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oppose double lines of infantry, his attempts, which would have been decisive had they proved successful, were unavailing. Although he had most fortunately escaped unhurt thus far, subsequently, in passing to the right, he received two severe wounds: regardless of himself, however, he did not quit the field, until he had directed Colonel Leavenworth to unite his battalion with the twenty-fifth regiment, under the command of the brave Jessup. Once again, an hour later, the British general mounted that fatal eminence. Our countrymen, worn down with fatigue, and almost fainting with thirst, nerved themselves a third time, to repel the enemy. This last was more terribly contested than the preceding attempts. The British reached the top of the hill, and the struggle was carried on at the point of the bayonet. Friend and foe were intermingled, and for a short time, the issue of the fight was uncertain; but the Americans, with desperate valor, repulsed their furious assailants, and the whole British line broke and fled. No exertions of their officers could restrain them, or bring them back again to the assault.

Generals Brown and Scott being disabled by severe wounds, General Ripley assumed the command, and made some efforts to obtain the means of removing the captured artillery; but the horses having been killed, and no dragropes being at hand, they were still on the place where they had been captured, when orders were sent to Ripley from General Brown, to collect the wounded, and return to the camp, for the refreshment of the troops.

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The British cannon were therefore left behind, the smaller pieces having first been rolled down the hill. The whole of the troops reached the camp in good order about midnight, after an unmolested march.

This famous battle (known as the battle of Niagara, or of Bridgewater, or of Lundy's Lane) was the most severely contested, and, in proportion to the numbers engaged, the most destructive to human life, of any that has ever been fought in America. The British force numbered something short of five thousand, including militia and Indians. The American army was, in number, less than three thousand ;* yet on each side nearly nine hundred men were killed, wounded, and missing. The proportion of officers killed and wounded, was unusually large, and showed clearly that, so far as the American army was concerned, our countrymen were as able as they were willing, to meet even the veteran troops which had gained laurels on the battle fields of the old world.

General Brown, vexed that the cannon had been left behind, ordered Ripley to proceed at sunrise, to the heights of Lundy's Lane, and, after burying the dead, to bring away the trophies of victory; but the enemy had taken possession of the eminence, and Ripley, with not more than sixteen hundred men, and these much worn down by fatigue, found it impossible to execute General Brown's order. He therefore retreated to Fort Erie ;

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*It is but proper to advise the reader, that the British accounts state, in respect to the numbers engaged, that the American force was much larger than that of their opponents.

CH. XI]

and as additional precautions against the enemy, destroyed the bridge over the Chippewa, and threw part of his baggage and stores into the rapids of the Niagara. Both sides claimed the victory; the Americans, because they captured the British guns, and drove the enemy from his position; the British, because they recovered the guns which Ripley had omitted bringing away, and, as Ingersoll says, found a cannon accidentally left by the Americans in their retreat; and also because the American force the next morning, did not attack them, but retired rather rapidly from the field. "Had General Drummond," says Ingersoll, "availed himself of this hasty and ill-judged retreat" on the part of Ripley, who does not seem to have entered heartily into Brown's views and plans,-"not a man of our army could have escaped. Whether it was the purpose of General Ripley to defend Fort Erie, or to cross the Niagara, he should have held the Chippewa, which was a strong fortress in itself. By leaving the Chippewa, he put the army, its artillery, all its supplies, and the whole Niagara frontier, into the power of the enemy. Fortunately for his reputation, and that of the country, Drummond failed to avail himself of any of the advantages thus offered to him."*

Arrangements for defending Fort Erie were urged forward, and General Brown, not altogether trusting in Ripley, sent orders to General Gaines, at Sackett's Harbor, to repair to Fort Erie

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and take command of the army. The British, reinforced by General De Watteville, with a thousand men, followed the Americans and laid siege to Fort Erie, on the 3d of August. The same day a detachment, under Colonel Tucker, crossed the Niagara, for the purpose of attacking Buffalo and recapturing General Riall. This party, although subsequently increased by reinforcements to twelve hundred men, was repulsed by Major Morgan with a rifle corps of two hundred and forty men.

General Gaines arrived at the fort on the 4th of August, and entered zealously upon his important duties. The defences were in rapid progress, and the enemy were quite as active in preparing to attack the Americans. For a week or more, an incessant cannonade was kept up by the batteries of both besiegers and besieged; and frequent skirmishes took place, in one of which, on the 11th, Major Morgan lost his life. On the 14th, from various indications, it was evident that the enemy were intending to try the fortune of an assault. General Drummond had made his arrangements to assail the works at Fort Erie on the right, centre and left at the same moment; and General Gaines prepared to meet him at all points. Late in the afternoon, one of the enemy's shells lodged in a small magazine, and blew it up with a tremendous noise, which caused a loud shout on the part of the British troops, although the Americans suffered no loss of men by the explosion.

The British commander, hoping to profit by the injury which he supposed

the Americans to have received, determined to assault the fort that night, under cover of the rain and deep darkness which envelopped all surrounding objects. Accordingly, at half past two, in the morning of the 15th of August, he sent forward his right column, thirteen hundred strong, under command of Colonel Fischer. Advancing quickly and steadily, the British assailed Towson's battery with scaling ladders, and the line towards the lake with the bayonet. A tremendous fire from the battery threw them into confusion, but, urged on by Colonel Fischer, they again advanced, and again were compelled to retire. Fischer next endeavored to pass round the abattis, by wading breast deep in the lake; but this attempt also failed, and nearly two hundred of his men were killed or wounded.

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Meanwhile, the left and central columns, under Colonels Scott and Drummond, advanced to the assault of the fort. The attack was furiously made, and though gallantly resisted, was partially successful. Drummond and his corps mounted the scaling ladders, gained the parapet, and with the savage cry, "give the Yankees no quarter!" fell upon the brave men there. The bastion was lost; Captain Williams was mortally wounded; Lieutenants Watmough and M'Donough, severely. The latter, no longer able to fight, called for quarter. This was refused by Colonel Drummond, who repeated his instructions to his troops to deny it in every instance. The almost exhausted strength and spirits of M'Donough were roused by the barbarity of this order, and seizing a handspike, with

the desperation of madness, he defended himself against the assailants, until he was shot by the infuriate Drummond himself. The latter survived this act only a few minutes; he received a ball in his breast, which terminated his career.

The enemy held what they had gained until daylight, although they suffered severely. The left column had already been repulsed with great loss. General Gaines ordered up reinforcements, and vigorous efforts were made to drive out the invaders, which were beginning to be successful, when a terrible explosion took place under the platform of the bastion, and carried it away and all who were on it. The contest was now brought to a speedy close, and the enemy, repulsed at all points, retreated to their encampment.

According to the British accounts, their loss was, in killed, wounded, and missing, six hundred and fifty; the American accounts estimate the British loss at about nine hundred men, while their own was only eighty-four.

The next day, General Drummond was reinforced by two regiments; but he did not deem it advisable to renew the assault. The siege, however, was continued, and some apprehensions began to be felt as to its result. General Izard, at Plattsburg, was ordered, on the 12th of August, by the secretary of war, to proceed to the relief of the besieged army, and he accordingly set out, at the close of the month, with five thousand men, for that purpose.

*

* Armstrong (vol. ii., pp. 100–108) is particularly caustic in his review of the course pursued by Izard.

CH. XI.]

The British pushed forward their regular approaches, while the Americans assiduously labored to complete their defences. General Brown, having recovered from his wounds, reassumed the command at Fort Erie, on the 2d of September; and frequent skirmishes occurred, without any material advantage to either side.

1814.

On the 17th of September, a brilliant sortie was made against the enemy's batteries, which he had been busily occupied in erecting for a number of days, quite near to the fort; and after an hour's vigorous fighting, the objects of the sortie were accomplished, and the Americans returned to the fort in good order, with many trophies of victory. The enemy's works were carried, the labors of six or seven weeks destroyed, the cannon spiked, and a thousand men placed hors de combat. General Brown's official report speaks in glowing terms of the gallantry of both officers and men. On the night of the 21st, General Drummond broke up his camp and retired to his entrenchments behind the Chippewa.

The northern sea coast, which had thus far experienced little molestation from the enemy, became the object of attack early in the spring. On the 7th of April, a body of sailors and marines, to the number of two hundred, ascending the Connecticut River, landed at Pettipaug Point, about six miles above Saybrook, and destroyed the shipping they found there: thence, proceeding to Brockway's Ferry, they did the same; and, remained there, amusing themselves, unapprehensive of attack, for twenty-four hours. In the mean time,

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a body of militia, aided by some ma rines and sailors, under Captain Jones and Lieutenant Biddle, from the neighboring American squadron, endeavored to cut them off from retreat, but unsuccessfully. Some $200,000 worth of shipping was destroyed on this occasion.

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About this time, the coasting trade was almost destroyed by a British privateer, the Liverpool Packet, which cruised in Long Island Sound. Commodore Lewis sailed with a detachment of thirteen gunboats, and succeeded in chasing her off. Proceeding to Saybrook, on his arrival there he found upwards of fifty vessels bound eastward, but afraid to venture out. The commodore undertook to convoy them, and sailed for that purpose on the 25th of April. Lewis, with his gunboats, gallantly put himself between the coasting vessels and a British frigate and sloop of war. The coasters escaped to New London, and Lewis attacked the English vessels to considerable effect.

The harbors of New York, New London and Boston continued to be blockaded, and the whole coast was exposed to incursions of the to incursions of the enemy.* Commodore Hardy, as we have before men

* Ingersoll (vol. ii., p. 55) devotes a page or two to the subject of the "blue lights treason," as he phrases it, which the reader may examine, not without profit. Commodore Decatur, who was shut up in the harbor of New London, was very anxious to get out, in the winter of 1813, but as often as he attempted it, blue light signals, he averred, were displayed at the harbor's mouth, and the blockading squadron put on the alert. Decatur's official letter of the 20th of December, was

brought up in the House of Representatives in January, 1814, but no result came of the movement. The vituperative expression, "blue light federalist," took its rise from this quarter.