Queenston Heights, 13 October 1812

The battle, stage by stage

1. 13 October 1812, about 3-4 AM

   Crossing the Niagara

   Four months into the war, Major General Stephen Van Rensselaer, a New York militia general and politician with little combat experience, has gathered an army of regulars and New York militia at Lewiston. A first attempt to cross on 11 October has failed. Before dawn on 13 October the second attempt begins: thirteen boats push off from the landing below the Lewiston escarpment, carrying about 600 men, by most accounts some 300 regulars and 300 militia, under Lieutenant Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer of the New York militia, a kinsman of the general. The boats can carry only about half the force at a time, so every reinforcement must wait for the boats to come back. Across the river, Queenston is a small village at the northern end of the portage road around the Falls, a vital point on the British supply line. It is held by the grenadier and light companies of the 49th Foot, a few small militia companies and an 18-pounder in a redan partway up the heights, below the brow; a 24-pounder at Vrooman's Point, a mile downstream, covers the river. Major General Isaac Brock, who took Detroit in August, is seven miles away at Fort George.

2. About 4-6 AM

   The landing under fire

   In the dark and the current, three of the thirteen boats fail to land: Lieutenant Colonel John Chrystie's, carrying the commander of the 13th Infantry, is swept back to the New York shore, another is ordered back, and a third drifts down and is taken. The other ten ground on the Canadian shore just above the village docks. Captain James Dennis's grenadiers of the 49th and the militia meet them with musketry and a field gun; by one British account a single shot killed fifteen men in one boat, and the occupants of three boats that landed below Mr. Hamilton's garden were killed or taken. The redan gun and the Vrooman's battery fire on the boats, while American guns at Lewiston and the 18-pounder at Fort Gray on the Lewiston heights answer. Solomon Van Rensselaer is badly wounded and the landing party is pinned under the riverbank. The light company of the 49th comes down from the heights to help hold the village.

3. About dawn

   Wool takes the redan

   Captain John E. Wool of the 13th Infantry, himself wounded, leads a party of regulars upstream along the shore, guided by Lieutenant John Gansevoort of the artillery. In Wool's words they 'proceeded round the point and ascended the rocks'; the traditional account says they found an unguarded fisherman's path, though the historian Guy St-Denis has argued that they had no particular need of one. Brock, who galloped from Fort George at the sound of the guns, has just reached the redan when Wool's men appear on the heights above and behind it. Brock, his aides and the gunners abandon the redan and hurry down the slope into the village, leading their horses. More American regulars, detachments of the 6th and 13th, land and climb after Wool, and boats carrying Major James Mullany's detachment are swept downstream under the Vrooman's battery and their men taken.

4. Early morning

   Brock's counterattack

   Brock will not wait for reinforcements: if the Americans hold the heights, they command the village and the river. He sends to Fort George for Major General Roger Hale Sheaffe and the rest of the troops, then gathers perhaps 100 to 200 men of the 49th and the Lincoln and York militia and leads them on foot up the slope toward the redan. American fire from the trees above is heavy. Brock, tall, in a general's coat and waving his sword, is a plain target; a musket ball grazes his wrist and then another hits him in the chest, and he dies within moments, at the foot of the slope near where the cenotaph now stands on Queenston Street. Accounts differ on the hour; the Great Lakes Seaway Trail marker at Lewiston puts it as late as 11 AM. His last words, 'Push on, brave York Volunteers,' are tradition; a York militia officer reported them two days later as 'Push on the York Volunteers,' but Brock University's historians doubt them, since he was not with the York men when he fell. His men carry his body down to a house in the village, and the attack falls back.

5. About 9-10 AM

   Macdonell's attack

   Brock's aide, Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell, comes up with flank companies of the York militia. With Captain John Williams of the 49th he climbs to the summit with perhaps 80 to 190 men, the accounts differ, and attacks along the top, driving the Americans back toward the edge of the gorge and, by some accounts, briefly retaking the redan. The Americans, three or four hundred by Robinson's account, rally behind trees and logs. Macdonell is hit three or four times and thrown from his rearing horse; Williams is wounded in the head. The attack breaks, and the survivors fall back through Queenston to a farm near Vrooman's Point. Macdonell dies the next day. Lieutenant John Beverley Robinson of the York militia later wrote that the enemy were 'covered by bushes and logs.'

6. Late morning to early afternoon

   The heights held, the river not crossed

   The Americans now own Queenston Heights. Brigadier General William Wadsworth of the New York militia crosses, and Lieutenant Colonel Winfield Scott of the 2nd Artillery, who has come forward as a volunteer, takes command on the heights with some 350 regulars and 250 militia; the engineer Joseph Totten lays out a breastwork facing the village. Wool's men drill the spikes out of the redan gun. But the boats are wrecked, sunk or abandoned, the boatmen grow unwilling, and on the Lewiston shore the New York militia, more than a thousand of them by most accounts, refuse to cross: under the law of the day, they say, militia cannot be made to serve outside the United States. Van Rensselaer, back at Lewiston, cannot move them. Meanwhile John Norton, the Mohawk leader Teyoninhokarawen, with John Brant and some 80 to 120 Haudenosaunee and Delaware warriors from the Grand River (other accounts give 250 to 300 warriors by the afternoon), makes a wide circuit and climbs the escarpment well west of the village. From the woods on the American right they strike, fall back and strike again, keeping the Americans from consolidating; Sheaffe later credited 'the judicious position which Norton and the Indians with him had taken.'

7. About noon to 3 PM

   Sheaffe's flank march

   Sheaffe comes up from Fort George with about 300 to 400 men of the 41st Foot, militia flank companies and field guns. Rather than attack straight up the slope where Brock fell, he leaves two guns near Vrooman's to cover the village and marches inland toward St Davids (Lossing says by way of the village, some three miles west; modern accounts put the climb nearer a mile west of Queenston), climbs the escarpment out of the Americans' sight and turns east along the top to form in the fields along the Chippawa road, behind the American position. Captain Bullock brings about 150 men of the 41st and two militia flank companies up from Chippawa. With them are Captain Robert Runchey's Company of Colored Men, Black volunteers raised at the urging of Richard Pierpoint, a veteran of the Revolution, and the survivors of the 49th. By various counts Sheaffe now has 800 to more than 1,000 regulars and militia besides the warriors. Scott turns his line to face west.

8. About 3-4 PM; formal surrender near sunset

   Surrender on the heights

   About 3 PM by most accounts (Lossing says 4), with the warriors on the left and the 41st, the militia and the guns on the right, Sheaffe's line fires a volley and charges. The Americans, many of them out of ammunition, give way within minutes and are driven back to the edge of the gorge. Some leap or slide down the cliff, and some drown trying to swim the river; there are no boats to take them off. Fearing a massacre, Scott raises a white flag (a cravat on his sword by Lossing's account) and surrenders; Wadsworth, the senior officer, hands his sword to Sheaffe. The Americans lose about 100 killed and 170 wounded (American Battlefield Trust figures) and some 835 to 960 captured (the national plaque says 958, about half of them regulars). British, Canadian and Haudenosaunee losses were about 105 to 130, among them two Haudenosaunee chiefs. The prisoners are marched to Newark. Brock and Macdonell are buried together at Fort George on 16 October; today they lie under Brock's Monument on the heights. Van Rensselaer resigns. The national plaque says the victory 'ended the American offensive of 1812'; a second attempt under Brigadier General Alexander Smyth in November came to nothing.