Almost simultaneous with the attack on the left, another was made on the American right, against the old fort; this was repelled, but Drummond, valiant man, could not be held in check, and under cover of a heavy cloud of smoke, followed by a hundred of the Royal Artillery, he crept silently around the fort and by means of scaling ladders gained the parapet almost unobserved. All attempts to dislodge the enemy failed. Time and again they were charged, but each time they beat back their assailants. Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond commanded his men to give no quarter, and in a short time he fell, pierced through the heart by a man to whom he refused mercy. Daylight dawned with the enemy repulsed on the left. Reinforcements were brought to the right but there was no room to use them. The Americans were finally gathered for a furious charge, when that part of the fort which the British had seized was blown suddenly a hundred feet into the air and fell in ruins. At the same instant a galling fire was opened from the batteries and the enemy was compelled to retire.
Both armies now received reinforcements and kept preparing for a second engagement. A continual cannonade was kept up, when on the 28th of August General Gaines was so injured by a shell that he had to retire from action. General Brown, though shattered in health then resumed command. The British were continually strengthening their works and he saw that his only hopes lay in a sortie. The weather had been rainy which inconvenienced the enemy as their works were located on the low ground. Their numbers had also been greatly reduced by fever. These facts were learned from prisoners which had been captured. The sortie was planned for the 17th of September, all the officers acquiescing except General Ripley. The plan was laid with great secrecy and was favoured by heavy fog on the morning of the proposed action. The Americans were entirely successful, the enemy being driven from their works and almost all their supplies captured. This victory was hailed with delight by the whole country. This, with the brilliant achievement at Plattsburg, and the repulse of the British from Baltimore caused rejoicing all over the nation, and restored the people from that gloom into which they had been cast by the fall of the national capital.
On the 5th day of October General Izard arrived with reinforcements and took command. With almost eight thousand troops he now prepared to attack Drummond, but all attempts to draw him out of his trenches failed.
Learning that there was a large store of grain at the mill on Lyons Creek, Bissell was sent to destroy it. On the night of the 18th, he was attacked but was successful in driving off the enemy and accomplishing his task. Drummond, now perceiving that he could not hope to cope successfully with the superior forces brought against him, fell back to Fort George and Burlington Heights. General Izard soon removed his whole force from Canada. On the 5th of November Fort Erie was blown up, to keep it from falling again into the hands of the British.
On September 11th, the brilliant victory, mentioned before, was gained by the Americans at Plattsburg and with the opening of winter, the militia was disbanded and the war closed on the Canadian frontier.
In 1837 the Niagara was again the scene of military operations on a slight scale when the Patriot War broke out, an uprising of revolutionists who planned the overturning of the Canadian Government. Navy Island was for a time the headquarters of the ferment, and from here, under the date of December 17th, the leader, William Lyon Mackenzie, issued a proclamation to the citizens of Canada. This strong, misguided man is most perfectly described in Bourinot's The Story of Canada:
He had a deep sense of public wrongs, and placed himself immediately in the front rank of those who were fighting for a redress of undoubted grievances. He was thoroughly imbued with the ideas of English radicalism, and had an intense hatred of Toryism in every form. He possessed little of that strong common-sense and power of acquisitiveness which make his countrymen, as a rule, so successful in every walk of life. When he felt he was being crushed by the intriguing and corrupting influences of the governing class, aided by the lieutenant-governor, he forgot all the dictates of reason and prudence, and was carried away by a current of passion which ended in rebellion. His journal, The Colonial Advocate, showed in its articles and its very make-up the erratic character of the man. He was a pungent writer, who attacked adversaries with great recklessness of epithet and accusation. So obnoxious did he become to the governing class that a number of young men, connected with the best families, wrecked his office, but the damages he recovered in a court of law enabled him to give it a new lease of existence. When the "family compact" had a majority in the assembly, elected in 1830, he was expelled five times for libellous reflections on the government and house, but he was re-elected by the people, who resented the wrongs to which he was subject, and became the first mayor of Toronto, as York was now called. He carried his grievances to England, where he received much sympathy, even in conservative circles. In a new legislature, where the "compact" were in a minority, he obtained a committee to consider the condition of provincial affairs. The result was a famous report on grievances which set forth in a conclusive and able manner the constitutional difficulties under which the country laboured, and laid down clearly the necessity for responsible government. It would have been fortunate both for Upper Canada and Mackenzie himself at this juncture, had he and his followers confined themselves to a constitutional agitation on the lines set forth in this report. By this time Robert Baldwin and Egerton Ryerson, discreet and prominent reformers, had much influence, and were quite unwilling to follow Mackenzie in the extreme course on which he had clearly entered. He lost ground rapidly from the time of his indiscreet publication of a letter from Joseph Hume, the English radical, who had expressed the opinion that the improper proceedings of the legislature, especially in expelling Mackenzie, "must hasten the crisis that was fast approaching in the affairs of Canada, and which would terminate in independence and freedom from the baneful domination of the mother-country." Probably even Mackenzie and his friends might have been conciliated and satisfied at the last moment had the imperial government been served by an able and discreet lieutenant-governor. But never did the imperial authorities make a greater mistake than when they sent out Sir Francis Bond Head, who had no political experience whatever.
From the beginning to the end of his administration he did nothing but blunder. He alienated even the confidence of the moderate element of the Reformers, and literally threw himself into the arms of the "family compact," and assisted them at the elections of the spring of 1836, which rejected all the leading men of the extreme wing of the Reform party. Mackenzie was deeply mortified at the result, and determined from that moment to rebel against the government, which, in his opinion, had no intention of remedying public grievances. At the same time Papineau, with whom he was in communication, had made up his mind to establish a republic, une nation Canadienne, on the banks of the St. Lawrence.
The disloyal intentions of Papineau and his followers were made very clear by the various meetings which were held in the Montreal and Richelieu districts, by the riots which followed public assemblages in the city of Montreal, by the names of "Sons of Liberty" and "Patriots" they adopted in all their proceedings, by the planting of "trees" and raising of "caps" of liberty. Happily for the best interests of Canada the number of French Canadians ready to revolt were relatively insignificant, and the British population were almost exclusively on the side of the government. Bishop Lartigue and the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church now asserted themselves very determinedly against the dangerous and seditious utterances of the leaders of the "Patriots." Fortunately a resolute, able soldier, Sir John Colborne, was called from Upper Canada to command the troops in the critical situation of affairs, and crushed the rebellion in its very inception. A body of insurgents, led by Dr. Wolfred Nelson, showed some courage at St. Denis, but Papineau took the earliest opportunity to find refuge across the frontier. Thomas Storrow Brown, an American by birth, also made a stand at St. Charles, but both he and Nelson were easily beaten by the regulars. A most unfortunate episode was the murder of Lieutenant Wier, who had been captured by Nelson while carrying despatches from General Colborne, and was butchered by some insurgent habitants, in whose custody he had been placed. At St. Eustache the rebels were severely punished by Colborne himself, and a number burned to death in the steeple of a church where they had made a stand. Many prisoners were taken in the course of the rebellious outbreak. The village of St. Benoit and isolated houses elsewhere were destroyed by the angry loyalists, and much misery inflicted on all actual or supposed sympathisers with Papineau and Nelson. Lord Gosford now left the country, and Colborne was appointed administrator. Although the insurrection practically ended at St. Denis and St. Charles, bodies of rebels and American marauders harassed the frontier settlements for some time, until at last the authorities of the United States arrested some of the leaders and forced them to surrender their arms and munitions of war.
The Caroline incident most closely connects the immediate Niagara region with the Patriot rebellion. This small steamer was chartered by Buffalo parties to run between that city, Navy Island, and Schlosser, the American landing above the Falls. The Canadian authorities very properly looked upon this as a bold attempt to provide the freebooters on Navy Island with the sinews of rebellion. Colonel Allan McNab was sent to seize the vessel, and the fact that it was found moored at the American shore in no way troubled the determined loyalists. It was about midnight December 29th when the attacking party found the ship. In the melée one man was killed; the boat was fired and set adrift in the river, passing over the Horseshoe Fall while still partly afire.