Laxer - Tecumseh & Brock : the War of 1812

SELECTED WORKS BY JAMES LAXER

Inventing Europe: The Rise of a New World Power

False God: How the Globalization Myth Has Impoverished Canada

In Search of a New Left: Canadian Politics after the
Neo-Conservative Assault

The Undeclared War: Class Conflict in the Age of Cyber Capitalism

Stalking the Elephant: My Discovery of America ( U.S. Edition : Discovering America: Travels in the Land of Guns, God and Corporate Gurus)

The Border: Canada, the U.S., and Dispatches from the 49th Parallel

Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism

The Acadians: In Search of a Homeland

Mission of Folly: Canada and Afghanistan

The Perils of Empire

Beyond the Bubble: Imagining a New Canadian Economy

FOR YOUNG READERS

Empire: A Groundwood Guide

Oil: A Groundwood Guide

Democracy: A Groundwood Guide

Tecumseh

Chapter 4

Isaac Brock and the Defence
of the Canadas

T HE FATE OF THE GLOBAL ENTERPRISE that became the second British Empire the first British Empire having been destroyed by the American Revolution hung in the balance at the turn of the century. The struggle between Britain and France would determine which power would dominate the world in the nineteenth century. If the French succeeded in landing an army on British soil, Britain would lose the war and would be reduced to an offshore island in Frances imperial sphere. Political and military leaders in London were keenly aware that all means at their disposal must be mobilized for the struggle.

Britain had two services in its arsenal: the great shield provided by the Royal Navy, and the sword in the hand of the British army. Take away its naval supremacy and Britain would have been doomed. The leaders of the British government and the admirals of the Royal Navy were prepared to do whatever was needed to sustain British command of the seas around the world. In the years prior to the War of 1812, the dominance of the Royal Navy over the fleets of other states is captured in the fact that it deployed 152 ships of the line, compared with 46 by the French, 13 by the Netherlands, 28 by Spain, and 33 by Russia, with some of the Russian ships interned under British command. The Royal Navy had 183 cruisers, France 31, the Netherlands 7, Spain 17, and Russia 10.

During the wars between Britain and France from 1793 to 1815, 103,660 men died while serving in the Royal Navy. Illness and personal accidents carried off 84,440 (81.5 percent) of these men. A further 12,680 (12.2 percent) of the deaths resulted from non-combat calamities, mostly shipwrecks, the foundering of vessels, and fires. Enemy action took the lives of 6,540 (6.3 percent) of the naval force.

Over the course of the Napoleonic War, the Royal Navy was globally pre-eminent, not only as a weapon of war but also as an industrial enterprise. Together, the dockyards of the navy were the worlds leading industrial operations. In 1803, 100,000 seamen and marines served in the Royal Navy. The navy sustained this complement and then increased it to 145,000 men in 1810 and kept it at that level through 1812, after which the number of seamen and marines declined to 117,000 in 1814 and 90,000 the following year. Maintaining this huge fighting force severely strained the British treasury. In 1803, the Royal Navy received a grant of just over ten million pounds, and that sum increased year by year to a peak of just over twenty million pounds in 1813.

The immense effort to sustain and expand the Royal Navy, in addition to the risks faced by men in the service, pressured those in charge of the Admiralty the strategy was crafted by a small group of senior officers and civilians in the Admiralty Board Room in London to take decisions that were bound to generate intense conflict, and possibly war, with the United States.

In theory, service in the Royal Navy and in the army was voluntary. In practice, the masters of the Royal Navy had to resort to desperate measures to keep up the complement of men on the ships. Impressment was the solution. The British state took unto itself the right to bodily carry off men for service and not just the deserters they found on American ships. Lieutenants in British port towns organized gangs of ruffians to seize able-bodied men to serve on ships. Exempt were gentlemen (those of sufficient means), those under eighteen or over fifty-five, seamen already in the Royal Navy, fishermen, tradesmen, apprentices, and a few others. Royal Navy ships also stopped merchant ships returning to home ports and impressed their most promising sailors. Once impressed, men were often offered the opportunity to volunteer, which made them eligible to receive a bonus that varied over the period of the wars with France from one pound ten shillings to ten pounds. Genuine volunteers may have accounted for as few as one-quarter of those serving on the ships of the Royal Navy.

Early-nineteenth-century warships combined the most advanced industrial technology of the day with the technology of a much earlier period. Wooden vessels, propelled by wind and deploying as much sail as possible to ensure maximum speed and manoeuvrability, coexisted with the rising firepower of guns cannon, we would call them and mortars. The ships of the line were packed with enormous firepower. They were the most concentrated engines of destruction in existence at the time. Although most of those who died while serving on ships were not killed in action, casualties were extremely high when naval battles erupted. When warships fought each other broadside, unleashing their firepower at close range, ships and masts were torn asunder and men were blown to bits.

The most crucial battle of the age was Vice Admiral Horatio Nelsons decisive victory at Trafalgar in 1805, fought off the southwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Against the combined fleets of France and Spain, Nelson managed a triumph that was the very opposite of the normally inconclusive battles at sea. Nelson used his uncanny understanding of the dictates and tactics of naval war to achieve Britains most strategically important victory on the seas. And he died in the fight, becoming as a result Britains pre-eminent naval hero.

At Trafalgar the British did not overturn Napoleons empire, but they gained for themselves much needed protection against a French invasion of the British Isles. In the end, it would be a soldier, not an admiral, who would finish off Napoleon the Duke of Wellington, at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Similarly, in North America, the Royal Navy would be indispensable to Britains defence of its holdings in North America. But it was soldiers who would have to mount a defence along an all-too-lengthy border when the Americans launched their war. While soldiers in the United States were most often farm boys, in Britain they were as likely to be recruited from the urban poor, from coal-mining or cloth-manufacturing towns.

The men who served in the armys rank and file were drawn from among the poorest segments of society in the British Isles. English, Irish, and Scots, they manned the regiments that served at home and in the colonies. Common soldiers were paid a pittance seven shillings a week from which were subtracted sums to cover rations, personal equipment, and materials for washing and cleaning. The soldier was fortunate to receive one and a half shillings after these deductions. British soldiers were poorly housed and clothed and inadequately fed. They spent long periods of time stationed away from wives and children. A small number of wives ranging from six to twelve, depending on where the unit was stationed were allowed to accompany about one hundred men. These women were charged with doing the washing and often cared for the wounded and the sick.

Officers, who regularly purchased their posts, came from higher rungs on the social ladder, from prosperous merchant families and families of the gentry. For them, as for enlisted men, the army was a calling for life. It was a tough, wearisome existence, especially for those posted in distant colonies. The generous consumption of alcohol made the drabness more endurable. Wars and battles punctuated army life with excitement, danger, and fear.