If there is one part of Burnished Rows of Steel which is more blatant than any other, it is the total lack of British or Canadian preparations for war (particularly when contrasted with the way the Union spends several months making preparations, including some they would have to have started before the OTL climbdown).
What makes this especially interesting is that there actually IS a defence plan for Canada dating from 1862 - it is as close as we can get to a primary source on how Canada would be defended. Even absent TFSmith discovering this source, however, he could at least have considered what preparations the Canadians would make to defend themselves. (He does not.)
The defence plan specified full permanent forts in many locations, but this would not be sufficient - temporary earthworks would suffice, especially as TFSmith allows Union troops to throw up several miles of earthwork trenches essentially at will.
Canada West
There are two major points of contact between the Union and Canada West - the Niagara Frontier and the Detroit Frontier - and the secondary one of Kingston on the St Lawrence.
Niagara:
There was to be a full corps (in the British model) on the Queenstown Heights, roughly 10,000 men, along with further entrenchments for roughly a brigade split between Hamilton and at Toronto (another 2,200), with seven fortifications from Fort Erie to Toronto containing between them about 2,500 men and 150 guns. The focus was on forward defence, particularly on the Niagara River and the Welland Canal.
If faced by an American invasion, this would be a fairly major opponent to deal with. The fortified position on the Queenstown Heights would be able to compel a Union force to either attack or mask it, and would be able to threaten the Union supply line if not dealt with efficiently. The forts would similarly cause problems (especially Fort Erie, which is roughly where the Americans cross TTL) and would certainly delay the Union even if defeated.
Instead, TFSmith's account of the Canadian defenders in the area is a few thousand militia without forts (even earthworks or trenches) who are easily and ringingly defeated on Limestone Ridge by 16,000 Union troops. In reality 16,000 men would barely outnumber the Canadian militia in the area (projected to be about 15,000 total) and would force the Union to act slowly and cautiously or expose themselves to a serious defeat.
Detroit:
The Detroit frontier has nothing as important as the Welland Canal, so the main forward defence was to be with forts - Sarnia and Amherstburg were to have 2,000 men and 90 guns between them. The main value of these forts, along with smaller batteries protecting several major rivers in the area, would be to impede Union logistics - important as the Union's logistical path from Union territory to important British targets is around a hundred miles long (functionally far beyond the limit of Union logistics in reality without water or rail transport). Simply buying time for trains to be taken northeast and out of range of capture would render the task of an invader restricted to wagon transport nigh impossible.
Moving further east, the important towns in the province (London, Paris, Chatham) were entrenched, with a little under 12,000 men split between them. The total defending force (counting batteries and forts) was about 14,500, all in at least temporary defensive works.
Sherman brings 30,000 men across the Detroit river, and this would probably be enough to overcome the defenders - but it would not be easy, and it would require a good rail transit net captured intact. If Sherman had to use road transport, then all available information from the logistics experience of the Civil War itself suggests that by the time Sherman reached London ON (which would take him around two weeks) he would have over half his army running his supply train - making the job of overcoming entrenched troops decidedly difficult, especially if the forces at Paris or Chatham could operate against the supply route.
Either Sherman has to capture the rail lines, or he has to bring new trains across the river from Detroit. Either way, the defence scheme would make the effortless victory scored by Sherman in TTL effectively impossible.
Kingston:
Kingston itself was to be reinforced and upgraded. With time this would mean full repairs to the forts and some expansion, but earthworks would suffice in a pinch. In total this was to include 3,300 men in the fort itself.
A number of forts and entrenchments were to be built (Prescott, Port Cobourg, Kingston Mills, Brockville) with a total of 1700 men in them, and 5,000 additional men were to form a field division at Prescott.
The total number of defenders was to be about 10,000.
In the TL, the offensive across the St Lawrence succeeds spectacularly against minimal opposition - Prescott is the largest single action, we are told, and involved the fort being taken by siege (with defenders consisting of one company and one battery outnumbered 15:1). In reality there would be 6,000 men in the fort at Prescott, and the single brigade TFSmith has take it would be radically inadequate.
The siege of Kingston would be a little easier in isolation than TFSmith presents it (he has about 6,000 men in the fort, where the above plan assumed 3,300) but TFSmith has the fort besieged by troops who have marched from the Detroit and Niagara frontiers; as we have seen, it would take considerably more force there than he has assigned, and they would be tied up for longer. Taking Kingston and Prescott between them would take an extra allocation of force.
Canada East
Montreal:
The area of Montreal was to be heavily defended. Counting batteries on the heights at Montreal, St. Helen's Island, St. Lambert's Island, Tete de Pont and various other posts there were to be about 15,000 men defending Montreal and environs, with the vast majority of these either along the Richelieu river (thus controlling one of the major supply routes) or - especially - entrenched in and around the city itself.
TFSmith's force of 30,000 men would be able to defeat these in an open field battle; crossing the river under fire they would have little or no chance. The way to cross without naval support would be for Heintzelmann to slowly reduce the batteries on the other side of the river by heavy artillery fire, and then cross under the cover of the guns; this would take weeks, and would still leave the Union force needing to defeat roughly 10,000 troops in entrenchments. Alternatively, the 10,000 men forming the "field force" (i.e. not assigned to forts) could be used to mount attacks on the Union supply line if it were left vulnerable.
Quebec:
Quebec was not considered to be in as much danger, so there would be a relatively small force. This would still entail several thousand troops in the citadel (about one brigade, ~2,500) and another 1,000 men manning smaller posts.
This would not provide a defence against a serious Union attack (except for the difficulty of crossing the St. Lawrence), but neither the planners nor TFSmith expected one in the early stages of a Trent war as it is logistically very difficult.
Total
The total assignment of troops here is about 40,000 to Canada West and 20,000 to Canada East - a total of 60,000. This would require only a small increase in volunteers over OTL (15,000 OTL volunteers, plus the first militia callout for 38,000, produces 53,000 total; in a pinch the remaining 7,000 could be made up from the existing regular garrison). This would make it so that none of the targets above is a soft one, and - even with TFSmith's much-slowed reinforcement schedule - would allow for roughly one British army corps each for Canada East and Canada West to operate against the Union troops in the field by the end of the thaw.
This number roughly corresponds to the values given in the defence scheme itself, which also allowed for a substantial lake gunboat fleet. More importantly, however, this official British Army source for internal use confirms that the British felt that the number was easily manageable:
The smallest military force which Your Commissioners consider essential to the occupation of the various positions and fortresses, is... 65,000. An equal number is necessary as reserves, and adding one-fifth for casualties, the total force required may be stated at 150,000 men.
The return of the enrolled militia of the province, dated 8th January 1857, shows a total of 236,427 men. Since then the population has much increased, and is stated (by the census taken in 1861) at 2,507,657.
The country, therefore, is well able to furnish the force required.
What this tells us is that the British felt that Canada could supply between 65,000 and 100,000 troops under arms, with a substantial number available as battle casualty replacements. Given that TFSmith repeatedly states that Petrie is an "official British Army source" and uses it as his primary argument for Canadian weakness:
It is worth noting, of course, that the British army itself did not expect more than 24,119 reserve personnel (volunteers and militia) of any military utility at all in the entire Province of Canada as late as August, 1862, and no more than 1850 in New Brunswick, 2401 in Nova Scotia, 1,643 in PEI, and 267 in Nova Scotia (plus 44 in BC etc.), as according to:
Petrie, Capt. Martin (14th F.) and James, Col. Sir Henry (RE - Topographical and Statistical Dept., War Office), Organization, Composition, and Strength of the Army of Great Britain, London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office; by direction of the Secretary of State for War, 1863 (preface dated Nov., 1862)
Reserves – BNA:
Canada – 10,000 militia (August, 1862); + 1,615 VC; 1,687 VA; 202 VE; 10,615 VI
NS – 269 VA; 2,132 VI (June, 1862)
NB – 1850 (VA and I) (March, 1861)
PEI – 1,643 (VA and VI) (June, 1862)
NF – 267 (5 cos.) (July, 1862)
BC & VI: 44 (August, 1862)
This is repeated verbatim at least three times; as should be clear, however, TFSmith's interpretation is flatly false. The British did not "expect" more than 24,000 reserve personnel of any military utility - they counted that many already undergoing training months after the crisis had abated. They "expected" to be able to put together as many as 150,000 trained men, though not all in the field at the same time, and by the end of December had 15,000 volunteers in various stages of readiness with another 40,000 being called out via the militia system for training.
The total number of guns to be put in place in permanent or temporary works was:
London: 110 guns permanent, 60 guns temporary
Toronto: 146 guns permanent, 45 guns temporary
Kingston: 20 guns permanent, 27 guns temporary
Montreal: 145 guns permanent, 202 guns temporary
Quebec: 45 guns permanent, 12 guns temporary
Total: 466 guns permanent, 346 guns temporary
Enough guns to fill all of these positions were already in Canada, though in many critical locations modern breechloader rifles would replace heavy smoothbore cannon from stores.
For the sake of comparison, the Washington defences contained 443 artillery pieces in early 1862 and in 1863 supported 643 guns and 75 mortars.
This does not by itself mean that the British would be victorious - but it does mean that the Union would need to deploy considerably more force than they do in this timeline in order to capture the swaths of Canada that they do.
Even with a similar number of troops in Canada to that in TFSmith's TL (i.e. 25,000 Canadian troops), if he had made the British reasonably competent and thought about how they would stand on the defensive then the timeline would have been much more realistic and much less biased. It would even have been more exciting, with plenty of opportunity for daring deeds on the small scale, and would have fit with how the British expected to defend Canada in the event of a war absent the Civil War:
'Whatever number of Militia and Volunteers the province may be able to raise, the forces in this country must be numerically inferior to those of the United States, and fortified places alone can enable them to contend successfully with this disparity.'In short, Canada could be defended against superior numbers by fortifications (though as we have seen, in the event of a realistic Trent war the numbers of troops in Canada would be somewhat close to even from both sides - 40,000 regulars and 60,000 local troops compares well to the 110 Union regiments TFSmith has invade the country.)
Instead, Canada West is defended as if by people who have been told about the potential for a war on the morning of the invasion, and Canada East is defended by people who apparently spent all their preparation time building a bridge across the St Lawrence for Heintzelmann to use. Contrasting this with the Union defenders in places like California or Portland provides a useful comparison - at Portland the population of a single besieged city (about 26,000) has constructed redundant layers of novel naval defences over the first five months of 1862, and dug several miles of interlocking defences and redoubts along an unused flank (the Penobscot) in the space of a month or two, while the entire population of Canada (one hundred times this) appears not to have constructed any entrenchments or done any planning at all with half a year of lead time.
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