, however, not the result of imprudent
hardihood, but purely the result of accident in the time of attack, and
in the neglect of Colonel Mullens, to whom the duty of bringing up the
fascines and ladders was entrusted. Pakenham well considered the
difficulties which he had to encounter. He would have carried the
American entrenchments by a _coup de main_, had he not perceived that
the operation would have been extremely hazardous. He would have sat
down before the city and have advanced under cover of first one
parallel and then another, had he not perceived that as he approached
so the enemy could have retired within successive lines of
entrenchment. Nay, he saw that the most probable mode of speedy and
successful assault was by a simultaneous attack upon the enemy during
the night, in the front and in the rear of their intrenched lines. He
further knew that the attack in rear would depend for success, in a
very great measure, upon the skill and intrepidity of the officer
entrusted with its execution, and he accordingly selected an officer
possessed of both these essentials in the person of Colonel Thornton.
And with respect to the effect of having landed his whole force, on the
right bank of the river, where success, though too late, did attend the
efforts of Thornton, it is to be remembered that Colonel Dixon reported
to General Lambert, when the battery on that side was in Thornton's
possession, that it could not be retained even, without more men than
Lambert could spare to re-inforce him. The defeat at New Orleans was
only humiliating to Great Britain in the result, not in the conception,
and it cannot fairly be laid to the charge of Pakenham that he only
exhibited heroic valour, coupled with imprudent hardihood, or that he
despised his enemy.

However the heroic defence of New Orleans and the disastrous retreat
from Plattsburgh may have elated the Americans and may yet gratify
their natural vanity, there are men in the United States, fully alive
to the consequences which could not have failed to have resulted from
the defeat of Pakenham, had the war continued. The British government
had able generals without number, well-trained and experienced
soldiers, and ships also without number, to bring to bear upon a
country almost pecuniarily exhausted, and suffering from internal
dissensions, on the conclusion of a war which had, as it were, brought
out the immense resources for war, which were almost latent in England