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39 - Canada- The Empire of the North by Agnes C. Laut · Canada- The Empire of the North

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  Speaker 1: Section number thirty eight of Canada The Empire of the North.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Lindamey Nilson, Vancouver, b C.
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  Speaker 1: Canada The Empire of the North by Agnes C. Lot
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  Speaker 1: from eighteen twelve to eighteen twenty Part five. It is
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  Speaker 1: a month later down at Fort George on the Canadian side,
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  Speaker 1: General Vincent knows well what has happened at Toronto and
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  Speaker 1: is on the lookout for the enemy's fleet. On the
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  Speaker 1: American side of the Niagara River, from Lake Ontario to
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  Speaker 1: Lake Erie are seven thousand troops eager to wipe out
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  Speaker 1: the stain of last year's defeat. On the Canadians side,
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  Speaker 1: from Fort George to Chippewa and Erie are twenty three
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  Speaker 1: hundred men, mostly volunteers from surrounding farms. And powder is
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  Speaker 1: scarce and provisions are scarce for Chauncey's fleet has cut
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  Speaker 1: off help from Saint Lawrence and Kingston Way. All the
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  Speaker 1: last two weeks of May, heavy hot fog lay on
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  Speaker 1: the lake and on the river between the hostile lines,
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  Speaker 1: But there was no mistaking what Chauncey's fleet was about.
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  Speaker 1: Red hot shot showers on Fort George in a perfect rain.
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  Speaker 1: Standing on the other side of the river are thousands
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  Speaker 1: of spectators, among them one grand old swashbuckler fellow in
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  Speaker 1: a cocked hat, whose fighting days are pasted, taking snuff
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  Speaker 1: after the fashion of a former generation, and wearing an
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  Speaker 1: air of grand patronage to the American troops because he
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  Speaker 1: has seen service in Europe. No, sir, says the grand
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  Speaker 1: old fighting cock, pompously to his auditors. Can't be done.
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  Speaker 1: Have seen it tried on the continent, and you can't
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  Speaker 1: do it. Lay a wager you can't do it. Can't
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  Speaker 1: possibly set fire to a fort by red hot shot.
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  Speaker 1: Then at night time, when the lurid glare of flame
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  Speaker 1: lights up the foggy darkness, the old gentleman is put
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  Speaker 1: to his trumps. See they say, Fort George is on fire.
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  Speaker 1: And over at Fort George the bucket brigade works hard
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  Speaker 1: as the cannoneers, but the fog is too good a
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  Speaker 1: chance to be missed by Chauncey rowing out with muffled oars.
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  Speaker 1: All the nights of May twenty fourth and twenty fifth,
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  Speaker 1: he has his men sounding sounding, sounding in silence, the
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  Speaker 1: chant right within pistol shot of Fort George. The night
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  Speaker 1: of the twenty six, troops and marines are bidden, breakfast
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  Speaker 1: at two in the morning, and be ready for action
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  Speaker 1: with a single blanket and rations for one day. That
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  Speaker 1: is all they are told. They embark at four. The
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  Speaker 1: waters are dead calm. The morning of the twenty seventh,
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  Speaker 1: gray as wool with fog sweeps out. Chancey's fleet circles
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  Speaker 1: up to Fort George with one hundred scows in tow,
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  Speaker 1: carrying fifty soldiers each. Vincent takes his courage in his
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  Speaker 1: teeth and gathers his one thousand men inside the walls.
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  Speaker 1: Then the cannon of the frigates split fog and air
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  Speaker 1: and earth, and under cover of the fire, the scows
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  Speaker 1: gain the land by nine a m. First, Vincent's sharpshooters
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  Speaker 1: sally from the fort and fire. Then they fire from
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  Speaker 1: the walls. Then they overturn guns, retreat from the walls,
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  Speaker 1: throw what powder they cannot carry into the water, and retreat,
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  Speaker 1: fighting behind stone walls and ditches. The contest of one
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  Speaker 1: thousand against six thousand is hopeless. Vincent sends couriers riding
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  Speaker 1: like the wind to Chippewa and Queenston and Erie, ordering
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  Speaker 1: the Canadians to retire to the back country. By four
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  Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon, Americans are in possession of the
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  Speaker 1: Canadian side from Fort George to Erie. Vincent retreats at
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  Speaker 1: quick march along the lake shore towards what is now Hamilton.
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  Speaker 1: June first, General Dearborn sends his officers Chandler and Winder
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  Speaker 1: in hot pursuit with thirty five hundred men. Vincent soldiers
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  Speaker 1: have less then ninety rounds of powder to a man.
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  Speaker 1: He has only one thousand men for the garrisons of
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  Speaker 1: Chippewa and Queenston Heights and Erie have fallen back in
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  Speaker 1: a circle to the region of Saint David's. June fifth,
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  Speaker 1: Vincent's Canadians are in camp at Burlington Bay. Only seven
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  Speaker 1: miles away at Stony Creek lies the American Army out
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  Speaker 1: sentries posted at a church artillery on a height commanding
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  Speaker 1: a field officers and men asleep in the long grass.
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  Speaker 1: Humanly speaking, nothing could prevent a decisive battle. The next day.
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  Speaker 1: The two American officers, Chandler and Winder, sit late into
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  Speaker 1: the night candles alight over campstools, mapping out what they
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  Speaker 1: think should be the campaign. It is a hot night,
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  Speaker 1: muggy with June showers, lighted up by occasional flash of
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  Speaker 1: sheet lightning. Then all candles out and putch, Darkness and
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  Speaker 1: silence as of a desert. The American Army is asleep,
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  Speaker 1: in the dead sleep of men exhausted from long, hard
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  Speaker 1: swift marching. The artillery men on the hillicks the centuries,
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  Speaker 1: the outposts at the church, they too are sound asleep.
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  Speaker 1: But the Canadians too know that humanly speaking, nothing can
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  Speaker 1: prevent a decisive battle on the morrow. The stories run
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  Speaker 1: I do not vouch for their truth, though facts seem
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  Speaker 1: to point to some such explanation that Harvey, a Canadian officer,
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  Speaker 1: had come back to the American Army that night disguised
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  Speaker 1: as a Quaker peddling potatoes and noted the unguarded condition
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  Speaker 1: of the exhausted troops. Also that Fitzgibbons, the famous Scout,
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  Speaker 1: came through the American lines dressed as a rustic selling butter.
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  Speaker 1: Whether these stories are true or not, or whether indeed
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  Speaker 1: the Canadians knew anything about the American camp they plucked
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  Speaker 1: resolution from desperation. If they waited for the morrow's battle,
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  Speaker 1: they would be beaten. Harvey proposed to Vincent that seven
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  Speaker 1: hundred picked men go back through the dark and raid
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  Speaker 1: the American camp. Vincent left the entire matter to Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: Setting out at eleven thirty along what is now Main Street, Hamilton,
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  Speaker 1: the Canadians marched in perfect silence. Harvey had given orders
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  Speaker 1: that not a shot should be fired, not a word spoken,
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  Speaker 1: the bayonet alone to be used. By two in the
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  Speaker 1: morning of June sixth. The marchers came to the church
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  Speaker 1: where the sentries were posted. Two were stabbed to death
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  Speaker 1: before they awakened. The third was compelled to give the password,
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  Speaker 1: then bayoneted in turn. The Canadian raiders might have come
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  Speaker 1: to the very midst of the American army if it
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  Speaker 1: had not been for the jubilant hilarity of some young officers, who,
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  Speaker 1: capturing a cannon, uttered a wild huza. On the instant,
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  Speaker 1: bugles sounded alarm, drums beat a crazy tattoo, and every
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  Speaker 1: man leaped from his place in the grass, hand on pistol.
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  Speaker 1: The next second, the blackness of the night was ablaze
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  Speaker 1: with musketry. The soldiers were firing blindly. Officers were shouting
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  Speaker 1: orders that nobody heard. Troops were dashing here, there, everywhere,
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  Speaker 1: lost in the darkness, the heavy artillery horses breaking teather
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  Speaker 1: ropes and stampeding over the field. Major Penderleath, with a
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  Speaker 1: company of young Canadians, suddenly found himself in the midst
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  Speaker 1: of the American camp. One of the young raiders stabbed
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  Speaker 1: seven Americans to death, a brother bayoneted four, and before
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  Speaker 1: daylight betrayed the smallness of the forces, the raiders came
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  Speaker 1: safely off with three guns and one hundred prisoners, including
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  Speaker 1: the two American officers, Winder and Chandler. The loss to
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  Speaker 1: the British was one hundred and fifteen killed and wounded,
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  Speaker 1: but there would be no battle. The next day, the
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  Speaker 1: Battle of Stony Creek sent the Americans retreating back down
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  Speaker 1: the Late Front to Fort George, harried by the English
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  Speaker 1: fleet under Sir James Yeo from Kingston. A hundred episodes
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  Speaker 1: odes might be related of the Stony Creek Raid. For
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  Speaker 1: years it was to be the theme of campfire yarns.
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  Speaker 1: For instance, in the Flare of Musketry Fire, a Canadian
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  Speaker 1: found himself gazing straight along the blade of an American's bayonet, Sir,
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  Speaker 1: the password demanded the American sentry. Luckily, the scout, instead
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  Speaker 1: of wearing an English red coat, had on a blue
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  Speaker 1: jacket resembling that of the American Marines, and he instantly
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  Speaker 1: took his cue. Rascal, He thundered back, what do you mean,
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  Speaker 1: off your line, go back to your post. The Sentry's
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  Speaker 1: bayonet dropped. There was momentary darkness, and the Canadian literally bolted.
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  Speaker 1: Then ludicrous ill luck befell all the generals. Vincent had
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  Speaker 1: accompanied the raiders on horseback. When the bugle sounded retired,
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  Speaker 1: he gave his horse the bit, and in the pitch darkness,
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  Speaker 1: the brute carried him Pallmell along the wrong road, over
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  Speaker 1: fences and hay fields, some fifteen miles into the back country.
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  Speaker 1: Next day, when Vincent was missing, under flag of truce,
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  Speaker 1: messengers went to the retreating American army to find if
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  Speaker 1: he were among the dead. At four in the afternoon,
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  Speaker 1: his horse came limping into the Canadian camp. Chandler, the
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  Speaker 1: American officer on awakening, had sprung on horseback and spurred
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  Speaker 1: over the field, shouting commands in the darkness. His horse
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  Speaker 1: fell and through him when Chandler came to himself. He
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  Speaker 1: was prisoner among the Canadians. Winder's ill luck was equally bad.
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  Speaker 1: By the flare of the firing, he saw what he
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  Speaker 1: thought was a group of a tillmen deserting a gun.
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  Speaker 1: Dashing up. He laid about him with his pistol, shouting,
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  Speaker 1: come on, come on. Another flare of fire, and he
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  Speaker 1: found himself surrounded by a circle of Canadian bayonets. Drop
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  Speaker 1: your pistol, sir, or you are a dead man, ordered
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  Speaker 1: a young Canadian, and Winder surrendered. It will be recalled
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  Speaker 1: that the garrisons of Queenstown below the falls, and Chippewa
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  Speaker 1: above and Erie at the head of the river, had
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  Speaker 1: retreated from the invading Americans to the back country, now
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  Speaker 1: traversed by Wellyn Canal. From different posts beyond what was
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  Speaker 1: known as the Black Swamp. These bands of the dispersed
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  Speaker 1: Canadian army swooped down on the American outposts, harrying the
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  Speaker 1: whole American line from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. Of
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  Speaker 1: all the raiders, none was more daring than Lieutenant fitz Gibbons,
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  Speaker 1: posted beyond the Beaver Dams at a stone house near
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  Speaker 1: de Keeu's Falls, space forbids more than one episode of
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  Speaker 1: his raids. Once, while riding along Lundy's lane alone, he
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  Speaker 1: was recognized by the wife of a Canadian captain, who
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  Speaker 1: dashed from the cottage, warning him to retreat, as a
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  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty Americans had just passed that way. Standing
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  Speaker 1: in front of the roadside inn was the cavalry horse
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  Speaker 1: of an American. Fitzgibbons couldn't resist the temptation for a
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  Speaker 1: bout with the foe, and dismounting was entering the door
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  Speaker 1: when a soldier in blue dashed at him with leveled musket.
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  Speaker 1: Naturally not keen to create alarm, Fitzgibbons knocked the weapon
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  Speaker 1: from the man's hand and without a sound had thrown
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  Speaker 1: him on the ground. When another American rifleman dashed from behind,
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  Speaker 1: strong as a lion, Fitzgibbons threw the first man violently
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  Speaker 1: against the second, and was holding both at bay beneath
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  Speaker 1: his leveled rifle when one of the down men snatched
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  Speaker 1: the irishman's sword from the scabbard. He was in the
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  Speaker 1: very act of thrusting the sword point into Fitzgibbons when
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  Speaker 1: the innkeeper's wife, with a dexterous kick sent the weapons
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  Speaker 1: whirling out of his hand. Fitzgibbons disarmed the men, tied them,
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  Speaker 1: threw them across his horse, and himself mounting, galloped to
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  Speaker 1: the woods with a laugh. Though one hundred and fifty
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  Speaker 1: Americans were within a quarter a mile, the American commanders
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  Speaker 1: at Niagara determined to clean up this nest of raiders
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  Speaker 1: from the back country, and Lieutenant Bostler was ordered to
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  Speaker 1: march from Fort George with some six hundred men. Leaving
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  Speaker 1: Fort George secretly at night, Boorstleur came to Queenston at
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  Speaker 1: eleven on the night of June twenty third. Here all
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  Speaker 1: Canadian soldiers free on parole were seized. To prevent word
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  Speaker 1: of the attack reaching the back country, the troops were
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  Speaker 1: not even permitted to light camp fire or candles. The
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  Speaker 1: great secrecy of the American marchers at once roused suspicion
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  Speaker 1: among the Canadians between Queenston and the village of Saint
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  Speaker 1: David's that the expedition was directed against fitzgibbons scouts at
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  Speaker 1: his home. Between Queenston and Saint David's dwelt a United
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  Speaker 1: Empire loyalist, James Seacoord, recovering from dangerous wounds received in
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  Speaker 1: the Battle of Queenston Heights. He was too weak himself
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  Speaker 1: to go by night and forewarn Fitzgibbons. But his wife,
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  Speaker 1: Laura Ingersoll, a woman of some thirty years, was also
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  Speaker 1: of the Old United Empire loyalist stock. She immediately set
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  Speaker 1: out alone for the back country to warn Fitzgibbons. Many
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  Speaker 1: and contradictory stories are told of her march. Whether she
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  Speaker 1: tramped two nights and two days or only one night
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  Speaker 1: and one day. Whether her march led her twenty or
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  Speaker 1: only twelve miles matters little. She succeeded in passing the
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  Speaker 1: first century on the excuse she was going out to
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  Speaker 1: milk a cow, and she eluded a second by telling
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  Speaker 1: him she wished to visit a wounded brother, which was true.
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  Speaker 1: Then she struck away from the beaten path through what
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  Speaker 1: was known as the Black Swamp. It had rained heavily,
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  Speaker 1: the cedar woods were soggy with moisture, the swamp swollen,
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  Speaker 1: and the streams running a mill race through the summer
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  Speaker 1: heat through the windfall over the quaking forest bog Traplora's secord.
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  Speaker 1: It may be supposed that the most of wild animals
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  Speaker 1: had been frightened from the woods by the heavy cannonading
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  Speaker 1: for almost a year. But the hoot of screech owl,
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  Speaker 1: the eldretch scream of wild cat, the far howl of
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  Speaker 1: the wolf pack hanging on the trail of the armies
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  Speaker 1: for Carrion were not sounds quieting to the nerves of
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  Speaker 1: a frightened woman flitting through the forest by moonlight. It
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  Speaker 1: was clear moonlight when she came within range of beaver
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  Speaker 1: Dam Dick Keu's house. She had just emerged in an
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  Speaker 1: open field when she was assailed with unearthy yells and
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  Speaker 1: a thousand ambushed Indians rose from the grass. Woman a woman,
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  Speaker 1: What does a white woman here, demanded the chief, seizing
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  Speaker 1: her arm. She answered that she was a friend and
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  Speaker 1: it was matter of life and death for her to
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  Speaker 1: see Fitzgibbons at once. So Laura Secord delivered her warning
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  Speaker 1: and saved the Canadian Army. The episode has gone down
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  Speaker 1: to history one of the national legends, like the story
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  Speaker 1: of Madeleine Versay on the Saint Lawrence. Fitzgibbons posts his
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  Speaker 1: forty men in place, and due charm, commander of the
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  Speaker 1: Indians scatters his one thousand redskins in ambush along the trail.
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  Speaker 1: Also word is for two other detachments to come with
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  Speaker 1: all speed. June twenty fourth, at seven in the morning,
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  Speaker 1: Boustur is moving along a narrow forest trail through the
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  Speaker 1: beech woods of beaver Dams. The men are advancing single file.
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  Speaker 1: Mounted infantrymen first with muskets slouched across saddle pommels, then
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  Speaker 1: the heavy wagons, then cavalry to rear. The timber is heavy,
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  Speaker 1: the trail winding. Here, the long line deploys out from
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  Speaker 1: the trail to avoid jumping windfall. Their halt is made
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  Speaker 1: to cut away for the wagons. Then the long line
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  Speaker 1: moves sleepily forward. Yellow sunlight shafted through the green foliage
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  Speaker 1: across the rider's blue uniforms. Suddenly a shot rings out,
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  Speaker 1: and another and another. The forest is full of unseen
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  Speaker 1: foes before behind on all sides the cavalry forces, breaking
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  Speaker 1: rank and dashing forward among the wagons. Boastlers sees it
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  Speaker 1: will be as unsafe to retreat as to go on,
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  Speaker 1: sending messages back to Fort George for aid. He pushes
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  Speaker 1: forward in an open weight field. Fifty six men have
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  Speaker 1: fallen and the bullets are still raining from an invisible foe.
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  Speaker 1: Looking back, he sees mounted men in green coats passing
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  Speaker 1: and repassing across his trail, filing and refiling. It is
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  Speaker 1: a trick of Fitzgibbons to give an impression he has
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  Speaker 1: ten times forty men, but the Americans do not know.
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  Speaker 1: There is no retreat and Indians are to the fore.
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  Speaker 1: In the midst of confusion, Fitzgibbons comes forward with a
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  Speaker 1: white handkerchief on his sword point and begs Bostier to
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  Speaker 1: prevent bloodshed by instant surrender. Bosstier demands to see the
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  Speaker 1: number of his enemies. Fitzgibbons says he will repeat the
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  Speaker 1: request to his commanding officer. Luck is with Fitzgibbons, for
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  Speaker 1: just as he goes back, a small party of reinforcements arrives,
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  Speaker 1: and one of its captains acts the part of commanding officer,
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  Speaker 1: telling Bosstier's messenger hotly that the demand to see the
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  Speaker 1: enemy is an insult. An answer must be given in
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  Speaker 1: five minutes or the Canadians will not be responsible for
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  Speaker 1: the Indians. The fight has lasted three hours. Bossier surrenders
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  Speaker 1: with his entire force. Such was the Battle of Beaver
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  Speaker 1: dams end of Section thirty eight. Recording by Lyndamree Nielsen,
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  Speaker 1: Vancouver b C.