The RisingSun Post

 

 

 

 

 

                             CHAPTER VIIII All morning the gunboat crews watched, resigned to their fate, while the line of barges rowed steadily toward them, stretched out closely abreast. Just before eleven a.m. on December 14 the battle began. Jones fired first because some of his guns were longer-ranged than the carronades in the bows of the barges. This did damage, but not enough, since he was outnumbered by more than five to one.  Still, the Americans cheered when two of the barges were blown to splinters and their occupants dumped or blown into the cold water. Fifteen barges soon detached themselves and began rowing directly toward Jone’s gunboat. Moments later the British opened fire, and Jones was among the first struck, with a musket ball in his shoulder. As he was being carried below he turned over command to his second officer, shouting, “Keep up the fight! Keep up the fight!” just as a blast of ...

                           CHAPTER VIII Jackson and his staff rode over to the Place d’Armes to review his troops. Considering that the British army then descending on Louisiana was variously thought to number from 10,000 to 20,000 regulars, all veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, Jackson didn’t seem to have much to work with.  New Orleans offered him the following: A battalion of local businessmen, lawyers, planters, and their sons, numbering 287 men, commanded by Major Jean Baptiste Plauche’. They were colorfully uniformed and high-spirited, but most of the companies had been organized for only about a month, and their fighting capabilities were untested.  Likewise there were “two regiments of Louisiana State Militia, badly equipped, some of them armed with fowling pieces, others with muskets, others with rifles, some without arms, all imperfectly disciplined. Then there was an understrength battalion of 210 ...