1812: The Rivers of War (59 page)

In the end, that was really all that mattered. Not even Jackson thought that his pieced-together army was capable of defeating British regulars on an open field of battle. He’d been willing to gamble on this attack because he was fighting at night, and still facing only a portion of the enemy’s forces. But the fundamental goal remained what it had always been: create a strong defensive position and force the British to attack the Americans in a frontal assault, where they couldn’t maneuver on the flanks. It was the British who were on the offensive, after all. Jackson had only to hold New Orleans, and he’d win.

“Yes, sir. I’m thinking we’ve gained enough time tonight to turn the Rodriguez Canal into something of a fortress.”

Jackson nodded. “I do believe you’re right. Send word to the men to start withdrawing from the field.”

John Ross had always thought bayonets were a flashy but fundamentally silly weapon. Sticking a skinny foot-and-a-half-long knife on the end of a heavy and clumsy musket seemed a preposterous way to design a spear. Nothing at all like the graceful weapons favored by the Indian tribes.

That night, groping his way through the dark woods of the cypress swamp, he stumbled into another highlander from the Ninety-third Regiment, and the man quickly showed the Cherokee captain the error of his thinking.

John simply hadn’t taken into account the fact that such men would be
trained
to use a bayonet properly. The musket might be clumsy and heavy, but the butt stroke the highlander delivered to start the fray was all the more powerful because of it. John was sent sprawling in the muck, his left arm badly bruised
and paralyzed. A moment later, his right arm just beneath the shoulder was ripped open by the bayonet.

He would have died then, except the swampy muck and the darkness made the highlander miss his next thrust. He speared a half-rotted log instead of John, and then made the mistake of trying to pry the bayonet loose. That gave John the time to scramble back to his feet and fire a shot from his pistol at point-blank range.

The pistol misfired.

John’s dowsing in the swamp had soaked the powder in the flashpan. But at close range a pistol made a decent enough club, especially when wielded by a man who was half terrified and half enraged. Wounded arm or not, he kept clubbing the highlander until the man collapsed—whether dead or simply unconscious, John had no way of knowing.

Under the circumstances, the difference was probably moot. The man’s head slid beneath the water, and by the time John could catch his breath and haul the highlander onto what passed for dry ground in the cypress, the man had probably drowned, even if his skull hadn’t been shattered. There was no way to tell.

Between John’s exhaustion, confusion, and the urgent need to bind up the flesh wound before he lost too much blood, he gave no thought at all to examining his enemy. By the time he finished dressing the wound, his only purpose was to get back to his own lines.

Wherever they were. In the course of the fighting, John had gotten completely lost and separated from the Cherokees and Tennesseans he’d been fighting alongside. So, he just made his best guess and started slogging through the swamp. He was worried that he might accidentally be shot by one of his own, but he was a lot more concerned about the effect of the blood loss. Or perhaps it was simply the cumulative effect of the most terrifying night in John’s life. Either way, he felt as if he might lapse unconscious any moment.

And if he did, in that muck, he would likely drown.

Eventually he heard some noises up ahead. He paused, trying to gauge the sound. Voices, he thought, and moved forward as silently as he could.

After a few yards, he recognized the voices. The words, if not the speakers.

Cherokees. He felt more relieved that he ever had in his life, and managed to croak out a few words in Cherokee himself.

He finally collapsed, then. When he came back to full consciousness, he found himself being levered powerfully forward by a man who had John’s left arm over a thick shoulder, and was carrying at least half of Ross’s weight.

Major Ridge, he realized. He was even stronger than John had imagined.

“Thank you,” he murmured. His badly bruised left arm was hurting a great deal now, from the awkward position more than anything else. But John issued no complaint. Ridge was propelling him out of that wretched cypress swamp as surely and certainly as a buffalo. An aching arm was a small price to pay for that blessing.

John heard Ridge chuckle. “Next time you fight an alligator,” he said, “try to keep your arm out of its maw. We don’t have that many promising young diplomats that we can afford to have them eaten.”

“Was a highlander,” John croaked.

“Scotsman, alligator—what’s the difference?”

“That’s it, then,” Driscol said. The sound of the cannonades had faded away and finally ceased.

“Did we win or lose?” Tiana asked.

“We won. Or it was a draw, more likely, which amounts to the same thing under the circumstances. If we’d lost, you’d still be hearing the sound of fighting. Jackson would muster a delaying action for every mile the British had to cross to get to New Orleans.”

Captain John grunted. “To allow the citizens time to evacuate.”

Driscol shook his head. “No, to allow the men he left behind time to set fires, and burn the whole city. Whatever else, Jackson will not allow the British to take New Orleans. A pile of smoldering ruins, perhaps, but not the city.”

For once, the jeering grin vanished from the face of Tiana’s father. “Good God. Do you really think he’s that cold-blooded?”

Driscol smiled thinly. “Oh, I’m positive. The instructions he gave me were quite precise.”

Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, Knight of the Bath, arrived from England on Christmas Day with three thousand fresh troops. He spent that day and the next familiarizing himself with the situation on the battle line at the Mississippi, before scheduling a conference of the top commanders of the British forces in the gulf. The conference was held in one of the rooms of the Villeré plantation house, and included his second in command, Major General Samuel Gibbs.

Pakenham and Gibbs had worked together in the Peninsular War. In fact, many people considered the two generals to have been Wellington’s most capable lieutenants during that long and bitter struggle in Spain against Napoleon and his marshals.

Admiral Cochrane came from Lake Bourgne. So, ignoring his illness and continuing weakness, did Robert Ross. He had insisted, and despite the fact that he no longer had a formal place in the chain of command, no one was prepared to tell him otherwise.

Pakenham’s assessment was blunt, forceful, and to the point.

“We’re in a bloody bottleneck,” he growled. “I can’t imagine worse ground to launch an assault.” Since General Keane was not present at the conference, Pakenham saw no need to spare his feelings. “Keane blundered badly, on the twenty-third. He should have kept driving forward while the Americans were still confused and disorganized.”

He shook his head irritably. “Yes, yes. I understand his reasoning. I’m not accusing the man of anything improper, mind you. Looked at from one side, his caution was commendable.

He only had a portion of the army available, and some of the intelligence he’d received led him to believe the American forces in New Orleans numbered as many as fifteen thousand troops.”

Robert Ross couldn’t quite stymie a choking sound. Pakenham cast him a shrewd look. “I take it you didn’t give any more credence to that figure than I do, Robert?”

Ross shook his head. “We heard the number from several sources, but the sources were all suspect. What’s more important, how could the United States possibly have assembled such a force in so short a time? It’s a republic, you know.”

Ross didn’t share the sharp hostility toward republicanism that was common among Britain’s officer corps, but he was still no great admirer of the beast. A republic was a clumsy form of government in time of war, especially when that republic was further burdened by the creaking joints of America’s intricate federal structure.

The same General Winfield Scott who had acquitted himself so well at the Chippewa had been ignominiously captured in an earlier campaign in the war because the boats that were supposed to ferry his army back across to American soil had been lodged on the opposite bank of the Niagara. The boats were under the control of the New York militia, and the militiamen had stoutly insisted that their sole responsibility was to defend the soil of
New York
—and Scott and his men were in Canada. So, placidly, the soldiers of one state in the union had watched federal regulars captured on the opposite bank because they refused to row across a river.

It took a peculiar sort of genius to make the armed forces of such a ramshackle nation fight effectively. Unfortunately, Andrew Jackson was just that sort of genius. There’d be no obstreperous militiamen to grease the skids for the British army here. If speeches and harangues didn’t work, Jackson would simply have them shot.

There was a reason, after all, that the word “tyrant” originated from the ancient Greek republics. Who else but a tyrant could make such a risible form of government work at all, in times of crisis?

Pakenham sighed, and ran fingers through his hair. It was an easy, natural gesture. Somewhat to Ross’s surprise, Wellington’s brother-in-law had proven to be remarkably free—so far, at least—of any trace of the haughty stiffness he had expected.
Albeit tentatively, Ross decided he rather liked the man, for all of Pakenham’s handsome looks and flashy reputation.

Like Ross himself, Pakenham came from Ireland—although, in Pakenham’s case, from the upper crust of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. He was only thirty-seven years old, but, again like Ross himself, he had been fighting for many years. With his family connections, he’d become a major in the Ulster Light Dragoons before his seventeenth birthday.

Thereafter, Pakenham’s rise through the ranks had been based upon his own ability. His reputation had been made solid by his impetuous headlong assault against the leading French column at the battle of Salamanca. Wellington’s great victory there had opened the road into Spain during the Peninsular War.

But it was becoming obvious to Ross that beneath that reputation lay a very fine and capable military brain. And one whose experience was almost as extensive as his own.

Pakenham was still looking at Ross, the man he was replacing. The relationship between the two men was potentially fraught with difficulty. They both knew it, even though not a word had been said by either on the subject.

So, making his movements appear more weak than they needed to be, Ross levered himself upright in his chair and shook his head. “I wouldn’t presume to advance any tactical opinions, Edward. You’ve seen the lay of the ground, and I haven’t. But from what I can tell, I’d think we’d be wise to extract ourselves and try another line of attack entirely.”

Pakenham took a slow, deep breath. The young general was doing his best to maintain his even expression, but Ross could tell that his words had come as a considerable relief.

“Exactly what I was thinking!” Pakenham stated forcefully, almost barking the words. He nodded toward Gibbs. “And he as well. That ground alongside the Mississippi is a slaughterhouse waiting to happen. We should pull our men out and come at New Orleans through Lake Pontchartrain, where we’d have more in the way of dry ground and room to maneuver. Instead of—blast Keane’s caution on the twenty-third!—being bottled up between one of the world’s biggest rivers and a cypress swamp, with less than a mile of front. With Jackson and his men busier than bees—oh, yes, I saw them myself—erecting solid fieldworks to block the way at the Rodriguez Canal.”

Admiral Cochrane was now looking distinctly unhappy.

“General Pakenham, we don’t have the requisite number of flat-bottom boats to go into Pontchartrain. We all agree that would be the ideal invasion route, but …” The admiral spread his hands. “It’s simply not possible.”

Pakenham and Ross exchanged a meaningful glance. Providing the proper water transport for this campaign had been the Royal
Navy’s
job.

It dawned on Ross that the awkwardness of his relationship with Pakenham could just as easily become an asset. If the two of them worked together … Ross advancing the objections in a sharp manner, since he had no need to directly coordinate his work with the admiral, thereby giving Pakenham the leeway to compromise as need be.

“You’re asking General Pakenham to lead his men into a charnel house, Admiral,” Ross snapped. “And most likely a pointless one, to boot. There simply is no way any army the size of ours is going to storm fortifications like the ones Jackson is erecting at the Rodriguez Canal. Not with Jackson in command, and guns manned by professional American artillerymen and sailors. Pakenham will lose hundreds—no, thousands—of officers and men, for no purpose whatever.

“Just as,” he growled, “I lost hundreds of men in front of the Capitol—which, I will point out, was a far weaker fortress than the one General Pakenham now confronts.”

Admiral Cochrane was becoming angry, but Ross decided to rub salt in the wounds. He was still quietly furious at the arrogance of the naval officers.

“I’m told, by the way, that the same Captain Houston who led the American stand at the Capitol is now on the scene in New Orleans, as well, along with many of the veterans of that affair. They’ve promoted the young man to colonel, in fact. And among those veterans is the same Lieutenant Driscol—now promoted to major—who provided Houston with the professional expertise needed to organize the gunners.”

Blithely ignoring Cochrane’s glare, Ross slumped back in the chair. Again, making the movement seem feebler than it needed to be.

“I met Major Driscol, by the way, while I was in American hands. Quite an impressive fellow. One of Napoleon’s veterans. I can assure you, Admiral, that you’ll not be breaking the likes of Driscol with a mindless frontal assault.”