With needless precipitation, Prevost instantly retreated the next day to Champlain, sacrificing stores to a very great amount, and losing many men by desertion. The army was cruelly mortified, and Prevost lost whatever military reputation he still preserved in Canada. In England the impression of disgrace was equally strong. “It is scarcely possible to conceive the degree of mortification and disappointment,” said the “Annual Register,”[181] “which the intelligence of this defeat created in Great Britain.” Yeo brought official charges of misconduct against Prevost, and Prevost defended himself by unusual arguments.
“With whatever sorrow I may think of the unfortunate occurrences to which I allude,” he wrote to Bathurst, three weeks later,[182] “I consider them as light and trivial when compared to the disastrous results which, I am solemnly persuaded, would have ensued had any considerations of personal glory, or any unreflecting disregard of the safety of the province, or of the honor of the army committed to my charge, induced me to pursue those offensive operations by land, independent of the fleet, which it would appear by your Lordship’s despatch were expected of me. Such operations, my Lord, have been attempted before, and on the same ground. The history of our country records their failure; and had they been undertaken again with double the force placed under my command, they would have issued in the discomfiture of his Majesty’s arms, and in a defeat not more disastrous than inevitable.”
The Duke of Wellington was not so severe as other critics, and hesitated to say that Prevost was wrong; “though of this I am certain, he must equally have returned ... after the fleet was beaten; and I am inclined to think he was right. I have told the ministers repeatedly that a naval superiority on the Lakes is a sine qua non of success in war on the frontier of Canada, even if our object should be wholly defensive.”[183] Yet the Duke in conversation seemed to think that his army in Canada was also at fault. “He had sent them some of his best troops from Bordeaux,” he said five-and-twenty years afterward,[184] “but they did not turn out quite right; they wanted this iron fist to command them.”
Meanwhile Major-General Izard, by Armstrong’s order, marched his four thousand men as far as possible from the points of attack. Starting from Champlain, August 29, the army reached Sackett’s Harbor September 17, having marched about two hundred and eighty miles in twenty days. At Sackett’s Harbor Izard found no orders from the government, for the government at that time had ceased to perform its functions; but he received an earnest appeal from General Brown to succor Fort Erie. “I will not conceal from you,” wrote Brown, September 10,[185] “that I consider the fate of this army very doubtful unless speedy relief is afforded.” Izard, who had no means of testing the correctness of this opinion, decided to follow Brown’s wishes, and made, September 17, the necessary preparations. Violent storms prevented Chauncey from embarking the troops until September 21; but September 27 the troops reached Batavia, and Izard met Brown by appointment. The army had then been a month in movement. The distance was more than four hundred miles, and no energy could have shortened the time so much as to have affected the result of the campaign. At one end of the line Sir George Prevost retreated from Plattsburg September 12; at the other end, Lieutenant-General Drummond retreated from Fort Erie September 21; and Izard’s force, constituting the largest body of regular troops in the field, had been placed where it could possibly affect neither result.
Izard was a friend of Monroe, and was therefore an object of Armstrong’s merciless criticism.[186] Brown was a favorite of Armstrong, and shared his prejudices. The position of Izard at Buffalo was calculated to excite jealousy. He had implicitly obeyed the wishes of Armstrong and Brown; in doing so, he had sacrificed himself,—yielding to Macomb the credit of repulsing Prevost, and to Brown, who did not wait for his arrival, the credit of repulsing Drummond. As far as could be seen, Izard had acted with loyalty toward both Armstrong and Brown; yet both distrusted him. Brown commonly inclined toward severity, and was the more sensitive because Izard, as the senior officer, necessarily took command.
Until that moment Izard had enjoyed no chance of showing his abilities in the field, but at Niagara he saw before him a great opportunity. Drummond lay at Chippawa, with an army reduced by battle and sickness to about twenty-five hundred men. Izard commanded fifty-five hundred regular troops and eight hundred militia.[187] He had time to capture or destroy Drummond’s entire force before the winter should set in, and to gather the results of Brown’s desperate fighting. Brown was eager for the attack, and Izard assented. October 13 the army moved on Chippawa, and stopped. October 16, Izard wrote to the War Department,[188]—
“I have just learned by express from Sackett’s Harbor that Commodore Chauncey with the whole of his fleet has retired into port, and is throwing up batteries for its protection. This defeats all the objects of the operations by land in this quarter. I may turn Chippawa, and should General Drummond not retire, may succeed in giving him a good deal of trouble; but if he falls back on Fort George or Burlington Heights, every step I take in pursuit exposes me to be cut off by the large reinforcements it is in the power of the enemy to throw in twenty-four hours upon my flank or rear.”
In this state of mind, notwithstanding a successful skirmish, October 19, between Bissell’s brigade and a strong detachment of the enemy, Izard made a decision which ruined his military reputation and destroyed his usefulness to the service. He reported to the Department, October 23,[189]—
“On the 21st, finding that he [Drummond] still continued within his works, which he had been assiduously engaged in strengthening from the moment of our first appearance, the weather beginning to be severe, and a great quantity of our officers and men suffering from their continued fatigues and exposure, at twelve at noon I broke up my encampment, and marched to this ground [opposite Black Rock] in order to prepare winter quarters for the troops.”
Nothing remained but to break up the army. Brown was sent at his own request to Sackett’s Harbor, where the next fighting was expected. A division of the army went with him. The remainder were placed in winter quarters near Buffalo. Fort Erie was abandoned and blown up, November 5, and the frontier at Niagara relapsed into repose.