“I Have Defeated this Boasted Army of Lord Wellington”
The Battle of New Orleans, 1815
By Douglas Brown

Jackson's troops repulse British at the Battle of New Orleans. Note the Kentuckians with their hunting frocks behind a wall of bales of cotton (published 1815)

“WHY, I'LL PROVE TO YOU THAT WE HAVE SHOWN OURSELVES THE BEST TROOPS IN THE WORLD. Didn’t the French beat the troops of every other continental nation? Didn’t you beat the French in the Peninsula? And haven’t we beat you just now?” Thus spoke an American officer to a British officer after the Battle of New Orleans[1]. This battle on January 8, 1815, electrified the young United States, giving the new nation a dizzying surge of self-confidence, inspiring it to expand from sea to sea and to emerge as the leading world power. Ironically, the basis for this inspiration was at best a half-truth and at worst a myth.

Like the American officer, the rest of the U.S. crowed in triumph after New Orleans because they thought they had defeated the finest army in Europe. For six years, the Duke of Wellington’s Peninsular Army had defeated Napoleon’s heretofore invincible battalions in every battle. Then they finally met the “Hunters of Kentucky” and were not only defeated, but utterly trounced. In a matter of minutes, the British were thrown back with a devastating 1,955 casualties, starkly contrasted with 13 American losses[2]. Glowing with pride, Congressman George Troup exalted “the farmers of the country triumphantly victorious over the conquerors of the conquerors of Europe.”[3] Andrew Jackson himself certainly basked in the glory, writing, “I have defeated this Boasted army of Lord Wellington[4].” If simple, untrained American frontiersmen could more than match the best troops Europe had to offer, what other wonders was this new nation capable of?

Or so the story went. Much of Sir Edward Pakenham’s army at New Orleans had served under Wellington in Portugal, Spain, and France. Careful analysis, however, reveals that the British defeat did not stem from any inadequacy in the Peninsular veterans, but from a regiment that had not served with Wellington at all.

Many historians love to write of New Orleans as the triumph of the underdog, but in actuality, Jackson enjoyed a formidable position on the East Bank of the Mississippi on January 8. His men enjoyed a sturdy line of earthworks fronted by the Rodriguez Canal and anchored with a wooded swamp on its left and the river on its right. Any approach would have to cover 2,000 yards of open ground under the fire of fourteen cannon and howitzers, many of them heavy ordinance[5]. The sloop Louisiana guarded the river itself, and on the West Bank waited an additional battery of sixteen pieces of artillery for enfilade fire[6]. The American guns also enjoyed better protection behind their earthworks than the Royal Artillery’s, and they were more securely positioned. The Americans had cotton bales to situate their cannons on, while the British had to drag their guns through mud with every shot. They were low on horses and even carriages for the artillery, using naval carriages instead, which impaired accuracy on land[7].

 
Portrait of Andrew Jackson painted in 1823 wearing his 1815 coat (New York City Collection)

The British did have a numerical advantage. By exactly how much seems debatable, but it was not overwhelming. Most historians agree that only 5,400 soldiers or so actually made the attack on January 8th. As historians generally reckon Jackson’s own strength at almost 4,000 on the East Bank, this small margin could hardly cancel out the strong American defenses and heavy artillery[8].

The situation for the British, therefore, looked grim, but not for Peninsular veterans. The Peninsular Army had fought the savage Battle of Albuera on May 16, 1811. At its end, in William Napier’s memorable phrase, “Fifteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill![9]” This army had also stormed Badajoz, infamous for the ferocity of the French fire and the horrid ingenuity of their booby traps.

Pakenham knew he faced long odds, so he devised an intricate plan, perhaps too intricate. Using boats that the Royal Navy would bring into the Mississippi via a canal from the British-held bayous, a detachment of sailors, Marines, and the 85th would storm the enfilading batteries on the West Bank at bayonet-point under cover of night. Then, with dawn approaching, the British would assault the East Bank line in two columns. The left column, composed of the Light Companies of the 7^th, 21^st, and 43^rd and the full strength of the 93^rd Highlanders, would assault the Americans where Jackson’s line met the Mississippi and was fronted by an advance redoubt. The main assault column on the right would strike close to the swamp, with half of the 44^th leading, followed by the 21^st and then the 4^th. To deal with the canal and the earthwork, Pakenham tasked the other half of the 44^th under Colonel Thomas Mullins with carrying fascines to fill in part of the ditch and ladders to scale the ramparts[10].

Portrait of Lieutenant General Sir Edward Pakenham, 1814.

That morning, the British assault devolved into a comedy of errors played out under the rapidly firing guns of Jackson and his men. Due to delays with the boats, the West Bank detachment did not take the enfilading batteries in time. Worried for the fire on his left flank now, Pakenham diverted the 93^rd Highlanders from the left column to cross the field and join the right column. As they did, they masked the British batteries and took devastating fire into their flank from Jackson’s line[11].

Worst of all was Mullins’s criminal negligence, for which he would be court-martialed and cashiered[12]. Although specifically ordered to confirm the location of the vital ladders and fascines prior to the assault, Mullins marched his 44^th Regiment past the redoubt where they were stored. He then waited for some time at the head of the column without bothering to fetch them until ordered back to do so. By the time the other troops were in position and the rocket signaled the advance, the ladders and fascines had still not reached the head of the column, and their commander had vanished.[13] When first fired upon, the half of the 44th leading the advance stopped and returned fire, rather than pressing on with their task. This proved a hopeless contest, as the Americans fired over the parapet without even showing their faces. The British column came to a confused standstill and in short order was decimated. Both halves of the 44th then broke and ran, having no doubt become unnerved by their commander’s actions and the resulting disorder[14]. The 93^rd, when it arrived at the right column, had nothing to cross the ditch with, and valiantly “stood like statues[15]” awaiting orders that could never come, as by this time the American fire had all but obliterated the British officer corps. In their march across the field and valiant but doomed stand, the 93^rd sustained more than 50% casualties[16].

British advancing with ladders towards American positions (published 1815)

British accounts blame a number of factors for the disaster, but the three that seem to surface the most are the delay of the 85^th’s attack, Mullins’ failure to provide the ladders and fascines, and the 44^th’s halting to fire. The fascines and ladders never reached the works, and the pause proved futile and disastrous. As a commentator in the United Service Journal noted, “One minute would have brought the assailants to the ditch; but in ten minutes’ halt the firing of the skulking democrats did its work murderously[17].” Staff officer Harry Smith said, “Had our heaviest column rushed forward in place of halting to fire under a fire fifty times superior, our national honor would not have been tarnished[18].”

While the fault for Thornton’s delay lay with the engineers in charge of the canal to convey the boats to the river, the latter two errors would probably not have happened with Peninsular regiments. Accounts of the storming of Badajoz speak of the dash and resolution with which the storming divisions drove their ladders right up to the ditch and walls[19]. In contrast, the 44^th’s pause so disrupted the attack that to William Surtees of the 95^th, watching from the rear, the British never made it to the earthwork, even though several British accounts do relate how some men reached the position[20].

Peninsular veterans like Harry Smith (95^th Rifles), William Surtees (95^th), and George Gleig (85^th Light Infantry) comment with disgust on Mullins’s sulkiness the night before the assault, how he grumbled that his regiment was being sacrificed as a forlorn hope instead of basking in the glory of the trust placed in him as the men at Badajoz had done[21]. For Peninsula men, the Forlorn Hope was a position of honor. Edward Costello of the 95^th remembered a comrade named Burke who volunteered for and, miraculously, survived the Forlorn Hopes at Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and San Sebastian[22]. Surtees wrote in his memoirs that, “Had the commanding-officer of the 44^th served in the Peninsula under our illustrious leader there, he would, I am confident, have been animated by a quite different spirit[23].”

Rifleman firing a Baker Rifle from a lying position (1804). The 95th Rifles used this firearm at New Orleans.

As the assault dissolved into chaos, the proud Peninsular veterans mostly waited in the rear. Three companies from the famed 95^th Rifles, who had been with Wellington, led the column as skirmishers and even tried cutting steps in the American works to scale them, but they were clearly not the weight of the attack. Two of the finest Peninsular regiments, the 43^rd and the 7^th, were specifically held in reserve and never fired until the order finally came to retreat, at which time they still looked to Smith of the 95^th as “ready for anything” and to Cooke of the 43^rd as “cool as cucumbers” and covered the retreat valiantly[24]. Unlike the 44^th, the portions of the 43^rd and the 7^th that did engage the Americans, namely the Light Companies in the left assault column, actually pressed home their attack and took the advance American redoubt. Had Pakenham left the 93^rd Highlanders in that column, they might have turned Jackson’s flank[25]. John Cooper with the 7^th thought that keeping the 43^rd and his regiment in reserve “was certainly a grand mistake, for the troops in front were composed of […] corps that had not been employed in sieges, etc., as we had in Spain[26].” John Cooke of the 43^rd remembered seeing the Peninsular veterans in the 95^th and the decimated remnants of the Light Companies of the 7^th and 43^rd reforming to cover the retreat, in the Light Companies’ case after enduring 75% casualties (as at Albuera)[27]. The 4^th Foot, another Peninsular regiment, was at the rear of the right column instead of leading it[28]. The only British success for the day came with the belated attack of the 85^th Light Infantry, a Peninsular regiment, which routed the Americans on the West Bank and captured the enfilading battery after the attack on the East Bank had already failed.

Most of the blame for the disaster, it can be seen, lies with the 44^th, which leads to some confusion among historians. The basic British tactical unit was the battalion rather than the regiment. British regiments would often have more than one battalion, and usually they did not serve together. The 2^nd Battalion of the 44^th won great glory under Wellington, seeing fierce action at Badajoz, capturing a French Eagle at Salamanca, and, after New Orleans, fighting at Waterloo. It was the 1^st Battalion, however, that botched the attack at New Orleans. Despite having the battle honor of “Peninsula,” it was not actually one of Wellington’s regiments, being part of Lord William Bentinck’s army in eastern Spain at the close of the war[29]. The next regiment in the column, the 21^st Fusiliers, had likewise technically served in the Peninsula, but not under Wellington either[30]. Peninsular veteran Harry Smith recounted his annoyance at men from the 44^th and 21^st who proved “sulky” when he needed them to retrieve the cannons that had been used on January 1^st and who would not move them until he brought Pakenham himself to oversee them. He observed, “Neither the 21st nor the 44th were distinguished for discipline–-certainly not of the sort I had been accustomed to[31].” Lieutenant Leavock (21^st) likewise became infuriated at them during the main assault when he reached the top of the rampart to find himself deserted by the 44^th and the 21^st: “Conceive my indignation on looking round to find that the two leading regiments had vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up[32].” Leavock also claimed that the Kentuckians were likewise retreating from the works except for the two officers who captured him, which, if true, would mean that Jackson was lucky indeed that Pakenham did not lead off with the 43^rd and 7^th. Gleig and Cooke showed the most generosity towards the 44^th, Gleig blaming their failure almost entirely on Mullins’s abysmal leadership and Cooke blaming the engineers for not directing the ladder party[33].

93rd Highlanders with 7th and 43rd Regiments at the Battle of New Orleans
(painting by Don Troiani - image not hosted here - external content  Buy print here)

One-fourth of the British casualties were sustained by the 93^rd Highlanders, who proved their bravery by standing in ranks despite the devastating fire. They were not a Peninsula regiment, however, and Cooper of the 7^th remembers how the Peninsular regiments the 43^rd and 7^th behind them “advanced to within musket shot; but the balls flew so thickly that we were ordered to lay down to avoid the shower[34].” Had the 93^rd done this, as Wellington had his men do at Waterloo six months later, their casualty list might not have been so devastating.

We will never know if the British attack would have succeeded had Pakenham put his Peninsular regiments in front. All British accounts attest to the ferocity of the American fire that day. Smith had seen Badajoz but still deemed the fire at New Orleans “the most murderous I ever beheld before or since[35].” That fire all but annihilated the British officer corps, and Jackson had men in reserve to plug any breakthrough[36]. On the other hand, the Peninsular Army had carried the day with even higher percentages of casualties and almost as heavy losses of officers at Albuera, and the British expressed surprise that Jackson did not pursue his broken foe, attributing it to his glimpsing the resolution of the 43^rd and 7^th in the rearguard, still “ready for anything[37].” Certainly the battle would have been much less one-sided. The Peninsular veterans and their officers in the 43^rd and 7^th would almost certainly have brought the fascines and ladders and pressed the attack home and over the wall.

The British disaster at New Orleans encouraged the United States to think that, if they could defeat “Wellington’s Invincibles,” they could defeat anyone on earth. What a lot of historians, even careful ones, miss is that the troops that faltered, failed, and doomed the assault, the 44^th and its dispirited commander, Mullins, had not served under Wellington. Indeed, Peninsular veterans said that Mullins and the 44^th behaved in a most un-Peninsular manner. Most of the troops who engaged the Americans were not the proud veterans of Wellington’s well-disciplined and battle-hardened army that had stormed Badajoz and done miracles on the battlefields of Portugal, Spain, and France. If they had been, the battle might have turned out quite differently.

Andrew Jackson etching (pub. 1815)
 

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[1] Quoted in William Surtees, Twenty-Five Years in the Rifle Brigade (1833, repr., Coppell, TX: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), 186.

[2] Robin Reilly, The British at the Gates: The New Orleans Campaign in The War of 1812 (New York: G. P. Putnams’s Sons, 1974), 297.

[3] Speech before House of Representatives on February 16, 1815, quoted in John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), 7-8; Daniel Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 17.

[4] [4] Robert V. Remini, The Battle of New Orleans (New York: Viking, 1999), 183.

[5] Reilly, British at the Gates, 280; Sir Harry George Wakelyn Smith, The Autobiography of Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Smith, Baronet of Aliwal on the Sutlej, Edited, With the Addidion of Some Supplementary Chapters by G.C. Moore Smith, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, Albermarle Street, 1902), 229-30; Tim Pickles, New Orleans 1815: Andrew Jackson Crushes the British (London: Osprey, 1993), 64.

[6] Reilly, British at the Gates, 288.

[7] Carson I. A. Ritchie, “The Louisiana Campaign,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 44, no. 1 & 2 (January-April, 1961:) 49, 53, 56; Alexander Dickson, “Journal of Operations in Louisiana, 1814 and 1815,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 44, no. 3 & 4 (July-October, 1961): 15, 29-30, 37.

[8] Reilly, British at the Gates, 280.

[9] History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France, From the Year 1807 to the Year 1814, 4^th ed., vol. II (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1842), 332.

[10] Reilly, British at the Gates, 276-78; Pickles, New Orleans 1815, 62-63, 69-70.

[11] Pickles, New Orleans 1815, 66.

[12] Thomas Carter, Historical Record of the Forty-Fourth, or the East Essex Regiment (London: W. O. Mitchell, 1864), Google Book, 64.

[13] Forrest, Charles Ramus, “Journal of the Operations against New Orleans in 1814 and 1815,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 44, no. 3 & 4 (July-October, 1961): 122; Dickson, “Journal,” 63, George Robert Gleig, The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 (1821, repr., Coppell, TX: Pantianos Classics, 2020) 132.

[14] Reilly, British at the Gates, 289; Surtees, Twenty-Five Years, 183; Gleig, Campaigns of the British Army, 132.

[15] Ensign Graves’ Account, Maunsel White MS, Louisiana Planters’ Papers, Tulane University (Special Collections), as quoted in Reilly, British at the Gates, 291.

[16] Compare total casualties for the 93^rd as reported in the British “Return of casualties on the 8^th of January,” prepared by Lt. Col. Fred Stovin and included in James, William, A Full and Correct Account of the Military Occurrences of the Late War Between Great Britain and the United States of America - Volume 2 (Digital Book: Andrews UK Limited, 2012), Google Book, 555, to the strength of the regiment provided in Pickles, New Orleans, 32.

[17] 1839, Vol. III, p. 400, as quoted in Philip Haythornthwaite, British Napoleonic Infantry Tactics 1792-1815 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2008), 48.

[18] Autobiography, 247.

[19] See Edward Costello, Adventures of a Soldier, 2^nd ed. (1852, repr., Ottawa: Kelman Enterprises & Intellectual Property, 2018), 149-150; John S. Cooper, Fusilier Cooper (1869, repr., originally published as Rough Notes of Seven Campaigns 1809-1815, USA: Leonaur Ltd., 2007) 70.

[20] Surtees, Twenty-Five Years, 183.

[21] Gleig, The Campaigns of the British Army, 150; Surtees, Twenty-Five Years, 182.

[22] Adventures of a Soldier, 106.

[23] Twenty-Five Years, 182.

[24] Smith, Autobiography, 238; Cooper, Fusilier Cooper, 116-118; John Henry Cooke, Narrative of Events in the South of France and of the Attack on New Orleans in 1814 and 1815 (London: T. & W. Boone, 1835), 260.

[25] Reilly, British at the Gates, 290.

[26] Fusilier Cooper, 116.

[27] Narrative of Events, 237-38.

[28] Cannon, Richard, Historical Record of the 4th, or the King's Own, Regiment of Foot from 1680 to 1839 (London: Longman, Orme, and Co., 1839), Project Gutenberg Book, 114-115; Ritchie, “The Louisiana Campaign,” 72.

[29] Thomas Carter, Historical Record of the Forty-Fourth, 50-51, 75, 78, 100-101.

[30] Pickles, New Orleans, 30; Groves, Percy, History of the Royal Scots Fusiliers (Edinburgh and London: W. & A. K. Johnston, 1895), Google Book, 26-27.

[31] Autobiography, 232.

[32] Quoted in Cooke, Narrative of Events, 256.

[33] Campaigns of the British Army, 150; Narrative of Events, 247-48.

[34] Cooper, Fusilier Cooper, 116.

[35] Autobiography, 247.

[36] Hickey, Don, Don’t Give Up the Ship! Myths of the War of 1812 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 285.

[37] Smith, Autobiography, 238; Cooper, Fusilier Cooper, 119.

 

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