the owner of
the plantation, placed a picket of twelve men at Fisherman's Village on
the twenty-first, to watch and report promptly in case the enemy
appeared there. After midnight, near the morning of the twenty-third,
five advance barges bearing British troops glided noiselessly into
Bienvenue from Lake Borgne, capturing the picket of twelve men without
firing a gun. Soon after, the first division of the invading army,
twenty-five hundred strong, under command of Colonel Thornton, appeared
in eighty barges, and passed up the bayous to Villere's canal, where a
landing was effected by the dawn of day. After a brief rest and
breakfast, the march of two miles was made to Villere's plantation,
arriving there at half-past eleven. The troops at once surrounded the
house of General Villere, and surprised and made prisoners a company of
the Third Louisiana Militia stationed there. Major Villere, after
capture, escaped through a window at the risk of his life, reached the
river bank and crossed over in a small boat, and hastened to New Orleans
with the startling news. Colonel Laronde also escaped, and reached
headquarters in the early afternoon; on the day before he had reported
the sighting of several suspicious vessels out upon Lake Borgne,
seemingly to reconnoiter.

Jackson had ordered Majors Latour and Tatum, of his engineer corps, to
reconnoiter in the direction of the Laronde and Lacoste plantations, and
to carefully examine this avenue of approach by the enemy. These
officers left the city at eleven o'clock, and had reached Laronde's,
when they met several persons fleeing toward the city, who told them of
the arrival of the British at Villere's, and of the capture of the
outpost there. It was then but half-past one o'clock. The two scouts put
spurs to their horses, and by two o'clock the General was informed of
the facts. With that heroic promptness and intuition characteristic and
ever present with him, he exclaimed with fierce emphasis: "By the
eternal! the enemy shall not sleep upon our soil!" The invading movement
was a complete surprise, and there was not yet a defensive work to
obstruct the march of the British upon the coveted city. Only genius and
courage of the highest order could have met successfully such an
emergency, and Jackson alone seemed equal to the occasion.

JACKSON DETERMINES TO ATTACK--BLOODY NIGHT-BATTLE OF THE
TWENTY-THIRD OF DECEMBER.

Orders were issued rapidly, as the report of the alarm-g