along the western end of Lake Ontario, from Fort Niagara
to Burlington. During this period no great operations
took place. But two minor incidents served to exasperate
feelings on both sides. Eight Canadian traitors were
tried and hanged at Ancaster near Burlington; and Loyalists
openly expressed their regret that Willcocks and others
had escaped the same fate. Willcocks had been the
ring-leader of the parliamentary opposition to Brock in
1812; and had afterwards been exceedingly active on the
American side, harrying every Loyalist he and his raiders
could lay their hands on. He ended by cheating the gallows,
after all, as he fell in a skirmish towards the end of
the present campaign on the Niagara frontier. The other
exasperating incident was the burning of St David's on
July 19 by a Colonel Stone; partly because it was a 'Tory
village' and partly because the American militia mistakenly
thought that one of their officers, Brigadier-General
Swift, had been killed by a prisoner to whom he had given
quarter.

When, on the 23rd of July, Brown at last received Chauncey's
disappointing answer, he immediately stopped manoeuvring
along the lower Niagara and prepared to execute an
alternative plan of marching diagonally across the Niagara
peninsula straight for the British position at Burlington.
To do this he concentrated at the Chippawa on the 24th.
But by the time he was ready to put his plan into execution,
on the morning of the 25th, he found himself in close
touch with the British in his immediate front. Their
advanced guard of a thousand men, under Colonel Pearson,