the most experienced veterans. Their loss was
proportionate with that of the regular army.

"Three or four days subsequent to this sanguinary battle on the plains
of Chippewa were mostly employed in burying their own dead, and in
burning those of the British, after which several ineffectual efforts
were made by General Brown to cross the Chippewa river, contemplating an
advance on Fort George; but at each of his attempts he was promptly met
by picket guards of the British, posted along the margin of the river
for that purpose."

General Riall, however, in a few days gave orders that the remnant of
his army should retire under the shelter of Fort George and Mississagua
until reinforcements could be collected to place him on more equal
ground with the enemy; after which General Brown moved his army towards
those posts within a mile and a half of the British--his army forming a
crescent; his right resting on Niagara river, his left on Lake Ontario.

The American army had no sooner taken up a position in front of Fort
George than their foraging parties, or rather marauders, commenced a
systematic course of plunder upon the defenceless inhabitants within the
vicinity of their camp, most of whom, at the time, consisted of women
and children. Even amongst general officers were acts of pillage
perpetrated, that, had such occurred with private soldiers in the
British army, would have stamped on the character of the British, in the
eyes of America, for which no course of conduct which they could ever
after have pursued, would have sufficiently atoned.

During the interval in which General Riall was receiving reinforcements
from York and other military posts on that side of Lake Ontario, General
Brown also received a strong reinforcement under General Izard, after
which he made a few ineffectual assaults on Fort George; but, finding
all his efforts to carry that fort fruitless, and the British army
receiving fresh acquisitions of strength, all seemed to conspire to
render the case of General Brown hopeless; who, now perceiving the
situation in which he was placed--the forts in his front to him
completely impregnable, and an army in his rear in full flow of spirits,
and every day gathering new strength (though by no means equal to his as
regarded numbers), a Canadian Militia, and unexpectedly to him, fervent
beyond a parallel in the cause of their King and country--began now to
think of a safe retreat, in pursuance of which, on