On the 5th Wilkinson's entire force moved down the St. Lawrence. They occupied more than three hundred boats, which made a procession five miles long. At Prescott the river was commanded by British batteries, and to avoid them Wilkinson debarked his troops and stores a short distance above that place, and sent them by land to Red Mill, some distance below. The boats were run by the batteries at night, and escaped injury, though under a heavy fire for a considerable time.
But it was found that the enemy had planted batteries at several other places, to obstruct and if possible destroy the flotilla. Colonel Alexander Macomb was ordered to cross the river with twelve hundred of the best troops in the army, and, marching down the north bank, abreast of the flotilla, drive away or capture the gunners. In this task he was assisted by Forsyth's riflemen, who crossed a little later. The cavalry and Brown's brigade passed over next day.
They found plenty of fighting to do, though of a desultory kind. There was a battery at nearly every narrow place in the river, and small parties of the enemy were continually hanging on the rear of the Americans, firing whenever they found a chance. Eight miles below Hamilton, Macomb had a fight with a party strongly posted in a block-house, and succeeded in driving them out.
Meanwhile General De Rottenburg, who had come down to Kingston from Queenstown, sent a force of fifteen hundred men, with two schooners and seven gunboats, to follow the expedition and attack its rear guard at every opportunity. It was Commodore Chauncey's duty to prevent any British force from leaving the harbor of Kingston at this time; but unaccountably he failed to do it. On the 9th the American riflemen had a brisk skirmish with a body of Canadian militia and Indians, and finally drove them off.
By the 10th the Long Rapid was reached, and Wilkinson put most of his men ashore, that the boats might shoot the rapid with greater safety. That evening the British gun-boats came up and opened a cannonade upon the barges, which for a time threatened to destroy them. But the Americans took two eighteen-pounders ashore, and improvised a battery, with which they soon drove off the gun-boats.
By this time the enemy's forces were pretty well united in the rear of the expedition, and the gunboats had been brought to act in concert. It was evident that the Americans could not safely proceed farther till a battle had been fought.
The troops were encamped on the farm of John Chrysler, a captain in the British service, a short distance below Williamsburg. On the morning of the 11th it was found that the enemy had taken a position close in the rear, in battle order, his left resting on a swamp, and his right on the river, where his gun-boats were moored. His line was well placed, and he had three pieces of artillery in position. As General Wilkinson was too ill to take the field, or even rise from his bed, the command of the American forces devolved upon General John Parker Boyd. Boyd, now about fifty years of age, had entered the United States service as early as 1786, but later had been a soldier of fortune in India, raising and equipping there, at his own expense, a force of fifteen hundred men, and selling their services to the highest bidder. Still later he returned to the United States, and was with Harrison at the battle of Tippecanoe.
Orders were given to drive back the enemy, and General Robert Swartwout's brigade dashed into the woods and routed the British advance, which fell back upon the main body. The brigade of General Leonard Covington supported Swartwout's, attacking the British right while Swartwout attacked the left. It was a cold, raw day, and part of the time there was snow and sleet in the air. There were charges and counter-charges, the contending columns alternately advancing and retiring across ploughed fields, where the men were often up to their knees in mud. All the romance of war was lacking, while all its disagreeable elements were present in full force. There were wounds enough, and death enough, and misery enough, and, as it proved, no decisive or profitable victory for either side. The Americans had the greater number of men, but this advantage was fully counterbalanced by the fact that they were, the attacking party, and there were several deep ravines which they could not cross with their artillery to bring it into use, while the British used their own guns throughout the action.
The attack was spirited and determined, and seemed likely to succeed; but after a while the American right wing found its ammunition exhausted, and about the same time the left was discouraged and thrown into some confusion by the fall of General Covington, mortally wounded. The enemy now massed troops on his right wing, and pressed forward heavily, so that he captured one of the American guns; a charge of cavalry under AdjutantGeneral Walbach, and the coolness and bravery of Captain Armstrong Irvine, being all that prevented him from seizing the others.
For two hours longer the contest swayed to and fro across the miry fields for the distance of a mile, till the Americans brought up a reserve of six hundred men under Lieutenant-Colonel Upham, by which order was restored and the line firmly established, to await the next onset of the enemy. But no further assault was made, and in the night the Americans retired unmolested to their boats.