. Brocke, the civil governorship of the Upper
province devolved upon Major Gen'l. Roger Sheaffe, the senior military
officer there, and to him, Gen'l. Smyth, the new American commander at
Niagara, applied for an armistice, which was granted, and which lasted
from the battle of Queenston until the 20th of November. Nothing could
have been more silly than this consent to an armistice on the part of a
general so very fortunate as General Sheaffe had been. He needed no
rest. He could gain nothing by inactivity. Delay necessary to the enemy
was of course injurious to him. Without any molestation whatever the
Americans were enabled to forward their naval stores from Black Rock to
Presque Isle, by water, which, had hostilities been active, would have
been impossible. This truce, not to bury the dead, or preparatory to
submission, was obtained with the view of gaining time, so that a fleet
might be equipped to co-operate with the army, by wresting from the
British their previous superiority on the lakes. General Smyth had,
with the true trickery of the diplomatist, rather than with the blunt
honesty of the soldier, exerted himself during the armistice, in the
preparation of boats for another attempt to invade Upper Canada.
Alexander Smyth, Brigadier-General, in command of the American army of
the centre, though a rogue, in a diplomatic point of view, was not
necessarily a fool. He had shrewd notions in a small way. Like a true
downeast Yankee, he knew the effect of soft sawder upon human nature.
Like the unfortunate Hull, before taking possession of a territory so
extensive as Upper Canada, he thought it necessary to assure the
stranger that he was, on submitting to be conquered, to become "a
fellow citizen." He proclaimed this interesting fact to his own
companions in arms. If the stranger citizens behaved peaceably, they
were to be secure in their persons, as a matter of course, but only in
their properties so far as Alexander's imperious necessities would
admit, and how far that would have been, time was to unfold. He
strictly forbade private plundering, but whatever was "booty,"
according to the usages of war--"booty and beauty," doubtless
combined,--Alexander's soldiery were to have. Appealing to the
trader-instincts of his hordes, he offered two hundred dollars a head
for artillery horses, of the enemy, and forty dollars for the arms and
spoils of each savage warrior, who should be killed, and every man, who
should shrink,