What happened at the Battle of Queenston Heights?
Before dawn on 13 October 1812, American troops under Major General Stephen Van Rensselaer crossed the Niagara River from Lewiston and seized the heights above Queenston in Upper Canada. Major General Isaac Brock was killed leading a counterattack. In the afternoon Major General Roger Hale Sheaffe marched round inland, joined John Norton's Haudenosaunee warriors and troops from Chippawa, and attacked. Most of the New York militia refused to cross to help, and more than 900 Americans, Lieutenant Colonel Winfield Scott among them, surrendered.5
The American Battlefield Trust calls Queenston Heights the first major engagement of the War of 1812, and Parks Canada the first battle for the Niagara frontier. It cost Upper Canada its commander and made Brock the province's lasting hero. The wider war is told in our guide to the War of 1812, and the rest of that day in 13 October in military history.6
After Detroit: a pause on the Niagara
The United States declared war on Britain on 18 June 1812 and planned to conquer Upper Canada. Major General Isaac Brock, who commanded the troops in the province and governed it as administrator, struck first in the west and, with Tecumseh, took Detroit. According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, he crossed the Detroit River on 16 August with about 1,300 men, and William Hull surrendered Detroit, an army of something over 2,000 and 35 guns.7
Brock hurried back to the Niagara, where an armistice agreed by Sir George Prevost and Henry Dearborn kept both sides from attacking. The Brock University Library exhibition writes that he could only wait helplessly while men and supplies reached the American camp, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography that he complained the pause merely let the enemy bring up more troops. It ended on 4 September.8
Brock could not hold the whole river. The Canadian Encyclopedia gives him 1,500 soldiers and 250 Indigenous allies, while the historian Henry Adams writes of fewer than 2,000 men guarding nearly forty miles of front. He kept garrisons at the points most at risk, meant to concentrate once the Americans showed where they would land, and stayed himself at Fort George, near the mouth of the river.9
Van Rensselaer's army and the false start
The American army on the Niagara was led by Major General Stephen Van Rensselaer of the New York militia, a wealthy politician who had never commanded troops in battle. Adams adds that he was a Federalist and a rival of Governor Daniel Tompkins, whose allies were eager to accuse him of delay. According to the Brock University Library, his army grew during the armistice to more than 6,000 men.10
The pressure on him was heavy. In his report of 14 October Van Rensselaer wrote that the troops told him they must have orders to act or they would go home. He chose to cross from Lewiston to the village of Queenston, below the heights on the Canadian bank.11
The first attempt failed. In Van Rensselaer's account, the officer leading the boats in the dark went far past the crossing place and abandoned the detachment with nearly all the oars in his boat, and the troops spent the night in a north-east storm. Van Rensselaer and Ronald Dale date this to 11 October, while Adams puts it on the night of 10 October.12
For the second try Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer was to lead 300 militia, and Lieutenant Colonel John Chrystie of the 13th Infantry 300 regulars. On 12 October Brock's brigade major, Thomas Evans, crossed under a flag of truce and saw boats ready on the American shore. He warned Brock, but Brock seems not to have been fully convinced and stayed at Fort George.13
The crossing before dawn
The first troops pushed off in the early hours of 13 October. Adams puts the embarkation at three o'clock. Thirteen boats were used. The Brock University Library writes that ten landed at Queenston and three were swept downstream, and Chrystie, in one of those that failed, had to return to the American bank.14
The defenders were awake. The grenadier and light companies of the 49th Foot under Captains Williams and Dennis, with militia from Lincoln and York and a three-pounder, about 300 men by Adams's count, caught the Americans on the shore. Colonel Van Rensselaer was hit several times, and his men took cover under the river bank.15
Behind them the crossing fell into disorder. Chrystie found nobody in charge of the boats and boatmen leaving their work. Mead later counted thirteen boats at first, soon reduced to three, while forty lay idle at Four Mile Creek, ten miles away.16
Wool's path and the redan
On the wounded colonel's orders, the landed regulars climbed the heights under Captain John Ellis Wool of the 13th Infantry. Wool wrote that they went round the point and up the rocks, came out partly behind the battery and took it without much resistance. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography calls the route a fisherman's path, and The Canadian Encyclopedia a hidden path.17
The battery was the redan, a one-gun position part way up the slope. Brock had ridden up to it, and the enemy appearing above him forced him and the gunners to run down the hill. Adams tells it differently, with Brock watching from an 18-pounder battery on the hilltop when Wool came out thirty yards behind it.18
Brock's last charge
Brock had heard the gunfire at Fort George before daylight and ridden for Queenston at once. On the way he passed the York Volunteers, the flank companies of the 3rd York militia, marching from Brown's Point. John Beverley Robinson, one of their officers, wrote the next day that Brock “waved his hand to us, and desired us to follow with expedition”.19
Wool had to be driven off before he could be reinforced. Brock gathered the nearest men of the 49th and militia and led them up the slope on foot. Wool wrote that they drove his men back to the edge of the bank. The Brock University Library adds that a ball grazed Brock's hand, and The Canadian Encyclopedia's article on his monument that he was hit in the wrist.20
Then an American marksman shot him in the chest, and he died almost at once. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography notes that he stood six feet two and made a splendid target, and that the bullet hole in his surviving coatee shows he was hit in the heart. The coat is now in the Canadian War Museum.21
His last words are disputed. The York Gazette printed “Push on brave York Volunteers”, but the Volunteers had not yet reached the field, and both the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and the Brock University Library doubt he said it while dying. His aide J. B. Glegg wrote that he lived a few minutes and asked in a feeble voice that his fall not stop his companions. His body was hidden in a house in Queenston.22
Macdonell's charge
Command on the spot passed to Brock's provincial aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell. Born in Scotland in 1785, he had, by the Dictionary of Canadian Biography's account, taken on the duties of attorney general of Upper Canada in 1811 and had helped arrange Hull's surrender at Detroit.23
Macdonell led the York Volunteers and the men of the 49th in a second attack. Robinson remembered that “McDonell was there mounted, and animating the men to charge”. Wool admitted that the British drove his men to the edge of the heights before Macdonell's horse was shot and Macdonell himself mortally wounded. According to the Brock University Library, about 80 men, mostly militia, attacked some 400 Americans.24
The attack failed, and the survivors fell back to the north end of the village. The Brock University Library writes that by about nine in the morning they had retired to Vrooman's Point, a mile downstream. Macdonell died the next day, 14 October.25
Norton and the warriors on the heights
For several hours the Americans held the heights, and Adams writes that at ten o'clock Wool held the summit with 250 men. But they were not alone for long. John Norton, called Teyoninhokarawen, believed to have been born in Scotland, a former schoolmaster and Indian Department interpreter who had become a Mohawk chief, arrived with warriors of the Six Nations of the Grand River.26
Norton did not attack straight up the cliff as Brock had. He took a circuit and climbed the escarpment well west of Queenston, where the slope was easier, and the woods on the American right gave his warriors cover. From there they pinned down the American advance for hours. The Canadian Encyclopedia counts about 80 Haudenosaunee and Delaware warriors under Norton and John Brant, and the Brock University Library about 80 Grand River warriors. Van Rensselaer's report speaks of several hundred.27
Chrystie, who reached the heights late in the morning, found Lieutenant Colonel Winfield Scott leading the regulars, just after Scott had checked the warriors' first charge. The Indian fire, he wrote, never stopped for the rest of the day. Sheaffe praised “the judicious position which Norton and the Indians with him had taken”.28
Sheaffe's march round the heights
Brock had left Major General Roger Hale Sheaffe at Fort George to bring up the main body, and Sheaffe now took command. He did not march straight at the heights under the guns at Lewiston. He led his column inland, out of range, and climbed the escarpment some distance from the river, in the footsteps of Norton's warriors.29
On the summit he joined Norton and a party of the 41st Foot from Chippawa under Captain Richard Bullock. From the American shore Van Rensselaer watched the column leave the road and join the Indians behind the heights. Sheaffe brought companies of the 41st and the 49th, militia and field guns.30
With them marched Captain Robert Runchey's Company of Coloured Men, Black militiamen, free and enslaved. The Canadian Encyclopedia credits Richard Pierpoint, a formerly enslaved veteran of the American Revolution, with raising it, while the Dictionary of Canadian Biography says his offer was turned down, that Runchey raised the company and that Pierpoint served in it as a private.31
The size of Sheaffe's force is given very differently. The Canadian Encyclopedia speaks of 300 soldiers and 250 militia arriving with him, the Brock University Library of more than 900 men, and Adams of about 1,000. Brigade Major Evans's return counts 1,000 British engaged in the whole battle, 800 regulars and militia and 200 Indians, while the American Battlefield Trust gives 1,300.32
The men who would not cross
Everything now depended on the boats. Chrystie saw that by about eleven o'clock half the morning's boats were lost or damaged and not half the troops had crossed. When firing broke out on the heights, a well-equipped company about to board stopped and, in his words, “absolutely refused to cross, regarding neither the orders nor threats nor remonstrances of the General”.33
Van Rensselaer, back on the New York bank, rode through the camp urging the men over, all in vain. Many of the militia said they were not obliged to fight on foreign soil. The American Battlefield Trust notes that the refusal was almost universal but the reasons varied, from loyalty to the state rather than the federal army to a sense that the attack was futile.34
How many Americans fought at all is uncertain. Sheaffe guessed that the advance which landed probably amounted to 1,300 or 1,400 men. Evans's return gives 1,600 as the force the Americans acknowledged, Ronald Dale fewer than 1,400, and the American Battlefield Trust 3,550 for the whole American army. Mead counted about 200 men who crossed and then hid under the bank. On the heights Scott, who had taken command from the wounded Wool, held a line with Brigadier General William Wadsworth of the New York militia. Adams and The Canadian Encyclopedia give him about 350 regulars and 250 militia, Chrystie fewer than 300 under arms when the British appeared.35
Surrender at the river
Van Rensselaer sent Wadsworth a note that no reinforcement would cross and that he would try to send boats to cover a retreat. The officers on the heights decided to fall back, and the British attacked as they moved. The sources disagree on the time. Chrystie saw the British form in front of him at about a quarter past two, the Brock University Library puts Sheaffe's advance just after three, and Van Rensselaer dated the last fight to about four.36
Sheaffe's men fired a volley and charged with the bayonet. The militia at the head of the American column broke at the first fire, and the rest were pushed over the edge of the heights down to the river bank. Ronald Dale writes that some were killed climbing down the escarpment and others drowned trying to swim the Niagara. There were no boats waiting.37
Even surrender was dangerous. Adams writes that Scott went to the British line through the warriors, who nearly killed him, and The Canadian Encyclopedia that he waved a white handkerchief. The Brock University Library adds that he feared a massacre, because the Grand River warriors had lost two chiefs. Sheaffe reported receiving Wadsworth's sword on the field.38
Counting the losses
Evans's return of 15 October lists 925 prisoners: 19 officers and 417 men of the regulars and 54 officers and 435 men of the militia. Parks Canada gives 958 and the American Battlefield Trust 835 missing or captured, while the Niagara Falls Museums say almost 1,000 and the Brock University Library about 900. Among them were Wadsworth, Scott and Chrystie. Adams notes that the prisoners included skulkers and militiamen who never reached the heights.39
The American dead and wounded are only estimated. Adams writes that ninety were reported killed, and Mead gives about 100 killed and about 200 wounded. The Canadian Encyclopedia puts the American killed and wounded at 300, and the American Battlefield Trust gives 100 killed and 170 wounded. Evans estimated them at 500.40
The British official return lists 14 killed, 77 wounded and 21 missing, regulars and militia only. The Canadian Encyclopedia gives 28 killed and 77 wounded with the warriors included, and the American Battlefield Trust 21 killed, 85 wounded and 22 missing or captured. A memorandum by Colonel William Claus of the Indian Department names five warriors killed, two Cayuga chiefs, an Onondaga and two Oneida, and Parks Canada lists the same men: Ayanete, Kayentatirhon, Ta Kanentye, Kayarawagor and Sakangonguquate.41
What Queenston changed
Adams writes that Van Rensselaer asked to be relieved and that Brigadier General Alexander Smyth took command at Buffalo on 24 October. The American Battlefield Trust writes that Van Rensselaer left the service in disgrace and that the defeat made Dearborn hesitate over his own plans against Canada.42
According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Sheaffe arranged a three-day armistice and then extended it, and Prevost criticised him for not crossing to take Fort Niagara. He was made a baronet in January 1813, yet in public memory Brock became the victor. Brock himself, the same dictionary notes, never learned that four days before his death the Prince Regent had made him a Knight of the Bath for Detroit.43
For Upper Canada the battle was proof that the province could be held. Parks Canada writes that it ended the American offensive of 1812 and, with the victories at Mackinac and Detroit, helped unite the population behind the war, and The Canadian Encyclopedia and the Niagara Falls Museums say the same of morale. Scott's later career is told in our biography of Winfield Scott, and the next great fight on this river in the Battle of Chippawa, 1814.44
Brock's Monument and the memory of the battle
Brock and Macdonell were buried on 16 October in a bastion of Fort George, and across the river the guns of Fort Niagara fired a salute. The York Gazette told its readers: “Inhabitants of Upper Canada, in the Day of Battle remember BROCK.”45
In 1824 they were reburied under a monument on the summit of the heights. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes it as a column just over 41 m high, largely finished in 1827, and the federal heritage statement dates it to 1823. On 17 April 1840 an explosion wrecked it, supposedly set by Benjamin Lett, a man linked to the rebellion of 1837. On 30 July 1840 about 8,000 people met on the heights and resolved to build a grander memorial.46
The second monument, designed by William Thomas, was begun on 13 October 1853, and Brock and Macdonell lie in a crypt beneath it. The federal heritage statement dates the building to 1853 to 1856, and The Canadian Encyclopedia gives its inauguration as 13 October 1859 and its height as 57 m. A statue of Brock 4.8 m tall stands on top, and 235 steps lead up inside the column.47
Ronald Dale writes that the battlefield was designated a national historic site in 1968. The monument belongs to Parks Canada and stands in Queenston Heights Park, run by the Niagara Parks Commission. Lower down, the Brock University Library notes, a small memorial dedicated by the Prince of Wales in 1860 marks the spot where Brock is thought to have fallen, chosen after veterans of the battle could not agree on it.48
The best-known image of the battle is John David Kelly's print of 1896, shown at the top of this page, with the dying Brock at the centre of a charge and Haudenosaunee warriors on the right. The Canadian War Museum calls it historically inaccurate but an iconic Canadian image of the war. The words lettered at its foot, “Push on York Volunteers”, are the very words that, by the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and the Brock University Library, he probably did not say as he died.49
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