cision. The
concentration of the army at Sackett's had not been effected until the
18th. On the 16th de Rottenburg, having coasted the north shore of the
lake, reached Kingston with his two regiments, reckoned by Armstrong
at fifteen hundred men. These raised to twenty-two hundred the
garrison previously estimated at seven to eight hundred.[112] The
numbers of the Americans were diminishing by sickness, and no further
re-enforcement was to be expected, excepting by uniting with the
Champlain division. This had been on the move from Plattsburg since
September 19, and was now at Chateaugay, on the Chateaugay River; a
local centre, whence roads running northeast, to the river's junction
with the St. Lawrence, immediately opposite the island of Montreal,
and west to St. Regis on the St. Lawrence, forty miles higher up, gave
facilities for moving in either direction to meet Wilkinson's advance.
By a letter of October 12 from its commander, General Wade Hampton,
this corps numbered "four thousand effective infantry, with a
well-appointed train." To bring it by land to Sackett's, over a
hundred miles distant, was considered too protracted and laborious in
the state of the roads; better utilize the current of the St. Lawrence
to carry Wilkinson down to it. In view of these circumstances, and of
the supposed increased strength of Kingston, Armstrong decided to
abandon the attack upon the latter and to move against Montreal, which
was believed to be much weaker, as well as strategically more
important.[113] The movement was hazardous; for, as planned, ultimate
success depended upon junction with another corps, which had natural
difficulties of its own to contend with, while both were open to
obstruction by an active enemy. As a distinguished military critic has
said, "The Americans committed upon this occasion the same error that
the British Government did in their plan for Burgoyne's march from the
head of Champlain to Albany,--that of making the desired result of an
important operation depend upon the success of all its constituent or
component parts." It is one of the most common of blunders in war.
Wilkinson and Hampton did not meet. Both moved, but one had retreated
before the other arrived.

In fact, while Montreal, as the most important point in Canada for the
British, except Quebec, and at the same time the one most accessible
to the United States, was the true objective of the latter,
concentration against it should hav