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The plan was not by any means an injudicious one, and its failure was almost marvellous. The expeditions were checked, and indeed annihilated by petty skirmishes, and that lack of decision, so fatal to military commanders. Hampton advanced on the 20th of September. At Odelltown he surprised the British picquet, and from thence he took the road leading to L'Acadie.
At two points near the American boundary-line, Napierville and Odelltown, the loyal militia and regulars clashed with the rebels and dispersed them. Once more the jails were filled, which the mercy of Durham had emptied. Once more the cry was raised for rebel blood, and the winter sky was red with the flame of burning houses which had sheltered the insurgents.
The defeat of Côté and his men at Lacolle meant that Nelson's line of communications with his base on the American frontier was cut. At the same time he received word that Sir John Colborne was advancing on Napierville from Laprairie with a strong force of regulars and volunteers. Under these circumstances he determined to fall back on Odelltown, just north of the border.
More men and more munitions were hurriedly despatched to all the United States frontier forts, and renewed courage imparted to some of the commanders and their hesitating brigades. The first to waken up after the expiration of this, to the Americans, merciful truce, was General Dearborn, who, with 2,000 men, attacked Odelltown, only to be driven back to Lake Champlain by de Salaberry.
Armand and remained there unmolested, while General Wilkinson prepared to assault Odelltown and Lacolle Mills. As soon as Wilkinson was fully prepared for the assault, Macomb joined him, and the Americans, numbering about five thousand men, entered Odelltown.
General Wilkinson, who had removed his headquarters from Salmon River to Plattsburg, advanced with five thousand men from the latter place, crossed the Canadian frontier at Odelltown, and pushed on to Lacolle, about ten miles from the border.
But the chief scene of his activities was the Canadian wilderness at the north end of Lake Champlain. Chazy, Champlain, Odelltown, La Colle Mill, Isle au Noix, and Richelieu River he knew intimately and had also acquired a good deal of French in learning their country.
He was called upon to put down another rebellious movement led by Robert Nelson, brother of Wolfred Nelson, then in exile. At Caughnawaga, Montarville Mountain, Beauharnois, and Odelltown the insurgents made a stand from time to time, but were soon scattered.
He had with him about a thousand men, eight hundred of whom were armed with muskets. He arrived at Odelltown on the morning of November 9, to find it occupied by about two hundred loyal militia, under the command of the inspecting field-officer of the district, Lieutenant-Colonel Taylor. He had no difficulty in driving in the loyalist outposts; but the village itself proved a harder nut to crack.
His parishioners were loyal, Father Paquin contended in a well-reasoned petition; it was not they but the discontented people of Grand Brulé who had seized the town; yet the result was ruin. In the affair of Odelltown in 1838 a citizen's barn was burnt down by orders of the British officer commanding because it gave shelter to the rebels.
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