Pontiac (Ottawa leader) exaggerated. Historians today generally view him as an important local leader who influenced a wider movement that he did not command. The war began in May 1763 when Pontiac and 300 followers attempted to take Fort Detroit by surprise. His plan foiled, Pontiac laid siege to the fort, where he was eventually joined by more than 900 warriors from a half-dozen tribes. Meanwhile, messengers spread the word of Pontiac's actions, and the war expanded far beyond Detroit. In July 1763, Pontiac defeated a British detachment at the Battle of Bloody Run, but he was unable to capture the fort. In
Fort Sandusky their territory. But in 1761 British General Jeffery Amherst ordered the erection of Fort Sandusky on Sandusky Bay in order to strengthen the line of defense from Fort Detroit, near the western end of Lake Erie, to central Lake Erie, and to Fort Pitt at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which controlled access to the Ohio River and the western frontier of the British colonies. The Seven Years' War continued in Europe until 1763 between Britain and France. Fort Sandusky was a small British fort established on the southeastern shore of Sandusky Bay off Lake Erie in