TERENCE COTTRELL, "STORY OF 'ALAMO NORTH' A GRIPPING TALE," KINGSTON WHIG STANDARD  (OCTOBER 9, 2001).

Copyright Kingston Whig Standard 2001

Battle at Prescott featured plots, raids, cowardice, stupidity - and an enigmatic hero

The 11 "rebels" hanged in Kingston during the winter of 1838-39 have often been thought of as William Lyon Mackenzie's men and thus part of the Upper Canada rebellion.

Guns Across the River: The Battle of the Windmill (Robin Brass, 2001), a new book by Donald E. Graves, gives a different view.

Canadians and Americans share many ideas, hopes and desires. Yet there's one desire we don't share with our cousins. The American mission to save the world in spite of itself has been called the "ugly American" syndrome after a 1958 novel about U.S. meddling in Indochina: "It is not the fault of the government or its leaders or any political party that we have acted as we have," the authors write. "It is the temper of the whole nation."

The American national dream to free the world blossomed into the nightmare of Vietnam, where many of the people did not wish to be liberated. But the evil seeds were sown in 1836 in Texas during a lucky disaster called the Battle of the Alamo. There, slave-dealer and butcher-knife-swinging James Bowie, Congressman Davy Crockett and 200 of his coon-hunting pals, managed to get themselves surrounded after they tried to impose freedom (including slavery) on the real owners of Texas.

In Graves's words: "Their commander, William Barret Travis, a 26- year-old refugee from a bad marriage and a host of creditors, sent out a message to the `People of Texas & all Americans in the world,' imploring them to come to the aid of their countrymen at the Alamo fighting `in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character.' "

The wrong-headed Mexicans penned them and slew them. And the rebels founded a cause: "[President] Jackson watched with satisfaction as thousands of Americans ... flooded into Texas until they outnumbered the Spanish-speaking population." They then proclaimed a republic. American troops invaded Texas and it voted to join the U.S.A.

Yet another failure of American zeal to convey benefits with powder and ball came two years after the Alamo in November 1838. An ornate church in the sizzling south was replaced by an austere stone windmill near Prescott on the frozen north shore of the St. Lawrence River. The aim: To free the enslaved Canadians from the yoke of the British tyrant.

After the farcical failure of his 1837 rebellion, William Lyon Mackenzie had fled south and set himself up as a republican guru. Anti-Tory Americans flocked to the fold and a movement took shape. But Mackenzie was soon dwarfed by a beast larger than himself. In particular, newly elected President Van Buren looked upon war with Britain as a far more serious matter than the clash with the Mexicans had been.

The fiery Mackenzie set up a newspaper and scorched the British. The Patriot movement went underground and became a law unto itself with the name Patriot Hunters. The secrecy, oath-taking and ritual attracted some 80,000 recruits to the flame in 1,147 lodges from Maine to Michigan. Armouries were raided for arms and a friendly New York militia loaned them cannon.

As Graves's well-researched book makes clear, the Hunter attack upon Canada led by Nils von Schoultz was not part of the Upper Canada rebellion. It was clearly a foreign invasion.

The idiocy of choosing United Empire Loyalist country for the liberating strike speaks for itself. Its authors, like their role models at the Alamo, had a yen for martyrdom.

Aided by Kingston turncoat Bill Johnston, self-styled "Commodore of the Patriot Navy," their plan was to land a picked force at night under Schoultz on a wharf in Prescott and capture half-ruined Fort Wellington just to the east. The remainder would float down to the windmill and secure the fort from counterattack from the east. But the landing was bungled and the alarm was given. The whole force charged ashore at the windmill.

At daybreak, the puny British steamer Experiment arrived from Kingston. It put the much larger hijacked steamer United States out of action with blasts of grapeshot; the invaders were denied some 300 more men, including their cowardly "general," John Birge. Bill Johnston crossed in a small boat and, telling lies about 500 more hunters who were supposedly on the way, persuaded the filibusters to hold on. He returned to Ogdensburg, N.Y., with more men than he'd taken.

Guns Across the River has handy maps and details events, regiments and ships, the characters who betrayed them, the men who led them, the men who manned them and the pigs who unmanned them as they lay on the field of battle. It will fascinate even pacifists. Details of plots, raids, courage, cowardice and stupidity, the flesh and blood history of Upper Canada, read like a well-plotted novel.

There's even an enigmatic, fated, Byronic hero.

According to Graves, Nils Gustave von Schoultz was not the Polish aristocrat he claimed to be. Poles found that he spoke a little Russian-accented Polish; they thought he was a Czarist spy. He was in fact a Swedish artillery officer brought up in Finland. He'd resigned at 23 over gambling debts and was honourably discharged. He may have served as a mercenary during the ill-fated 1830 Warsaw uprising against Russian rule, as he claimed, but it's unlikely that he served in the French Foreign Legion.

A consummate actor, he'd deserted his Scottish wife and two daughters in Sweden and fled to the U.S., where he became a "chemist" at a salt mine at Salina, N.Y. There he was recruited by the Hunters to become a recruiting officer himself. He also became something of a ladies' man; he was engaged to be married to at least two women.

A born loser, Schoultz found his calling at last when he took command of the 189 invaders - six Britons and 19 Canadians among them. His tactical use of the windmill site was elegant. His courage inspired all who saw him - even his enemies.

But his moral obliquity shows in the way he would not evacuate his men when given the chance to do so by what was probably collusion between the British commander and his official U.S. Army counterpart. He courted death and glory. And in defeat he was superb. He held his head high and comforted his men.

Glory eluded the Hunters, however. The British did not put them to the sword as the Mexicans had done at the Alamo. The 137 freezing half-clad men were prodded to their destiny from Kingston's waterfront linked at the neck by a long rope.

"When the procession got to Tete de Pont barracks, the wives of the 83rd were there to greet their menfolk and add their own taunts (probably directed at the virility of the Hunters) to the chorus of verbal invective that fell on the wretched men along with stones, dirt and saliva. To the prisoners' relief, the torment began to lessen as they neared the long wooden bridge over Cataraqui River with its seventeen arches and wry toll gate sign: `Let my care be no man's sorrow: Pay today, I'll trust tomorrow.' And finally it was over the bridge and into the blackness beyond, where Fort Henry waited."

Their trials at court-martial were short and seemed to them unjust. But there could be no doubt of their guilt. Tried under "An Act to protect the Inhabitants of This Province against Lawless aggression from Subjects of Foreign Countries at Peace with Her Majesty," passed earlier in the year, the three-fold test for guilt was soon proved (even against Schoultz, who contrary to advice had pleaded guilty).

1) That they were British subjects or citizens of a foreign country at peace with Britain.

2) That they had been at Windmill Point in the company of traitorous or rebellious British subjects

3) That they had, with guns, bayonets and other warlike weapons, feloniously killed or attempted to kill British subjects.

Schoultz and 10 others were hanged. Eighty-six were sentenced to death, but were reprieved and sent to Tasmania for life. Four others were acquitted. The remainder, mainly under 21, were quietly returned to the U.S.A.

By his will, drawn up by his Kingston lawyer, John A. Macdonald, Schoultz left #400 Sterling to the nine widows and 38 children of the 17 Canadian militiamen he'd killed. This was a grand gesture, typical of the man: there's no evidence he had as much as a pound to his name. Perhaps that's why the future prime minister turned down his own fee.

In 1938, Prime Minister Mackenzie King made a Windmill centennial speech in Prescott that gave birth to a myth. He claimed that the Hunter invaders inspired by his grandfather William Lyon Mackenzie, who'd killed or wounded 80 British subjects, were true Canadian reformers who'd somehow helped found responsible government in Canada. This view is supported in Ella Pipping's fanciful 1971 biography, Soldier of Fortune, about her ancestor Nils von Schoultz.

Guns Across the River lays that bogey to rest.

- Terence Cottrell is a Kingston freelance writer.