The city of Mobile could be defended by fortifications on Mobile Point, thirty miles distant, at the mouth of the bay, since opposite it was a narrow channel through which alone vessels of any considerable size could enter the bay.  At this point was Fort Bowyer, in a state of dilapidation, mounting but a few pieces of cannon.  Into this fort Jackson at once threw a garrison of one hundred and sixty regular infantry under Major Lawrence, a most gallant officer.  These troops were of course unacquainted with the use of artillery, but they put the fort in the best condition they could, and on the 12th of September the enemy appeared, the fleet under Captain Percy, and a body of marines and Indians under Colonel Nichols.  Jackson, then at Mobile, apprised of the appearance of the British, hastily reinforced the fort, about to be attacked by a large force confident of success.  On the 15th of September the attack began; the English battered down the ramparts of the fortifications, and anchored their ships within gun-shot of the fort; but so gallant was the defence that the ships were disabled, and the enemy retreated, with a loss of about one hundred men.  This victory saved Mobile; and more, it gave confidence to the small army on whom the defence of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico depended.

Jackson forthwith issued his bulletins or proclamations in a truly Napoleonic style to the inhabitants of Louisiana, to rally to the defence of New Orleans, which he saw would probably be the next object of attack on the part of the British.  On the 2d of December he personally reached that city and made preparations for the expected assault, and, ably assisted by Edward Livingston, the most prominent lawyer of the city, enlisted for the defence the French creoles, the American residents, and a few Spaniards.

New Orleans was a prize which the English coveted, and to possess it that government had willingly expended a million of pounds sterling.  The city not only controlled the commerce of the Mississippi, but in it were stored one hundred and fifty thousand bales of cotton, and eight hundred and ten thousand hogsheads of sugar, all of which the English government expected to seize.  It contained at that time about twenty thousand people,—­less than half of whom were whites, and these chiefly French creoles,—­besides a floating population of sailors and traders.

New Orleans is built on a bend in the Mississippi, in the shape of a horse-shoe, about one hundred miles from where by a sinuous southeasterly course the river empties into the Gulf of Mexico.  At the city the river was about a mile wide, with a current of four miles an hour, and back of the town was a swamp, draining to the north into Lake Ponchartrain, and to the east into Lake Borgne, which opens out into the Gulf east of the city.  It was difficult for sailing-vessels at that time to ascend the river one hundred miles against the current, if forts and batteries