Revelation: Facing one’s own limits and
backing off before moving forward.
After a twenty-minute hike, General Coffee’s officers called a halt to prevent stumbling into the English before the scouts reported back with their exact location. Almost instantly, Nakni appeared out of the gloom. The scouts reported that about thirty Redcoats were fifty yards ahead. Positioned four or five yards apart, the English were facing west.
They were told there was to be no gunfire; the Redcoats were to be taken prisoner. If necessary, tomahawks and rifle butts were to be used to dispatch uncooperative English.
Nakni and the Choctaws led the Tennessee volunteers silently to the rear of the English picket line. The individual sentries were not aware of the Americans’ presence until they felt rifle muzzles pressed against their spines. This rude greeting was accompanied by a whispered order to ground their muskets and take three paces forward. The sound of their captors’ rifles being cocked ended any hesitation or thoughts of a heroic response.
Quickly, Jacques and thirty other men were assigned to escort the captured English and their weapons back to the American army’s rear, at the Laronde plantation. The balance of the covering party again remained in place while the Choctaw scouts jogged into the darkness to locate the remaining English outpost. Behind them, they could hear the main body of General Coffee’s force closing in on the English camp. The thunderous volleys of the English muskets and the roar of the Carolina’s cannons periodically drowned out the Americans’ scattered rifle shots. The distant fireworks were a sharp contrast with their own small and mostly bloodless victory.
Nakni and the other scouts finally returned, only to report that the second English picket outpost was no longer in their former location and had apparently withdrawn to the main English battle line. With that information, the remaining troops of the covering force proceeded toward the river to rejoin General Coffee.
The blanket of fog moving inland from the river had obscured the light from the full moon, causing General Coffee’s main force to become intermingled with the enemy. Using the flashes of the Carolina’s cannons, elements of the Tennessee volunteers had penetrated to the buildings of the LaCoste plantation. Others were firing from the fields directly northeast of the Carolina, picking off the English silhouetted by the cannon blasts.
As the two sides mingled in the fog, hand-to-hand fighting ensued. The English brandished bayonets and swords, while the Americans wielded rifle butts and tomahawks. Although a bayonet or sword gave the English extended reach, a Tennessee backwoodsman and a Choctaw could throw a tomahawk or a hunting knife up to ten feet with deadly accuracy.
The battle became a multitude of skirmishes between small groups and even individual soldiers. In the fog and confusion, misidentification occurred and friend unknowingly attacked friend.
Meanwhile, English reinforcements were arriving at the battle from their beachhead on Lake Borgne. These light infantry soldiers of the 85th Regiment moved quickly to the sound of the fighting around the Lacoste plantation. There, they joined the smoke and fog–shrouded clashes hoping that they were attacking Americans.
The Tennessee volunteers had been engaged for almost two hours when a courier brought General Coffee the news that the west end of their battle line had made contact with the New Orleans militia. That meant that the English force was enclosed in a U shape, with Americans on their west and north and the river on their southwest. This intelligence reinforced Coffee’s supposition that the English were being driven east, toward the Villeré plantation. He took comfort in the strategy of General Jackson, who was presently giving the famed English army hell from three directions.
Coffee sent the courier to find General Jackson and report that the English were withdrawing from his front. However, he was concerned that his men would not be sure of their targets in the fog and might soon run out of powder and shot.
Within half an hour, the courier returned with a dispatch from General Jackson ordering Coffee to slowly disengage his troops from contact with the enemy and withdraw to their original position at the east end of the Laronde plantation, adjacent to the swamp.