Sir Isaac Brock
As this book is published, Canada is celebrating her fiftieth birthday. The thoughts of all of us travel back along the line of those fifty years since Confederation swept away all divisions and made the people of what is now Canada one in name, that they might become one in purpose, ideal, and spirit. We see our country served by a succession of great men. Their greatness consisted in trying to weld Canada into this oneness and in trying to develop our illimitable resources. For this fifty years and for the fifty before it, Canada had no war to engage her attention until, in 1914, she joined with Great Britain in the Great War that the world might be “made safe for democracy.”
While we look with pride at the progress our country has made during this time of peace, we may well go further back and see some of the ultimate contributory factors. And as we do this we shall see that in those troublous days as in the calmer that succeeded them, the history of Canada gathers itself round two or three men. One of these is Major-General Sir Isaac Brock.
Brock is called “The hero of Upper Canada.” That he undoubtedly was, but he was more. He was the hero of Canada, for while his efforts both as soldier and statesman were peculiarly for one province, their effect was felt by Canadians of later days from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Indeed it is not too much to say that Brock’s part in the War of 1812-14 made fast and sure what is now the Dominion of Canada for the British Empire. This makes him at once the primal hero of Canada. We have our other heroes. The names of Frontenac, Wolfe, Montcalm, Carleton, and others stand out from Canada’s “storied page” and deservedly so, but not one of them served our country in a way eventually so signal as did Brock. Wolfe conquered the French; Carleton defended Canada against invasion in 1776; but their work had not the crucial quality of Brock’s.
He was certainly a man of action, and his biography is fittingly the first title in a series of Canadian Men of Action. The older nations of the world have their great ones. France has its Joan of Arc, Italy its Garibaldi, Russia its Peter, and Britain its Arthur and its Alfred. In ten short years in Canada, Brock accomplished much, for while he lost his life but four months after war was declared, it was his action and, after, his spirit which animated the defence of his adopted country against invasion. In considering him and the noble part he played we may well contrast this man of action with another, who drew his sword three years ago not that he might help to establish peace, but for his own selfish end of vainglory. Brock, like thousands of Canadians to-day, fought for honor and that his country might be free. The spirit of Brock animates Canada to-day, and “the brave live on.”
CHAPTER I
Early Years
The year 1769 was an important one for Europe. In it were born two men who were destined between them to change the face of that continent. These were Wellington and Napoleon. There was another man who first saw the light in that year. His name was Isaac Brock, and while his life and work were hardly comparable in their effect and result to those of the two great Europeans, they were nevertheless an important factor in shaping the destiny of Canada. It may, perhaps, be laying undue stress on the work he did to call General Brock the Wellington of Canada. Necessarily he left less mark on the times in which he lived than did the Iron Duke, for his task was less monumental and his sphere less wide. Yet, in relative degree, Brock’s work was immensely important. We are beginning to realize, a hundred years after his death, just how directly he affected Canada and indirectly Europe. It would be interesting, however, to speculate on just what would have been the result had he remained in Europe. It might, – who knows? – have been his as much as Wellington’s to save the world from the ambitious schemes of Napoleon, but in the part he played, Brock admittedly did a very great deal to make the bounds of Empire “wide and wider yet.”
Isaac was born on October 6th, 1769, and was the eighth son of John Brock. Of his father we know little. He was a sailor, had been a midshipman in the navy, and his duty had carried him far afield, to India and other outposts. Isaac’s birthplace was Guernsey, an island in the English Channel, which is one of the beauty spots of the world. There could have been no more fitting cradle for a child who was to become indeed a man of action than this rugged little island, with its rocky weather-beaten coast, stern and bold in outline. The heavy seas of the Channel beat upon it in vain, and it is possible that in after-life, when he was buffeted by circumstances, his thoughts may have gone back to his island home, a small but hardy defence against thundering waves and shrill winds and raging tempest.
He had good blood in his veins, for, far back, there was a Sir Hugh Brock, a valiant knight of Edward III. Sir Hugh lived in Brittany, just across the Channel from England and at that time an English duchy. The French, however, bitterly mindful of Crecy and Poitiers, bided their time, and when Edward was old and enfeebled, rose and drove the English out of Northern France. Brittany again became French, and, when the English were expelled, it is thought that Sir Hugh’s family came to the Channel Islands, which was like a half-way house between France and Britain, and there settled.
There were other Brocks in nearer relationship who had won their spurs both in battle by land and sea and in journeyings afar. As has been said, Isaac’s father, John Brock, was a midshipman and had travelled to India, in those days a great distance away. Another relative was the famous Lord de Saumarez, also a Guernsey man, who had distinguished himself at St. Vincent and at the Nile. Brock’s mother was Elizabeth de Lisle, daughter of the lieutenant-bailiff of Guernsey, a position which corresponded to that now held by our lieutenant-governors, an office the duties of which, as we shall see, Isaac Brock himself, in later years, discharged in Upper Canada.
It was not, however, in family tradition and example alone that young Brock found inspiration for heroic and valorous deeds. He could not but be imbued with love of adventure. This island home of crag and headland was the vault of many a memory of heroic deeds, the past scene of many a stirring exploit of the hardy seafaring folk who had been its dwellers as long as ever dwellers had been there. Young Brock learned numberless stories
“Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach.”
Long, long years before, the Druids had their caves and catacombs tucked away in quaint hiding-places, and to the young adventurer these haunts and the tales told of them furnished idea and scope for many an escapade. Stories of Cromwellian and Stuart days, when Cavalier and Roundhead in turn found refuge in this land of his birth, and evidences of the resolute defence which the Islanders had offered to the maraudings and attackings of the French, fostered in Brock an ambition to emulate the Guernsey folk who were dead and gone.
So, in boyhood days, he played for a while with the things of nature. He became strong and robust. He was, like his seven brothers, tall and manly, a precocious boy, a better boxer, a stronger and bolder swimmer than any of his companions. He would scale jagged headland, or sighting Castle Cornet, a landmark half a mile from the shore, would brest the swiftly-running tide, meeting and overcoming
“ every wave with dimpled face
That leaped upon the air.”
He did not entirely neglect his studies, but gave some time to reading, particularly along historical lines. There seems to be no doubt, however, that, like many another boy, his prowess in games was gained at the expense of his education. At the age of ten he was sent to school at Southampton, and later was at Rotterdam, where his tutor was a French pastor. Neither his parents nor himself would be aware, at that time, of the use that the knowledge of French he there acquired would be to him when he came to Canada later on.
He chose his profession early in life. For him there could be only two careers, the navy or the army. Guernsey men, from time immemorial, had favored the services as a means of earning their living, for the love of adventure was ingrained in the people. Besides, Brock had two brothers in the army.
One brother,
