| On the Eve of the Battle, Spies Inform Jackson of the Enemy's Position |
It was now two days before Christmas. In a little dwelling house in Royal Street all was hurry and bustle. This was General Jackson's headquarters. Early in the afternoon, a young French officer, Major Villeré, had galloped to the door, with the word that an outpost on his father's plantation, twelve miles below New Orleans, had been surprised that morning by the British.
"The redcoats are marching in full force straight for the city," he said; "and if they keep on, they will reach here this very night."
"By the Eternal!" exclaimed Jackson. His eyes flashed, his reddish gray hair began to bristle, and he brought his fist down upon the table. "They shall not sleep upon our soil this night."
"Gentlemen," he continued to his officers and to the citizens round him, "the British are below; we must fight them to-night."
The great bell on the old cathedral of St. Louis begins to ring, cannon are fired three times to signify danger, and messengers ride to and fro in hot haste, with orders for the troops to take up their line of march.
The people of New Orleans had heard how the rough Britons dealt with the cities of Spain, and they knew well enough that the hated redcoats would treat their own loved city in like manner.
Jackson put every able-bodied man at work. It was a motley crowd. Creoles, Frenchmen, Spaniards, prison convicts, negroes, and even Lafitte, the far-famed "Pirate of the Gulf," and his crew of buccaneers, answered Jackson's call. The people cheerfully submitted to martial law. The streets resounded with "Yankee Doodle" and with "The Marseillaise" sung in English, French, and Spanish.
The backwoodsmen once more came to the front, as they had done at King's Mountain, thirty-five years before. The stern features of "Old Hickory" relaxed a bit at the sight of Colonel Carroll and his riflemen from Nashville. They arrived in flatboats on the same day that the British vanguard reached the river. Clad in coonskin caps and fringed leggins, and with their long rifles on their shoulders, these rough pioneers came tramping into the city. They were tall, gaunt fellows, with powder horns over their buckskin shirts, and with hunting knives in their belts.