all-important, British fleet
on Lake Erie, under the command of Captain Barclay, sustained a fatal
defeat at Put-in-Bay, and the United States vessels under Commodore
Perry held full control of Lake Erie. A few weeks later, General Procter
lost the reputation which he had won in January by his defeat of
Winchester, and was beaten, under circumstances which disgraced him in
the opinion of his superiors, on the River Thames not far from the
Indian village of Moraviantown. The American forces were led by General
Harrison, who had won some reputation in the Indian campaign in the
north-west and who subsequently became, as his son in later times, a
president of the United States.

It was in this engagement that the Shawenese chief, Tecumseh, was
killed, in him England lost a faithful and brave ally. English prospects
in the west were consequently gloomy for some time, until the autumn of
1813, when the auspicious tidings spread from the lakes to the Atlantic
that the forces of the republic, while on their march to Montreal by the
way of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, had been successfully met
and repulsed at Chateauguay and Chrysler's Farm, two of the most
memorable engagements of the war, when we consider the insignificant
forces that checked the invasion and saved Canada at a most critical
time.

In the last month of the same year Fort George was evacuated by the
American garrison, but not before General McLure had shamelessly burned
the pretty town of Niagara, and driven helpless women and children into
the ice and snow of a Canadian winter. General Drummond, who was in
command of the western army, retaliated by the capture of Fort Niagara
and the destruction of all the villages on the American side of the
river as far as Buffalo, then a very insignificant place. When the new
year dawned the only Canadian place in possession of the enemy was
Amherstburg on the western frontier.

The third and last year of the war was distinguished by the capture of
Oswego and Prairie-des-Chiens by British expeditions; the repulse of a
large force of the invaders at Lacolle Mills in Lower Canada; the
surrender of Fort Erie to the enemy, the defeat of General Riall at
Street's or Usher's Creek in the Niagara district, the hotly contested
battle won at Lundy's Lane by Drummond, and the ignominious retreat from
Plattsburg of Sir George Prevost, in command of a splendid force of
peninsular veterans, after the defeat of Commodore Down