees in the Civil War. On the side of victory, casualties were far lighter, a fraction of the American losses among British, colonial militia, and aboriginals, approximately a hundred in all.

One of the dead was General Brock, and his loss was the most grievous. The general was not only a bold, decisive, confident, and courageous leader, but also one who was able to work with- and had great respect for- Native warriors. In the years that followed, the relationship between the British and Native peoples would never be the same as it had been under Brock. His legacy remains in place, with his name spread in various places across the province and the country. The tunic he wore that day- with the bullet hole directly visible beneath the lapel- is on prominent display in the War Museum in Ottawa today.

 Brock’s remains are buried on the battleground where he fell, as are those of Colonel MacDonnell, in crypts beneath the monument that stands sentinel over the field of battle.  The grounds of the Heights are quiet these days, preserved in perpetuity. A visitor to the battlefield will find the monument surrounded by gardens and paths that mark the stages of the battle. The visitor can go inside the monument, ascending a spiral stairs up to the top and take in the view.

The victory at Queenston Heights- and the death of Brock- fortified the willpower of the people living here against American incursions. It remains to this day a key moment in Canadian history, and two hundred years on, we mark it as a touchstone in our history.

Oh, and just so we’re clear: our side won the War of 1812. So there.