FRONTIERSMAN AND SOLDIER 251 



every shot tell ; we must finish this business to-day, 

 you know." We may well believe that these faultless 

 marksmen, who thought nothing of bringing down a 

 squirrel from the top of the tallest tree, wasted very few 

 shots indeed. In just twenty-five minutes the British 

 were in full retreat, leaving twenty-six hundred of 

 their number killed and wounded. " The field," said an 

 officer, " was so thickly strewn with the dead, that from 

 the American ditch you could have walked forward 

 for a quarter of a mile on the bodies." " In some places 

 whole platoons lay together, as if killed by the same 

 discharge." 1 Without a sound of exultation the 

 Americans looked on the dreadful scene in melan- 

 choly silence, and presently detachments of them were 

 busy in assuaging the thirst and bathing the wounds 

 of those in whom life was left. Among the slain was 

 Pakenham himself. The American loss was only 

 eight killed and thirteen wounded, because the enemy 

 were mown down too quickly to return an effective 

 fire. Never, perhaps, in the history of the world, has 

 a battle been fought between armies of civilized men 

 with so great a disparity of loss. It was also the most 

 complete and overwhelming defeat that any English 

 army has ever experienced. It outdid even Bannock- 

 burn. News travelled so slowly then that this great 

 victory, like the three last naval victories of the war, 

 occurred after peace had been made by the commis- 

 sioners at Ghent. Nevertheless, no American can 

 regret that the battle was fought. Not only the inso- 

 lence and rapacity of Great Britain had richly deserved 

 such castigation, but if she had once gained a foothold 

 in the Mississippi Valley, it might have taken an armed 



Barton, II. 209. 



