On the 10th of December the British fleet entered Lake Borgne, where on the 14th it defeated and captured the American gunboats. On the 23d a body of two thousand four hundred British troops reached the bank of the Mississippi nine miles below New Orleans, and with two thousand one hundred Jackson went down to meet them.
New Orleans was the largest prize which had been contended for in this war. It was a city of twenty thousand inhabitants; and a hundred and fifty thousand bales of cotton, worth two shillings a pound, were stored there. But it was not so much its immediate pecuniary value that tempted the enemy, as the commercial and strategical importance of its position, for they expected not only to capture but to hold it permanently. Lieutenant Gleig, author of "The Subaltern," who was connected with the expedition, after describing the Mississippi and its tributaries, wrote: "Whatever nation, therefore, chances to possess this place, possesses in reality the command of a greater extent of country than is included within the boundary line of the whole United States," and the London Times, announcing that all the disposable shipping had been sent from Bermuda, to the Mississippi, added that, "most active measures are pursuing for detaching from the dominion of the enemy an important part of his territory."
Wellington's veterans, fresh from their victories in the Spanish peninsula, were now before the city, and the inhabitants, knowing how hasty had been the preparations for defence, trembled for its safety. The expectation was, that, if captured, it would at once be sacked.
It was late in the day when Jackson moved to the attack. He sent Coffee and his Tennesseeans to gain the right flank and rear of the enemy, while the rest of his forces were to deploy across the narrow strip of land between the river and a morass, and attack in front. The schooner Carolina was ordered to move down to a point opposite the British left, and enfilade the position; her first discharge to be the signal for the land attack. It was half-past seven o'clock when she opened the battle with a broadside that tore through the British camp and swept down a large number of men. The moon was young and obscured by clouds, so that there was almost absolute darkness, except when the flashes of the guns momentarily lighted up one or another part of the field. The two armies soon became intermingled, and, as one of the participants wrote, "no man could tell what was going forward in any quarter, except where he himself chanced immediately to stand; no one part of the line could bring assistance to another, because in truth no line existed." The fighting was mostly hand-to-hand; few of the Americans had bayonets, but many carried long knives, and the most ghastly wounds were given and received. Officers on either side would gather little companies of men and go out into the darkness to find the enemy; but when they had come in contact with an armed party like themselves, it was often impossible to say whether they were friends or foes.
After three hours of this bloody work, the Americans withdrew to works four miles from the city. They had lost twenty-four killed, one hundred and fifteen wounded, and seventy-four missing. General Keane's official report made the British loss forty-six killed, one hundred and sixty-seven wounded, and sixty-four missing. Lieutenant Gleig, in his "Narrative," says, "Not less than five hundred men had fallen, many of whom were our finest soldiers and best officers; and yet we could not but consider ourselves fortunate in escaping from the toils, even at the expense of so great a sacrifice." A journal found upon a British officer who was killed in the battle of January 8th, puts the loss in this action at "two hundred and twenty-four killed, and an immense number wounded."
Heavy reënforcements of British troops soon arrived, and with them Generals Sir Edward Pakenham and Samuel Gibbs. Pakenham, a brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, had won considerable distinction in the Peninsular War. He found the army before New Orleans in a pitiful plight. It was encamped on a strip of low and level land, on one side a broad river where it had no vessels, and on the other an almost impassable morass. In front were fortifications that were continually being strengthened, and of the enemy behind them almost nothing was known; while two armed vessels kept up day and night an enfilading fire. With all this, alternate rain and frost left them scarcely a comfortable hour.
Pakenham's first movement was to bring heavy guns and a furnace across the peninsula by night, and plant them on the levee; from which on the morning of the 27th he opened a fire with hot shot, and in half an hour had driven the Louisiana up stream and set the Carolina on fire, so that she was abandoned and blew up.
On the 28th he made a reconnoissance in force. As the left wing approached the American lines, a group of buildings which Jackson's men had filled with combustibles was fired by a hot shot from one of his guns, and amid the heat and smoke the British saw before them an impassable ditch, from behind which a few pieces of artillery, handled with the utmost skill, poured destruction through their ranks. The right wing found the left of Jackson's position weak, effected a lodgment within the lines, and might perhaps have changed the fortunes of the campaign, had not its leader been instructed that this was to be a reconnoissance, not a battle.
Pakenham now resolved upon regular siege operations, and brought thirty guns from the fleet, which in the night of the 31st he mounted within three hundred yards of the American lines. His troops were encamped in the midst of sugar plantations, and a considerable portion of his new ramparts was formed of hogsheads of sugar, set on end.
When day dawned, and the Americans saw thirty guns frowning down upon them from high bastions that had risen as if by magic in the darkness, the sight was rather appalling; but as soon as fire was opened upon these apparently formidable works, it was seen that the balls passed right through the hogsheads of sugar, and the whole fabric began to crumble away. There was also a vulnerable element in Jackson's works; for he had used cotton bales as his enemy used sugar, and though the cotton resisted the passage of a ball, it was easily set on fire, and the bales knocked out of position.