red by a party of Americans who had taken refuge in the
log-barracks! The British troops reluctantly obeyed their general's
order and returned to their boats, men and officers being acutely
sensible to his folly, and wondering by what means so incompetent a
commander had been placed over them. If Sir George Prevost had studied
the history of the war of the American revolution, it could only have
been with an eye to copy all the indecisions and blunders of the
formalising, badly instructed English generals of that period. But the
Howes, Clintons, and Burgoynes, were at least always ready to fight. As
soon as the Americans could believe that the English were really
abandoning their enterprize at the moment that it was all but completed,
they rushed back to stop the conflagration: they were too late to save
the stores which had been brought from York, the navy barracks, or the
brig, but the frigate on the stocks, being built of green wood, would
not easily burn, and was found but little injured. If the destruction at
Sackett's Harbour had been completed, we should have deprived the
Americans of every prospect of obtaining the ascendancy on the
lake."[123] And, as if to crown this miserable failure, the details were
narrated by the adjutant-general, in a dispatch to Sir George Prevost,
as if Colonel Baynes had commanded in chief, and the governor-general
had been present as a mere spectator![124]

From these humiliating occurrences on Lake Ontario, we turn to the
captured post of Detroit, which, it will be remembered, was left by
Major-General Brock in charge of Colonel Proctor. No sooner had
intelligence of the surrender of Hull reached Washington, than the
renewal of the North-Western army for the recovery of the Michigan
territory became the anxious object of the American government. That
army, which eventually outnumbered the former one, was placed under the
command of Major-General Harrison, (who died a few years since while
president of the United States,) and in September was in full march for
the Miami rapids, the spot assigned as the general rendezvous. In
January, 1813, Colonel Proctor received information that a brigade of
that army, under Brigadier Winchester, was encamped at Frenchtown, on
the river Raisin, 40 miles south of Detroit. The British commander,
although he had orders not to act on the offensive, promptly determined
to attack this brigade before it was reinforced by the main body, a few
days march in