After the disaster at the River Raisin, General Harrison concentrated his remaining troops--twelve hundred men--and built Fort Meigs, at the foot of the rapids of the Maumee. This work was on the right bank of the stream, on high ground, and enclosed about eight acres. There were several strong block-houses, and considerable artillery. General Proctor, with a force of about one thousand British and twelve hundred Indians, and two gunboats, set out on an expedition against this post in April. He crossed the lake, ascended the river, and on the 28th landed about two miles below the fort, but on the opposite bank. Here he erected a battery, and subsequently he planted two others, above the fort but on the left bank, and one below and very near it on the right bank. The Indians, commanded by the famous Tecumseh, were landed on the right bank, to invest the fort in the rear. The batteries opened fire on the 1st of May, and {091}kept it up steadily four days; but it had very little effect, owing largely to a traverse twelve feet high and twenty feet thick which the garrison had constructed while the batteries were being erected. Proctor on the third day demanded a surrender, with the usual threat of massacre. Learning that General Green Clay was coming to him with a reënforcement of eleven hundred Kentuckians, Harrison had sent word to him to hurry forward as fast as possible. At midnight on the 4th of May, two officers and fifteen men from this force descended the river and entered the fort, with the news that Clay was but eighteen miles distant. Harrison sent orders to him to send eight hundred of his men across the river at a point a mile and a half above the fort, thence to march down the left bank and capture and destroy the enemy's batteries; the remaining three hundred to march down the right bank and fight their way through the Indians to the fort. The detachment landed on the left bank, commanded by Colonel Dudley, moved silently down upon the British batteries, and then, raising a terrific yell, were upon them before the enemy could realize that he was attacked. The guns were spiked and their carriages destroyed; but instead of crossing to the fort at once, as Harrison's orders direct{092}ed, the victors, flushed with their success, were drawn into a running fight with some Indians, and finally fell into an ambush, and all but about a hundred and fifty were either captured or killed. That number reached their boats and crossed. The detachment on the right bank, under General Clay himself, had some difficulty in landing, and lost a few men in fighting its way through the Indians, but ultimately reached the fort. While these movements were going on, three hundred and fifty men of the garrison, under Colonel John Miller, made a sortie against the battery on the right bank, captured it, spiked the guns, and returned with forty-three prisoners.