Letters полностью

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.

The Battle of New Orleans is less than half an hour old, and effectively over. Major General Lambert of the reserve units, unexpectedly promoted from fourth in command to commander in chief, orders his men to attack. They refuse. He then orders retreat, and is willingly obeyed. Most of the rest of the army are pinned to the muddy plain by Jackson’s barrage. At 8:30 A.M. the riflery ceases, the attackers having crawled back out of range; the artillery is sustained with deadly effect into early afternoon, when Lambert sends a flag of truce and begs leave to remove his wounded and bury his dead. They total 2,000, as against half a dozen Americans killed and seven wounded.

’Twas a scene to end an Iliad, writes Andrew, that huge interment in the bloody bog; I resolved to take advantage of it to recross the lines & resume my Odyssey. But that same sudden swoon, which had afflicted me in the bayou on Christmas Eve day, now smote me again as I mingled with the burial parties. Once more I awoke to think myself on Bloodsworth Island, and found myself on the shores of Louisiana! I had been fetcht back to Lake Borgne as one of the wounded; recognized now by Admiral Cochrane’s sailors, I was detain’d a virtual prisoner, as accessory to the Mullens affair. Had news of the Peace not reacht us ashore at Fort Bowyer (which Cochrane seized to console himself for the loss of New Orleans) instead of aboard ship, I had surely been return’d to England in irons or hang’d from the yardarm for a spy. But in the officers’ chagrin (and the enlisted men’s rejoicing) at that same news, I contrived on St. Valentine’s Day to hide myself in the Fort till my captors departed. I then posted to you the letter begun off Bermuda the summer before (which seem’d already a hundred years since), and made my way back to New Orleans, to await your arrival with the twins, when we should commence a new life in new surroundings. Whilst awaiting you there, I thot to complete that other letter begun in Washington, which I was not to finish until Rochefort in the July to come.