The summer campaign on the Niagara frontier ended with three minor British successes. Fort Schlosser was surprised on July 5. On the 11th Bisshopp lost his life in destroying Black Rock. And on August 24 the Americans were driven in under the guns of Fort George. After this there was a lull which lasted throughout the autumn.
Down by the Montreal frontier there were three corresponding British successes. On June 3 Major Taylor of the 100th captured two American gunboats, the Growler and the Eagle, which had come to attack Isle-aux-Noix in the Richelieu river, and renamed them the Broke and the Shannon. Early in August Captains Pring and Everard, of the Navy, and Colonel Murray with nine hundred soldiers, raided Lake Champlain. They destroyed the barracks, yard, and stores at Plattsburg and sent the American militia flying home. But a still more effective blow was struck on the opposite side of Lake Champlain, at Burlington, where General Hampton was preparing the right wing of his new army of invasion. Stores, equipment, barracks, and armaments were destroyed to such an extent that Hampton's preparations were set back till late in the autumn. The left wing of the same army was at Sackett's Harbour, under Dearborn's successor, General Wilkinson, whose plan was to take Kingston, go down the St Lawrence, meet Hampton, who was to come up from the south, and then make a joint attack with him on Montreal.
In September the scene of action shifted to the West, where the British were trying to keep the command of Lake Erie, while the Americans were trying to wrest it from them. Captain Oliver Perry, a first-rate American naval officer of only twenty-eight, was at Presqu'isle (now Erie) completing his flotilla. He had his troubles, of course, especially with the militia garrison, who would not do their proper tour of duty. 'I tell the boys to go, but the boys won't go,' was the only report forthcoming from one of several worthless colonels. A still greater trouble for Perry was getting his vessels over the bar. This had to be done without any guns on board, and with the cumbrous aid of 'camels,' which are any kind of air-tanks made fast to the sides low down, in order to raise the hull as much as possible. But, luckily for Perry, his opponent, Captain Barclay of the Royal Navy, an energetic and capable young officer of thirty-two, was called upon to face worse troubles still. Barclay was, indeed, the first to get afloat. But he had to give up the blockade of Presqu'isle, and so let Perry out, because he had the rawest of crews, the scantiest of equipment, and nothing left to eat. Then, when he ran back to Amherstburg, he found Procter also facing a state of semi-starvation, while thousands of Indian families were clamouring for food. Thus there was no other choice but either to fight or starve; for there was not the slightest chance of replenishing stores unless the line of the lake was clear.
So Barclay sailed out with his six little British vessels, armed by the odds and ends of whatever ordnance could be spared from Amherstburg and manned by almost any crews but sailors. Even the flagship Detroit had only ten real seamen, all told. Ammunition was likewise very scarce, and so defective that the guns had to be fired by the flash of a pistol. Perry also had a makeshift flotilla, partly manned by drafts from Harrison's army. But, on the whole, the odds in his favour were fairly shown by the number of vessels in the respective flotillas, nine American against the British six.
Barclay had only thirty miles to make in a direct south-easterly line from Amherstburg to reach Perry at Put-in Bay in the Bass Islands, where, on the morning of September 10, the opposing forces met. The battle raged for two hours at the very closest quarters till Perry's flagship Lawrence struck to Barclay's own Detroit. But Perry had previously left the Lawrence for the fresh Niagara; and he now bore down on the battered Detroit, which had meanwhile fallen foul of the only other sizable British vessel, the Queen Charlotte. This was fatal for Barclay. The whole British flotilla surrendered after a desperate resistance and an utterly disabling loss. From that time on to the end of the war Lake Erie remained completely under American control.
Procter could hardly help seeing that he was doomed to give up the whole Lake Erie region. But he lingered and was lost. While Harrison was advancing with overwhelming numbers Procter was still trying to decide when and how to abandon Amherstburg. Then, when he did go, he carried with him an inordinate amount of baggage; and he retired so slowly that Harrison caught and crushed him near Moravian Town, beside the Thames, on the 5th of October. Harrison had three thousand exultant Americans in action; Procter had barely a thousand worn-out, dispirited men, more than half of them Indians under Tecumseh. The redcoats, spread out in single rank at open order, were ridden down by Harrison's cavalry, backed by the mass of his infantry. The Indians on the inland flank stood longer and fought with great determination against five times their numbers till Tecumseh fell. Then they broke and fled. This was their last great fight and Tecumseh was their last great leader.
The scene now shifts once more to the Montreal frontier, which was being threatened by the converging forces of Hampton from the south and Wilkinson from the west. Each had about seven thousand men; and their common objective was the island of Montreal. Hampton crossed the line at Odelltown on September 20. But he presently moved back again; and it was not till October 21 that he began his definite attack by advancing down the left bank of the Chateauguay, after opening communications with Wilkinson, who was still near Sackett's Harbour. Hampton naturally expected to brush aside all the opposition that could be made by the few hundred British between him and the St Lawrence. But de Salaberry, the commander of the British advanced posts, determined to check him near La Fourche, where several little tributaries of the Chateauguay made a succession of good positions, if strengthened by abattis and held by trained defenders.
The British force was very small when Hampton began his slow advance; but 'Red George' Macdonell marched to help it just in time. Macdonell was commanding a crack corps of French Canadians, all picked from the best 'Select Embodied Militia,' and now, at the end of six months of extra service, as good as a battalion of regulars. He had hurried to Kingston when Wilkinson had threatened it from Sackett's Harbour. Now he was urgently needed at Chateauguay. 'When can you start?' asked Prevost, who was himself on the point of leaving Kingston for Chateauguay. 'Directly the men have finished their dinners, sir!' 'Then follow me as quickly as you can!' said Prevost as he stepped on board his vessel. There were 210 miles to go. A day was lost in collecting boats enough for this sudden emergency. Another day was lost en route by a gale so terrific that even the French-Canadian voyageurs were unable to face it. The rapids, where so many of Amherst's men had been drowned in 1760, were at their very worst; and the final forty miles had to be made overland by marching all night through dense forest and along a particularly difficult trail. Yet Macdonell got into touch with de Salaberry long before Prevost, to whom he had the satisfaction of reporting later in the day: 'All correct and present, sir; not one man missing!'
The advanced British forces under de Salaberry were now, on October 25, the eve of battle, occupying the left, or north, bank of the Chateauguay, fifteen miles south of the Cascade Rapids of the St Lawrence, twenty-five miles south-west of Caughnawaga, and thirty-five miles south-west of Montreal. Immediately in rear of these men under de Salaberry stood Macdonell's command; while, in more distant support, nearer to Montreal, stood various posts under General de Watteville, with whom Prevost spent that night and most of the 26th, the day on which the battle was fought.
As Hampton came on with his cumbrous American thousands de Salaberry felt justifiable confidence in his own well-disciplined French-Canadian hundreds. He and his brothers were officers in the Imperial Army. His Voltigeurs were regulars. The supporting Fencibles were also regulars, and of ten years' standing. Macdonell's men were practically regulars. The so-called 'Select Militia' present had been permanently embodied for eighteen months; and the only real militiamen on the scene of action, most of whom never came under fire at all, had already been twice embodied for service in the field. The British total present was 1590, of whom less than a quarter were militiamen and Indians. But the whole firing line comprised no more than 460, of whom only 66 were militiamen and only 22 were Indians. The Indian total was about one-tenth of the whole. The English-speaking total was about one-twentieth. It is therefore perfectly right to say that the battle of Chateauguay was practically fought and won by French-Canadian regulars against American odds of four to one.