Wilkinson knew that the British outpost at the crossing of Lacolle Creek, numbering two hundred men all told,[28] was without support nearer than Isle aux Noix ten miles away; but it was stationed in a stone mill, with thick walls and a solid front. He took two twelve-pound field-guns to batter the mill, and crossing the boundary, March 30, with his four thousand men, advanced four or five miles to Lacolle Creek. The roads were obstructed and impassable, but his troops made their way in deep snow through the woods until they came within sight of the mill. The guns were then placed in position and opened fire; but Wilkinson was disconcerted to find that after two hours the mill was unharmed. He ventured neither to storm it nor flank it; and after losing more than two hundred men by the fire of the garrison, he ordered a retreat, and marched his army back to Champlain. With this last example of his military capacity Wilkinson disappeared from the scene of active life, where he had performed so long and extraordinary a part. Orders arrived, dated March 24, relieving him from duty under the form of granting his request for a court of inquiry. Once more he passed the ordeal of a severe investigation, and received the verdict of acquittal; but he never was again permitted to resume his command in the army. The force Wilkinson had brought from Lake Ontario, though united with that which Wade Hampton had organized, was reduced by sickness, expiration of enlistments, and other modes of depletion to a mere handful when Major-General Izard arrived at Plattsburg on the first day of May. Izard’s experience formed a separate narrative, and made a part of the autumn campaign. During the early summer the war took a different and unexpected direction, following the steps of the new Major-General Brown; for wherever Brown went, fighting followed. General Brown marched from French Mills, February 13, with two thousand men. February 28, Secretary Armstrong wrote him a letter suggesting an attack on Kingston, to be covered by a feint on Niagara.[29] Brown, on arriving at Sackett’s Harbor, consulted Chauncey, and allowed himself to be dissuaded from attacking Kingston. “By some extraordinary mental process,” Armstrong thought,[30] Brown and Chauncey “arrived at the same conclusion,--that the main action, an attack on Kingston, being impracticable, the _ruse_, intended merely to mask it, might do as well.” Brown immediately marched with two thousand men for Niagara. When the secretary learned of this movement, although it was contrary to his ideas of strategy, he wrote an encouraging letter to Brown, March 20:[31] “You have mistaken my meaning.... If you hazard anything by this mistake, correct it promptly by returning to your post. If on the other hand you left the Harbor with a competent force for its defence, go on and prosper. Good consequences are sometimes the result of mistakes.”