New Orleans, 8 January 1815

The battle, stage by stage

1. 23 December 1814, 7:30 PM

   A night attack

   The campaign opened on 14 December, when British boats overwhelmed the small American gunboat flotilla on Lake Borgne. On the 23rd the British advance guard came up Bayou Bienvenue and reached the Mississippi at the Villeré plantation, about nine miles below the city; Major Gabriel Villeré reportedly escaped through a window to warn Jackson. That night Jackson struck first. At about 7:30 PM the schooner Carolina opened fire on the British camp from the river; Jackson's division advanced along the levee while Coffee's Tennesseans swung round the inland flank. In fog and darkness the fight broke into confused small actions. Jackson lost 24 killed, 115 wounded and 74 missing, the British 46, 167 and 64 by their count. The British were checked but not driven off, and Jackson fell back two miles to the Rodriguez Canal.

2. 8 January 1815, before 6 AM

   Line Jackson and the missing ladders

   Behind the old Rodriguez millrace, Jackson's men have built a mud rampart running about three-quarters of a mile from the river to the cypress swamp, with eight batteries along it: regulars of the 7th and 44th U.S. Infantry, the uniformed Battalion of Orleans, two battalions of free men of color, Marines, Carroll's and Coffee's Tennesseans, with Adair's Kentuckians in reserve, and Baratarian and Navy gunners on the big guns. (There is no evidence Jean Lafitte himself was on the line.) General Sir Edward Pakenham plans to storm it before dawn: Gibbs's column against the swamp end, Keane's and Rennie's along the river, Lambert in reserve, while Thornton crosses the river to take the American guns on the west bank. The 44th Foot is to carry the fascines and scaling ladders — but in the dark Lt Col Thomas Mullins leads it past the redoubt where they are stored. Thornton's boats are hours late, and only about 560 men get across.

3. About 6:15 AM

   Rockets, then the fog lifts

   Two signal rockets go up at about daylight, and the American batteries answer. The fog holds longer by the river, but out by the swamp it lifts and leaves Gibbs's column marching across open cane stubble straight at Batteries 6, 7 and 8; by tradition Lt Samuel Spotts ordered the first shot from Battery 7. Part of the 44th has been sent back for the ladders and fascines, and the column goes on without most of them. By the river, Colonel Robert Rennie's light column comes up the levee road toward the forward redoubt, and Keane starts the 93rd Highlanders across the field.

4. About 6:30–7 AM

   At the ditch without ladders

   Round shot and grape from Batteries 6, 7 and 8 tear into Gibbs's column from long range; inside musket range Carroll's Tennesseans and the Kentuckians brought up behind them open fire in ranks. The column reaches the canal with no way across and no ladders for the wall, and stalls. Gibbs is mortally wounded, reportedly within about 20 yards of the rampart. Pakenham rides forward to rally the men and is hit — his horse is killed, and he is mortally wounded (the park's 'Pakenham's Fall' wayside marks the area; accounts differ on the exact spot). Keane, leading the 93rd obliquely across the field, is badly wounded and its colonel, Robert Dale, killed; the Highlanders stand in the open under fire. On the river road Rennie's men seize the forward redoubt hand to hand, but Rennie is shot down and the Americans retake it. The main column breaks after about 25 minutes of fire.

5. About 8 AM

   Lambert calls it off

   With Pakenham dying, Gibbs down and Keane carried off, command falls to General John Lambert, who brings up the reserve to cover the broken columns and decides the attack is hopeless; the infantry fight has lasted less than two hours. The American line is nearly untouched: the Park Service counts only seven killed and six wounded on the main line. Most of the heavy British losses came from Jackson's artillery, crewed largely by regulars, sailors and Baratarians, though the frontier troops met the advance at musket range and helped break Gibbs's column.

6. About 8–9 AM

   Success on the wrong bank

   Across the river, Thornton's small force — the 85th, sailors and Royal Marines — drives in the forward post, where tired and poorly armed militia fire a few volleys and run, then strikes Morgan's unfinished line near its inland end and breaks it. Patterson spikes the naval guns that had been firing across the river into the British flank and withdraws. It is the one part of the plan that works, but it comes too late: with the main attack already beaten, there is no one on the east bank in a position to use it. Jackson's report singled out the Kentuckians on this bank for giving way — the start of his long quarrel with their state.

7. 9–19 January 1815

   The cost, and the song

   Lambert recalls Thornton and arranges a truce to bury the dead; on 18–19 January the British slip away to the lake. On 8 January the British lost about 291 killed, some 1,262 wounded and 484 captured or missing — over 2,000 men — against 13 American dead, 39 wounded and 19 missing for the whole day on both banks. Pakenham's body went home reportedly preserved in a cask of rum. The peace treaty had been signed at Ghent on 24 December but took effect only when the U.S. Senate ratified it on 16 February 1815, so the war was still on. Jackson became a national hero, and Samuel Woodworth's song 'The Hunters of Kentucky' later fixed the rifleman in memory — and carried Jackson's 1828 campaign.