moved to the boundary limits of Lacoste and Villere, with a view of
taking the enemy in the rear. Coffee extended his front and ordered his
men to move forward in silence and to fire without orders, taking aim as
best they could. They drove the enemy before them, and took a second
position in front of Lacoste's plantation. Here was posted the
Eighty-fifth Regiment of the British army, which was forced back by the
first fire toward their main camp. Captain Beale's Riflemen advanced on
the left into the British camp at Villere's, driving the enemy before
them and taking some prisoners, but sustained some loss before joining
Coffee again. Coffee's division finally took a last position in front of
the old levee, near Laronde's boundary, where it harassed the enemy as
they fell back, driven by Jackson on the right. By ten o'clock the
British had fallen back to their camp in discomfiture, where they were
permitted to lay in comparative quiet until morning, except their
harassment from the artillery fire of the schooner Carolina. In the
darkness and confusion of combat at dead of night lines were broken and
order lost at times, until it was difficult to distinguish friends from
foes. General Jackson led his troops back to the opening point of the
attack and rested them there until morning, when he fell back over one
mile to Rodrique's Canal, the position selected for the defense of the
city.
Three hundred and fifty of the Louisiana militia, under command of
General David Morgan, were stationed at English Turn, seven miles below
Villere's, and nearly fourteen miles from New Orleans. Intelligence of
the arrival of the British at Villere's, on the twenty-third, reached
General Morgan's camp at one o'clock in the afternoon of the day.
Officers and men expressed an eagerness to be led against the enemy; but
General Morgan, not having then received orders from Jackson to that
effect, deemed it prudent to hold them waiting in camp. At half-past
seven o'clock, when the guns from the Carolina were heard bringing on
the battle, it was found difficult to restrain them longer. Morgan
finally, at the urgent request of his officers, gave orders to go
forward, which the troops received with ardor. They reached a point near
Jumonville's plantation, just below Villere's, when a picket guard in
advance met a picket force of the enemy and fired on it; the fire was
returned. A reconnoiter failing to discover the numbers and position of
the enemy in his front, Morgan took a position in a field until three
o'clock in the morning, when he marched his men back to camp. The
failure of this command to join issue in this battle, in concert with
the other commands of Jackson's army, was apparently most unfortunate.
The records do not show what orders, if any, were sent from headquarters
by Jackson to General Morgan in summoning his forces in the afternoon of
the day for the attack at night. It is barely possible that the General
neglected to dispatch an order to, or to communicate with, the commander
of so important a body of troops, in numbers nearly one fifth of the
entire American forces engaged, in a critical hour when every available
soldier was needed on the field of combat. A swift messenger sent by
Jackson from headquarters at two o'clock, as to other outpost commands,
could easily have reached English Turn at five o'clock. General Morgan
knew that the invading army were in bivouac seven miles above. By eight
o'clock he could have had his troops in attacking distance of the enemy,
and in their rear. When Jackson and Coffee assaulted the British lines
at eight o'clock, and drove them back in confusion upon their camp, a
spirited surprise attack by Morgan's command in the rear, any moment
before nine o'clock, would probably have routed the entire British
division engaged and forced them to lay down their arms or retreat to
their boats. He did move his command forward, and halt them at some
distance from the enemy, but it was probably too late. The battle was
over and the opportunity gone.
An after-incident throws a ray of light upon the criticism of the day
upon the above affair. Honorable Magloire Guichard, President of the
House of Representatives, in his testimony before the Committee of
Inquiry on the military measures employed by Jackson against the
Legislature, said:
On the twenty-seventh of December, when I got home, I found Colonel
Declouet (of Morgan's command), who had just crossed the river. Amid
the conversation of the evening, I expressed my surprise at his not
having attacked the British from the lower side, on the night of the
twenty-third; that had he done so with the men under his command, at
the same time with the troops coming from the city, all would have
terminated on that evening, and the British would have laid down
their arms. He expressed great sorrow that he had not been the master
to do so. He declared that this was his intention, but that General
Morgan refused to comply with his request. Afterwards, having
resolved to come toward midnight to reconnoitre, they had met with a
small picket, who fired upon them; they returned the fire, and then
retired.
The British loss in this initial night-battle is put by our authorities
at four to five hundred in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Their own
official reports admit three to five hundred. The Americans had
twenty-four killed, one hundred and fifteen wounded, and seventy-four
made prisoners. The fall of Colonel Lauderdale, of Mississippi, was much
lamented.
So unique in the annals of military experience was this fiercely fought
night-battle, so startling in its surprise of the bold and confident
Britons, and so characteristic of Jackson's grim humor of war, that it
is interesting to know the impressions it made upon the minds of the
enemy. With this view, we quote a vivid description from the history of
an English officer who was in the campaigns against Napoleon, with Ross
and Pakenham in America, and who was a participant in this battle,
Captain Robert Gleig. He says:
About half-past seven at night our attention was drawn to a large
vessel which seemed to be stealing up the river, opposite our camp,
when her anchor was dropped and her sails quietly furled. She was
repeatedly hailed, but gave no answer. An alarm spread through our
bivouac, and all thought of sleep was abandoned. Several musket shots
were fired at her, when we heard a commanding voice cry out: "Give
them this for the honor of America!" The words were instantly
followed by the flashes of her guns, and a deadly shower of grape
swept down numbers in our camp.
Against this dreadful fire we had nothing as yet to oppose. We sought
shelter under the levee, and listened in painful silence to the
pattering of shot which fell among our troops, and to the shrieks and
groans of the wounded who lay near by. The night was dark as pitch.
Except the flashes of the enemy's guns, and the glare of our own
deserted fires, not an object could be distinguished. In this state
we lay helpless for nearly an hour, when a straggling fire of
musketry, driving in our pickets, warned us to prepare for a closer
and more desperate strife. This fire was presently succeeded by a
fearful yell, while the heavens became illuminated on all sides by a
semi-circular blaze of musketry.
Rushing from under the bank, the Eighty-fifth and Ninety-fifth
Regiments flew to support the pickets; while the Fourth, stealing to
the rear, formed close column as a reserve. But to describe this
action is out of the question, for it was such a battle as the annals
of warfare can hardly parallel. Each officer, as he was able to
collect twenty or thirty men around him, advanced into the midst of
the enemy, where they fought hand to hand, bayonet to bayonet, and
sword to sword, with the tumult and ferocity of Homer's combats
before the walls of Troy. Attacked unexpectedly in the dark, and
surrounded by enemies before we could arrange to oppose them, no
order or discipline of war could be preserved. We were mingled with
the Americans before we could tell whether they were friends or foes.
The consequence was that more feats of individual gallantry were
performed in the course of the conflict than many campaigns might
have afforded. The combat having begun at eight in the evening, and
long and obstinately contested, continued until three in the morning;
but the victory was decidedly ours, for the Americans retreated in
the greatest disorder, leaving us in possession of the field. Our
losses, however, were enormous. Not less than five hundred men had
fallen, many of whom were our first and best officers.
The recall being sounded, our troops were soon brought together,
forming in front of the ground where we had at first encamped. Here
we remained until the morn, when, to avoid the fire of the vessel, we
betook ourselves to the levee on the bank, and lay down. Here we lay
for some hours, worn out with fatigue and loss of sleep, and
shivering in the cold of a frosty morning, not daring to light a fire
or cook a meal. Whenever an attempt was made, the ship's guns opened
on us. Thus was our army kept prisoners for an entire day.
This was not a field victory for either combatant, but rather a drawn
battle, as each party fell back to the lines occupied at the opening. It
was a very great victory for the Americans in its bearings on the final
issues of the campaign. The attack of Jackson was to the British like a
bolt of lightning from a clear sky. It paralyzed and checked them on the
first day, and at the first place of their encampment on shore, and
enabled him to adopt measures to beat back the invaders in every attempt
they made for a further advance inland. The enemy had found an open way
and expected an easy march, with a certainty that the Crescent City, by
Christmas Day, would become an easy prey for their "Loot and Lust," as
Admiral Cochrane is said to have promised. Instead of a garden of
delights, they had walked into a deathtrap at the gate of entrance.
Confidence and prestige were shaken in the front of a foe equal in valor
and as skilled in arms as themselves. The rude reception given by
Jackson had compelled the army of the invaders to halt in its first
camp, and to re-form, to reinforce, and to rehabilitate its plans,
before daring another step forward. This delay, fatal to the British,
probably saved the city. On the next morning early (of the
twenty-fourth) the first division of the British army would have been
reinforced by the second division landed on the night of the battle,
giving five thousand fresh veteran troops in bivouac at Villere's, with
which to march upon the city. It was but seven miles distant, with a
broad, level highway leading to it. Jackson could have opposed to this
army not over two thousand men in the open field, where every advantage
would have been with the enemy. With the bravery and discipline the
latter showed in the surprise-battle at night, they would have made an
irresistible march to victory against the city, had not the invincible
Jackson paralyzed them with this first blow. It was a master-stroke,
worthy the genius of a great commander.
The valor of the English soldiers was rarely, if ever, surpassed on a
bloody field of contest. There was no panic, no rout, no cowering under
the murderous fire of the ship's guns, or when the blaze of musketry
encircled them in the darkness of the night. Although the ranks were
broken and little order prevailed, the men rallied to the calls of the
nearest officers, and plunged into the thickest of the strife. Only this
veteran discipline and stubborn British courage saved the enemy from
rout and worse disaster. Colonel Thornton, the bravest and most skillful
of the officers of the English army, as he repeatedly proved himself,
commanded on this occasion. General Keene had not yet come up.
The American forces engaged were: United States regulars, Seventh
Regiment, Major Peire, four hundred and sixty-five men, and Forty-fourth
Regiment, Captain Baker, three hundred and thirty-one men; marines,
Lieutenant Bellevue, sixty-six; artillery, McRae, twenty-two; Major
Plauche's battalion, two hundred and eighty-seven; Major Daquin's
battalion of St. Domingo men of color, two hundred and ten; Choctaws,
Captain Jugeant, eighteen; Coffee's Tennessee Brigade, five hundred and
sixty-three; Orleans Rifles, Captain Beale, sixty-two; and Mississippi
Dragoons, Major Hinds, one hundred and seven; in all, twenty-one hundred
and thirty-one men.
JACKSON ENTRENCHES AT RODRIQUE'S OLD CANAL SITE.
As mentioned, Jackson occupied the line of Rodrique's Canal, two miles
above the British camp at Villere's, and five miles below the city. The
space from the river here back to the swamp was but seventeen hundred
yards, making it an admirable line for defense. Early on the
twenty-fourth every available man was put to work throwing up a
breastwork on the upper side of the canal, while pieces of artillery
were planted at commanding points for immediate emergency. Negroes from
the adjacent plantations were called in to expedite the work of building
the entrenchment and suitable redoubts, as had been done at other works
of fortification and defense. On the twenty-fifth, General Morgan was
ordered to abandon the post at English Turn and to move his command of
Louisiana militia to a position on the right bank of the river, at
Flood's plantation, opposite Jackson's camp.
THE SHIP CAROLINA BURNED WITH HOT SHOT--ARTILLERY DUEL ON THE
TWENTY-EIGHTH.
The enemy determined to destroy the ship Carolina, as she lay out in the
river, from whose deadly broadsides by day and by night they had been so
terribly harassed since the opening of the night battle of the
twenty-third. Having brought up their artillery from their
landing-place, they erected a battery commanding that part of the river,
with a furnace for heating shot. On the twenty-seventh, they opened fire
in range, and in fifteen minutes the schooner was set on fire by the
red-hot missiles and burned to the water's edge. The fire of the battery
was next directed against the Louisiana, a larger war-vessel, the
preservation of which was of great importance. Lieutenant Thompson, in
command, with the combined efforts of one hundred men of his crew,
succeeded under fire of the battery in towing her beyond the range of
the guns of the enemy.
On the evening of the twenty-seventh the British moved forward in force,
drove in the American advance lines, and occupied Chalmette's
plantation, one mile above Laronde's. During the night they began to
establish several batteries along the river. At dawn of day on the
twenty-eighth they advanced in columns on the road, preceded by several
pieces of artillery, some playing upon the Louisiana and others on the
American lines. The ship's crew waited until the columns of the enemy
were well in range, when they opened upon them a destructive fire, which
silenced their guns. While this oblique fire fell upon the flank of the
British, the batteries on the American line answered them from the front
with much effect. One shot from the Louisiana killed fifteen of the
enemy's men. Some of his guns were dismounted, and he was driven from
several of his batteries. In seven hours' cannonading the ship fired
eight hundred shot. The enemy threw into the American ranks many
Congreve rockets, evidently misled in the hope that these ugly-looking
missiles would strike terror to the ranks of our troops. These soon
learned that they were not so dangerous as they appeared. The infantry
this day did not engage in more than heavy picket skirmishing, and in
checking the demonstrations of the enemy on our lines. This movement all
along the line was evidently a feint in force, to draw from Jackson's
army information as to the powers of resistance it might offer and to
ascertain its most vulnerable point of attack. The loss of the British
this day was estimated at two hundred; that of the Americans much less,
as they were mainly sheltered from the enemy's fire. There were nine
killed and eight wounded.
DEFENSES ON THE WEST BANK OF THE RIVER.
Realizing that the enemy might suddenly throw a force across the river,
and by a flank movement up the right bank gain a position opposite the
city, from which, by shot and shell, he might compel a surrender,
Jackson sent Major Latour, chief of his engineer corps, to the west
side, with orders to select a position most suitable for a fortified
line in the rear of General Morgan's camp. Bois-Gervais Canal, three
miles below New Orleans, was fixed upon, and one hundred and fifty
negroes from the plantations near at once set to work. In six days they
completed the parapet, with a glacis on the opposite side.
Commodore Patterson removed from the Louisiana a number of her guns,
which he placed in battery in front of Jordon's plantation, on the right
bank, with which he did important service to the end of the campaign.
This formidable battery was formed to give a deadly flanking fire on the
enemy's ranks from the opposite bank of the river. It was manned and
served by sailors, mostly landed from the Carolina when she was burned.
They had been enlisted about the city after the gunboats were destroyed;
men of all nations, not a third of them speaking the English language.
The constant daily fire of this battery caused the British to fall back
from Chalmette's and Bienvenue's houses and to seek safer quarters in
the rear, after the artillery duels of the twenty-eighth.
Captain Henly, of the late ship Carolina, was placed in command of a
strong redoubt on the bank of the river, opposite New Orleans, around
which was a fosse twenty-five feet in width, the earth from which was
thrown up to form a steep glacis, from the summit of the wall serving as
a parapet to the brink of the fosse. Here a battery of two twenty-four
pounders commanded at once the road and the river back to the swamp.
The Tennesseans, placed on the left, and operating in the undergrowth of
the woods of the swamp, were a continual terror to the British sentinels
and outposts. Clad in their brown hunting-dress, they were
indistinguishable in the bush, while with their long rifles they picked
off some of the British daily. The entrenchment line was being daily
strengthened.
A SECOND ATTEMPT TO BREACH THE AMERICAN WORKS, ON THE FIRST OF
JANUARY--GREAT ARTILLERY DUEL.
On the evening of the twenty-fifth, Sir Edward Pakenham arrived at the
British headquarters, and at once assumed chief command of the army in
person. He was a favorite of Lord Wellington in the Peninsular
campaigns, and held in high esteem by the English Government and people.
His presence imparted great enthusiasm to the officers and men of the
army, a majority of whom had served under him in other wars. The
invading British forces were now swelled to over ten thousand men for
present service. On the thirtieth and thirty-first, the enemy was
ominously busy in throwing up redoubts and in pushing his offensive
works in threatening nearness to our lines. In front of Bienvenue's
house he constructed a battery, of hogsheads of sugar taken from the
near plantations, the season for grinding the cane and converting the
product into sugar having just closed. A redoubt was also begun at a
point nearer the wood, fronting the American left, and some guns mounted
by the thirty-first. A heavy cannonading was opened on this day, from
this and other batteries along the British front, to which our own guns
responded, including those of the marine battery across the river, until
two in the afternoon.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS, JANUARY 8, 1815.]
These demonstrative movements of the enemy, with his busy
reconnoitering, foreboded an attack in force.
In the night of the thirty-first he erected, under cover of darkness,
two other batteries of heavy guns at a distance of six hundred yards
from the front of Jackson's entrenchments, on a ditch running along the
side of Chalmette's plantation, at distances of three and six hundred
yards from the river. During the night the men working on the platforms
and mounting the ordnance could be distinctly heard.
On the morning of the 1st of January, 1815, the earth was veiled by a
dense fog until eight o'clock. As the misty cloud lifted above the
horizon, the enemy opened up a terrific fire from his three batteries in
front, mounting respectively two, eight, and eight pieces of heavy
cannon. A meteor-like shower of Congreve rockets accompanied the balls,
filling the air for fifteen minutes with these missiles of terror. The
two batteries nearest the river directed their fire against McCarty's
house, some hundreds of yards behind our front line, where Jackson and
his staff had their headquarters. In less than ten minutes more than one
hundred balls, rockets, and shells struck the house. Bricks, splinters
of wood, and broken furniture were sent flying in all directions, making
the premises dangerously untenable. General Jackson and his staff
occupied the house at the time; yet, strange to say, not a person was
even wounded. There is no account that the old hero "ingloriously fled,"
but it is in evidence that he retired with commendable dispatch to a
safer place.
Though the batteries of the enemy were in a better position, on a lower
plane, and with a narrower front than those of the Americans, the
gunners of the latter fired with more precision and effect on this day,
and on other occasions, as their own officers afterward admitted. In an
hour's time the fire from the enemy's side began to slacken, and
continued to abate until noon, when his two batteries to the right were
abandoned. Our balls dismounted several of his guns early in the day,
and in the afternoon the greater part of his artillery was dismounted or
unfit for service. The carriages of three of the guns on the American
side were broken, and two caissons, with over one hundred rounds of
ammunition, were blown up by rockets, at which the enemy loudly cheered.
The cheeks of the embrasures of our batteries were formed of cotton
bales, which the enemy's balls struck, sending the cotton flying through
the air. The impression that Jackson's breastwork line was constructed
of bales of cotton is a mistake. Bales of cotton were used only at the
bottom and sides of the embrasures, for a firmer support for the
artillery, beneath a casing of heavy plank. The British, in the absence
of cotton bales, used hogsheads of sugar, which were conveniently near,
for the same purposes. These our shot easily knocked to pieces,
saturating the damp earth around with the saccharine sweets. Our
breastworks were more substantially and easily made of the alluvial
earth.
The guns of the British batteries nearest the levee were directed in
part against the marine battery across the river during the day, but
with little effect. Before the close the enemy's guns were silenced,
and several of them abandoned. The British columns were in readiness,
drawn up in several parallel lines, prudently awaiting in the back
ditches and the trenches between the batteries a favorable moment to
advance to an assault of our lines. In this they were disappointed; the
superiority of the American artillery left them no hope of an advantage
by breaching our lines with this arm. That this was their object their
own authorities state. The losses this day of the Americans were
thirty-five killed and wounded; the enemy admitted a loss of
seventy-five. During the night of the first of January, the latter
succeeded in removing his heavy guns from the dismantled batteries,
dragging them off with much difficulty through the mired earth.
A VIEW FROM THE ENEMY'S STANDPOINT.
It is interesting to view a situation from an enemy's standpoint, and to
know the impressions made upon an enemy's mind in a great issue like the
one of contest. We quote again from Gleig's "Campaigns of the English
Army":
It was Christmas Day, and a number of officers, clubbing their scant
stocks of provisions, resolved to dine together in memory of former
times. But at so melancholy a Christmas dinner, I do not remember to
have been present. We dined in a barn; of tableware, of viands, and
of good cookery, there was a dismal scarcity. These were matters,
however, of minor thought; the want of many well-known and beloved
faces thrilled us with pain. While sitting at the table, a loud
shriek from outside startled the guests. On running out, we found
that a shot from the enemy's ship had cut almost in twain the body of
a soldier, and he was gasping in death.