Patrick Finan's War Recollections General Isaac Brock   Patrick Finan's War Recollections: Part 2 Patrick Finan's War Recollections: Part 3 Boys at War

Part 1: A Briton remembers scenes from the war that he witnessed as an 11-year-old boy in Montreal EDITOR'S NOTE: The following war recollections of Patrick Finan are copied directly from his original writings, all spelling and punctuation appears as therein. We arrived in Montreal, a large, populous and well-built town, pleasantly situated on the north bank of the St. Lawrence, near the foot of a mountain from which it derives its name. .... In a few days General Hull's army, which had been captured by General Brock at Detroit, arrived as prisoners of war at La Chine, a village nine miles above Montreal; and as I felt a strong desire to see them, I set out, with my brother and a gentleman of the 49th regiment, to meet them. On our way we met a calash, in which we had the unexpected satisfaction to recognise my father and the colonel of his regiment, who had come down from Kingston, attached to the escort of the prisoners, the latter having the command. We returned to town with them, and at about nine o'clock in the evening we had the pleasure of witnessing the arrival of the first fruits of this useless and too disastrous war. I was a very young boy at the time; and, having been born and brought up in the army, it is natural to suppose that my ideas ran early upon military exploits.–Scenes of war, conquered enemies, &c. had long been familiar to me in idea, but in reality had always been remote from me; and I had been in the habit, when thinking of a foreign enemy, to picture to my mind something very unlike what I had daily before my eyes. Upon this occasion, however, I witnessed the reality; and my youthful heart, big with warlike achievements, and too inconsiderate to sympathise in misfortunes of this description, triumphantly exalted in the sight of a fallen enemy. The band of the 8th regiment marched at the head of them, playing the well known air, "Yankee Doodle." General Hull, a venerable looking old gentleman, and his son with the other officers, in calashes, followed the band; and were succeeded by the soldiers, guarded on either side by a rank of our own troops. As it was dark when they reached the town, the streets they passed through were quite illuminated by numbers of candles, held out from the windows of all the houses which were crowded with people assembled to witness the scene.