etreat and fight, in
hopes of escape, but were mostly killed in the attempt by the Indians,
so greatly exasperated by the mode of warfare adopted against them from
the houses. Under this pretext most American writers have represented
the Indians, with the sanction of the English, as having committed
unheard-of cruelties against helpless men, women, and children at the
battle of Frenchtown--statements which were pure fiction, as has been
proved to demonstration in Chapter XXXV. of this history, in the
fictions of the alleged "Massacre of Wyoming."

For example, General Harrison, who was one of the few old American
generals employed by the democratic President Madison in the war, and
who was one or two days' march from Frenchtown, was informed and wrote
in a despatch two days after the battle (24th of January), that "General
Winchester had been taken by the Indians, _killed and scalped; his body
was cut up and mangled in a shocking manner, and one of his hands cut
off_;" when not a hair of General Winchester's head was injured, and he
was afterwards exchanged, and appeared on the Niagara frontier, and was
again taken prisoner, safe and sound, by the British at the battle of
Stony Creek.

General Harrison, in his despatches written five days afterwards, after
having ascertained all the facts of the battle, makes no mention of any
cruelties practised by the Indians, which he doubtless would have done
had there been any truth in the imputations against the Indians or the
English soldiers with whom they acted. He speaks of General Winchester
as among the prisoners, notwithstanding his statement five days before
that he had been killed, scalped, and cut to pieces. The following
facts, given by Mr. Thompson in his "History of the War of 1812," are
conclusive on this affair of the battle of Frenchtown, the 22nd of
January, 1813:

"Much has been said by American writers regarding the conduct of the
combined forces of the affair of Frenchtown. They have not even stopped
to charge British officers and soldiers with the most enormous
cruelties, committed in conjunction with the Indians, when it was in
their power to have prevented them. Such have been the contemptible
misrepresentations to which many publications, otherwise deserving of
merit, have descended, as well of this as of many other affairs during
the war; and even amongst a few British subjects they have gained
credence.

"General Harrison, however, in writing his des