Thus seven or eight hundred tired, ill-armed, and unprotected militia, divided in two bodies a mile apart, waited on the west bank to be attacked by a British column which was then in the act of crossing the river. Their defeat was almost certain. A thousand British troops could easily drive them away, capture all the batteries on the west bank, destroy the “Louisiana” as they had destroyed the “Carolina,” thus turning all Jackson’s lines, and probably rendering necessary the evacuation of New Orleans. For this work Pakenham detached the Eighty-fifth regiment, about three hundred strong, the Fifth West India, two hundred seamen and two hundred marines,—about twelve hundred men in all,[553]—under command of Colonel Thornton, who had led the light brigade at Bladensburg and across Lake Borgne to the Mississippi. The movement was ordered for the night of January 7, and was to be made in boats already collected in the Villeré canal.
With some hesitation[554] Pakenham decided to make a simultaneous attack on Jackson. The arrangements for this assault were simple. The usual store of fascines and ladders was provided. Six of the eighteen-pound guns were once more mounted in battery about eight hundred yards from the American line, to cover the attack. The army, after detaching Thornton’s corps, was organized in three divisions,—one, under Major-General Gibbs, to attack Jackson’s left; another, under Major-General Keane, to attack along the river-side; a third, the reserve, to be commanded by Major-General Lambert.
“The principal attack was to be made by Major-General Gibbs,” said the British official report.[555] The force assigned to Gibbs consisted of the Fourth, Twenty-first, and Forty-fourth regiments, with three companies of the Ninety-fifth,—about two thousand two hundred rank-and-file.[556] The force assigned to Keane consisted of “the Ninety-third, two companies of the Ninety-fifth, and two companies of the Fusileers and Forty-third,”[557]—apparently about twelve hundred rank-and-file. “The first brigade, consisting of the Fusileers and Forty-third, formed the reserve” under Major-General Keane, apparently also twelve hundred strong. Adding two hundred artillerists and five hundred black troops of the First West India regiment, employed as skirmishers along the edge of the swamp, the whole body of troops engaged on the east bank in the assault, according to the official report and returns of wounded,[558] numbered about five thousand three hundred rank-and-file, consisting of the Fourth, Seventh (Fusileers), Twenty-first, Forty-third, Forty-fourth, Ninety-third, and Ninety-fifth regiments, of whom twenty-two hundred were to attack on the right, twelve hundred on the left, and twelve hundred were to remain in reserve.
Thus of the whole British force, some eight thousand rank-and-file, fifty-three hundred were to assault Jackson’s line; twelve hundred were to cross the river and assault Morgan; eight hundred and fifty men were detailed for various duties; and the seamen, except two hundred with Colonel Thornton, must have been in the boats.
To meet this assault, Jackson held an overwhelming force, in which his mere numbers were the smallest element. According to a detailed account given by Jackson two years afterward, his left wing, near the swamp, was held by Coffee’s brigade of eight hundred and four men; his centre, by Carroll’s brigade of fourteen hundred and fourteen men; his right, near the river, by thirteen hundred and twenty-seven men, including all the regulars; while Adair’s Kentucky brigade, numbering five hundred and twenty-five men, were in reserve.[559] Adair claimed that the Kentuckians numbered fully one thousand. The dispute mattered little, for barely one third of the entire force, whatever it was, discharged a gun.
Besides three thousand or thirty-five hundred men on the parapets and a thousand in reserve, Jackson had twelve pieces of artillery distributed along the line, covering every portion of the plain. The earth-wall behind which his men rested was in every part sufficiently high to require scaling, and the mud was so slippery as to afford little footing.[560] Patterson’s battery on the opposite shore increased in force till it contained three twenty-four-pounders and six twelve-pounders,[561] covered the levee by which the British left must advance. The “Louisiana” took no part in the action, her men being engaged in working the guns on shore; but without the “Louisiana’s” broadside, Jackson had more than twenty cannon in position. Such a force was sufficient to repel ten thousand men if the attack were made in open day.
Pakenham, aware of the probable consequences of attacking by daylight, arranged for moving before dawn; but his plan required a simultaneous advance on both banks of the river, and such a combination was liable to many accidents. According to the journal of Major Forrest, the British Assistant-Quartermaster-General,[562] forty-seven boats were brought up the bayou on the evening of January 7:
“As soon as it was dark, the boats commenced to be crossed over into the river. A dam erected below the sternmost boat had raised the water about two feet. Still there was a very considerable fall from the river; and through which, for an extent of two hundred and fifty yards, the boats were dragged with incredible labor by the seamen. It required the whole night to effect this, and the day had dawned before the first detachment of Colonel Thornton’s corps (about six hundred men) had embarked; and they just reached the opposite bank when the main attack commenced on the enemy’s line.”
At six o’clock in broad dawn the columns of Gibbs and Keane moved forward toward Jackson’s works, which were lined with American troops waiting for the expected attack. Gibbs’s column came first under fire, advancing near the swamp in close ranks of about sixty men in front.[563] Three of the American batteries opened upon them. Coming within one hundred and fifty yards of the American line, the British column obliqued to the left to avoid the fire of the battery directly in face. As they came within musketry range the men faltered and halted, beginning a confused musketry fire. A few platoons advanced to the edge of the ditch, and then broke. Their officers tried in vain to rally them for another advance. Major-General Gibbs was mortally wounded, according to the official report, “within twenty yards of the glacis.”[564] Pakenham himself rode forward to rally Gibbs’s column, and was instantly struck by a grape-shot and killed, nearly three hundred yards from the American line.[565] “As I advanced with the reserve,” said Lambert’s report, “at about two hundred and fifty yards from the line, I had the mortification to observe the whole falling back upon me in the greatest confusion.”
Keane’s column on the left moved along the road and between the river and the levee. Pressing rapidly forward, greatly annoyed by Patterson’s battery on the west bank, the head of this column reached the American line, and stormed an unfinished redoubt outside the main work at the edge of the river. The concentrated fire of the whole American right almost immediately drove the column back in disorder; the men who reached the redoubt were killed; Major-General Keane was severely wounded and carried off the field, while the casualties among officers of a lower grade were excessive. The Ninety-third regiment in Keane’s brigade lost its lieutenant-colonel and two captains killed, and four more captains severely wounded; three hundred and forty-eight rank-and-file were wounded, ninety-nine were reported missing, and fifty-eight killed. These losses amounted to five hundred and five in seven hundred and seventy-five rank-and-file.[566]