Events now began to assume a more warlike aspect along the Lakes. At Detroit, the Americans had been assembling in force, and on July 12, 1812, General Hull crossed the river into Canada at the head of twenty-two hundred men, his object being to prevent further construction on British fortifications which were in progress near Sandwich. Seven days later, Commodore Earle, in command of the British naval forces on Lake Ontario, made a futile bombardment of Sacketts Harbour. Meanwhile at York, now Toronto, Major-General Brock was assembling his forces, and before Hull crossed the river, he had established himself at Fort Niagara and had sent reinforcements under Colonel Proctor to Amherstburg, a few miles down the river from Detroit, where the British were to act as a check to Hull. The latter had prepared to march upon Malden when General Brock’s appearance at the head of a large body of British and Indian troops sent him in precipitate retreat to Detroit. Before his attack upon the Americans, Brock sought an interview with the Indian chief Tecumseh and succeeded in winning his friendship to the British cause. On August 15th, the attack upon Detroit was made, beginning with a bombardment from guns situated across the river. The Americans in their trenches were eager for battle. Never had a garrison been more confident of repulsing an enemy. As the British and Indians swept up to the attack, the men stood behind their shotted guns with lighted matches in their hands. When the enemy was less than five hundred yards away, and as his men, anxiously awaiting the order to fire, were sighting along their guns, General Hull suddenly commanded the white flag to be hoisted above the fort. Never were two combatants more thoroughly astounded. With a powerful force, strongly entrenched, Hull had surrendered without firing a shot. Two thousand men longing for battle and with the odds all in their favour became the prisoners of less than eight hundred British and six hundred Indians. It was a humiliating defeat. In an hour the prowess of the Americans had dropped to the lowest ebb. Hull’s cowardice not only placed the British in supreme control of the Upper Lake region but added greatly to the foes of the Americans. Those Indian tribes that had remained neutral at once turned to the British, and the disaffected militia of Canada were moved into enthusiastic support of Brock. On this same day Hull was directly responsible for one of the most horrible massacres of the Lake country. The commander at Fort Dearborn, which stood on the present site of Chicago, had received orders from Hull to evacuate his position, and, on the morning of Brock’s bombardment of Detroit, the fort’s entire garrison of seventy soldiers, together with many women and children, set out from its protection. They had gone as far as what is now Eighteenth Street when they were attacked from the rear by Miami Indians and a merciless slaughter followed. When only twenty