The British ranks lay down in the same order as that in which they fought; and a deep hush fell over the whole, black-shrouded battlefield. The immemorial voice of those dread Falls to which no combatant gave heed for six long hours of mortal strife was heard once more. But near at hand there was no other sound than that which came from the whispered queries of a few tired officers on duty; from the busy orderlies and surgeons at their work of mercy; and from the wounded moaning in their pain. So passed the quiet half of that short, momentous, summer night. Within four hours the sun shone down on the living and the dead—on that silent battery whose gunners had fallen to a man—on the unconquered Rise.
The tide of war along the Niagara frontier favoured neither side for some time after Lundy's Lane, though the Americans twice appeared to be regaining the initiative. On August 15 there was a well-earned American victory at Fort Erie, where Drummond's assault was beaten off with great loss to the British. A month later an American sortie was repulsed. On September 21 Drummond retired beaten; and on October 13 he found himself again on the defensive at Chippawa, with little more than three thousand men, while Izard, who had come with American reinforcements from Lake Champlain and Sackett's Harbour, was facing him with twice as many. But Yeo's fleet had now come up to the mouth of the Niagara, while Chauncey's had remained at Sackett's Harbour. Thus the British had the priceless advantage of a movable naval base at hand, while the Americans had none at all within supporting distance. Every step towards Lake Ontario hampered Izard more and more, while it added corresponding strength to Drummond. An American attempt to work round Drummond's flank, twelve miles inland, was also foiled by a heavy skirmish on October 19 at Cook's Mills; and Izard's definite abandonment of the invasion was announced on November 5 by his blowing up Fort Erie and retiring into winter quarters. This ended the war along the whole Niagara.
The campaign on Lake Ontario was very different. It opened two months earlier. The naval competition consisted rather in building than in fighting. The British built ships in Kingston, the Americans in Sackett's Harbour; and reports of progress soon travelled across the intervening space of less than forty miles. The initiative of combined operations by land and water was undertaken by the British instead of by the Americans. Yeo and Drummond wished to attack Sackett's Harbour with four thousand men. But Prevost said he could spare them only three thousand; whereupon they changed their objective to Oswego, which they took in excellent style, on May 6. The British suffered a serious reverse, though on a very much smaller scale, on May 30, at Sandy Creek, between Oswego and Sackett's Harbour, when a party of marines and bluejackets, sent to cut out some vessels with naval stores for Chauncey, was completely lost, every man being either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.
From Lake Ontario down to the sea the Canadian frontier was never seriously threatened; and the only action of any consequence was fought to the south of Montreal in the early spring. On March 30 the Americans made a last inglorious attempt in this direction. Wilkinson started with four thousand men to follow the line of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu river, the same that was tried by Dearborn in 1812 and by Hampton in 1813. At La Colle, only four miles across the frontier, he attacked Major Handcock's post of two hundred men. The result was like a second Chateauguay. Handcock drew in three hundred reinforcements and two gunboats from Isle-aux-Noix. Wilkinson's advanced guard lost its way overnight. In the morning he lacked the resolution to press on, even with his overwhelming numbers; and so, after a part of his army had executed some disjointed manoeuvres, he withdrew the whole and gave up in despair.
From this point of the Canadian frontier to the very end of the five-thousand-mile loop, that is, from Montreal to Mexico, the theatre of operations was directly based upon the sea, where the British Navy was by this time undisputedly supreme. A very few small American men-of-war were still at large, together with a much greater number of privateers. But they had no power whatever even to mitigate the irresistible blockade of the whole coast-line of the United States. American sea-borne commerce simply died away; for no mercantile marine could have any independent life when its trade had to be carried on by a constantly decreasing tonnage; when, too, it could go to sea at all only by furtive evasion, and when it had to take cargo at risks so great that they could not be covered either by insurance or by any attainable profits. The Atlantic being barred by this Great Blockade, and the Pacific being inaccessible, the only practical way left open to American trade was through the British lines by land or sea. Some American seamen shipped in British vessels. Some American ships sailed under British colours. But the chief external American trade was done illicitly, by 'underground,' with the British West Indies and with Canada itself. This was, of course, in direct defiance of the American government, and to the direct detriment of the United States as a nation. It was equally to the direct benefit of the British colonies in general and of Nova Scotia in particular. American harbours had never been so dull. Quebec and Halifax had never been so prosperous. American money was drained away from the warlike South and West and either concentrated in the Northern States—which were opposed to the war—or paid over into British hands.
Nor was this all. The British Navy harried the coast in every convenient quarter and made effective the work of two most important joint attacks, one on Maine, the other on Washington itself. The attack on Maine covered two months, altogether, from July 11 to September 11. It began with the taking of Moose Island by Sir Thomas Hardy, Nelson's old flag-captain at Trafalgar, and ended with the surrender, at Machias, of 'about 100 miles of sea-coast,' together with 'that intermediate tract of country which separates the province of New Brunswick from Lower Canada.' On September 21 Sir John Sherbrooke proclaimed at Halifax the formal annexation of 'all the eastern side of the Penobscot river and all the country lying between the same river and the boundary of New Brunswick.'
The attack on Maine was meant, in one sense at least, to create a partial counterpoise to the American preponderance on Lake Erie. The attack on Washington was made in retaliation for the burning of the old and new capitals of Upper Canada, Newark and York.
The naval defence of Washington had been committed to Commodore Barney, a most expert and gallant veteran of the Revolution, who handled his wholly inadequate little force with consummate skill and daring, both afloat and ashore. He was not, strictly speaking, a naval officer, but a privateersman who had made the unique record of taking eleven prizes in ten consecutive days with his famous Baltimore schooner Rossie. The military defence was committed to General Winder, one of the two generals captured by Harvey's '704 firelocks' at Stoney Creek the year before. Winder was a good soldier and did his best in the seven weeks at his disposal. But the American government, which had now enjoyed continuous party power for no less than thirteen years, gave him no more than four hundred regulars, backed by Barney's four hundred excellent seamen and the usual array of militia, with whom to defend the capital in the third campaign of a war they had themselves declared. There were 93,500 militiamen within the threatened area. But only fifteen thousand were got under arms; and only five thousand were brought into action.
In the middle of August the British fleet under Admirals Cochrane and Cockburn sailed into Chesapeake Bay with a detachment of four thousand troops commanded by General Ross. Barney had no choice but to retire before this overwhelming force. As the British advanced up the narrowing waters all chance of escape disappeared; so Barney burnt his boats and little vessels and marched his seamen in to join Winder's army. On August 24 Winder's whole six thousand drew up in an exceedingly strong position at Bladensburg, just north of Washington; and the President rode out with his Cabinet to see a battle which is best described by its derisive title of the Bladensburg Races. Ross's four thousand came on and were received by an accurate checking fire from the regular artillery and from Barney's seamen gunners. But a total loss of 8 killed and 11 wounded was more than the 5,000 American militia could stand. All the rest ran for dear life. The deserted handful of regular soldiers and sailors was then overpowered; while Barney was severely wounded and taken prisoner. He and they, however, had saved their honour and won the respect and admiration of both friend and foe. Ross and Cockburn at once congratulated him on the stand he had made against them; and he, with equal magnanimity, reported officially that the British had treated him 'just like a brother.'
That night the little British army of four thousand men burnt governmental Washington, the capital of a country with eight millions of people. Not a man, not a woman, not a child, was in any way molested; nor was one finger laid on any private property. The four thousand then marched back to the fleet, through an area inhabited by 93,500 militiamen on paper, without having so much as a single musket fired at them.