To equalize in part this game of international see-saw, Chauncey again visited York with fourteen ships, mounting 114 guns, and plundered the defenceless capital.
On Lake Erie, Perry, with nine ships and a total broadside of 936 pounds of metal, defeated Barclay's six Canadian ships, with a total broadside of 459 pounds. These facts must be taken into impartial consideration in weighing the issue. In the west, Procter, still suffering from the shock received at Fort Meigs, with 407 troops and 800 Indians, retreated up the Thames valley, neglecting to burn his bridges in his retreat, with General Harrison and an army of 3,500 men in hot pursuit. The American general brought him to bay at Moraviantown, and in the frozen swamps the dispirited British, having lost all confidence in their fleeing commander, surrendered or escaped. It was here that the gallant and high-minded Tecumseh met his death, under distressing circumstances. The story was circulated that, mortified at Procter's proposed flight, the Shawanese chief was only restrained from shooting that officer by the interference of Colonel Elliott. For his conduct and the unexplained disaster at Moraviantown, Procter was court-martialed, severely condemned, and suspended from his command for six months.
[Illustration: TAKING OF NIAGARA, MAY 27TH, 1813. From an old Print]
The defeat of Procter was counterbalanced, however, by Colonel de Salaberry's dramatic victory over General Hampton. With 350 French Canadian Voltigeurs he hypnotized 3,500 United States troops at Chateauguay. When the fight was hottest the gallant Frenchman ordered his buglers to sound the advance, an alarming fanfare, accompanied by discharges of musketry from various points of the surrounding forest, and the enemy, thinking he was about to be attacked and flanked by superior numbers, was seized with panic, stampeded, and never halted in his retreat until he had placed twenty-five miles of country between him and the "French devils." After this, occurred the historic battle of Chrysler's Farm, on the St. Lawrence, when 2,000 U.S. regulars under General Boyd, with six field-guns, were routed, with a loss of 102 killed and 237 wounded, by a force composed of 380 regulars, militia and Indians, under Colonel Morrison, and driven back into American territory.