When The Brits Burned Down The White House | War Of 1812 Documentary | Timeline

it's june 1812 36 years after the declaration of independence the united states declares war on britain and invades her colony of upper canada britain is already locked in a life and death struggle with napoleon in europe upper canada is poorly defended and vulnerable to attack and majority of its population is american-born u.s politicians are convinced they'll be welcomed with open arms and former president thomas jefferson declares victory will be a mere matter of marching the odds are stacked in favor of the united states as the fate of north america hangs in the balance today the war of 1812 is largely forgotten but unfairly so rarely in history has there been so much at stake if the u.s had managed to conquer canada today the united states would extend unbroken from the warm waters of the gulf of mexico to hudson bay and the arctic circle and the world today would be a very different place but this isn't what happens one year into the war the united states attacks york the british defenders of fort york detonate their grand magazine an armory packed to the rafters with much of the province's ammunition supply nearly 30 000 pounds of gunpowder together with 10 000 cannonballs and 30 000 cartridges at the time it's one of the biggest explosions ever witnessed in north america and more than 250 american soldiers are either killed or maimed by the blast in the days that follow the u.s army will wreak a bitter revenge on the civilian population who will come to see them not as liberators but as aggressors a series of events is set in motion that will not only change the outcome of the war but the destiny of a nation 21st century toronto stands as a modern metropolis on the northern shores of lake ontario and today is home to 5 million canadians little now remains of the muddy settlement it once was a frontier town called york that was the backwoods capital of the british province of upper canada but buried in the heart of the city is fort york an archaeological treasure trove and one of the best preserved 19th century fort in the whole of north america it was also the site of the explosion so for me this is like one of those places that uh should give any canadian goosebumps symbolically this is ground zero in the war of 1812. today dr ron williamson is leading a team of archaeologists in search of the remains of the magazine and the crater left by the explosion material evidence from the crater could shed light on a little-known and poorly understood episode of the war why were so many u.s soldiers killed by the blast were they as the americans would later claim victims of a gigantic improvised explosive device deliberately detonated by the british or were they the unintentional collateral damage of war it's a turning point in the conflict and yet it has never been scientifically investigated until now as long as i've been associated with fort york people have talked about this they've talked about this crater and that kind of conversation has never led to well let's go see if we can find it so um this is a unique effort here to see if we can lay in a trench to locate where it is it's a little bit of a needle in a haystack quite frankly although the configuration of the fort has changed there is still a clue as to the whereabouts of the original magazine which was dug into the embankment on the shoreline facing the lake a military survey of the fort from 1816 clearly shows the outline of a massive crater buried into the side of the fort's ramparts the gun emplacement provides a rough coordinate and so a trench is laid up the side of the modern rampart in the hope of intersecting it andy robertshaw a military historian and director of the royal logistic corps museum in england has been recruited to help interpret what the archaeologists uncover this is the bit i love because it's it's like just unpainting an onion because you've got this this nice green turf what's underneath it isn't clear you only know what it is when you find it and right now they're finding things what i don't know we got a real problem here with the dig for the magazine barely begun lead archaeologist dave robertson has hit not a crater but an obstacle the the problem is that in going down they've actually hit uh basically groundwater um and what that's doing is it's actually uh dissolving as it were the sand layer below that which means that the walls are being undermined and it gets very dangerous no one can go down there after two centuries of landfill the shoreline has shifted leaving the modern fort high and dry but originally it stood at the water's edge a defensive bastion at the mouth of a natural harbour protecting the town to the east known as muddy york the capital of upper canada was a remote outpost of british rule clinging to the edge of the north american wilderness there were less than 800 inhabitants many of whom were american-born at the end of the american revolutionary war a border was drawn between the new united states of america and the remaining colonies of british north america a small group of around 6 000 refugees known as empire loyalists moved from the u.s to make a new life in upper canada on the north side of the lawrence river and the great lakes but they were joined in the years after the war by 40 000 american-born immigrants attracted by the promise of free land on the eve of the war of 1812 two-thirds the population of upper canada had been born in the united states and the side that could win the hearts and minds of these recently arrived immigrants would have a massive advantage so you've got these english-speaking people who are a majority in upper canada they didn't call themselves canadians before the war of 1812. they usually called themselves americans there's a great deal of anxiety among british officials that the people settled in upper canada could not be trusted in the event of a war against the united states and that these people might be closet supporters of a republican regime of introducing the american system into canada and perhaps of uniting canada as part of the united states in june 1812 the united states declares war against britain and invades canada for the u.s the british empire and her native allies represent the biggest obstacle to its expansion west and north across the continent and more than 30 years after the revolution u.s president james madison and the republican war hawks believe they still have unfinished business with their erstwhile colonial rulers the leaders of the united states believe that it was a continuation of the revolution they believed that the british empire had never accepted american independence government house at fort york was the command center of the province and the headquarters of british power in upper canada the man in charge was isaac brock a charismatic leader and inspirational general who would mobilize the british war effort against the american invasion today no visible trace of the building remains and for the first time in 200 years dr ron williamson is trying to trace the ghost of its footprint using the latest in ground penetrating radar as the gpr penetrates deeper it detects anomalies telltale variations in the subsoil which to the trained eye are indicative of a building's foundations if his hunch is right ron may have located brock's lost headquarters as the seat of executive power and the official residence of the king's representative this was the equivalent in upper canada of the white house and i'm standing in what was probably government house now that is a real cool moment we're talking about sir isaac brock having been in this building we're talking about possibly finding materials this guy held in his hand so am i excited you bet but he'll only know for sure by digging within months of the outbreak of war british hopes will be dealt a terrible blow when brock is killed on the battlefield but even though the british lose their inspirational general in the first year of the war american attempts to conquer upper canada will fail miserably by year two the us government is desperate for a quick and easy victory and decides to attack the poorly defended capital of upper canada and it's a decision that will have repercussions well beyond the woods of muddy york ten-year-old patrick feenan is the son of the quartermaster of the royal newfoundland fencibles a home-grown north american regiment which is part of the small british garrison at fort york a lonely and isolated outpost of the empire [Music] the garrison at york numbering about 400 regulars is commanded after brock's death by general schaef there's a smaller number of militia the citizen army of york under the command of aeneas shaw who in this time of crisis have been pressed into service to defend the empire as an adult patrick feenan will write his memoirs including his recollection of those dramatic days of his boyhood having been born and brought up in the british army my ideas ran early upon military exploits scenes of war and conquered enemies my youthful heart was big with warlike achievements upon this occasion however i was to witness the reality the storm of war was brooding at hand 27th of april 1813 from the ramparts of fort york ten-year-old patrick feinan spies the american fleet bearing down fourteen ships eighteen hundred american soldiers their sights set on york the british capital of upper canada general sheaf commander of the british garrison gives the order to intercept the americans as they land his position what the general can see is that the americans are going to land down the lake shore the people he sends are actually the grenadiers of the eighth regiment of foot under captain mcneil and he sends them along as quickly as they can to make their way to the landing place to give him time to organize these forces and to cut off the american column as it comes towards them the first wave of american soldiers comes ashore two kilometers west of the fort and it's here in the woods that the british mean to cut them off as they land outnumbered by more than four to one they know that this is where the battle for york will be won or lost on the flank the grenadiers are supported by a small band of mississauga and ojibwe warriors like many native tribes in this war they have rallied to the british cause believing the british empire to be their best defense against aggressive american expansion westward through their lands but it's an alliance that is abhorrent to politicians in the states americans regarded the british as essentially race traders because here they are they're white people but they're making alliances with indian peoples to stop american expansion and in the american view to promote these indian attacks on american farm families so there's a great deal of anger in the united states particularly among republicans toward the british for this indian alliance and no one in upper canada would feel the brunt of this anger more than men such as major james givens the indian superintendent for the likes of him the american invaders have sworn no mercy promising that any white man caught fighting alongside native warriors will face execution at 7 20 a.m the vanguard of the british grenadiers engages with the first wave of the american landing force this battle wasn't decided on the open battlefield it was decided in the woods they don't just come up against the normal fighters they might have expected blue coated americans with regular muskets a smoothbore instead it's major forsyth and his green coated rifleman major forsyth's men have a very bad reputation in the american army they have no interest in discipline they're very good at killing their opponents his men are absolutely masters of their art and their art is not volley firing it's not standing up shoulder to shoulder firing in a standard way it's actually using cover a major forsythe men are wearing green uniforms camouflage and they're in woodland and very importantly they're armed not with smoothbore muskets but with rifled weapons their crack shots what forsyth men are doing is deliberately looking for targets the person pointing the person that everybody's looking at is clearly a senior man kill him and you cut off the head of the snake captain mcneil was well liked by his men he led by example he led from the front so when they set off he actually would have directed them not saying go there lads go there lads but follow me getting in close unfortunately as they do get close to the enemy the way that he's behaving attracts the attention of forsyth rifleman and a bullet through his brain ends his military career outgunned and outnumbered the british regulars are now in desperate need of reinforcements from the militia under the command of local land owner ania shaw the british lose their officers lose cohesion and as for where near shore is in the militia is he going to fall on the flank of the advancing americans and cause them a problem is he going to cut them off from the rear nobody knows he just doesn't appear on the battlefield 200 years later what shaw did or did not do remains one of the great unanswered questions of the battle for york dr ron williams traces what may have been his route through the woods now modern day queen street as the british grenadiers and their native allies their defeat in the face aeneas shaw local land owner and major general of the militia now makes his own cool and calculated choice with orders to act according to circumstances he leads his men through the woods along what is now queen street by coincidence or design this also happens to be where his house is next up [Music] so the battle is waging south of queen street here we are about a half a block up and this is given shaw school and somewhere on this property is actually was actually shaw's house his estate the suspicion is that maybe shaw brought the militia to this property to protect his own house and that's something that might be completely consistent with how the citizenry at that time and certainly militia would have seen their responsibility neither shaw nor his militia will make an appearance on the battlefield even though on the neighbouring property at james gibbons's house casualties from the woods are beginning to stream in and on the kitchen table givens his wife a seamstress must stitch their wounds by midday the battle in the woods is lost the main body of the american army now advances on fort york under the command of general zebulun pike famous explorer of the american west and poster boy of the u.s army around midday they reach an open field which 200 years later has become the fort's parking lot here ron's team have opened a third trench this is the commons in front of the fort but this is also battleground because the americans came ashore a couple of miles further west they work their way through the exhibition grounds there's there's fighting there's skirmishing they make their way and there's actually battle in this area as well and into the fort proper on the other the side column is standing approximately half a kilometer to the west of the fort unknown to general pike the fort has now been largely abandoned by the british and in the woods to the north the townsfolk of york are fleeing in panic [Music] so here we are at the intersection of queen and bathurst we're right downtown toronto but 200 years ago this was the north edge of the city and in april of 1813 when the americans invaded what they had to do was evacuate the women and children from down near the lake down near the fort bring them north of the city and bring them up to north probably north of queen street little patrick feenan wanted to see what happened to his father's father's involved in the battle and you can imagine the chaos of all these women and children move north he slips away unnoticed and he begins to head down towards the fort along this way as patrick feenan heads into danger the commander of the british army makes a fateful decision the grand magazine at fort york is a weapons dump crammed with explosives up to 300 barrels of black powder together with cannon and musket balls to prevent it from falling into enemy hands general sheaf gives the order to detonate the lot i heard the report and felt a tremendous motion in the earth resembling an earthquake closer to the blast pike sees the flash of the explosion traveling at more than 500 meters a second it hurls the americans backwards 20 meters and as the shock wave slices through soft human tissue eardrums burst lungs hemorrhage guts rupture brains are traumatized the shockwave is a unique signature of the explosion death will follow in its wake and it defines the scope and extent of the killing zone deciding who will die and who won't in order to understand what happened to the american column when the magazine blew andy decides to recreate the shockwave and to do so he's recruited the help of explosives expert professor bibu mahanti we've come a long way from civilization we've come out actually onto the rock of the canadian shield where we've actually got explosive setup over there we've then got sensors and over here high speed cameras the only way we're going to detect it is not by looking at it it's actually getting those cameras to be able to slow down sufficiently to see whether it's possible with the experiment to spot that shockwave as it comes through five kilograms of high explosive are laid directly onto the bedrock minimizing the amount of debris that will be thrown into the air and maximizing the chances of capturing the shock wave on camera sight is clear terry when viewed at a quarter speed the shock wave is just visible but gone in the blink of an eye it felt that was like being banked up to the stomach actually you felt it through here sort of really high up so it must be just compressing the air in eating your lungs i was down on the ground he felt it through the ground as well it's a phantom of explosive energy barely detectable when slowed down nearly 30 times the shape of the shock wave begins to materialize and when seen slowed down more than 200 times its full nature is revealed an airborne tsunami of destructive power radiating outwards from the epicentre of the explosion and it's the energy of this shock wave that will propel lethal amounts of debris up and out of the magazine we have at least 18 different eyewitnesses for this event and they paint a vivid picture they talk about a huge cloud of debris rocks as big as two fists timbers rafters clay and even men blasted far into the sky one eyewitness says it took at least 30 seconds what he calls this infernal shower to come crashing back down to earth general pike says to one of the bystanders that his back's been stoved in along with his ribs he's probably been hit by falling debris as he lay on the floor he doesn't die at once but he dies as he's taken away for treatments and around him are men with very similar injuries about 25 american soldiers are killed immediately about 200 are wounded the whole area is a scene of devastation debris and bodies 200 years after the explosion of the grand magazine evidence is unearthed in the parking lot of fort york a copper barrel hoop which fell to the ground near to the spot where pike and the american army were standing just that's that's just twisted to pieces [Applause] so that came to rest where on the side right here and that's incredible what i've got in my hand is a piece of apparently random twisted copper i mean you'd think it was a bit of scrap you know from a scrap yard but it's not what it is is a section a small piece of one of the barrel bands that held together the gunpowder barrels and this thing has gone from where it started off and fallen through the sky to end up here which is way outside the fort and it's exactly the kind of thing that i hoped i might see but but not like this when the magazine blows death rains down in all directions but not equally so the american column is up to half a kilometer west of the magazine but standing just paces from the epicentre of the explosion at the government house battery are george duggan and more than a dozen other york volunteers all but one of whom will survive the blast comparatively unscathed what appears to be the asymmetry of the killing zone the disproportionate number of u.s casualties and the directionality of the blast will all lead the americans to accuse the british of springing a gigantic booby trap for 200 years it's an accusation that has been untested and unproven until now in an unconfined explosion the shock wave radiates destructive energy equally in all directions but this isn't what happened at york so andy riggs up a second experiment this time confining the explosion with a scaled down model of the grand magazine to see if you can replicate what happened on april the 27th 1813. this is experimental archaeology this is about what we can prove by trying it out nobody has done this before what happens when you blow up a magazine with a doorway like this will we find it comes right up drops down again or does it go in a direction and if so what is that direction going to be the experiment is designed by professor bibu mahanti one of north america's leading experts on the science of explosives in order to document the explosion and to map the debris field four remotely controlled cameras have been set up around the replica magazine two high-speed cameras are 100 meters in front of the magazine at a 30 degree angle a third is 50 meters closer at 45 degrees and a normal speed camera is positioned just five meters behind the magazine itself ten kilograms of high explosive have been laid the cameras are set speed four minute warning [Music] all right caroline give the siren [Music] so [Music] that that just was incredible let's have a look and see what we've got the moment of the explosion has been documented from three different angles and what each of the cameras captures is evidence of what happened 200 years ago i can see timber up on top yep so that's been wow there's tiny bits of stone here yep an almost perfectly symmetrical and circular crater has formed where the magazine once stood its walls dismantled and thrown outwards but the direction of the blast has been anything but symmetrical the camera position just behind the magazine demonstrates how remarkably little debris is thrown backwards demonstrating how york volunteer george duggan managed to survive we've got a few bits of debris but actually up there not in protection not behind plexiglas was this it was in five meters of explosion and it's completely undamaged had it been in front that had been nothing left at all the side angle demonstrates how most of the debris up to 90 percent of it has been thrown forwards funneled upwards and outwards in the direction of the doorway the weakest part of the entire structure come with me we have a whole line of debris all aligned along the front entrance of the magazine so this match is almost the same width as the magazine entry it goes a long distance into the lake you're kidding it's always been assumed that the magazine was built facing the lake if we do that and then we blow it up what's going to happen is based on the experiments is all the material the most of it will be ejected towards the american fleet now some of that material does hit the fleets but also on the american soldiers for that to happen you have to turn the magazine through 90 degrees you can dig it in the enemy can't shoot into the doorway which is a really bad idea more importantly it's totally camouflaged they can't see it at all don't know where it is result of that is that when you then blow the magazine materials ejected based on the experiment about 30 degrees some of it drops on the american fleet over there but the majority drops on the americans who are waiting to advance if andy's theory is correct the asymmetry of the killing zone isn't deliberate it's simply a function of how the magazine was built and the direction in which it faced this is an accident it's not a deliberate war crime 1pm 27th of april 1813. in a field west of muddy york 38 american soldiers lie dead 222 injured and maimed a moment in time when the future of north america hangs in the balance as the debris settles and the dust clears the inexorable wheels of history grind into gear and the onward march of war continues fort york has been abandoned by the british military and the road lies open for the main column of the u.s army to advance once more ten-year-old patrick fenan is witness to the moment the british capital of upper canada falls into enemy hands and he gets probably to somewhere around this spot and he's looking back into the fort and then he can see the flagpole of the fort and what he sees is the union jack lowered on the flagpole and he knows even at the age of 10 what that means the americans have the fort victory belongs to the americans with the fort in their possession the american army advances on the town and as they march into york the townsfolk must now meet their new rulers the reality of the situation was was that the town had been abandoned by the british military and all the citizens were left up to their own devices to deal with the americans i can actually feel the fear when you think about it with your military your defenses gone and this force coming through the king's writ no longer runs in these streets british authority has vanished as quickly as the redcoats the inhabitants of the town of york many of whom are american-born citizens now have a simple choice to make how best to protect their property the decision arrived at by the inhabitants of york in april 1813 can still be seen at canada's national archive in ottawa [Music] in negotiating their surrender to the occupying power the townsfolk agreed to sign a capitulation agreement according to the terms of which their private property will be protected in return for the militia laying down their arms this is the document the order the terms of capitulation from the war 1812 thank you i'm just going to set it out here for you yeah and uh you put your gloves on what's really interesting about this document is this page is nice lots of information but this page here on the very back it actually has what's called an explanatory remark on the list of prisoners explanatory remark on the list of prisoners a great number of the officers in the list were not on duty in the garrison of york many of them arrived from their places of abode at distances at various distances but in time to be included in the capitulation in other words men who weren't present at the time of the fighting turn up afterwards after the surrender to say oh yeah i didn't fight i wish i had actually but i didn't but while i'm here could i just sign that won't promise to do anything else not that i did to start with so i would suggest that somebody putting this in here has actually looked at the terms and conditions and he's actually having a bit of a go at the militia by saying yes you've all signed this but you weren't really there present in the battle you've sort of piggybacked on the whole thing the fact is that the people here giving their names really would like just to be able to draw a line under it get on with their lives and for the war to go away just agree get on with it it's all over but it's far from over whether deliberately or otherwise the american officers delay signing the capitulation and as the rank and file of their army enters the town the explosion of the grand magazine rankles still the soldiers feel that this was treacherous on the part of the british and therefore they feel fully within their rights to plunder any house that seems not to be occupied and they proceed to do that the prime movers of the looting are the riflemen of major forsyth a man-killing idiot according to one american officer whose men are more like outlaws than soldiers but there's method in foresight's madness and the revenge he wreaks is anything but random he seeks out the house of major james givens the indian superintendent who fought against him in the woods knowing what his fate will be if he's taken by forsyth givens has fled the town of york but his wife angelique remains [Music] her house is entirely stripped of its carpets curtains bed sheets and clothing even after her life is threatened at gunpoint forsyth superiors refused to intervene [Music] in the first year of the war both sides were guilty of larceny and looting but nothing on the scale of york and before they leave the smoldering ruins in a final symbolic act the americans torched the symbols of british power including the first parliament buildings and government house upper canada's equivalent of the white house where the ground penetrating radar had detected anomalies beneath the subsoil dr ron williamson's team have now uncovered what they believe to be the remains of a structure and beside it an early 19th century garbage dump as the layers are stripped away the vestige of a burned posthole is laid bare and yet more proof of the rape of york in the burn layer a shattered brick it's handmade you can sort of see how rough it is it's another piece of evidence of that burning event this is very important at the site of the grand magazine the trench now extends from the original lake level up the modern embankment oh what's that and the archaeologists have made an intriguing discovery one which matches the fines from government house under the ramparts of the modern fort where there was once a crater there is now a jumble of buried rubble there's a lot of brick here isn't that but it's not been laid in water it's just been jumbled hasn't it fairly rubbery including deposits of burned brick similar kinds of bricks from a similar date as the one found in the ruins of government house that's what we're looking for because there are stories about the the crates have been used to dump rubbish in what a hall represents is a convenient place to place garbage so i would expect that we would find you know early to mid 19th century garbage used to fill it in debris rubble maybe rubble from the government house i would expect to see some signature of a hole filled with garbage burned brick rubble and debris what is left of the capital of upper canada dumped in a hole and rediscovered 200 years later after an orgy of violence having outstayed their welcome the americans sail away weighted down by the booty of war and the ill will of the townsfolk they've plundered no longer a war of liberation the american invasion of upper canada has become a campaign of conquest and by the summer of 1813 it's a campaign which the americans think they can win [Music] after the sack of york the americans sail across the lake to niagara where they capture fort george they then drive back the last remaining serious force of redcoats in the colony to stoney creek the scene is set for a battle that will decide the fate of upper canada [Music] stoney creek lies just 50 kilometers from york on the evening of the 5th of june 1813 3 000 american soldiers now under the command of general chandler reached this point along modern-day king street called smith's knoll essentially what we've got is a a bank that runs across here it's about 20 foot high dropping down towards any potential british advance he's got a strong defensive position which he feels confident he can hold out against any british attack if they dare have a go the british have retreated two kilometers to the west of chandler's position as night falls the us general bivouax his men in the fields with his cannon on the higher ground outnumbered by four to one the british know that if they wait till morning they will lose so they gamble against all the odds and throw the dice of war the british are the only one way they can attack but doing it in such a way they can get in without firing if a single american century fires a shot the whole plan's betrayed so what they're going to do is approach absolutely silently in a very very very dark night it's a desperate measure in a desperate situation nothing else will work anything regular conventional they face defeats undetected the british approach the american camp and then somebody shouts it's a scream which other british soldiers take up for one it looks as if the whole plan has been betrayed many of the british soldiers have been serving out here for years they've heard aboriginal war cries so what they do is they mimic them it's not a deliberate tactic we think but what it does is it terrifies the americans in this position they are convinced and lots and lots of them say this that every indian as they call them in canada is coming towards them there's this classic image that americans were all frontiersmen who were hardened by um their experiences and were prepared to fight indian peoples on their own terms there were some americans like that in fact there were a lot of americans like that in a place like kentucky but the americans who lived in upstate new york or in new england weren't like that and a lot of the soldiers were being thrust into combat their experience with indian peoples consists of stories read to them by their mothers about brutal savages or newspaper reports that they've read about brutal savages so you take these people with very little military training you put a uniform on them and a gun in their hands and you send them into the canadian woods and they hear indians screaming in the background these people spook in their panic the americans now open fire but they're shooting blindly into the pitch black knight as the british advance on them with bayonets fixed and one of the things that the british do is they practice an awful lot with the bayonets they're very very familiar with getting in with 17 inches of cold steel and using it against their opponents it's closing in using the bayonet going for the soft squishy parts of the body you try and avoid the ribs if you can because the banana will get stuck if you withdraw it and it's left behind you're utterly defenseless so therefore you're gonna get in stab put the man down dispatch him even using the butt of the weapon to smash his head in and move on because you don't want survivors standing up behind you and shooting you you need to make sure that once they're down they're no threat to you and you just keep moving forward in the dark over the course of the last 200 years the bones of those who fought and died here have from time to time been unearthed not neatly buried bodies but pieces of unarticulated remains that have been jumbled by the plowshare and the backhoe today these fragments of traumatized humanity are shedding new light on this the darkest hour of the war pieces of bone recovered by hamilton city council from just a few square meters on top of smith's knoll are now being subjected to forensic analysis we stopped at 1400 fragments that we could identify and catalogue and i expect to get to over 2 000 identifiable bone fragments each of which tells a tale of terror in the night this is um a phalanx from the hand and that's one of the bones that makes up your fingers on it we can see these scratches or lines and these are possibly what are referred to in forensic cases as defense wounds with bladed weapons coming at your head or your chest something they'll grab it this is a part of a fibula that's the smaller bone in your lower leg so this bone sort of sits in here and if we angle it around slightly we can see that there is in fact um a bladed weapon injury here in just one night up to 300 americans are killed injured or captured including general chandler himself stoney creek is as close as the americans will ever come to conquering canada there will be more battles fought more farms plundered and towns burned but the following year the tide of war will shift decisively against the united states and it's now that the specter of york will come back to haunt them by 1814 britain and her allies have defeated the emperor napoleon and brought france to her knees this allows britain to send vast numbers of ships and men across the atlantic attacks commence right up and down the u.s seaboard eastern maine new york even chesapeake bay striking at the very heart of the republic the americans what has begun as a battle on the northern frontier is now a struggle for national survival all of a sudden you've got thousands of veteran british soldiers that can be redeployed and the british decide okay now it's time for some payback the americans attacked us when we were at our weakest in 1812 now they will feel the consequences of that in making a point to the americans that it is not wise to attack the british lion august 1814 4 000 british soldiers advance on washington dc one year after the americans attacked the imperial city of york it's now the republic's capital that is in the crosshairs at the battle of bladensburg within earshot of washington dc the president himself leads his army in a last-ditch defense of his capital his wife dolly makes preparations at the white house to celebrate what she assumes will be a famous american victory but already the sounds of battle are echoing on capitol hill and as the british get closer and closer panic grips the city and that's why when people were here in dc when they heard the 18 pounder cannons you know booming it echoed all the way to here so they knew that the the british were close when the last line of american defense collapses the road to washington dc lies open president madison the man who declared war on the british has already fled the city a refugee in his own country his wife and servants he leaves to salvage what they can according to legend it's dolly who saves a precious portrait of george washington according to her slave paul jennings her priority is the silverware the british march down pennsylvania avenue the last remaining elements of the u.s army are left leaderless thinking back 200 years ago soldiers come up here they want to find out if anybody is home at the white house they go up their front door they knock no one's there you can just imagine the power and the sound of silence in that moment nearly 40 years after the revolution the british are back and the capital of the united states is at their mercy just as the americans have put the torch to government house now the british will do the same to the white house this is the first and only time in u.s history that the capital will be occupied by a foreign power and it would not come under direct attack again until the events of 9 11. behind the facade underneath the whitewash the scars of august 1814 can still be seen scorch marks burned into the masonry of the white house towards the end of 1814 is becoming apparent to both sides that neither of them is actually capable of winning this war and on christmas eve they signed the peace treaty of ghent bringing hostilities to a formal close as for the u.s canada border this is the border before the war and this is the border after the war there was no change no gains and no losses for either side over two years fighting out of twenty thousand battlefield casualties the border remained exactly the same the real victory for the u.s will come during the following decades as it resumes its aggressive expansion westwards and the british empire unwilling to risk yet another war will end up betraying her native allies and north of the border there is also a change but this time in the mindset of the late loyalist majority population of upper canada a mindset that's been molded by the events at york before the war there's not much to identify the people of canada as canadians [Music] now after the war of 1812 you start to see for the first time english-speaking people in canada calling themselves canadians and taking pride in their success at repelling the american invasion [Music] after the war and for much of the rest of the century the dread of american invasion will persist and 200 years later this fear has left its mark on the modern landscape at the site of the grand magazine halfway down the trench the archaeologists have discovered what happened after the americans left in 1813 how the fort at york was rebuilt and its ramparts reconstructed what we've got is a layer of timber which goes right the way through here all the way through here to this vertical timber that seems to be driven through it and it's actually this mat which sort of holds the structure together in the decades that follow the war of 1812 the fort and its defenses will be repaired and revamped ready to repel american aggression but by the end of the 19th century the red coats will have left the fort will fall into disuse and the secret of its ramparts will be forgotten until today for me if i'm finding this evidence of the 1814 rampart construction with the landscaping above it it doesn't get any cooler this is big news this is something that we're going to want to publish about absolutely what we've got here is definite evidence of the aftermath as the people of york and the british army remodel their fortress ready for another occasion should they come back they'll be great or more ready next time than they were in 1813. 200 years ago on this site one of the biggest explosions anyone in north america had ever witnessed gouged a hole in the side of fort york [Music] after the dust had settled and the armies of britain and the united states had moved on to battlefields new the people of york filled in the hole and repaired the fort the american-born majority population of upper canada were prepared to defend both themselves and what they now called home [Music] you know there's that moment in life where the place you were born is no longer your home the place you've chosen to live as an adult becomes your home that is my home and it was that little muddy york and the events of 1813 that helped to solidify the identity of canada [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 294,508

Rating: 4.6625171 out of 5

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, war of 1812, the war of 1812, independence day, united states, history of the world, history channel, history channel documentary, full documentary history channel

Id: oNu-Y5ybJQk

Length: 59min 52sec (3592 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/stevencartwright]

Nobody spoil the ending for me!

[u/YTTMirrorBot]

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