Battle of Buffalo

Part of War of 1812

Date	December 30, 1813
Location	Buffalo, New York
Result	British victory

Belligerents

United Kingdom

United States

Commanders and leaders

Gordon Drummond;
Phineas Riall

Amos Hall

Strength

965 British regulars
50 Canadian militia
400 Natives

2,011

Casualties and losses

31 killed;
72 wounded;
5 captured
4 missing

50 killed;
52 wounded;
11 wounded prisoners;
56 captured

The Battle of Buffalo (also known as the Battle of Black Rock) took place during the War of 1812 on December 30, 1813 in the State of New York, near the Niagara River. The British forces drove off the hastily organized defenders and engaged in considerable plundering and destruction. The operation was conceived as an act of retaliation for the burning by American troops of the Canadian village of Newark (present day Niagara-on-the-Lake).

When Brigadier General George McClure of the New York State Militia, commander of the garrison of Fort George, decided to abandon the post on December 10, 1813, he ordered the neighboring village of Newark to be destroyed. Giving the inhabitants only a few hours' notice, he turned them out into the cold winter night and burned all but one of the hundred and fifty or so buildings to the ground.

Lieutenant General Gordon Drummond, the newly appointed Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, was planning an offensive against the American positions on Niagara frontier. In the early hours of December 18, a force under Colonel John Murray captured Fort Niagara by surprise. Another force under Major General Phineas Riall raided the American side of the lower Niagara River, destroying the villages of Lewiston, Youngstown, Manchester, Tuscarora and the small military post and surrounding settlement of Fort Schlosser.

Riall's raid was eventually halted when the Americans set fire to a bridge over the Tonawanda Creek. Drummond and Riall intended further devastation, and Riall's troops returned to the Canadian side of the Niagara and marched south around Niagara Falls, carrying their boats, to launch an attack on the villages of Buffalo and Black Rock.

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Wikipedia