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The War from the Saddle:
The Diary of Lieutenant John Lang, 19th Light Dragoons, 1813-14
by Adam Norman Lynde

continued from part one.....

    The 19^th Light Dragoons played an active role in most of the British Army’s operations in the Canadas during the 1813 and 1814 campaigns. On 24 August 1813 Captain Verner’s troop participated in a "considerable demonstration" before the American positions at Fort George. In addition to forming a mounted reserve and providing dismounted troopers to cover the camp at St. David’s, a detachment of thirty troopers under Colonel O’Neill "dashed with great gallantry into [Newark], scouring several of the streets and penetrating as far as the Presbyterian Church."¹⁸ In the autumn of that year, one squadron was serving with the combined Right and Centre Divisions, one troop with the Left Division, while three troops remained in Lower Canada.¹⁹ In November 1813, a detachment of the 19^th covered Major-General John Vincent’s "retrograde movement" to Twelve-Mile Creek, but by December a detachment of twenty-five troopers and a subaltern were part of the "Advance" of the Right Division, under Colonel Murray, at Fort George.²⁰

     Elements of the regiment were in action further west in early 1814, when on 16 May the Dragoons "greatly increased" the "ardour" of the Canadian militia that repulsed an American landing at Turkey Point.²¹ This minor action merely foreshadowed that 1814 would prove to be the 19^th’s most active campaign on the Niagara Frontier. Major-General Riall felt "particularly obliged" to the officers and troopers under his command for their conduct at Chippawa [5 July 1814], while Lieutenant-General Sir Gordon Drummond likewise praised the same detachment for its conduct at Lundy’s Lane [25-26 July 1814].²²  In the abortive British assault on American-held Fort Erie, 15 August, a squadron of the 19^th was posted to the rear of a battery "nearest to the advance, ready to receive charge of prisoners and conduct them to the rear."²³ The glory of the regiment that day went to a sergeant named Powell, who "in the most intrepid style" led the first infantry sub-division to the attack.²⁴ In early September 1814 Powell "again distinguished himself" in an attack on enemy pickets led by Captain Patteson, 6^th Foot, while the entire detachment of the 19^th received praise for its role in the bloody repulse of the 17 September American attack on the British siege lines.²⁵

     The Anglo-American War of 1812-1814 was as difficult a series of campaigns for the 19^th Light Dragoons as it was for any other British, Canadian, or American unit that participated in the conflict. In November 1814, Major-General Louis deWatteville bemoaned the fact that the regular cavalry on the Niagara frontier had but "few men and serviceable horses," and hoped that headquarters would follow Drummond’s recommendation of a month earlier and order the 19^th, temporarily at least, to the comparative quiet of Ancaster. Yet despite the wear and tear on men, mounts, and materiel, the regiment continued to have "spirit and unwearied activity" attributed to its conduct and its services remained in demand among senior officers.²⁶ "A troop of the 19^th would be of great service here," Major-General Henry Proctor assured Prevost from Sandwich in August 1814, "in the confidence they would give to our mounted Indians."²⁷ The prescience of Proctor’s observation is suggested by the reception that Lang and Colonel O’Neill met with on first encountering Native Americans in Montreal the previous spring. In March 1814, Drummond requested an additional of the 19^th for duty in the Niagara region, if only to protect civilians from the light companies of the Royal Scots and 69^th Regiments, "whose behaviour has been more of a plundering banditti than of British soldiers."²⁸

      Despite its activity and the praise it won, the 19^th Light Dragoons have generally found little place in the history of the Anglo-American War of 1812-1814. In part this is due to the few number of Dragoons in Canada, and the manner in which they were dispersed. Arriving in May 1813 with some 500 men, the largest detachment on the Niagara a year later consisted of three officers and sixty men at Long Point; thirty-three officers and men were at Fort George and smaller detachments of from five to twenty-five were posted at Queenston, Chippawa, and Fort Erie.²⁹ In July 1814, the regiment on the Niagara had been consolidated into two detachments of three officers and seventy-one men at Fort George, and three officers and sixty-one men at Long Point.³⁰ By November, thirty-two of the fifty rank and file at Queenston were ill, though only two of the thirty-nine at Chippawa were similarly unfit for duty. Still, none of the regiment was at this time doing duty at Forts Niagara, George or Mississauga, or at Burlington or York.³¹ When the material consequences of low numbers of men and a perpetual shortage of mounts are compounded by wide dispersal in the Upper and Lower Canadian theatres of war, the 19^th Light Dragoon’s near-anonymity in the history of the war is perhaps understandable. Low numbers and high dispersal also afflicted marching regiments in the Canadas at this time, and despite its problems the 19^th was at least spared the ignominious fate of the 8^th, 41^st, 49^th and Royal Newfoundland Regiments who, by October 1813, appeared on official returns not as standing corps, but as "remains."³²

     The minor place of the 19^th Light Dragoons in the historiography of the War makes the diary of Lieutenant John Lang, a cavalry officer’s contemporary account of what was primarily an infantryman’s war, a rare manuscript indeed. It is therefore unfortunate that Lang was vague at several points in his diary. The entry of 4 August, describing a trip to Niagara Falls, exemplifies the problem with many entries:

     There is speculation that a reason for this is that Lang planned to later write a fuller memoir of the war, much as did many of his contemporaries in a variety of armies. Perhaps Lang kept an additional diary at the same time, for which the existing manuscript was but a notebook. More likely, these cryptic entries were intended to serve as shorthand reminders for when the officer came to write his fuller account at a later date. If it exists, that fuller memoir has yet to be discovered.³³ It is also often the case that, whatever the good intentions with which they begin, the authors of diaries and journals often either lose interest in their self-appointed task, or find that the events in the daily task of living leave little time or energy for writing about them when the day is done. With Lang, as indeed with likely any other young officer, entertainments such as those offered by Montreal would seem to have been better enjoyed than merely written about. This might explain in particular the comparative silence of the journal during the officer’s return from Niagara in the autumn of 1813, during which time he undoubtedly did all he could to restore both his spirits and health, and invariably in the company of the ladies of the town. On the Niagara frontier, military duties might have similarly prevented Lang from entering into expansive descriptions of life in the Centre Division, while the sickness that hit the Burlington Lines in September 1813 undoubtedly gave him, and many others, something more severe than mere writer’s cramp.

     Whatever may have been the case, we are left with tantalizingly vague references to places and incidents in Lang’s war experience. Of the reconnaissance-in-force against American positions on 24 August 1814 Lang has little to say while, as if intending to tease the reader, what he does say hardly supports the glowing reports filed by Army command and reported in the provincial press. More exasperating still is his terse discussion of events after his second return from Niagara, and especially of the operations against Plattsburg in September 1814. According to Hitsman, 309 all ranks served on this expedition; that is, more of the 19^th Light Dragoons together in one place since their arrival in Canada.³⁴ Lang’s description of the battle consists of the scattered comments that by this time afflict his diary --- "Troops move too late. Insufficiency of our batteries. Rockets render no service. Troops retreat" --- from which the only sound conclusion is that British defeat was not to be attributed to American prowess.

     Lang’s only full narrative account of a battle, that of Chippawa, is in fact of little value as it is merely based on second-hand information derived from unidentified sources. Given the circles both civilian and military in which the Lieutenant moved and in Lower as well as in Upper Canada, it is a greater loss still that we are given no insight into the character of the many important men Lang met and served under. Lang met de Rottenburg several times, and by the end of the diary was appointed to his staff, but of the man behind the General’s tunic we are given no insight. What, we must ask, was Vincent or Riall like at the dinner table? How was he invited to join Colonel Harvey on an evening ride to the lakeside of Burlington Heights in a vain effort to signal the fleet? Of the arrival of Sir George Prevost at Burlington on 19 August 1813, and the subsequent Indian Council and Council of War, we are told nothing but that they happened.

     Despite these shortcomings, Lang has given us valuable insights into the world in which he lived. Indeed, the ultimate value of the Lang diary is less for its strictly military account of the war than for its description it offers of the Canadas at war, sprinkled as they are with the officer’s candid commentary. By virtue of the fact that it is a contemporary manuscript, moreover, Lang’s diary has the value of immediacy and, with certain inevitable qualifications, veracity that is lacking in more reflective, and much later written, works by Dunlop and Richardson.. As to its brevity on some points, the diary has at least the virtue of avoiding the personal biases that often cloud other contemporary accounts by officers such as Merritt and Claus. This paper will conclude by highlighting some of the more colourful episodes of early Canadian life that Lang relates for his reader.

     Even before his convoy entered the St. Lawrence, Lang was clearly enamoured with the natural beauty of the Canadas. Passing the southern extremity of Newfoundland on 10 May, the shore "presented a very curious appearance as viewed from the ship":

The snow which had covered it to an immense depth was partially melted and disclosed tremendously deep chasms in the snow running in many places from the tops of the mountains down to the sea.

Trois Rivieres in 1810 (LAC)

I was tempted by the transparency of the water [of the River St. Maurice] and the heat of the day to bathe, but I had no sooner leaped in than I made to shore again, nearly frozen by the extreme coldness of the water. This proceeds from the course of the river running through the immense frozen regions of the northwest. In summer it may be ascended in canoes almost to its source, from whence, if we can credit the Indians, it is not far to Hudson’s Bay.

    Even at his worst moments, Lang could not help noticing the beauty of the hell through which the regiment passed on its marches. On the 20 July, after recording how the Colonel marched lame footed and appeared as anything other than what his rank signified, Lang still found time to observe:

     Mounted with a gun, it is hardly surprising that Lang spent much of his time hunting, and otherwise had a keen eye for the proximity of game. It was while quartered at Rogers’, two days march out of Kingston, that Lang "… first saw a specimen of wild rice which grows in the lakes of this country and which attracts such multitudes of water fowl in the fall." The proximity of waterfowl was something that Lang would take particular advantage of during his return march to Kingston in the autumn of 1813, though his setting out to hunt from Ernestown on foot, in early November, was a contributing factor to his serious illness while quartered at Mrs. Johnson’s. Ever the sportsman, Lang also took care to note the abundance of game that did not necessarily find a ready place at the 19^th’s Mess table: "Saw a young bear," he wrote on 3 November 1813. "Bears plenty in this district …. Country of Mississauga Indians with whom the white inhabitants trade for furs." He also noted the lack of game: "Deer formerly plenty in this district," he wrote of Scarborough, "until destroyed by Indians."

     Whether on military business or making the social rounds, Lang spent a considerable amount of time in Lieutenant-Colonel O’Neill’s company. He almost invariably attended social functions with him, purchased a horse from him for 25 pounds, and first experienced travel in a Canadian stagecoach in his company:

Which is the most infernal machine that ever was imagined. It resembles a hearse with three seats in it and three sides of canvas, open in front on which the driver sits. We did not return till past midnight and the fellow, who got beastly drunk, drove at a full gallop over rocks, stumps of trees, ruts, etc., etc., until we were nearly shook to mummies. He is a Yankee and as stubborn as any of his mulish race. His only answer was ‘Hear now, I swear I guess I’ll drive you safe and that is enough for you.’

Or, on the evening before the 19^th’s departure from Montreal: "the Colonel danced a jig with Miss G. and had the hardihood to conclude it in the usual manner. The Lady, highly affronted, cut him, but approaching separation melted her to forgiveness."


Dance in the Château St. Louis, Quebec 1801

     Lang’s experiences were not limited to English or French Canadian high society, and his criticism of the lot which he believed that Roman Catholicism had afflicted upon the common habitant has been already noted. Despite such criticism of Canadien society, which neither originated nor ended with Lang, other aspects of life on the St. Lawrence clearly enchanted him. Waiting for the arrival of the steamer at Trois Rivieres:

It happened to be Ascension eve and a number of the habitants who had been across the river at chapel were returning in their canoes. As they passed they struck up their boat song with all its native wildness. The scene was new and we almost fancied ourselves in a fairy land.

A French Canadian Lady in her Winter Dress and a Roman Catholic Priest, 1810

 As though attracted by the mystery of what was forbidden in the Home Islands, British visitors to Canada invariably commented on the prominence of the Roman Catholic Church in the French province.³⁵ Lang attended Roman Catholic Mass in both Quebec and Montreal, writing of a service in the latter on 20 June 1813:

     In attributing the regiment’s reception in eastern Upper Canada to the American origins of most of the area’s settlers, Lang ignored the fact that the general distrust of the military conjured by the image of soldiers "lying idle in their quarters and oppressing all the inns and other public houses of the Kingdom" had been strong in England since the sixteenth century.³⁶ It is possible that, having come from Ireland, Lang was less than familiar with the problems of finding adequate quarters in the barrack-less, less-militarized empire beyond that troubled island. Indeed, almost a half-century earlier Major-General Thomas Gage complained from New York of officers whose only professional experience was to "march pampered out of an Irish barrack, to parade for guard or a review."³⁷

      Yet even if the 19^th Light Dragoons had served in Canada from their first muster in the 1780s, it is likely that they would have continued to experience unease at local customs that perhaps appeared all the more inexplicable when both host and guest spoke the King’s English:

We asked if they could give us anything for dinner. They said they could give us some lamb but what was our surprise when we saw them catch a lamb out of the field, kill it and put it down to fry literally still warm with life. I looked at a watch. In less than half an hour from the time the animal was running about, we had it on the table. Fortunately, the Yankee custom of adding tea, rice and butter, and eggs to dinner saved us from being under the necessity of eating it.

There can be little doubt concerning the important role Native Americans played in the defence of Canada between 1812 and 1814. To British officers these "swarthy warriors" proved "themselves right worthy and right useful auxiliaries."³⁸ In August 1813, Lang and his comrades "were much surprised" at an address made them by one of the most important Native leaders on the Niagara frontier, Chief John Norton:

     Given the nature of Lang’s service in Canada, at least as recorded in his diary, it was perhaps inevitable that the most entertaining encounter with "Natives" that he recorded occurred not on the front, but during a social evening in Montreal:

Trivial as this incident may appear, it serves as a reminder that, though distant from the most active front of the war, Montreal and indeed the entire St. Lawrence lay under constant threat of enemy attack between 1812 and 1814. Part of that threat, and one that clearly caused terror from Detroit to Halifax, was the tomahawk and scalping knife, which even "sentimental young ladies" of Montreal feared, even if only because of the horror stories with which officers fresh from the Niagara frontier regaled audiences at the Baroness Longueuill’s.

    It is perhaps the vagueness of some key military points in Lang’s diary, as well as its modern location so far from the place where it was written, that has given this manuscript such a small place in the study of the Anglo-American War of 1812-1814. This is indeed unfortunate, and it is to be hoped that, if the document is not edited and published by the Perkins Library, other scholars might at least give it the place it so richly deserves in future monographs. The fate of the Lang diary is also that of the Library’s Imperial Collections as a whole, which have not been used seriously for many years. Perhaps they, too, will soon receive the attention they deserve. For devotees of the 19^th Light Dragoons there is also at the Library an account of its role in the Vellore Sepoy Mutiny of 1806, but that is another story.

_____________

18  General Order, St. David’s, 23 August 1813; Quebec Mercury, 7 September 1813, Cruikshank, Doc. Hist. [1813, pt. 3], p. 53, 59. Colonel William Claus, "An Account of the Operations of the Indian Contingent with Our Forces on the Niagara Frontier, 1812-19\813" {December, 1813], in E.A. Cruikshank, ed. Campaigns of 1812- 1814, Niagara Historical Society #9 (Niagara, Ontario: Niagara Historical Society, 1902), p. 36.

19  Prevost to Bathurst, 30 October 1813. Cruikshank, Doc. Hist., [1813, pt. 4], pp. 102-103.

20  Vincent to de Rottenburg, 15 November 1813; Return of the Troops comprising the Advance of the Right Division of the Army under Colonel Murray, 12 December 1813. Ibid., pp. 187- 190, 273. Hitsman, Incredible War, p. 239.

21   Riall to Lieutenant-General Sir Gordon Drummond, 19 May 1814; Drummond to Prevost, 27 May 1814; General Orders, Falls of Niagara, 26 July 1814. Cruikshank, Doc. Hist. [1814, py. 1], pp. 31-33, 50, 91, 93.

22   Riall to Drummond, 6 July 1814; General Orders, Montreal , 13 July 1814; Drummond to Prevost, 27 July 1814; General

23   [Orders] Camp before Fort Erie, 14 August 1814. Ibid., p. 139.

24   Drummond to Prevost, 15 August 1814. Ibid., p. 143, 146.

25   District General Order, Camp before Fort Erie, 7 September 1814; Drummond to Prevost, 19 September 1814. Ibid. p. 195, 206.

26   Drummond to Prevost, 26 October 1814; DeWatteville to Lieutenant-Colonel Joen Harvey, 10 November, 1814. Ibid. [1814, pt. 2], p. 277, 301.

27  Proctor to Prevost, 9 August 1814, in Alexander Clark Casselman, ed. Richardson’s War of 1812 (Toronto: Historical Publishing Co., 1902; reprint, Toronto: Coles Publishing Co., 1974), p. 187.

28  Drummond to Prevost, 5 March 1814. Cruikshank, Doc. Hist. [1813-1814], p. 208.

29  Abstract of Weekly Distribution Return of the Right Division, Major-General Riall, 22 June 1814. Ibid. [1814, pt. 1], pp. 28-30.

30  Weekly Distributions …. Right Division …. 8 July 1814. Ibid., p. 51.

31  Distribution of the Right Division, 8 November 1814, Ibid., [1814, pt. 2], pp. 459 – 460.

32  Prevost to Bathurst, 30 October 1813. Ibid. [1813, pt. 4], pp. 102 – 103.

33  As befits good, ill-informed historical speculation, that related here resulted from little more than a casual discussion of the manuscript between the author and the then Curator of Manuscripts at the Perkins Library.

34  Hitsman, Incredible War, p. 216.

35  John Knox, The Siege of Quebec and the Campaigns in North America, 1757 – 1760, Brian Connell, ed. (Pendragon Press: Mississauga, 1980), pp. 224-225; George Hariot, Travels through the Canadas, 2 Vols. (Richard Phillips: London, 1807), Vol. 1, pp. 66 –70; Anon., The Backwoods of Canada: Being Letters from the Wife of an Emigrant Officer, Illustrative of the Domestic Economy of British America (Charles Knight: London, 1836), pp. 38-39.

36   The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London: T.C. Hansard, 1812), Vol. Xim 154-155 (Lord Sandys)

37  Gage to Lieutenant-Colonel John Wilkins, 18 May 1768. Thomas Gage Papers, William L. Clements Library; American Series, Vol. 77.

38  Colonel Robert MacDougall to Proctor, 14 June 1813. Gratz Family Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania;

Copyright: Adam Norman Lynde 2001

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