Continued from October 30.
The British figured that each Indian warrior was worth three American soldiers and when they marched into battle in their traditional red coats, Tecumseh and his warriors would be protecting the flanks.
Tecumseh seemed to be everywhere during the first years of fighting: fighting, recruiting, saving prisoners from torture from his men, cajoling the British to maintain supplies, food and men, and even rallying their troops in the field on occasion.
The British failed in almost every aspect of the war. (Of course a big part of this was because Britain was much more heavily engaged with Napoleon and his French army in the war for control of Europe.) The world's strongest maritime power lost the fight for the Great Lakes, saw its supply lines to the Northwest cut, and , in the fall of 1813, were chased by William Henry Harrison and a large American force into a panicked retreat across Upper Canada.
British commander, General Henry Procter, made a strategic blunder before taking an ill-prepared stand near Moraviantown on the Thames River, in early October.
Tecumseh and some five hundred warriors supported the British line in what became known as the Battle of the Thames, but those lines collapsed almost immediately in the face of an American cavalry charge. A small group of Americans led by Richard Mentor Johnson, a Kentucky militia colonel, charged the Indian lines on horseback, hoping to draw their fire and thus reveal the Indian positions for the next wave of soldiers.
--Brock-Perry
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