"It is impossible any person can be more truly sensible of your Excellency's unremitting attention and assiduity to every thing connected with the naval department in this country than myself, &c.
I have the honour to remain,
With the highest respect,
Dear Sir,
Your Excellency's
Most obedient servant,
James Lucas Yeo."
With regard to the naval action on Lake Erie, we shall only observe, that it certainly was not lost from the want of skill or courage on the part of the officers and men of our squadron. The decided superiority of the enemy in their weight of metal and seamen, gave them an advantage which the bravest efforts of our squadron, directed and encouraged by the distinguished gallantry and conduct of their Commander, were insufficient to resist. The causes of the disastrous result of that action are best told, in the words of the sentence of the Court-martial upon Captain Barclay and his officers, which will be found in the Appendix.[66] The situation of General Procter was such, after this disaster, as to render it indispensable for him to take the most prompt and energetic measures for withdrawing his troops from posts which were no longer tenable, and to join the main body of the army on the Niagara frontier, to whose force he knew his men would prove a seasonable and powerful accession. Upon this disastrous retreat it is unnecessary to dwell. It must, however, be remarked, that from the sentence of the Court-martial upon General Procter, and the subsequent remarks upon that sentence by order of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, it certainly appears that General Procter did not avail himself, with sufficient energy and activity of the period which elapsed between the loss of our fleet and the action at the Moravian village, to effect the important object of retiring with his troops to a place of safety.
However meritorious had been the conduct of General Procter, and of the troops serving under him previous to his retreat from Amherstburgh, it was not possible for Sir George Prevost to avoid noticing in the public orders, which announced to the army the capture of the greater part of those troops at the Moravian town, what appeared to him the disgraceful circumstances with which the affair had been attended. Although General Procter might feel hurt by the reflections thus passed upon his conduct, yet the Commander of the forces, in consideration of his former services, was unwilling to make that conduct the subject of public investigation, until His Majesty's Government, to whom General Procter's explanation had been submitted, should determine upon the course to be pursued. It was in obedience to their orders that General Procter was at length put upon his trial.[67]
That the charges against General Procter could only rest upon the events of the retreat which he was accused of misconducting, and that "a long period of arduous services and neglected representations"[68] could form no part of such charges, must be obvious to the lowest capacity. General Procter had, of course, the opportunity of availing himself of those services before the Court-martial, and that he did so the nature of the sentence would lead us to suppose. But it surely cannot be inferred from the opinion of the Court, that Sir George Prevost had any other motive in preferring the charges, than the good of the service, and obedience to the commands of his superiors. Whether, under these circumstances, and with the knowledge of Sir George Prevost's military life, which the Reviewer must have possessed, he is justified in making the gross insinuation with which he concludes his strictures on this subject, will be left to the candid reader to determine.
The greater part of the troops under General Procter having been captured, General Vincent was compelled immediately to retreat to Burlington Heights, a measure which the information received by that officer of the extent of General Procter's loss, and the probable immediate advance of the enemy, seemed to render indispensable.
The first intelligence received of General Procter's defeat was through a Staff-Adjutant, who had escaped from the field of battle, and who, by exaggerated accounts of this disaster, and of the consequences to be expected from it, spread terror and dismay through the country as he passed rapidly along to Kingston, where he arrived on the 12th October. In the mean time, General Vincent, whom these reports had reached, and who had also on the 8th received from General Procter intelligence of the action, had begun his retreat from the four-mile creek, and had halted at the twelve-mile creek, when a communication from Colonel Young, at Burlington, induced him immediately to fall back upon that place as a post where he might with less difficulty maintain himself if attacked, and where he might wait for instructions from General de Rottenburg, the officer commanding in Upper Canada.
General de Rottenburg, who was on his way from York to Kingston, when the intelligence of General Procter's defeat overtook him on the road, immediately sent to General Vincent, directing him, in his despatch of the 10th October, if he did not consider himself sufficiently strong to hold out against the superior force of the enemy, to destroy the stores, &c. and to fall back on Kingston. These directions, it is to be observed, were given under the impression created by the Staff-Adjutant's account, which, in a very short time was discovered to be greatly exaggerated; and it appears from General Vincent's letter to General de Rottenburg, previous to the receipt of the despatch last mentioned, as well as from the one in answer to it, that he had no immediate intention of retreating from the position he then occupied, although he thought circumstances might afterwards render such a measure necessary. In the mean time the same exaggerated accounts of the action at the Moravian village, which had been carried to Kingston, having been received at Montreal by the Commander of the forces, together with General de Rottenburg's despatches, communicating the orders he had sent to General Vincent in consequence of that intelligence, Sir George Prevost in his letter to General de Rottenburg of the 18th October, approved of those orders, and directed them to be carried into execution.
On the 18th October, the very day on which this last despatch was dated, General de Rottenburg informed Sir George Prevost, by letter, that the Staff-Adjutant's account, by which he had been induced to give the directions to General Vincent to retreat to York, preparatory to falling back on Kingston, was false and scandalous. As soon as it was thus ascertained at head-quarters at Montreal, what the real nature of General Procter's disaster was, the Commander of the forces having also reason to believe, from the information transmitted to him by General de Rottenburg, that the enemy had designs upon York from Sackett's Harbour, instructions, dated the 29th October, were sent to that officer, directing him to prevent General Vincent's further retreat, and to order him to occupy both Burlington and York with the force under his command. The orders, which were accordingly sent from General de Rottenburg to General Vincent to that effect on the 1st November, were received by him on the 4th, and he in consequence remained in the position he then occupied at Burlington Heights, which undoubtedly led afterwards to the recovery of the Niagara frontier.