Recollections of the War of 1812

by William Dunlop

I shall have occasion to show hereafter how easily those camp habits may be acquired; meantime I have only to remark that, were they generally understood, an army might often be kept in the field in an infinitely more serviceable condition than it now is, and the prevalence of ague and dysentery in a body of men exposed to hardship and privation, if not totally arrested, might at least be very much diminished. I lately saw a very clever article on this subject by Sir J. E. Alexander of the 32nd Regt., now quartered at London, U.C., and I wrote him a very long and a very prosy letter thereanent. My positions, if I remember aright, were, first—That every Regiment in Canada should be made a Light Infantry Regiment, insomuch as they ought to be taught to understand and obey the bugle; secondly, that they should be taught the use of the axe, without which a Regiment is absolutely helpless in the woods, and this might be done by making them chop their own firewood, and giving them the money that is otherwise given to the contractor: and thirdly, that they should be taken into the woods for a month every summer, with a party of woodsmen to teach them how to erect shanties, cut fire-wood and provide for themselves in such a situation. Even the Commissariat Department (the most important in modern warfare) may be dispensed with by able woods-men. Sir William Johnson marched his Regiment, who were all woods-men, from the Mohawk River to Fort Niagara, through the woods, requiring no other support, on that long line of march, than their rifles were amply sufficient to supply them with.

When I arrived at Fort Erie, I found myself appointed to the very service I would have chosen had I had the right of choosing. A corps of six flank companies was organized under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Drummond, of Keltie, then commandant of the 104th Regiment.

Colonel Drummond was everything that could be required in a soldier; brave, generous, open-hearted and good natured, he added to all these the talent of a first-rate tactitian; and if at times eccentricities broke out through all these, any one who knew him must have agreed with his clansman, and I believe kinsman, Sir Gordon Drummond, that "all these eccentricities would one day mellow down into sound common sense, and that Keltie would be an honor to the service." Alas! his prophecy was destined never to be fulfilled—that was his last campaign, and he fell in it as a brave man and a soldier would wish to fall, a death far less to be pitied than envied. But I am anticipating. We were divided into three brigades—let not the old soldier suppose that these were such brigades as are generally in the army. Our force never amounted to 9,000 men, including artillery, cavalry and militia, and these took their tour of piquet duty in rotation, so that we had one day of duty, were relieved the next, and on the fourth again took our turn. This, all things considered, especially alarms and skirmishes, when we all turned out, was pretty hard work, but we were in high spirits, and it never affected us. One of the great drawbacks of the service in Canada was that we got the rubbish of every department in the army. Any man whom The Duke deemed unfit for the Peninsula was considered as quite good enough for the Canadian market, and in nothing was this more conspicuous than in our Engineer Department. Without the semblance of a battering train, it was deemed expedient to besiege Fort Erie, and the ground was occupied, parties sent in advance, and batteries ordered to be constructed. Our first essay in this line was a battery on the main road leading to the Fort, which was to breach the strong stone building in the centre of it, on which were mounted, if I recollect rightly, one iron 24-pounder, one 18-pounder and two brass field 24-pounders. I have never seen before or since, any like them, but they were of the time of George II., and were admirable guns in the field, though not quite the best that could be used for breaching the wall of a fort. A brass and an iron mortar were afterwards added to this most efficient battering train; the latter, however, having no bed, was placed in one of oak, which it split almost as often as it was fired. After much skirmishing with the enemy and the covering parties, the battery was at last opened, and gentle reader! if ever you saw what is termed hopping bowling at cricket you may have some idea how our fire operated. I very much doubt if one shot in ten reached the rampart at all, and the fortunate exceptions that struck the stone building at which they were aimed, rebounded from its sides as innocuous as tennis balls.

The fact is the distance had been miscalculated, and we were attempting to breach a wall at a distance that it was scarcely possible to hit it. The enemy knew their distance better, and managed to pitch shot and shell among us in a way that was anything but pleasant.

I remember one day while I was in the battery, admiring our abortive attempts to do any mischief, while a gun of the enemy was practising with the most admirable precision on us, Mr. K., of the Glengarries, lounged into the battery, and casually asked the Commanding Engineer how far we were from the Fort. He replied about seven hundred yards. Mr. K. said he thought double the distance would be nearer the mark;—this brought on a dispute, which Mr. K. offered to settle by either cutting a fuse or laying a gun for the supposed distance. To this it was replied that both the powder and the fuses were bad, and no faith could be had in them. Mr. K. then asked leave to lay the 24-pounder, and the Engineer, with a sneer, looking at his green jacket, observed, that there was some difference between a rifle and a 24-pounder; however, Mr. K. then himself on the trail of the gun, brought out the coign further than it had been before, and from the orders he gave to the artillery even, showed, at least, that he knew the words of command in working a gun. The presiding Engineer, seeing the elevation he was taking, asked him if he was aiming at the truck of the flagstaff of the Fort. He replied, no—the site of the embrazure would be high enough for him. The gun was fired, and the ball entered the sand bags about a foot below the mark. He then asked leave to try a second shot. He laid the gun with great care, and took a long while to do it,—at last he gave the word "fire," away went the ball, and driving the sand up from the site of the embrazure, took the enemy's gun on the transom, and capsized it. "Pray, sir," said the Engineer, "where might you have learned to lay guns?" "At Woolwich," was the reply, "where I was three years Serjeant Major of Artillery."

It was then resolved that another battery should be erected some hundreds of yards in advance, and to the right of the first. Accordingly, our brigade was sent out to drive the enemy's piquets out of the wood in our front, and establish parties to cover the workmen.

This duty was performed in good style, but with considerable loss on our part, for in a wood the advancing party always acts to disadvantage, as the retreating can fire from under cover, and retreat in the smoke; whereas the advancing party must necessarily expose himself somewhat, the quantum of exposure depending much on his knowledge of his business in advancing in such a way as will give his antagonists as little chance as may be of taking a steady aim at him.

The ground was accordingly chosen, and the third effort commenced. The enemy were aware of what we were about, so they kept up a constant fire of round shot and shells upon the working parties. The direction of their practice was admirable, but they seemed to have altogether lost their knowledge of elevation, for their shot was uniformly over our heads. At last the battery was declared ready to open, but, as it was masked by a considerable belt of trees, these had, of course, to be felled, and that required a strong covering, and an equally strong working party. If the enemy had failed with their round shot against the men in the trenches, they were infinitely more fortunate with their grape against the covering and working party. This was by far the bloodiest bush skirmish we had. The party with which I was, though not 120 strong, had six killed and about thirty wounded; however, we stuck obstinately to it, and at last our object was achieved. The battery was unmasked, and the Lord have mercy on the defenders of the Fort, for we would have none! "Mistakes will creep into the best regulated families." When all this profuse waste of life, time and labor had been gone into, it was discovered that the battery had been erected without taking the levels, and that a rise of ground in front of it prevented us even from seeing the Fort. This at once demonstrated that the battery was useless, and explained the reason why the American shot had been so innocuous. During the whole time we lay before Fort Erie, bush-skirmishing was an every day's occurrence, and though the numbers lost in each of these affairs may seem but trifling, yet the aggregate of men put hors de combat in a force so small as ours became very serious in the long run. They generally commenced with some accidental rencontre of videttes—their firing brought out the piquet, then the brigade on duty, and then, not unfrequently, the brigade next for duty. I think, on a fair average of three months, I enjoyed this amusement about three times a week.

Excepting only a melée of cavalry, a bush skirmish is the only aspect in which modern warfare appears in anything picturesque. Look at all attempts at painting a modern battle, and unless the painter takes such a distance as to render everything indistinct, you have nothing but a series of stiff, hard, regular, straight lines, that might represent a mathematical diagram in uniform. Not so with light infantry in a wood. There a man ceases to be merely a part of a machine, or a point in a long line. Both his personal safety and his efficiency depend on his own knowledge and tact. To stand straight upright and be shot at is no part of his duty; his great object is to annoy the enemy, and keep himself safe; and so far was this carried by the tacticians of the Prussian school, that in a German Contingent, which served on this continent during the revolutionary war, a yager has been flogged for getting himself wounded.

Perhaps there can be no military scene more fit for the pencil than a body of light infantry awaiting an attack. The variety of attitude necessary to obtain cover—the breathless silence—the men attentive by eye and ear—every glance (furtively lowered) directed to the point—some kneeling, some lying down, and some standing straight behind a tree—the officer with his silver whistle in his hand, ready to give the signal to commence firing, and the bugle boy looking earnestly in his officer's face waiting for the next order. This is worth painting, which cannot, by any one having a decent regard for truth, be said of the base reliefs that we see on the tombs of heroes, of a line of men marching in step, each with his bayonet levelled at precisely the same angle, in a manner that would draw forth the enthusiastic approbation of the shade of Sir David Dundas, but which no effort of the genius of sculptor or painter could even render more tolerable, than a well executed representation of the same quantity of park pales.