army were on three successive days beaten back by a
small number of the 41st regiment and a few Indians. Michilimakinack had
fallen since the invasion, and the Indians from that quarter were
flocking to the British standard. Our naval force being superior on the
lake, Colonel Proctor pushed over to Brownstown, an American village,
about 25 miles from Detroit, and nearly opposite to Amherstburg, a small
detachment of the 41st regiment, and some Indians under the celebrated
Tecumseh, who, with 70 of the latter, awaited in ambush near that
village a party of 200 Americans, under Major Van Home, on their
march[61] from Detroit to the River Raisin, (40 miles south of Detroit,)
to meet a detachment of volunteers from Ohio, with a convoy of
provisions for Hull's army. The Indians, firing suddenly, killed 20,
including 5 officers, and wounded about the same number of the
Americans, who hastily retreated, and were pursued seven miles by the
warriors alone, not a British soldier being engaged. In this affair,
General Hull's dispatches and the correspondence of his troops fell into
the hands of Tecumseh, and it was partly the desponding nature of their
contents which afterwards induced Major-General Brock to attempt the
capture of the American army. Foiled in the reduction of Fort
Amherstburg; disappointed in his hope of a general insurrection of the
Canadians; and, "above all, dismayed at the report of General Brock's
resolution to advance against him,"[62] Hull's schemes of conquest
vanished; and he who, less than a month before, had landed in Canada
boastful of his strength and with threats of extermination, now saw no
other alternative than a hasty return to Detroit, under the pretence of
concentrating his forces; and after re-opening his communication with
the rivers Raisin and Miami, through which he received his supplies, of
resuming offensive operations. Accordingly, on the 7th and 8th of August
the American army re-crossed the river, with the exception of a garrison
of 250 men left in charge of a small fortification they had thrown up on
the British side, a little below Detroit, and which they evacuated and
destroyed before the arrival of Major-General Brock.[63] On the 9th of
August, a body of 600 Americans, sent to dislodge the British from
Brownstown and to open a communication with the Rivers Raisin and Miami,
was met by the white troops and Indians under Captain Muir, of the 41st,
at Maguaga, between Brownstown and De