But in the East fortune was kinder to the Canadians.
The American plan of invasion called for an attack on Montreal
from two directions; General Wilkinson was to sail and march down
the St. Lawrence from Sackett's Harbor with some eight thousand
men, while General Hampton, with four thousand, was to take the
historic route by Lake Champlain. Half-way down the St. Lawrence
Wilkinson came to grief. Eighteen hundred men whom he landed to
drive off a force of a thousand hampering his rear were
decisively defeated at Chrystler's Farm. Wilkinson pushed on for
a few days, but when word came that Hampton had also met disaster
he withdrew into winter quarters. Hampton had found Colonel de
Salaberry, with less than sixteen hundred troops, nearly all
French Canadians, making a stand on the banks of the Chateauguay,
thirty-five miles south of Montreal. He divided his force in
order to take the Canadians in front and rear, only to be
outmaneuvered and outfought in one of the most brilliant actions
of the war and forced to retire. In the closing months of the
year the Americans, compelled to withdraw from Fort George on the
Niagara, burned the adjoining town of Newark and turned its women
and children into the December snow. Drummond, who had succeeded
Brock, gained control of both sides of the Niagara and retaliated
in kind by laying waste the frontier villages from Lewiston to
Buffalo.
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