The American forces were recalled by Brown and Miller as soon as their progress was stopped, and they retired without serious pursuit beyond the British lines. Their losses were very severe, numbering five hundred and eleven killed, wounded, and missing, or about one fourth of their number. Among them were several of the best officers in the United States service, including Ripley, Wood, and Gibson. Drummond’s loss was still more severe, numbering six hundred and nine,[134] probably almost one man in three of the number engaged. The British killed numbered one hundred and fifteen. The Americans reported seventy-nine killed,—sixty regulars, and nineteen militia.
The next day Drummond issued a general order claiming a victory over an American force of “not less than five thousand men, including militia;” but his situation, untenable before the sortie, became impossible after it. Three out of six battering cannon were disabled;[135] he had lost six hundred men in battle, and his losses by sickness were becoming enormous. “My effective numbers are reduced to considerably less than two thousand firelocks,” he reported, September 21. Immediately after the sortie, although reinforced by the Ninety-seventh regiment, he made his arrangements to retreat.
“Within the last few days,” he wrote to Prevost, September 21,[136] “the sickness of the troops has increased to such an alarming degree, and their situation has really become one of such extreme wretchedness from the torrents of rain which have continued to fall for the last thirteen days, and from the circumstance of the Division being entirely destitute of camp-equipage, that I feel it my duty no longer to persevere in a vain attempt to maintain the blockade of so vastly superior and increasing a force of the enemy under such circumstances. I have therefore given orders for the troops to fall back toward the Chippawa, and shall commence my movement at eight o’clock this evening.”
CHAPTER IV.
Weak as was the army at Niagara, it was relatively stronger than the defence at any other threatened point. Sackett’s Harbor contained only seven hundred effectives.[137] On Lake Champlain, Major-General Izard tried to cover Plattsburg and Burlington with about five thousand regular troops.[138] Already Armstrong knew that large British reinforcements from Wellington’s army were on their way to Canada;[139] and within a few weeks after the battle of Lundy’s Lane eleven thousand of the best troops England ever put in the field were camped on or near the Sorel River, about to march against Izard’s five thousand raw recruits.
They could march nowhere else. Not only was the line of Lake Champlain the natural and necessary path of an invading army, but the impossibility of supplying any large number of troops in Upper Canada made Lake Champlain the only region in which a large British force could exist. Sir George Prevost had reached the limit of his powers in defending Upper Canada. His commissary-general, W. H. Robinson, wrote to him, August 27, expressing “the greatest alarm” on account of deficient supplies at Burlington Heights and Niagara, where instead of nine thousand rations daily as he expected, he was required to furnish fourteen thousand, half of them to Indians.[140] Much as Prevost wanted to attack Sackett’s Harbor, and weak as he knew that post to be, he could not attempt it, although he had thirteen or fourteen thousand rank-and-file idle at Montreal. In October he went to Kingston expressly to arrange such an attack, and found it impossible.
“An investigation of the state of the stores at this post,” he wrote to Lord Bathurst October 18,[141] “proved that the articles for the armament and equipment for a ship of the class of the ‘St. Lawrence,’ carrying upward of one hundred guns, had absorbed almost the whole of the summer transport-service from Montreal, leaving the materials for an undertaking of the magnitude of the destruction of Sackett’s Harbor still at the extremity of the line of communication; and now, by giving precedence to that supply of provisions and stores without which an army is no longer to be maintained in Upper Canada, its removal is inevitably postponed until the winter roads are established.”
Not only were military operations on a large scale impossible in Upper Canada, but for the opposite reason occupation of Lake Champlain by a British force was necessary. Northern New York and Vermont furnished two thirds of the fresh beef consumed by the British armies. General Izard reported to Armstrong, July 31,[142]—
“From the St. Lawrence to the ocean, an open disregard prevails for the laws prohibiting intercourse with the enemy. The road to St. Regis is covered with droves of cattle, and the river with rafts, destined for the enemy. The revenue officers see these things, but acknowledge their inability to put a stop to such outrageous proceedings. On the eastern side of Lake Champlain the high roads are found insufficient for the supplies of cattle which are pouring into Canada. Like herds of buffaloes they press through the forest, making paths for themselves.... Nothing but a cordon of troops from the French Mills to Lake Memphramagog could effectually check the evil. Were it not for these supplies, the British forces in Canada would soon be suffering from famine, or their government be subjected to enormous expense for their maintenance.”
After Chauncey, August 1, regained possession of Lake Ontario, any British campaign against Sackett’s Harbor or Detroit became doubly impossible, and the occupation of Lake Champlain became doubly necessary. Prevost wrote to Bathurst, August 27,[143]—