After the battle of Queenston Heights Sheaffe succeeded Brock in command of the British, and Smyth succeeded Van Rensselaer in command of the Americans.  Sheaffe was a harsh martinet and a third-rate commander.  Smyth, a notorious braggart, was no commander at all.  He did, however, succeed in getting Sheaffe to conclude an armistice that fully equalled Prevost’s in its disregard of British interests.  After making the most of it for a month he ended it on November 19, and began manoeuvring round his headquarters at Black Rock near Buffalo.  After another eight days he decided to attack the British posts at Red House and Frenchman’s Creek, which were respectively two and a half and five miles from Fort Erie.  The whole British line of the upper Niagara, from Fort Erie to Chippawa, a distance of seventeen miles by the road along the river, was under the command of an excellent young officer, Colonel Bisshopp, who had between five and six hundred men to hold his seven posts.  Fort Erie had the largest garrison—­only a hundred and thirty men.  Some forty men of the 49th and two small guns were stationed at Red House; while the light company of the 41st guarded the bridge over Frenchman’s Creek.  About two o’clock in the morning of the 28th one party of Americans pulled across to the ferry a mile below Fort Erie, and then, sheering off after being fired at by the Canadian militia on guard, made for Red House a mile and a half lower down.  There they landed at three and fought a most confused and confusing action in the dark.  Friend and foe became mixed up together; but the result was a success for the Americans.  Meanwhile, the other party landed near Frenchman’s Creek, reached the bridge, damaged it a little, and had a fight with the 41st, who could not drive the invaders back till reinforcements arrived.  At daylight the men from Chippawa marched into action, Indians began to appear, and the whole situation was re-established.  The victorious British lost nearly a hundred, which was more than a quarter of those engaged.  The beaten Americans lost more; but, being in superior numbers, they could the better afford it.

Smyth was greatly disconcerted.  But he held a boat review on his own side of the river, and sent over a summons to Bisshopp demanding the immediate surrender of Fort Erie ‘to spare the effusion of blood.’  Bisshopp rejected the summons.  But there was no effusion of blood in consequence.  Smyth planned, talked, and manoeuvred for two days more, and then tried to make his real effort on the 1st of December.  By the time it was light enough for the British to observe him he had fifteen hundred men in boats, who all wanted to go back, and three thousand on shore, who all refused to go forward.  He then held a council of war, which advised him to wait for a better chance.  This closed the campaign with what, according to Porter, one of his own generals, was ’a scene of confusion difficult to describe:  about four thousand men without order or restraint discharging their muskets in every direction.’  Next day ‘The Committee of Patriotic Citizens’ undertook to rebuke Smyth.  But he retorted, not without reason, that the affair at Queenston is a caution against relying on crowds who go to the banks of the Niagara to look at a battle as on a theatrical exhibition.’