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Updated: June 10, 2025
Roger Sheaffe, the senior military officer there, and to him, Gen'l. Smyth, the new American commander at Niagara, applied for an armistice, which was granted, and which lasted from the battle of Queenston until the 20th of November. Nothing could have been more silly than this consent to an armistice on the part of a general so very fortunate as General Sheaffe had been. He needed no rest.
A deputation of prominent men met him at Queenston, placed him in an open carriage, and with martial music he was escorted in triumph to Fort George. After receiving at Niagara the congratulations of the lady to whom he was engaged, Brock took schooner for York and Kingston. At both of these places fervid demonstrations were showered upon him.
At the foot of the cliff and on its lower slopes, nestled on the western side the hamlet of Queenston and on the eastern the American village of Lewiston. On the Canadian side, where the ascent of the hill was more abrupt, it was overcome by a road that by a series of sharp zigzags gained the tableland at the top.
Many surrendered at discretion, and those who resisted were driven at the point of the bayonet, to the verge of the terrific precipices which descend abruptly from the Heights of Queenston.
There happened to be on that night, a company of showmen stopping at that hotel, and exhibiting wax-work; among the rest, was a figure of General Brock, who fell at Queenston Heights, and a costly cloak of fur, worn by the General previous to his death. Nothing of this escaped the eagle-eye and quick ear of the Indian.
The river bank between Fort George and Queenston for seven miles was patrolled night and day. A watch was placed on Mississaga lighthouse from daylight to dusk, and beacon masts, supporting iron baskets filled with birchbark and pitch, were erected on the heights to announce, in event of hostilities, the call to arms. At this time one of Brock's most intimate friends his chosen adviser was Mr.
Lossing, the American historian, solemnly records the "fact" that "less than 600 American troops of all ranks ever landed at Queenston," and that "of these only 300 were overpowered" some of the United States histories of the colonial wars need drastic revision yet 958 American soldiers were taken prisoners by the British; "captured by a force," so officially wrote Colonel Van Rensselaer, after the battle, "amounting to only about one-third of the united number of the American troops."
He was referred to as one who, after spending his earlier days in the din of war and the turmoil of camps, had gained enough renown in Europe to enable him to enjoy himself, like the country he governed, in inactivity; whose migrations were, by water, from York to Queenston and from Queenston to York, like the Vicar of Wakefield, from the brown bed to the blue, and from the blue bed to the brown.
In many a Canadian home, bitter tears were shed for son or sire left cold and stark upon the bloody plain at Queenston Heights, or Chippewa, or Lundy's Lane, or other hard-fought field of battle. After the stubborn and sanguinary battles of Chippewa, Lundy's Lane, and Fort Erie, the Niagara frontier had exemption from invasion, and a sort of armed truce prevailed to the end of the war.
For a brief space the body of Isaac Brock rested where it had fallen, about one hundred yards west of the road that leads through Queenston, and a little eastward of an aged thorn bush. Above the dead soldier's head, clouds, sunshine and rustling foliage; beneath it, fallen forest leaves, moist and fragrant.
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