and threatening the British line of communication to the
west. No sooner was Prevost clear of Prescott than
Macdonell led his four hundred regulars and one hundred
militia over the ice against the American fort. His direct
assault failed. But when he had carried the village at
the point of the bayonet the garrison ran. Macdonell then
destroyed the fort, the barracks, and four vessels. He
also took seventy prisoners, eleven guns, and a large
supply of stores.

With the spring came new movements in the West. On May
9 Procter broke camp and retired from an unsuccessful
siege of Fort Meigs (now Toledo) at the south-western
corner of Lake Erie. He had started this siege a fortnight
earlier with a thousand whites and a thousand Indians
under Tecumseh; and at first had seemed likely to succeed.
But after the first encounter the Indians began to leave;
while most of the militia had soon to be sent home to
their farms to prevent the risk of starvation. Thus
Procter presently found himself with only five hundred
effectives in face of a much superior and constantly
increasing enemy. In the summer he returned to the attack,
this time against the American position on the lower
Sandusky, nearly thirty miles east of Fort Meigs. There,
on August 2, he tried to take Fort Stephenson. But his
light guns could make no breach; and he lost a hundred
men in the assault.

Meanwhile Dearborn, having first moved up from Plattsburg
to Sackett's Harbour, had attacked York on April 27 with