was already breaking up and returned to the half-finished fort. He found the officer he had left in charge, Joel B. Leftwich, had left with all his men because the enlistment period of the militia units assigned to the task had expired. Construction had halted, and the wood that had been cut was being used as firewood. As the enlistments of Harrison's Ohio and Kentucky militia were also about to expire, Harrison disbanded his force and departed for Cincinnati, Ohio to the south on the Ohio River, to raise a fresh army. He left Army Corps of Engineers Major Eleazer D. Wood to complete the construction of the fort. The garrison consisted of several hundred men from the 17th and 19th Regiments, U.S. Infantry, who were inadequately clothed, plus militia from Pennsylvania and Virginia whose own enlistments were soon to expire. The fort was on the south bank of the Maumee, near the Miami Rapids. Across the river were the ruins of the old British Fort Miami and the site of the pivotal 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers. Fort Meigs occupied an area of , the largest fortification constructed in North America to that date. The perimeter consisted of a fifteen-foot picket fence, linking eight blockhouses. The north face was protected by the Maumee, and the east and west faces by ravines. The south face was cleared of all timber to create an open glacis. The poor weather of early spring prevented a British attack while the fort was still vulnerable. The British Army commander on the Detroit frontier, Major General Henry Procter, had been urged to attack Fort Presque Isle (present day Erie, Pennsylvania), where the Americans were constructing a flotilla intended to seize control of Lake Erie, but Procter refused unless he received substantial reinforcements. Instead, he decided upon an attack on Fort Meigs, to disrupt American preparations for a summer campaign and hopefully capture supplies. Harrison received word of Procter's preparations, and hastened down the Maumee with 300 reinforcements, increasing the garrison of the fort to a total of 1,100 men. He had persuaded Isaac Shelby, the Governor of Kentucky, to call up a brigade of 1,200 Kentucky militia under Brigadier General Green Clay. Clay's brigade followed Harrison down the Maumee, but had not reached the fort before it was besieged. Siege begins Procter's force disembarked at the mouth of the Maumee on 26 April. His force