LETTER OF DE LORIMIER (1812)
A call to arms
While, therefore, the struggle was in the Upper Province, the attack on Montreal was, however, reserved for the next year and the Montreal militia, with men like Lieut. Col. Charles de Salaberry, Lieutenant McDonell, Captains Jean Baptiste and Jucherau Duchesnay, Daly and Ferguson, Bruyère and la Motte, with adjutants O’Sullivan and Hedder—all to be mentioned in despatches—were to give the Americans no cause to doubt either British or French Canadian loyalty to the British flag.
The chance came to save Montreal in 1813, on October 21st, when the militia battalions of Montreal and the district took the field at Chateauguay to prevent the advance on the city by the American army under General Hampton. It was a glorious victory for the militia.
The attack on Montreal was planned by Major-General Wilkinson, who had arrived about the end of August, 1813, in Sacketts Harbour to take charge of the troops of the North American frontier. There in his council of officers it was determined: “To rendezvous the whole of the troops on the lake in the vicinity[4] and in cooperation with our squadron to make a bold feint upon Kingston; step down the St. Lawrence; lock up the enemy in our rear to starve or surrender; or oblige him to follow us without artillery, baggage or provisions, or eventually to lay down his arms; to sweep the St. Lawrence of armed craft; and in concert with the division of Major-General Hampton to take Montreal.”[5]
Montreal was therefore the main object of attack. “Montreal is the safer and greater object,” wrote Armstrong to the Secretary of War, fearing hard blows at Kingston, the weaker place, “and you will find there a small force to encounter.” Montreal offered no terrors for there were “no fortifications at that city, or in advance of it,” and only “200 sailors and 400 marines with the militia, number unknown,” but there were, to be sure, “2,500 regular troops expected daily from Quebec.”
Yet the American force which made its way under Major-General Hampton from Burlington was a powerful army. It arrived on October 8th at Chateauguay Four Corners, a small settlement distant five miles from the national boundary, about forty-six from Montreal, and about forty-five from the proposed junction of Hampton’s force with Major-General Wilkinson’s.
William James, who published in London in 1818, “a full and correct account of the military occurrences of the late war between Great Britain and the United States of America,” says of General Hampton’s force, now prepared against Montreal, that it “has been stated at 7,000 infantry and 200 cavalry,” but we have no American authority for supposing that the latter exceeded 180 or the former 5,520, making a total of 5,700 men accompanied by ten pieces of cannon. This army, except the small militia force attached to it, was the same that, with General Dearborn at its head, paraded across the line and back to Plattsburg in the autumn of 1812. During the twelve months that had since elapsed, the men had been drilled under an officer, Major-General Izard, who had served one or two campaigns in the French army. Troops were all in uniform, well clothed and equipped; in short, General 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.
At Montreal there was bustle and stir in getting the additional forces out which were to join Lieutenant-Colonel Salaberry of the Canadian Fencibles, who commenced operations to check the American advance as soon as he had learned that the Americans had crossed the lines. But the whole of the force that went to meet Hampton between October 21st and 29th was only about eight hundred rank and file, with 172 Indians under Captain Lamotte at the settlements of Chateauguay. The battle of Chateauguay and its results may now be told by Sir George Prevost in his dispatch from Montreal to Earl Bathurst.
“Headquarters, Montreal, October 30, 1813.