THE BATTLE OF QUEENSTON HEIGHTS.
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.
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.
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 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.
[Illustration: DEATH OF ISAAC BROCK]