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Regiments / 41st Regiment of Foot - The Welch [EU]

« on: April 20, 2013, 05:12:33 pm »

History

1812 Campaigns
At the outbreak of the War, the 41st was the only full British regiment in Upper Canada and as such would bear the principal burden - and earn the glory - of repelling the initial American attacks. Simply stated, General Brock, in command in Upper Canada, faced a strategic dilemma: large American forces were gathering to invade on both the Niagara and Detroit Rivers. His solution to this problem was to shift most of his men to the Detroit frontier, capture Detroit, then shift his strength back to the Niagara front. Sounds simple, sounds obvious - yet any student of the Detroit campaign must be aghast at the sheer bravado displayed by Brock, and the magnitude of the risks he ran. But desperate times make for desperate measures.
Luckily for Canada, Brock's gamble paid off. The 41st formed the main element in the Anglo-Canadian forces that captured Detroit in August of 1812, with the assistance of native allies in a coalition the dominant personality of which was Tecumseh. The strength of the 41st was then shifted back to the Niagara front and formed the main element of the force which crushed the subsequent American invasion at the Battle of Queenston Heights in October. The Regiment had earned its first two Battle Honours - "Detroit" and "Queenstown". However, the picture at the end of 1812 was not all rosy. While some reinforcements had arrived in Upper Canada, the talented Brock had been killed at Queenston Heights, and the Americans were making preparations to redeem their earlier mistakes. The 41st found itself split, its companies attempting to guard both the Niagara and Detroit frontiers, with the Regiment's Colonel, Henry Procter, in command of the "Right Division" on the Detroit frontier. A major element and consideration in all operations on the Detroit front involved the western native allies, but Procter would prove unable to forge as productive a relationship with Tecumseh as Brock had. It appears that the average soldier of the 41st also had more fear than affection for his native comrade in arms.

1813 Campaigns
The first American counter-attack occurred on the Detroit frontier. A January offensive by General Henry Harrison led to an aggressive counter-punch by Procter at Winchester's isolated and exposed American command at Frenchtown (now Monroe, Michigan) on January 22, 1813. Although Procter achieved strategic and tactical surprise, his resulting battle tactics threw the advantage away, and in the desperate fighting which resulted, the companies of the 41st present suffered over 50% casualties. Luckily, the native allies managed to break and overrun the American right flank and the result of the battle was the destruction of Winchester's force, thus crippling Harrison's overall "winter-campaign" strategy. Unfortunately, Procter, in his desire to get his mauled forces back to the security of the Detroit River forts (Amherstburg and Detroit) abandoned American wounded to the not-so-tender mercies of the native allies. The resulting "River Raisin Massacre" would form a rallying cry for Americans for the rest of the War.Harrison concentrated his remaining forces on the Maumee River near what is now Toledo, Ohio, and commenced construction of Fort Meigs to act as a base for his next offensive. The Americans had set in play a shipbuilding program on both Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, and the isolated position of the Right Division on the Detroit front deteriorated steadily as the year 1813 progressed. Although the need to reinforce Procter's Right Division was recognized by the "High Command" in Montreal and orders were sent to the Center Division to forward the remaining companies of the 41st to Procter, events on the Niagara front precluded this possibility. Thus, companies of the 41st were present when the Americans attacked and captured Fort George in May of 1813, and these companies formed the garrison of Burlington Heights when the rest of the Center Division made their successful night attack on the American camp at Stoney Creek on June 6.
Although the Center Division in effect disobeyed orders to send the 41st companies on to Procter, they at least were kept as an emergency reserve and thus did not get shot up in either of these major confrontations. Individual officers of the 41st were involved in both actions. Meanwhile, Procter had decided to use the Right Division for a spoiling attack on Fort Meigs. The first siege, in late April/early May, resulted in the destruction of a large force of American reinforcements in 'Dudley's Defeat', and some hard fighting as the Americans attacked the siege batteries - but it proved impossible for the smaller Right Division to actually capture the American fort given its commanding position and very large garrison. There was another ugly incident involving American prisoners being maltreated by some of the native allies, in which an infantryman of the 41st attempting to protect the Americans was himself "chopped". Fortunately Tecumseh arrived in time to stop a major massacre. Despite the overall disappointing results from this operation, the 41st earned the Battle Honour "Miami" (the Maumee River was also called the "Miami" at this time). As progress on what would become Commodore Perry's U.S. Lake Erie squadron relentlessly continued, and reports of the forces Harrison was gathering came in, Procter became more and more despondent. In July, at the insistence of the Indian Allies, Procter again led the Right Division out in a spoiling attack against Fort Meigs. The "Second Siege" (July 21-26 1813) accomplished even less than the first, and Procter decided to attack Fort Stephenson (Fremont, Ohio), basically a fortified supply depot, which he thought would be "easy pickings". On August 2, 1813, Procter ordered an attempt to escalade the American fort, but the unexpected presence of an American artillery piece, plus the unwillingness of the American garrison to surrender (natural enough, given the several 'massacres' that had already occurred when Procter proved unable to protect his prisoners), led to a bloody repulse of the attack columns and a precipitate retreat back to the Detroit forts. And, the bottoming-out of the 41st's faith in their commander's battlefield skills. As the completed American Squadron on Lake Erie took dominance of the Lake, Procter sat in the Detroit River forts, receiving only limited reinforcements from the Center Division (most of the 1st Battalion eventually reached him). He waited for the completion of the new British flagship for the Lake Erie squadron, H.M.S. Detroit, and watched his food stocks deplete at an alarming rate. Finally, the "Detroit" was as complete as resources at Amherstburg could make her, the food was almost gone, and the only honourable choice left was to go out and try and win back command of Lake Erie. Procter placed 150 men of the 41st on Barclay's squadron as marines, and on September 10, 1813, the two squadrons hammered it out off Put-In-Bay. The result was the destruction and capture of the British squadron, the loss of all its manpower, and the knowledge that Perry's fleet could now with impunity ferry Harrison's large army to anywhere on the north shore of Lake Erie, thereby cutting Procter's communications with the Center Division. Procter's decision to retreat to a position on the lower Thames was ineptly carried out and in the early afternoon of October 5, 1813, what was left of the 1/41st found itself just west of Moraviantown strung out in an overly-extended formation in light woods, facing overwhelming numbers of Americans. The 41st's "battle" lasted about 10 minutes, as a column of American mounted infantry charged and overran the left flank of 41st line on a narrow frontage, then turned left and neatly rolled it up. Indians on the right flank posed a more serious threat to the Americans, until Tecumseh was killed. Indian resistance meant some men on the right of the 41st's line managed to escape the disaster. Only 6 subalterns, 9 sergeants, 6 drummers, and 159 rank and file of the 41st made it to the Center Division at Burlington Heights - and not all of these men had been present at the battle.