A Matter of Honour: The Life, Campaigns and Generalship of Isaac Brock

A MATTER

OF HONOUR

OTHER BOOKS BY JONATHON RILEY

History of the Queen’s Royal Regiment (Canterbury, 1984)

From Pole to Pole: The Life of Quintin Riley 1905–1980

(Chippenham, 1989 and 1998)

The Monitor Mission in the Balkans (Zagreb, 1992)

Soldiers of the Queen (Chippenham, 1993)

White Dragon (Shrewsbury, 1995)

Napoleon and the World War, 1813 (London and New York,

1999 and 2007)

Regimental Records of the Royal Welch Fusiliers Vol VI, 1945–1969

(Llandysul, 2001)

Regimental Records of the Royal Welch Fusiliers Vol VII, 1969–2000

(Llandysul, 2001)

The Life and Campaigns of General Hughie Stockwell, 1903–1986:

From Norway, through Burma, to Suez (London, 2006)

Napoleon as a General (London and New York, 2007)

That Astonishing Infantry (with Michael Glover) (London, 2008)

Decisive Battles (London and New York, 2009)

Up to Mametz… and Beyond (ed., annotated and introduced –

original by Llewelyn Wyn Griffith) (London, 2010)

JONATHON RILEY

A MATTER OF

HONOUR

The Life, Campaigns

and Generalship

of Isaac Brock

Foreword by Donald E. Graves

ROBIN BRASS STUDIO

Montreal

Frontline Books, London

Copyright © Jonathon Riley 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be stored in a retrieval system,

transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means, photocopying, electronic

or mechanical, without written permission of the publisher or a licence from the

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licence, visit <www.accesscopyright.ca> or call 1-800-893-5777.

First published 2011 by Robin Brass Studio Inc., Montreal

www.rbstudiobooks.com

Published and distributed in the United Kingdom in 2011 by Frontline Books,

an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS

www.frontline-books.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-896941-65-3

ISBN-10: 1-896941-65-6

Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis Imprimeur Inc., Cap-Saint-Ignace,

Quebec

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Riley, J. P. (Jonathon P.)

A matter of honour: the life, campaigns and generalship of Isaac Brock/

Jonathon Riley; foreword by Donald E. Graves.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-896941-65-3

1. Brock, Isaac, Sir, 1769–1812. 2. Brock, Isaac, Sir, 1769–1812 – Military leadership.

3. Generals – Canada – Biography. 4. Canada – History – War of 1812 – Campaigns.

I. Title.

FC443.B76R54  2011     971.03’2092     C2011-900586-7

Contents

Foreword by Donald E. Graves

Preface

Prologue: Queenston Heights

Tuesday, 13 October 1812, About 7 o’clock in the morning

1

A Remarkable Fine Corps

Isaac Brock’s Early Life and Service, 1769–1791

2

Be Sober, Be Ready

Revolution, Revolt and Discord, 1791–1799

3

Ever Glorious to the 49th

The Helder Campaign, 1799–1800

4

An Immediate and Vigorous Attack

Copenhagen, 1800–1801

5

Nothing Should be Impossible for a Soldier

British North America, 1802–1807

6

The Most Volatile and Easily Led Astray

Acting Commander-in-Chief, 1805–1807

7

Craig’s Reign of Terror

The Canadas, 1807–1811

8

The Fittest Person

Upper Canada, 1811–1812

9

A System Strictly Defensive

Upper Canada, October 1811–June 1812

10

Mr Madison’s War

The United States, Britain and the Canadas, June–July 1812

11

A Force Which Will Look Down All Opposition

Hull and the Invasion of the Northwest, July–August 1812

12

A More Sagacious Warrior

Seizing the Initiative in the Northwest, August 1812

13

Intimidated by the Confidence of Our Advance

The Fall of Detroit, August 1812

14

To Improve and Augment My Resources

August–October 1812

15

Proof of their Loyalty and Courage

The Attack on Queenston, 13 October 1812

16

The Honourable Bed of a Soldier

Aftermath

Endnotes

Bibliography

Index

MAPS

The Channel Islands

The West Indies

Jamaica

Hispaniola

The Campaign of the Helder, 1799

Battle of Copenhagen, 1801

British North America and the United States, 1800–1812

The Canadas, from a Sketch Attributed to Brock

Fort George, Newark and Fort Niagara

City of Quebec

Districts and Counties of Upper Canada on Which Militia Organization Was Formed

Detroit Frontier and the American Line of Communication

Amherstburg, Detroit and the Western Frontier, 1812

Michilimackinac and St Joseph, June–July 1812

Detroit and Fort Lernoult, 1779

Brock’s Sketch of the Attack on Detroit, 16 August 1812

The Attack on Detroit, August 1812

The Niagara Frontier

Queenston, from a Sketch Made in 1818

Battle of Queenston Heights, 4.00–5.30 a.m., 13 October 1812

Battle of Queenston Heights, 6.00–7.30 a.m., 13 October 1812

Foreword

In the nearly two centuries that have passed since Major-General Isaac Brock’s death in October 1812, there have been numerous books devoted to this prominent figure in Canadian history, and the forthcoming bicentennial of the War of 1812 will undoubtedly bring forth several more. Although Brock died very early in the conflict and there were many other British generals who saw serious fighting in it, the manner of his death and its effect – not to mention the impressive memorial beneath which his remains lie today – have insured that Brock has always received a good deal of attention from biographers. A Matter of Honour differs, however, from previous accounts of Brock’s life because it is a study of the man by a fellow general – a member of the same profession and a peer, as it were.

The irony is that, in this case, the biographer may have more military experience than his subject, for Jonathon Riley has had a distinguished military career. After joining the British army in 1973, he served in Northern Ireland (six tours with only one on the staff), Central America, the Balkans (five tours), Iraq and West Africa. In 1995 he received the Distinguished Service Order for valour after commanding The Royal Welch Fusiliers in the defence of the Bosnian town of Gorazde during a six-month siege by Serbian forces. Riley has led military forces ranging in size from a platoon to a corps and his last active assignment was deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Lieutenant-General Riley, however, is also an historian of some note, having earned a doctorate in history and written or edited thirteen books, including an assessment of Napoleon as a general. He is therefore very much a member of that distinguished line of British soldier-scholars that includes such names as General Sir John Hackett, Brigadier Richard Holmes, General Sir William Napier and Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell – and is thus the ideal person to examine the life of Isaac Brock.

Riley, who has personal connections in the Channel Islands, has uncovered much new information about Brock’s early years and has clarified matters concerning his education and family finances. Money problems seriously affected Brock’s professional career, causing him to remain in a colonial backwater where he held an important command rather than going to the Peninsula to serve with Wellington, the object of every ambitious officer. They also affected his personal life and were undoubtedly the reason for his not marrying, rather than other reasons that have been implied in recent times. We also learn much about Brock: his hat size, his physique (rather more portly than most artists or sculptors have portrayed him) and his favourite reading. Finally, Riley demolishes many of the myths that have grown up around the man, among them that of the wretched horse Alfred, whose statue adorns the battlefield of Queenston Heights, although the animal almost certainly did not have the privilege of serving there.

It is Riley’s assessment of Brock as a soldier that is the core of this biography, however, and its most important aspect. It is my firm belief that historians who write about war and the military should have worn a uniform at some point in their lives – be their service ever so humble. Too often civilian historians who write about military operations are like the man who knew all the words and sang all the notes but somehow never quite learned the song. That is definitely not the case with the author of this book, as when Jonathon Riley discourses about the art of command, the principles of leadership, the conduct of operations and the effect of terrain and weapons capabilities on tactics, his words have the ring of not only truth but experience. This is actually one of the most fascinating aspects of the book that follows. When the author talks about the importance of senior commanders visiting subordinate commanders, of commanders getting out and talking to ordinary soldiers, of the difficulties of preparing for an assault crossing of a water obstacle, of the effects of fatigue and rain on morale, of the difficulties faced by a senior commander vested with both military and civil responsibilities, of the methods of encouraging resistance to the enemy by indigenous peoples, of the common experience of young officers first joining their regiments, of the necessity of leading by example and of maintaining intelligent discipline, he knows of what he speaks.

I also hold the firm belief that if one is to write about the operational and tactical level of war, there is simply no substitute for going on the actual ground. In this respect I can personally testify to Jonathon Riley’s thoroughness in researching this book as I accompanied him on two battlefield tours of the Niagara Peninsula, which featured long and exhausting days followed by lengthy evening post-mortems over a comfortable dram or two. I well remember a fine April day when, having found a runnel running up the face of Queenston Heights which just might have been the way American troops took to capture the British battery, he climbed it hand over fist, grasping at branches and rocks, all the while cheerfully discoursing on the difference between an infantryman’s load in 1812 and 2010. I followed faithfully only about a third of the way when I decided that I could best serve by taking photographs – for, as Milton would have it, they also serve who only stand and wait – and marked his progress by the noise of branches cracking and rocks falling from above. Where Riley could not go on the ground, as at Detroit, which is more or less buried in concrete, he made a painstaking study of all available map and pictorial material, and his account of this often-neglected operation is one of the best I have read.

These tours were always full of fascinating sidebars. A pleasant picnic lunch on the grounds of McFarland House near the Niagara River incorporated an interesting anecdotal lecture on the best way to deploy a modern infantry battalion for all-round defence, using Gorazde as a model. On another occasion, when asked to contribute to a discussion with a group of lady school teachers from Nebraska about the night assault on Fort Erie, Riley not only went through the check list a company commander must have in his head before committing his troops to such an operation but also, in response to their questions, provided them with a succinct but informative lecture on the role of the British army in Iraq. The visitors, who clearly did not meet British general officers all that often, were fascinated not only with his knowledge and erudition but also by his accent – Don’t he speak so pretty was one not-so-sotto-voce comment overheard. Six months later Jonathon Riley was serving Christmas dinner to British troops in Afghanistan.

A Matter of Honour is therefore a study of a good soldier by another good soldier, but this does not mean that Riley has not been critical of Brock. For example, he makes the sound point that if Brock had faced the better trained and led American army that took the field in 1814, he might not have proved so successful. But Riley is always empathetic with his subject – having faced in his own experience many of the problems that Brock encountered – and both his praise and his criticism are sound and balanced. The result is an informative new biography of one of the major figures of the War of 1812 that will be read with profit by anyone interested in that conflict and the art of military leadership.

DONALD E. GRAVES

Day of St. Ambrose 2010

Maple Cottage

Valley of the Mississippi

Upper Canada

Preface

When I was eleven years old, my parents put a book in my Christmas stocking; it was Donald Goodspeed’s The Good Soldier. Although I was partly brought up in Jersey, my parents knew nothing of Brock and they were probably attracted by the cover design, showing Brock in his cocked hat, mounted on the grey horse Alfred, waving his sword and urging British troops in red coats and 1812-pattern shakos forward into action. As an historical depiction, it contains at least three major errors, but to me it was an irresistible picture, for I had decided at an early age to be a soldier. I loved that book and because of it I became one of only a handful of British officers who even knew Brock’s name, so much was it eclipsed by events in the Peninsular War at the same time. I maintained my studies of the War of 1812 for many years and tried to show its strategic connections with the wider world war of the later Napoleonic Period in my book Napoleon and the World War. As a result I read a number of biographies of Brock. Some were hagiographic, like Tupper or Read, and to modern scholarship somewhat lacking in rigour. Others had a reasonable basis of fact but soon drifted off into supposition, wishful thinking and romantic nonsense. On the other hand there is some good, penetrating scholarship by men like Kosche, Graves, Hickey and Malcomson on aspects of Brock’s life and death, but no single-volume examination of his life, campaigns and generalship, nor its relation to his role as civil administrator. When Don Graves therefore suggested that I should write a modern biography of Brock as a general and Robin Brass said he would publish it for the bicentenary of the outbreak of the War of 1812, there was nothing on earth that was going to stop me.

My admiration for Isaac Brock as a soldier remains undimmed with the passing of the years, although I have some doubts about his grasp of strategy and the political imperatives of the time. I respect greatly his courage: we all have a certain store of courage – some people have a great deal, some people have a little, but it is a finite resource that cannot be renewed. Brock had a great deal of it, both moral and physical, and never stinted to use it up. I also admire his sense of loyalty and in particular his loyalty to his peers, his subordinates and the families of those who had served him. It could never be said that Isaac Brock failed in his self-imposed duty to them. But I never really understood how it was that he met his death doing a captain’s job. I have tried to explain this in the context of the moral compass of the late eighteenth century – since it would be meaningless to do so by today’s lights. I believe that, above all, Brock was governed by his sense of honour and that the clues are there throughout his life, if we look for them. Hence the title of this biography.

As a general officer, I have held extended commands in West Africa, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. I have commanded not only British troops but those of many other nations and I have had to co-ordinate my actions closely with civil authorities: those of my own country, of our allies and of host nations. In Africa, Iraq and Central Asia I have also experienced the interplay between regular troops and indigenous tribal fighters. This being the case, I perhaps understand the problems that Brock faced in a way that no purely academic writer ever can because like him I have carried major burdens of responsibility and balanced conflicting loyalties. On the other hand, I possess two graduate degrees in history and have completed a body of published work on early nineteenth-century military history that perhaps allows me to analyze the subject matter in a way that a purely military writer might not be able to do. It is with these different but intertwined backgrounds that I approached the task of writing a biography of a deserving officer.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am very much obliged to a number of authorities. They include: the staff at the National Archives, Kew; Dr Darryl Ogier, Guernsey Island Archives; Richard Hocart of Guernsey for information on Brock’s early life and on the banking house of Le Mesurier and Brock; Dr Jason Monaghan, Director, and Guernsey Museums for permission to reproduce the two authenticated portraits of Brock as a young officer in the 8th Foot and as a colonel; Library and Archives Canada for several maps, drawings and contemporary images; the Royal Armouries for images from the records of the Board of Ordnance; the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, for the images of the British landing at Callantsoog in the Helder, 1799, and the naval assault on Copenhagen, 1801; the curators of the regimental museums of the King’s Regiment (formerly the 8th), the Royal Regiment of Wales (formerly the 41st) and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Royal Regiment (formerly the 49th); Brian Leigh Dunnigan, Curator of Maps, William L. Clements Library of the University of Michigan, for his extensive knowledge and generosity in identifying the ground around Detroit and for permission to use the maps and line drawings of early Detroit; Robert Henderson for extensive help in researching contemporary images and details of military life in the early nineteenth century; Tom Fournier and Professor Ray Hobbes for their help with the movements and history of the 41st and other material; Dan Laroche and Fort George, Niagara-on-the-Lake, for the uniform of the officers of the 41st; Markus Stein for the uniform of the 8th Foot; New York Public Library for the use of the contemporary picture of a Napoleonic War period recruiting party from The Costume of Yorkshire; Nick Saint for permission to reproduce the image of Assistant Surgeon Faulkner; the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, for permission to reproduce for the first time the watercolour images of the Colours of the 4th U.S. Infantry, captured at Detroit; the trustees of Muckross House, Killarney, for permission to use the portrait of General John Vincent; Janet Malcomson for permission to use the photograph by the late Robert Malcomson of Brock’s memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral; Bob W. Scott for photographs of the Brock house and commemorative plaques at St Peter Port; Major John Grodzinski of the Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario, for his help in unravelling British strategy and the work of Sir George Prevost; and Dr Carl Benn for his advice on aboriginal matters. Thanks to Steve Waites for his excellent maps. Finally, thanks to my good friends, and authorities on the War of 1812, Donald E. Graves and Dianne Graves for permission to use material from Dragon Rampant and In the Midst of Alarms – as well as for their endless help, encouragement, hospitality, correction and goading almost beyond endurance, without which this book would never have been written.

JONATHON RILEY

2011

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE TEXT

PROLOGUE

Queenston Heights

TUESDAY, 13 OCTOBER 1812,

ABOUT 7 O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

The general is a big man, over six feet tall and broad too – in fact at the age of forty-three, tending to bulk. But his movements are brisk, he is more muscle than fat and he has the tanned complexion of one who has spent his life in the open air. In his red coat and cocked hat, astride his horse, he is a conspicuous figure in the early morning light. He is the general in command of all regular troops and militia in Upper Canada and yet he is at the head of a company of less than fifty men, doing the job of a captain. Dismounting from his horse, he exchanges a word here and there with a nervous soldier in the ranks; he knows these men and they know him, for they are from the light company of the 49th Foot, the regiment he joined twenty-one years ago as a captain and which he has led into battle on the last two occasions that it has faced the enemy – in the Helder and at Copenhagen, eleven years ago. The general is Isaac Brock and although he cannot know it, this is the morning of his death.

The day is Tuesday, 13 October 1812. The place is the small village of Queenston on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. During the night, the Americans have made their second incursion into the Canadas since the declaration of war in June. They have established a precarious bridgehead on the river bank but are contained by the garrison of British and Canadian regulars and militia in the village of Queenston. But a further landing downstream has required the withdrawal of the grenadier company of the 49th from their commanding position on the heights above the village to deal with that incursion. Worse still, a body of American troops of unknown strength has managed to scramble up the heights, appear behind the British artillery redoubt just below the summit and has captured it and the gun it houses. Brock is nettled, for he was on the position when the Americans appeared – from a direction that was supposed to have been an impossibility – and doubly nettled because he has been implicit in ordering down to the riverside the soldiers who would have stopped this gang of amateurs. More British and Canadian troops, and Mohawk warriors too, are on their way, but Brock is determined to push the Americans off the heights before they can build up their forces; his intuition tells him that a counter-attack now by a company may be worth a counter-attack by a brigade in two hours’ time. And in any case, his pride has been wounded. A word of command and the men shoulder their arms. Another word and they step off in line. The advancing redcoats come under fire from American riflemen hiding in the tree-line above the redoubt almost at once.

To the Americans waiting around the position or in the trees it is obvious that a very senior officer is leading the attack; some of them, who have been on the frontier for a while, recognize Brock from their own observations or from descriptions. The sight of him causes some of the younger men to waver, but to the older fellows it is a chance not to be missed. Brock leads the light company of the 49th forward, not taking up the usual position of an officer to the right or behind the firing line as the range closes, waving his sword and encouraging the men to follow. A bullet strikes him a glancing blow on the hand but he pays no attention to it. Then, just as he makes a half turn to urge the redcoats to charge in with the bayonet, an American soldier steps out of the trees and takes deliberate aim. Some men of the light company try to bring him down before he can take his shot, but to no avail. At that range there is no mistake: the bullet takes Brock squarely in the chest and he collapses. Several of the 49th gather round him; one poor fellow is all but severed in the middle by a ball and falls across the general’s body. The cry goes up: Avenge the General! The troops press on – but there are too many Americans and the fire is too fierce. The British and Canadians pull back, carrying their general’s body, into the village of Queenston below.

CHAPTER ONE

A Remarkable Fine Corps

ISAAC BROCK’S EARLY LIFE AND SERVICE,

1769–1791

The Channel Islands – Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herrn, Jethou and Brechou – lie just to the west of the Cotentin Peninsula of Normandy and within sight of the French coast. Originally they had formed part of the Duchy of Normandy and when Duke William conquered England in 1066, the kingdom and the duchy were united. In the time of King John, during the opening years of the thirteenth century, the duchy was conquered by the King of France. The islands had the choice of staying with their king or leaving with their new duke. They chose their king. Thus the island of Guernsey, like the other Channel Islands, owes allegiance to the British Crown, but not directly to the British government. The island was governed by an assembly or parliament known as the Etats or States and the monarch was represented by a governor. The islands set their own laws, administered themselves and conducted their own courts under the authority of a bailiff appointed by the Crown; the bailiff was also the presiding officer of the Etats.

The working language of the islands was a patois of French, but this by no means meant that the islanders had any sympathy with France – quite the reverse. During the sixteenth century, Protestantism had become strongly entrenched, further distancing the islanders from the French on the mainland, and during the English Civil Wars the islands had for the most part declared for Parliament. In the conflicts of the late seventeenth and early to mid eighteenth centuries, the islands had been a haven for the Royal Navy and a host of privateers and were accordingly the very bane of French maritime trade. The islands all maintained militia regiments with drills every Sunday and were usually garrisoned by one or more regular British infantry regiments. The militia, like many aspects of life on the islands, was organized on a parish basis under the leadership of the feudal lord of the manor – the Seigneur.

Despite competition from France and attempts by the British government to control – and therefore tax – their trade, the Channel Islands’ economies improved steadily throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. Fishing, both near home and across the Atlantic around Newfoundland, was a major source of income but the chief occupation of the population was farming. Wheat, cider and milk were the main exports and the distinctive cattle of the islands began to emerge as separate breeds about this time. Bigger incomes from agriculture and trade meant bigger properties. Many important houses were built or rebuilt about this time, including Saumarez Park in Guernsey, the seat of the Le Marchant family,¹ related by marriage to the Brocks.

The sons of notable families, especially in Guernsey, were usually sent to school in England for a few years to supplement the rather meagre education available locally. This served both to widen their outlook and improve their command of English, before they took up a career or, as many did, entered the Royal Navy or the army. Generally, estates in the Channel Islands were simply not big enough to provide the sort of existence that a gentleman’s family in England would have expected. Sons of such families in the islands had no option but to go away to earn a living – hence the fact that they were over-represented in percentage terms in the Royal Navy and the regiments of the British army.

Among the notable families of Guernsey was that of Brock. Earlier biographers of Isaac Brock have identified the family as being of English ancestry, asserting their descent from various Brocks, including that Sir Hugh Brock named by Froissart in his Chronicles as the keeper of Derval Castle in Brittany on behalf of Sir Robert Knollys, around the middle of the fourteenth century. Certainly there are eight families of that name in various British armorial registers² and the Oxford English Dictionary gives the derivation as the Anglo-Saxon Broc(e), for badger. However, the family of Le Brocq has been long established in the islands. In 1563 the Seigneur of St Ouen in Jersey, Helier de Carteret, took over the defence of Sark with a number of followers, one of whom was surnamed Le Brocq. The family name crops up in St Brelade, Jersey, again in 1674, and in Guernsey, a Martha Le Brocq is recorded in St Peter Port in 1668 – she appears to have been an ancestor of Buffalo Bill Cody. It must therefore be a strong possibility that the family was of Norman-French origin but, given the history of conflict between Britain and France, the name had become anglicised. What is certain is that the parish registers of St Peter Port, the main – indeed only – town of Guernsey show that Isaac Brock’s grandfather, William, died there in 1776. William had four children: William, the eldest, who married Judith de Beauvoir; Henry, who married Susan Saumarez, sister of the famous Admiral de Saumarez;* Mary, who married the local magnate John Le Marchant, whose family included the general of that name;† and last John, born in 1729, who married Elizabeth De Lisle, the daughter of the lieutenant-bailiff of the Island. The Brock family house was large and comfortable, built of the distinctive pink granite of the islands, in the High Street of St Peter Port. It is still there, bearing a plaque identifying it, although at the time of writing it houses a chemist’s shop.

John Brock died on 12 July 1777 at the early age of forty-eight at Rennes, where he had gone from Dinan, after having taken the waters because of poor health. He left eight sons and two daughters; another two sons and two daughters had died in infancy. John’s estate was large enough to allow the family to live comfortably, for his daughters to marry well, and for his sons to be educated as gentlemen – this despite a large family and a long period of minority for all the children during which they would have to be supported by the estate. As they grew to adulthood there would be no question of living off the estate: the girls would have to marry well and the boys would have to embrace a profession. As one account put it,

They were left in independent, if not affluent, circumstances; but the fond indulgence of a widowed mother, who could deny them no enjoyment, tended, notwithstanding their long minority, to diminish their patrimony.³

I am indebted to Dr Darryl Ogier of the Guernsey Island Archives for his work on John Brock, which reveals that he made an oral will leaving his wife 2,000 guineas, to be drawn from the Funds, that is, government bonds, or otherwise; the use for life of his house in St Peter Port; and the guardianship of his children.⁴ He appointed an executor for his interests in France and two other executors for his properties outside France: his brother-in-law John Le Marchant, and Matthieu Perchard,* a financier and goldsmith with whom John Brock may have banked. From this it may be inferred that John Brock had substantial investments in the Funds; secondly that he owned more than one house; and third that he had substantial property and investments in Britain, France and the Channel Islands. According to the parish tax lists, John Brock was rated at 1,100 quarters, the sixth largest in his parish, and in 1780 his heirs were rated at 1,420 quarters,† the fourth highest.⁵

John Brock’s two daughters were Mary, born in 1777, who married Thomas Potenger of Compton in Berkshire; and Elizabeth, born in 1767, who married John Tupper of Guernsey. Tupper’s son Ferdinand Brock Tupper (1795–1874) was an early biographer of Isaac.⁶ John Brock’s two eldest sons, John, born in 1759, and Ferdinand, born in 1760 (such was the pace of child-bearing in the eighteenth century), both entered the British army. John purchased a commission in the 8th (The King’s) Regiment and was killed in a duel in 1801 when a brevet lieutenant-colonel in the 81st Foot. Ferdinand, a lieutenant in the 60th Royal Americans, was killed at the defence of Baton Rouge on the Mississippi in September 1779, fighting against Spanish troops from New Orleans after Spain entered the Revolutionary War in support of the rebels. John’s third son, Pierre-Henry, died aged two in 1763. His fourth, Daniel de Lisle Brock, born in 1762, was later Bailiff of Guernsey. Next came William in 1764, who subsequently made a career in banking; Pierre in 1765, who died at just one year old; Frederic in 1768; Isaac in 1769; John Savery in 1772, who later entered the Royal Navy; and finally Irving, who translated Bernier’s Travels in India.⁷ Two other little girls were born but died in infancy: an earlier Elizabeth who died in 1756 aged seven, and Rebecca, who was either stillborn or survived only a few days in 1758. These were the brothers and sisters of Isaac, John’s eighth son, born on Friday, 6 October 1769, at St Peter Port, in the same year as Napoleon Bonaparte and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.⁸ Their father’s early death, and that of their brother Ferdinand, drew the family together.

Isaac’s early life and education were spent in Guernsey, where he followed the normal pursuits of a young gentleman of the day. He mixed with his equals in island society, spoke both English and the patois of the island, and gained a basic education. He also learned to swim and sail a small boat in the dangerous waters around the islands. Oral tradition says that he regularly swam the half-mile along the sea wall from the harbour to Castle Cornet in St Peter Port, through waters that are notoriously prone to tideraces and sudden storms.⁹ He rode, shot and fished, and he became an early devotee of the bare-knuckle ring that was almost an obsession with many gentlemen of Brock’s class at that time, both as spectator and participant – indeed he was reckoned as the best fighter of his age and weight in the island.¹⁰ By his early teens, Isaac was a big, strong lad – he grew to be 6 feet 2 inches tall, well built and broad in proportion – but despite his evident physical prowess he had the reputation of being something of a gentle giant: slow to anger, but implacable, if cool, when roused. These physical pursuits were important in forming the character of a gentleman, especially one destined for a military career, and from an early age, therefore, Isaac learned to master, and then dismiss, physical fear and to control his emotions. He also learned that with his physical qualities he had no need to succumb to bullying or coercion.

Castle Cornet, St Peter Port, Guernsey, as it appeared in the late eighteenth century. (Author’s collection)

His first school was Elizabeth College in Guernsey, which was founded in 1563 to make good the destruction of the educational system that had followed the confiscation and dissolution of the monasteries. The college was later to become a first-class public school but at this date it left much to be desired. Under the mastership of the Reverend Mr Crispin, the curriculum centred on Latin and Greek, as was usual in public schools at the time. To educate him more widely, Brock’s brother Daniel had already been sent to Alderney to study privately under an émigré Swiss clergyman called Vallat, to prepare him for a public school in England. In 1780, at the age of eleven, Isaac went to school in Southampton, and thereafter, like his brothers Daniel and William, to Rotterdam to a French Huguenot clergyman known only as Père Jean – Father John. The rough island patois was not to be compared with the then internationally accepted language of diplomacy and culture, a language necessary for any gentleman of position.

In 1784, a year after Britain’s humiliation in the Treaty of Versailles and the loss of her thirteen American colonies, Isaac’s education came to an end. He was fifteen years old. In that year his eldest brother John purchased a captaincy in his regiment, the 8th (The King’s) Regiment of Foot. His promotion opened up a vacancy lower down and the Brock family accordingly purchased a commission as ensign for Isaac in the same regiment, with seniority from 2 March 1784.

The service that young Isaac Brock joined was experiencing severe problems. At the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783, the British army had been reduced to an authorized strength of 52,378 men, of whom 17,483 were in mainland Britain, another 12,000 in Ireland, with 3,282 allocated to the Royal Artillery for both field and garrison artillery – thus the home establishments accounted for around 50 per cent of the total. The remainder were divided between India (a mere 6,366 but augmented by the large East India Company armies); 12,421 in the remaining colonies – principally the West Indies, New South Wales and British North America; and 2,826 guarding the fortress and naval base of Gibraltar. At no time during the following decade, however, was this strength ever reached. The army varied from a low of 59 per cent of its authorized strength, 30,703 men, to a maximum of 88 per cent or 46,092. By 1792, on the eve of the outbreak of