John Barth - Letters

On the 29th he hears a valuable rumor: that Major General Gibbs, Pakenham’s second in command, thinks both his chief and Admiral Cochrane mad for planning to send infantry over ground so marshy that it cannot be entrenched, to cross a wide ditch (virtually a moat) and scale a high mud wall without proper fascines and ladders. Two days later he hears another: that one Lieutenant Colonel Mullens of the 44th Infantry Regiment, whose wife is among the officers’ ladies come over with the fleet, has been cuckolded by Admiral Malcolm of the Royal Oak, on which ship Mrs. Mullens is waiting out the battle; and that her husband is properly embittered by this state of affairs.

On New Year’s morning, 1815, Cochrane’s artillery mounts its barrage. The infantry await behind to make their assault as soon as Jackson’s wall is breached. Forty minutes later, so accurate is the Baratarians’ reply, half the British cannon are out of action; by afternoon the infantry must be withdrawn without ever attacking; that night the surviving ship’s guns, so toilsomely emplaced, must be toilsomely retrieved through the marsh. The Americans are jubilant and scarcely damaged; the thrice-repulsed British suffer nearly a hundred additional casualties and a great loss of face, confidence, guns, and ammunition.

Pakenham and Cochrane are now equally humiliated… but to Andrew’s distress they do not abandon the siege. Aside from the burning of Washington (in which action George Cockburn was the driving spirit) Cochrane has won no victories in this fast-concluding war; and Sir Edward Pakenham (Andrew has now learned) carries a secret commission to be the first royal governor of Louisiana. They agree to wait for the reinforcements and supplies en route from Havana and then mount an overwhelming attack from both sides of the Mississippi: if American cannon can be captured on one flank and turned against the center while fascines and scaling ladders are positioned, Jackson’s defense will be breached by sheer force of numbers. It will not be inexpensive, they agree: but the prize, and the salvaging of their reputations, is worth the cost.

I understood, writes Andrew, that my efforts to discourage them had but raised the stakes, and that as their troops grew the more disheartened, their commanders turn’d the more stubborn. Unable now to prevent a grand battle, I was obliged to see not only that it fail, but that it fail miserably, beyond that of re-enactment.

He is not surprised that, after the New Year’s Day fiasco, Cochrane no longer seeks his advice; indeed, he discreetly avoids the admiral’s sight. From those Baratarian spies among the Spanish fishermen he picks up a third valuable rumor: that Admiral Malcolm has let General Pakenham know that he will be much obliged if Lieutenant Colonel Mullens can be assigned some particularly hazardous duty in the coming action. And from the cynical foot soldiers he learns further that Pakenham has chosen his critic, General Gibbs, to lead the main assault on the American center. At Gibbs’s desperate insistence the corps of engineers is building ten-foot ladders and heavy fascines of ripe sugarcane, the only available material. Lieutenant Colonel Mullens’s 44th Regiment is under Gibbs’s command: it wants no military expertise to guess what “particularly hazardous duty” lies ahead for Mrs. Mullens’s husband, whom Andrew now befriends and apprises of the rumors current.

He was a dour, melancholical fellow, this Mullens, Andrew reports, but neither a coward nor a fool. Unsurprised & bitter as he was to learn the scheme against himself, his first thot was for his men. When his orders came down on the evening of January 7, and he was ask’d if he understood them, he reply’d: ’Twas clear as day: his regiment were order’d to their execution, to make a bridge of their bodies for Sir Edward to enter New Orleans upon.

Nevertheless, he musters his men and marches them that night toward their position, stopping en route to pick up their burden at the engineers’ redoubt. Ladders and fascines are strewn everywhere; but their makers not being among the units ordered into combat next morning, they and their officers have retired. Cursing their good fortune and his ill, Mullens goes in search of someone authorized to give him official consignment of the gear — until Andrew, who has accompanied him thus far, finds the opportunity he has sought and makes his third and final contribution to the Battle of New Orleans.

I pointed out, he reports to Andrée, that his orders specify’d taking delivery of the fascines & ladders and proceeding with them to the front, to be ready for attack at dawn. But to appropriate that equipage without a sign’d release from the engineering battalion would be to exceed his authority. If no officer was present to consign the ladders to us, I argued, the dereliction was the engineers’, not ours. We would do better to arm ourselves & take our stations for battle without the ladders, than to take the ladders without authorization.

Seductive as this logic is, Mullens fears court-martial. But dawn is approaching; they have wasted a quarter hour already at the redoubt; Andrew resolves the matter by having Mullens deputize him to find the appropriate engineering officer and bid him rouse his men to fetch the ladders and fascines forward, while Mullens sees to it the 44th are in position. Otherwise their tardiness might be imputed to lack of courage. Mullens shrugs, moves the regiment on — and Andrew does nothing.

Now, it is possible the British would have lost the battle even with their scaling equipment: the marines assigned to cross the Mississippi in 50 boats at midnight, capture the American cannon on the west bank, and open fire on Jackson’s center at dawn to signal the attack, are delayed by mud slides and adverse current; they reach the west bank only at dawn — their force reduced from 1,400 to less than 500 by confusions, desertions, and garbled orders — and find themselves swept by the current five miles below their appointed landing place. The guns are not even approached, much less captured, until well after the main assault has failed.

But the missing ladders and fascines are indisputably crucial. When General Gibbs, by dawn’s early light, sees the 44th in position without them, he claps his brow, rushes over to Pakenham, and vows to hang Mullens from the highest cypress in the swamp. Pakenham himself angrily orders Mullens and 300 of his men to return for the ladders, authorization or no authorization. But it is a quarter-mile trip each way, and the gear is heavy. From the engineers’ redoubt they hear the first shots of the battle. Dozens of the 44th refuse to pick up the equipment and return to the line; scores of others, fearing court-martial, assume their burden but take their own time, hoping the assault will have been made or abandoned before they get there.

Even now Mullens is inclined to comply, however sluggishly, with his orders. But Andrew confesses to him that he himself deliberately disobeyed the colonel’s command to rouse up the engineers; that he had done so to save the 44th from suicide, and will answer for his action to any court-martial; that it is Mullens’s feckless complaisance with his superiors that has lost him his wife; and that should he return to the line now, either Gibbs will shoot him for not ordering the regiment forward, or his men will shoot him for doing so, or the Americans will shoot them all. Be a man, Andrew ironically exhorts him: Stay here & lay the blame on me.

Mullens does, and disappears from our story (he will live to be court-martialed for incompetence; of his marital affairs no more is known). Fewer than half of the 300 return to the line; of those, many feign or suffer confusion, throw away the ladders and fascines, and open random fire. Jackson’s cannoneers reply with a barrage that blows them into panic retreat. They ignore Gibbs’s orders to regroup and charge. Pakenham himself, finding Mullens vanished, leads the remnants of the 44th some three dozen yards forward, and is killed by Baratarian grapeshot. Gibbs takes his place, gets as close as twenty yards from Jackson’s ditch, and is cut down by rifle fire. Major General Keane, third in command, falls a few minutes later trying to rescue Gibbs. The few intrepid British who actually manage to cross the ditch and scale the embankment are immediately killed or captured.