Weando Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Lions. We're doing this. We're doing it. We're doing it. We're doing it. So this is part two of the War of 1812. So if you're just tuning in, go back an episode so you don't miss anything or if you don't want to, whatever, you do you. If you like to live dangerously, you do that. I do. I do. I do. I'm doing pretty good. You know, could be better. Yeah. Yeah. It is what it is. I don't really care most of the time. Yeah, I don't.
You don't care in general or just how you're doing you know, what you're about. No, no, I'm doing. How I'm doing is, but most of the time how work goes or anything like, I don't care. Well, you have a unique job in that whether you care or that you don't care, the same amount of work gets done. I could, that could only see be said for a lot of jobs. Mostly from the government sector because there's very feel real valuations.
But obviously also when you're a mafia member, shit gets done under you. Usually don't have to worry about it. You know, I have a healthy amount of old grow pumping through my system. I'm wearing my wolf pants. They're shitty looking wolves. That's why I bought them. So they're the wolves that the private get like, I'm a wolf, not a sheep. Now, these are the wolves that you get if you have 50 bucks to spend on a tattoo.
And like I went, and that's funny because a lot of places don't even allow below 60 for tattoos. Yeah. I got these pants, which you can't see them, but I can. After a, I got these for $5 a Walmart when I did a liquor run to Walmart and I saw them hanging up and I thought they looked so terrible. I had to own a pair. So I bought them and they looked terrible.
So we left off on our last episode with William Hall drinking himself into a surrender at Fort Detroit and the American army looking all around bad for the first two major actions of the war. So leads us to the question of why is that? Why did the army look so bad? Well, because the American army in general was totally unprepared and not ready for any war, let alone for one against the British Empire. The regular army was around the same size of the US Navy at the time, which isn't a good side.
It was around 7,000 men, which isn't great. Because tiny army is actually a symptom of a deep distrust in a large standing army that carried over from pre-revolutionary times. A large standing army was seen as a tool of oppression and tyranny in a lot of American size, which is why you see things in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that make literally no sense to us today sitting here in the year 2018. No free quarter for soldiers. Of course, just fucking that. We were both soldiers.
That would literally never happen. But this large, huge, encompassing army of permeing in every layer of life is what America was afraid of. It's kind of cool. I'm really big into army air force history. It kind of plays into the cord of soldiers. Soldiers in March Air Force Base back in California. A lot of houses in the area had addons for soldiers that couldn't live on post because there wasn't enough room. They forced those houses to have those addons for those soldiers.
So you literally violated something that was written in the 1700s. Right. So they had these addons. You can tell it's an addon because it does not go with the flow of the house. Here's a small fucking room.
And this is, it's a large part of why that mythos from the revolution we talked about last a little bit, lived on in modern day where they talk about the militia, this militia that when it was absolutely the continental army or the regular army who won these battles and did all the major fighting.
But that continental army at the end of the revolution was largely disbanded for this exact fear of like we, if we have this huge giant army, you know, the states are all afraid of their independence from a government, from a federal government. They wanted to be small and weak effectively. And having a small and weak central government is not a good way to defend yourself. As America is about to find out, it's about to find out very, very quickly and violently.
But at the outbreak of the war, the army was actually authorized another 35,000 men. Unfortunately, the army was badly paid and the living conditions were terrible, making it hard to come by these soldiers. The war was actually really in popular from the outset as well with several states just out like refusing to send militia and to fight. One of those, which we'll get into a little bit later as like a side story, was the New England states. They did not want to fight at all. And they did not.
I can't see see that. So the force that the US government is going to have to defend on was the militia, which was actually really big. By wars and they would call up nearly half a million militia. Holy shit. Which was around the same size of the entire population of British North America at the time. So this is not a small force. But unlike what Joseph Stalin likes to say, quantity is not quality of its own. Especially not here with the Moisha.
No. Especially if you heard last part where the militia kind of dipped on their boy. And that happens a lot. Now that's one of the main keys. We do not go into a lot of how militaries are trained here. Maybe we will sometime in the future. This day and age with smooth bore muskets. And the armies are forced to come very, very close to one another to fire. And large formations, zero-way scene and pictures and movies.
The only thing separating an effective army from a non-effective army is the discipline to stand there and get shot at. I mean, that's the long and the short of it. Accuracy is important. That's why they are all grouped together like that. We're a large amount of fire to be put into one area.
But the main thing that separates a militia from a unit of the regular army is trained and disciplined to, I mean, mostly by fear and through physical violence at this point in time to stay in line no matter what. Unless they're completely broken and routed. The militia don't have that. But they'll march in what looks like roughly the same thing, but then when bullets start flying, they're going to run. Yeah. Because that's terrifying.
I can't imagine what's like the stand in front of a full regiment of muskets. I wouldn't want to. No, I wouldn't want to. Hell, at all. No, not at all. So they'd be able to call up almost half a million men. And unlike what your high school history class and the Hollywood movies like to leave, the militias were just not going to war.
There's a reason why one of the first things that General George Washington did during the revolution was like literally physically beat the militia into regular army soldiers. The militia during the war of 1812 was no different from that militia except they had the benefit of having a couple of revolutionary war that aren't sprinkled throughout it. But at this point, they're very, very old. You know, they're not exactly. This is decades afterwards.
They were poorly led, virtually untrained and badly armed, many of them still holding muskets that could have fought in the revolution to make matters worse. Fucking daddy's old muskets from the war. Yeah, just passed down throughout the lines. It's kind of like the jazales that we talked about in the Kabul episode, except these did not look nearly as cool. Agreed. Yeah. There's some old shitty brownbasses. Many governors refused to allow their militias to fight outside of their state.
And when the government forced them to do so anyway, they fought terribly. They might as well not been there. Most of them ran at the first side of combat. All of this mismanagement, this incompetence and confusion was bred into the federal government. This is because the federal government, like we said, was supposed to be very, very, very small and weak. This left a lot in the hands of individual states. The year prior in 1811, the Republicans, now I know this is 1811, not 2011.
People are going to try to make connections of the Republicans of old and current Republicans. I'm not doing that. I feel like I need to put that out there. This is not a knock against any current politician. If and when I do insult a current politician, I'll do something. Use them openly. Check his Twitter. Yeah. At J.C.S. No, no, no, no. So the Republicans allowed the charter for the first bank of America to expire.
Now if you're saying the fuck is the first bank of America, that's exactly my point. It doesn't exist anymore. It was a centralized bank. Like most European nations have currently and they had them. So they allowed it to expire, meaning there was actually no way for banks to transfer money in between states. You can imagine how hard it was to fund a war like this. Each state would have to fund everything individually. Not all states are critical.
Meeting some states, militia was better fund than others and the federal government cannot help. Some of them were wearing fucking socks for boots. Yeah, probably. I don't see him. Imagine that. Yeah. So with that, in 1813, future president, current general William Henry Harrison was given the command of the United States Army of the Northwest and his mission was to retake Detroit.
He failed and a contingent of his 60 men were captured by the Brits, Native allies who then slaughtered them, which became known as the River Raisin Massacre. British colonel Henry Proctor with the Comsa pushed further into Ohio, laying siege to Fort Megas. And for the first time in the war, the Americans actually won.
Nice. They inflicted enough casualties on the combined attackers that the natives decided to just go home without his native allies Proctor had to withdraw and they would eventually pull all the way back to Canada. Seeing an opening, the awesomely named and titled Master Combatant William, all of her hazard, Perry. These names this series are great. Decided to try to push the Brits from the whole of Lake Erie. Perry had a battle flag made for the occasion.
Emblaze in the flag was the dying words of his friend Captain James Lawrence of the USS Chesapeake. Remember them? The Chesapeake from the last episode. Yeah. Well, when they were attacked, Lawrence said, quote, don't give up the ship. It probably meant a lot cooler back then. And hazard had that, I'll call him hazard, not Perry, but his hazard is really cool. Had that emblazoned on the flag. With that, he launched what was now known as the Battle of Lake Erie or the Battle of Putten Bay.
I sent around you, guess it, Putten Bay Island off the coast of Ohio. Perry's forces scored an important victory and captured six British ships securing the entire Lake. Not bad for a group of sailors. Hazard himself had previously called wretched. After this victory, Perry wrote a now legendary letter to President Mass and that said simply quote, we have met the enemy and they are ours. And you know, this sounds really broken. It is not taken away from that.
But nowadays Putten Bay is just like a drunken hole in the wall for college kids. No, yeah. I eat it's hard to imagine that. And a great lake had a naval battle in it. Well, it was the first of several. And you know, a lot of people think of lakes. Now, I grew up around the Great Lakes. I grew up Michigan. Never. Me never. So a lot of people think of lakes as what you see in your neighborhood, wherever you're local lakes. Do park.
Yeah. The local lakes or those local lakes do not compare to the size of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are seriously so huge. You kind of have to see it to believe it. You know, they're fucking massive ocean sized freighters travel those lakes to travel like the for trade and stuff. That's kind of cool. I didn't know that. They are massive. Which is why see it as a it's hard to see a naval battle. Right. Because I know they call it the Great Lakes, but naval battles. Right.
Where they've had a shit ton of battles during the 18 around the time of 1812. Right. Imagine a whole, I mean, these are frigates that would have fought on the high seas. So you have a shit ton of chat frigates running around. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I grew it now. Yeah. The Great Lakes are massive. I actually went fishing once with my step that on Lake Superior. You don't fish. I don't, but I was 12 and he made me go fishing.
Oh. Okay. And I went fishing on Lake Superior and there's a few people out there that said, oh, I can kind of see where this is stories is going to end. Because Lake Superior is really well known for having waves bigger than the ocean. Oh, okay. Like I was going way, way left field. Lake Superior's waves are so big they have taken on full-sized shipping freighters. Holy shit.
Yeah. There's actually a story that we, there's a story and a song that we have to learn in elementary school called the Ballad of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It is about a freighter that went down in one of those giant storms took the whole ship down, killed everybody. Fuck. Yeah. I think it was in the 50s or so. We got told how to brace doors for school shootings or suspects around the school. Like that's dark. Like it was a normal thing. Like, well, this is a pre-columbine for me.
So we didn't really have that. This is before, I mean, school shootings have happened, but we were just LA. We were, we had suspects all around. Yeah. Well, I mean, I went to Detroit schools. Okay. You're right. So this is pre-columbine. We all are sitting on little, those little mats that you've sit on and, and music class and singing about a ship. Yeah. Okay. So different times. That's like trying to think about, you know, it's kind of jarring to think about completely off topic.
But it's kind of totally jarring to think about how different a pre-columbine world was in comparison to like a pre-911 world. It's, it's almost the same thing. Yeah. I mean, it's not, but it is. Anyway, back on topic. So Madison got the letter. You know, we met the enemy in the air hours. The victory actually scared the British garrison at Detroit so bad. They, I mean, to be fair, they actually needed Lake Irei to be open for resupply.
But the garrison, but true, all the way back to Canada left for Detroit without a fight. I think too. Yeah. Like actually, here's a fun fact, they fled from Detroit much like the rest of the population of white people would a few generations later. All for bad reasons. Isn't it about cheap beer? No, they mostly left because of racism. Oh, that too. Yeah. Okay. Like most things in the inner cities, mostly based on racism. And I can tell you for sure. Yeah, I could have tested that.
Yeah. I can go. My neighborhood was, I don't know what that means. It was, it was weird. The neighborhood I was in was considered a little Mexico. Right. Of the Esel area. And me being the only really Mexican kid there that didn't speak Spanish. Oh, yeah, I can say it being a little bit of a shame. It was really weird. So I can only imagine how the white people that weren't there anymore, that were there during the times when they were building B24s and B25s out of boil heights.
Yeah. Not anymore. Well, that's kind of like what happened to Detroit. I mean, Detroit started as, you know, well, obviously there's four Detroit. But you know, then it turned into an automotive superpower of the world. And it was just a wash with auto worker money. And that auto worker money was, a lot of it was based on, you know, World War II manufacturing of tanks. And like, especially the Sherman was manufactured there. But then eventually segregation was taken away.
And you know, there's cheap housing in downtown. So black people moved in and there's, there's nothing keeping them from moving into their white neighbors. So all the white people took off running had nothing to do with the jobs leaving. They just ran because they're like black people. I would imagine that is the same with LA, but LA is just so expensive to live in. Well, LA is a little different. LA is also way bigger. It's fucking huge.
Yeah. It's like, it might as well be its own state almost. It's bigger than some states. Yeah, it has a larger population than some states. So, anyway, bring it back around to slightly less depressing part of history, you know, it's a little bit of fuel shooting at each other. So general Harrison didn't accept the withdrawal back to Canada as a victory. And instead would only rest when he beat those bastards in combat.
He launched another invasion of Canada back around 4,000 soldiers in militiamen among his forces was the governor of Kentucky and revolutionary war hero Isaac Shelby who was pushing 70 years old at the time, which is like, I don't know how you like age has inflation, but he's like a hundred and modern day times because this is the 17 or the 1800s and he's like 70 years old. No, he's dying tomorrow. Yeah, he's on his last look.
He would be facing proctor and barely 800 of his own men with the Kumpsa and around 508 of soldiers. So on October 3rd, proctor's men formed up with the natives protecting their flank. This is actually not a great idea in retrospect because most of the time you want to secure your flanks with the best soldiers available. Every and 18th century racism says the flanks would be secured by regular soldiers.
Proctor actually instead secured it with native soldiers, which either means he's a bad commander or he knew the natives were better soldiers than him, but he just went and admitted that out loud. For whatever reason, proctor elected to not fortify his position against cavalry attacks, which is dumb in general. Which is exactly what Harrison saw and exactly what Harrison did. He ordered his cavalry on a frontal assault. The Brits actually in a frontal assaults are never good.
They're a sure fire way to take massive casualties as you'll see throughout history, but the Brits were so tired and haggard and sick of marching that they only managed one ragged fooselate on the enemy before retreating. I'm convinced they were actually just really demoralized from proctor leadership. Maybe seeing that they weren't fortified for a cavalry attack when they saw cavalry attackings like we're really propping down. You can't deal with this. We're fucked. I just can't even right now.
Yeah, right now. I can't even. Yeah. And I keep bringing this up, but it's totally true. Bring you back to my whole Empire Total War days. Your men get tired as fuck through marching or how fast they go. For sure. And it'll let you know. So I think it kind of plays into this with them as well. Obviously they're doing a shit ton of marching. And unlike my campaigns of Empire Total War, proctor didn't actually have the options of turning off fatigue. Which I always do. Because I cheat.
You do always cheat. You fuck an Empire. You're not even playing Empire with me. No, you played. No. Yeah, we never played Empire together, but I know you cheat because you play NHL with no penalties on it. You play. That's right. You fuck. Because nobody likes to think that the penalty box was the pinnacle of entertainment. I'm sorry. I take entertainment from playing. Yeah, I tried to play your rules and you cheated the whole time. I was still trying to play. Oh, there's the blue line.
All right, we passed it. I'm getting fucked. Well, it sounds like you should have adapted and overcame there. So to Kumpsa, actually, the guy who was securing the flanks and supposedly the inferior force fought on. He held the flank. Yeah. Yeah. Another cavalry charge actually killed the Kumpsa and set the natives running though.
So the reason behind it is, you know, the middle completely collapsed and the only thing left was the flank so they got completely enveloped, killing the Kumpsa who was apparently the best leader in all of Canada at that time. From what I understand is he was a great political leader. He was very good for uniting the tribes, which is rare and native politics. Yeah, because usually they're going to each other's necks. Right.
They're fighting over material and guns and hunting grounds and stuff like that. You know, every once in a while, somebody will come around and be able to unite the tribes and to come. So, you know, there's a reason why the entire tribal Confederacy of that buffer state revolved around him. Yeah. And the British ended up fucking themselves by leaving to Kumpsa high and dry here.
Yeah. Because with the death of Kumpsa, they're an idea that buffer state died with them because the tribes stopped fighting with them. They didn't have any benefit in the United States. And they certainly weren't going to unite around a whole bunch of white dudes. Yeah. No, I totally agree. He was a great military leader as well. Yeah, he was. I mean, he could keep who were effectively untrained native soldiers, static fighting in a line when the entire middle of the formation collapsed.
Right. Any European formation would have fled, but they kept fighting. I mean, obviously, ended up biting him in the ass, but that happens. But they fought better than the British Canadians did. Right. So, high on their victory, the Americans sold his burn down the town of Moravian town for revenge because, you know, normally militia's levy militia men from nearby towns. So they're like, well, we'll show you well about that.
Moravian town was a community of pacifist Christians who had absolutely nothing to do with the fighting. Yeah. That'll show them. They act. They do that. They do this type of stuff because I'm glad you tell me about this because the only thing I knew about of Americans doing shit like this was in York, which we're going to get into later. Well, this whole, you know, we invade Canada several times during the war.
Yeah. Pretty much every time if we take a town we burn it, this is because it's well demoralizing terrorism effectively. Yeah. No, it is. You're scaring people away from wanting to fight you. Yeah. Which is common for the for martial tactics at the time. But I personally think completely uneducated depending here. So a little asterix above this one. I guess our entire podcast is an educated opinion.
But there's a little asterix above this one that says like, I just think that Americans are really, really happy to beat the British. No, yeah. No, we're going to sell it. If they took, if they took something, they were going to burn that shit just to show it, just to give the Brits a little finger. The same reason why they impress the British sailors when they won the one native naval battle when they never did that before. No, yeah.
It's, it's almost like, it's like, I'm a little bit more than they can chew. Right. And a good example here is I'm a little brother. I have a big brother. Me too. And my big brother beat their shit out of me my entire life. When I was 17, I enlisted in the army and went off to basic training, advanced training, everything like that. I got in shape, became very strong.
I learned how to fight because even though I got punched in the face a lot and I got jumped a lot when I was a kid, I never really learned how to fight and I learned how to get be scrappy. Oh, yeah. So then when I had the physical capability of winning that fist fight, I didn't just beat my brother's ass. I beat him unconscious. It's always a good story. Yeah. Like, but that is effectively what America's doing. Oh, yeah. Like, oh, we can win a fight now, guys. They put on their big boy pants.
Yeah. And they essentially said, look, we're big dick now. We're our own country. America's coming on to the international stage. Right. And they're going to do it with a whole lot of fire bombing, apparently. So the problem was though, obviously, and nothing to do with the fighting in Moravian town. So they burned down innocent down eventually. Another issue was Harrison obviously had one hell of a foothold in Canada. So he wouldn't be able to press this, maybe even take more territory.
Yeah. But he couldn't. Harrison's militiamen were getting ready. Their enlistments were getting ready to expire. So he's unable to capitalize on this victory and had to pull back instead. Militiamen have enlistments. Yes. So how it worked back then from what I could gather, if I'm wrong, someone please tell me. So militiamen can be called up only for a certain amount of time. So that's where that whole Minutemen thing comes into play or what is that?
Well, the Minutemen were, well, that's kind of the idea that the National Guard is based on. National Guard is based on the militia. So you have to rewind back a couple generations. Um, militia could be called up by their state governor who could then kind of like receipt them over to the federal government in a time of war like this, which is like Harrison is a commission officer in the federal army. Therefore he has tons of federal troops and tons of militiamen under his command.
The militia will have their own officers who will be commissioned as militia officers or two distinctly different things, which is why, um, doosman. The guy who was under lieutenant Hinks command in the last episode, right. He was only commissioned as a militia, but the main difference being they can only be called up for a certain amount of time. These are truly citizen soldiers. These are farmers who need to go back and tend their land.
They can't be away for that long and you can't extend them. That's why, uh, you know, uh, back in the, winding all the way back to the revolutionary war where, uh, general Washington had to give a like stirring speech to get people to reinless. Oh, my entire army was in a fallout. Yeah. They couldn't just like keep them. That'd probably be a lot easier if they could just stop lost their ass like they did else. So, you know, I don't fucking stop militia.
Anyway, um, this is the American army of the war of 1812. So that met this victory was about to be followed by a hilariously bad defeat and even worse planning, uh, because they'd finally somewhat had a successful vision of Canada after about four tries now, um, the US decided to do it again. This time they decided to take the city of Montreal. So a successful invasion involves burning of basically a city or a village. There's a village of village.
Okay. A successful invasion to the extent that one, they won the battle and they didn't get forced from the field. They left because wall they had to, but they left in their own volition. So it's basically based off the battle. Yeah. I mean, at this point, at this point, you have to think that American invasions of Canada, they have a really low bar for this. Yeah, they do. They don't have a good track record. Um, so they plan to take Montreal. Why take Montreal of all places?
Well, no one seemed to think it was a good idea. Go figure. I mean, Poutine, uh, Poutine is delicious. It is. Everyone argued how to accomplish this. Montreal was like the communication center for all of British Canada, which as we know now communication back then, so it was terrible. So everybody argued how to exactly take the city, but nobody actually thought it was a good idea because they didn't think they can pull it off.
Yeah. Um, finally in late 1813, general Wade Hampton and general James Wilkinson made their move. The plan was immediately beset by problems by bad roads, logistical issues, and the small fact that the two generals fucking hated one another. This will become an issue. Um, they hated each other so much. They actually did not want to support one another. Yeah. Like, we're talking about like physically support one another in combat. They didn't want to do it. That's where I was going.
Yeah. In combat, not with each other. I mean, but still, they shouldn't have really had to between them. It had about 10,000 men. That's why I see this whole 1812. It's all petty. It's super petty. And I think everybody's super petty. I think this whole war and as probably an unpopular opinion, I don't really care. This whole war is, is a direct result of having that really, really strong push after revolutionary war, of having absolute state rights and having a really weak central government.
Yeah. If, okay, if there was a strong central government with subservient states, I fully believe Canada would actually be a province of the United States. I mean, there probably would have been some kind of historical event that would still have separated the two currently. But the force that was defending Canada from an entire country was pitiful. And that's not to take anything away from the Canadians.
The Canadians definitely showed themselves worthy in the battlefield of being their own state. But the fact remains that like having a couple plucky units should not have mattered when you're facing with this combined force of 10,000 men. Yeah. That, that 10,000 men that these two generals fielded was more than the entirety of the Marshall force of Canada at the time. And I'll about tell you why the denendiped so well. So it turns out, however, that the numbers would not matter.
Hampton led 4,000 of his men into action at the Battle of Shantragri lined up against him was a Paltry force of 300 French Canadian forces led by a Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dish Salaberry consisting of mostly French speaking volunteers and Mohawk Indians. Oh, fuck. Hampton's forces were immediately checked by the Duggen Canadians in 4th of withdrawal. Not to be outdone though. Wilkinson's 8,000 men were defeated at the Battle of Chrysler's farm by a British force of only 900. Chrysler's farm?
Yes. Yeah. Okay. 900 to 4,000. Sorry, 8,000. Yeah, holy fuck. Yeah. That's a lot. With those two embarrassments, the campaign to capture Montreal was called off. Do you know how many casualties were? Not that many. So the Battle of Shantragri was like maybe like 2000. 2000. And they just pulled back. It's not like these guys. It's almost like they were taking pop shots and they said, all right. He was like, they just assumed a walk into Montreal.
And when they weren't able to, like, this is too hard time to go home. Like they were expecting nothing. I think no type of defense. So military thinking at the time says when you're facing a forces ledger just surrender. I think that's what they're assuming that the Koreans would do or just surrender. Yeah. Which is kind of stupid because the people in charge of these armies were alive during the revolution and effectively lived through something like this.
And they know Americans didn't surrender when forced with overwhelming odds. There's nothing showing what. I mean, now the Battle of Shantragri, like those dudes were pretty well dug in. But I mean, a bayonet charge would have dislodged them. Yeah. Like for sure, it would have worked. But they didn't even try. It was more like a probing attack where they like, well, we're going to try this entrance way. Oh, there's people there trying to group with you. Yeah, let's just about.
Even though they had overwhelming super promise. Oh, for sure. And these are, I wonder if they even knew of the defense that the French can ains had or how many men they had at the time. You know, there's no evidence in the dispatches that they knew they were only fighting a couple of 100 people. Right. So they had scouts. So they knew that the force was definitely smaller than theirs.
And most of the time battles at this point are decided by numerical superiority, which the British are actually pretty rigid about. And we'll find out a little bit later at a much better known battle in America. But the United States did not fight all that much here. No, I kind of want to bring up this funny story. So as you know, you've been to NTC before. It's the National Training Center in California, Fort Irwin. And that's when we do our, what, 30 day field training. It's a pre-training.
I know. So I was a tanker. When I went through NTC training, they taught us effectively cold war tactics for a large skill armor on armor battles. And I know that they have whole towns, firing ranges. It's like hundreds of miles of training. Oh, yeah. So I can see this small force defeating a bigger force. Right. Because I went with third CR down in Texas. Yeah. And it's a third cavalry regiment. Yeah. Okay. You, you cover that. Uh, we took a third ACR at the time. So you were old.
So get fucked. The time is now old, man. Brave rifles. Oh, fuck. What is it? Oh, fuck. Aía. Aía. There we go. So let's still Aía. Uh, so we're going through this village. We took 80% casualties going through a village. It's pretty common for NTC, honestly. 80 to 90% casualties. Uh, the unit that runs NTC is 11th ACR, which is known as Black Horse. Yeah. Uh, their whole job is to fuck up everybody who comes there. And they're very good at it. They are really good at it.
But they're also a very highly trained opposition force. These were a whole bunch of Canadian fur trappers, which is even better. And the vast majority of Wilkinson's, uh, force were regular army. Didn't matter though. So these failures though, did not mean the Americans would stop trying to invade Canada. Though they still need to do something to cut British supplies and communication. If they were ever going to have a hope to get a leg up on their much drunker opponents.
Since Montreal and Kingston were clearly other question, they invaded through the Niagara Frontier in 1814. It also coincided with the end of war in Europe, however, at least for now, meaning the British would have thousands of regulars suddenly freed up and ready to redeploy to America's to stomp down those up to the Americans. Oh, yeah. This is the end of the peninsula war for you European war, kind of, so is that home.
So the end of the invasion, Napoleonic invasion of Russia, which began in 1812, which we will be covering in a later day. So American leaders were anxious to finish the capture of Upper Canada and forced the British to see it to them. As they recaptured Macna, the Americans knew they had zero hope of facing the full wrath of the British Royal Army and hope to capture it as much as possible so they could negotiate from position of strength. At this point, they're...
It's kind of hard to find a comparison to this. It's kind of like Vienna, where when we were negotiating with the North Vietnamese, we knew we were going to win, but we were trying to be as strong as possible coming to the table. And that's kind of what we try to do here. Also after several years of war, the American Army had actually been greatly improved.
After the guidance of Major General Jacob Brown and future actually failed the presidential candidate and veteran of pretty much every American war ever since before 1812 and the Civil War when Phil Scott. These guys managed to take the American Army, which was only a few thousand people before the war and make it into something that actually could win this war in North America, assuming Britain didn't turn its full attention to it.
There was no American Army that was going to beat the British Army. Oh, fuck no. So their work was actually evident from the beginning of the Niagara campaign. Their forces quickly took Fort Eri on July 3rd and routed the British Army from the field in the fifth of July, the Battle of Jippua. Both occasions, Americans outnumbered the British counterparts by thousands though.
So we were actually still doing the whole, we outnumbered you by thousands, like we didn't Canada, except we're actually winning now. This would change however, the Battle of Lundy's Lane at the end of the month on the 25th of July in what turned into be one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war, which with the worst name ever, honestly. And it was actually the bloodiest battle ever on Canadian soil.
The two sides fought to a bloody stance still that so when Phil Scott and Jacob Brown wounded an action, both of them. So not a good look for the Americans. And both of the British commanders, Phineas Ryle and Gorn Drummond were also wounded with Ryle being captured. Great names. Yeah. I really like the names. Phineas, I like the whole Phineas thing. Yeah. So at the end. Phineas Ryle? Phineas Ryle. Ryle. Yeah. I might be pronouncing that wrong. I'm not the best of British names.
How is this spelled? It's R-I-A-L-L. Might be Ryle. I'm not going to attempt that. Yeah. You got that. So at the end of the battle, 258 were killed and a further 1500 were wounded. There had actually been a lot of fighting at close quarters. At this point, British veterans who had fought in a Polionic Army in the Peninsula War had been pulled to North America. Oh, so they got fucked. They got stop loss. You will not really.
At the time, the British Army had some pretty severe enlistment contracts. So you just get bounced around from one war to another at the time. So it's normal. So today it's normal. It's a normal enlistment. Yeah, for sure. So this battle and the American Army showed themselves so well in the field of battle.
One veteran, Drummond, reported, quote, of so determined of character where the American attacks directed against our guns that are artillerymen were bayonetted by the enemy and the act of loading. Oh. And the muzzles of the enemy's guns were advancing within a few yards of ours. The battle confirmed that the American reggaer forces head evolved into a fully highly professional army. And the fact that they fought British veterans of the Napoleonic Peninsula War to a standstill.
And only withdrew because they lost the initiative. It was kind of a fiery victory on the end of the British. That's really interesting. Yeah. It shows that Americans kind of are good at war with given time. We're kind of born into the whole thing of war. We are now. Yeah. I mean, people born next year will be next year. People who were born after 9-11 will get to listen to the army and we're still at war. No, it's true. It was Orson Wells that I love Orson Wells.
I believe he said in a book that that this war isn't meant to be won. It's meant to go on forever. Yeah. No. I ranny. So I do like when the Simpsons make von Orson Wells. The further professionalism of the American army was shown at the siege of Fort Eury. The British army reinforced by 15,000 veterans of the Napoleonic Wars. It was beaten back in a protected battle that lasted from August 4th to September 21st and cost to British 1500 casualties.
The Americans lacking provisions burned the fort to the ground and treating back across the Niagara shortly afterwards. And that's where things start to go south for America. Oh, at the same time, Americans were holding strong at Fort Eury. The newly reinforced British army began to move all swear. The incredibly powerful Royal Navy had controlled the Chesapeake Bay since early 1813, which the American Navy was completely unable to pull them from.
During this time, the constraint of resources, the forces commander, real Admiral George Cochburn, was only able to land around 2,000 soldiers into the area, unable to push too far inland from the bay itself. The army actually a little more than right around the area and become a giant thorn in the set of Americans. This changed with Napoleon's abdication in 1814. Cochburn was able to reinforce with a brigade of veterans from the Duke of Wellington's own army.
Now, I know that sounds really, really impressive and it is. There's still veterans. This is like still before the Battle of Waterloo. He's not like that, Duke of Wellington. Yeah. No, he's not. Napoleon's not taking a nap at this point. No, so at this point, Napoleon's at Elba Island. He hasn't been, he's only been kicked out to the curb once. Elba Island to fuck. He got sent to Elba Island for... Well, he abdicated the throne. That was his punishment. Right.
Now, at the complete side note, I'm a huge Napoleonic air nerd. When he was at Elba Island, he actually was a lot to keep all his titles and everything. He was still Emperor Napoleon. His dominion was Elba Island. He formed his own army and... He did Elba Island. Yeah. Which is like 20 people. Nice. And set government policy and all this other shit. This is prior to Waterloo. Right. So, which I personally, Waterloo is one of my favorite battles to look up, which is, I hope we cover.
It would be hard not to cover it, but that's at a much later time. Oh, yeah. It is. So, with these reinforcements, major general Robert Ross was able to put all of them in an army and push towards Washington, DC itself. From nodding him, Ross continued across the Poxston River to Upper Malboro from where he could threaten and advance on either Washington or Baltimore. He kind of had both cities in the hat-poll in his hand.
To confuse the Americans, he actually acted like he was going to go to Baltimore and quickly changed courses in with the DC. Yeah. And actually, he may have actually just taken the capital completely unopposed if he would advance on the 23rd of August, but instead, he rested as med and reorganized everything, because they've been marching pretty hard from the coastline. Oh, yeah.
So on the night of the 23rd through the 24th of August, that the urging of real Admiral Cochburn and some British army officers under his own command, Ross decided to risk an attack on Washington.
He had four infantry battalions, a battalion of Royal Marines, a rocket detachment from the Royal Marines battalion, and 50 Royal Marine sappers and minors, along with a 100 gunners from the Navy and 275 guns and 60 rocket launchers, each being attached to a congrived rocket, which is one of the better known firsts, massively fielded strategic rocket units to be used in the military. They were actually more of a morale weapon than a physical weapon. They were super inaccurate.
They screamed and made loud noises and shit. They're pretty terrifying to see. No, yeah, I would imagine that. And the noise alone. Yeah. We're Admiral Cochburn, a company of this force. Interesting enough, there's also 200 man detachment of Black refugees. It ran from their slave masters and joined the British. They would go on to be known as the Corps of Colonial Marines. So interesting footnote here to take a left in the story.
During the war, over 4,000 slaves would escape and run to the British for safe harbor. At the time, even though a lot of modern day self-described historians will tell you that slavery was normal in the world, it was absolutely not. In Western Europe, slavery is all but outlawed way before now to include the British Empire. America was pretty much one of the only nation states still standing that had widespread impressment slavery. Meaning the British invited this.
I mean, granted there, obviously, free soldiers who kind of wanted revenge, kind of want to fight for the freedom. And the Brits did not cave on this. At the end of the war, in some of the arguments for the Treaty of Gent, which would end the war, the Americans demanded that the British give all these slaves back into British outright refused. And we're actually ready to continue fighting because of it. But the Americans terrified of continuing fighting and Brits drew that.
So at the end of the war, the British would actually resettle about half of those free slaves in Canada and the other half in the Caribbean. They never give any of them back. This would go on to be the largest population of emancipated slaves from the Americas until the end of the civil war. Good on them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing real fuck shit. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing but I could go on about this fucking shit forever.
But there's a lot of people that still argue that well, it was just a part of the time with slavery. And that would have been true a hundred years before. And in 1814, this started beginning in the emancipation. But the vast majority of civilized society moved on from slavery, but then that state stayed firmly rooted into it. So arranged against them, the Americans put together a force led by Brigadier General Winder, who in theory could call up a local militia force of around 15,000.
And despite the questionable quality of the militia, this would have actually been a pretty solid defense against the approaching British. Unfortunately for Winder, he didn't actually have 15,000 men. What he did have was about 400 regulars and could only muster up 1500 militiamen. Nice. Hardly a fraction of what he thought he had. Winder realized that Blattensburg was the key to Washington's defense.
Blattensburg was commanded the roads of both Baltimore and Annapolis, along with reinforcements that would be moved into join him. The town also lay on one of the only two routes available for the British advance to go into Washington. In fact, the preferred route, because the Eastern branch was really easy to forward here. So on 20 August, Winder had ordered Brigadier General Tobias Stansbury to move from Baltimore to Blattensburg.
So, take the best position in advance of Blattensburg and should he be attacked to resist as long as possible. On August 22nd, Stansbury deployed his force around Loudens Hill, where he hastily dug earthworks for artillery replacements. The road from Annapolis crossed the hill and the road from Upper Mallsboro ran from South to West. Furthermore, the road from Washington, Georgetown and Baltimore all intersected behind it and Blattensburg.
From this position, Stansbury dominated all approaches available to the British and controlled all lines of communication. So this dude was set. He was absolutely dug into the best possible place he could be dug into. Unfortunately for him, I went in that way. At 2.30 am on the 23rd of August, Stansbury received a message from Winder informing him that he had withdrawn across the eastern branch and intended to fire the lower bridge. By fire, he means set on fire. Yeah, no. I told you.
Therefore, trapping in Stansbury, surprised, of course, because this was never planned before, Stansbury was seized by an irrational fear that his right front could be turned. Instead of strengthening and like his right flank, because he already had a total commanding position. Instead of strengthening this, he immediately decamped and marched his exhausted troops who had just finished digging in across the Blattensburg bridge, which he did not burn to a brickyard 1.5 miles away.
He had thus thrown away every tactical advantage available to him and fuck everybody but not burning the bridge down. Yeah. Oh, my soul would be so pissed on the Empire Total War. They'd be so mad. I know I'd be mad. In fact, this position eventually militias from the strutting areas of Tricholin and join the defense. They'd eventually number on 60, 500 militiamen and 18 guns of various sizes. I know it's a pretty impressive force gathered. It is.
And I know, or would you say that it's based off the out by the artillery that we used is mainly French artillery. I think it's a mixture. It's a mixture of more French. I don't know why. It's probably a mixture of French artillery that we have left over from the Revolutionary War and captured British artillery. But either way, I mean, it's still a sizeable force. So on noon at August, at noon at August 24th, Ross's army reached Blattensburg. Standsbury tactical airs quickly became apparent.
He had Lowns Hill. Standsbury could have made the British approach a costly one. Although this would have actually involved him fighting with each east branch of the river at his back, which means he really wouldn't have been able to retreat, especially if that bridge had actually been burned down. None of which happened. He had held the brick structures of Blanzberg, which were a ready-made mini fortress.
He may have actually embroiled Ross's troops in a bloody street by street fight, but because the bridge had not been burned, it had also not been defended. Standsbury's infantry and artillery were posted too far from the river's edge to contest the crossing effectively, meaning the bridge just kind of strolled across it. As the British began to press the attack, the Americans started withdrawal, initially in Goerd order. That part's important.
That's actually one of the things that people give George Washington a lot of credit for, is the master of retreat during the revolution has forced him to be routed. The fight could be continued if you could keep your army together. Then Winder began to issue out all sorts of confusing orders. One occasion, he issued three different orders, the same cavalry commander. Not a good start.
His order for a general retreat was also not spread through most of the ranks, leading some units to withdrawal and others trying to stay in fight, which would leave the forces who were staying in fighting, who would leave their flanks completely open to British attack. This made it look like some units were not withdrawing, but instead were routing in fear. Basically when you see one unit running from battle, that's kind of contagious.
It's demoralizing to see another unit go down either shear force or shear fear. This kind of panic spread through the other ranks. This turned the general well-ordered retreat into an outright sprint for their lives. To make matters worse, Winder had not given any instructions before the battle in the case of a retreat. Normally have rallying points, secondary orders, things like that, but he had none of that. That meant in the case of retreat of the American militias, there was nothing.
They just kind of scattered to the wind, ran back home. Scatter, everybody. To make matters worse, he had actually ordered contradictory orders to order a halt and a reform to fall back on the Capitol, where Secretary of War John Armstrong Jr. had hoped vainly to make a last stand using the federal buildings as strong points or to retreat to Georgetown or Tenley Town. Most of the militias just ran home. I would too, to be honest with you. Yeah, why not?
The battle was such an embarrassment that had become known as, quote, the greatest disgrace ever to American arms. And I'd run home and act like I wasn't even a part of it. Yeah. Well, you probably wouldn't be able to list anyway, because you're not white. It's very true. Yeah. Different times. President Madison himself and several other members of the government were actually at the battle. And the army ran from the field so quickly that he was actually nearly captured and left behind.
Totally. Immediately after the Battle of the American government packed what they could and ban of the Capitol as soon as they could. This is where we talked about Madison's wife. Yes. This is great. So there's a huge story that Madison's wife packed up all these pieces of art. It's George Washington's original mural. Yeah, the one that's like torn in half or whatever, because it's all they could fit. It wasn't Madison's wife. It was Madison's wife's slave.
It's basically the servant, basically the slave. It was the house slave. Yes. So it's a little less heroic when you realize all she did is tell a slave what to do. Yeah. And it's not like how my textbooks have said it where she barely had enough time and she slid it in her address. She had plenty of time. It was her servant who did all the work, which if honestly if you would have just waited like 30 minutes and been liberated by the British, you'd be a free man. He would be.
Yeah. And that's where I talk about, I think in the first episode where I say this is where a lot of people get salt from. Yeah. Where they think, oh, no, no. America wouldn't do that. Well, there's a lot of salt involved in slavery in Americans. No, very interesting. Do you remember back, fuck, two years? Michelle Obama went to choose first lady made a speech. It was definitely not two years ago because she was the first lady to use.
Well, whenever she was first lady made a speech saying, you know, I wake up every morning and a house built by slaves. And people got really butt hurt by that. Why? The White House was built by slaves. It's true. It's true. There's no amount of historical revisionism that will change that. Exactly. Just like saying that there's a lot of heroic things chalked up to people in American history that were done by slaves who weren't allowed their own choices. This happens to be one of them.
Yeah. No, and that's why I always tell you, I always hold that unpopular opinion within my co-workers or within the people that I know where I was like, who's cider you on? You don't agree with America. All this other stuff. It's just like, no, I just see the truth. Yeah. And the truth is, is untwistable to people who will fight for it. I mean, there's a lot of historical revisionism and there's a lot of shit out there about what is truly American and what's not. And history is history.
And while history might be written by the vectors, there's still plenty of paperwork and paper trails and all this other shit that still exists that tells us the truth. And we definitely go into that in our Q&A. Oh, yeah. If you want to go back to that episode. Yeah. So the chasing British soldiers were actually so close at the heels of the withdrawing American government that several British soldiers sat down to enjoy a president, Madison thinner, who was still hot. Nice. Yeah. I know I would.
Yeah, I would up to. As the soldiers made their way unopposed into the Capitol, a cockburn decided to burn the place to the ground. This was not a spur of the moment type thing is a lot of things with lead you to believe that was the case or some kind of vengeful thing from our former colonial overlords. All the vengeful thing may actually be true.
That is because the Americans had burned several towns and villages to the ground during their attacks into Canada and it made the British pissed before the fires were set. Soldiers, debuts, soldiers, do you alluded to the hell out of everything? Cockburn actually personally alluded, quote, an account of the receipts and expenditures of the United States for the year 1810. Because I assume he was a petty asshole to steal the recounting information. There was a receipt for that.
Yeah. Afterwards, the White House and the Capitol building were sent in fire. As most people are aware of, Cockburn actually also meant to burn down the headquarters of the national intelligence or a local newspaper that had actually been bad malting him since the outbreak of war. A journalist who was in the office begged him not to set the office on fire because it might spread to nearby houses.
Cockburn saw he had a point and it was a bit of a agreeable man and he did not set the building on fire. And said he ordered his men to demolish it by hand and take all the seas off their typesets. So quote, the rascals can have no further means of abusing my name. Get fucked, dude. Which might be both the best and most petty thing ever done from the war. Yes. But also, like I totally would do it too. No, it's the first Twitter beef.
Yeah, it's like if Twitter beefs melted into real life in the 1800s. Yeah. Yeah. And take away all the seas. They can't talk shit out of that. So I know in the beginning, I said this is the conclusion of the war of 1812. But we're actually going to stop there because we already at plus an hour and hour is generally our limit. So that is the war of 1812 part two.
Tune in next week for the conclusion of the war of 1812 where we will talk further about all the horrible things that happened after the White House is burned to the ground. Yeah. As always, people didn't know about because of what we've gone into first episode to second episode of the communication during the time. Right. So as always, follow the podcast on Twitter at lines underscore by follow me on Twitter at jcas 99 follow me at nickass m1.
And please rate, review, share us amongst your friends. Thank you, Patreons. Yes. Thank you to the Legion of the old crow for keeping us afloat and paying all of our server costs and the cost of future research. Our podcast will always be free. But if you think what we do is worth a buck, you can throw it to us on Patreon. So I know everybody thought you're going to hear at the end this week, but tune in next week for our conclusion of the war of 1812. Yep. Later. Bit of it by Bizahlel Turner.
Yeah.