A second-rate episode in the third-rate War of 1812 was General Zebulon Montgomery Pike's expedition with 2,500 men in April 1813, across Lake Ontario against York (now Toronto), a village important only as the capital of Ontario. The U. S. soldiers took York after a little skirmishing and raided the Parliament House. On the table of the House lay the legislative assembly's official mace. Over the Speaker's dais was a canopy surmounted by a wooden figure of the British lion. Over the mace was what Commodore Chauncey, who had ferried Pike's...
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