General Proctor, with a force of about one thousand British and twelve hundred Indians, and two gunboats, set out on an expedition against this post in April. He crossed the lake, ascended the river, and on the 28th landed about two miles below the fort, but on the opposite bank. Here he erected a battery, and subsequently he planted two others, above the fort but on the left bank, and one below and very near it on the right bank. The Indians, commanded by the famous Tecumseh, were landed on the right bank, to invest the fort in the rear. The batteries opened fire on the 1st of May, and kept it up steadily four days; but it had very little effect, owing largely to a traverse twelve feet high and twenty feet thick which the garrison had constructed while the batteries were being erected. Proctor on the third day demanded a surrender, with the usual threat of massacre.
Learning that General Green Clay was coming to him with a reënforcement of eleven hundred Kentuckians, Harrison had sent word to him to hurry forward as fast as possible. At midnight on the 4th of May, two officers and fifteen men from this force descended the river and entered the fort, with the news that Clay was but eighteen miles distant. Harrison sent orders to him to send eight hundred of his men across the river at a point a mile and a half above the fort, thence to march down the left bank and capture and destroy the enemy's batteries; the remaining three hundred to march down the right bank and fight their way through the Indians to the fort.
The detachment landed on the left bank, commanded by Colonel Dudley, moved silently down upon the British batteries, and then, raising a terrific yell, were upon them before the enemy could realize that he was attacked. The guns were spiked and their carriages destroyed; but instead of crossing to the fort at once, as Harrison's orders directed, the victors, flushed with their success, were drawn into a running fight with some Indians, and finally fell into an ambush, and all but about a hundred and fifty were either captured or killed. That number reached their boats and crossed.
The detachment on the right bank, under General Clay himself, had some difficulty in landing, and lost a few men in fighting its way through the Indians, but ultimately reached the fort. While these movements were going on, three hundred and fifty men of the garrison, under Colonel John Miller, made a sortie against the battery on the right bank, captured it, spiked the guns, and returned with forty-three prisoners.
When Clay's troops reached the fort, they were joined by another sallying party, and the combined force moved against the Indians, whom Tecumseh commanded in person, and drove them through the woods at the point of the bayonet. Tecumseh attempted to move a force of British and Indians upon their left flank and rear, to cut off their return to the fort, but this movement was frustrated by Harrison, who understood Indian warfare quite as well as the great chief himself.
Proctor's savage allies, disgusted at his want of success, now began to desert him, and he was obliged to raise the siege and retreat. This he did not do, however, without keeping up his reputation for treachery and cold-blooded cruelty. His prisoners were taken to old Fort Miami, a short distance down stream, where the savages were allowed to murder more than twenty of them. Captain Wood, an eye-witness, says: "The Indians were permitted to garnish the surrounding rampart, and to amuse themselves by loading and firing at the crowd, or at any particular individual. Those who preferred to inflict a still more cruel and savage death selected their victims, led them to the gateway, and there, under the eye of General Proctor, and in the presence of the whole British army, tomahawked and scalped them." It is said that the horrible work was stopped by Tecumseh, who, coming up when it was at its height, buried his hatchet in the head of a chief engaged in the massacre, crying: "For shame!—it is a disgrace to kill a defenceless prisoner!" "In this single act," says the witness who narrates it," Tecumseh displayed more humanity, magnanimity, and civilization than Proctor, with all his British associates in command, displayed through the whole war on the northwestern frontiers."
The total loss to the Americans in these actions was eighty-one men killed, two hundred and sixty-nine wounded, and four hundred and sixty-seven made prisoners. It is uncertain what the British loss was, but it was probably somewhat smaller than that of the Americans.
In July, Proctor and Tecumseh, with a combined English and savage force of about five thousand, returned to Fort Meigs and attempted to draw out the garrison by strategy; but Harrison was, as usual, too shrewd for them, and they turned their attention to Fort Stephenson. This was an oblong stockade fort, about a hundred yards long and fifty yards wide, with high pickets, surrounded by a deep ditch or moat. There was a strong block-house at each corner. It was on the Sandusky, where the town of Fremont, Ohio, now stands. The garrison consisted of one hundred and sixty men, commanded by Major George Croghan.
The British sailed around into Sandusky Bay, and up the river, while their savage allies marched overland and invested the fort in the rear, to prevent the approach of reënforcements. Harrison believed the fort to be untenable, and had sent orders to Croghan to abandon and destroy it; but these orders did not reach the Major till retreat had become impossible.
On the 1st of August Proctor sent in a flag of truce, and demanded an immediate surrender, accompanied with the usual threat that if it were refused the Indians would massacre the entire garrison as soon as the place was taken. The ensign who met the flag made answer that Major Croghan and his men had determined "to defend the fort, or be buried in it." Proctor opened fire from his gunboats and four guns which he had placed in battery on shore, and bombarded the fort continuously for two days and nights. As this fire was directed mainly against the northwest angle, Croghan expected the main attack to be made at that point, and prepared for it. Besides strengthening the walls with bags of sand and bags of flour, he placed his only gun, a six-pounder, where it would enfilade the ditch on that side, loaded it with a double charge of slugs, and masked it.