Page:Brock centenary 2nd ed. 1913.djvu/19

 INTRODUCTION

Napoleon — the most splendid, as we have said, of all years in British military annals. Since 1808, the British forces had been striving to drive the French from Spain. First under Sir John Moore, later under Wellington, inch by inch, year by year, they had beaten them back toward the Pyrenees. Then on July 22, 1812, just as Brock was strug- gling with all his difficulties here in Canada, there came Wellington's first decisive victory at Sala- manca. The news reached Brock in October and a day or two before he died he sent the tidings forward to Proctor — Proctor then struggling with his Forty-first Regiment to do as much damage as he could to the enemy hundreds of miles out from Windsor and Detroit, Proctor who was to be etern- ally much abused for faults he never was guilty of, and to be blamed for Tecumseh's death next year. With the news of Salamanca went Brock's pro- phetic comment : " I think the game nearly up in Spain " ; and within a year the game, Napoleon's game, was up, not only in Spain but in all Europe. Within a year Leipsic had been fought and won and Napoleon was a wanderer on the face of the earth, to be gathered in and lodged on Elba.

Meanwhile other great events were shaping. Just a month before Salamanca — in fact, four days before the United States declared war — Napoleon had set out on his fatal expedition against Russia. Two days later he crossed the Niemen. More than a million Frenchmen were now in arms in Europe ; and Britain was the only active enemy in the field.

What wonder then that Brock, as the civil and military head of the Government of Upper Canada, should view with extreme anxiety the situation in the Province? He had been in Canada for ten years. He knew that the Motherland could not furnish any more men. There were fifteen hundred regular troops in Upper, and two thousand in Lower Canada. Forty years before there had not been a single settlement in what is now Ontario

�� �