ry. By September 4 the whole body had reached to
the village of Chazy, twenty-five miles from Plattsburg. Thus far, to
the mouth of the Little Chazy River, where the supplies of the army
were to be landed, no opposition was experienced. The American
squadron waiting on the defensive at Plattsburg, the left flank of the
British received constant support from their flotilla of gunboats and
galleys under the command of Captain Pring, who seized also the
American Island La Motte, in the narrows of the lake, abreast the
Little Chazy. The following day, September 5, delays began to be met
through the trees felled and bridges broken by Macomb's orders. On the
6th there was some skirmishing between the advanced guards; but the
American militia "could not be prevailed on to stand, notwithstanding
the exertions of their officers, although the fields were divided by
strong stone walls, and they were told that the enemy could not
possibly cut them off."[413] Deprived of this support, the small body
of regulars could do little, and the British Peninsulars pushed on
contemptuously, and almost silently. "They never deployed in their
whole march," reported Macomb, "always pressing on in column." That
evening they entered Plattsburg. Macomb retreated across the Saranac,
which divided the town. He removed from the bridges their planking,
which was used to form breastworks to dispute any attempt to force a
passage, and then retired to the works previously prepared by Izard.
These were on the bluffs on the south side of the Saranac, overlooking
the bay, and covering the peninsula embraced between the lake and the
river.

From the 7th to the 11th, the day of the battle, the British were
employed in preparations for battering the forts, preliminary to an
assault, and there was constant skirmishing at the bridges and fords.
Macomb utilized the same time to strengthen his works, aided by the
numbers of militia continually arriving, who labored night and day
with great spirit. Prevost's purposes and actions were dominated by
the urgency of haste, owing to the lateness of the season; and this
motive co-operated with a certain captiousness of temper to
precipitate him now into a grave error of judgment and of conduct. At
Plattsburg he found the small American army intrenched behind a
fordable river, the bridges of which had been made useless; and in the
bay lay the American squadron, anchored with a view to defence. The
two were not strictly in