Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/373

1813] The war on Lake Ontario. 341 complete defeat upon Proctor on the river Thames, capturing eight of his guns and the greater part of his force. Proctor fled in his carnage ; the Indian chief Tecumthe died gallantly in action, striving to retrieve the day ; and his body after death was mutilated by the victors. On Lake Ontario, the Americans, directed by Captain Chauncey, had constructed a squadron superior in power to the British force under Captain Yeo ; and in the spring of 1813 they utilised their preponder- ance for an attack upon York, now known as Toronto. On April 27 the place, with 300 prisoners, fell into their hands. The Americans burnt the Parliament House, an act which was afterwards cited as jus- tifying the British proceedings at Washington. Exactly a month later Chauncey covered a successful attack upon Fort George, on the Niagara, and compelled the British to abandon the fort and the line of that river. On May 29 Yeo's flotilla, with a military force, made a raid upon the American naval base of Sackett's Harbour, but was repulsed with heavy loss, though a large quantity of American naval stores was destroyed. For the next few months a peculiar situation existed on this lake. Each side was building ships; and, as these ships were completed, first one side and then the other obtained a temporary command of its waters. While the two navies were thus occupied, a fresh reverse befell the American land forces under General Dearborn, which had now been driven back to the neighbourhood of the Niagara river. On June 24 a detachment 570 strong was cut off by a small force of Indians at Beaver Dam, and captured. The military situation was made still worse by the failure of an expedition against Montreal, in which an American force of 2000 regulars under General Wilkinson was defeated by 800 British troops at Williamsburg, on November 11. In June, also, the American flotilla upon Lake Champlain had been checked ; and in July, Plattsburg, on that lake, fell into the hands of the British, who destroyed the barracks and military stores there. In December the Canadian village of Newark was burned by the American general McClure, without provocation, an act which added fuel to the flames of British indignation. At sea the British navy made its power felt during the year, as rein- forcements arrived. The estuaries of the Delaware and Chesapeake were entered and used as British bases by British squadrons, which harassed the coast population, attacked the militia, burned houses where any resistance was offered, and raided small towns ; in fact, they employed exactly the same methods of severity which fifty years later Sherman and Sheridan brought to so high a pitch of perfection. The apathy of the coast population was remarkable; and the American navy, in the absence of ships of the line capable of meeting the British seventy-fours, was unable to afford any real protection. On the open sea the tide of victory no longer flowed uninterruptedly in favour of the United States. Warned by the disasters of 1812, British captains were paying more attention to gunnery, so that it was said, with no small amount of truth,