and in April, 1814, a reinforcement of about 90 men, under an active and zealous officer, Lieut.-Colonel M’Douall, was forwarded with military stores and provisions, by a back route to Michilimakinack.  They embarked in twenty-four bateaux from Nottawassega Bay on Lake Huron, distant 260 miles from Michilimakinack, and, after a very tempestuous passage of twenty-five days, reached the fort on the 18th of May.  On the 26th July, an American expedition from Lake Erie, consisting of three brigs and two schooners of war, under Captain Sinclair, with nearly 800 troops on board, appeared off Michilimakinack, and a landing was effected by them on the 4th of August.  The British force on the island amounted to only 190 men, including regulars, militia, and Indians, with which Lieut.-Colonel M’Donall repulsed every effort of the Americans to approach the fort; so that they were glad, to re-embark the same evening in the utmost haste and confusion, leaving 17 dead on the ground, while the garrison had only one Indian killed.  Captain Sinclair stated what does not appear to have been known to Lieutenant Hanks, when he surrendered the island in 1812 to Captain Roberts,[128] “that Michilimakinack is by nature a perfect Gibraltar, being a high inaccessible rock on every side,[129] except the west, from which to the heights you have nearly two miles to pass through a wood so thick, that our men were shot in every direction, and within a few yards of them, without being able to see the Indians who did it.”  Michilimakinack remained unmolested to the end of the war, when it was restored, by the treaty of peace, to its former possessors.

It has already been mentioned, that among the prisoners taken at the battle of Queenstown, 23 were sent to England for trial as British born subjects and deserters, and that the American government had placed an equal number of British soldiers into close confinement as hostages.  In consequence, Sir George Prevost, by a general order of the 27th October, 1813, made known that he had received the commands of the prince regent to put 46 American officers and non-commissioned officers into close confinement as hostages for the 23 soldiers confined by the American government.  He at the same time apprized that government, that if any of the British soldiers should suffer death by reason of the guilt and execution of the traitors taken in arms against their country, he was instructed to select out of the American hostages double the number of the British soldiers who might be so unwarrantably put to death, and to cause them to suffer death immediately.  The governor-general also notified to the American government, that in the event of their carrying their murderous threat into execution, the commanders of the British forces, by sea and land, were instructed to prosecute the war with unmitigated severity against all the territory and inhabitants of the United States.