enemy should have carried his force from Montreal to Kingston,
and be prepared there, "a safer movement was to march two thousand men
to Sackett's, embark there, and go to Brown's assistance."[334] Izard
obediently undertook this new disposition, which he received August
20; but upon consultation with his officers concluded that to march by
the northern route, near the Canada border, would expose his
necessarily long column to dangerous flank attack. He therefore
determined to go by way of Utica.[335] On August 29 the division,
about four thousand effectives, set out from the camp at Chazy, eight
miles north of Plattsburg, and on September 16 reached Sackett's. Bad
weather prevented immediate embarkation, but on the 21st about two
thousand five hundred infantry sailed, and having a fair wind reached
next day the Genesee, where they were instantly put ashore. A
regiment of light artillery and a number of dragoons, beyond the
capacity of the fleet to carry, went by land and arrived a week later.

In this manner the defence of Lake Champlain was deprived of four
thousand fairly trained troops at the moment that the British attack
in vast superiority of force was maturing. Their advance brigade, in
fact, crossed the frontier two days after Izard's departure. At the
critical moment, and during the last weeks of weather favorable for
operations, the men thus taken were employed in making an unprofitable
march of great length, to a quarter where there was now little
prospect of successful action, and where they could not arrive before
the season should be practically closed. Brown, of course, hailed an
accession of strength which he sorely needed, and did not narrowly
scrutinize a measure for which he was not responsible. On September
27, ten days after the successful sortie from Fort Erie, he was at
Batavia, in New York, where he had an interview with Izard, who was
the senior. In consequence of their consultation Izard determined that
his first movement should be the siege of Fort Niagara.[336] In
pursuance of this resolve his army marched to Lewiston, where it
arrived October 5. There he had a second meeting with Brown,
accompanied on this occasion by Porter, and under their
representations decided that it would be more proper to concentrate
all the forces at hand on the Canadian bank of the Niagara, south of
the Chippewa, and not to undertake a siege while Drummond kept the
field.[337]

Despite many embarrassments, and a