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Graeme Decarie, Canadian Historian
Further Reading |
Why the New York Militia refused to cross into Canada before the Battle of ChateauguayTraditionally, the attack route in the direction of Montreal was up by the Richelieu River, and at some point you would abandon that route, then go across land for Montreal. Perhaps from up the Richelieu to St-Jean, then from St-Jean across to Montreal. Good road system. No problem for moving an army. That road, that was a pathway that goes right back to New France when the Richelieu was called the River of Blood for the war parties that went both ways, coming up from Lake Champlain and going back down again.The Americans followed that route, more or less. They came off to the west of it a bit, coming up through the Chateauguay valley in an attack on Montreal. And of course, they had the problem that all armies had in that time. A large part of the army was militia. That is, these were able-bodied men called up. They weren't really trained soldiers. They might have minimal training. And they had signed up to fight in defense of their own territory. When the New York militia got to the border, they just said, "We ain't crossing that border; we signed up to fight New York." Now that sounds strange to a modern ear, but it still happens. As recently as the Second World War, there were tens of thousands of soldiers in Canada who had signed up to fight in North America, and there was no way they were going to go overseas. So it's not an unusual circumstance. The American army came up in 1813, crossed the border without its New York militia, but it was still an army overwhelmingly larger than anything we could put in the field against them. They were met essentially by the Voltigeurs, backed up by the Glengarry regiment. And they were defeated. It should never have happened in a properly led army.
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