A notoriously incompetent officer, on this one occasion of the battle of the Raisin he acted with decision and took advantage of the American blunder.
The conduct of General Winchester after his arrival at Frenchtown is inexplicable.

He did nothing to prepare his force for action even on learning that the British were advancing from Amherstburg.

A report of the disaster, after recording that no patrols or pickets were ordered out during the night, goes on: The troops were permitted to select, each for himself, such quarters on the west side of the river as might please him best, whilst the general took his quarters on the east side--not the least regard being paid to defense, order, regularity, or system in the posting of the different corps....

Destitute of artillery, or engineers, of men who had ever heard or seen the least of an enemy; and with but a very inadequate supply of ammunition--how he ever could have entertained the most distant hope of success, or what right he had to presume to claim it, is to me one of the strangest things in the world.
At dawn, on the 21st of January, the British and Indians, having crossed the frozen Detroit River the day before, formed within musket shot of the American lines and opened the attack with a battery of three-pounders.

They might have rushed the camp with bayonet and tomahawk and killed most of the defenders asleep, but the cannonade alarmed the Kentuckians and they took cover behind a picket fence, using their long rifles so expertly that they killed or wounded a hundred and eighty-five of the British regulars, who thereupon had to abandon their artillery.