Brock took Detroit without fighting for it, and he did it while outnumbered. On 16 August 1812 he had 250 regulars of the 41st Foot, 50 men of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, 30 gunners with five field pieces, 400 militia, and some 600 warriors under Tecumseh. Inside the fort, William Hull had more men than that. So Brock set about making Hull believe otherwise. The militia were put into cast-off red tunics lent by the regulars, so that from the walls the whole force looked like professional infantry. Tecumseh's warriors moved through the woods north of the fort in a way that suggested numbers far beyond what was there. Then Brock sent in a summons, and the sentence that did the work was this one: "It is far from my inclination to join in a war of extermination, but you must be aware that the numerous body of Indians who have attached themselves to my troops will be beyond my control the moment the contest commences." It is worth being plain about what that is. It is a threat, dressed as a courtesy, made about allies Brock had no intention of restraining, and Hull — with civilians and his own daughter and grandchild inside the works — believed every word of it. The bombardment killed seven Americans. Then Hull surrendered 2,188 men; 582 regulars went to Quebec as prisoners and 1,606 militia were paroled home. He was court-martialled in January 1814 for treason, cowardice and neglect of duty, sentenced to death, and reprieved by Madison. Brock had understood something about his opponent that no amount of artillery would have told him: Hull's worst enemy was his own imagination, and it only needed feeding.

The figure is Brock in a general officer's scarlet coatee with gold bullion epaulettes, crimson sash, white breeches, black boots and the plumed bicorne — the uniform of a man who spent the war in Upper Canada wishing he were in Spain fighting Napoleon. Tecumseh should not be read as his instrument in any of this; he had his own war and his own aim, a Native confederacy with a defensible homeland, and Detroit served both men. Two months later Brock was dead, killed leading a counter-attack at Queenston Heights in October 1812. Detroit did not stay taken either: Commodore Perry's victory on Lake Erie the following September broke the British hold on the water, and William Henry Harrison marched back up the road Brock had come down. For the ordinary British soldier of that war, garrisoning the forts while the generals manoeuvred, see the 10th Royal Veteran Battalion.

Model: 10148 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 1 piece set