by Ron Carter
Jackson met them at the door, and both Caleb and Lafitte knew instantly something significant had happened.
“My office,” he clipped, and led them down the hall.
“Scouting reports just came in. Pakenham’s moving. The rain will slow him, but I expect him to attack the canal line sometime tonight or early tomorrow morning.”
He paused and tapped a map on his desktop.
“Our reports say he has scouted the river. If he has, he means to send someone across to the west side. I calculate he wants those gun batteries of ours over there. If he gets them, he can use our own guns to reach the west end of our lines on this side of the river. We could be in trouble.”
Lafitte interrupted. “It also means that Pakenham will not attack until he has those guns and the bombardment begins.”
Jackson paused, eyes narrowed in thought. “That makes sense.”
Lafitte continued. “Do you want my men to keep you informed? They know the river. The British will never know they are there.”
“Yes. I’ll need those reports hourly.”
Lafitte bobbed his head. “It shall be done.”
Jackson tapped the map again. “I have riflemen from Tennessee and Kentucky. More than a thousand of them. Battle-hardened. I don’t worry about them. But I also have about fourteen hundred state militia. They’ve never been under fire. I don’t know what they’ll do in the face of a head-on British assault. If the British overrun them and get behind our lines, our entire defense could collapse. There’s little I can do about that except hope they don’t break under fire.”
He paused for a moment, then went on.
“Mister Lafitte, your command brings our total fighting force on the line to just over thirty-two hundred men.”
Again he paused, and his next words were quiet. “The British have more than twelve thousand regulars. A ratio of four to one in their favor.”
He looked at Lafitte and then Caleb. “Gentlemen, we are about to find out if one of our men can beat four of theirs.” A chuckle rolled out of his chest. “Have you looked at what we’ve got out there? Blacks, whites, Indians, Creoles, Cajuns, merchants, saints, scoundrels, soldiers, militia—a muddle the like of which I’ve never seen. I would like to know what Pakenham is thinking about now, moving the best Britain has to offer against a mix like we have.”
Nine miles to the south, British major general Sir Edward Pakenham was hunched over a table with his war council in the huge mansion of Villere, which he had commandeered from its owner to serve as his headquarters.
He turned to Colonel William Thornton. Pakenham’s finger was moving on a map as he spoke. “Our scouting reports are in. There are no American forces between this command post and the Mississippi. You will march your forces to the river just after evening mess. They will load into the barges and launch at dusk. They will cross the river and be on the west bank not later than midnight. They will move north where they will instantly attack and capture the American gun batteries directly across from the west end of the Rodriguez Canal. They will then turn the guns to bear on the American lines. A rocket will be fired just before dawn, and on that signal you will immediately commence firing. A concurrent attack on the east side of the river will then commence. Are you clear?”
Thornton was clear.
He turned to Colonel Mullens. “Your regiment will be responsible to carry the scaling ladders and fascines to the Rodriguez Canal. Without them, we will not get across the canal and over the top of the American breastworks. They must be there when we reach the Rodriguez Canal. Your regiment will be with mine when we make the attack. Do you have any questions?”
Mullens had no questions, and Pakenham went on.
“I will lead the attack. We will move across this open area with all speed, directly into the center of the American lines. Once we breach those lines and are behind the Americans, we can destroy them at will, because all their cannon are pointed the opposite direction.”
He straightened and addressed them all. “We have twelve thousand troops facing less than four thousand of theirs. The numbers are in our favor. I have no doubt about the outcome. The more quickly we can move the fewer men we will lose. The weather is not good. It appears certain this will all be done in rain and fog and mud. Rest your men while you can and be ready to complete your duties at the appointed times. That is all. You are dismissed.”
The cold drizzle of rain held as the day wore on, turning the roads into muddy ruts and the open fields into quagmires. Jackson rode up and down his lines with Lafitte and Caleb flanking him, talking with his men as they shivered, soaked, unable to build fires to cook, trying to protect their precious gunpowder. It was past noon when he stopped at battery number three to find Beluche and Dominique and their men calmly sitting in the wet with a pot of coffee boiling on a tiny fire beneath a tarp.
“Is that coffee?” Jackson called. “Real coffee?”
Dominique smiled up at him, squinting in the rain. “But of course, Mon General.” He poured a cup and handed it up to Jackson, still seated in his wet saddle, then a cup for Lafitte and Caleb. Jackson raised it to sniff, then sipped at it. For a moment he closed his eyes to savor the richness. The three men sipped at it until it was gone, then handed the cups back to Dominique.
Jackson grinned. “Where did you get that? Smuggle it?”
Dominique grinned back at him. “We have our ways.”
Dripping wet, soaked to the skin, fevered with the remains of an attack of malaria, Jackson chuckled as he wheeled his horse and continued down the line, talking to his troops, doing all one man could to build their courage in the face of an enemy four times their number.
There was no sunset. The light simply faded beneath the black clouds overhead and through the misty rain and the fog. The tension began to build among the soldiers on both sides of the canal—the British knowing they were soon to attack Americans behind breastworks, and the Americans knowing they were coming, but neither side knowing when the deadly battle would begin.
At dusk, far to the south, Colonel William Thornton took a deep breath, mounted his horse, and called his orders.
“Fall into ranks and follow me to the river.”
He led his regiment west, slogging in the mud, wet, shivering, in darkness and swirling mist, until he could make out the broad expanse of the Mississippi River before him and the huge barges waiting to carry his troops across the river. He called a halt and rode on alone to the place where he expected the bank to meet the water, and he felt his horse sink into mud halfway to its knees. The mare stopped, tossing her head, refusing to go farther into the muck.
For a moment Thornton sat still, unable to understand what was happening. Then he swung his leg over to dismount, and his foot sank into the mud eight inches above his ankle. After extracting his foot from the clinging mess, he remounted and turned his mount back, tied her, and walked back to the riverbank. There was only mud. He walked out into the mess, counting steps, judging distance, until he had covered thirty feet. There was no water. He had gone another twelve feet before he felt the splash and saw the water at his feet.
It struck him like a hammer blow, and he thought—The river has fallen! The water level is down! He turned in terror to peer back at the invisible bank. The barges! We will have to drag them fifty feet in mud! We’ll never reach the far side by midnight!
He turned and slogged back through the muck, grabbed the reins of his mount, and galloped back to his command to shout orders.
“The river has fallen! Break ranks! Break ranks! Get to the barges! Throw your backpacks and muskets into them. Drag them to the river. Do it! Now!”
His bewildered regiment broke ranks and trotted to the barges. They threw their backpacks and muskets into the rainwater that had collected in the boats, and then grasped the gunwales to bow their backs and heave with all their strength. The barges began to move slowly, until they hit the mud of the river bottom, and they mired down.
With Thornton shouting or
ders, the men struggled, slipping, sinking in mud to their knees, straining, moving the barges only inches at a time toward the water.
Nine miles north and across the river, four of Lafitte’s scouts moved silently to the place where Jackson and Lafitte and Caleb had settled for the night, huddled beneath a tarp, with their men. The scouts appeared before them from nowhere, and Jackson flinched. Lafitte smiled as he spoke to them.
“You have a report?”
“Oui. The river has fallen. The British are trying to move their barges to the water. The mud holds the barges down. They will not be across the river much before daylight. They will never reach our cannon batteries on the other side of the river by morning. We thought you should know.”
Jackson started. “You’re certain?”
“Oui. Certain. The mud is deep.”
“Well done, well done,” Jackson exclaimed.
Lafitte quietly gave his orders. “We are grateful. We will be waiting for your next report.”
The men disappeared as silently as they had come. No picket saw or heard them as they moved back to the main road and worked their way south.
Jackson turned to Caleb and Lafitte in the darkness. “If the British don’t reach those batteries before Pakenham begins his attack, they could be in trouble.”
* * * * *
To the south, Pakenham sat in the kitchen of the Villere mansion, nervous, watching the clock, marking time until the hour before dawn when the rocket would arc into the black heavens to signal the attack. With the advantage of numbers four to one in his favor, he had arranged no scouts, no lines of communication with Thornton, nor had anyone yet come to tell him the Mississippi River had fallen. Thoughts of sleep were gone as he rose and paced, marking time, battling nerves. It was four o’clock when Pakenham fastened his cape about his shoulders, settled his hat on his head, and walked out the door into the blackness to his waiting horse. He mounted and rode to his command, standing in the mud in ranks, waiting for his orders.
He peered to the northwest, with time dragging at a maddening pace. He drew his watch from his pocket and held it close to his face to see the hands in the dark. It was twenty minutes before five o’clock.
Where’s Thornton? What’s gone wrong? The rocket should have fired half an hour ago!
Across the river, Thornton was in a near panic. He had been three hours late in getting the barges loaded and launched, and then he had miscalculated the swiftness of the Mississippi current. The flowing river had carried the barges one and one-half miles downstream. Dawn was approaching, and his entire force had scarcely reached the place he had intended landing hours ago. Sitting his horse in the rain, his thoughts were nearly paralyzed.
In this rain and mud I will never reach the American guns before midmorning. When Pakenham doesn’t see the rocket at dawn, what will he do? What will he do?
At that moment, from a source somewhere in the woods, a rocket arced into the black heavens, high, bright in the rain, far short of the American guns. Thornton’s breathing stopped. Pakenham stared, unable to understand why the rocket was fired from the wrong place.
Jackson leaped to his feet and shouted, “Get ready, boys! They’re coming!”
Pakenham did nothing, knowing something was badly wrong, but not knowing what it was. Then, according to the plan, with the rocket in the sky, the officers out on his flanks shouted their orders, and four regiments started forward, their drums rattling and their fifes playing. Pakenham jerked as though he had been struck!
It was too late to stop them! Two-thirds of the British command was moving forward—eight thousand men. Pakenham’s shouts to halt were lost in the sound of sixteen thousand British boots slogging in the mud, with their regimental bands beating a cadence. The men in his own command heard the regiments on both sides marching in the darkness and started forward with them, not knowing that the entire campaign was on the brink of disaster.
On the red-coated regulars came, twelve thousand of them, rank upon rank, on toward the open fields that lay between them and the Rodriguez Canal, slogging slowly onward through the mud and the river fog, slipping, recovering, moving on with their muskets at the ready. The storm clouds to the east became gray, and then the marching troops could see the skyline, and then the canal and the breastworks were there in the far distance.
Beyond the canal, Jackson sat his horse on a rise where he could see the entire panorama of his own lines, and the open fields stretching into the distance, and the Mississippi River moving south, bordered by fifty feet of muddy river bottom left by the receding waters. Beside Jackson were four of his staff officers, Lafitte, and Caleb, sitting tall, eyes squinted in the rain, straining through the misty fog for the first glimpse of a red line coming from the south.
Suddenly it was there, and then they heard the faint rattle of the regimental drums. From their right, Lafitte’s four scouts came trotting, beards and hair wet, muddy to their knees. They stopped before Jackson, and he exclaimed, “What’s your report?”
“The British on the west side of the river are yet three miles south of our gun positions over there. Our battery crews are prepared to give support to our lines here.”
“Excellent,” Jackson said. “Get to your crew and be ready when I give the order to fire.”
The four men spun and ran for battery number three, where Beluche and Dominique stood waiting, calmly counting the distant regimental flags of the oncoming British. The fog began to thin as the British came on, and all along the American line gunners were concentrating, calculating the distance. Jackson sat like a statue, eyes locked onto the first rank, waiting, watching.
Three hundred yards! Jackson raised his hand and bellowed, “Ready!”
Twenty-five hundred muskets and long Pennsylvania rifles clicked onto full cock, and men knelt in the mud to steady their weapons while the cannoneers held smoking linstocks above the cannon touchholes.
Jackson’s arm dropped, and he shouted, “Fire!”
The heavy guns blasted at the same moment, with every musket and rifle in the line. The ground shook in the deafening roar, and buildings five miles away in New Orleans trembled. Grape shot and canister spread to splatter mud just in front of the first British ranks and rip into the leading British lines like a scythe. The rifle fire from the Tennessee volunteers and Kentucky militia punched into the ranks, and red-coated regulars went down in heaps.
They came on, stepping over their own dead and wounded, breaking into a slippery trot in the mud, following their officers, mounted and riding before them, swords drawn, shouting them on.
The Americans reloaded, and the second ear-splitting report sounded. Again mud leaped in front of the British line as the grapeshot and canister tore into the ranks, and the musket and rifle balls decimated them. The sound of distant cannon reached from across the river, and then cannonballs slammed into the British from the west. Jackson glanced at the white cloud of smoke rising on the far bank of the Mississippi and turned back to the battle that was before him, watching the two positions where the untried, untested militia were gathered. They were slow in reloading, hesitant, unsure. Jackson shouted to Lafitte and Caleb and pointed. “There! See the militia? They need to settle!”
The three men came off the hill at a gallop, in behind the militia, then among them, shouting “Steady, boys, steady! Reload. Reload. You’re holding them! Pace yourselves. You can do it.” A sense of confidence took root and spread, and the line straightened and held firm.
The sounds of the firing from the American cannon and muskets and rifles settled into a steady, unbroken din. The white gun smoke rose in clouds that hid the British while the Americans reloaded. The rough, long-haired, bearded, tobacco-stained riflemen from Tennessee and Kentucky were loading and firing faster than any other regiment, and they did not miss. The British were falling on top of each other, with those behind stepping over their own dead to charge on toward the canal and the American lines beyond.
The British came on, with the Ameri
can guns cutting them down by the hundreds. They reached the south edge of the canal, and Pakenham turned to look for the scaling ladders and facines, and they were not in sight!
For a moment he sat his horse in utter disbelief. With near twelve thousand soldiers behind him, his entire army was stopped less than thirty yards from the American guns! Without the ladders, they could not cross the canal nor scale the American breastworks!
He shouted, “Where’s Mullens? The ladders?”
One of his officers pointed back, south, and shook his head.
For reasons Pakenham never learned, Mullens was toward the rear, with the scaling ladders!
Instantly Pakenham spun his horse and dug his spurs. The animal leaped to a gallop and the lines opened to let him through, throwing mud thirty feet at every jump, back through the lines, to the rear, where he hauled his horse to a sliding stop before Mullens and demanded, “The ladders! Where are the ladders?”
Colonel Mullens had no answer. He gaped, stammered, then turned to shout to his men, “Forward! With the ladders and the facines!”
Pakenham turned his horse and galloped back through his command toward the front of the lines, shouting as he went, “Hold firm! Hold firm!” with the American guns firing all the way.
He was within fifty yards of the canal when grapeshot came whistling and his horse went down. He hit the mud rolling, came to his feet, commandeered another horse, and leaped into the saddle. He had just taken the far stirrup when grapeshot came singing again, this time through his upper thigh, into his horse, and it went down, dead. Pakenham tried to stand and could not. Paralysis seized him, and he could not move, and he toppled over in the mud. Instantly the soldiers nearest him stopped to protect him from the hail of bullets and grapeshot, picked him up, and started back through the lines with their fallen commander.
He was dead within minutes.
At the front, in the hail of American gunfire, a Tennessee rifle bullet struck Colonel Keane in his left side, and he jerked in his saddle and toppled into the mud, unconscious. One instant later, grapeshot caught Colonel Gibb in the back and knocked him sprawling from his horse, almost dead when he hit the ground.