THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

The heavy fog of morning
Still hid the plain from sight,
When came a thread of scarlet
Marked faintly in the white.
We fired a single cannon,
And as its thunders rolled,
The mist before us lifted
In many a heavy fold.
The mist before us lifted,
And in their bravery fine
Came rushing to their ruin
The fearless British line.
--Thomas Dunn English.


THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

When, in 1814, Napoleon was overthrown and forced to retire to
Elba, the British troops that had followed Wellington into
southern France were left free for use against the Americans. A
great expedition was organized to attack and capture New Orleans,
and at its head was placed General Pakenham, the brilliant
commander of the column that delivered the fatal blow at
Salamanca. In December a fleet of British war-ships and
transports, carrying thousands of victorious veterans from the
Peninsula, and manned by sailors who had grown old in a quarter
of a century's triumphant ocean warfare, anchored off the broad
lagoons of the Mississippi delta. The few American gunboats were
carried after a desperate hand-to-hand struggle, the troops were
landed, and on December 23 the advance-guard of two thousand men
reached the banks of the Mississippi, but ten miles below New
Orleans, and there camped for the night. It seemed as if nothing
could save the Creole City from foes who had shown, in the
storming of many a Spanish walled town, that they were as
ruthless in victory as they were terrible in battle. There were
no forts to protect the place, and the militia were ill armed and
ill trained. But the hour found the man. On the afternoon of the
very day when the British reached the banks of the river the
vanguard of Andrew Jackson's Tennesseeans marched into New
Orleans. Clad in hunting-shirts of buckskin or homespun, wearing
wolfskin and coonskin caps, and carrying their long rifles on
their shoulders, the wild soldiery of the backwoods tramped into
the little French town. They were tall men, with sinewy frames
and piercing eyes. Under "Old Hickory's" lead they had won the
bloody battle of the Horseshoe Bend against the Creeks; they had
driven the Spaniards from Pensacola; and now they were eager to
pit themselves against the most renowned troops of all Europe.

Jackson acted with his usual fiery, hasty decision. It was
absolutely necessary to get time in which to throw up some kind
of breastworks or defenses for the city, and he at once resolved
on a night attack against the British. As for the British, they
had no thought of being molested. They did not dream of an
assault from inferior numbers of undisciplined and ill-armed
militia, who did not possess so much as bayonets to their guns.
They kindled fires along the levees, ate their supper, and then,
as the evening fell, noticed a big schooner drop down the river
in ghostly silence and bring up opposite to them. The soldiers
flocked to the shore, challenging the stranger, and finally fired
one or two shots at her. Then suddenly a rough voice was heard,
"Now give it to them, for the honor of America!" and a shower of
shell and grape fell on the British, driving them off the levee.
The stranger was an American man-of-war schooner. The British
brought up artillery to drive her off, but before they succeeded
Jackson's land troops burst upon them, and a fierce, indecisive
struggle followed. In the night all order was speedily lost, and
the two sides fought singly or in groups in the utmost confusion.
Finally a fog came up and the combatants separated. Jackson drew
off four or five miles and camped.

The British had been so roughly handled that they were unable to
advance for three or four days, until the entire army came up.
When they did advance, it was only to find that Jackson had made
good use of the time he had gained by his daring assault. He had
thrown up breastworks of mud and logs from the swamp to the
river. At first the British tried to batter down these
breastworks with their cannon, for they had many more guns than
the Americans. A terrible artillery duel followed. For an hour or
two the result seemed in doubt; but the American gunners showed
themselves to be far more skilful than their antagonists, and
gradually getting the upper hand, they finally silenced every
piece of British artillery. The Americans had used cotton bales
in the embrasures, and the British hogsheads of sugar; but
neither worked well, for the cotton caught fire and the sugar
hogsheads were ripped and splintered by the roundshot, so that
both were abandoned. By the use of red-hot shot the British
succeeded in setting on fire the American schooner which had
caused them such annoyance on the evening of the night attack;
but she had served her purpose, and her destruction caused little
anxiety to Jackson.

Having failed in his effort to batter down the American
breastworks, and the British artillery having been fairly worsted
by the American, Pakenham. decided to try open assault. He had
ten thousand regular troops, while Jackson had under him but
little over five thousand men, who were trained only as he had
himself trained them in his Indian campaigns. Not a fourth of
them carried bayonets. Both Pakenham and the troops under him
were fresh from victories won over the most renowned marshals of
Napoleon, and over soldiers that had proved themselves on a
hundred stricken fields the masters of all others in Continental
Europe. At Toulouse they had driven Marshal Soult from a position
infinitely stronger than that held by Jackson, and yet Soult had
under him a veteran army. At Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and San
Sebastian they had carried by open assault fortified towns whose
strength made the intrenchments of the Americans seem like the
mud walls built by children, though these towns were held by the
best soldiers of France. With such troops to follow him, and with
such victories behind him in the past, it did not seem possible
to Pakenham that the assault of the terrible British infantry
could be successfully met by rough backwoods riflemen fighting
under a general as wild and untrained as themselves.

He decreed that the assault should take place on the morning of
the eighth. Throughout the previous night the American officers
were on the alert, for they could hear the rumbling of artillery
in the British camp, the muffled tread of the battalions as they
were marched to their points in the line, and all the smothered
din of the preparation for assault. Long before dawn the riflemen
were awake and drawn up behind the mud walls, where they lolled
at ease, or, leaning on their long rifles, peered out through the
fog toward the camp of their foes. At last the sun rose and the
fog lifted, showing the scarlet array of the splendid British
infantry. As soon as the air was clear Pakenham gave the word,
and the heavy columns of redcoated grenadiers and kilted
Highlanders moved steadily forward. From the American breastworks
the great guns opened, but not a rifle cracked. Three fourths of
the distance were covered, and the eager soldiers broke into a
run; then sheets of flame burst from the breastworks in their
front as the wild riflemen of the backwoods rose and fired, line
upon line. Under the sweeping hail the head of the British
advance was shattered, and the whole column stopped. Then it
surged forward again, almost to the foot of the breastworks; but
not a man lived to reach them, and in a moment more the troops
broke and ran back. Mad with shame and rage, Pakenham rode among
them to rally and lead them forward, and the officers sprang
around him, smiting the fugitives with their swords and cheering
on the men who stood. For a moment the troops halted, and again
came forward to the charge; but again they were met by a hail of
bullets from the backwoods rifles. One shot struck Pakenham
himself. He reeled and fell from the saddle, and was carried off
the field. The second and third in command fell also, and then
all attempts at further advance were abandoned, and the British
troops ran back to their lines. Another assault had meanwhile
been made by a column close to the river, the charging soldiers
rushing to the top of the breastworks; but they were all killed
or driven back. A body of troops had also been sent across the
river, where they routed a small detachment of Kentucky militia;
but they were, of course, recalled when the main assault failed.

At last the men who had conquered the conquerors of Europe had
themselves met defeat. Andrew Jackson and his rough riflemen had
worsted, in fair fight, a far larger force of the best of
Wellington's veterans, and had accomplished what no French
marshal and no French troops had been able to accomplish
throughout the long war in the Spanish peninsula. For a week the
sullen British lay in their lines; then, abandoning their heavy
artillery, they marched back to the ships and sailed for Europe.

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