The year closed with Amherstburg on the Detroit the only
Canadian post in American hands. On the sea the capture of the
Chesapeake by the Shannon salved the pride of England.
The last year of the war was also a year of varying fortunes. In
the far West a small body of Canadians and Indians captured
Prairie du Chien, on the Mississippi, while Michilimackinac,
which a force chiefly composed of French-Canadian voyageurs and
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relics or political favorites, had now nearly all been replaced
by abler men--Scott, Brown, Exert--and their troops were better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.
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