Lundy's Lane, 25 July 1814

The battle, stage by stage

1. 25 July 1814, about 6-7 PM

   The hill at Lundy's Lane

   Three weeks into the American summer offensive into Upper Canada, Major General Jacob Brown's Left Division, which had beaten Major General Phineas Riall at Chippawa on 5 July, has fallen back to the Chippawa River. Riall has pushed light troops and militia forward to Lundy's Lane, a road running inland from the Portage Road along a rise a mile from the Falls of Niagara. Riall had ordered a withdrawal, but Lieutenant General Gordon Drummond, coming up from Fort George with reinforcements, countermands it as Scott approaches and reoccupies the hill. He places his guns, two 24-pounders, two 6-pounders and a 5.5-inch howitzer, among the graves of the little cemetery beside the meeting house at the top of the rise, the 89th Foot behind them, the Incorporated Militia and the light company of the 8th on the left toward the Portage Road, and the Glengarry Light Infantry and John Norton's warriors on the right. About 6 PM Brigadier General Winfield Scott's brigade of about 1,000 to 1,200 regulars, marching north up the Portage Road, nears the British; shortly after 7 PM it comes out of the woods and finds them waiting.

2. About 7:15 PM

   Scott in the open

   Scott sends to Brown for the rest of the army, but rather than fall back he deploys his brigade, the 9th and 22nd side by side on the left under Colonel Hugh Brady (then Major Henry Leavenworth) and the 11th on the right, with Towson's guns, in the open fields south of the hill and opens the fight shortly after 7 PM. The British guns on the crest, firing across the plain, tear gaps in the blue lines; Colonel James Miller later wrote that the enemy had 'their artillery posted on a height in a very commanding position.' For more than an hour the brigade stands and trades fire at long range and loses heavily. Scott sends Major Thomas Jesup's 25th Infantry off to the right, into the woods east of the Portage Road.

3. About 8 PM

   Jesup on the Portage Road

   Following a disused track toward the river through the woods, Jesup's 25th comes out on the British left, surprises the light company of the 8th and the Incorporated Militia and drives them back up the Portage Road. Jesup sends Captain Ketchum's light company to the crossroads where Lundy's Lane meets the road; in the gathering dark Riall, wounded in the arm and riding to the rear, blunders into them and is taken prisoner, along with the militia cavalry officer Captain William Hamilton Merritt. Most of the other prisoners slip away. To cover his threatened left, Drummond realigns his infantry behind the lane to meet the threat on his left and withdraws the Glengarries, leaving his guns exposed on the crest.

4. About 9 PM

   'I'll try, sir'

   Night has fallen when Brown arrives with Brigadier General Eleazer Ripley's brigade of regulars and Brigadier General Peter B. Porter's militia brigade; Scott's shattered regiments, reduced to a few hundred men, are pulled back. Brown sees that nothing can be done while the guns command the field and asks Lieutenant Colonel James Miller of the 21st Infantry whether he can take them. 'I'll try, sir,' Miller is reported to have answered. While the 1st Infantry on his left and the 23rd on his right draw the defenders' attention, Miller leads the 21st up the south-east slope of the hill under cover of darkness.

5. About 9:15-10 PM

   The guns are taken

   From a few yards away the 21st fires a single volley into the gunners and charges with the bayonet. The gun crews are shot down or driven off, and the Americans take every gun on the hill. The 89th counterattacks and is thrown back by Miller and Ripley. Brown brings up Towson's, Biddle's and Ritchie's guns beside the captured British pieces and forms a line along the crest, Porter on the left, Jesup on the right. Between about 9:30 and 10 PM Colonel Hercules Scott's column, about 1,200 regulars of the 103rd, 8th and 104th with a militia brigade, some 1,500-1,700 men in all, many of whom have marched some 20 miles that day, reaches the field in the dark; by most accounts it stumbles into the American line, loses its three 6-pounders, and falls back; the 6-pounders are retaken. The Royal Scots main body comes up in reserve.

6. About 10-11:30 PM

   Three counterattacks in the dark

   Drummond, shot through the neck but still in the saddle, now attacks to retake his guns. Three times his line, in a grain field north of the lane and increasingly a mix of detachments rather than whole regiments, advances without skirmishers to close range; three times the musketry duel around the guns and the gravestones ends in hand-to-hand fighting and a British retreat. In the confusion units fire on friends: the Glengarries, going back for ammunition, are taken for Americans and fired on by the 103rd and 104th. Between attacks Winfield Scott leads the survivors of his brigade in a charge of his own at the British center; the 89th, kneeling in the grain, fires into it at about 20 paces; caught by fire from both sides, American fire from Ripley's brigade included, the column breaks, and Scott is badly wounded. Brown is also wounded twice.

7. 26 July, about midnight-2 AM

   Withdrawal to Chippawa

   By midnight only about 700 Americans are still standing in the line. Brown, out of action, orders the army back to its camp at Chippawa to get water, ammunition and food; Porter and other officers protest but obey, and Ripley, who had held the hill, follows. Short of horses, the Americans leave the captured British guns and some of their own on the hill. A party sent back for a British gun brings off one British piece and leaves two of their own. The exhausted British, Canadians and warriors do not pursue and sleep on or near the field. The column reaches Chippawa in the small hours (by one account about 2 AM).

8. 26 July 1814, morning

   A bloody draw

   Ordered to go back for the guns, Ripley marches out about 9 AM with some 1,200 to 1,500 men, finds Drummond back on the hill with about 2,200, and turns away unmolested. The Americans then fall back to Fort Erie, burning Bridgewater Mills and breaking down the Chippawa bridge as they go. Each side has lost more than 800 killed, wounded, captured or missing, about 860 American and 880 British and Canadian by the official returns, in about five hours, making it one of the bloodiest battles of the war and the bloodiest fought in Canada. So many dead lie on the field that the British burn many of them on a pyre. Both armies claim victory, but the American advance into Upper Canada is over; Drummond follows Brown to Fort Erie and lays siege to it in August.