The two regular brigades had been subjected for three months to a new and most rigid discipline. The system of tactics hitherto in use, had been handed down from the Revolution, and was not, therefore, adapted to the improved mode of warfare. Scott, here, for the first time, introduced the French system. He drilled the officers, and they, in turn, the men. So severe and constant was this discipline, that, in the short space of three months, these brigades became intelligent, steady, and invincible as veterans. [Sidenote: July 3.] The preparations being completed, the army crossed the Niagara river, and took Fort Erie without a struggle. The main British army, under General Riall, lay at Chippewa, towards which Scott pressed, heading the advance, with his brigade, chasing before him for sixteen miles, a detachment commanded by the Marquis of Tweesdale, who said he could not account for the ardor of the pursuit until he remembered it was the 4th of July, our great anniversary. At dark the Marquis crossed the Chippewa, behind which lay the British army. This river enters the Niagara nearly at right angles. Two miles farther up, Street's Creek joins the Niagara also, and behind it Gen. Brown drew up the American forces. Those two miles of interval between the streams was an open plain, skirted on one side by the Niagara river and on the other by a forest. In the morning Gen. Brown resolved to advance and attack the British in their position. The latter had determined on a similar movement against the Americans, and unbeknown to each other, the one prepared to cross the bridge of Chippewa, and the other that of Street's Creek.