Topic summary
Battle of York
43°39′09″N79°22′54″W / 43.65250°N 79.38167°W
United StatesJames Givins
John Robinson
Aeneas Shaw
Isaac Chauncey
Henry Dearborn
300 militia
40–50 Natives
14 armed vessels
112 wounded (including 69 wounded prisoners)
274 captured
7 missing
265 wounded
The Battle of York was a War of 1812 battle fought in York, Upper Canada (today's Toronto, Ontario, Canada) on April 27, 1813. An American force, supported by a naval flotilla, landed on the western lakeshore and captured the provincial capital after defeating an outnumbered force of regulars, militia and Ojibwe natives under the command of Major General Roger Hale Sheaffe, the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada.
After Sheaffe's forces were defeated, he ordered his surviving regulars to withdraw to Kingston, abandoning the militia and civilians. The Americans captured the fort, town, and dockyard. They themselves suffered casualties, including force leader Brigadier General Zebulon Pike and others were killed when the retreating British blew up the fort's magazine. After the Americans carried out several acts of arson and looting, they seized ordnance and supplies from the settlement and subsequently withdrew from the town weeks later.
Although the Americans won a clear victory, the battle did not have decisive strategic results as York was a less important objective in military terms than Kingston, where the British armed vessels on Lake Ontario were based.