A VICTORY AND ITS COST.
While the events just described had been taking place, an
important movement was made for the recovery of Queenston Heights.
Major-General Sheaffe, with a force of about nine hundred redcoats
and militia, made a circuitous march through the village of St.
David's, and thus gained the crest of the heights on which the
enemy were posted. Here he was re-enforced by the arrival of a
company of the 41st grenadiers and a body of militiamen from
Chippewa.
With a volley and a gallant British cheer, they attacked, about
two o'clock in the afternoon, the American force, which had also
been re-enforced to about the same number as the British. Courage
the enemy had, but they lacked the confidence and steadiness
imparted by the presence of the veteran British troops.
Nevertheless, for a time they stoutly stood their ground; but,
soon perceiving the hopelessness of resistance, they everywhere
gave way, and retreated precipitately down the hill to their place
of landing. The Indians, like sleuth hounds that had broken leash,
unhappily could not be restrained, and, shrieking their blood-
curdling war-whoops, pursued with tomahawk and reeking blade the
demoralized fugitives. Many stragglers were cut off from the main
body and attempted to escape through the woods. These were
intercepted and driven back by the exasperated Indians, burning to
avenge the death of Brock, for whom they felt an affection and
veneration for which the savage breast would scarce have been
deemed capable.
Terrified at the appearance of the enraged warriors, many of the
Americans flung themselves wildly over the cliff and endeavoured
to scramble down its rugged and precipitous slope. Some were
impaled upon the jagged pines, others reached the bottom bruised
and bleeding, and others, attempting to swim the rapid stream,
were drowned in its whirling eddies. One who reached the opposite
shore in a boat made a gesture of defiance and contempt toward his
foes across the river, when he fell, transpierced with the bullet
of an Indian sharpshooter.
Two brothers of the Canadian militia fought side by side, when, in
the moment of victory, a shot pierced the lungs of the younger, a
boy of seventeen, with a fair, innocent face. His brother bore him
from the field in his arms, and, while the life-tide ebbed from
his wound, the dying boy faltered--
"Kiss me, Jim. Tell mother--I was not--afraid to die," and as the
blood gushed from his mouth, the brave young spirit departed.
All that day, and on many a foughten field thereafter, the living
brother heard those dying words, and in his ear there rang a wild
refrain, which nerved his arm and steeled his heart to fight for
the country hallowed by his brother's blood.
"O, how the drum beats so loud!
'Close beside me in the fight,
My dying brother says, 'Good night!'
And the cannon's awful breath
Screams the loud halloo of Death!
And the drum,
And the drum
Beats so loud!"
Such were some of the dreadful horrors with which a warfare
between two kindred peoples was waged; and such were some of the
costly sacrifices with which the liberties of Canada were won. As
from the vantage ground of these happier times we look back upon
the stern experiences of those iron days, they inspire a blended
feeling of pity and regret, not unmingled with a vague remorse,
shot through and through our patriotic pride and exultation, like
dark threads in a bright woof. Through the long centuries of
carnage and strife through which the race has struggled up to
freedom, how faint has seemed the echo of the angel's song, "Peace
on earth, good will to men."
"I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan.
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.
"Is it, O man with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies.
* * * * *
"Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations
I hear once more the voice of Christ say, 'Peace!'
"Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise."
The result of the battle of Queenston Heights was the
unconditional surrender of Brigadier Wadsworth and nine hundred
and fifty officers and privates as prisoners of war. But this
victory, brilliant as it was, was dearly bought with the death of
the loved and honored Brock, the brave young Macdonnell, and those
of humbler rank, whose fall brought sorrow to many a Canadian
home.
"Joy's bursting shout in whelming grief was drowned,
And victory's self unwilling audience found;
On every brow the cloud of sadness hung,--
"The sounds of triumph died on every tongue."
Three days later all that was mortal of General Brock and his
gallant aide-de-camp was committed to the earth with mournful
pageantry. With arms reversed and muffled drums and the wailing
strains of the "Dead March," the sad procession passed, while the
half-mast flags and minute guns of both the British and American
forts attested the honour and esteem in which the dead soldiers
were held by friends and foes alike. Amid the tears of war-bronzed
soldiers and even of stoical Indians they were laid in one common
grave in a bastion of Fort George. A grateful country has since
erected on the scene of the victory--one of the grandest sites on
earth--a noble monument to the memory of Brock, and beneath it,
side by side, sleeps the dust of the heroic chief and his faithful
aide-de-camp--united in their death and not severed in their
burial.
As Neville and the squire and Zenas turned away from the solemn
pageant of which they had been silent spectators, the latter
remarked,
"Captain Villiers said he'd almost give his other arm to be able
to be present to-day and lay a wreath on the coffin of his gallant
chief. As he couldn't come, he wrote these verses, which he wished
me to post to the York _Gazette_. He said I might read them
to you, Mr. Trueman, before I sent them." And the boy, not very
fluently, but with a good deal of feeling, read the following
lines:--
"Low bending o'er the ragged bier,
The soldier drops the mournful tear,
For life departed, valour driven,
Fresh from the field of death, to Heaven.
"But Time shall fondly trace the name
Of BROCK upon the scrolls of Fame,
And those bright laurels, which should wave
Upon the brow of one so brave,
Shall flourish vernal o'er his grave."
Neville commended the graceful tribute with generous warmth, when
Zenas remarked,
"The Captain will be glad to hear you like them. Leastways, I
suppose so. He read them himself to Kate this morning, and seemed
pleased because they made her cry."
"He is a brave gentleman," says the squire. "I fear it will be
long before he mounts his horse, again."
"O he'll soon be round again," chimed in Zenas. "He said Kate
would be his Elaine, to nurse the wounded Lancelot back to life.
Who was Lancelot?"
"Some of those moon-struck poetry fellows, I'll be bound," said
the squire contemptuously.
"Nay, a very gallant knight," said Neville, who had when a boy,
read with delight Sir Thomas Mallory's book of King Arthur; but he
did not seem to relish the comparison and led the conversation
into a serious vein, as befitting the solemn occasion.