alternatehistory.com

25 April

10:30

The Union attack steps off from the hedge line at 400 yards. British fire switches from sniping to a set of full volleys, aiming for the American troops in the main column (the one they can see), and delivers punishing fire - with around 400 British troops at what is fairly short range for them, they are causing around eighty casualties a minute on the American forces.
The Canadian milita contributes relatively little in terms of casualties, especially with the Union forces not presenting an easy mass target, but their morale effect is considerable - they are about 70% of the defending British force and their volleys are quite intimidating. The smoke they pump out is somewhat inimical to the general musketry accuracy, but with only an average of fifty shots a second along the entire front the result is less than what would be produced by a single British regiment of the Napoleonic era (and much more widely spread).
The American reaction to this rifle fire is complex - first the attacking troops accelerate, hunkering down as if leaning into a heavy rain in order to keep moving forwards. At around a hundred yards, however, their morale begins to waver, and they go to ground in whatever scant cover they can gain before engaging in a firefight.

Were this a simple attack, the results would be bloody indeed for the Union - while their weapons are mostly percussion muskets (with almost as many flintlocks as rifles) and loaded with buck and ball, more effective at short ranges like these, the casualties being inflicted are disproportionately in favour of the British. They are picking individual targets (and the Canadian militia are also firing effectively at this range) while the Union force is trying to rely on sheer volume of relatively unaimed fire. However, the saving grace for the Union force is their flank column attacks - relatively unmolested, these get close enough to force the British supports to engage them, and at this point the 31st battalion commander orders a retreat in good order.

The Union artillery is quick to shift fire to this target of opportunity, graced with a skilled commander, and the Napoleons send a considerable volume of fire at this distant target (~800 yards on average) before returning to bombarding the main British line at long range (~1,200 yards - at this range solid shot is relatively ineffective, so shrapnel shot is used as this will burst and give the lead balls an extra 'kick'. Explosive shells are also employed.)

11:00
Casualties have been tallied and the Union commander has some sense of how many casualties he has taken - counting KIA and WIA, the ten-minute engagement cost around 700 casualties, possibly more. There are only a few British or Canadian bodies left behind, but in fact at least 200 were wounded by the American buckshot - though not very seriously in many cases. (As a point of curiosity, one Canadian militiaman is killed by a ball fired from a flintlock Brown Bess musket - one captured from his own Grandfather at Fort Erie nearly fifty years ago.)
There were also perhaps fifty serious casualties caused by the artillery fire as the British/Canadian delaying force retreated.

After around half an hour of slow artillery fire, the ammunition load the Union force is provided with is getting a little low - they are not provided with a huge quantity of shells, with ball and canister making up a substantial fraction - and the main attack is under planning.

This is a tricky exercise. The British have a line of embrasures and small redoubts just short of the canal, made with logs and mounded earth, and have torn down the hedge line between the first two fields to the east of the canal. As such there is a field of fire about 800 yards long.
As against this, the long-range artillery fire has clearly done some damage to the redoubts, and the Union commander decides that the best approach would be to close the range as soon as possible - the rifle fire has him worried.
Accordingly, he assigns the entire force (less 1,000 infantry and the cavalry to serve as artillery guards, and the whole as a flank guard). There are thus about 15,000 American troops getting ready to attack.
Additionally, he has anyone who claims to be a skilled hunter issued with one of the ~200 Enfields he has captured. Their task will be to drop out of the attack force at longer range and deliver suppressive fire - which will be needed, as he has noticed that there are range posts in neat lines along the field.
The attack steps off at 11:15.




At about this time, a British battery of field guns (six 12-lber Armstrong guns) begins setting up further upslope. They are nearly 2,500 yards from the American attack and 2,300 yards from the American artillery - well out of range of the Napoleon smoothbores.