Page:Tupper family records - 1835.djvu/28

 10 MEMOIR OF SIR ISAAC BROCK.

"By what new principle are they to be prevented from defending their property ? If their warfare, from being different to that of white people, be more terrible to the enemy, let him retrace his steps. They seek him not, and cannot expect to find women and children in an invading army ; but they are men, and have equal rights with all other men to defend them- selves and their property when invaded."

The deeds of the American general, however, but ill accorded with his boasted and real superiority of force ; and as his threats had not the effect which he intended, it had been better in him to have withheld them. After wasting nearly a month in preparations for the siege of Fort Amherstburgh, and not meeting with the welcome from the inhabitants in the neigh- bourhood which he had fondly anticipated, he retraced his steps precipitately to Fort Detroit, whither he returned with his army on the 8th of August. Major- General Brock reached Amherstburgh by water on the 13th, with a reinforcement of three hundred men, chiefly militia, having traversed Lake Erie in open boats, when he immediately determined on following the enemy into his own territory, and on attempting, by a sudden and resolute attack, the annihilation of his power in that quarter. With this view the troops marched with the utmost expedition to Sandwich, where a few guns were placed in battery, from which a fire was opened against Fort Detroit on the 1 5th of August. On this day Major-General Brock trans- mitted a summons to his adversary, in which he declared, "that the force at his disposal authorised him to require the immediate surrender of Fort Detroit, and that he was disposed to enter into such conditions as would satisfy the most scrupulous sense

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