Major-General Brock.
The opportunity of active service soon came, as the 49th was thrown into Holland, Brock being wounded at Egmont-op-Zee, or Bergen. His simple statement concerning being struck in the breast by a spent bullet is interesting: "I got knocked down soon after the enemy began to retreat," he remarks, "but never quitted the field, and returned to my duty in less than half an hour."[30] Here Brock fought under Sir John Moore and Sir Ralph Abercrombie; in 1801 he was second in command of the land forces at Copenhagen and saw Lord Nelson on the Elephant write his famous letter to the Crown Prince of Denmark. During the next year the 49th was sent to Canada and was quartered at Fort George near Newark, the present Niagara-on-the-Lake. The character of Brock's management of the troops under him is well illustrated in the case of a strange mutiny that came near to breaking out at this time at Fort George due to the useless annoyance, or alleged actual severity, which so exasperated the men that an almost inconceivable plot to kill the officers was discovered. After the crime the soldiers were to cross the river into the United States and escape. One of the confederates was sent by the commanding officer to Brock at York with a letter describing the horrifying discovery. The incensed commander compelled the soldier at the point of a musket to disclose the chief conspirators. Hastening to Fort George the ringleaders were apprehended at the dinner table and hurried off to Quebec, where they were summarily shot. As a result Brock himself was ordered to make Fort George his headquarters, whereupon all trouble seems to have ceased.
In 1805 Brock received his colonelcy and with it leave of absence. While at home he made a report to the commander-in-chief which throws an interesting light on affairs at that period, favouring the formation of a veteran battalion for service in Upper Canada. He wrote:
The artifices employed to wean the soldier from his duty, conspire to render almost ineffectual every effort of the officers to maintain the usual degree of order and discipline. The lures to desertion continually thrown out by the Americans, and the facility with which it can be accomplished, exacting a more than ordinary precaution on the part of the officers, insensibly produces mistrust between them and the men, highly prejudicial to the service.
Experience has taught me that no regular regiment, however high its claim to discipline, can occupy the frontier posts of Lower and Upper Canada without suffering materially in its numbers. It might have been otherwise some years ago; but now that the country, particularly the opposite shore, is chiefly inhabited by the vilest characters, who have an interest in debauching the soldier from his duty; since roads are opened into the interior of the States, which facilitate desertion, it is impossible to avoid the contagion. A total change must be effected in the minds and views of those who may hereafter be sent on this duty, before the evil can be surmounted.[31]
Such was the warlike tenor of despatches now at hand from Canada that Brock, eager to be at the post of duty at a critical time, hastened from London in June, 1806, cutting short his leave of absence. Throughout that year and its successor he was actively engaged in studying his province with regard to military demands that might suddenly be made upon it; it is noteworthy that the commander feared that in case of an outbreak between England and America a considerable part of the inhabitants of Upper Canada (Loyalists) would prove friendly to the young Republic. Discussing a new militia law he wrote as follows to the Council:
In thus complying with the dictates of his duty, Colonel Brock was not prepared to hear that the population of the province, instead of affording him ready and effectual support, might probably add to the number of his enemies; and he feels much disappointment in being informed by the first authority, that the only law in any degree calculated to answer the end proposed was likely, if attempted to be enforced, to meet with such general opposition as to require the aid of the military to give it even a momentary impulse.