Page:Tupper family records - 1835.djvu/162

 140 SIR ISAAC BROCK.

No. 8. Extracts from Quarterly Review for July, 1 822.

" But far more important consequences than these resulted from the surrender of Hull. The whole of the Michigan territory, an extensive peninsula watered by the lake of that name, by Lake Huron and the Detroit, and which separates the Indian country from Canada, was ceded to the British by the same capitulation. No acquisition could so effectually have secured the north-western frontier of Upper Canada by cementing our alliance with the Indian nations, whose confidence and respect were gained by this success. Its effects upon the militia who had shared in it, and upon the population of the Canadas generally, were hardly less beneficial : it inspired the timid, fixed the wavering, and awed the disaffected.

" Leaving Colonel Proctor in command on the Detroit frontier and in the newly acquired territory, General Brock hastened his return to the Niagara line, with the intention of sweeping it of the American garrisons, which he knew were then unprepared for vigorous resistance. But the first intelligence which he received on his arrival at Fort George paralyzed his exertions. The com- mander in chief, Lieut.-General Sir George Prevost, had concluded an armistice with the American general, Dearborn, which provided that neither party should act offensively until the government at Washington should ratify or annul the suspension of hostilities ! Of the inactivity thus forced upon General Brock, the enemy made the best use. As the armistice did not prohibit them from trans- porting ordnance, stores, and provisions, of all of which they were greatly in need, from Lake Ontario along the Niagara line, they had time to recover the panic which had seized them on the sur- render of Hull, and to fortify their frontier. The president of the United States then refused, as might have been anticipated, to confirm the armistice, but not before an American force of six thousand three hundred men had assembled on the Niagara frontier. The British on the same frontier under General Brock, who now received orders from Sir George Prevost to act upon the defensive only, did not exceed twelve hundred regulars and militia.

" The enemy now prepared to carry the war across the Niagara. Opposite the village of Queenston on that strait, they concentrated three thousand men of their force, and at daylight, on the 13th of October, effected a landing on the Canadian shore, notwithstanding

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