The Story of Isaac Brock: Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada/29
While these fateful and stirring scenes were being enacted at Queenston, a despatch rider arrived from Evans of Fort George. Without waiting for further instructions, he had, after Brock's departure, with the first glimpse of daylight, cannonaded Fort Niagara. This he did with typical thoroughness. His fire was returned with interest. With a license in direct opposition to the laws of battle, the enemy, under Captain Leonard, turned his guns on the village of Newark, bombarding public buildings and private residences with hot-shot, laying part of the town in ashes. This infuriated Evans, and he renewed the siege with so much vigour that he compelled the American garrison to evacuate. A shot from one of his twelve-pounders burst within the centre of Fort Niagara and decided Leonard to abandon his position in haste, after suffering many casualties.
Under a nasty crackle of musketry, galling and accurate, which harried the men, already chilled and strung up with suspense, the small detachment following the courageous Brock from the lower village soon reached the stone walls that surrounded a residence at the base of the hill. Here our hero dismounted, handed his horse to an orderly, and directed the men to find shelter. A moment later, taking advantage of a lull in the firing, he vaulted over the wall, and waving his sword above his head, shouted to the grenadiers a word of encouragement. They answered with a cheer, still following him as he led the way up the steep ascent towards the captured battery.[Pg 153]
Wool, within the enclosure of the redan, was closely watching the steady advance of the small body of resolute men breasting the Height.
The purpose of these men was unmistakable. As they drew closer, scarlet uniform and polished bayonet blazed and flashed in the sunshine. Having been heavily reinforced, he detached a party of 150 picked regulars, and with these moved out to meet the small band of British led by Brock. A brief exchange of shots took place, and the Americans fell back, firing.
Though the rain had ceased the trees were gemmed with drops that still dripped. The ground was strewn with wet leaves, slippery, and affording treacherous foothold. Progress was slow and laborious. As the hillside grew steeper, a man here and there slid, lurched and fell. To maintain any semblance of formation was impossible. The fire grew hotter. Ball and buckshot and half-ounce bullets down-poured on them from above. "Death crouched behind every rock and lurked in every hollow."
Had Brock's handful of loyalists been able to rush headlong, spurred by lust of conflict, and lock bayonets with the enemy, another tale might have been told. But the effect of the futile struggle for foothold on the hillside, seamed with slippery depressions, in the teeth of a blizzard of lead, soon showed. The bullet-swept ascent was a cruel test for men already fagged and faint. As for our hero, though storm-beaten, stained with mud, and hungry as a wolf, he was still the same indomitable youth who had scaled the cut cliffs of Cobo in search of seagulls' eggs. His vigour and disregard of danger were magnificent. His example, splendid.[Pg 154]
Brock may not have been judicially precautious. Had he waited for reinforcements—there were none nearer than Fort George—his own life might possibly have been preserved. As an alternative he could perhaps have withdrawn and sought shelter in the village. But—apart from the peril to his own prestige—who would care to estimate the ulterior effect upon his men if such an example had been set them? These rough Canadian irregulars consisted, as they do to-day, of the finest fighting material in the world. The law of self-preservation had no place in the litany of Isaac Brock. He was a daily dealer in self-sacrifice. Besides, this was not the time or place to calculate involved issues. He was not a cold-blooded politician, nor was he an opportunist; he was merely a patriot and a soldier fighting for hearth and home, for flag and country. It was not an issue that could be left to arbitration in the hereafter, or threshed out by judge and jury. The situation called for instant action. To do his obvious duty rather than to know it, seemed to our hero the only honorable exit from the dilemma, even though it resulted in his own undoing.
Not until the dead are mustered by the God of hosts—at the last roll-call—will this noble soldier's conception of duty and his sacrifice be truly appraised.
God and the right was carved deep in the heart of Isaac Brock. Though he felt for his men, it was in a compassionate, not a weak way. War without bloodshed was inconceivable. He had been trained in an age and in a school that regarded blood-shedding in the protection of the right as wholly justifiable, as it was inevitable. Is there any change in respect to the application of this[Pg 155] doctrine to-day? For himself he had no compassion whatever. His faith in the cause compelled him to fight to a finish. He was not of the potter's common clay of which fatalists are made. How many of these faithful fellows, he wondered, as his alert mind rapidly reviewed the present and recalled the past—Canadian and Celt, Irish and Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and Catholic, whom "neither politics, sect or creed could, in such a crisis, keep apart"—would leave their bodies to bleach on that hill-side? How many of them were destined to yield their lives for honour's sake, to die with their valour unrecorded in the defence—in the case of numbers of them—not of their own, but of their brother's rights?
The next second he was wondering what was doing at St. Peter's Port or London. It would be noon there. Were the good brothers and sister thinking of "Master Isaac" at that moment? Then, swifter than light, he was at Niagara, and the bowed figure of a woman at a porch, with pale, upturned face, who that morning had bade him a silent farewell, rose before him—surely it was years ago—the woman to whom he was betrothed. Then, in a flash, he turned to see some wavering figures around him, some of his own men—not a few wounded—who faltered and shrank from the screaming buckshot, and dropped to the rear.
The soldier awoke.
"This is the first time," he shouted, "I have ever seen the 49th turn their backs! Surely the heroes of Egmont will never tarnish their record!"
The rebuke stung. The panting ranks closed up.