Hull with a rapidity and decision that seemed to paralyze his
senile and irresolute opponent. The latter retreated to Detroit,
where, without striking a blow, he surrendered 1,400 men to Brock's
nearly equal force, which consisted nearly one half of Indians under
Tecumseh. On the Niagara frontier, an estimable and honest old
gentleman and worthy citizen, who knew nothing of military matters,
Gen. Van Rensselaer, tried to cross over and attack the British at
Queenstown; 1,100 Americans got across and were almost all killed or
captured by a nearly equal number of British, Canadians, and Indians,
while on the opposite side a large number of their countrymen looked
on, and with abject cowardice refused to cross to their assistance.
The command of the army was then handed over to a ridiculous
personage named Smythe, who issued proclamations so bombastic that
they really must have come from an unsound mind, and then made a
ludicrously abortive effort at invasion, which failed almost of
its own accord. A British and Canadian force of less than 400 men
was foiled in an assault on Ogdensburg, after a slight skirmish,
by about 1,000 Americans under Brown; and with this trifling
success the military operations of the year came to an end.

Early in 1813, Ogdensburg was again attacked, this time by between
500 and 600 British, who took it after a brisk resistance from some
300 militia; the British lost 60 and the Americans 20, in killed
and wounded. General Harrison, meanwhile, had begun the campaign
in the Northwest. At Frenchtown, on the river Raisin, Winchester's
command of about 900 Western troops was surprised by a force of
1,100 men, half of them Indians, under the British Colonel Proctor.
The right division, taken by surprise, gave up at once; the left
division, mainly Kentucky riflemen, and strongly posted in houses
and stockaded enclosures, made a stout resistance, and only