on had arranged his main body of troops along the inner edge of
the small canal extending from a levee to a tangled swamp. The legendary
cotton bales had been blown up or set on fire during the artillery
bombardment and protection was furnished only by a raw, unfinished
parapet of earth and a double row of log breastworks with red clay
tamped between them. It was a motley army that Jackson led. Next to the
levee were posted a small regiment of regular infantry, a company of New
Orleans Rifles, a squad of dragoons who were handling a howitzer, and a
battalion of Creoles in bright uniforms. The line was extended by the
freebooters of Pierre Lafitte, their heads bound with crimson kerchiefs,
a group of American bluejackets, a battalion of blacks from San Domingo,
a few grizzled old French soldiers serving a brass gun, long rows of
tanned, saturnine Tennesseans, more regulars with a culverin, and rank
upon rank of homespun hunting shirts and long rifles, John Adair and his
savage Kentuckians, and, knee-deep in the swamp, the frontiersmen who
followed General Coffee to death or glory.

A spirit of reckless elation pervaded this bizarre and terrible little
army, although it was well aware that during two and a half years almost
every other American force had been defeated by an enemy far less
formidable. The anxious faces were those of the men of Louisiana who
fought for hearth and home, with their backs to the wall. Many a brutal
tale had they heard of these war-hardened British veterans whose
excesses in Portugal were notorious and who had laid waste the harmless
hamlets of Maryland. All night Andrew Jackson's defenders stood on the
_qui vive_ until the morning mist of the 8th of January was dispelled
and the sunlight flashed on the solid ranks of British bayonets not more
than four hundred yards away.

At the signal rocket the enemy swept forward toward the canal, with
companies of British sappers bearing scaling ladders and fascines of
sugar cane. They moved with stolid unconcern, but the American cannon
burst forth and slew them until the ditch ran red with blood. With
cheers the invincible British infantry tossed aside its heavy knapsacks,
scrambled over the ditch, and broke into a run to reach the earthworks
along which flamed the sparse line of American rifles. Against such
marksmen as these there was to be no work with the bayonet, for the
assaulting column literally fell as falls the grass under the keen
scythe. Th