Battle of Chippawa, 1814: "Those are regulars, by God!"

For two years the American invasions of Canada had gone badly, and by 1814 time was running short. With Napoleon defeated, Wellington's veterans could soon cross the Atlantic, and the Secretary of War, John Armstrong, wanted a decisive success on the Canadian border before they came. The main effort that year was the Niagara front. Major General Jacob Brown's Left Division was to cross the Niagara River, meet the navy's Lake Ontario squadron and strike at targets such as Burlington Bay, York or Kingston.²

Camps of instruction

What made Brown's division different was its training. Through the spring Brown and Winfield Scott ran camps of instruction in northern New York, drilling the regular regiments hard and appointing officers on merit rather than connections. Uniforms were short, and many of Scott's men went to war in the gray cloth normally issued to militia, a detail that would matter on 5 July. HistoryOfWar.org puts Brown's whole force at about 4,000 men: 2,400 regular infantry in the brigades of Scott and Eleazar Ripley, 300 artillerymen, 600 Pennsylvania volunteers and 600 Native American warriors.³

On 3 July the division crossed into Upper Canada and took Fort Erie within hours. The next day Scott's brigade marched north along the river road. A British delaying force under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Pearson slowed it so well that it was dusk before Scott reached the Chippawa River, the British line of defense, where the bridge had been partly destroyed. He camped south of the plain behind Street's Creek and waited for the rest of the division.⁴

Riall's mistake

Major General Phineas Riall, commanding the British forces on the Niagara, had about 2,000 regulars, Canadian militia and First Nations warriors at hand. On 5 July he scouted the American camp and concluded, wrongly, that he faced militia, which earlier fighting on the Niagara had taught the British to despise. He repaired the bridge and marched his three regiments, the 1st, 8th and 100th Foot, onto the plain, with guns on the flank and on the river road.⁵

Brown struck at the same time from the other side. He sent about 500 Pennsylvania militia and warriors into the woods on the west of the plain to clear out British skirmishers. They ran into Pearson's light infantry and Canadian militia and were driven back, and then, writes HistoryOfWar.org, into Riall's whole force coming across the river. Brown ordered Scott forward. His brigade crossed Street's Creek and formed on the open ground just as Riall's line came into position, at about 4.30 p.m..⁶

Regulars, by God

Riall's plan was simple: advance, fire one volley and charge, and wait for the Americans to break. Instead he watched gray-clad troops keep their order under artillery fire. According to the American Battlefield Trust, he is said to have exclaimed, "Those are regulars, by God!"; The Canadian Encyclopedia records only that he suddenly realized his opponents were well-trained regulars. Scott opened gaps in his line so that the 25th Infantry could slip into the woods, push back Pearson and fire into the flank of the 8th Foot, while the British advance masked the fire of their own guns.⁷

The fight came down to discipline and firepower. For about half an hour, by The Canadian Encyclopedia's estimate, or 20 to 25 minutes by other accounts, the two lines loaded and fired at close range. Brown pushed another regiment through the woods and brought more guns to the center of his line. The British line wavered, and Riall, whose coat was cut by a bullet, ordered a withdrawal. His men left in good order, crossed the Chippawa and dropped the bridge behind them. By about 6.30 p.m. the battle was over.⁸

Counting the cost

The Canadian Encyclopedia gives British losses as 148 killed, 321 wounded and 46 missing, and American as 58 killed, 241 wounded and 19 missing. HistoryOfWar.org has the same British figures from Riall's report and puts American losses at around 60 dead and 300 to 350 casualties in all, most of them in Scott's brigade.⁹

What Chippawa meant

Historian John R. Grodzinski calls it a momentous event: American regulars had beaten an equal British force in open battle for the first time in the war. Strategically it settled little. The British fell back to Fort George, the promised naval support never arrived, and three weeks later the two armies met again at Lundy's Lane on 25 July, in an inconclusive battle, before the Americans pulled back to Fort Erie. Yet it showed what drilled American regulars could do, and it is the battle most closely tied to the name of Winfield Scott, whose brigade fought it.¹⁰