of his aide-de-camp. Nor did General Gibbs and General Keane fail to do their duty as English soldiers. Riding through the ranks, they strove to restore order and to encourage the failing energy of the attack, till both were wounded and were borne from the field. Their leaders gone, and ignorant of what should be done, small wonder if the troops first halted, then began slowly to retire, and then betook themselves to disordered flight. Great as was the disaster, its results might have been even more crushing than they were but that the 7th and 43d, presenting an unbroken, steadfast front, prevented any attempt on the part of the enemy to quit the shelter of their lines in pursuit.

We left Colonel Thornton and his 340 men on the right bank of the Mississippi, and four miles from the battery which they had been detailed to take, and whose power was so severely felt by the main body of the English army.

They had seen the signal-rocket which told that their comrades were about to attack, and late though they were, they pressed forward to do their share of the day's operations. A strong American outpost was encountered, but it could not withstand the rush of the 85th, and fled in confusion. The position where the battery was mounted was reached, and to less daring men than Colonel Thornton and his little following

might have seemed impregnable. Like their countrymen on the other side, the Americans, 1,500 in number, were strongly entrenched, a ditch and thick parapet covering their front. Two field-pieces commanded the road, and flanking fire swept the ground over which any attack must be made. The assailants had no artillery, and no fascines or ladders by means of which to pass the entrenchment.

But, unappalled by superior numbers, undeterred by threatening obstacles, the English formed for immediate assault. The 85th extended across the whole line; the seamen, armed with cutlasses as for boarding, prepared to storm the battery, and the few marines remained in reserve. The bugle sounded the advance. The sailors gave the wild cheer that has so often told the spirit and determination of their noble service, and rushed forward. They were met and momentarily checked by a shower of grape and cannister, but again they pressed on. The 85th dashed forward to their aid in the face of a heavy fire of musketry, and threatened the parapet at all points. From both sides came an unremitting discharge; but the English, eager to be at close quarters, began to mount the parapet. The Americans, seized with sudden panic, turned and fled in hopeless rout, and the entrenchment,

with eighteen pieces of cannon, was taken. Too late!

These very guns had been able already to take their part in dealing destruction to Sir Edward Pakenham's morning attack, and if they were now taken if their defenders were dispersed they had done all that they were wanted to do. Even yet, if the disaster to the British main body had not been so complete and demoralizing, they might have been turned upon Jackson's lines and covered a second assault; but this was not to be. General Lambert, on whom had fallen the command of all that remained of the army, resolved-perhaps, under the circumstances, with wisdom to make no further attempts on New Orleans. To withdraw his army was, in any case, difficult; another defeat would have rendered it impossible; and, as the Americans had gained confidence in proportion as the English had lost it, defeat was only too probable. In the last fatal action nearly 1,500 officers and men had fallen, including two generals, for General Gibbs had only survived his wound for a few hours. The English dead lay in piles upon the plain - a sacrifice to faulty generalship, and even more to a course of relentless ill-fortune. Of the Americans who had so gallantly defended their country, eight only were killed and fourteen wounded.

Alas! that electricity did not then exist to prevent so great a sacrifice of honor and life; for the preliminaries of peace between England and the United States had been signed in Europe before the campaign of New Orleans was begun.

XX

The Battle of Ligny,

H

June 16, 1815

By ARCHIBALD FORBES

AVING quitted Elba, the place of his temporary exile, on February 26th, 1815, Napoleon landed in the Gulf of St. Juan on March 1st; and on the following day he began his march on Paris at the head of a single weak battalion, General Cambronne, with forty grenadiers, moving as an advance-guard. After the week immediately following his debarkation, his march was an ever-swelling triumph, and he entered Paris on March 21st, only a few hours after Louis XVIII. had hurriedly quitted the Tuileries. With characteristic energy he at once set about the stupendous task of the reorganization of the French army, the strength and character of which had been greatly impaired in his later campaigns, as well as during the short period of the first Restoration of the Bourbons. Such was the marvellous vigor and capacity of this extraordinary man that by June 1st he had organized forces amounting in all to about 560,