Indians had captured in the first months of war, defied a strong
assault. In Upper Canada the Americans raided the western
peninsula from Detroit but made their chief attack on the Niagara
frontier. Though they scored no permanent success, they fought
well and with a fair measure of fortune. The generals with whom
they had been encumbered at the outset of the war, Revolutionary
relics or political favorites, had now nearly all been replaced
by abler men--Scott, Brown, Exert--and their troops were better
trained and better equipped. In July the British forces on the
Niagara were decisively beaten at Chippawa. Three weeks later was
fought the bloodiest battle on Canadian soil, at Lundy's Lane,
either side's victory at the moment but soon followed by the
retirement of the invading force. The British had now outbuilt
their opponents on Lake Ontario; and, though American ships
controlled Lake Erie to the end, the Ontario flotilla aided
Drummond, Brock's able successor, in forcing the withdrawal of
Exert forces from the whole peninsula in November. Farther east a
third attempt to capture Montreal had been defeated in the
spring, after Wilkinson with four thousand men had failed to
drive five hundred regulars and militia from the stone walls of
Lacolle's Mill.

Until this closing year Britain had been unable, in face of the
more vital danger from Napoleon, to send any but trifling
reenforcements to what she considered a minor theater of the war.
Now, with Napoleon in Elba, she was free to take more vigorous
action. Her navy had already swept the daring little fleet of
American frigates and American merchant marine from the seas. Now
it maintained a close blockade of all the coast and, with troops
from Halifax, captured and held the Maine coast north of the