as the burning of St David's on
July 19 by a Colonel Stone; partly because it was a 'Tory
village' and partly because the American militia mistakenly
thought that one of their officers, Brigadier-General
Swift, had been killed by a prisoner to whom he had given
quarter.

When, on the 23rd of July, Brown at last received Chauncey's
disappointing answer, he immediately stopped manoeuvring
along the lower Niagara and prepared to execute an
alternative plan of marching diagonally across the Niagara
peninsula straight for the British position at Burlington.
To do this he concentrated at the Chippawa on the 24th.
But by the time he was ready to put his plan into execution,
on the morning of the 25th, he found himself in close
touch with the British in his immediate front. Their
advanced guard of a thousand men, under Colonel Pearson,
had just taken post at Lundy's Lane, near the Falls.
Their main body, under Riall, was clearing both banks of
the lower Niagara. And Drummond himself had just arrived
at Fort Niagara. Neither side knew the intentions of the
other. But as the British were clearing the whole country
up to the Falls, and as the Americans were bent on striking
diagonally inland from a point beside the Falls, it
inevitably happened that each met the other at Lundy's
Lane, which runs inland from the Canadian side of the
Falls, at right angles to the river, and therefore between
the two opposing armies.

When Drummond, hurrying across from York, landed at Fort
Niagara in the early morning of the fateful 25th, he
found that the orders he had sent over on the 23rd were
already being carried out, though in a slightly modified
form. Colonel Tucker was marching off from Fort Niagara
to Lewiston, which he took without opposition. Then,
first making sure that the heights beyond were also clear,
he crossed over the Niagara to Queenston, where his men
had dinner with those who had marched up on the Canadian
side from Fort George. Immediately after dinner half the
total sixteen hundred present marched back to garrison
Forts George and Niagara, while the other half marched
forward, up-stream, on the Canadian side, with Drummond,
towards Lundy's Lane, whither Riall had preceded them
with reinforcements for the advanced guard under Colonel
Pearson. In the meantime Brown had heard about the taking
of Lewiston, and, fearing that the British might take
Fort Schlosser too, had at once given up all idea of his
diagonal march on