At length both parties retired, badly punished.

The Americans had lost all ardor for pursuit and on the following day retreated ten miles and were soon ordered to return to Fort George.
General Dearborn was much distressed by this unlucky episode and was in such feeble health that he again begged to be relieved.

He was, he said, "so reduced in strength as to be incapable of any command." General Morgan Lewis took temporary command at Niagara, but, being soon called to Sackett's Harbor, he was succeeded by General Boyd, whom Lewis was kind enough to describe, by way of recommendation, in these terms: "A compound of ignorance, vanity, and petulance, with nothing to recommend him but that species of bravery in the field which is vaporing, boisterous, stifling reflection, blinding observation, and better adapted to the bully than the soldier." In order to live up to this encomium, Boyd sent Colonel Boerstler on the 24th of June, with four hundred infantry and two guns, to bombard and take an annoying stone house a day's march from Fort George.

But two hundred hostile Indians so alarmed Boerstler that he attempted to retreat.

Thirty hostile militia then caused him to halt the retreat and send for reinforcements.