And the troops went down so merrily to death in that cloud of dust—what pathos, what patriotism, what sublime ignorance of what they were up against, what blind faith in Jackson and God went forth that day to fight the conquering, red English, who knew no such word as defeat, no such tactics as retreat. Marines, raw troops who hardly knew how to drill, and one little battery, in all, 884; flashy Creoles, gaudily equipped and making much noise, the battalion of St. Domingo, “men of color,” 210; Choctaw Indians, 18; Coffee’s Tennessee Volunteers, mounted riflemen, 563; Beall’s Orleans Rifle Company, 62; Mississippi Dragoons, 107, in all 2,131.
And this crowd were going to drive the victors of Toulouse, San Sebastian, Salamanca and Badajos into the river, and do it at night, and not a hundred bayonets on their guns and only two little six-pound cannon!
It was six o’clock and the British were having a jolly good time, with campfires burning merrily and abundance of supper for hungry, healthy stomachs. And now it is seven o’clock and suddenly a little gunboat looms out in the twilight of the river before them, a queer looking little craft to them, and they crowd up on the bank to look at it. It came steadily on, its guns trained on the crowd of soldiers on the bank, who were laughing, jollying and bantering it with empty jokes. “Can it shoot?” “What is it?” “Give it a few from a musket,” are the shouts, and they fired on the little Carolina with muskets and out of the gathering darkness came:
“Now, boys, for the honor of America. Give it to them” And, to their consternation, there was poured into the joking crowd a regular hell of grape and shell, driving the British pell-mell to camp and arms and the levee banks.
Jackson had reached the Bayou Bienvenu about four o’clock and formed his thin lines as far across the plain as he could, to flank the enemy. Notices were stuck up everywhere, signed “Keane and Cochrane:” “Louisianans, remain quietly in your homes; your slaves will be preserved to you and your property respected. We make war against Americans!”
The Carolina floats down to the river opposite Jackson. He sends an aide aboard and gives her commander his orders to drop down and open on the British camp. It was an hour before the waiting Jackson heard her guns two miles below, and then he advanced, Coffee, regulars, marines, Indians, negroes, artillery, forward, with blazing guns and American yells and the British caught a circle of fire.
No man can paint that battle in the dark, for no man ever saw such a fight in the dark before. The English fought nobly, but Jackson went right in on them, his men using their knives and rifle butts, and in the mix-up they knew not front from rear, nor friend from foe. Powder smoke settled, gray and sulphurous over the plain, half dimming an already cloud-dimmed moon. The fog added to it, and out of it, on the river, thundered the guns of the Carolina pouring shot into their ranks, and before them the sheeted fire of Jackson’s battery, up the levee, poured it in from the front. They fought by companies, battalions, squads. They charged around in the darkness and under clouds of smoke and fog, and heard strange backwoods yells and ungodly oaths, and felt strange bear-knives rip into their vitals from out of the dark. They fell back, fighting, to the river bank, to the camp of trees. They charged and drove the Tennesseans time and again before the naked, cold bayonet, but each time they came back before clubbed guns and tomahawk and bear-knife. It was a riot, not a battle; a butchery, not a fight; a stabbing contest in the dark, where the bear killers and Indian fighters had all the advantage.
At midnight Jackson collected his men, fell back to the canal and began there to throw up the long line of entrenchments over which the vaunted British battalions never put their foot.
Keane was stopped, shocked, chagrined; his troops dumbfounded. Three hundred and three lay dead or wounded in the field, and sixty-four had run off or been captured.
And now before them, entrenched, lay the same intrepid backwoodsman who had violated all the rules of warfare in fighting them hand-to-hand in the night, when, if he had waited a few more hours, the city had been theirs.