and Hampton had now completely lost touch with one another.  Purdy was astounded to see Macdonell’s main body of redcoats behind the rear ford.  He paused, waiting for support from Hampton, who was still behind the front ford.  Hampton paused, waiting for him to take the rear ford, now occupied by Macdonell.  De Salaberry mounted a huge tree-stump and at once saw his opportunity.  Holding back Hampton’s crowded column with his own front, which fought under cover of his first abattis, he wheeled the rest of his men into line to the left and thus took Purdy in flank.  Macdonell was out of range behind the rear ford; but he played his part by making his buglers sound the advance from several different quarters, while his men, joined by de Salaberry’s militiamen and by the Indians in the bush, cheered vociferously and raised the war-whoop.  This was too much for Purdy’s fifteen hundred.  They broke in confusion, ran away from the river into the woods under a storm of bullets, fired into each other, and finally disappeared.  Hampton’s attack on de Salaberry’s first abattis then came to a full stop; after which the whole American army retired beaten from the field.

Ten days after Chateauguay dilatory Wilkinson, tired of waiting for defeated Hampton, left the original rendezvous at French Creek, fifty miles below Sackett’s Harbour.  Like Dearborn in 1812, he began his campaign just as the season was closing.  But, again like Dearborn, he had the excuse of being obliged to organize his army in the middle of the war.  Four days later again, on November 9, Brown, the successful defender of Sackett’s Harbour against Prevost’s attack in May, was landed at Williamsburg, on the Canadian side, with two thousand men, to clear the twenty miles down to Cornwall, opposite the rendezvous at St Regis, where Wilkinson expected to find Hampton ready to join him for the combined attack on Montreal.  But Brown had to reckon with Dennis, the first defender of Queenston, who now commanded the little garrison of Cornwall, and who disputed every inch of the way by breaking the bridges and resisting each successive advance till Brown was compelled to deploy for attack.  Two days were taken up with these harassing manoeuvres, during which another two thousand Americans were landed at Williamsburg under Boyd, who immediately found himself still more harassed in rear than Brown had been in front.

This new British force in Boyd’s rear was only a thousand strong; but, as it included every human element engaged in the defence of Canada, it has a quite peculiar interest of its own.  Afloat, it included bluejackets of the Royal Navy, men of the Provincial Marine, French-Canadian voyageurs, and Anglo-Canadian boatmen from the trading-posts, all under a first-rate fighting seaman, Captain Mulcaster, R.N.  Ashore, under a good regimental leader, Colonel Morrison—­whose chief staff officer was Harvey, of Stoney Creek renown—­it included Imperial regulars, Canadian regulars of both races, French-Canadian and Anglo-Canadian militiamen, and a party of Indians.