Fort Erie - March 2002 - Historical Notes

It was truly the last invasion attempt by the Americans during the War of 1812 in the Niagara. After failed attempts to seize Montreal (these were the battles of Chateaguay and Chrysler's Farm both of which were RESOUNDING British/Canadian/Native/Canadien victories,) American attentions turned once again to the battlefields of the Niagara and their attempt to capture Upper Canada.

The exact phraseology of the order from the US Secretary of War, John Armstrong, was...

"To give... immediate occupation to your troops, and prevent their blood from stagnating, why not take Fort Erie?"

So, General Jacob Brown dispatched brigadier generals Winfield Scott and Eleazer Wheelcock Ripley to the task.

On July the 3rd, 1814 (for the record, Scott wanted to wait a day to celebrate the 4th with a victory but was rushed into it by General Brown,) Scott started over in the boats across the river at 2am. On reaching the shore, Scott checks the depth of the water off the boat with his sword and once assuring it is safe yells "Follow Me!" and the boat swerves and he steps into a deep hole... "Too deep." He gurgles as he sinks to the bottom of the hole encumbered by his cloak, pistols, uniform, boots and sword. His cry does save 150 men from drowning in the Niagara River. He is hauled, ingloriously, into the boat but none of the men laughed... Scott, you see, was a brilliant if brash (in his actions) general and a great egotist.

The British garrison of the fort is heavily outnumbered by the Americans who, aside from Scott's and Ripley's "regulars" (full time soldiers) consists of an extra 1,000 militia and native warriors (yes, some did fight on the side of the Americans) under the guidance of Congressman Peter B. Porter.

The British surrender the fort quickly.

After this, the Americans use the fort as a base for their successful operation (battle) at Chippawa against British Major General Phineas Riall (pronounced Rhy-Al) where the American "regulars" first truly beat British "regulars" but still the Americans withdrew back to the falls as the British forces are too well entrenched to pursue.

Once back at the falls, the Americans faced the English again this time under Lieutenant General Gordon Drummond (who, by the way, was a Canadian born in Quebec in 1772 but had served in the British Army for almost 25 years before this battle. Drummond had seen action (been in battle) in Holland, the Mediterranean and Jamaica before coming "home" to Canada to take up his post in this war.)

This fight was more of a draw. The Americans really had won this battle by the falls (now called Lundy's Lane) but did not maintain the ground and instead withdrew to Fort Erie leaving the British and Canadian's to reclaim the battlefield there. (The Americans claim victory as they had soundly thrashed the English there BUT the Canadians and British claim victory as they possessed the field after the battle. It's all a bit confused really.)

Lundy's Lane saw the capture and wounding of Riall and (of footnote to the GHRS folks) the capture of Provincial Dragoon Captain William Hamilton Merritt.

Drummond, too, was wounded and decided to stay put allowing the Americans to reach the safety of the fort and to burn the town of Bridgewater Mills in the process. (Town burnings, as we know, were a popular pastime in this war.)

Entrenched and dug in, the Americans built earthworks from the fort to nearby Snake Hill (some eight-hundred yards from the fort South (away from the current Bridge to the US) and had also constructed an abatis (a-bay-tiss) of twisted branches and tree trunks in front of the fort and reinforced the defensive walls. The earthworks, fort and Snake Hill now bristled with cannon. One British officer described Fort Erie when they arrived in August to start the siege as "an ugly customer".

Drummond built earthworks and a gun emplacement of his own North of the fort but as the engineers who designed it, Lieutenant George Phillpotts and Joseph Portlock, were not the best of men for the job (according to surgeon William "Tiger" Dunlop, any engineer that Wellington "deemed unfit for the peninsula (France and Spain) was considered quite good enough for the Canadian market!") they placed the guns too far from the fort and the bombardment had little effect.

For a week, the British Cannon kept firing on the fort but caused few casualties and little damaged to the well entrenched Americans.

Finally, a round of British cannon fire lands on the American's ammunition chest. Drummond seized the chance believing the Americans would have suffered heavy casualties and were now off balance.

Actually, the chest explosion caused little casualties and the gentleman now in charge of the fort's defenders, Brigadier General Edmund Pendleton Gaines, read his opponents mind and expected the heavy attack that did follow and strengthened his defenses.

Both men have no idea of the others strength. The British camp is screened by trees and the fort is still "an ugly customer". Gaines figures Drummond has five-thousand men. Drummond has less than three thousand. Drummond thinks Gaines has fifteen hundred men. Gaines has twice that number. The match is set.

Drummond calculates a very difficult plan. A night assault from three directions to try to take all the major gun emplacements and assault the fort directly.

From the North towards one of the American gun emplacements (roughly where the present memorial stands) and then hopefully on to the fort, Drummond uses the men of the 103rd Regiment of Foot (British Regulars) under Colonel Hercules Scott.

Towards the centre of the fort itself (near the North bastion) is the 104th Foot, Light Infantry (Glengarry Light Infantry and other regiments "light" infantry), Royal Marines and Royal Navy sailors under Drummond's nephew, Lieutenant-Colonel William Drummond of Keltie.

From the South (against Snake Hill and then hopefully on to the fort) is a mixed bag... Some militia, a smattering of "The King's" 8th Regiment of Foot and the 89th with the majority made up of the De Watteville's Regiment. This latter regiment is made up of "foreign corps" such as French deserters from Napoleon's Army, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch and anything else they could enlist. These rather unsteady troops were under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Viktor Fisher.

The last attack force under John Norton (half-Scott, half-Native) was an "Indian Deception" attack force made up of Natives fighting for the Enlgish. They'd 'feign' an attack on the centre of the earthworks between Snake Hill and The Fort.

The people in charge were of a strange order. The two main force commanders were about as different as you could get. Hercules Scott was a brave and loyal soldier who definitely could be counted on to "do his duty". Scott mistrusted Gordon Drummond and thought the plan would fail. He wrote a brief will and mailed it to his brother before going to sleep before the battle.

William Drummond was wild, daring and brave. "The kind of officer that rarely rises above field rank for they are either killed in action or barred by promotion by their own quirkiness." According to Pierre Berton.

William Drummond was drinking and playing cards with his friends before the battle and before leaving commented...

"Now, boys! We never will all meet together here again; at least I will never meet you, I feel it and am certain of it."

It was raining and the men spent a miserable night before the attack sleeping in the wet with their firelocks between their legs to keep them dry. Hercules Scott slept under a piece of canvas. William Drummond stowed himself away in an empty Congreve rocket case.

In order for the plan to work, Drummond knew he needed complete surprise and for all the attacks to take place at the same time. Before marching out, he ordered the men to remove the flints from their muskets to avoid wild or panicked firing and forbade them to speak to each other.

Drummond had made one of the more fatal errors of a commander during the Napoleonic period assuming that the bayonet would be a better weapon for the attackers than the musket. Needless to say, for all the muskets faults (and there are many such as inaccuracy and misfiring often) more were killed by that weapon then ever by the bayonet.

Fisher's mixed-bag approached Snake Hill and are detected. US Artillery Captain Nathan Towson puts out the alarm and brings his guns to action. Surprise is lost. Towson's artillery is so heated and bright that Snake Hill becomes dubbed "Towson's Lighthouse".

While fighting through the artillery rounds with his men, Fisher encounters the abatis. Unable to go over it, Fisher tries to move to the American's left and take the guns from the rear. Heading to the far end and getting to the river bank, the men try to fight to the battery but the rocks are slippery and the current is swift and some of the men are swept into the Niagara River. Some do make it to the gun battery and start to fight hand-to-hand but two companies pour a destructive fire on them from the heights. The foreign core panic and dash back in a hasty retreat carrying with them the regulars meant to "stiffen their backs". Only the 89th stand as the King's are whisked into the retreat by the deWatteville's regiment like floating sticks in a current.

What's left at the battery with Fisher attempts to scale the hill and the emplacement but finds their ladders are too short. Worse, his men cannot respond to the musketry being rained down on them as his men were ordered to remove their flints. The bulk of his corps is now hiding in the woods and his "forlorn hope" (a term meaning any of the first troops to try and penetrate an enemies defenses) and the King's 8th are mauled. Only the 89th stand and are intact. Most of the deWatteville's have deserted to the woods.

The defenders in the fort are alerted and the two main forces of Scott and Drummond are expected but minutes tick slowly by before anything happens. Instead of attacking immediately, the forces try to "sneak up" on the fort. Another fatal error.

At 3am, the commander of the guard at the fort, David Bates Douglass opens up his canon and muskets on the not-so-stealthy British.

He pours a galling fire into the trenches and onto the fields killing many men.

Suddenly, a voice cries out...

"Cease firing! You are firing on your own men!"

...the fire slackens but the voice is stiffly British. Suddenly, another voice with a distinctive American twang yells back...

"Got to hell! Fire away there, why don't you?"

...and the firing continues.

Hercules Scott's column presses forward with ladders to surmount the breastworks and is again and again repulsed. Of twenty officers (not privates, NCOs and "working" soldiers") only four escape becoming a casualty. More than half the regiment are killed or wounded. Hercules Scott is wounded mortally by a musket ball lodged now in his forehead.

Drummond has better luck. He forms his 350 men and after swapping his sword for a boarding pike, he leads his men in a mad dash across the open field to the fort. They get their scaling ladders up to the wall but are beaten back. Instead, he changes strategy and creeps along the outer wall, scales the North bastion (near the kitchen and the monument) and manages to get over the wall and take the bastion.

USUALLY, in Napoleonic times, once you were in, you'd won BUT notice that Fort Erie is really TWO stone buildings, not just one... Well, the British held the North and the American's held the South.

"Give the damn Yankees no quarter!" Drummond shouted as they stormed into the North bastion. When one badly wounded American asks Drummond for quarter, Drummond, in a rage, shoots him with his pistol. William Drummond is killed immediately after this act... shot through the heart and bayoneted.

Heavy fire pours in from all directions... The British in the North of the fort and the Americans in the South. The battle see-saws until under the British feet, a rumbling and then a tremendous explosion. The ammunition magazine in the North bastion has exploded... possibly by design, more likely the burning ember from a British musket touched it off.

The explosion is felt by almost everyone as is the death it rains.

Douglass, over a hundred yards away, sees the jet of flame shoot straight up into the sky followed by a shower of stone, dirt, timbers and body parts. One of his own men standing nearby is struck dead by flying debris.

The British, fighting on the bastion, are torn up or thrown outside the fort. Many men perish on the tips of the bayonets of their own men waiting to enter the fort in the ditch below.

After all is said and done, Drummond now has fewer than one-thousand effective troops.

What's left of the British retreat.

The Americans, also badly mauled, cannot attempt to attack the British as they go.

The next morning, Drummer Boy Jarvis Hanks of the Americans surveys the ditch and counts roughly 190 bodies... some dead, some dying. The pockets and possessions of these men being picked by the surviving Americans.

Charred and mangled, men died while being physically buried under their own comrades in the ditch.

Over a thousand men from both side are lost during this battle.

But it did not end there.

Unable to let go of his investment at the fort, Drummond continues to lay siege and to keep up the canon fire.

On August 29th, one of Drummond's shells manage to strike the headquarters of General Gaines within the fort. It drops and smashes his writing desk and wounds the general so badly he evacuates himself to Buffalo.

On September 17th, the Americans try one last time to break out of the fort. They attempt to attack the British guns and are partially successful. When this short, sharp attack is done, the Americans are forced to retreat back into the fort and another thousand men are dead or wounded.

The bombardment continues but the British camp is now a swamp. Many men die of disease in the camp and Drummond calls off the siege on the 21st and moves his men back to camp at Chippawa.

The Americans are too weak to follow.

By November 1st, the Americans pull back to their own side of the river and abandon the fort.

In newly commanding US General George Izzard's view...

"It commands nothing, not even the entrance of a straight." It is "a weak, ill planned... hastily repaired redoubt."

November 5th, guided by a sense, Drummond sends out Captain James Fitzgibbon (of the "Take me to Fitzgibbon!" fame from the Laura Secord "Canadian Historical Moments" commercial) of the Glengarry Light Infantry who finds that the Americans have abandoned the place, dismantled anything of value and are not longer on Canadian soil.

So, after all that, the common graves with over 2,000 men seem to be filled for nothing. The war would be over that Christmas with the treaty of Ghent and things in Niagara would return, by treaty, to status quo.

Keep in mind that "our side" of this battle was not really rife with loyal Canadians but with foreign men and most of those that died were from England and had literally come to Canada to do a job and then go home. None of them saw home and at the same time this was all going on, Napoleon and his crew were busy causing the English frustration in France and Spain. Basically, the English soldiers knew that they were the "Forgotten Soldiers"... Their own country not too concerned with how they were doing as they were too involved with Bonapart's fall...

Surgeon William "Tiger" Dunlop quipped about Wellington and the soldiers in Canada...

"THANK GOD he managed to do without us at Waterloo!"

So, that's it... The BRIEF story of the soldiers and the siege...

SOURCES Pierre Berton - Flames Across the Border, Penguin 1988 Donald E. Graves - Where Right and Glory Lead, Donald E. Graves 1993, 1997 Matthew Didier - Notes from visits 1999, 2000 and 2001

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