The next morning, Jan. 17, 1813, Col. William Lewis, of the Fifth Kentucky militia, started for the river Raisin, with four hundred and fifty men.[66] A few hours afterward he was followed by Colonel Allen with one hundred and ten men. No reports told what regiments were taken, or where they were at any moment stationed; but Lewis and Allen probably led twelve companies, drawn from four Kentucky regiments,--the Seventeenth United States Infantry, recruited in Kentucky, commanded by Col. Samuel Wells; the Kentucky Rifles, Col. John Allen; the First Kentucky Infantry; and Colonel Lewis’s regiment, the Fifth Kentucky Infantry,--in all, six hundred and sixty men, representing the flower of Kentucky. They marched on the ice, along the shore of Maumee Bay and Lake Erie, until nightfall, when they camped, and at two o’clock the next afternoon, January 18, reached without meeting resistance the houses on the south bank of the river Raisin. The north bank was occupied, according to British authority,[67] by fifty Canadian militia and two hundred Indians. The British force opened fire with a three-pound howitzer. The action began at three o’clock and lasted till dark, when the enemy after an obstinate resistance was driven about two miles into the woods with inconsiderable loss.[68] The action was sharp, and cost the Americans not less than twelve killed and fifty-five wounded, reducing their effective number to six hundred. Colonel Lewis had orders to take possession of Frenchtown, and hold it. He reported his success to General Winchester at the rapids, and remained at Frenchtown waiting further orders. Winchester became then aware that the situation was hazardous. Six hundred men were with him in a half-fortified camp on the north bank of the Maumee; six hundred more were thirty miles in advance, at the Raisin River; while fully two thousand--or, according to Harrison’s estimate, four thousand[69]--enemies held two fortresses only eighteen miles beyond the Raisin. The Kentuckians at the Maumee, equally aware of their comrades’ peril, insisted on going to their aid. Winchester promptly started on the evening of January 19, and arrived at Frenchtown the next morning. Colonel Wells’s Seventeenth United States Infantry, two hundred and fifty men, followed, arriving at Frenchtown in the evening.[70] Winchester, before leaving the Maumee Rapids, sent a despatch to Harrison with a report of the battle of the 18th, which met Harrison on the road hurrying to the Maumee Rapids. The next morning, January 20, Harrison arrived at the camp on the Maumee, and found there about three hundred Kentucky troops,[71] the remainder being all with Winchester at the river Raisin. Probably Harrison, whose own caution was great, felt the peril of Winchester’s situation,[72] but he sent his inspector-general, Captain Hart, forward with orders to Winchester “to hold the ground we had got at any rate,”[73] while he wrote to the Secretary of War:--