Drummond gives up on Fort Erie; the siege lifts after seven weeks

For seven weeks, British troops under Lieutenant General Gordon Drummond had camped in the rain outside Fort Erie, trying to starve or storm out the Americans holed up inside. On September 21, 1814, Drummond called it off and withdrew his exhausted, sickly army from the siege lines. Brigadier General Edmund P. Gaines, commanding the fort's defenders, watched the British march away rather than risk another assault. It was the last major British offensive along the northern border of the War of 1812…