The season was already advanced before St. Clair took the field. The whole force of regulars and levies able to march from Fort Washington did not much exceed two thousand men. Desertion reduced the number to about fourteen hundred before they had advanced far into the hostile territory. Continuing the march, however, on the 3d of November he encamped on a piece of commanding ground, within fifteen miles of the Miami villages. An interval of only seventy paces was left between the two wings of the army. The right was in some degree protected by a creek with a steep bank; the left by cavalry and pickets. Colonel Oldham, who commanded the remains of the Kentucky levies, was sent across the creek and took a position on the first rising ground beyond it, about a quarter of a mile distant. Indians were seen during the afternoon and evening, skulking about the camp, and were fired at by the sentinels, yet neither St. Clair nor Butler took any adequate measures to ward off the impending blow, or prevent a surprise. Indeed, they did not expect to be attacked. Meantime the Indians were holding a grand war council. The plan of attack was decided, and the order and rank of the various tribes settled, and positions assigned them. The Wyandots stretched to the west; the Delawares were stationed next to them; the Senecas third in order, while the other tribes and bands took similar positions on the other side. The Turtle, acting as commander-in-chief, superintended and stimulated the whole, but headed no particular detachment; the arm of the warrior was to do much, but the eye and voice of the chieftain much more. Nothing happened during the night to alarm the Americans, and the noise and stir of the outskirts in the early part of the evening gradually subsided. All at length was silent, and it might well be supposed, as it probably was, that the enemy had taken advantage of the darkness of the night to make good a precipitate retreat, or that their whole force as yet consisted only of a few scouting and scalping parties. But they were soon undeceived. On the morning of November 4, the militia were violently attacked between dawn and sunrise by a large body of Indians, who, with terrific yells, poured in a volley of musketry along the entire length of the picket line. Never was surprise more complete. The ranks of the militia were thrown into confusion at once by the fury of the onset, the heavy firing, and the appalling whoops and yells of the throngs of painted savages. After a brief resistance they broke and fled in wild panic to the camp of the regulars, among whom they rushed like frightened sheep, spreading confusion and demoralization.