After this sharp reverse Drummond settled down to a siege, in the course of which he complained frequently and grievously of the annoyance caused him by Chauncey's blockade, established August 6, with three vessels competent seriously to interrupt transportation of supplies, or of men in large detachments. The season was still propitious for marching; but as early as August 21 Drummond was afraid "that relief by control of the lake may not reach us in time." September 11, "Our batteries have almost been silent for several days from the reduced state of the ammunition." September 14, "The sudden and most unlooked for return to the head of Lake Ontario of the two brigs, by which the Niagara has been so long blockaded, and my communication with York cut off, has had the effect of preventing the junction of the 97th regiment, which arrived at York the 10th, and probably would have been here the following day but for this unlucky circumstance."[325] September 24, "The deficiency of provisions and transport is the difficulty attending every operation in this country, as it prevents the collection at any one point of an adequate force for any object. These difficulties we must continue to experience, until our squadron appears superior on the lake." It would be impossible to depict more strongly the course incumbent upon Chauncey in July, or to condemn more severely, by implication, his failure then to do what he could, taking the chance of that chapter of accidents, "to be in the way of good luck," which it is the duty of every military leader to consider as among the clear possibilities of war. "The blockade of Kingston," wrote Prevost on October 11 to Lord Bathurst,[326] "has been vigorously maintained for the last six weeks by the enemy's squadron. The vigilance of the American cruisers on Lake Ontario was felt even by our batteaux creeping along the shore with provisions for Drummond's division. In consequence, I found that the wants of that army had grown to an alarming extent."[327]
In pushing his siege works, Drummond by September 15 had erected three batteries, the last of which, then just completed, "would rake obliquely the whole American encampment."[328] Brown determined then upon a sortie in force, which was made on the afternoon of September 17, with entire success. It was in this attack that the New York militia, of whom fifteen hundred had crossed to the fort, bore an honorable and distinguished part. Brown states the actual force engaged in the fighting at one thousand regulars and one thousand militia, to whose energy and stubbornness Drummond again pays the compliment of estimating them at five thousand. The weight of the onslaught was thrown on the British right flank, and there doubtless the assailants were, and should have been, greatly superior. Two of the three batteries were carried, one of them being that which had directly incited the attack. "The enemy," reported Drummond, "was everywhere driven back; not however before he had disabled the guns in No. 3 battery, and exploded its magazine;"[329] that is, not before he had accomplished his purpose.
Nor was this all. The stroke ended the campaign. Drummond had nearly lost hope of a successful issue, and this blow destroyed what little remained. The American navy still held the lake; the big ship in Kingston still tarried; rains torrential and almost incessant were undermining the ramparts of Forts George and Niagara, causing serious alarm for the defence, and spreading sickness among his troops, re-enforcements to which could with difficulty be sent. The British returns of loss in repelling the sortie gave one hundred and fifteen killed, one hundred and forty-eight wounded, three hundred and sixteen missing; total, five hundred and seventy-nine. The Americans, whose casualties were five hundred and eleven, reported that they brought back three hundred and eighty-five prisoners; among whom the roll of officers tallies with the British list. Four days afterwards, September 21, Drummond abandoned his works, leaving his fires burning and huts standing, and fell back secretly by night to the Chippewa.
Brown was in no condition to follow. In a brief ten weeks, over which his adventurous enterprise spread, he had fought four engagements, which might properly be called general actions, if regard were had to the total force at his disposal, and not merely to the tiny scale of the campaign. Barring the single episode of the battle of New Orleans, his career on the Niagara peninsula is the one operation of the land war of 1812 upon which thoughtful and understanding Americans of the following generation could look back with satisfaction. Of how great consequence this evidence of national military character was, to the men who had no other experience, is difficult to be appreciated by us, in whose memories are the successes of the Mexican contest and the fierce titanic strife of the Civil War. In truth, Chippewa, Lundy's Lane, and New Orleans, are the only names of 1812 preserved to popular memory,[330] ever impatient of disagreeable reminiscence. Hull's surrender was indeed an exception; the iron there burned too deep to leave no lasting scar. To Brown and his distinguished subordinates we owe the demonstration of what the War of 1812 might have accomplished, had the Government of the United States since the beginning of the century possessed even a rudimentary conception of what military preparation means to practical statesmanship.
Shortly after the sortie which decided Drummond to retire, the defenders of Fort Erie were brought into immediate relation with the major part of the forces upon Lake Champlain, under General Izard. Both belonged to the same district, the ninth, which in Dearborn's time had formed one general command; but which it now pleased the Secretary of War, General Armstrong, to manage as two distinct divisions, under his own controlling directions from Washington. The Secretary undoubtedly had a creditable amount of acquired military knowledge, but by this time he had manifested that he did not possess the steadying military qualities necessary to play the role of a distant commander-in-chief. Izard, at the time of his appointment, reported everything connected with his command, the numbers and discipline of the troops, their clothing and equipment, in a deplorable state of inefficiency.[331] The summer months were spent in building up anew the army on Champlain, and in erecting fortifications; at Plattsburg, where the main station was fixed, and at Cumberland Head, the promontory which defines the eastern side of Plattsburg Bay. Upon the maintenance of these positions depended the tenure of the place itself, as the most suitable advanced base for the army and for the fleet, mutually indispensable for the protection of that great line of operations.
On July 27, before the Secretary could know of Lundy's Lane, but when he did anticipate that Brown must fall back on Fort Erie, he wrote to Izard that it would be expedient for him to advance against Montreal, or against Prescott,—on the St. Lawrence opposite Ogdensburg,—in case large re-enforcements had been sent from Montreal to check Brown's advance, as was reported. His own inclination pointed to Prescott, with a view to the contingent chance of an attack upon Kingston, in co-operation with Chauncey and the garrison at Sackett's.[332] This letter did not reach Izard till August 10. He construed its somewhat tentative and vacillating terms as an order. "I will make the movement you direct, if possible; but I shall do it with the apprehension of risking the force under my command, and with the certainty that everything in this vicinity, save the lately erected works at Plattsburg and Cumberland Head, will, in less than three days after my departure, be in possession of the enemy."[333] Izard, himself, on July 19, had favored a step like this proposed; but, as he correctly observed, the time for it was when Brown was advancing and might be helped. Now, when Brown had been brought to a stand, and was retiring, the movement would not aid him, but would weaken the Champlain frontier; and that at the very moment when the divisions from Wellington's army, which had embarked at Bordeaux, were arriving at Quebec and Montreal.
On August 12, Armstrong wrote again, saying that his first order had been based upon the supposition that Chauncey would meet and beat Yeo, or at least confine him in port. This last had in fact been done; but, if the enemy should have carried his force from Montreal to Kingston, and be prepared there, "a safer movement was to march two thousand men to Sackett's, embark there, and go to Brown's assistance."[334] Izard obediently undertook this new disposition, which he received August 20; but upon consultation with his officers concluded that to march by the northern route, near the Canada border, would expose his necessarily long column to dangerous flank attack. He therefore determined to go by way of Utica.[335] On August 29 the division, about four thousand effectives, set out from the camp at Chazy, eight miles north of Plattsburg, and on September 16 reached Sackett's. Bad weather prevented immediate embarkation, but on the 21st about two thousand five hundred infantry sailed, and having a fair wind reached next day the Genesee, where they were instantly put ashore. A regiment of light artillery and a number of dragoons, beyond the capacity of the fleet to carry, went by land and arrived a week later.
In this manner the defence of Lake Champlain was deprived of four thousand fairly trained troops at the moment that the British attack in vast superiority of force was maturing. Their advance brigade, in fact, crossed the frontier two days after Izard's departure. At the critical moment, and during the last weeks of weather favorable for operations, the men thus taken were employed in making an unprofitable march of great length, to a quarter where there was now little prospect of successful action, and where they could not arrive before the season should be practically closed. Brown, of course, hailed an accession of strength which he sorely needed, and did not narrowly scrutinize a measure for which he was not responsible. On September 27, ten days after the successful sortie from Fort Erie, he was at Batavia, in New York, where he had an interview with Izard, who was the senior. In consequence of their consultation Izard determined that his first movement should be the siege of Fort Niagara.[336] In pursuance of this resolve his army marched to Lewiston, where it arrived October 5. There he had a second meeting with Brown, accompanied on this occasion by Porter, and under their representations decided that it would be more proper to concentrate all the forces at hand on the Canadian bank of the Niagara, south of the Chippewa, and not to undertake a siege while Drummond kept the field.[337]
Despite many embarrassments, and anxieties on the score of supplies and provisions while deprived of the free use of the lake, the British general was now master of the situation. His position rested upon the Chippewa on one flank, and upon Fort Niagara on the other. From end to end he had secure communication, for he possessed the river and the boats, below the falls. By these interior lines, despite his momentary inferiority in total numbers, he was able to concentrate his forces upon a threatened extremity with a rapidity which the assailants could not hope to rival. Fort Niagara was not in a satisfactory condition to resist battery by heavy cannon; but Izard had none immediately at hand. Drummond was therefore justified in his hope that "the enemy will find the recapture of the place not to be easily effected."[338] His line of the Chippewa rested on the left upon the Niagara. On its right flank the ground was impassable to everything save infantry, and any effort to turn his position there would have to be made in the face of artillery, to oppose which no guns could be brought forward. Accordingly when Izard, after crossing in accordance with his last decision, advanced on October 15 against the British works upon the Chippewa, he found they were too strong for a frontal attack, the opinion which Drummond himself entertained,[339] while the topographical difficulties of the country baffled every attempt to turn them. Drummond's one serious fear was that the Americans, finding him impregnable here, might carry a force by Lake Erie, and try to gain his rear from Long Point, or by the Grand River.[340] Though they would meet many obstacles in such a circuit, yet the extent to which he would have to detach in order to meet them, and the smallness of his numbers, might prove very embarrassing.
Izard entertained no such project. After his demonstration of October 15, which amounted to little more than a reconnaisance in force, he lapsed into hopelessness. The following day he learned by express that the American squadron had retired to Sackett's Harbor and was throwing up defensive works. With his own eyes he saw, too, that the British water service was not impeded. "Notwithstanding our supremacy on Lake Ontario, at the time I was in Lewiston [October 5-8] the communication between York and the mouth of the Niagara was uninterrupted. I saw a large square-rigged vessel arriving, and another, a brig, lying close to the Canada shore. Not a vessel of ours was in sight."[341] The British big ship, launched September 10, was on October 14 reported by Yeo completely equipped. The next day he would proceed up the lake to Drummond's relief. Chauncey had not waited for the enemy to come out. Convinced that the first use of naval superiority would be to reduce his naval base, he took his ships into port October 8; writing to Washington that the "St. Lawrence" had her sails bent, apparently all ready for sea, and that he expected an attack in ten days.[342] "I confess I am greatly embarrassed," wrote Izard to Monroe, who had now superseded Armstrong as Secretary of War. "At the head of the most efficient army the United States have possessed during this war, much must be expected from me; and yet I can discern no object which can be achieved at this point worthy of the risk which will attend its attempt." The enemy perfectly understood his perplexity, and despite his provocations refused to play into his hands by leaving the shelter of their works to fight. On October 21, he broke up his camp, and began to prepare winter quarters for his own command opposite Black Rock, sending Brown with his division to Sackett's Harbor. Two weeks later, on November 5, having already transported all but a small garrison to the American shore, he blew up Fort Erie and abandoned his last foothold on the peninsula.