The flanking party failed to find its way, and the attack in front was not pressed.[272] The American loss did not exceed fifty men. The British loss was reported as twenty-five. Sir George Prevost and his officers were greatly pleased by their success;[273] but Prevost did not attempt to molest Hampton, who fell back by slow marches to Chateaugay, where he waited to hear from the Government. The British generals at Montreal showed little energy in thus allowing Hampton to escape; and the timidity of their attitude before Hampton’s little army was the best proof of the incompetence alleged against Prevost by many of his contemporaries. Hampton’s retreat was due more to the conduct of Armstrong than to the check at Spear’s or to the movements of Prevost. At the moment when he moved against Salaberry, October 25, a messenger arrived from Sackett’s Harbor, bringing instructions from the quartermaster-general for building huts for ten thousand men for winter quarters. These orders naturally roused Hampton’s suspicions that no serious movement against Montreal was intended. “The papers sunk my hopes,” he wrote to Armstrong, November 1,[274] “and raised serious doubts of receiving that efficacious support that had been anticipated. I would have recalled the column, but it was in motion, and the darkness of the night rendered it impracticable.” In a separate letter of the same date[275] which Hampton sent to Armstrong by Colonel King, assuming that the campaign was at an end, he carried out his declared purpose of resigning. “Events,” he said, “have had no tendency to change my opinion of the destiny intended for me, nor my determination to retire from a service where I can neither feel security nor expect honor. The campaign I consider substantially at an end.” The implication that Armstrong meant to sacrifice him was certainly disrespectful, and deserved punishment; but when Colonel King, bearing these letters, arrived in the neighborhood of Ogdensburg, he found that Armstrong had already done what Hampton reproached him for intending to do. He had retired to Albany, “suspecting ... that the campaign ... would terminate as it did.” A week afterward, November 8, Hampton received a letter from Wilkinson, written from Ogdensburg, asking him to forward supplies and march his troops to some point of junction on the river below St. Regis.[276] Hampton replied from Chateaugay that he had no supplies to forward; and as, under such circumstances, his army could not throw itself on Wilkinson’s scanty means, he should fall back on Plattsburg, and attempt to act against the enemy on some other road to be indicated.[277] Wilkinson received the letter on his arrival at Cornwall, November 12, the day after his defeat at Chrystler’s farm; and with extraordinary energy moved the whole expedition the next day to French Mills, six or seven miles up the Salmon River, within the United States lines, where it went into winter quarters.