Meanwhile the new British general, Gordon Drummond, second in ability to Brock alone, was hurrying to the Niagara frontier. He was preceded by Colonel Murray, who took possession of Fort George on the 12th, the day McClure crossed the Niagara river. Murray at once made a plan to take the American Fort Niagara opposite; and Drummond at once approved it for immediate execution. On the night of the 18th six hundred men were landed on the American side three miles up the river. At four the next morning Murray led them down to the fort, rushing the sentries and pickets by the way with the bayonet in dead silence. He then told off two hundred men to take a bastion at the same time that he was to lead the other four hundred straight through the main gate, which he knew would soon be opened to let the reliefs pass out. Everything worked to perfection. When the reliefs came out they were immediately charged and bayoneted, as were the first astonished men off duty who ran out of their quarters to see what the matter was. A stiff hand-to-hand fight followed. But every American attempt to form was instantly broken up; and presently the whole place surrendered. Drummond, who was delighted with such an excellent beginning, took care to underline the four significant words referring to the enemy's killed and wounded--_all with the bayonet_. This was done in no mere vulgar spirit of bravado, still less in abominable bloody-mindedness. It was the soldierly recognition of a particularly gallant feat of arms, carried out with such conspicuously good discipline that its memory is cherished, even to the present day, by the 100th, afterwards raised again as the Royal Canadians, and now known as the Prince of Wales's Leinster regiment. A facsimile of Drummond's underlined order is one of the most highly honoured souvenirs in the officers' mess. Not a moment was lost in following up this splendid feat of arms. The Indians drove the American militia out of Lewiston, which the advancing redcoats burnt to the ground. Fort Schlosser fell next, then Black Rock, and finally Buffalo. Each was laid in ashes. Thus, before 1813 ended, the whole American side of the Niagara was nothing but one long, bare line of blackened desolation, with the sole exception of Fort Niagara, which remained secure in British hands until the war was over. CHAPTER VI 1814: LUNDY'S LANE, PLATTSBURG, AND THE GREAT BLOCKADE