and from Barney’s seamen gunners.  But a total loss of 8 killed and 11 wounded was more than the 5,000 American militia could stand.  All the rest ran for dear life.  The deserted handful of regular soldiers and sailors was then overpowered; while Barney was severely wounded and taken prisoner.  He and they, however, had saved their honour and won the respect and admiration of both friend and foe.  Ross and Cockburn at once congratulated him on the stand he had made against them; and he, with equal magnanimity, reported officially that the British had treated him ‘just like a brother.’

That night the little British army of four thousand men burnt governmental Washington, the capital of a country with eight millions of people.  Not a man, not a woman, not a child, was in any way molested; nor was one finger laid on any private property.  The four thousand then marched back to the fleet, through an area inhabited by 93,500 militiamen on paper, without having so much as a single musket fired at them.

Now, if ever, was Prevost’s golden opportunity to end the war with a victory that would turn the scale decisively in favour of the British cause.  With the one exception of Lake Erie, the British had the upper hand over the whole five thousand miles of front.  A successful British counter-invasion, across the Montreal frontier, would offset the American hold on Lake Erie, ensure the control of Lake Champlain, and thus bring all the scattered parts of the campaign into their proper relation to a central, crowning triumph.

On the other hand, defeat would mean disaster.  But the bare possibility of defeat seemed quite absurd when Prevost set out from his field headquarters opposite Montreal, between La Prairie and Chambly, with eleven thousand seasoned veterans, mostly ‘Peninsulars,’ to attack Plattsburg, which was no more than twenty-five miles across the frontier, very weakly fortified, and garrisoned only by the fifteen hundred regulars whom Izard had ‘culled out’ when he started for Niagara.

The naval odds were not so favourable.  But, as they could be decisively affected by military action, they naturally depended on Prevost, who, with his overwhelming army, could turn them whichever way he chose.  It was true that Commodore Macdonough’s American flotilla had more trained seamen than Captain Downie’s corresponding British force, and that his crews and vessels possessed the further advantage of having worked together for some time.  Downie, a brave and skilful young officer, had arrived to take command of his flotilla at the upper end of Lake Champlain only on September 2, that is, exactly a week before Prevost urged him to attack, and nine days before the battle actually did take place.  He had a fair proportion of trained seamen; but they consisted of scratch drafts from different men-of-war, chosen in haste and hurried to the front.  Most of the men and officers were complete strangers to one another; and they made such short-handed crews that some soldiers had to be wheeled out of the line of march and put on board at the very last minute.  There would have been grave difficulties with such a flotilla under any circumstances.  But Prevost had increased them tenfold by giving no orders and making no preparations while trying his hand at another abortive armistice—­one, moreover, which he had no authority even to propose.