on of the exhausted troops; also that
Fitzgibbons, the famous scout, came through the American lines dressed
as a rustic selling butter. Whether these stories are true or not, or
whether, indeed, the Canadians knew anything about the American camp,
they plucked resolution from desperation. If they waited for the
morrow's battle, they would be beaten. Harvey proposed to Vincent that
seven {358} hundred picked men go back through the dark and raid the
American camp. Vincent left the entire matter to Harvey. Setting out
at 11.30 along what is now Main Street, Hamilton, the Canadians marched
in perfect silence. Harvey had given orders that not a shot should be
fired, not a word spoken, the bayonet alone to be used. By two in the
morning of June 6 the marchers came to the church where the sentries
were posted. Two were stabbed to death before they awakened. The
third was compelled to give the password, then bayoneted in turn. The
Canadian raiders might have come to the very midst of the American army
if it had not been for the jubilant hilarity of some young officers,
who, capturing a cannon, uttered a wild huzza. On the instant, bugles
sounded alarm; drums beat a crazy tattoo, and every man leaped from his
place in the grass, hand on pistol. The next second the blackness of
the night was ablaze with musketry; the soldiers were firing blindly;
officers were shouting orders that nobody heard; troops were dashing
here, there, everywhere, lost in the darkness, the heavy artillery
horses breaking tether ropes and stampeding over the field. Major
Plenderleath with a company of young Canadians suddenly found himself
in the midst of the American camp. One of the young raiders stabbed
seven Americans to death; a brother bayoneted four, and before daylight
betrayed the smallness of their forces the raiders came safely off with
three guns and one hundred prisoners, including the two American
officers, Winder and Chandler. The loss to the British was one hundred
and fifteen killed and wounded; but there would be no battle the next
day. The battle of Stony Creek sent the Americans retreating back down
the lake front to Fort George, harried by the English fleet under Sir
James Yeo from Kingston. A hundred episodes might be related of the
Stony Creek raid. For years it was to be the theme of camp-fire yarns.
For instance, in the flare of musketry fire a Canadian found himself
gazing straight along the blade of an American'