the British forces were directed and supplied.

Quick work, by water and land together, was essential for American success before the winter, even if the Canadians were really so anxious to change their own flag for the Stars and Stripes. But the American government put the cart before the horse—the Army before the Navy—and weakened the military forces of invasion by dividing them into two independent commands. General Henry Dearborn was appointed commander-in-chief, but only with control over the north-eastern country, that is, New England and New York. Thirty years earlier Dearborn had served in the War of Independence as a junior officer; and he had been Jefferson's Secretary of War. Yet he was not much better trained as a leader than his raw men were as followers, and he was now sixty-one. He established his headquarters at Greenbush, nearly opposite Albany, so that he could advance on Montreal by the line of the Hudson, Lake Champlain, and the Richelieu. The intended advance, however, did not take place this year. Greenbush was rather a recruiting depot and camp of instruction than the base of an army in the field; and the actual campaign had hardly begun before the troops went into winter quarters. The commander of the north-western army was General William Hull. And his headquarters were to be Detroit, from which Upper Canada was to be quickly overrun without troubling about the co-operation of the Navy. Like Dearborn, Hull had served in the War of Independence. But he had been a civilian ever since; he was now fifty-nine; and his only apparent qualification was his having been governor of Michigan for seven years. Not until September, after two defeats on land, was Commodore Chauncey ordered 'to assume command of the naval force on Lakes Erie and Ontario, and use every exertion to obtain control of them this fall.' Even then Lake Champlain, an essential link both in the frontier system and on Dearborn's proposed line of march, was totally forgotten.

To complete the dispersion of force, Eustis forgot all about the military detachments at the western forts. Fort Dearborn (now Chicago) and Michilimackinac, important as points of connection with the western tribes, were left to the devices of their own inadequate garrisons. In 1801 Dearborn himself, Eustis's predecessor as Secretary of War, had recommended a peace strength of two hundred men at Michilimackinac, usually known as 'Mackinaw.' In 1812 there were not so many at Mackinaw and Chicago put together.

It was not a promising outlook to an American military eye—the cart before the horse, the thick end of the wedge turned towards the enemy, three incompetent men giving disconnected orders on the northern frontier, and the western posts neglected. But Eustis was full of self-confidence. Hull was 'enthusing' his militiamen. And Dearborn was for the moment surpassing both, by proposing to 'operate, with effect, at the same moment, against Niagara, Kingston, and Montreal.'

From the Canadian side the outlook was also dark enough to the trained eye; though not for the same reasons. The menace here was from an enemy whose general resources exceeded those in Canada by almost twenty to one. The silver lining to the cloud was the ubiquitous British Navy and the superior training and discipline of the various little military forces immediately available for defence.

The Maritime Provinces formed a subordinate command, based on the strong naval station of Halifax, where a regular garrison was always maintained by the Imperial government. They were never invaded, or even seriously threatened. It was only in 1814 that they came directly into the scene of action, and then only as the base from which the invasion of Maine was carried out.

We must therefore turn to Quebec as the real centre of Canadian defence, which, indeed, it was best fitted to be, not only from its strategical situation, but from the fact that it was the seat of the governor-general and commander-in-chief, Sir George Prevost. Like Sir John Sherbrooke, the governor of Nova Scotia, Prevost was a professional soldier with an unblemished record in the Army. But, though naturally anxious to do well, and though very suavely diplomatic, he was not the man, as we shall often see, either to face a military crisis or to stop the Americans from stealing marches on him by negotiation. On the outbreak of war he was at headquarters in Quebec, dividing his time between his civil and military duties, greatly concerned with international diplomacy, and always full of caution.

At York (now Toronto) in Upper Canada a very different man was meanwhile preparing to checkmate Hull's 'north-western army' of Americans, which was threatening to invade the province. Isaac Brock was not only a soldier born and bred, but, alone among the leaders on either side, he had the priceless gift of genius. He was now forty-two, having been born in Guernsey on October 6, 1769, in the same year as Napoleon and Wellington. Like the Wolfes and the Montcalms, the Brocks had followed the noble profession of arms for many generations. Nor were the De Lisles, his mother's family, less distinguished for the number of soldiers and sailors they had been giving to England ever since the Norman Conquest. Brock himself, when only twenty-nine, had commanded the 49th Foot in Holland under Sir John Moore, the future hero of Corunna, and Sir Ralph Abercromby, who was so soon to fall victorious in Egypt. Two years after this he had stood beside another and still greater man at Copenhagen, 'mighty Nelson,' who there gave a striking instance of how a subordinate inspired by genius can win the day by disregarding the over-caution of a commonplace superior. We may be sure that when Nelson turned his blind eye on Parker's signal of recall the lesson was not thrown away on Brock.

For ten long years of inglorious peace Brock had now been serving on in Canada, while his comrades in arms were winning distinction on the battlefields of Europe. This was partly due to his own excellence: he was too good a man to be spared after his first five years were up in 1807; for the era of American hostility had then begun. He had always been observant. But after 1807 he had redoubled his efforts to 'learn Canada,' and learn her thoroughly. People and natural resources, products and means of transport, armed strength on both sides of the line and the best plan of defence, all were studied with unremitting zeal. In 1811 he became the acting lieutenant-governor and commander of the forces in Upper Canada, where he soon found out that the members of parliament returned by the 'American vote' were bent on thwarting every effort he could make to prepare the province against the impending storm. In 1812, on the very day he heard that war had been declared, he wished to strike the unready Americans hard and instantly at one of their three accessible points of assembly-Fort Niagara, at the upper end of Lake Ontario, opposite Fort George, which stood on the other side of the Niagara river; Sackett's Harbour, at the lower end of Lake Ontario, thirty-six miles from Kingston; and Ogdensburg, on the upper St Lawrence, opposite Fort Prescott. But Sir George Prevost, the governor-general, was averse from an open act of war against the Northern States, because they were hostile to Napoleon and in favour of maintaining peace with the British; while Brock himself was soon turned from this purpose by news of Hull's American invasion farther west, as well as by the necessity of assembling his own thwarting little parliament at York.

The nine days' session, from July 27 to August 5, yielded the indispensable supplies. But the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, as a necessary war measure, was prevented by the disloyal minority, some of whom wished to see the British defeated and all of whom were ready to break their oath of allegiance whenever it suited them to do so. The patriotic majority, returned by the votes of United Empire