Guns Across the River

In 1838, a clandestine American organization, the Patriot Hunters, launched a series of attacks across the Canadian border. They hoped to duplicate the success of the Texas rebellion when Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie fought to establish a ­republic in northern Mexico. They believed that Canadians would rally to their standard and throw off the British yoke.

The most ambitious Hunter attack was launched in November 1838 when more than 500 armed men, commanded by a European soldier of ­fortune, set out from northern New York in a flotilla of chartered and hijacked vessels and occupied a windmill near Prescott, Ontario.

Their hopes were doomed. After five days of fighting, British and Canadian soldiers captured this “Alamo of the North,” and those invaders who survived were tried by a court martial – eleven were ­executed and sixty deported to Australia. Donald E. Graves tells the story of this bloody but ­forgotten military action and the undeclared war of which it was a part.

Donald Graves E.

Donald E. Graves, one of Canada's best known military historians, is the -author or editor of 20 books primarily on the War of 1812 and the Second World War. His studies on the battles of Lundy's Lane (Where Right and Glory Lead!) and Crysler's Farm (Field of Glory) are established classics of musket-period warfare.