in the words of Macomb's own official report, 'so undaunted
was the enemy that he never deployed in his whole march,
always pressing on in column'; that is, the British
veterans simply brushed the Americans aside without
deigning to change from their column of march into a line
of battle. Prevost's duty was therefore perfectly plain.
With all the odds in his favour ashore, and with the
power of changing the odds in his favour afloat, he ought
to have captured Macomb's position in the early morning
and turned both his own and Macomb's artillery on
Macdonough, who would then have been forced to leave his
moorings for the open lake, where Downie would have had
eight hours of daylight to fight him at long range.

What Prevost actually did was something disgracefully
different. Having first wasted time by his attempted
armistice, and so hindered preparations at the base,
between La Prairie and Chambly, he next proceeded to
cross the frontier too soon. He reported home that Downie
could not be ready before September 15. But on August 31
he crossed the line himself, only twenty-five miles from
his objective, thus prematurely showing the enemy his
hand. Then he began to goad the unhappy Downie to his
doom. Downie's flagship, the _Confiance_, named after a
French prize which Yeo had taken, was launched only on
August 25, and hauled out into the stream only on September
7. Her scratch crew could not go to battle quarters till
the 8th; and the shipwrights were working madly at her
up to the very moment that the first shot was fired in
her fatal action on the 11th. Yet Prevost tried to force