Colonel Lewis had orders to take possession of Frenchtown, and hold it. He reported his success to General Winchester at the rapids, and remained at Frenchtown waiting further orders. Winchester became then aware that the situation was hazardous. Six hundred men were with him in a half-fortified camp on the north bank of the Maumee; six hundred more were thirty miles in advance, at the Raisin River; while fully two thousand—or, according to Harrison’s estimate, four thousand[69]—enemies held two fortresses only eighteen miles beyond the Raisin. The Kentuckians at the Maumee, equally aware of their comrades’ peril, insisted on going to their aid. Winchester promptly started on the evening of January 19, and arrived at Frenchtown the next morning. Colonel Wells’s Seventeenth United States Infantry, two hundred and fifty men, followed, arriving at Frenchtown in the evening.[70]
Winchester, before leaving the Maumee Rapids, sent a despatch to Harrison with a report of the battle of the 18th, which met Harrison on the road hurrying to the Maumee Rapids. The next morning, January 20, Harrison arrived at the camp on the Maumee, and found there about three hundred Kentucky troops,[71] the remainder being all with Winchester at the river Raisin. Probably Harrison, whose own caution was great, felt the peril of Winchester’s situation,[72] but he sent his inspector-general, Captain Hart, forward with orders to Winchester “to hold the ground we had got at any rate,”[73] while he wrote to the Secretary of War:—
“Upon my way to this place [Maumee Rapids] last evening, I received the letter from the General [Winchester] of which the enclosed is a copy, informing me of the complete success of the enterprise in the defeat of the enemy and taking the stores they had collected. The detachment under Colonel Lewis remain at the river Raisin, and General Winchester very properly marched yesterday with two hundred and fifty men to reinforce him and take the command.... It is absolutely necessary to maintain the position at the river Raisin, and I am assembling the troops as fast as possible for the purpose.”[74]
Harrison added that his only fear was lest Winchester should be overpowered. He waited at the Maumee Rapids two days, until at noon, January 22, a messenger arrived with disastrous tidings from the front.
Winchester afterward told the story of his own proceedings with so much candor that his narrative became a necessary part of any explanation of his disaster:—
“Suspecting that Proctor would make an attempt to avenge this stroke, and knowing that our wounded men could not be removed, I hastened to reinforce Colonel Lewis with Wells’s regiment, two hundred and fifty men; and set out myself to join him, and arrived on the morning of the 20th. The town, lying on the north side of the river, was picketed on three sides, the longest facing the north, and making the front. Within these pickets Colonel Lewis’s corps was found. Not thinking the position eligible, nor the pickets a sufficient defence against artillery, I would have retreated but for the wounded, of whom there were fifty-five; but having no sufficient means for transporting these, and being equally destitute of those necessary for fortifying strongly, I issued an order for putting the place in the best condition for defence that might be practicable, intending to construct some new works as soon as the means for getting out timber might be had. On the evening of the 20th Wells arrived, and was directed to encamp on the right, in an open field, immediately without the picketing. On the 21st a patrol as far as Brownstown [opposite Malden] was sent out, and returned without seeing anything of an enemy. On the same day a man from Malden came in who reported that the enemy were preparing to attack us; but knowing nothing of the kind or extent of the preparation made or making, what he brought was thought to be only conjecture and such as led to a belief that it would be some days before Proctor would be ready to do anything.... Neither night-patrol nor night-pickets were ordered by me, from a belief that both were matters of routine and in constant use.... Not to discommode the wounded men, ... I took quarters for myself and suite in a house on the southern bank, directly fronting the troops and only separated from them by the river, then firmly frozen, and but between eighty and a hundred yards wide.”
The only educated officer under Harrison’s command was Major E. D. Wood of the Engineers, one of the early graduates of West Point, and an officer of high promise. He was not with Winchester’s division, but with the right wing on the Sandusky, and arrived at the Maumee Rapids some ten days afterward, where he built Fort Meigs, in February. During the campaign he kept a diary, and his criticisms of Winchester, Lewis, Allen, and their command were quoted with approval by the Kentucky historian,[75] as well as by Harrison’s biographer:[76]—
“The troops were permitted to select, each for himself, such quarters on the west side of the river as might please him best, whilst the general ... took his quarters on the east side,—not the least regard being paid to defence, order, regularity, or system, in the posting of the different corps.... With only one third or one fourth of the force destined for that service; destitute of artillery, of engineers, of men who had ever seen or heard the least of an enemy; and with but a very inadequate supply of ammunition,—how he ever could have entertained the most distant hope of success, or what right he had to presume to claim it, is to me one of the strangest things in the world.... Winchester was destitute of every means of supporting his corps long at the river Raisin; was in the very jaws of the enemy, and beyond the reach of succor. He who fights with such flimsy pretensions to victory will always be beaten, and eternally ought to be.”
Defeat under such conditions was disgraceful enough; but defeat by Colonel Proctor was one of the worst misfortunes that happened to an American general. The Prince Regent took occasion, at the close of the war, to express his official opinion of this officer, then Major-General Proctor, in language of unusual severity.[77] Yet Proctor’s first movements at the Raisin River showed no apparent sign of his being “so extremely wanting in professional knowledge, and deficient in those active, energetic qualities which must be required of every officer,” as his later career, in the Prince Regent’s opinion, proved him to be. He had opposed Brock’s bold movement on Detroit; but he did not hesitate to make a somewhat similar movement himself. January 21 he marched with artillery across the river on the ice, to Brownstown opposite Malden, in full view of any American patrol in the neighborhood. His force consisted of six hundred whites, all told,[78] besides either four hundred and fifty, six hundred or eight hundred Indians, under the chief Round Head, Tecumthe being absent collecting reinforcements on the Wabash.[79] This large body of more than a thousand men, without an attempt at concealment, crossed to Brownstown and marched twelve miles, January 21, camping at night within five miles of Frenchtown.[80] If the British historian James was correct, they numbered eleven hundred and eighty men, of whom five hundred and thirty were white, and the rest Indians;[81] but the official return reported the whites, including every person present, at five hundred and ninety-seven men. Two hours before dawn, January 22, they again advanced, and before daybreak approached within musket-shot of the picket-fence, and half-formed their line, before an alarm was given.
Had Proctor dashed at once on the defenceless Seventeenth regiment and the fence that covered the militia, he would probably have captured the whole without loss; but he preferred to depend on his three-pound guns, which gave the Kentuckians opportunity to use their rifles. In such fighting the Americans had much the advantage, especially as British regulars were opposite them. Within an hour the Forty-first regiment lost fifteen killed and ninety-eight wounded, and of the entire body of six hundred British troops not less than twenty-four were killed and one hundred and sixty-one wounded.[82] Their three-pound guns were abandoned, so murderous were the Kentucky rifles.[83] Had all the American troops been under cover, the battle would have been theirs; but Wells’s Seventeenth regiment was a hundred yards away, on open ground outside the picket-fence on the right, where it was flanked by the Canadian militia and Indians and driven back toward the river, until Allen’s Rifle regiment went out to help it. Gradually forced toward the rear, across the river, this part of the line was at last struck with a panic and fled, carrying with it Winchester himself, Colonel Allen, and Colonel Lewis; while six hundred Indians were in hot pursuit, or already in advance of them.