Early on the 11th Brown had arrived at Cornwall with his two thousand Americans; Wilkinson was starting down from Williamsburg in boats with three thousand more, and Boyd was starting down ashore with eighteen hundred.  But Mulcaster’s vessels pressed in on Wilkinson’s rear, while Morrison pressed in on Boyd’s.  Wilkinson then ordered Boyd to turn about and drive off Morrison, while he hurried his own men out of reach of Mulcaster, whose armed vessels could not follow down the rapids.  Boyd thereupon attacked Morrison, and a stubborn fight ensued at Chrystler’s Farm.  The field was of the usual type:  woods on one flank, water on the other, and a more or less flat clearing in the centre.  Boyd tried hard to drive his wedge in between the British and the river.  But Morrison foiled him in manoeuvre; and the eight hundred British stood fast against their eighteen hundred enemies all along the line.  Boyd then withdrew, having lost four hundred men; and Morrison’s remaining six hundred effectives slept on their hard-won ground.

Next morning the energetic Morrison resumed his pursuit.  But the campaign against Montreal was already over.  Wilkinson had found that Hampton had started back for Lake Champlain while the battle was in progress; so he landed at St Regis, just inside his own country, and went into winter quarters at French Mills on the Salmon river.

In December the scene of strife changed back again to the Niagara, where the American commander, McClure, decided to evacuate Fort George.  At dusk on the 10th he ordered four hundred women and children to be turned out of their homes at Newark into the biting midwinter cold, and then burnt the whole settlement down to the ground.  If he had intended to hold the position he might have been justified in burning Newark, under more humane conditions, because this village undoubtedly interfered with the defensive fire of Fort George.  But, as he was giving up Fort George, his act was an entirely wanton deed of shame.

Meanwhile the new British general, Gordon Drummond, second in ability to Brock alone, was hurrying to the Niagara frontier.  He was preceded by Colonel Murray, who took possession of Fort George on the 12th, the day McClure crossed the Niagara river.  Murray at once made a plan to take the American Fort Niagara opposite; and Drummond at once approved it for immediate execution.  On the night of the 18th six hundred men were landed on the American side three miles up the river.  At four the next morning Murray led them down to the fort, rushing the sentries and pickets by the way with the bayonet in dead silence.  He then told off two hundred men to take a bastion at the same time that he was to lead the other four hundred straight through the main gate, which he knew would soon be opened to let the reliefs pass out.  Everything worked to perfection.  When the reliefs came out they were immediately charged and bayoneted, as were the first astonished men off duty who ran