only three hundred men. All the others had
gone with Winchester to reinforce the men at Frenchtown. It was too late
to summon troops from other points, and Harrison waited with forebodings
of disaster.

News reached him after two days. The Americans at the Raisin had
suffered not only a defeat but a massacre. Nearly four hundred were
killed in battle or in flight. Those who survived were prisoners. No
more than thirty had escaped of a force one thousand strong. The enemy
had won this extraordinary success with five hundred white troops and
about the same number of Indians, led by Colonel Procter, whom Brock had
placed in command of the fort at Amherstburg. Procter's name is infamous
in the annals of the war. The worst traditions of Indian atrocity,
uncontrolled and even encouraged, cluster about his memory. He was later
promoted in rank instead of being degraded, a costly blunder which
England came to regret and at last redeemed. A notoriously incompetent
officer, on this one occasion of the battle of the Raisin he acted with
decision and took advantage of the American blunder.

The conduct of General Winchester after his arrival at Frenchtown is
inexplicable. He did nothing to prepare his force for action even on
learning that the British were advancing from Amherstburg. A report of
the disaster, after recording that no patrols or pickets were ordered
out during the night, goes on:

The troops were permitted to select, each for himself, such
quarters on the west side of the river as might please him best,
whilst the general took his quarters on the east side--not the
least regard being paid to defense, order, regularity, or system in
the posting of the different corps.... Destitute of artillery, or
engineers, of men who had ever heard or seen the least of an enemy;
and with but a very inadequate supply of ammunition--how he ever
could have entertained the most distant hope of success, or what
right he had to presume to claim it, is to me one of the strangest
things in the world.

At dawn, on the 21st of January, the British and Indians, having crossed
the frozen Detroit River the day before, formed within musket shot of
the American lines and opened the attack with a battery of
three-pounders. They might have rushed the camp with bayonet and
tomahawk and killed most of the defenders asleep, but the cannonade
alarmed the Kentuckians and they took cover behind a pick