"All apprehensions of an invasion of Lower Canada for the present season having disappeared, the troops and embodied militia were, on the 27th of November, ordered into winter quarters."[203]
FOOTNOTES:
[203] Christie's History of the War of 1812, Chap, iv., pp. 90-92.
"The armistice between General Smyth and Sheaffe after the battle of Queenston was terminated on the 20th of November, pursuant to notification to that effect from the former. This and the former armistice, without affording any present advantage, proved in the event materially prejudicial to the British on Lake Erie. The Americans availed themselves of so favourable an occasion to forward their naval stores unmolested from Black Rock to Presqu' Isle [Erie] by water, which they could not otherwise have effected, but with immense trouble and expense by land, and equipped at leisure a fleet which afterwards wrested from us the command of that lake."—Ib., pp. 92, 93.
CHAPTER LVI.
PART I.
WAR CAMPAIGNS OF 1813—THREE DIVISIONS OF THE AMERICAN ARMY—BATTLE OF FRENCHTOWN, AMERICANS DEFEATED—MISREPRESENTATIONS CORRECTED.
The campaign of 1813 opened auspiciously for the Canadians, in both Upper and Lower Canada, notwithstanding the fewness of their defenders in regulars, militia, and Indians, and though they suffered severely in several instances towards the close of the year.
It was manifest from the movement of the American army to the frontiers of Upper and Lower Canada, before the close of the year 1812, that on the opening of the campaign of 1813 they intended to retrieve the disasters and disgraces of the first year of the war, and make descents upon the colonies in good earnest. Sir George Prevost, Governor-General, was placed at great disadvantage for their general defence, as the small British force then occupying the Canadas, and the wide extent of frontier the British commander-in-chief had to defend, rendered it impossible for him to cope with the American enemy in point of numbers.