ed in the West Indies. It
was such an army as would have been considered fit to withstand the
finest troops in Europe. In command was one of England's most brilliant
soldiers, General Sir Edward Pakenham, of whom Wellington had said, "my
partiality for him does not lead me astray when I tell you that he is
one of the best we have." He was the idol of his officers, who agreed
that they had never served under a man whose good opinion they were so
desirous of having, "and to fall in his estimation would have been worse
than death." In brief, he was a high-minded and knightly leader who had
seen twenty years of active service in the most important campaigns of
Europe.

It was Pakenham's misfortune to be unacquainted with the highly
irregular and unconventional methods of warfare as practiced in America,
where troops preferred to take shelter instead of being shot down while
parading across open ground in solid columns. Improvised breastworks
were to him a novelty, and the lesson of Bunker Hill had been forgotten.
These splendidly organized and seasoned battalions of his were confident
of walking through the Americans at New Orleans as they had done at
Washington, or as Pakenham himself had smashed the finest French
infantry at Salamanca when Wellington told him, "Ned, d'ye see those
fellows on the hill? Throw your division into column; at them, and drive
them to the devil."

Stranger than fiction was the contrast between the leaders and between
the armies that fought this extraordinary battle of New Orleans when,
after the declaration of peace, the United States won its one famous but
belated victory on land. On the northern frontier such a man as Andrew
Jackson might have changed the whole aspect of the war. He was a great
general with the rare attribute of reading correctly the mind of an
opponent and divining his course of action, endowed with an unyielding
temper and an iron hand, a relentless purpose, and the faculty of
inspiring troops to follow, obey, and trust him in the last extremity.
He was one of them, typifying their passions and prejudices, their
faults and their virtues, sharing their hardships as if he were a common
private, never grudging them the credit in success.

In the light of previous events it is probable that any other American
general would have felt justified in abandoning New Orleans without a
contest. In the city itself were only eight hundred regulars newly
recruited and a thousand voluntee