Campaign of France by Ernest Meissonier, 1814: Napoleon was the chief driver of the War of 1812. He was obsessed with defeating Britain, and he came to realize that with two bold blows, he could knock Britain out of the war.
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As Monday is the 200th anniversary of the American declaration of war in 1812, it’s important to look at the real reasons why a small nation of less than eight million decided to take on Great Britain and its 1,000-ship Royal Navy.
According to Canadian and American textbooks, this thousand-day war was all about free trade and sailor’s rights — the British Royal Navy was cruelly stopping U.S. vessels and taking away American sailors to serve on board British ships. They were also providing Native American warriors with guns and ammunition used to viciously kill white settlers.
A closer look at the war shows a very different story. These public excuses for war were simply political spin, a smokescreen generated to hide a very different reason for the conflict. Behind the propaganda war of the ruling Democratic Republican Party, led by a trio of Virginia slave-owners — Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe — were some real economic and geopolitical advantages for the young country.
First and foremost, the War of 1812 was an attempt by the opportunistic Americans to capture Canada while Britain was locked in a life and death conflict with Napoleon.
The goals, the timing and the results of this conflict clearly show that the invasion of Canada was a special project of the Virginians, and their ally, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Canada was one of the three main battlefronts of the war — the others were Spain and Russia. Napoleon was the chief driver of the War of 1812. He was obsessed with defeating Britain, and he came to realize that with two bold blows, he could knock Britain out of the war.
I have found new evidence to suggest that the American attack on Upper Canada was indeed timed to go off at exactly the same time as Napoleon’s attack on the armies of Tsar Alexander of Russia. Indeed, Napoleon’s Grande Armée crossed the River Neman toward Russia six days after President Madison’s declaration of war.
Most people know that Napoleon’s invasion was a disaster — hundreds of thousands of his men died during the disastrous retreat from Moscow — but the reasons for his conduct are not so clear. Why was Napoleon so angered by the Tsar that he sent the largest army in history — almost 700,000 men — against Russia?
I believe the answer is hemp — cannabis. No, not the psychoactive variety; rather the industrial fibre produced by hundreds of thousands of serfs in the Tsar’s dominions.
Britain’s Royal Navy ran on hemp. Ships of the line had to have their sails and ropes replaced every year and a half, and they were all made of hemp. The British had no supplies of the fibre, and bought 90 per cent of their needs from Russia. Ironically, during this last stage of the Napoleonic Wars, most of the ships engaged in this trade were from New England — U.S. ambassador to Russia John Quincy Adams witnessed hundreds of Yankee trading ships flying the American flag in Russian waters, making good profits supplying Britain with hemp.
Napoleon’s master plan was to strike one bold blow against the Tsar, and at the same time have the Americans strike the other against the British in North America.
He knew that the Royal Navy also ran on spruce and oak, a good deal of it from Nova Scotia and Canada. This resource was equally important to the British — in 1809, Isaac Brock marvelled at the sight of the basin of Quebec packed with hundreds of ships waiting to load timber for the Royal Navy.
The Americans were crucial to Napoleon’s plans. He had relied on them before in his battles against the British. In 1803, abandoning his empire in the Western hemisphere, he sold Louisiana to the Jefferson administration for about $250 million in today’s money. “This accession of territory affirms forever the power of the United States,” he declared, “and I have given England a maritime rival who sooner or later will humble her pride.”
The Emperor immediately used these funds to build an army to invade England, but his project came crashing down on Oct. 21, 1805, when Admiral Nelson and the Royal Navy defeated the French and Spanish fleet at Trafalgar. Frustrated at sea, Napoleon was then forced to turn his attention to bringing all of the land mass of Europe under his control, as monarchy after monarchy bowed to the power of his armies.
As 1812 began, Bonaparte had been battling the British for over 10 years. His treasury was nearly exhausted, and he was now facing potential defeat due to a continuing blockade of European trade by the British. Guerillas and Wellington’s crack regulars, supplied by sea, were hamstringing his forces in Spain.
Napoleon needed to strike quickly, or all was lost. To light a fire under the Americans, and get them to open a western front on his behalf, he promised them Spanish Florida, then the personal property of his brother Joseph, King José of Spain.
So in June of 1812, while the Emperor started his invasion of Russia, his American allies began their own march toward Canada.
The war was a chance to drive the Native Americans back from the frontier and west of the Mississippi, and open new territories for slavery and plantations. One of the American War Hawks eager for western expansion, Henry Clay, was a major promoter of hemp production using slaves.
The military results that year were a disaster for both the French and the Americans. After he pulled in 30,000 men from his army in Spain for the Russian invasion, Napoleon’s remaining forces were soon driven north toward the French border. In August, the Russian Army deflected the French from marching on the Russian capital at Saint Petersburg — Napoleon feared to get too close to the Baltic coast since it was controlled by the Royal Navy — and the Emperor himself led the way to Moscow instead. On Sept. 14, he entered an empty city, stripped of all supplies, including food for his foraging army. Fires broke out that night, consuming most of Moscow.
Napoleon maintained his army in the ruined Russian capital for a fatal five weeks in the hope of bringing the Russians to terms, then began his disastrous wintertime retreat. One of those following his army was American ambassador to France Joel Barlow, who froze to death in a Polish village.
In North America, the U.S. invasion was repelled by Isaac Brock at Detroit, and, after his death, by his British regulars at Queenston Heights.
Next Monday on this page, we’ll look at how the British army in Canada responded to the war after Isaac Brock’s death.
Alastair Sweeny is author of Fire Along the Frontier: Great Battles of the War of 1812, published by Dundurn Press
