On This Day: Crysler’s Farm halts Montreal advance, 1813

On Nov. 11, 1813, a British and Canadian force under Lt.-Col. Joseph Wanton Morrison defeated a larger American army at Crysler’s Farm, a field along the St. Lawrence River between present-day Morrisburg and Cornwall, Ont., ending the last American attempt to capture Montreal that year.

The battle was the end of a two-pronged American plan, according to historian J. Rickard’s account at historyofwar.org. One army under Maj.-Gen. Wade Hampton was to advance from Lake Champlain, while a second under Maj.-Gen. James Wilkinson was to descend the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario. The two forces were not well coordinated, Rickard wrote.

Hampton’s advance had already failed. As our earlier On This Day story on Châteauguay described, his force was turned back on Oct. 26, 1813. Wilkinson did not learn of it until after Crysler’s Farm, according to historyofwar.org.

Wilkinson’s flotilla, which Rickard put at just under 8,000 men in about 300 transport boats with 12 gunboats, was moving down the river past British posts. A British corps of observation shadowed it. Rickard said Morrison led 630 men of the 49th and 89th Regiments, supported by two schooners and seven gunboats, and that reinforcements picked up at Prescott brought his force to about 900. The Canadian Encyclopedia puts Morrison’s force at no more than 1,200. The two sources differ on that number.

Wilkinson was ill and stayed aboard ship, according to both sources. The Canadian Encyclopedia said he delegated command of about 2,500 infantry, plus cavalry and artillery, to Brig.-Gen. John Parker Boyd. Historyofwar.org gives Boyd 2,000 regulars for the rearguard action.

Fighting took place on the farm of John Crysler, a narrow strip of open ground between the river and a swamp and woods. Canadian militia fired on the American boats from the shore, and Canadian voltigeurs skirmished in front of the British line, Rickard wrote. He also noted a small party of about 30 Indigenous warriors in the woods on the British left. The Canadian Encyclopedia said First Nations warriors and voltigeurs pressed Boyd’s army as it fell back.

Capt. William Mulcaster commanded the British gunboats, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. After Boyd’s attempt to turn the British flank stalled, Morrison counterattacked and the Americans withdrew to their boats. The encyclopedia said Boyd called the retreat, which Wilkinson later denied ordering.

Casualty figures differ in detail. Historyofwar.org recorded 22 British dead, 148 wounded and nine missing, about 20 per cent of Morrison’s force. For the Americans it listed 102 dead, 237 wounded and 100 taken prisoner. The Canadian Encyclopedia said Boyd’s own record showed about 340 American killed and wounded and 100 captured, and that British estimates of their own losses ranged from 180 to about 200.

The consequences were strategic rather than tactical. Historyofwar.org said the battle ended any hope of an American attack on Montreal. On the day after the fight, Wilkinson received Hampton’s letter reporting his failure, called a council of war and took his army into winter quarters on the American side of the river. The army wintered at French Mills, N.Y., on the Salmon River and dispersed in February 1814, according to Rickard. The Canadian Encyclopedia said Wilkinson later tried to claim an American victory, though many historians consider the campaign a disastrous defeat.

The Canadian Encyclopedia describes the battle as the Americans’ last attempt to take Montreal in the war. With Châteauguay a fortnight earlier, it closed the 1813 campaign on the St. Lawrence with the Lower Canadian heartland still in British hands.

Historians still debate the exact numbers on both sides, and the sources cited here do not agree on every figure. They agree on the date, the place, the commanders and the outcome.

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