Produced by Steven Gibbs, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE STORY OF ISAAC BROCK HERO, DEFENDER AND SAVIOUR OF UPPER CANADA 1812 BY WALTER R. NURSEY "By his unrivalled skill, by great And veteran service to the state, By worth adored, He stood, in high dignity, The proudest knight of chivalry, Knight of the Sword." --_Coplas de Manrique._ TORONTO: WILLIAM BRIGGS 1908 Copyright, Canada, 1908, by WALTER R. NURSEY. [Illustration: _Frontispiece_ PORTRAIT OF MAJOR-GENERAL SIR ISAAC BROCK] A WORD TO THE READER That Isaac Brock is entitled to rank as the foremost defender of the flag Western Canada has ever seen, is a statement which no one familiar with history can deny. Brock fought and won out when the odds were all against him. At a time when almost every British soldier was busy fighting Napoleon in Europe, upon General Brock fell the responsibility of upholding Britain's honour in America. He was "the man behind the gun"--the undismayed man--when the integrity of British America was threatened by a determined enemy. His success can be measured by the fact that it is only since the war of 1812-14 that the British flag has been properly respected in the western hemisphere. It is also a fact that after the capture of Detroit the Union Jack became more firmly rooted in the affections of the Canadian people than ever. It must not be forgotten that the capture of this stronghold was almost as far-reaching in its ultimate effect as the victory of Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, and was fraught with little, if any, less import to Canada. What with the timidity of Prevost, and the tactical blunders of both himself and Sheaffe, the immediate influence upon the enemy of the victories at Detroit and Queenston was almost nullified. Had Brock survived Queenston, or even had his fixed, militant policy been allowed to prevail from the first, it is safe to say there would have been no armistice, no placating of a clever, intriguing foe, and no two years' prolongation of the war. Had the capitulation of Detroit, the crushing defeat at Queenston, and the wholesale desertion of Wadsworth's cowardly legions at Lewiston, been followed up by the British with relentless assault "all along the line"--before the enemy had time to recover his grip--then our hero's feasible plan, which he had pleaded with Prevost to permit, namely, to sweep the Niagara frontier and destroy Sackett's Harbor--the key to American naval supremacy of the lakes--could, there is no good reason to doubt, have been carried out. The purpose of this little book is not, however, to deal in surmises.