of a century's triumphant ocean warfare, anchored off the broad
lagoons of the Mississippi delta. The few American gunboats were
carried after a desperate hand-to-hand struggle, the troops were
landed, and on December 23 the advance-guard of two thousand men
reached the banks of the Mississippi, but ten miles below New
Orleans, and there camped for the night. It seemed as if nothing
could save the Creole City from foes who had shown, in the
storming of many a Spanish walled town, that they were as
ruthless in victory as they were terrible in battle. There were
no forts to protect the place, and the militia were ill armed and
ill trained. But the hour found the man. On the afternoon of the
very day when the British reached the banks of the river the
vanguard of Andrew Jackson's Tennesseeans marched into New
Orleans. Clad in hunting-shirts of buckskin or homespun, wearing
wolfskin and coonskin caps, and carrying their long rifles on
their shoulders, the wild soldiery of the backwoods tramped into
the little French town. They were tall men, with sinewy frames
and piercing eyes. Under "Old Hickory's" lead they had won the
bloody battle of the Horseshoe Bend against the Creeks; they had
driven the Spaniards from Pensacola; and now they were eager to
pit themselves against the most renowned troops of all Europe.

Jackson acted with his usual fiery, hasty decision. It was
absolutely necessary to get time in which to throw up some kind
of breastworks or defenses for the city, and he at once resolved
on a night attack against the British. As for the British, they
had no thought of being molested. They did not dream of an
assault from inferior numbers of undisciplined and ill-armed
militia, who did not possess so much as bayonets to their guns.
They kindled fires along the levees, ate their supper, and then,