across the top of the Heights, pressing the Americans back toward the river. There was no place for them to go. Wool had been injured, and his successor, Colonel Winfield Scott, tried in vain to keep his men together.
Although a few Americans escaped down the hill to the village, others scrambled down the steep bank to the river, hoping to be picked up by one of their boats; still others panicked and went over the cliffs to their deaths.
Colonel Winfield Scott surrendered, and by 3:30 p.m. the Battle of Queenston Heights was over. Three hundred American soldiers and officers were captured. The next day, six hundred more were taken prisoner — men left stranded when their boats went home without them.
With Brock’s victories at Michilimackinac and Detroit, and the American defeat at the Battle of Queenston Heights, the morale of the defenders of Canada grew immeasurably.
The death of Isaac Brock was a high price to pay for victory. The man who had been such an inspiration to his troops died before learning that he had been knighted for his victory at Detroit.
The body of Major General Sir Isaac Brock lay in state at Government House in Niagara. Both he and Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell were buried with full military honours at Fort George on October 17, 1812, in a newly built bastion in the northeast corner of the fort. Macdonell, in rallying the men after Brock had fallen and leading the second attack on Queenston Heights in an attempt to recapture the redan, was also recognized as a hero.
The young Scottish-born Macdonell had been a lawyer at York and a politician. In 1811 he had assumed duty as the attorney general of Upper Canada. Brock had appointed him as provincial aide-de-camp in April 1812, with the rank of lieutenant colonel in the York Militia.
For the long funeral procession from Government House to the fort the road was lined with soldiers of every stripe, the militia, Native warriors, and thousands of civilians, who solemnly watched as the twin caissons carrying the caskets of Brock and Macdonell passed by. General Brock’s trusted horse, Alfred, was also part of the procession, led along the road by four grooms, to the slow beat of the drums.
As Brock’s body was laid to rest, the British gunners at Fort George fired a twenty-one-gun salute. The American guns across the river at Fort Niagara fired a matching salute, a mark of respect for the fallen hero.
5
A Seasonal War
The same thunderous roar of cannon fire that had roused Isaac Brock from his bed at Fort George before dawn on October 13 shook the ground at Queenston and reverberated through the Secord house. Laura bolted upright.
Before she’d opened the door to the children’s room, thirteen-year-old Mary appeared in the hall. “I heard it, Mother. I’ll help you get the little ones up.”
Eleven-year-old Charlotte was already pulling clothes on over her nightshift. Harriet, who was nine, had her face pressed to the windowpane, trying to see what was causing the excitement. “It’s another thunderstorm,” she decided when the next flash of light illuminated the escarpment west of the house.
Laura lifted Appy from her bed. “Quickly; quickly!”
Charles had to be shaken awake. The three-year-old sat up, rubbing his eyes and scowling. “Don’t want to,” he complained, trying to shake off Mary, who was stuffing his chubby arms into his coat.
There was no time to grab more than a knitted coverlet. Laura, with two-year-old Appy on her hip, found Fan standing at the foot of the stairs, wringing her hands. She put an arm about her shoulders and herded the girl and the children out through the back door.
Bob had already gone ahead to set the farm animals loose, as James had instructed he should do in the event of an invasion.
“Pick-a-back.” Mary crouched down to let the reluctant Charles clamber onto her back.
“Hurry; hurry!” They had to get to a safe place, away from the gunfire at Queenston. In the dim light of early morning the family made its way into the countryside.
“Cannon balls were flying around me in every direction,” Laura recalled many years later. If only James were there. She had no way of knowing where his company of militia had taken him, and her worst fear was that he would be in the midst of whatever was happening.
About a mile from the village Laura and the children found shelter in a farmhouse where several other Queenston families had gathered. Although the children were safe for now, Laura was sick with worry over James. Throughout the whole day, while the children found ways to amuse themselves, the adults in the house listened to the sound of muskets and cannon. Every so often there would be a lull, and then the noise of gunfire would resume. If only someone would bring some news!
Finally, late in the afternoon, there was another lull. Would this one last? They waited. Even the children grew still. When only the occasional crack of a musket was heard in the distance, Laura could wait no longer. Leaving her children in the care of Mary and the other women, she hurried back to Queenston.
The air was still thick with gun smoke when she entered her own property through the back, giving a rueful smile to find the cow patiently waiting for someone to open the gate, the pigs happily rooting in the weeds on the other side of their pen.
Before she reached the back door, a man wearing a bloodied bandage on his head came with the news that James had been wounded and was lying on the battlefield at Queenston Heights.
With a murmur of thanks, Laura pushed past the messenger. Her heart hammering in her throat, she lifted her skirts and climbed the steep hill to the scene of the battle, each step a prayer that James would not be badly hurt.
At the sight of the dead from both sides of the battle, and the moans of the injured and dying amongst them, Laura was filled with horror. She picked her way through all the red and blue uniformed figures on the ground until at last she found her husband.
James was weak from loss of blood and in great pain. In her haste to reach him, Laura had not thought to bring anything to staunch the flow of blood from his wounded shoulder. She tore a wide strip off the bottom of her petticoat and folded it to make a compress. Besides the shoulder injury, James had a musket ball lodged in his knee and could barely stand. A kind officer, whom Laura later referred to as “a Gentleman,” came to her aid, and together they got James down off the hill and into his own house.
There, the Secords were in for another shock. The house had been ransacked, searched for valuables, and its contents turned upside down. During one of the lulls in fighting a few unscrupulous American soldiers had seized the opportunity to break into the deserted homes in the village and plunder them.
But this was not the time to grieve over their lost possessions. James was alive. Bob, who had returned by this time, helped Laura to make up a bed on the ground floor for him, and Laura bathed and dressed his wounds. By evening the children returned with the other villagers and were greatly relieved to find their father home.
Over the next few days the whole family prayed for James’s recovery. A doctor from Fort George was finally able to attend him, but was unable to remove the shell from James’s knee. He would never fully recover from this injury, and it would cause him pain for the rest of his life.
When James was a little stronger and could be moved, the family took him to St. Davids, where they planned to spend the winter. The house in Queenston would have to be repaired while they were gone.
Returning to St. Davids was a little like coming home. James had grown up in the tiny village, and he and Laura had spent the first few years of their marriage there among the members of his family. There were Secords on many of the farms in the area, and Laura would have plenty of help in caring for James. James’s older brother, Stephen Secord, had died four years earlier, but Hannah and their seven children were still there, running the gristmill together.
While she was in St. Davids, Laura was relieved to learn that her half-brother Charles Ingersoll