posterity as
Prevost the Pusillanimous.

Day after day Prevost's armistice kept the British
helpless, while supplies and reinforcements for the
Americans poured in at every advantageous point. Brock
was held back from taking either Sackett's Harbour, which
was meanwhile being strongly reinforced from Ogdensburg,
or Fort Niagara, which was being reinforced from Oswego,
Procter was held back from taking Fort Wayne, at the
point of the salient angle south of Lake Michigan and
west of Lake Erie--a quite irretrievable loss. For the
moment the British had the command of all the Lakes. But
their golden opportunity passed, never to return. By
land their chances were also quickly disappearing. On
September 1, a week before the armistice ended, there
were less than seven hundred Americans directly opposed
to Brock, who commanded in person at Queenston and Fort
George. On the day of the battle in October there were
nearly ten times as many along the Niagara frontier.

The very day Brock heard that the disastrous armistice
was over he proposed an immediate attack on Sackett's
Harbour. But Prevost refused to sanction it. Brock then
turned his whole attention to the Niagara frontier, where
the Americans were assembling in such numbers that to
attack them was out of the question. The British began
to receive a few supplies and reinforcements. But the
Americans had now got such a long start that, on the
fateful 13th of October, they outnumbered Brock's men
four to one--4,000 to 1,000 along the critical fifteen
miles between the Falls and Lake Ontario; and 6,800 to
1,700 along the whole Niagara river, from lake to lake,
a distance of thirty-three miles. The factors which helped
to redress the adverse balance of these odds were Brock
himself, his disciplined regulars, the intense loyalty
of the militia, and the 'telegraph.' This 'telegraph'
was a system of visual signalling by semaphore, much the
same as that which Wellington had used along the lines
of Torres Vedras.

The immediate moral effects, however, were even more
favourable to the Americans than the mere physical odds;
for Prevost's armistice both galled and chilled the
British, who were eager to strike a blow. American
confidence had been much shaken in September by the sight
of the prisoners from Detroit, who had been marched along
the river road in full view of the other side. But it
increased rapidly in October as reinforcements poured
in. On the 8th a council of