Books: Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher
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William Henry Withrow >> Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher
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The first detachment of invaders were driven with some loss behind
a steep bank close to the water's edge, but they were soon
reinforced by fresh arrivals, and, being now in overwhelming
strength, steadily fought their way up the bank.
Meanwhile, where was Brock? Such, we venture to think, was the
most eager thought of every mind on either side. He was speeding
as fast as his good steed could carry him to his glorious fate.
The previous night, at head-quarters at Fort George, he had called
his staff together and, in anticipation of the invasion, had given
to each officer his instructions. In the morning, agreeably to his
custom, he rose before day. While dressing, the sound of the
distant cannonade caught his attentive ear. He speedily roused his
aides-de-camp, Major Glegg and Colonel Macdonel, and called for
his favourite horse, Alfred, the gift of his friend, Sir James
Craig. His first impression was that the distant firing was but a
feint to draw the garrison from Fort George. The real point of
attack he anticipated would be Niagara, and he suspected an
American force to be concealed in boats around the point on which
Fort Niagara stood, ready to cross over as soon as the coast was
clear. He determined, therefore, to ascertain personally the
nature of the attack before withdrawing the garrison.
With his two aides, he galloped eagerly to the scene of the
action. As he approached Queenston Heights, the whole slope of the
hill was swept by a heavy artillery and musketry fire from the
American shore. Nevertheless, with his aides, he rode at full
speed up to the 18-pounder battery, midway to the summit.
Dismounting, he surveyed the disposition of the opposed forces and
personally directed the fire of the gun. At this moment firing was
heard on the crest of the hill commanding the battery. A
detachment of American troops under Captain (afterwards General)
Wool had climbed like catamounts the steep cliff by an unguarded
fisherman's path. Sir Isaac Brock and his aides had not even time
to remount, but were compelled to retire with the twelve gunners
who manned the battery. This was promptly occupied by the
Americans, who raised the stars and stripes. Brock, having first
despatched a messenger to order up reinforcements from Fort George
and to command the bombardment of Fort Niagara, [Footnote: This
was done with such vigour that its fire was silenced and its
garrison compelled for the time to abandon it.] determined to
recapture the battery. Placing himself at the head of a company of
the Forty-ninth he charged up the hill under a heavy fire. The
enemy gave way, and Brock, by the tones of his voice and the
reckless exposure of his person, inspirited the pursuit of his
followers. His tall figure--he was six feet two inches in height,
--his conspicuous valour, and his general's epaulettes and cockade
attracted the fire of the American sharpshooters, and he fell,
pierced through the breast by a mortal bullet. As he fell upon his
face, a devoted follower rushed to his assistance. "Don't mind
me," he said. "Push on the York volunteers," and with his ebbing
life sending a love-message to his sister in the far-off Isle of
Guernsey, the brave soul passed away.
CHAPTER IV.
THE WAGES OF WAR.
At The Holms, as may well be supposed, the rude alarum of war, at
the very door, as it were, threw the quiet household into unwonted
excitement. The early cannonade brought every member of the family
with eager questioning into the great kitchen.
"It has come," said the squire, "the day I have long looked for.
We muse meet it like brave men."
"God defend the right," added Neville, with solemn emotion.
"And forgive and pity our misguided enemies," said Katharine, the
tears standing in her eyes.
"And send them back quicker than they came," exclaimed Zenas, with
some more hard words of boyish petulance.
"We must help to send them, eh, Sandy?" said Tom Loker.
"Ay, please God," devoutly answered Mr. McKay. "I doubt na He will
break them in pieces like a potter's vessel--a vessel fitted for
destruction."
After a hurried breakfast the two men hastened to join their
militia company, Mary having first filled their haversacks with a
liberal supply of bread and cheese, ham sandwich, and, at Sandy's
special request, a quantity of oaten bannocks.
"They're aye gude to fecht or march on," he said, "an' we're like
eneuch to hae baith to thole or ere we win hame again."
The apparition of Sir Isaac Brock and his aides galloping past the
house in the early dawn, and an hour later of the breathless
messenger returning to hurry up re-enforcements, and of the troops
from Fort George marching by to the inspiring strains of "The
British Grenadiers," had been witnessed by Zenas, and had excited
his highest enthusiasm. "Now, father," he said, "the time has come
for me to do my part for my country."
"You shall, my son," said the squire tenderly. "Even as David went
to his brethren in the camp, shall you bear succour to the brave
fellows who are fighting our battles. Some of them may sorely want
help before the day is over."
"And I," said Neville, "will go with him. I hope I may be of some
use, too."
"That you may," answered the squire. "I only fear there may be but
too much need for your services."
With busy hands the old soldier and his son loaded the waggon with
such articles as his military experience had taught him would be
most needed by men exposed to all the deadly vicissitudes of war.
Katharine prepared a great boilerful of tea--"The best thing in
the world," said the squire, "for fighting men." All the bread in
the house, a huge round of cold beef and half a dozen smoked hams,
a large cheese, several jars of milk, and the last churning of
great yellow rolls of butter were gladly given to the patriotic
service. With his own hands the squire put up a generous parcel of
his best Virginia leaf tobacco. "I know well," he said, "how it
soothes the pain of wounds and numbs the pangs of hunger." More
thoughtful provision still, Kate, with a sigh, brought out the
stout roll of lint bandage which, at her father's suggestion, she
had prepared for the unknown contingencies of the border war.
"O this is dreadful, father," she said. "It seems almost like
making a shroud before the man who is to wear it is dead."
"It may save some poor fellow's life, my dear," he answered, "and
one must always prepare for the worst, war is such an uncertain
game. Indeed, wounds and death are almost the only things certain
about it."
"Keep in the rear of the troops, my son, and take your orders from
Major Sheaffe or of the army surgeon. I told them both what we
were sending, as they passed. Keep out of gunshot and avoid
capture: the time may come only too soon when you'll share the
battle's brunt yourself."
"I wish it were to-day, father. I'd give almost anything to be
with Brock and his brave fellows."
"So would I, my son; but I must be the home-guard. It would never
do to leave Kate and the maids unprotected, with an invasion so
near. And no work can be more important than may be before you
both before you return."
The brave boy drove off to the scene of action, the distant rattle
of musketry, and at short intervals the loud roar of the cannon,
making his heart throb with martial enthusiasm. The young preacher
communed with his own heart on the unnatural conflict between his
own kinsmen after the flesh and the compatriots of his spiritual
adoption--and was still. The brave old veteran, shouldering the
musket that had done good service at Brandywine and Germantown,
patrolled the river road bounding the farm.
As they approached the village of Queenston, Neville and Zenas
found that a temporary lull in hostilities had taken place. The
Americans had possession of the heights, and were strongly re-
enforced from the Lewiston side of the river.
The redcoats from Fort George--about four hundred men of the 41st
regiment, together with a part of the 49th, which had already been
in action--were about to march by a by-road apparently away from
the scene of action.
"Hello!" said Zenas to young Ensign Norton, of the 41st regiment,
who was a frequent visitor at his father's house. "I don't
understand this. You are not running away from these fellows are
you? Why don't you drive the Yankees from that battery?"
"We intend to, young Hotspur, but it would be madness to charge up
that hill in face of those guns. We are to take them in flank, I
suppose, and drive them over the cliff."
"Where's Brock?" asked the boy, jealous of the fame of his hero,
which he seemed to think compromised by this prudent counsel.
"Have not you heard," said Norton, with something between a sigh
and a sob? "He'll never lead us again. He lies in yonder house,"
pointing to a long, low, poor-looking dwelling-house on the left
side of the road.
"What! dead? killed--so soon?" cried the boy, turning white, and
then flushing red, and unconsciously clenching his fists as he
spoke.
"Yes, Mister," said a war-bronzed soldier standing by, who looked
doubly grim from the blood trickling down his powder-blackened
cheek from a scalp wound received during the morning skirmish. "I
stood anear him when he fell, an' God knows I'd rather the bullet
had struck me; my fighting days will soon be over, anyhow. But
we'll avenge his death afore the day is done. They call us the
green tigers, them fellers do, an' there's not a man of us won't
fight like a tiger robbed of her whelps, for not a man of us
wouldn't 'a' died for the General."
"To the right, wheel, forward march!" came the order from the
Colonel, and the "green tigers" filed on with the grim resolve to
conquer or to die.
The militia, clad chiefly in homespun frieze, with flint-lock
muskets and stout cartridge boxes at their belts, were drawn up at
the roadside, and were being supplied with ammunition, previous to
following the regulars.
A number of Indians, whose chief dress was a breach clout and
deerskin leggings, formidable in their war-paint and war plumes,
with scalping-knives and tomahawks, were only partially held in
hand by Chief Brant, conspicuous by his height, his wampum fillet
and eagle plumes, and his King George's medal on his breast.
"Drive on to the village," said Major-General Sheaffe, who was now
chief in command, to Zenas as he passed. "You will find plenty to
do there."
At the house where Brock's body lay, a single sentry stood at
guard, his features settled in a fixed and stony stare, as though
by a resolute effort controlling his emotions. Beyond the village
a strong guard was drawn up, and two field pieces, with their
gunners, occupied the road.
Soldiers were passing in and out of a large barn which stood near
the roadside. They came in groups of two each from the trampled
hill slope, bearing on stretchers their ghastly burden of bleeding
and wounded men. Although coming within musket-range of the
American force, no molestation was offered. Their work of humanity
was felt to be too sacred for even red-handed War to disturb.
Indeed, both American and British wounded were cared for with
generous impartiality.
Zenas and Neville, assisted by an officer's orderly, conveyed
their hospital stores into the barn. On bundles of unthreshed
wheat, or on trusses of hay, were a number of writhing, groaning,
bleeding forms, a few hours since in the vigour of manhood's
strength, now maimed, some of them for life, some of them marked
for death, and one ghastly form already cold and rigid, covered by
a blood-stained sheet At one side they beheld an army surgeon with
his sleeves rolled up, but, notwithstanding this precaution,
smeared with blood, kneeling over a poor fellow who lay upon a
truss of hay, and probing his shoulder to trace and, if possible,
extract a bullet that had deeply penetrated.
"Why, Jim Larkins, is that you?" exclaimed Zenas, recognizing an
old neighbour and recent schoolfellow.
"Yes, Zenas, all that's left of me. I won't fight no more for one
while, I guess," he answered, as he moaned with agony as the
doctor probed the wound.
"Give him a drink," said the doctor, and Zenas, as tenderly as a
girl, supported his head and held to his parched lips a mug of
cold and refreshing tea.
"Blessings on the kind heart that sent that," said the wounded
man.
"It was Kate," said Zenas.
"I knowed it must be," murmured Jim, who was one of her rustic
admirers. "Tell her," he continued, in the natural egotism of
suffering, "she never did a better deed. Heaven reward her for
it."
Zenas thought of the benediction pronounced on the cup of cold
water given for the Master, and rejoiced in the privilege of
ministering to these wounded and, it might be, dying men.
"You'll have to lose your arm, my good fellow," said the doctor,
kindly, but in a business-like way, "the bone is badly shattered."
"I was afear'd o' that ever since I got hit. I was just a-takin'
aim when I missed my fire,--I didn't know why, didn't feel
nuthin', but I couldn't hold the gun. Old Jonas Evans, the Methody
local preacher, was aside me, a-prayin' like a saint and a-
fightin' like a lion. 'The Lord ha' mercy on his soul,' I heared
him say as he knocked a feller over. Well, he helped me out o' the
fight as tender as a woman, and then went at it again as fierce as
ever."
"Don't talk so much, my good follow," said the doctor, who had
been preparing ligatures to tie the arteries and arranging his
saw, knife, and tourniquet within reach. The operation was soon
over, Jim never flinching a bit. Indeed, during action, and for
some time after, the sensibilities seem, by the concurrent
excitement, mercifully deadened to pain.
"I'd have spared t'other one too, an' right willin'," said the
faithful fellow, "if it would have saved Brock."
Zenas, at the doctor's direction, held the poor fellow's shattered
arm till the amputation was complete. As the dissevered limb grew
cold in his hands, he seemed more distressed than its late owner.
Instead of laying it with some others near the surgeon's table, he
wrapped it tenderly, as though it still could feel, in a cloth,
and going out where a fatigue party were burying on the field of
battle--clad in their military dress, in waiting for the last
trump and the final parade at the great review--the victims of the
fight, he laid the dead arm reverently in the ground, and covered
it with its kindred clay. He thought of his sister's remark, about
preparing the shroud before death, but here was he burying part of
the body of a man who was yet alive.
Neville, meanwhile, had been speaking words of spiritual comfort
and counsel to the wounded and the dying, and receiving their last
faint-whispered messages to loved ones far away. He also read,
over the ghastly trench in which the dead were being buried--one
wide, long, common grave, in which lay side by side friend and
foe, those recently arrayed in battle with each other, slain by
mutual wounds, and now at rest and for ever--the solemn funeral
service. As he pronounced the words, "Dust to dust, ashes to
ashes," the earth was thrown on the uncoffined dead, and then over
the soldiers' grave their comrades fired their farewell volley and
again mounted guard against the foe.
Zenas received a lesson in surgery that day of which he found the
benefit more than once before the war was over. He was soon able
to apply one of Katharine's lint bandages or dress a wound with a
deftness that elicited the commendation not only of the subject of
his ministration, but even of the knight of the scalpel himself.
Neville, too, evinced no little skill in the surgeon's beneficent
art.
"Young Drayton," said the surgeon, "I think we shall have to
trespass on the hospitality of your house on behalf of Captain
Villiers, here. He has received a severe gunshot wound, from which
he will be some time in convalescing. I know no place where he
will be so comfortable, and I know the squire will make him
welcome."
"Of course he will," said Zenas, with alacrity. "He would make
even those wounded Yanks welcome, much more an officer of the
King."
While Neville remained to minister to the dying, Zenas made a
comfortable bed of hay in his now empty waggon, on which the
wounded captain was placed, with a wheat sheaf for a pillow, and
drove carefully to The Holms. He was preceded by a waggon
conveying a number of wounded soldiers to the military hospital at
Niagara. As this load of injured and anguished humanity was driven
down and up the steep sides of the ravine which crosses the road
to the north of the village, at every jolt over the rough stones a
groan of agony was wrung from the poor fellows, that made the
heart of Zenas ache with sympathy and when the team stopped at the
top of the hill, the blood ran from the waggon and stained the
ground. War did not seem to the boy such a glorious thing as when
he saw the gallant redcoats in the morning marching to the
stirring strains of the "British Grenadiers." The boy seemed to
have become a man in a few hours. Not less full of enthusiasm and
high courage, but more serious and grave, and never again was he
heard vapouring about the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war."
[Footnote: Accounts of several of the above-mentioned incidents
were gleaned from the conversation of an intelligent lady,
recently deceased, who, as a young girl, was an eye-witness of the
leading events of the war.]
CHAPTER V.
A VICTORY AND ITS COST.
While the events just described had been taking place, an
important movement was made for the recovery of Queenston Heights.
Major-General Sheaffe, with a force of about nine hundred redcoats
and militia, made a circuitous march through the village of St.
David's, and thus gained the crest of the heights on which the
enemy were posted. Here he was re-enforced by the arrival of a
company of the 41st grenadiers and a body of militiamen from
Chippewa.
With a volley and a gallant British cheer, they attacked, about
two o'clock in the afternoon, the American force, which had also
been re-enforced to about the same number as the British. Courage
the enemy had, but they lacked the confidence and steadiness
imparted by the presence of the veteran British troops.
Nevertheless, for a time they stoutly stood their ground; but,
soon perceiving the hopelessness of resistance, they everywhere
gave way, and retreated precipitately down the hill to their place
of landing. The Indians, like sleuth hounds that had broken leash,
unhappily could not be restrained, and, shrieking their blood-
curdling war-whoops, pursued with tomahawk and reeking blade the
demoralized fugitives. Many stragglers were cut off from the main
body and attempted to escape through the woods. These were
intercepted and driven back by the exasperated Indians, burning to
avenge the death of Brock, for whom they felt an affection and
veneration for which the savage breast would scarce have been
deemed capable.
Terrified at the appearance of the enraged warriors, many of the
Americans flung themselves wildly over the cliff and endeavoured
to scramble down its rugged and precipitous slope. Some were
impaled upon the jagged pines, others reached the bottom bruised
and bleeding, and others, attempting to swim the rapid stream,
were drowned in its whirling eddies. One who reached the opposite
shore in a boat made a gesture of defiance and contempt toward his
foes across the river, when he fell, transpierced with the bullet
of an Indian sharpshooter.
Two brothers of the Canadian militia fought side by side, when, in
the moment of victory, a shot pierced the lungs of the younger, a
boy of seventeen, with a fair, innocent face. His brother bore him
from the field in his arms, and, while the life-tide ebbed from
his wound, the dying boy faltered--
"Kiss me, Jim. Tell mother--I was not--afraid to die," and as the
blood gushed from his mouth, the brave young spirit departed.
All that day, and on many a foughten field thereafter, the living
brother heard those dying words, and in his ear there rang a wild
refrain, which nerved his arm and steeled his heart to fight for
the country hallowed by his brother's blood.
"O, how the drum beats so loud!
'Close beside me in the fight,
My dying brother says, 'Good night!'
And the cannon's awful breath
Screams the loud halloo of Death!
And the drum,
And the drum
Beats so loud!"
Such were some of the dreadful horrors with which a warfare
between two kindred peoples was waged; and such were some of the
costly sacrifices with which the liberties of Canada were won. As
from the vantage ground of these happier times we look back upon
the stern experiences of those iron days, they inspire a blended
feeling of pity and regret, not unmingled with a vague remorse,
shot through and through our patriotic pride and exultation, like
dark threads in a bright woof. Through the long centuries of
carnage and strife through which the race has struggled up to
freedom, how faint has seemed the echo of the angel's song, "Peace
on earth, good will to men."
"I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan.
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.
"Is it, O man with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies.
* * * * *
"Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations
I hear once more the voice of Christ say, 'Peace!'
"Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise."
The result of the battle of Queenston Heights was the
unconditional surrender of Brigadier Wadsworth and nine hundred
and fifty officers and privates as prisoners of war. But this
victory, brilliant as it was, was dearly bought with the death of
the loved and honored Brock, the brave young Macdonnell, and those
of humbler rank, whose fall brought sorrow to many a Canadian
home.
"Joy's bursting shout in whelming grief was drowned,
And victory's self unwilling audience found;
On every brow the cloud of sadness hung,--
"The sounds of triumph died on every tongue."
Three days later all that was mortal of General Brock and his
gallant aide-de-camp was committed to the earth with mournful
pageantry. With arms reversed and muffled drums and the wailing
strains of the "Dead March," the sad procession passed, while the
half-mast flags and minute guns of both the British and American
forts attested the honour and esteem in which the dead soldiers
were held by friends and foes alike. Amid the tears of war-bronzed
soldiers and even of stoical Indians they were laid in one common
grave in a bastion of Fort George. A grateful country has since
erected on the scene of the victory--one of the grandest sites on
earth--a noble monument to the memory of Brock, and beneath it,
side by side, sleeps the dust of the heroic chief and his faithful
aide-de-camp--united in their death and not severed in their
burial.
As Neville and the squire and Zenas turned away from the solemn
pageant of which they had been silent spectators, the latter
remarked,
"Captain Villiers said he'd almost give his other arm to be able
to be present to-day and lay a wreath on the coffin of his gallant
chief. As he couldn't come, he wrote these verses, which he wished
me to post to the York _Gazette_. He said I might read them
to you, Mr. Trueman, before I sent them." And the boy, not very
fluently, but with a good deal of feeling, read the following
lines:--
"Low bending o'er the ragged bier,
The soldier drops the mournful tear,
For life departed, valour driven,
Fresh from the field of death, to Heaven.
"But Time shall fondly trace the name
Of BROCK upon the scrolls of Fame,
And those bright laurels, which should wave
Upon the brow of one so brave,
Shall flourish vernal o'er his grave."
Neville commended the graceful tribute with generous warmth, when
Zenas remarked,
"The Captain will be glad to hear you like them. Leastways, I
suppose so. He read them himself to Kate this morning, and seemed
pleased because they made her cry."
"He is a brave gentleman," says the squire. "I fear it will be
long before he mounts his horse, again."
"O he'll soon be round again," chimed in Zenas. "He said Kate
would be his Elaine, to nurse the wounded Lancelot back to life.
Who was Lancelot?"
"Some of those moon-struck poetry fellows, I'll be bound," said
the squire contemptuously.
"Nay, a very gallant knight," said Neville, who had when a boy,
read with delight Sir Thomas Mallory's book of King Arthur; but he
did not seem to relish the comparison and led the conversation
into a serious vein, as befitting the solemn occasion.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CAPTURE OF YORK.
After the battle of Queenston Heights an armistice of a month
followed, during which each party was gathering up its strength
for the renewal of the unnatural conflict. General Smyth, who had
succeeded Van Rensselaer, assembled a force five thousand strong,
for the conquest of Canada. At the expiration of the armistice, he
issued a Napoleonic proclamation to his "companions in arms."
"Come on, my heroes" it concludes; "when you attack the enemy's
batteries let your rallying word be: 'The cannon lost at Detroit,
or death.'"
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