CAPITAL IN FLAMES
The American Attack
on York, 1813
By Robert Malcolmson
Robin Brass Studio/Naval Institute Press, 489 pages, $39.95
While I was writing The Battle of the St. Lawrence, I mentioned to an eminent historian that many of the men I'd interviewed had been torpedoed. His response: "One explosion on a ship is just like another. What really matters isn't the individual's story but the impact the attack or sinking has on tactics and strategy."
Point taken. The sickening sound of an exploding torpedo doesn't change too much from ship to ship, the same being true for effect of grapeshot and volleyed musket fire on infantry in 1813. However, as historian Robert Malcolmson shows to great effect in Capital in Flames, his examination of the American attack on York (Toronto) in 1813, it is not a case of either/or but of weaving the two strands of history together so that the fullness of an individual's participation in historical events can be grasped.
Donald McClean, clerk of the Legislature of Upper Canada, was killed just after the battle began almost 200 years ago. In many ways, his death was meaningless, since the attack on York had almost no lasting impact on the War of 1812. Generations of textbook writers aside, neither the battle nor the fires (which, it turns out, were set by disorderly troops) were the "tit" for which the burning of Washington in 1814 was the "tat." The victory did give the Americans control of the lower Great Lakes, but the War of 1812 was a funny sort of war. The United States' only clear-cut victory, the Battle of New Orleans, in 1814, occurred two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent ended the war - which, of course, was not known for several more weeks. And, of course, McClean's descendants have long since stopped mourning him.
Still, his life and death and those of the other men who fought and were affected by the battle are important, because on that day their personal experiences were the nodes on which the larger forces of tactics and strategy turned. Actually, the intersection of these forces and individual experience began before the battle. Largely because of the war against Napoleon, Britain could not afford to build the sort of defensive works needed to deter an American invasion or to properly train the militia. Thus, artillerists remounted guns that dated to the time of governor-general Simcoe; one was cast when Oliver Cromwell ruled England, in the mid-1600s. Thomas Plucknett's poor management of the shipyard at York delayed the building of the frigate Sir Isaac Brock so that it was not ready to sail against the American squadron.
After hearing that the American ships had been sighted, British commanding general Sir Roger Sheaffe spent the night "at a table smoking his cigar." Luckily, such Canadians as chief justice Thomas Scott, who knew that £2,500 of the province's money had been secreted in a private home, arranged for the money to be spirited away.
Malcolmson cannot tell every story of the efforts of hundreds of Americans (their names, and those of the Canadians and British, are listed in an appendix). These men manhandled cannon across the wilds of New York State to Sackets Harbor, where a squadron was being built, and where wretched conditions obtained after the population grew from 250 to more than 4,000. But he does turn the Americans from an invading force into men struggling with their place in history.
Thanks to a letter from Reverend John Strachan, Malcolmson takes us back to the exact moment the battle began: "I am interrupted, an express has come to tell us the [American invasion squadron]within a few minutes steering for this place." Given that the Americans had cut York's supply line, the power of the squadron's guns and that the invasion force of 3,000 was well trained - and well led by such commanders as General Zebulon Pike - Sir Roger's 700 men (including Indians and poorly trained militia) probably never had a chance.
Lacking a plan, he dribbled his men away in small groups - many being cut down by sharpshooters from North Carolina. Early on in the battle, the lack of artillery and its poor placement told badly. Malcolmson's prose rises to the occasion of describing the explosion of the colony's central magazine: "In an instant 300 barrels of black powder were vaporized and transformed into a yellow-orange-red ball of flame that erupted through the upper story, roof and sides of the magazine, blooming up into the air like some nightmarish mushroom. It folded back on itself and up and out again, expanding further. ... Stone, brick and clay, pulverized into dust, soared aloft in reddish brown and white sheets."
History gave everyone their roles, including the Americans who drank some of the rum in which General Pike's body was preserved after he was killed when a retreating British garrison blew up its ammunition store. Perhaps the strangest role belonged to Reverend Strachan. When negotiations over the capitulation agreement dragged out overnight, Strachan, who led them, stormed out of the parley and demanded that an American boat take him directly to U.S. commander General Henry Dearborn. When, a few moments later, he came upon the general, he upbraided him for refusing the original terms, thus allowing American soldiers time for more plunder. Worse, British prisoners were housed in a warehouse without food or water, and wounded soldiers received no medical attention. Dearborn went off in a huff, but Strachan won the point: The capitulation agreement was signed minutes later.
Nathan M. Greenfield, author of Baptism of Fire: The Second Battle of Ypres and the Forging of Canada, April 1915, wonders how many Canadian hikers know that Pike's Peak was named for the general who commanded the assault on York.