Perhaps no
other exploit of his career was so audacious, or so well carried out.
Pensacola subdued, he hastened to New Orleans, which was in the gravest
danger.
The overthrow of Napoleon and his banishment to Elba had given England a
breathing-space, and the veteran troops which had been with Wellington
in Spain were left free for use against the Americans. A great
expedition was at once organized to attack and capture New Orleans, and
at its head was placed General Pakenham, the brilliant commander of the
column which had delivered the fatal blow at Salamanca. A fleet of fifty
vessels, manned by the best sailors of England, was got ready, ten
thousand men put aboard, and in December, a week after Jackson's arrival
at New Orleans, this great fleet anchored off the broad lagoons of the
Mississippi delta. Seventeen thousand men, in all, counting the sailors,
who could, of course, be employed in land operations; and a mighty
equipment of artillery, for which the guns of the fleet could also be
used. The few American gunboats were overpowered, and Pakenham proceeded
leisurely to land his force for the advance against the city, which it
seemed that nothing could save. On December 23d, his advance-guard of
two thousand men was but ten miles below New Orleans.
On the afternoon of that very day, the vanguard of Jackson's
Tennesseans marched into New Orleans, clad in hunting-shirts of
buckskin or homespun, wearing coonskin caps, and carrying on their
shoulders the long rifles they knew how to use so well.
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