Neville Trueman, the Pioneer Preacher Part 16

"But we got it hard enough as it was. General Winfield Scott, [Footnote: Afterwards Commander-in-chief of the United States armies.] began pounding away at us with his artillery just before sundown. We expected to be re-enforced before long, so we determined to hold the hill where our own battery was planted at any cost. The sun went down; it got darker and darker; still the cannon flashed their tongues of flame, and the deadly rattle of the musketry went on without a minute's pause for three mortal hours. The Yankee sharp-shooters crept up in the darkness behind a screen of barberry bushes growing in the panels of a rail fence, and at a volley picked off all the gunners of our battery but three. Then, with a cheer, they rushed forward with the bayonet, and wrestled in fierce hand-to-hand fight with our infantry for the guns, which were alternately taken and re-taken on either side, till the hill-slope was slippery with blood.

"Our troop of dragoons was ordered to charge up the hill and re- capture the guns. I had only time to lift up my heart in prayer, and say 'Lord have mercy upon us,' when a roundshot struck my horse. He reared straight up and fell backward, partly falling upon me. All at once everything got black, and I heard not a sound of the din of battle that was raging around me. After a while, I don't know how long, it seemed like hours, I became aware of a deep thunderous sound that seemed to fill the air and cause the very earth to tremble, and I knew it was the roar of the Falls.

Then I felt an intolerable aching, as if every bone in my body was broken. I opened my eyes and saw the moon s.h.i.+ning through the drifting clouds. I was parched with thirst and raging with fever, and felt a sharp pain piercing my temple. Raising my arm to my head, I found my hair all clotted with blood from a scalp wound.

"Just then I heard a rattle and a cheer, and galloping down hill full in the moonlight, right toward the spot where I lay, a bra.s.s field-gun fully horsed, the drivers las.h.i.+ng the horses with all their might. I was afraid they would gallop over me, and raised my arm to warn them aside. But they either didn't see or couldn't heed, and on came the heavy cannon, lurching from side to side, the polished bra.s.s gleaming in the moonlight like gold. I heard a deep shuddering groan as the heavy wheels rolled over a wounded man beside me, crus.h.i.+ng the bones of his legs like pipe stems. As the plunging horses galloped past, one iron-shod hoof struck fire against a stone just beside my head. In the momentary flash I could see the hoof poised just above my face. I remember I noticed that it had been badly shod, and one of the nails was bent over the edge of the shoe. By a merciful Providence, instead of das.h.i.+ng my brains out he stepped on one side, and I received no further hurt. After the roar of the battle had ceased, while the solemn stars looked down like eyes of pitying angels on the field of slaughter, I managed to crawl to the road-side and wet my parched lips with some muddy water that lay in a cattle track. In the morning Trueman found me and brought me off the field, and here I am laid up for one while. I pray G.o.d I may never see another battle. It is a sight to make angels weep and devils rejoice, to see men thus mangling each other like beasts of prey."

"Amen!" said his father. "Even when it is just, war is the greatest of calamities; and when unjust, it is the greatest of crimes."

Sadder still was the story told by Neville Trueman to Katharine Drayton, as he conveyed to her the dying message of Captain Villiers. The Captain was gallantly cheering on his company, when a bullet pierced his lungs. He fell from his horse and was bore to the rear, and carried into the little Methodist Church, which had been turned into a temporary hospital. Here Neville Trueman was busily engaged in far different ministrations from those which were the wont of that consecrated spot. The seats had been removed, and beds of unthrashed wheat sheaves from the neighbouring harvest-fields were strewn upon the floor.

As the bleeding form of Captain Villiers was brought in, Neville saw by his deathly pallor and his laboured breathing that he had not many hours to live. He sat down beside him on the floor and took the hand of the dying man, which he softly caressed as it lay pa.s.sive in his grasp. Opening his eyes, a wan smile of recognition flickered over the pallid countenance. He tried to speak, but in vain. Then he pointed to his breast pocket, and made signs which Neville interpreted as a wish that he should take something out.

He obeyed the suggestion, and found the copy of Wesley's Hymns given him by Katharine Drayton, but now, alas! dyed with the life- blood of a loyal heart.

"Tell her," said the dying man, but he faltered in his speech.

Then, with difficulty opening the book, he turned to a pa.s.sage where the leaf was turned down and a hymn was marked with the letters "H.V.," the initials of Herbert Villiers. The hymn was that sublime one beginning--

"Now I have found the ground wherein Sure my soul's anchor may remain:

The wounds of Jesus, for my sin Before the world's foundation slain; Whose mercy shall unshaken stay, When heaven and earth are fled away."

The dying eyes looked eagerly at Neville as the latter read the words; but when he replied, "Yes, I will tell her, and give her hack her book enriched with such a sacred recollection," a look of infinite content rested on the pallid face.

"I bless G.o.d I ever met her," faltered the failing voice. "Tell her," it continued with a final effort, "Tell her--we shall meet again--where they neither marry--nor are given in marriage--but are as the angels of G.o.d in heaven!" And with a smile of ineffable peace the happy spirit departed from the carnage of earth's battles to the everlasting peace of the skies.

Tears of pity fell fast from the eyes of the tender-hearted Katharine as she listened to the touching narration. As soon as she could sufficiently command her feelings she wrote a sympathetic letter to the now doubly-bereaved widow of the stately Melton Hall, amid the broad ancestral acres of Berks.h.i.+re. She enclosed therewith the jewelled cross, which had been committed to her keeping; but the blood-stained hymn-book she placed in her little cabinet, beside the Prayer-Book with its leaves of rosemary for remembrance and pansies for thoughts.

The fellow-officers of Captain Villiers erected over the grave in which their comrade was buried, beneath the walls of the humble Methodist Church, a marble slab commemorating his valour and his heroic death. With the lapse of five-and-sixty years, however, its brief inscription has become well nigh illegible through the weathering of the elements, and the grave has become indistinguishable from the mouldering mounds on every side around it. But beneath the funeral hatchment of his father, on the chancel walls of Melton-Mowbray Church, is a marble s.h.i.+eld charged with a cross enguled and a wyvern volant; and a record of the untimely death of the hope and last scion of the house on the banks of the far-off Niagara.

CHAPTER XX

CLOSING SCENES OF THE WAR.

We return now to retrace the fortunes of the war of which the culminating acts, at least in Upper Canada, had now taken place.

After the fatal fight of Lundy's Lane, as we have seen, the American force retreated precipitately on Fort Erie, of which they retained possession, and, working night and day, formed an entrenched camp for their protection, strengthening a line of abattis along the front. The victorious British columns closely followed, and for three weeks the camp and fort occupied by the American army were closely besieged by a force only two-thirds as numerous. Two American armed vessels, which supported the fort on the lake side, were very cleverly captured in a night attack by Captain Dobbs, of the Royal Navy, by means of boats conveyed by sheer force of human muscles twenty miles across the country in the rear of the American lines, from the Niagara to Lake Erie.

The British forces also threw up strong entrenchments and planted batteries; and the two armies lay watching each other like couchant lions, waiting the opportunity to make the fatal spring. The guns on the batteries were kept double shotted, and through the long nights dark lanterns were kept burning, and linstocks ready for firing lay beside every gun. Ever and anon a live sh.e.l.l screamed through the air, one of which penetrating an American magazine, caused it to explode with fearful violence.

On the 14th of August, after a vigorous bombardment, a night attack, in three columns, was made upon the fort. At two o'clock in the morning, the columns moved out of the trenches, with the utmost silence, bearing scaling ladders, and crept stealthily over the plain toward the apparently slumbering fort. Dark clouds hung low, and the only sounds heard were the melancholy cry of the loon and the measured dash of the waves upon the sh.o.r.e. At length the American picket discovered the approach of the British columns and gave the alarm. The bugles rang shrill in the ear of night. Every embrasure of the seemingly sleeping fort flashed forth its tongue of flame, revealing the position of the a.s.sailants, and the gloom settled heavier than ever, deepened still further by the sulphureous clouds of smoke from the cannon. The British van hacked with their swords at the abattis, and tried, by wading through a marsh, to enter the curtain of the fore by a flank movement. Rent and torn by a fire of canister and grape, five times the a.s.sailing columns were hurled back, and five times, undaunted, they returned to the charge.

At length the wall was reached, the ladders were planted, and Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond, with a hundred men of the Royal Artillery, gained a footing in a bastion. The parole by which they recognized each other in the dark was "steel"--an omen of the desperate means used to insure their victory. With pike and bayonet they rushed upon the garrison. Their comrades swarmed up the scaling ladders and filled the bastion. Suddenly the ground heaved and trembled as with the throes of an earthquake. There came a burst of thunder sound; a volcano of fire and timber; stones and living men were hurled two hundred feet in the air; and the night settled down on the scene of chaos. The British columns, utterly demoralized by this appalling disaster, fell back precipitately on their entrenchments, leaving the mangled bodies of two hundred of their comrades, among them the gallant leader, Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond, in the fatal fosse and bastion.

The Americans, being strongly re-enforced, a month later made a vigorous sally from the fort, but were driven back, with a loss on the part of both a.s.sailants and a.s.sailed of about four hundred men. Shortly after, General Izzard blew up the works and re- crossed the river to United States territory. The fortress, constructed at such a cost, and a.s.sailed and defended with such valour, soon fell to utter ruin. Where earth-shaking war achieved such vast exploits, to-day the peaceful waters of the placid lake kiss the deserted strand, and a few gra.s.s-grown and mouldering ram-mounds alone mark the grave of so much military pomp, power, and unavailing valour. [Footnote: Engravings of these are given in Lossing's "Field Book of the War."]

Nor were the ravages of the war confined alone to the Niagara frontier. Far otherwise. They extended from the upper waters of the Mississippi to the Atlantic seaboard, and to the Gulf of Mexico. In the West, Michilimackinac was re-enforced, and Prairie du Chien, a fort on the Mississippi, was captured by a body of six hundred and fifty Canadians and Indians, without the loss of a single man. An American attempt to recapture Michilimackinac, by a force of a thousand men, was a total failure, the only exploit of the expedition being the inglorious pillage and destruction of the undefended trading-post of Ste. Marie.

Meanwhile, Sir John Sherbrooke, the Governor of Nova Scotia, despatched several hostile expeditions from Halifax against the coast of Maine.

Eastport, Castine, Bangor, Machias, and the whole region from the Pen.o.bscot to the St. Croix, surrendered to the British, and were held by them to the close of the war.

The arrival, in August, of sixteen thousand of Wellington's Peninsular troops, the heroes of so many Spanish victories, placed at the command of Sir George Prevost the means of vigorously undertaking offensive operations. A well-appointed force of eleven thousand men advanced from Canada to Lake Champlain. Captain Downie, with a fleet on which the s.h.i.+p carpenters were still at work as he went into action, was to co-operate with the army in an attack on Plattsburg, which was defended by five well-armed vessels and by fifteen hundred regulars and as many militia, under General Macomb. The British fleet gallantly attacked the enemy, but after a desperate battle, in which Captain Downie was slain, and nine of the ill-manned gunboats fled, it was compelled to surrender to a superior force. Prevost, notwithstanding that his strength was ten times greater than that of the enemy, had awaited the a.s.sistance of the fleet. As he tardily advanced his storming columns, the cheers from the fort announced its capture. Although on the verge of an easy victory, Prevost, fearing the fate of Burgoyne, and humanely averse to the shedding of blood, to the intense chagrin of his soldiers gave the signal to retreat. Many of his officers for very shame broke their swords, and vowed that they would never serve again. While an able civil governor, Prevost was an incompetent military commander. He was summoned home by the Horse Guards to stand a court-martial, but he died the following year, before the court sat.

The launch at Kingston of the "St. Lawrence," an "oak leviathan"

of a hundred guns, gave the British complete naval supremacy of Lake Ontario, and enabled them strongly to re-enforce General Drummond with troops and stores.

We will now trace very briefly the further events of the war, which lay altogether outside of Canada. Along the Atlantic seaboard the British maintained a hara.s.sing blockade. The close of the Continental war enabled Great Britain to throw more vigour into the conflict with the United States. Her giant navy was, therefore, free from service in European waters, and Admiral c.o.c.kburn, with a fleet of fifty vessels, about the middle of August, arrived in Chesapeake Bay with troops destined for the attack on the American capital. Tangier Island was seized and fortified, and fifteen hundred negroes of the neighbouring plantations were armed and drilled for military service. They proved useful but very costly allies, as, at the conclusion of the war, the Emperor of Russia, who was the referee in the matter, awarded their owners an indemnity of a million and a quarter of dollars, or over eight hundred dollars each for raw recruits for a six weeks' campaign.

There are two rivers by which Was.h.i.+ngton may be approached--the Potomac, on which it is situated, and the Patuxent, which flows in its rear. The British commander chose the latter, both on account of the facility of access, and for the purpose of destroying the powerful fleet of gunboats which had taken refuge in its creeks.

This object was successfully accomplished on the 20th of August-- thirteen of the gunboats being destroyed and one captured, together with fourteen merchant vessels. The army, under the command of General Ross, on the following day disembarked. It numbered, including some marines, three thousand five hundred men, with two hundred sailors to drag the guns--two small three- pounders.

For the defence of Was.h.i.+ngton, General Winder had been a.s.signed a force of sixteen thousand six hundred regulars, and a levy of ninety-three thousand militia had been ordered. Of the latter, not one appeared; of the former, only about one-half mustered. The Americans had, however, twenty-six guns against two small pieces possessed by the British. General Winder took post at Bladensburg, a few miles from Was.h.i.+ngton. His batteries commanded the only bridge across the East Potomac. Ross determined to storm the bridge in two columns. Not for a moment did the war-bronzed veterans of the Peninsular war hesitate. Amid a storm of shot and sh.e.l.l, they dashed across the bridge, carried a fortified house, and charged on the batteries before the second column could come to their aid. Ten guns were captured. The American army was utterly routed, and fled through and beyond the city it was to defend. The lack of cavalry and the intense heat of the day prevented the pursuit by the British. The brilliant action was saddened to the victors by the loss of sixty-one gallant men slain and one hundred and eighty-five wounded.

Towards evening the victorious army occupied the city. The destruction of the public buildings had been decreed, in retaliation for the pillage of Toronto and the wanton burning of Niagara. An offer was made to the American authorities to accept a money payment by way of ransom, but it was refused. The next day, the torch was ruthlessly applied to the Capitol, with its valuable library, the President's house, treasury, war office, a.r.s.enal, dockyard, and the long bridge across the Potomac. The enemy had already destroyed a fine frigate, a twenty-gun sloop, twenty thousand stand of arms, and immense magazines of powder. Even if justifiable as a military retaliation, this act was unworthy of a great and generous nation.

The town of Alexandria was saved from destruction only by the surrender of twenty-one vessels, sixteen hundred barrels of flour, and a thousand hogsheads of tobacco.

The city of Baltimore redeemed itself more bravely. Against that place General Ross now proceeded with his army and the fleet. In attacking the enemy's outposts, General Ross was slain, and the command devolved on Colonel Brooke. Six thousand infantry, four hundred horse, and four guns, protected by a wooden palisade, disputed the pa.s.sage of the British. With a shout and a cheer Wellington's veterans attacked the obstructions, and, in fifteen minutes, were masters of the field. The American army fled, leaving behind them six hundred killed or wounded, and three hundred prisoners, September 13. The next morning, the British were within a mile and a half of Baltimore, but they found fifteen thousand men, with a large train of artillery, in possession of the heights commanding the city. Colonel Brooke, not willing to incur the risk of attacking in daylight, with three thousand men, a fivefold number, resolved on attempting a surprise by night. He learned, however, that the enemy, by sinking twenty vessels in the river, had prevented all naval co-operation. The inevitable loss of life in an a.s.sault far counter-balancing any prospective advantage, Brooke wisely abandoned the design, and withdrew unmolested to his s.h.i.+ps.

The fleet and army which had been baffled at Baltimore sailed for New Orleans, with the object of capturing the chief cotton port of the United States, then a city of seventeen thousand inhabitants.

The fleet arrived off the mouth of the Mississippi on the 8th of December. It was opposed by a flotilla of gunboats, but they were all soon captured and destroyed. Amid very great difficulties and hards.h.i.+ps, resulting from the severity of the weather and the wretched condition of the roads, the army under General Packenham advanced to within six miles of New Orleans. Here General Jackson, the American commander, had constructed a deep ditch and an entrenchment of earthworks, strengthened by sand-bags and cotton- bales, a thousand yards long, stretching from the Mississippi to an impa.s.sable swamp in the rear. Flanking batteries enfiladed the front. Behind these formidable works was posted an army of twelve thousand men.

Packenham resolved to send Colonel Thornton, with fourteen hundred men, across the river by night, to storm a battery which swept the front of the earthworks, and to menace the city of New Orleans. At the same time, the main attack was to be made on Jackson's lines, in two columns, under Generals Gibbs and Keane. Packenham had only six thousand men, including seamen and marines, "to attack twice the number, entrenched to the teeth in works bristling with bayonets and loaded with heavy artillery." [Footnote: Allison's "History of Europe," Chap. lxxvi., American ed., vol. iv., p.

480.] The rapid fall of the river r.e.t.a.r.ded the crossing of the troops, and prevented a simultaneous attack on the right and left banks.

Impatient at the delay, Packenham ordered the a.s.sault on Jackson's lines, January 6, 1815; the columns moved steadily forward, but the dawn of day revealed their approach, and they were met by a concentrated and murderous fire from the batteries. Without flinching, they advanced to the ditch, when it was found that the fascines and scaling-ladders had been forgotten. The head of the column, thus brought to a halt under the enemy's guns, was crushed by the tremendous fire. Packenham now fell mortally wounded, and Generals Gibbs and Keane were shortly after struck down.

The gallant Ninety-third Highlanders, however, undaunted by the carnage, rushed forward, and many of them fairly climbed their way into the works, mounting on each other's shoulders. But their rash valour brought upon them the concentrated fire of grape, by which the successful a.s.sailants were cut down to a man. General Lambert, on whom the command now devolved, finding it impossible to carry the works, and the slaughter being appalling, drew off his troops. In this sanguinary repulse, the British lost two thousand men killed, wounded, and prisoners. The Americans claim that their loss was only eight killed and thirteen wounded.

Meanwhile, Colonel Thornton, on the left bank of the river, had achieved a brilliant success. With only one-third of his command, or less than five hundred men, he had stormed a redoubt of twenty guns, defended by seventeen hundred men. The defeat of the main body, however, rendered the position untenable. Lambert successfully retreated to his s.h.i.+ps, bringing off all his stores, ammunition, and field artillery. On the 27th the army re-embarked, and found a partial consolation for its defeat in the capture of Fort Boyer, a strong fortification at the mouth of the river.

Peace had already been concluded at Ghent on the 24th of December, and was hailed with delight by the kindred peoples, wearied with mutual and unavailing slaughter. The calm verdict of history finds much ground of extenuation for the revolt of 1776; but for the American declaration of war in 1812, little or none. A reckless Democratic majority wantonly invaded the country of an unoffending neighbouring people, to seduce them from their lawful allegiance and annex their territory. The long and costly conflict was alike b.l.o.o.d.y and barren. The Americans annexed not a single foot of territory. They gained not a single permanent advantage.

Their seaboard was insulted, their capital destroyed. Their annual exports were reduced from L22,000,000 to L1,500,000. Three thousand of their vessels were captured. Two-thirds of their commercial cla.s.s became insolvent A vast war-tax was incurred, and the very existence of the Union imperilled by the menaced secession of the New England States. The "right of search" and the rights of neutrals--the ostensible but not the real causes of the war--were not even mentioned in the treaty of peace. The adjustment of unsettled boundaries was referred to a commission, and an agreement was made for a combined effort for the suppression of the slave-trade. The United States, however, continued its internal slave-traffic, of a character even more obnoxious than that which it engaged to suppress.

On Canada, too, the burden of the war fell heavily. Great Britain, exhausted by nearly twenty years of conflict, and still engaged in a strenuous struggle against the European despot, Napoleon, could only, till near the close of the war, furnish scanty military aid.

It was Canadian militia, with little help from British regulars, who won the brilliant victories of Chrysler's Farm and Chateauguay; and throughout the entire conflict they were the princ.i.p.al defence of their country. In many a Canadian home, bitter tears were shed for son or sire left cold and stark upon the b.l.o.o.d.y plain at Queenston Heights, or Chippewa, or Lundy's Lane, or other hard-fought field of battle.

The lavish expenditure of the Imperial authorities, for s.h.i.+p- building, transport service, and army supplies, and the free circulation of the paper money issued by the Canadian Government, greatly stimulated the material prosperity of the country. [Footnote: The paper money of the United States was not redeemed till it had greatly depreciated in value, to the often ruinous loss of the holders.] Its peaceful industries, agriculture, and the legitimate development of its natural resources, however, were very much interrupted, and vast amounts of public and private property were relentlessly confiscated or destroyed by the enemy. [Footnote: See Withrow's "History of Canada;" 8vo. ed., pp., 234-340.]

CHAPTER XXI.

CLOSING SCENES.