CHAPTER IV

1812: BROCK AT DETROIT AND QUEENSTON HEIGHTS

The prorogation which released Brock from his parliamentary
duties on August 5 had been followed by eight days of
the most strenuous military work, especially on the part
of the little reinforcement which he was taking west to
Amherstburg. The Upper Canada militiamen, drawn from the
United Empire Loyalists and from the British-born, had
responded with hearty goodwill, all the way from Glengarry
to Niagara. But the population was so scattered and
equipment so scarce that no attempt had been made to have
whole battalions of 'Select Embodied Militia' ready for
the beginning of the war, as in the more thickly peopled
province of Lower Canada. The best that could be done
was to embody the two flank companies--the Light and
Grenadier companies--of the most urgently needed battalions.
But as these companies contained all the picked men who
were readiest for immediate service, and as the Americans
were very slow in mobilizing their own still more unready
army, Brock found that, for the time being, York could
be left and Detroit attacked with nothing more than his
handful of regulars, backed by the flank-company militiamen
and the Provincial Marine.