He could tell that Cochrane was still unconvinced, unfortunately. Or, at least, not convinced enough.
Again, how to explain, Ross asked himself desperately, in words that would be calm and coherent? The long and painful months recovering from his terrible wounds at the Capitol, now added to by this new illness, had left Ross too muddleheaded to say anything clearly. In truth, he felt—had he the strength—like grabbing Cochrane by the shoulders, shaking him, and screaming: Take your enemy seriously, you fool! What sort of arrogant ass thinks you can put a man in command, a week before a battle—Pakenham or Caesar, it matters not—and expect him to defeat the likes of Jackson?
Ross could see it all unfolding. Pakenham would arrive just in time to inherit the poor tactical position left him by Keane—and, from frustration and inexperience, he’d try to overcome it with a direct assault. Assuming, unthinkingly, that the British veterans who’d broken Napoleon on the open field of battle would easily sweep aside these American militiamen.
And so, indeed, they might, if it weren’t for that terrifying American artillery. The same artillery that Ross had seen batter his forces at Bladensburg, and shred them in front of the Capitol. Cannons fired more quickly and accurately than any British battery had ever managed, in Ross’s decades of experience.
He sighed. “I simply wish you’d postpone the thing until Pakenham’s been here for a bit, Admiral. At least give him the chance to learn the terrain and size up his enemy properly.”
Cochrane wasn’t an ill-tempered man, by nature, so his earlier anger had faded away. “I can’t, Robert. I’d like to myself, as it happens, but I simply can’t.”
He hesitated a moment; then: “I’ll ask you to keep this in confidence. I’ve just received word concerning the latest developments in the peace negotiations at Ghent. Underneath the formal language, the gist of it is that our envoys are stalling, to give us a chance to seize New Orleans before any treaty is signed.”
“I see.” Ross grimaced.
The peace negotiations, which had been taking place between Britain and the United States in the Belgian city of Ghent, had been going on for many months now. If they were finally close to a settlement . . .
The war with the United States wasn’t popular in England—all the more so now that twenty years of war with France had ended. That did, indeed, place Cochrane on the horns of a dilemma. Since Britain had never recognized the legitimacy of the Louisiana Purchase, the treaty would not settle that question. If Britain already held New Orleans when word of a peace treaty arrived in the gulf, they’d keep it. Under the legal fiction of returning it to its proper Spanish owners, of course.
But given the war-weariness in Britain, there was no chance of starting a new war with the United States, even under the pretense of rectifying an injustice done to Spain. So if Cochrane was going to take New Orleans, he had to do it quickly.
“They can’t stall for very long, I take it.”
“No, Robert, they can’t. It’s not just that our populace is growing restive. The situation on the continent is none too well settled, either. There is still a great deal of Napoleonic sentiment in France, you know. The government isn’t as confident as everyone else that we’ve seen the end of that conflict, and if that’s the case, no one wants to have a large body of British troops on this side of the Atlantic.”
“Yes, I can see the logic behind that. So, in essence, they’ll stall at Ghent just long enough to give us one chance at a quick victory.”
Cochrane nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all to discover that the ink is drying right now on the treaty. We’ve only got a few weeks, Robert. If we’re to do it at all, it has to be done now. And that’s all there is to it.”
Cochrane rose from his chair, moving carefully. “Enough, Robert. You need to get some rest. You’re looking—well, terrible, to be honest. If you contract yellow fever in your condition . . .”
Ross struggled to his feet. “Yes, I know. I’ll die.”
“Look on the bright side,” the admiral said. “Pakenham can probably manage. But whether he can or can’t, I’m ordering the men into the landing boats tomorrow morning.”
“Three days before Christmas,” Ross mused. “Well, let’s hope for the best.”
DECEMBER 21, 1814
Ghent, the Low Countries
Glumly, sitting at his writing table in the lodgings he occupied in Ghent, John Quincy Adams studied a copy of the treaty which had finally been arrived at. Only the long and stern habit of a man raised in the puritanical environment of one of New England’s premier families kept him from cursing aloud.
Months, he’d spent, slowly persuading the other members of the American delegation that this treaty he had before him was the best the United States could hope for. Months, while the other members of the delegation—Albert Gallatin, Henry Clay, James Bayard, and Jonathan Russell—kept stalling, hoping for some sort of miracle.
What miracle? Adams wondered. The only bright moment had been when news arrived that the British assault on Washington had been driven off, and the Capitol had been spared. Savagely, Adams almost found himself wishing the assault had succeeded—since, from his perspective, it had simply kept Gallatin and Clay and Bayard and Russell suspended in midair for perhaps a month, empty-headed with braggadocio.
Almost . . . but not quite. Adams was a patriot, and he couldn’t deny the deep satisfaction he’d felt when the news had arrived. The same sort of satisfaction he’d felt at the news of the Guerriere’s capitulation, or the news of the battle at the Chippewa.
The problem had been that his fellow envoys simply couldn’t understand that such satisfaction was all that the United States could realistically hope to achieve in this war. The conflict with Britain had always been a preposterous exercise, in purely military terms.
It was no doubt a very fine thing for the morale of a young republic to see a handful of plucky American frigates defeating a handful of British frigates. But the cold, hard, cruel strategic fact remained that the tiny U.S. Navy boasted no ships larger than a few 44-gun frigates—and the British Navy had over a hundred two-decker 74-gun ships of the line.
It was no doubt excellent from the standpoint of that same young republic to see—finally!—one of its armies defeat an equal force of British regulars on the open field of battle, as Brown and Scott had done at the Chippewa. But the moral splendor of the feat could not, to a sane man, disguise its triviality in cold military terms. The total forces engaged at the Chippewa had been less than five thousand—a clash which, for the past twenty years on the continent, would have been considered a skirmish rather than a battle.
In the campaign that had finally defeated Napoleon, culminating in the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig, more than half a million men had met on the field.
Splendid, yes—certainly!—the pluck of Captain Houston and Lieutenant Driscol and their men at the Capitol. But what did it really come down to, in the harsh, brutal, realistic terms of political geography? One thousand men armed with a few cannons kept a small invading force with no artillery to speak of from taking Washington, D.C.
Splendid, splendid. No doubt many fine poems and songs would be written to commemorate the event. The fact remained that Napoleon had brought seven hundred field guns to Leipzig—but the Allies had fielded twice that number. Just as the fact remained that no sane man gave even a moment’s thought to the possibility that the United States might land an army on British soil to threaten London.
Adams sighed, left off his pointless study of the treaty—he had every clause in it memorized by now—and rose from his desk. Then he moved to a window that faced to the west, toward the Atlantic and his nation beyond.
He was forty-five years old, and had spent many of those years living in Europe. As a student, an assistant to American diplomats—his father among them, before John Adams became the second president of the United States—and then later as a diplomat himself. The son of the second American president had often, as a young m
an, sat at the dining table with its first, listening carefully to George Washington’s shrewd assessments of foreign affairs.
Since then, John Quincy Adams had sat at many other tables with the world’s most powerful men, in most of the major capitals of Europe. He’d been, at one time or another, America’s ambassador to Britain, France, Holland, Portugal, Prussia, and Russia. He spoke and read French easily and fluently, and had once translated Wieland’s Oberon from German into English. He was one of the most well-educated and well-read men in the United States—the world, in fact—and had the personal library to prove it.
All for nothing, quite possibly. Partly, because Gallatin and Clay and Bayard and Russell were fools. Partly—Adams was usually as harsh in his self-criticism as his criticism of others—because John Quincy Adams had never been good at suffering fools gladly. So, over the months, he’d increasingly alienated his fellow envoys, while their light-minded frivolity led their nation into a very possible trap.
Again, he restrained himself from cursing. They could have signed that same treaty months ago. And why not? To this day, the British still refused to concede anything concrete, when it came to the official casus belli the United States had proclaimed as the causes of the war. The issues of impressment, boundaries, fisheries, neutral rights—all ignored or swept under the table. For all practical purposes, the United States was agreeing in that treaty to the same conditions that had existed prior to the war.
And so what? The only possible victory America could have obtained in this conflict was simply the moral victory of going to war in the first place. And that had already been won, long since. The cold equations of national power hadn’t been changed an iota, except in the one—often critical—variable of national respect. Whatever else, none of the great European powers would any longer regard the transatlantic republic as something of a bad joke.
Months, it had taken him to convince his fellow envoys. Precious, precious months—while Adams watched anxiously as Britain finally defeated the great French power which had kept it preoccupied for decades and could now send part of its true might across the Atlantic. Months, during which the territorial integrity of the U.S. could have been protected simply by signing the same blasted treaty they were going to sign now anyway.
Months . . . while the British were able to assemble the powerful task force which now lay somewhere near New Orleans and the critical outlet of the Mississippi. Might even, for all John Quincy Adams knew, already be enjoying a conqueror’s feast in the Cabildo. It took weeks for news to cross the Atlantic, even from his native New England, much less the distant Gulf of Mexico.
It was all up to Andrew Jackson, now. Jackson and the same sort of rude, crude, uncouth southern frontiersmen who composed his army.
Sternly, John Quincy Adams reminded himself that he had chosen long ago, exercising his God-given free will, to devote his life to the service of his nation. Knowing from the very beginning—he’d hear no excuses, from himself least of all—that his nation was a republic. It wasn’t as if dozens of monarchists hadn’t told him for years he was a fool. Some of them had even read as many books as he had.
Not many, of course.
CHAPTER 37
DECEMBER 23, 1814
A mile upriver of the Villeré plantation,
near New Orleans
Colonel William Thornton decided to try one last time.
“I beg you, sir,” he said forcefully, “consider that every single piece of evidence leads us to believe that we’ve caught Jackson completely by surprise.” Dramatically, he pointed a finger ahead of them, to the northwest. “The prize is but a few miles away, sir! One vigorous push now, and we can be into the city before Jackson can organize its defense.”
General Keane replied with an equally dramatic finger pointed to the rear. Specifically, to the Villeré plantation house that was still visible to the southeast.
“Every piece of evidence?” the general demanded. “Hardly that, Colonel! Villeré himself escaped from captivity this morning, did he not? By now, he’ll surely have brought warning to the enemy.”
Thornton silently cursed the fluke of chance that had allowed that to happen. As time went on, Thornton was learning how astute General Ross’s assessment of the Americans was—even if that assessment often ran counter to the established wisdom of British officers.
“Don’t fool yourselves, gentlemen,” Ross had said. “They are our cousins, and lack neither courage nor intelligence. Sluggish one moment, they can be decisive—even daring—the very next. So you will do me the favor of not matching Cousin Jonathan’s carelessness with carelessness of your own.”
Those words, said in a tone that was unusually harsh for the normally mild-mannered Ross, had sobered his officers. Ross had gone on, in a more congenial manner, to elaborate.
“The key thing is that the Americans are brittle in war. But brittle is not the same thing as soft. Indeed, some of the finest alloys can be quite brittle. The trick is to catch them by surprise—to strike at the haft of the American blade, as it were, and be sure to miss entirely the edge. Because that edge can be very, very sharp, gentlemen. Don’t ever forget that.”
Very sharp, indeed, as they’d discovered in the failed assault on the Capitol. In truth, Thornton had already discovered that earlier at Bladensburg. “A rout,” Bladensburg would be called in the historical records. But the Eighty-fifth had been the unit which encountered the edge in that battle, when Thornton had led his men across the key bridge near Lowndes Hill.
The bridge had still been standing in the first place because of American incompetence. Any professional army would have destroyed it. But, just as Ross had said, having blundered one moment, the Americans had rallied the next. The defense their artillerymen and riflemen had put up for that bridge had been ferocious. Thornton could not remember ever coming under such heavy fire from an enemy, even if it hadn’t lasted that long before the Americans broke.
Sharp edge, indeed—but the haft was brittle.
And today, only two days before Christmas, Thornton knew that the British expedition, if it moved quickly and decisively, could strike Jackson’s sword before the American general could bring the edge into position. They could snap that brittle blade at the haft.
Wait a day, and the opportunity might be lost.
“No, Colonel,” General Keane said, shaking his head. “We’ll halt the advance here and bivouac while we wait for the rest of our forces to arrive. By now, Villeré will have carried the warning to New Orleans. I am not so reckless as to attempt the city with only a portion of my army, and with my lines of supply stretched as badly as they are.”
Nothing for it.
Thornton walked away obediently, almost grinding his teeth. The small mistake of allowing Villeré to escape was about to be compounded, he thought, by the huge mistake of allowing Jackson to escape.
Such an odd fellow, Cousin Jonathan, as if two completely different men inhabited the same skin. Up till the moment of his escape, Major Gabriel Villeré had been a laughingstock to his British captors. A commanding officer caught on his own porch, smoking a cigar!
Yes, a farce, all very comical—and all very typically American. Amateur soldiers who’d disobey orders in order to safeguard their own property, and lounge about whenever they felt like it.
Even Villeré’s sudden bolt for freedom when his British guards grew slack had been amusing enough. Especially comical had been the sight of Villeré’s faithful dog, racing across the yard after its master, barking excitedly.
But Thornton and his men had not laughed some minutes later, when they’d found the dog’s body in the swamps. The poor beast’s throat had been cut. By Villeré himself, obviously. Feckless Cousin Jonathan had been cold-blooded and ruthless enough to kill his own loyal dog, rather than run the risk of having the excited beast give away his location to his pursuers.
Damnation! Colonel Thornton desperately wished that Robert Ross was still leading this army, instead of lying cl
ose to death on a ship in Lake Bourgne. Ross would have understood immediately that they had the chance—now, this moment, if they moved—to capture Andrew Jackson on his own figurative porch, smoking a cigar.
But Ross was not in command, alas, Keane was. And while Keane was certainly a courageous enough commander, he was neither an imaginative nor a particularly intelligent one.
If Keane let the American general escape, allowed him that one carelessly unguarded moment . . .
Villeré had cut the throat of a dog. Jackson would cut the throat of an army, if they gave him the time to bring that brittle but very sharp blade into position.
Hiding nearby in a cypress swamp, Major Arsène Latour studied the British positions as Keane’s army began its bivouac. Latour and another military engineer, Major Howell Tatum, had left New Orleans that morning. General Jackson had commanded them to scout the terrain in the vicinity of the Villeré plantation. Partly, to determine the current position of the British; partly, to assess the possibility of erecting good fieldworks in the area.
Well, they’d done both.
The Mississippi River coursed east by southeast from New Orleans for some fifteen miles before it began the bend that culminated in the English Turn. The English Turn was blocked by Fort St. Leon on the opposite bank—and the fort itself was protected by the cypress swamps that surrounded it. Coming up by the bayous from Lake Bourgne, therefore, the British would have no choice but to follow the east bank of the river, in order to reach the city.
It was a truly terrible route for an invading army. Any part of the area between the Chalmette and Villeré plantations would make superb terrain for the Americans, allowing them to erect fortifications to defend the city. There was less than a mile of open ground at any given point, with no easy possibility for the flanking maneuvers a British professional army could manage so much better than Jackson’s largely volunteer force.
To the southwest lay the Mississippi, impossible to cross without boats—and Jackson had a small flotilla under Commodore Daniel Patterson to prevent that from happening. To the north and east, at distances varying from half a mile to a mile from the Mississippi, the thick cypress swamps filled most of the land between the river and the lakes. Those swamps weren’t exactly impenetrable—Latour knew that Jackson’s Indian allies and many of his frontiersmen would manage in them quite handily. But they might as well be, for an army organized and trained to fight great formal pitched battles on the continent of Europe.