An Account of the Battle of Chateauguay Part 1

An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay.

by William D. Lighthall.

PREFACE.

On October 26th, 1888, the Chateauguay Literary and Historical Society was organized at Ormstown, Quebec, to foster Canadian patriotism by encouraging the study of Canadian history and Canadian literature. The Society began its labours at home, taking as its subject the battle whence it derives its name. Mr. W.D. Lighthall, M.A., B.C.L., an honorary member, was asked to prepare an account of that victory, and kindly responded by his lecture, which he delivered before the Society on March 8th, 1889. Pleasure is now felt in offering this lecture, in the interests of the Society, to the Canadian world, no apology being required at a time when patriotic literature is in great demand. Mr.

Lighthall's researches have been discussed by the members, and the belief is prevalent that his work touching this important item of history, in so far as accuracy is concerned, stands unrivalled, the previous authorities having been carefully compared and their testimony put together.

In the Appendix will be found a number of notes having a bearing on the battle and its times. The portrait frontispiece is from a line engraving kindly lent by Gerald E. Hart, Esq., President of the Society for Historical Studies. The drawing of the map, after the design of the author, is due to J.A.U. Beaudry, Esq., C.E., Curator of the Antiquarian Society of Montreal.

The first part of the account is partly based upon R. Christie's History of Lower Canada; but William James' Military Occurrences of the War of 1812, was found the most accurate in statistical details, and is, therefore, frequently followed. Other authorities are referred to in their places.

The battle of Chateauguay, in view of the important results that followed it, is an event which all Canadians will appreciate, and to which posterity will have reason to point the finger of admiration.

All nationalities concerned in building up this country, when united by a common danger, bore in it an honorable part, as they fought side by side in defence of their homes and those that were dear to them, from the wanton aggression of an ungenerous foe.

The Society hopes to continue its work and to offer other pamphlets in the near future, so that this effort on its part may be regarded as the first of a series. Another of its immediate objects is the erection of a monument on the battlefield, to accomplish which pecuniary a.s.sistance is required. The belief is held that no opportunity should be lost to educate the rising generation to form a true conception of the grandeur of the heritage that is ours,

W.P.

ORMSTOWN, _October 29th, 1889._

THE BATTLE OF CHATEAUGUAY.

The War of 1812 has been called by an able historian "the afterclap of the Revolution." The Revolution was, indeed, true thunder--a courageous and, in the main, high-principled struggle. Its afterclap of 1812 displayed little but empty bombast and greed. In the one, brave leaders risked their lives in that defence of rights which has made their enterprise an epoch in man's history; in the other, a mean and braggart spirit actuated its promoters to strike in the back that nation which almost alone was carrying on, in the best spirit of the Revolution, the struggle for the liberties of Europe against the designs of Napoleon. The brave spirits of the War of Freedom led the affairs of the United States no longer. All the contemptible elements, all the boasters, all those who had done least in the real fighting, had long come out of their sh.e.l.ls and united to establish the mighty rhetorical school of the Spread Eagle! It was the legions of Spread Eagleism who wore to have the glory to be got in taking advantage of hara.s.sed England. The Battle of Chateauguay was one of the answers to that illusion.

The War was introduced by a Declaration, in which President Madison, in smooth and elaborate terms, pretended that his nation found cause for it in the tyrannical exercise by British wars.h.i.+ps of what was called _The Right of Search_--that is to say, a claim of s.h.i.+ps of war to stop the s.h.i.+ps of other nations and search them for deserters and contraband goods. That this was not, however, the true cause, was shown by the facts and cries of the war.

Firstly, the right was one belonging to all nations by international law; secondly, though it was at once relinquished by Britain in a conciliatory spirit, the Americans persisted in their campaign; thirdly, at the close of the war they did not insist at all on the abrogation of the Right of Search, in the treaty of peace.

It would be much easier to show what the real causes were:-(1), hatred of England, lasting over from the Revolution; (2), envy of her commerce and prestige; and especially (3) the scheme for the conquest of Canada.

The course of the negotiations exhibit a thoroughly ungenerous course on the part of the American authorities, contrasted with a desire not to offend on the part of Britain. President Madison's Declaration of War was made on the 18th of June, 1812, and the British Government, after using every honorable overture for friends.h.i.+p, only issued theirs in October, couching it, besides, in terms of regret and reproach at the unfairness in which Madison's party persisted. Owing to that unfairness and other causes the enterprise also was by no means unanimously popular in the States. A convention of delegates from the counties of New York, held in the capitol at Albany, on the 17th and 18th of September, and called the New York Convention, condemned Madison's party for declaring the war, on account of its injustice, and "as having been undertaken," they said, "from motives entirely distinct from those which have been hitherto avowed." The New England States treated it coldly. Maryland disapproved through her Legislature. Many persons everywhere looked on it as a mere political scheme, and when drafted for service in frequent cases bought themselves subst.i.tutes.

It was soon found that a mistake had been made in attacking Canada.

That happened which might be expected where bodies of men with inflated ideas of glory and no experience attack men fighting desperately for their homes, and officers and veterans who had seen such service as the Napoleonic wars. The British, with an astuteness which is oftener the character credited to their opponents, managed to get earliest word of the Declaration sent to their own forts on the Lakes, and promptly captured the American fort Michilimackinac. They then followed with the daring capture of the stronghold of Detroit, amply equipped and garrisoned, by a little handful of men under the heroic General Brock, who simply went before it and demanded its surrender, whereupon it was given up, together with the whole Territory of Michigan. The presence of such trained British officers as Brock and of army veterans in the ranks was a very great advantage.

Poor Brock soon afterwards died in his memorable charge at the victory of Queenston Heights.

That year--the first of the War--is known as a succession of fiascos for the Americans. The other conspicuous aspect of it is that the attacked points were, with the exception of a little skirmis.h.i.+ng at St. Regis and Lacolle, all in the Province of Upper Canada.

It was only towards the close of the campaign of the next year--1813--that Lower Canada was gravely threatened.

The Americans, emboldened by several successes, and having put a great many men into the field, believed that the struggle might easily be terminated by capturing Montreal. The advance upon Lower Canada took place under General James Wilkinson in chief command, with 8,826 men and 58 guns and howitzers.[1] He had intended to attack Kingston. "At Montreal, however," wrote the Secretary of War, Armstrong, in phrases colored by the prevailing school of rhetoric, "you find the weaker place and the smallest force to encounter.... You hold a position which completely severs the enemy's line of operations, and which, while it restrains all below, withers and perishes all above itself."

This great position--for it is so--Colonel Coffin[2] compares it to Vicksburg for natural strength--was to be approached by two routes: by Wilkinson himself in boats down the St Lawrence, and by Major-General Wade Hampton, his almost independent subordinate, from the Champlain border; and it was planned that the two armies should meet at the foot of Isle Perrot,[3] thence to strike together across the Lake to Lachine, and on to the city, which seems to have had not over, if as many as, a thousand regulars to defend it.

Wade Hampton, with over 5,000 men (an effective regular force of 4,053 rank and file, about 1,500 militia and ten cannon[4]), was at first on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain at Burlington[5]. He crossed to the New York side, directing his march for Caughnawaga on the St.

Lawrence. His army[6], except the militia, was the same which, with a certain General Dearborn at its head, paraded irregularly across the lines and returned to Pittsburgh in the autumn of 1812. During the year since elapsed the men had been drilled by Major-General Izard, who had served in the French Army. They were all in uniform, well clothed and equipped--in short, Hampton commanded, if not the most numerous, certainly the most effective, regular army which the United States were able to send into the field during the War. Crossing the border on the 20th of September, 1813, he surprised a small picket of British at Odelltown, a Loyalist settlement afterwards celebrated for a battle in the Rebellion of 1837. He soon found himself met with what seemed to him great difficulties, for the army was plunged into an extensive swampy wood, the only road through which was rendered impracticable by fallen trees and barricades, behind which and in the gloomy forests surrounding were every here and there to be seen Indians and infantry crawling and flitting about, who fired upon them from unexpected ambushes. Hampton's men were not of a kind to face this. "The perfect rawness of the troops," writes he, "with the exception of not a single platoon, has been a source of much solicitude to the best-informed among us."[7] They were ignorant, insubordinate, and forever "falling off."[8]

Urging on the scattered defenders was, no doubt, to be seen from time to time a stout-built, vigorous officer with stripes across the breast of his dark gray uniform, das.h.i.+ng about from point to point giving fierce orders. This was De Salaberry.

Not reflecting--for he seems to have had the information--that the wood was only fifteen miles or so in depth, the Canadians few in number, and that a short press forward would have brought him into the open country of L'Acadie leading towards Montreal, the American General in two days withdrew along the border towards Chateauguay Four Corners, alleging the great drought of that year as a reason for wis.h.i.+ng to descend by the River Chateauguay. At the Corners he rested his army for many days.

Wade Hampton was a type of the large slaveholders of the South. Nearly sixty years of age, self-important, fiery and over-indulgent in drink, of large, imposing figure, of some reputed service in the Revolution, and with a record as Congressman and Presidential elector, he was one whose chief virtues were not patience and humility. In 1809 he had been made a brigadier-general and stationed at New Orleans; but in consequence of continual disagreements with his subordinates, was superseded in 1812 by Wilkinson, whom he consequently hated. In the spring of 1813 he received his Major-General's commission. He had acquired his large fortune by land speculations, and at his death some time later was supposed to be the wealthiest planter in the United States, owning 3,000 slaves. He is said to have ably administered his estate.[9]

Hampton had another slave-holding South Carolinian by his side, young Brigadier-General George Izard, son and descendant of aristocrats and statesmen, well-educated in the soldier's profession, college-bred, travelled, and who had served in the French Army. Izard led the main column at the battle shortly to ensue.[10]

Another officer of the circle--who seems to have been the ablest--was Colonel James Purdy, on whom the brunt of the American work and fighting were to fall, and who seems to have done his best in a struggle against natural difficulties and against the incompetency of both his commander and men.

When Hampton moved to Four Corners, Lieut-Colonel De Salaberry, with the Canadian Voltigeurs, moved in like manner westward to the region of the Chateauguay and English Rivers. The Voltigeur troops were French-Canadians with a small sprinkling of British. Their organization was as follows:--Sir George Prevost, on the approach of war, May 28th, 1812, ordered the levy of four French volunteer battalions, to be made up of unmarried men from 18 to 25 years old.

They were to be choice troops, and trained like regulars. Charles Michel d'Irumberry De Salaberry, then high in the regard of his people as a military hero, was chosen to rally the recruits, issued a stirring poster calling the French-Canadians to arms, and acted with such extraordinary energy that the troops were in hand in two days.

De Salaberry was a perfect type of the old French-Canadian military gentry, a stock of men of whom very little remains, a breed of leaders of, on the whole, more vigorous forms, more active temperaments, than the average--descendants inheriting the qualities of the bravest and most adventurous individuals of former times. They were the natural result of the feudal _regime_, with which they have pa.s.sed away.

Though a gentry, they were a poor one, possessed of little else than quant.i.ties of forest lands. The officers of the Voltigeurs were selected out of the same cla.s.s, united with a number of English of similar stamp. De Salaberry himself was born in the little cottage manor-house of Beauport, near Quebec, on the 19th of Nov., 1778.[11]

Taking to soldiering like a duck to water when very young, he enrolled as volunteer in the 44th. At sixteen, the Duke of Kent, who was then in Canada, and delighted in friendly acts towards the seigneurs, got him a commission in the 60th, with which regiment he left at once for the West Indian Isle of Dominica. There he saw terrible service, for all the men of his battalion except three were killed or wounded during the seige of Fort Matilda. Nevertheless, the young fellow kept gay. "Our uniforms," he wrote to his father, "cost very dear; but I have received 40, and with that I am going to give myself what will make a fine figure." "This fine large boy of sixteen years," says Benjamin Sulte in his History of the French-Canadians, "strong as a Hercules ... with smiling face ... made a furore at parties.... As he was never sick, they employed him everywhere. Fevers reduced his battalion to 200 men, but touched not him." Though so young, he was charged with covering the evacuation of Fort Matilda.[12]

The Duke of Kent, who was commanding at Halifax, kept a friendly eye upon him, and gave him much personal advice, on one occasion dissuading him from an inadvisable marriage. He now took him into his own regiment. De Salaberry still saw rough service, was s.h.i.+pwrecked, served in the West Indies again, and then fought in Europe and the disastrous expedition to Walcheren, where he was placed in the most advanced posts.[13] Returning to his 60th, he was made captain in 1799. "I have often heard say," narrates De Gaspe, "that his company and that of Captain Chandler were the best drilled in the regiment."

In the West Indies he was drawn into a duel which caused him sorrow until his dying day, for in it he was forced by the "code of honor" to kill a German fellow-officer, and bore a scar of the affair ever after on his forehead. It is related that by his great strength he cut the German in two.

"The prodigious force with which he was endowed," says Sulte, "had made of him an exceptional being in the eyes of the soldiers," and when he returned to Canada after West Indian service of eleven years[14] a little before the war of 1812, he was already the hero of the French-Canadians. That the stories of his strength and vigor are true is corroborated by every circ.u.mstance which has been perpetuated about him. His ruddy, energetic face is preserved in portraits among his family, and his walking-stick, said to be an enormous article, is kept at Quebec in the collection of the Literary and Historical Society.

De Salaberry's Voltigeurs were organized at a peculiar juncture. "The discords between French and English in Quebec had emboldened the United States," says Garneau, "and the English Governors hara.s.sed the French. An opposite conduct might bring back calm to men's spirits.

The Governor of Nova Scotia, Sir George Provost, a former officer, of Swiss origin, offered all the conditions desirable.... Arriving at Quebec, Sir George Provost strove to introduce peace and to remove animosity. He showed the completest confidence in the fidelity of the French-Canadians, and studied how to prove at every opportunity that the accusations of treason which had been brought against them had left no trace in the soul of England nor in his own.... Soon the liveliest sympathy arose between Sir George Prevost and the people."[15] It was in pursuance of this policy that the order to raise the Voltigeur force was given by him.

While Hampton was at Four Corners, Sir George, thus now Commander-in-Chief of all the forces in Canada, was at the camp which had just been formed at La Fourche, and of which a description is given by Mr. Sellar in his history of the district. Sir George was a man quite devoid of the decisiveness necessary to a soldier, and though, as we have seen, he was useful in reconciling the French, his errors in military matters several times brought disgrace on the British forces, and gave rise to storms of rage and disgust among them.[16] De Salaberry was now ordered by him on the Quixotic errand of attacking, with about 200 Voltigeurs and some Indians, the large camp of Hampton at Four Corners. De Salaberry promptly obeyed these impracticable orders, and it is probably at this juncture that a little anecdote comes in which I have heard as told by one of his men.

De Salaberry was down the river dining at a tavern, when a despatch was brought to him.

"D---- it!" he exclaimed, jumping up from his seat, "Hampton is at Four Corners, and I must go and fight him!" and mounting his fine white charger, he dashed away from the door.

On the 1st of October he crept up with his force to the edge of the American camp. There they saw the a.s.semblage spread out in all the array of war, with its host of tents, stacked guns, flags, moving men and sentries, and he prepared to strike it as ordered. One of his Indians indiscreetly discharged his musket. The camp was in alarm in an instant. De Salaberry, finding his approach discovered, immediately collected about fifty of his Voltigeurs, with whom and the Indians he pushed into the enemy's advanced camp, consisting of about 800 men, and, catching them in their confusion, drove them for a considerable distance, until, seeing the main body manoeuvring to cut off his little handful, he fell back and took up his position at the skirt of the woods. Once again he sallied out and charged, but with all the army now thoroughly aroused it was useless, and the Indians having retreated, most of his own men ran off, leaving him and Captains Chevalier d.u.c.h.esnay and Gaucher, officers much like himself in stamp, with a few trusty Voltigeurs to skirmish with the enemy as long as daylight permitted it.[17] He then withdrew to Chateauguay, taking the precaution of breaking up the forest road in his rear, in pursuance of the general policy of the campaign, which was to destroy and obstruct as much as possible in the path of the enemy. Acquainting himself also with the ground over which Hampton was expected to make his way into the Province, he finally stopped, selected and took up the position where the battle afterwards took place, in a thick wood on the left bank of the Chateauguay River at the distance of two or three leagues above its _Fork_ with English River, where he threw up his works of defence, with the approval of General De Watteville. The plan of the British commanders, owing to the smallness and inefficiency of their forces, was the stern one of burning and destroying all houses and property, and retreating slowly to the St. Lawrence, hara.s.sing the enemy in his advance.[18] The position chosen was as strong as the nature of that flat and wooded country and the route of the American march would allow. Here his experience and quick eye came in.[19]

Now as to the measures of fortification taken by De Salaberry. In his rear there was a small rapid where the river was fordable in two spots close to one another. He commanded this with a strong breastwork and a guard. There were four ravines which issued from the very thick woods, crossing the road, and distant from each other two hundred yards or so. On their banks he made his men fell trees and build them into breastworks--"a kind of parapet extending into the woods some distance." To prevent the American cannon from bearing on these breastworks, he felled trees and bush, covering a large stretch of ground with obstructions in the front. The breastwork on the front-line formed an obtuse angle at the right of the road, and extended along the curves of the ravine. The Colonel then sent forward to a spot some distance in advance of the front-line a party of Beauharnois' axemen, well accustomed to felling trees, who destroyed the bridges and obstructed the road with their fragments and fallen trees and brush. Lieut. Guy, with twenty Voltigeurs, guarded them in front, and Lieut. Johnson, with about the same number, in rear.

Working incessantly, these axemen made a formidable series of such obstructions in front of the first line, extending from the river three or four acres into the woods, where they joined an almost impracticable marsh. On the opposite bank of the river De Salaberry also placed a picket of sixty Beauharnois militia under Captain Bruyere, so as to check any advance on the ford, which was his weak point in the rear.

Part of De Salaberry's line at the abattis, was a small blockhouse on the river-bank (which, however, is not that which has since been reputed to be the one concerned), and the works there blocked the commencement of the wood and looked out on a broadening plain or level of clearings, across which the enemy would have to pa.s.s.

The Glengarry men now came down, under McDonell of Ogdensburgh, famous for his adventurous capture of that place, and whose exploit the Salaberry was about to match. Lieut.-Colonel McDonell--"Red George"--was at Prescott drilling a new force of Canadian Fencibles, made up, some say, chiefly of Scotch and loyalists,[20] others chiefly of French boatmen, when Sir George Prevost asked him how soon he could have his men ready to go down to Chateauguay. "As soon as they have done their dinner!" he responded. Within a few hours he had provided them with _batteaux_, and they were off down the rapids. When Sir George himself, who was on the way, got there, he, to his great surprise found McDonell before him. "Where are your men?" said he.

"There," said the Highland Colonel, pointing to his force resting on the ground--"not a man absent."[21]

For nearly three weeks the parties of Canadian workers worked continually upon the plan of De Salaberry, while Hampton was considering, preparing, reviewing his troops, and arranging for a communication with Wilkinson so soon as the latter should have pa.s.sed Ogdensburg on his way down the St. Lawrence.

On the 21st of October the advance down the Chateauguay commenced. The first move was a rapid march by General Izard with the light-equipped troops and a regiment of the line, who surprised a party of about ten[22] Indians sitting late in the afternoon at their evening meal at the junction of the Outarde and Chateauguay Rivers, and killed one of them. There Izard encamped and proceeded to establish a road of communication with Hampton. Word was soon brought to Major Henry, of the Beauharnois' Militia, commanding on the English River. Henry sent word to General De Watteville at La Fourche, and had Captains Levesque and Debartzch advance immediately with the flank companies of the 5th Battalion of embodied militia and about 200 men of the Beauharnois'

division. This was the preliminary move towards the battle.

They advanced about six miles that night up the Chateauguay from La Fourche, when they came to a wood which it would not have been prudent to enter in the dark. Next morning early they were joined by De Salaberry with his Voltigeurs and the light company of Captain Ferguson, an officer who took a front place in the affair. De Salaberry brought all these companies about a league up the bank to the place he had fortified, and there stopped. An American patrol party being observed in front, General De Watteville came over himself, visited the outposts, approved of them, and the work proceeded.[23] That evening the main body of the Americans encamped at Sear's, about twenty-five miles above the Chateauguay's mouth. The engineers had cut a road for the ten cannon, and with great labor and difficulty had dragged them thus far.[24]