hirty-three cannon, an armed brig, and the whole state of Michigan.
The case is probably more an example of nervous hysterics than treason,
though the other American officers broke their swords with rage and
chagrin, declaring they had been sold for a price. It was but the
first of the many times the lesson was taught in this war, that however
well intentioned a volunteer's courage may be, it takes a seasoned man
to make war. {340} Ten minutes later, a boy had climbed the flagstaff
and hung out the English flag over Detroit. Of the captured American
army Brock permitted the volunteer privates to go home on parole. The
regulars, including Hull, were carried back prisoners on the boats to
Niagara, to be forwarded to Montreal. At Montreal, Hull was given back
to the Americans in exchange for thirty British prisoners. He was
sentenced by court-martial to be shot for treason and cowardice, but
the sentence was commuted.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION OF THE MILITARY OPERATIONS ON
THE DETROIT RIVER]

At Niagara River, where the main troops of Ontario were centered,
Brock's victory was greeted with simply a madness of joy. From the
first it had been plain that the principal fighting in Ontario would
take place at Niagara, and along the river Brock had concentrated some
sixteen hundred volunteer troops, {341} raw farm hands most of them,
with a goodly proportion of descendants from the United Empire
Loyalists, who had furbished out their fathers' swords. But the army
was in rags and tatters; many men had no shoes; before Brock captured
the guns at Detroit there had not been muskets to go round the men, and
there were not cannon enough to mount the batteries cast up along
Niagara River facing the American defenses. As the boats came down
Lake Erie and disembarked the American prisoners on August 24, at Fort
Erie on the Canadian side, opposite Black Rock and Buffalo, wild yells
of jubilation rent the air. By nightfall every camp on the Canadian
side for the whole forty miles of Niagara River's course echoed to
shout and counter shout, and a wild refrain which some poet of the
haversack had composed on the spot:

We 'll subdue the mighty Democrats and pull their dwellings down,
And have the States inhabited with subjects of the Crown.

Take a survey of the Niagara region. South is Lake Erie, north is Lake
Ontario, between them Niagara River flowing almost straight north
through a steep dark gorge h