After checking their weapons and making sure their powder was dry, the Anglo-Indian war party set off to the west at the quick step toward La Prairie. Perched on the overbank of the St. Lawrence, Fort La Prairie served as Captain Louis-Hector de Callière’s headquarters. For Schuyler and Lawrence, the only consolation was the two sides were more evenly matched than at Fort La Prairie. In his journal, Schuyler captured the frantic hand-to-hand fighting and English breakthrough during the second battle that morning:We fought stoutly one whole hour. “Nothing saved them from destruction,” writes Francis Parkman, “but the failure of the French at La Prairie to follow their retreat and thus enclose them between two fires.”