The Battle of New Orleans 251 



heaviest cannon, both from the breastwork and the 

 water-battery, played on the British camp, both 

 night and day, giving the army no rest, and the 

 mounted riflemen kept up a trifling, but incessant 

 and annoying, skirmishing with their pickets and 

 outposts. 



The British could not advance, and it was worse 

 than useless for them to stay where they were, for 

 though they, from time to time, were reinforced, 

 yet Jackson's forces augmented faster than theirs, 

 and every day lessened the numerical inequality 

 between the two armies. There was but one thing 

 left to do, and that was to retreat. They had no 

 fear of being attacked in turn. The British sol- 

 diers were made of too good stuff to be in the least 

 cowed or cast down even by such a slaughtering de- 

 feat as that they had just suffered, and nothing 

 would have given them keener pleasure than to 

 have had a fair chance at their adversaries in. the 

 open; but this chance was just what Jackson had 

 no idea of giving them. His own army, though in 

 part as good as an army could be, consisted also 

 in part of untrained militia, while not a quarter of 

 his men had bayonets; and the wary old chief, for 

 all his hardihood, had far too much wit to hazard 

 such a force in fight with a superior number of sea- 

 soned veterans, thoroughly equipped, unless on his 

 own ground and in his own manner. So he con- 



