He therefore wisely determined to retreat, whilst retreat was practicable, and whilst it could be effected with the least possible loss. The order was accordingly given for that purpose, and such was the energy and promptitude of the execution, that the retreat was conducted without the smallest molestation from the enemy, who, in fact, were not aware of it until it was nearly completed. Notwithstanding the almost impassable state of the roads, from the rains which were falling, not a gun was left behind; and, although the subject has been much exaggerated, yet in fact only a very small quantity of provisions and stores, together with _fifteen_ wounded men in hospital, was left to the enemy. Of deserters, the utmost amount was under 300 men, which was the consequence, not as has been falsely asserted, of the _retreat_,[91] but of the _advance_, many of them having deserted upon our entry, and as we afterwards penetrated into the American territory; a consequence which almost invariably attended every attack upon their frontier, and was most strongly manifested in Colonel Scott's expedition, in December, 1813, against part of General Wilkinson's army, when, out of a force of not more than 500 men, he lost upwards of 90 by desertion. The exaggerated account of this retreat having induced his Majesty's government to call upon Sir George Prevost for a more particular detail of the losses attending it, it appears, by Sir George Prevost's reply to Lord Bathurst's despatch on the subject, together with the documents accompanying it, that the whole loss in killed, wounded, prisoners, and deserters, from the time of the army entering the American territory, until it was withdrawn, did not amount to 500 men. This affords a complete answer to one of the Reviewer's concluding mis-statements, that when Sir George Prevost wrote the despatch from Montreal, though dated at Plattsburg,[92] "he knew that the desertion of 800 men had attended his shameful defeat."