Fearless Leader
Hopefully the Sackets Harbour attack will be decisive. With a clean naval superiority the British will be able to move troops and supplies a lot more easily and also gain information on enemy movements. Possibly even force the Americans to keep away from the lakeside in many cases to avoid naval bombardment. Pike has a long march through fairly difficult terrain even to reach his starting point. Furthermore he probably has to keep at least some forces behind to prevent the British making even more gains by attacking again in the Niagara region. Hence despite his superior numbers and the fact he seems to have learnt to train his forces better, although whether the militia will be happy with that

, I think Brock will prove too strong for him.
It's more uncertain in the west as Johnson has more knowledge of what warfare in the region needs and has already shown his skills. There is the danger if Tecumseh is killed that his confederation could fall apart. However Tecumseh is also a skilled leader and has a lot of men available with experience of the war. Furthermore this time Johnson will be doing the attacking and won't have clear supply lines to raid. His cavalry and possibly artillery could be a serious threat, depending on how well they can be used in the conditions and how much British support Brock can survive.
While the idea of new offensives seem to make sense I'm not sure how practical it is given that negotiations are occurring in London and hence the time delay. If an agreement is reached given borders at a certain date then by the time news has reached America Pike has won a possibly very costly victory the US would be faced with giving up such gains of repudiating the treaty and really angering the UK.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing how things develop. How long are you thinking of carrying on the TL? Sounds like peace is approaching so will you stop it then or [hopefully] continue for some years [preferably a lot] afterwards?
Steve
The very idea behind the offensives is to influence the negotiations in the hope that the victories will be somewhat timely. America pursued a very similar course in OTL.
Part XII: One Last Gasp
(From “The Forge of Nations 1813-1814” by Pierre Berton)
...As Brigadier General Zebulon Pike trundled along the dusty roads leading from the Niagara peninsula to Sackets Harbor at the head of his reformed Army of the Center, one could not help but notice the weight of an entire nation’s fate upon his shoulders. Rather than attempt another futile offensive along the Niagara, Pike, under the orders of John Armstrong and James Monroe began his march northwards towards Sackets Harbor in the hopes of severing Upper Canada’s supply line at Kingston(1)...
...It is somewhat ironic that despite the strategic city of Kingston being at the heart of every American plan for invading Canada, only in the war’s final year was a direct offensive ever attempted at it. Born out of desperation of a country unable to gain the upper hand in what was supposed to be a simple conflict, the stage was being set for the war’s decisive battle. Should Pike and his forces be victorious in taking the port, America would have scored a critical victory, perhaps one that would allow them an honourable way out of the conflict before more British troops, fresh from the battlefields of Europe could arrive...
...Indeed as the spring of 1814 progressed, the stage was being set for the final decisive battle to decide the fate of Upper Canada. From the Niagara, Pike marched north with some 6000 men, all regulars, well drilled after the embarrassment at Burlington Heights. They would proceed North to Sackets Harbor where they would be met by some 4000 troops headed south from Lake Champlain under newly promoted General George Izard. Together the two armies would then march northwest to the town of Ogdensburg where they would cross the St. Lawrence before turning south and attacking Kingston...
...This entire operation would have been considerably easier, had the American fleet on Lake Ontario, survived the Raid on Sackets Harbor. Had the fleet been intact, taking Kingston would have taken weeks at most, instead Pike was now forced to detour well to the north to avoid British naval interdiction. As it was, the fleet, now under the command of Commodore John Rodgers, was just barely beginning to recover. Though yet another gargantuan building program was being undertaken, priority was given to repairing those ships still salvageable and constructing a small flotilla of riverine gunboats to secure the St. Lawrence. These ships, though not able to wrest control of the lake from the superior forces under Commodore Yeo, would prove invaluable to Pike in transporting men and supplies from the Niagara to Sackets Harbor under the very noses of the British and in the upcoming offensive(2)...
...Aided by Rodgers’ fleet, Pike’s army was able to make excellent time travelling from the Niagara to Sackets Harbor. Yet despite arriving in mid May, Pike, eager to learn from his mistakes took over a month to establish a logistical base for his strike on Kingston. Guided by an unusual combination of caution and urgency Pike began to undertake logistical preparation for his upcoming offensive. This time, his invasion of Canada would not be depending on the often oh so unreliable naval forces technically at his disposal...
...The arrival of Pike’s army as well as George Izard’s would transform the sleepy town of Ogdensburg New York overnight. As a border town in a traditionally Federalist portion of New York, Ogdensburg had already seen the furies of war, being the sight of a minor skirmish in which Pike gained a name for himself, eventually catapulting him to command the final American invasion of Canada. Immediately upon arriving Pike would proceed to establish martial law in the town, effectively quarantining the residents there whom Pike viewed as “dubious in their loyalty”. Meanwhile hundreds of oxcarts towing everything from food, to clothing, to powder and shot, to bateaux began their long journey to Ogdensburg to support Pike in his offensive...
...These American preparations for a final invasion of Upper Canada would not go unnoticed by Brock. Brock, who had suspected an invasion around Kingston in the fall of 1813, only to find Pike attacking through the Niagara, this time began to pool all his resources in and around the Kingston area. British garrisons supporting Tecumseh in the Northwest, and holding down the Niagara frontier were stripped to bare minimums while continuous letters were sent to George Prevost pleading for troops stationed in Lower Canada...
...In the end, by June 1814 Brock was able to marshal some 5000 troops (out of the entire British North American garrison of 9000) to protect a stretch of coastline from Montreal to Kingston. Any more, he was informed, would increase the chance of Britain losing Lower Canada and leave Upper Canada cut off from further reinforcement. Nevertheless, despite a generous infusion of troops including French Canadian Militia under Charles De Saleberry Brock still found himself outnumbered by the Americans by a ratio of nearly two to one...
...Though Brock’s initial response to the situation was to launch an aggressive attack on the American position, the realities of the situation precluded him from doing so. Any attack on the American position risked being destroyed in detail, and further worsening the long odds Brock was already facing. Furthermore whereas in the initial phases of the war Brock held advantages such as having better trained troops and fearsome Indian allies, by 1814 these advantages had largely been nullified by American war experience and the incessant drilling of Zebulon Pike...
...Indeed, even at Burlington Heights, Brock could not help but note the improvement in the quality of American regulars. Though the British were still victorious, Brock personally feared the Americans training troops equal to the British regulars and in greater numbers and thereby overwhelming them...
...Yet despite not having his traditional advantages, Brock was not without resources with which to defeat the Americans. For once, time was on his side, every day that passed was a day closer to peace as British and American diplomats hammered out the details of a peace treaty in London. Brock need not win this battle, he just needed to keep Pike from taking Kingston. Brock was further aided in this endeavour by British superiority on Lake Ontario, whereas it would have been quite simple for Pike to launch an amphibious assault on the key port, British naval superiority had forced the Americans to make a long detour north to safely cross the St. Lawrence...
...The long awaited American offensive would begin on June 14th 1814 as American bateaux, guarded by a brace of gunboats towed overland to the particular section of the St. Lawrence, began to ferry American troops across the river towards the sleepy town of Prescott. Supported by thunderous volleys of American artillery as well as the guns on the gunboats, the first wave of American invaders faced little opposition from the bewildered Canadian garrison in Prescott...
...After delivering only a handful of volleys against the assembling American troops, Prescott’s garrison of Militia promptly abandoned their positions marching eastward to join with Brock’s main body of troops while sending riders both to Kingston and Montreal to inform the authorities of the location of the attack...
...Lacking the resources to respond strongly to Pike’s initial landing Brock was forced to resign himself to a more passive, yet proven strategy in order to blunt yet another American invasion of Upper Canada. Echoing the events at Burlington Bay, the majority of Brock’s troops would assemble at Elizabethtown to stop Pike well before Kingston. Meanwhile local partisans and native allies (most notably Caughnawaga Indians under Captain Dominique Ducharme) would harass Pike’s gargantuan army as it assembled and made its way towards Kingston. Finally a fleet of some 15 gunboats under the command of Captain James Howe Mulcaster, veteran of Burlington Bay and second in command to Commodore James Yeo would sail into the Thousand Islands and wrest control of the St. Lawrence from the Americans, severing Pike’s supply line and cutting off his retreat...
...Unfortunately for Brock, it would seem that his luck was beginning to run out. Almost immediately it became apparent that these troops arriving by the boatload in Prescott were a far cry from the ill trained and demoralized troops formerly employed by the Americans. Un phased by partisan and Native attacks Pike’s army began its long march towards Kingston on June 17th, though the partisan attacks would make a dent in the supply situation of the army, by and large the Americans were unaffected as they approached Brock’s positions outside of Elizabethtown for what was to be the final battle of the war(3)...
...To make matters worse, Brock had intended for British gunboats under Captain Mulcaster to seize the St. Lawrence by the time his army met Pike’s and provide artillery support. However staunch American resistance in the Battle of the Thousand Islands had prevented Mulcaster from ridding the river of American craft and had set his timetable for seizing the crucial waterway by weeks at the very most...
...As a result the Battle of Elizabethtown would be a relatively simple affair, uncomplicated by partisans, navies, or supply lines. Simply army versus army, commander against commander come what may. Though the British did possess a degree of fortification, Pike’s army had considerable weight of numbers roughly cancelling out British preparations...
...As soon as the battle was joined on the morning of June 20th, it became apparent that the regulars employed by Pike were a far cry from those the British had seen earlier in the war. Unflinching under heavy British fire, they let off volley after volley into the British barricades inflicting their share of casualties on the hated redcoats...
...Fortunately for Brock, he had chosen his battlefield well. With impenetrable forest and swamp to his left, Pike’s advance was limited to the road bisecting a small clearing between the wall of trees and the river. The very nature of the terrain made it all but impossible for Pike to do anything but send wave after wave of men against the British positions, so he did knowing full well that his army could afford to take such losses while Brock’s could not...
...With the American columns advancing fearlessly under a hail of British fire, Brock orders a phased withdrawal as he’s planned all along. Truth be told, Elizabethtown was a relatively minor village, the engagement here had been one of experimentation. Now the size and composition of Pike’s force was known and furthermore substantially reduced allowing Brock to prepare for the defence of Kingston. While Pike and his men count the cost of taking Elizabethtown, Brock and his own will join up with the garrison at Kingston while over 1000 fresh men under Colonel Charles De Salaberry approach from the East. Though the battle of Elizabethtown is over, this campaign has only just started...
...Still Brock’s army does not manage to escape completely unscathed. The daring actions of Eleazar Ripley’s brigade see to it that the British lose a substantial portion of their artillery in the engagement, though the cost is incredibly high to the point of removing Ripley’s brigade from active service for the remainder of the offensive...
...As Pike enters the town of Elizabethtown he finds unsurprisingly that there is little of value. Echoing his previous offensive along the Niagara, the British have employed a scorched earth strategy to further complicate and lengthen his supply line. Yet this does not worry Pike who has planned for such an occurrence. His logistical base is more than capable of supplying his army on its march to Kingston...
...Nevertheless, despite American papers crying of a great victory at Elizabethtown, Pike knows that this is merely a prelude to the real battle, and an expensive prelude at that. All told, Brock’s stand at Elizabethtown has reduced Pike’s total number of effectives by fifteen hundred while costing the British only a fraction of that number. Yet such casualties were to be expected, taking only a few days to rally his troops, Pike resumes his march towards Kingston on the twenty second of June...
...Though Pike and his command remained optimistic that they could take Kingston before the onset of peace, an analysis of the strategic realities facing the Americans paints a different picture. Not only was a sizeable British force approaching their rear from Northern Canada, their supply lines were lengthening daily and Brock was in possession of sizeable fortifications outside of Kingston. Once Pike and his army arrived outside of Kingston placing the city under siege would be their only option, all the while more and more British forces would be brought to bear on their position...
...The exact outcome of Pike’s final invasion of Canada in 1812 will forever remain a mystery and one of the wars most tantalizing “what if” questions. For mere hours after arriving outside Brock’s defensive works surrounding Kingston on June 30th, couriers would arrive from Albany and Quebec to deliver messages to Pike and Brock respectively bringing news of the recently signed Treaty of London and the end of the War...
Notes
1)In OTL the final American offensive under Winfield Scott would take place in the Niagara to take advantage of American superiority on Lake Erie and to make the most of American numerical superiority before the arrival of British reinforcements from Europe. In TTL the Americans are desperately seeking a peace, and have no superiority on Lake Erie causing them to make one last attempt at Kingston in the hopes of securing an amicable peace instead of launching another offensive on the Niagara.
2)With the death of Oliver Hazard Perry, the command of the Lake Ontario Fleet, in TTL one of America’s most important naval commands is transferred to Commodore John Rodgers who has up until now, sat inactive in Maryland (In OTL he played a key role in the defence of Baltimore).
3)The state of Pike’s army is meant to reflect the increased training it has received in TTL due to Pike being in command for longer. Compared to the army wielded by Winfield Scott in 1814 in OTL Pike’s army is slightly better and as such does better in these final engagements.