The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock eBook

Ferdinand Brock Tupper
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 433 pages of information about The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock.

The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock eBook

Ferdinand Brock Tupper
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 433 pages of information about The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock.
by what means so incompetent a commander had been placed over them.  If Sir George Prevost had studied the history of the war of the American revolution, it could only have been with an eye to copy all the indecisions and blunders of the formalising, badly instructed English generals of that period.  But the Howes, Clintons, and Burgoynes, were at least always ready to fight.  As soon as the Americans could believe that the English were really abandoning their enterprize at the moment that it was all but completed, they rushed back to stop the conflagration:  they were too late to save the stores which had been brought from York, the navy barracks, or the brig, but the frigate on the stocks, being built of green wood, would not easily burn, and was found but little injured.  If the destruction at Sackett’s Harbour had been completed, we should have deprived the Americans of every prospect of obtaining the ascendancy on the lake."[123] And, as if to crown this miserable failure, the details were narrated by the adjutant-general, in a dispatch to Sir George Prevost, as if Colonel Baynes had commanded in chief, and the governor-general had been present as a mere spectator![124]

From these humiliating occurrences on Lake Ontario, we turn to the captured post of Detroit, which, it will be remembered, was left by Major-General Brock in charge of Colonel Proctor.  No sooner had intelligence of the surrender of Hull reached Washington, than the renewal of the North-Western army for the recovery of the Michigan territory became the anxious object of the American government.  That army, which eventually outnumbered the former one, was placed under the command of Major-General Harrison, (who died a few years since while president of the United States,) and in September was in full march for the Miami rapids, the spot assigned as the general rendezvous.  In January, 1813, Colonel Proctor received information that a brigade of that army, under Brigadier Winchester, was encamped at Frenchtown, on the river Raisin, 40 miles south of Detroit.  The British commander, although he had orders not to act on the offensive, promptly determined to attack this brigade before it was reinforced by the main body, a few days march in the rear; and with his disposable force, consisting of 500 regulars, militia, and seamen, he made a resolute assault, at dawn on the 22d, on the enemy’s camp, which was completely successful.  In this affair the Americans lost between 3 and 400 men killed; and Brigadier Winchester, 3 field officers, 9 captains, 20 subalterns, and upwards of 500 men, in prisoners.  This gallant exploit secured Detroit from any immediate danger, but the day after it was sadly tarnished by the straggling Indians, who massacred such wounded prisoners as were unable to walk, the guard left for their protection deserting their charge on a false alarm of General Harrison’s approach.  This success, for which Colonel Proctor was immediately promoted to the rank of Brigadier, together with the

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The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.