The Battle of New Orleans 241 



as the ground was thrown up into batteries by gangs 

 of workmen, the rumble of the artillery as it was 

 placed in position, the measured tread of the bat- 

 talions as they shifted their places or marched off 

 under Thornton, all these and the thousand other 

 sounds of warlike preparation were softened and 

 blended by the distance into one continuous hum- 

 ming murmur, which struck on the ears of the 

 American sentries with ominous foreboding for the 

 morrow. By midnight Jackson had risen and was 

 getting everything in readiness to hurl back the 

 blow that he rightly judged was soon to fall on 

 his front. Before the dawn broke his soldiery was 

 all on the alert. The bronzed and brawny seamen 

 were grouped in dusters around the great guns. 

 The creole soldiers came of a race whose habit it 

 has ever been to take all phases of life joyously; 

 but that morning their gayety was tempered by a 

 dark undercurrent of fierce anxiety. They had more 

 at stake than any other men on the field. They 

 were fighting for their homes: they were fighting 

 for their wives and their daughters. They well knew 

 that the men they were to face were very brave in 

 battle and very cruel in victory; 41 they well knew 



41 To prove this, it is only needful to quote from the words 

 of the Duke of Wellington himself; referring, it must be re- 

 membered, to their conduct in a friendly, not a hostile, coun- 

 try. "It is impossible to describe to you the irregularities 

 and outrages committed by the troops. They are never out 

 VOL. X. K 



