This Day in Military History (Brits, Yanks in Costly Battle of Lundy’s Lane)

July 25, 1814—It might not have been the full-fledged disaster that other American land operations were in the northern theater of the War of 1812, but the Battle of Lundy’s Lane was equally decisive in shaping its outcome. And, like the larger war, this battle marked by conspicuous heroism was also characterized by major blunders, making it the bloodiest of the whole conflict.

One of these blunders was committed by an American commander who came out of this theater of the conflict with an enhanced reputation, Brigadier General Winfield Scott (seen in the image accompanying this post). Today, we know him as the greatest American soldier between Washington in the American Revolution and Grant in the Civil War. His reputation began, in a serious way, in ferociously hot conditions, in a spot where he would rather not be.

It was the greatest irony of Scott’s life that, in the most convulsive military conflict of his career, the Civil War, he would be regarded as a superannuated hero who needed to be replaced, even though, as commander in chief of the Union Army, he formulated the "Anaconda" strategy that was later employed to strangle the Confederacy. But the paradoxes of his career don’t stop there, because not all the failures of “Old Fuss and Feathers’ career were as pronounced as his detractors claimed and not all the successes as clear-cut as his supporters believed.

Case in point: Lundy’s Lane. Tipped off that the British might be planning an attack on the American side of the Niagara River, Scott marched out of Chippewa toward Queenston. The Americans came to a tavern (one of the few not burned in the area by American partisans) owned by a widow named Mrs. Wilson, who, when questioned by Scott, said (probably disingenuously) that the British numbered “about eight hundred regulars, three hundred militia and Indians, and two pieces of artillery.”

For the last several years, Scott had been chomping at the bit, waiting for a chance to show that he could do better than the aged Revolutionary War generals then in control of the army (not unlike George McClellan would act toward him 50 years later). Now was his opportunity. He didn’t stop to wait for reinforcements from his superior officer, General Jacob Brown, or to obtain any estimate of enemy strength besides the Widow Wilson’s. By the time he realized his mistake, he was facing seven pieces of British artillery, not the two mentioned by Mrs. Wilson, was outnumbered, and was caught in a crescent formed by redcoats.

Scott could have withdrawn from this disadvantageous position, but it might have demoralized his troops and dented his growing reputation as a military commander. His only choice, then, was to attack now. At six o’clock pm, Scott’s 1,500 troops attacked the 1,700 led by his opposite number, British Gen. Gordon Drummond.

What ensued then was one of the more picturesque—and deadly—battles of the war. By sunset, 500 of the 750 in Scott’s First Brigade had been cut down. An informal ceasefire took place in which both sides received reinforcements. After an hour, American and British troops faced off against each other again in pitch-black darkness, where soldiers often only saw their opponents through the flash of musket fire.

In his history Flames Across the Border, 1813-1814, Canadian historian Pierre Berton wrote of this “confused melee in which friend and foe are inextricably intermingled, struggling in the darkness, clubbing one another to death with the butts of muskets, mistaking comrades for foes, stabbing at each other with bayonets, officers tumbling from horses, whole regiments shattered.”

Scott would have two horses shot from under him before he himself would fall from a wound. He was just one of 860 U.S. casualties, and the toll was particularly devastating on his regimental commanders (seven out of 10 died or were wounded). Drummond lost 878 men, and one of his generals, Phineas Riall, was wounded and taken prisoner by the Americans.

Oh, did I mention that this fighting took place in a cemetery? An appropriate place, don’t you think? Nobody surrendered when it was over—both sides’ troops were too exhausted to do much more of anything except collapse.

British troops disposed of the corpses quickly. The bodies were in such thick clumps that British and some American soldiers and horses were thrown together and burned in a massive funeral fire.

Forced to abandon the battlefield by exhaustion, the Americans would never have so good a chance in the northern theater again. The same prize that had eluded them in the American Revolution during the joint Benedict Arnold-Richard Montgomery expedition--Canada--fell through their hands again. Within six weeks, they would not even be concerned with adding new territory but with keeping what they had, as Washington itself was invaded.