Gentlemen Rovers Part 2

Disappointed and disgusted, Eaton returned to the United States in November, 1805, to find himself a national hero. From the moment he set his foot on American soil he was greeted with cheers wherever he appeared; it was "roses, roses all the way." The cities of Was.h.i.+ngton and Richmond honored him with public dinners; Ma.s.sachusetts, "desirous to perpetuate the remembrance of an heroic enterprise," granted him ten thousand acres of land in Maine; Boston named a street after the city which he had captured against such fearful odds; President Jefferson lauded him in his annual message; and in recognition of his services in effecting the release of some Danish captives in Tripoli, he was presented by the King of Denmark with a jewelled snuff-box. He was complimented everywhere except at the seat of government, and received every honor except that which he most deserved--a vote of thanks from Congress. Though his expedition had involved an expense of twenty-three thousand dollars, for which he had given his personal notes and the repayment of which exhausted all his means, Congress never reimbursed him. Notwithstanding the astounding indifference and ingrat.i.tude of the nation on whose flag he had shed such l.u.s.tre, he indignantly rejected the advances of Aaron Burr, who tried ineffectually to enlist him in his conspiracy to establish an empire beyond the Mississippi, and died, poverty-stricken and broken-hearted, on June 1, 1811. Though the most modest of monuments marks his resting-place in Brimfield churchyard, and though not one in a hundred thousand of his countrymen have so much as heard his name, his fame still lives in that wild and far-off region where it took an Italian army of forty thousand men to repeat the exploit which he accomplished with four hundred.

THE LAST FIGHT OF THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG"

We leaned over the rail of the _Hamburg_, Colonel Roosevelt and I, and watched the olive hills of Fayal rise from the turquoise sea. Houses white as chalk began to peep from among the orange groves; what looked at first sight to be a yellow snake turned into a winding road; then we rounded a headland, and the U-shaped harbor, edged by a sleepy town and commanded by a crumbling fortress, lay before us. "In there," said the ex-President, pointing eagerly as our anchor rumbled down, "was waged one of the most desperate sea-fights ever fought, and one of the least known; in there lies the wreck of the _General Armstrong_, the privateer that stood off twenty times her strength in British men and guns, and thereby saved Louisiana from invasion. It is a story that should make the thrills of patriotism run up and down the back of every right-thinking American."

Everything about her, from the carved and gilded figure-head, past the rakish, slanting masts to the slender stern, indicated the privateer.

As she stood into the roadstead of Fayal late in the afternoon of September 26, 1814, black-hulled and white-sparred, carrying an amazing spread of snowy canvas, she made a picture that brought a grunt of approval even from the surly Azorian pilot. Hardly had the red-white-and-blue ensign showing her nationality fluttered to her peak before a harbor skiff bearing the American consul, Dabney, shot out from sh.o.r.e; for these were troublous times on the Atlantic, and letters from the States were few and far between. Rounding her stern, he read, with a thrill of pride, "_General Armstrong, New York_."

The very name stood for romance, valor, hair-breadth escape. For of all the two-hundred-odd privateers that put out from American ports at the outbreak of the War of 1812 to prey on British commerce, none had won so high a place in the popular imagination as this trim-built, black-hulled schooner. Built for speed, and carrying a spread of canvas at which most skippers would have stood aghast, she was the fastest and best-handled privateer afloat, and had always been able to show her heels to the enemy on the rare occasions when the superior range of her seven guns had failed to pound him into submission. Her list of captures had made rich men of her owners, and had caused Lloyd's to raise the insurance on a vessel merely crossing the English Channel to thirteen guineas in the hundred.

The story of her desperate encounter off the mouth of the Surinam River with the British sloop of war _Coquette_, with four times her weight in guns, had fired the popular imagination as had few other events of the war. Although her commander, Samuel Chester Reid, was not long past his thirtieth birthday, no more skilful navigator or daring fighter ever trod a quarter-deck, and his crew of ninety men--Down-East fishermen, old man-o'-war's men, Creole privateersmen who had fought under Lafitte, reckless adventurers of every sort and kind--would have warmed the heart of bluff old John Paul Jones himself.

Just as dusk was falling the officer on watch reported a sail in the offing, and Reid and the consul, hurrying on deck, made out the British brig _Carnation_, of eighteen guns, with two other war-vessels in her wake: the thirty-eight-gun frigate _Rota_, and the _Plantagenet_, of seventy-four. Now, as the privateer lay in the innermost harbor, where a dead calm prevailed, while the three British s.h.i.+ps were fast approaching before the brisk breeze which was blowing outside, Reid, who knew the line which marks foolhardiness from courage, appreciating that the chances of his being able to hoist anchor, make sail, and get out of the harbor before the British squadron arrived to block the entrance were almost infinitesimal, decided to stay where he was and trust to the neutrality of the port, a decision that was confirmed by the a.s.surances of Consul Dabney that the British would not dare to attack a vessel lying in a friendly harbor. But therein the consul was mistaken, for throughout the entire duration of the war the British as cynically disregarded the observance of international law and the rights of neutrals as though they did not exist.

The _Carnation_, learning the ident.i.ty of the American vessel from the pilot, hauled close into the harbor, not letting go her anchor until she was within pistol-shot of the _General Armstrong_. Instantly a string of signal-flags fluttered from her mast, and the message was promptly acknowledged by her approaching consorts, which thereupon proceeded to stand off and on across the mouth of the harbor, thus barring any chance of the privateer making her escape. So great was the commotion which ensued on the _Carnation's_ deck that Reid, becoming suspicious of the Englishman's good faith, warped his s.h.i.+p under the very guns of the Portuguese fort.

About eight o'clock, just as dark had fallen, Captain Reid saw four boats slip silently from the shadow of the _Carnation_ and pull toward him with m.u.f.fled oars. If anything more were needed to convince him of their hostile intentions, the moon at that moment appeared from behind a cloud and was reflected by the scores of cutla.s.ses and musket-barrels in all four of the approaching boats. As they came within hailing distance Reid swung himself into the shrouds.

"Boats there!" he shouted, making a trumpet of his hands. "Come no nearer! For your own safety I warn you!"

At his hail the boats halted, as though in indecision, and their commanders held a whispered consultation. Then, apparently deciding to take the risk, and hoping, no doubt, to catch the privateer unprepared, they gave the order: "Give way all!" The oars caught the water together, and the four boats, loaded to the gunwales with sailors and marines, came racing on.

"Let 'em have it, boys!" roared Reid, and at the word a stream of flame leaped from the dark side of the privateer and a torrent of grape swept the crowded boats, almost annihilating one of the crews and sending the others, crippled and bleeding, back to the shelter of their s.h.i.+p.

By this time the moon had fully risen, and showed the heights overlooking the harbor to be black with spectators, among whom were the Portuguese governor and his staff; but the castle, either from weakness or fear, showed no signs of resenting the outrageous breach of neutrality to which the port had been subjected. Angered and chagrined at their repulse, the British now threw all caution aside. The long-boats and gigs of all three s.h.i.+ps were lowered, and into them were crowded nearly four hundred men, armed with muskets, pistols, and cutla.s.ses. Reid, seeing that an attack was to be made in force, proceeded to warp his vessel still closer insh.o.r.e, mooring her stem and stern within a few rods of the castle. Moving two of the nine-pounders across the deck, and cutting ports for them in the bulwarks, he brought five guns, in addition to his famous "long tom," to bear on the enemy.

With cannon double-shotted, boarding-nets triced up, and decks cleared for action, the crew of the _General Armstrong_ lay down beside their guns to await the British attack.

It was not long in coming. Just as the bells of the old Portuguese cathedral boomed twelve, a dozen boats, loaded to the water's edge with sailors and marines, whose burnished weapons were like so many mirrors under the rays of the moon, swung around a promontory behind which they had been forming and, with measured stroke of oars, came sweeping down upon the lone privateer. The decks of the _General Armstrong_ were black and silent, but round each gun cl.u.s.tered its crew of half-naked gunners, and behind the bulwarks knelt a line of cool, grim riflemen, eyes sighting down their barrels, cheeks pressed close against the b.u.t.ts. Up and down behind his men paced Reid, the skipper, cool as a winter's morning.

"Hold your fire until I give the word, boys," he cautioned quietly.

"Wait till they get within range, and then teach 'em better manners."

Nearer and nearer came the shadowy line of boats, the oars rising and falling with the faultless rhythm which marks the veteran man-o'-war's man. On they came, and now the waiting Americans could make out the gilt-lettered hat-bands of the bluejackets and the white cross-belts and the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons on the tunics of the marines. A moment more and those on the _Armstrong's_ deck could see, beneath the shadow of the leather shakoes, the tense, white faces of the British boarders.

"Now, boys!" roared Captain Reid; "let 'em have it for the honor of the flag!" and from the side of the privateer leaped a blast of flame and lead, cannon and musketry cras.h.i.+ng in chorus. Never were men taken more completely by surprise than were those British sailors, for they had expected that Reid, relying on the neutrality of the port, would be quite unprepared to resist them. But, though the American fire had caused terrible havoc in the crowded boats, with the bull-dog courage for which the British sailors were justly famous, they kept indomitably on. "Give way! Give way all!" screamed the boy-c.o.xswains, and in the face of a withering rifle-fire the sailors, recovering from their momentary panic, bent grimly to their oars. Through a perfect hail-storm of lead, right up to the side of the privateer, they swept. Six boats made fast to her quarter and six more to her bow. "Boarders up and away!" bellowed the officers, hacking desperately at the nettings with their swords, and firing their pistols point-blank into the faces they saw above them. The _Armstrong's_ gunners, unable to depress the muzzles of their guns enough so that they could be brought to bear, lifted the solid shot and dropped them from the rail into the British boats, mangling their crews and cras.h.i.+ng through their bottoms. From the shelter of the bulwarks the American riflemen fired and loaded and fired again, while the negro cook and his a.s.sistant played their part in the defence by pouring kettles of boiling water over the British who were attempting to scramble up the sides, sending them back into their boats again scalded and groaning with pain.

There has been no fiercer struggle in all the annals of the sea. The Yankee gunners, some of them gray-haired men who had seen service with John Paul Jones in the _Bon Homme Richard_, changed from cannon-b.a.l.l.s to grape, and from grape to bags of bullets, so that by the time the British boats drew alongside they were little more than floating shambles. The dark waters of the harbor were lighted up by spurts of flame from muskets and cannon; the high, shrill yell of the Yankee privateersmen rose above the deep-throated hurrahs of the English sailors; the air was filled with the shouts and oaths of the combatants, the shrieks and groans of the wounded, the incessant trampling of struggling men upon the decks, the splash of dead and injured falling overboard, the clash and clang of steel on steel, and all the savage, overwhelming turmoil of a struggle to the death. Urged on by their officers' cries of "No quarter! Give the Yankees no quarter!" the British division which had attacked the bow hacked its way through the nettings, and succeeded by sheer weight of numbers in getting a footing on the deck, all three of the American lieutenants being killed or disabled in the terrific hand-to-hand struggle that ensued.

At this critical juncture, when the Americans on the forecastle, their officers fallen and their guns dismounted, were being pressed slowly back by overwhelming numbers, Captain Reid, having repulsed the attack on the _Armstrong's_ quarter, led the after division forward at a run, the privateersmen, though outnumbered five to one, driving the English overboard with the resistless fury of their onset. As the British boats, now laden with dead and dying, attempted to withdraw into safety, they were raked again and again with showers of lead; two of them sank, two of them were captured by the Americans. Finally, with nearly three hundred of their men--three-quarters of the cutting-out force--dead or wounded, the British, now cowed and discouraged, pulled slowly and painfully out of range. Some of the most brilliant victories the British navy has ever gained were far less dearly purchased.

At three in the morning Reid received a note from Consul Dabney asking him to come ash.o.r.e. He then learned that the governor had sent a letter to the British commander asking him to desist from further hostilities, as several buildings in the town had been injured by the British fire and a number of the inhabitants wounded. To this request Captain Lloyd had rudely replied that he would have the Yankee privateer if he had to knock the town into a heap of ruins. Returning on board, Reid ordered the dead and wounded taken ash.o.r.e, and told the crew to save their personal belongings.

At daybreak the _Carnation_, being of lighter draught than the other vessels, stood close in for a third attack, opening on the privateer with every gun she could bring to bear. But even in those days the fame of American gunners was as wide as the seas, and so well did the crew of the _General Armstrong_ uphold their reputation that the _Carnation_ was compelled to beat a demoralized retreat, with her rigging cut away, her foremast about to fall, and with several gaping holes between wind and water. But Reid, appreciating that there was absolutely no chance of escape, and recognizing that further resistance would entail an unnecessary sacrifice of his men's lives, by which nothing could be gained, ordered the crew to throw the nine-pounders which had rendered such valiant service overboard and to leave the s.h.i.+p. The veteran gunners, who were as much attached to their great black guns as a cavalryman is to his horse, obeyed the order with tears ploughing furrows down their powder-begrimed cheeks. Then Reid with his own hand trained the long-tom down his vessel's hatchway, and pulling the lanyard sent a charge of grape cras.h.i.+ng through her bottom, from which she at once began to sink. Ten minutes later, before a British crew could reach her side, the _General Armstrong_ went to the bottom with her flag still defiantly flying.

Few battles have been fought in which the odds were so unequal, and in few battles have the relative losses been so astounding. The three British war-s.h.i.+ps carried two thousand men and one hundred and thirty guns, and of the four hundred men who composed the boarding party they lost, according to their own accounts, nearly three hundred killed and wounded. Of the American crew of ninety men, two were killed and seven wounded. This little crew of privateersmen had, in other words, put out of action more than three times their own number of British, and had added one more laurel to our chaplet of triumphs on the sea.

The Americans had scarcely gained the sh.o.r.e before Captain Lloyd--who, by the way, had been so severely wounded in the leg that amputation was necessary--sent a peremptory message to the governor demanding their surrender. But the men who could not be taken at sea were not the men to be captured on land, and the Americans, retreating to the mountainous centre of the island, took possession of a thick-walled convent, over which they hoisted the stars and stripes, and from which they defied British and Portuguese alike to come and take them. No one tried.

[Ill.u.s.tration: But even in those days the fame of American gunners was as wide as the seas.]

All of the following day was spent by the British in burying their one hundred and twenty dead--you can see the white gravestones to-day if you will take the trouble to climb the hill behind the little town--but it took them a week to repair the damage caused by the battle. And so deep was their chagrin and mortification that when two British s.h.i.+ps put into Fayal a few days later, and were ordered to take home the wounded, they were forbidden to carry any news of the disaster back to England.

To Captain Reid and his little band of fighters is due in no small measure the credit of saving New Orleans from capture and Louisiana from invasion. Lloyd's squadron was a part of the expedition then gathering at Pensacola for the invasion of the South, but it was so badly crippled in its encounter with the privateer that it did not reach the Gulf of Mexico until ten days later than the expedition had planned to sail.

The expedition waited for Lloyd and his reinforcements, so that when it finally approached New Orleans, Jackson and his frontiersmen, who had hastened down by forced marches from the North, had made preparations to give the English a warm reception. Had the expedition arrived ten days earlier it would have found the Americans unprepared, and New Orleans would have fallen.

Captain Reid and his men, landing on their native soil at Savannah, found their journey northward turned into a triumphal progress. The whole country went wild with enthusiasm. There was not a town or village on the way but did them honor. The city of Richmond gave Captain Reid a great banquet, and the State of New York presented him with a sword of honor. But of all the tributes which were paid to the little band of heroes, none had the flavor of the concluding line of a letter written by one of the British officers engaged in the action to a relative in England. "If this is the way the Americans fight," he wrote, "we may well say, 'G.o.d deliver us from our enemies.'"

THE PIRATE WHO TURNED PATRIOT

How many well-informed people are aware, I wonder, that the fact that the American flag, and not the British, flies to-day over the Mississippi valley is largely due to the eleventh-hour patriotism of a pirate? Of the many kinds of men of many nationalities who have played parts of greater or less importance in the making of our national history, none is more completely cloaked in mystery, romance, and adventure than Jean Lafitte. The last of that long line of buccaneers who for more than two centuries terrorized the waters and ravaged the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, his exploits make the wildest fiction appear commonplace and tame. Although he was as thorough-going a pirate as ever plundered an honest merchant-man, I do not mean to imply that he was a leering, low-browed scoundrel, with a red bandanna twisted about his head and an armory of a.s.sorted weapons at his waist, for he was nothing of the sort. On the contrary, from all I can learn about him, he appears to have been a very gentlemanly sort of person indeed, tall and graceful and soft-voiced, and having the most charming manners. Though he regarded the law with unconcealed contempt, there came a crisis in our national history when he placed patriotism above all other considerations, and rendered an inestimable service to the country whose laws he had flouted and to the State which had set a price on his head.

Indeed, we are indebted to Jean Lafitte in scarcely less measure than we are to Andrew Jackson for frustrating the British invasion and conquest of Louisiana.

Though the palmy days of piracy in the Gulf of Mexico really ended with the seventeenth century, by which time the rich cities of Middle America had been impoverished by repeated sackings and the gold-freighted caravels had taken to travelling under convoy, even at the beginning of the nineteenth century these storied waters still offered many opportunities to lawless and enterprising sea-folk. But the pirates of the nineteenth century, unlike their forerunners of the seventeenth, preyed on slave-s.h.i.+ps rather than on treasure-galleons. Consider the facts. On January 1, 1808, Congress pa.s.sed an act prohibiting the further importation of slaves into the United States. By this act the recently acquired territory of Louisiana, over which prosperity was advancing in three-league boots, was deprived of its supply of labor.

With crops rotting in the fields for lack of laborers, the price of slaves rose until a negro fresh from the coast of Africa would readily bring a thousand dollars at auction in New Orleans. At the same time, remember, s.h.i.+ploads of slaves were being brought to Cuba, where no such restrictions existed, and sold for three hundred dollars a head. Under such conditions smuggling was inevitable. At first the smugglers bought their slaves in the Cuban market, and running them across the Gulf of Mexico, landed them at obscure harbors on the Louisiana coast, whence they were marched overland to New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The smugglers soon saw, however, that the slavers carried small crews, poorly armed, and quickly made up their minds that it was a shameful waste of money to buy slaves when they could get them for nothing by the menace of their guns. In short, the smugglers became buccaneers, and as such drove a thriving business in captured cargoes of "black ivory," as the slaves were euphemistically called.

As the demand was greatest on the rich new lands along the Mississippi, it was at New Orleans that the buccaneers found the most profitable market for their human wares, for they could easily sail up the river to the city, dispose of their cargoes, and be off again with the quick despatch of regular liners to resume their depredations. But the buccaneers did not confine their attention to slave-s.h.i.+ps, so that in a short time, despite the efforts of British, French, and American war-s.h.i.+ps, the waters of the Gulf became as unsafe for all kinds of merchant-vessels as they were in the days of Morgan and Kidd.

As a base for their piratical and smuggling operations, as well as for supplies and repairs, the buccaneers chose Barataria Bay, a place which met their requirements as though made to order. The name is applied to all of the Gulf coast of Louisiana between the mouth of the Mississippi and the mouth of another considerable stream known as the Bayou La Fourche, the latter a waterway to a rich and populous region. The Bay of Barataria is screened from the Gulf, with which it is connected by a deep-water pa.s.s, by the island of Grande Terre, the trees on which were high enough to effectually hide the masts of the buccaneers' vessels from the view of inquisitive war-s.h.i.+ps cruising outside. Between the Mississippi and the La Fourche there is a perfect network of small but navigable waterways which extend almost to New Orleans, so that the buccaneers thus had a back-stairs route, as it were, to the city, which brought their rendezvous at Grande Terre within safe and easy reach of the great mart of the Mississippi valley.

Such supplies as the buccaneers did not get from the s.h.i.+ps they captured, they obtained by purchase in New Orleans. For the chains which were used in making up the caufles of slaves for transportation into the interior, they were accustomed to patronize the blacksmith-shop of the Brothers Lafitte, which stood--and still stands--on the northeast corner of Bourbon and St. Philippe Streets. Of the history of these brothers prior to their arrival in New Orleans nothing is definitely known. From their names, and because they spoke with the accent peculiar to the Garonne, they are credited with having been natives of the south of France, though whence they came and where they went are questions which have never been satisfactorily answered. They were quite evidently men of means, and might have been described as gentlemen blacksmiths, for they owned the slaves who pounded the iron. Being men of exceptional business shrewdness, it is not to be wondered at that from doing the buccaneers' blacksmithing they gradually became their agents and bankers, the smithy in St. Philippe Street coming in time to be a sort of clearing-house for many questionable transactions. Now Jean Lafitte was an extremely able man, combining a remarkable executive ability with a genius for organization, and had he lived a century later these traits, together with his predatory instincts and his utter contempt for the law, would undoubtedly have made him the president of a trust.

Through success in managing their affairs, he gradually increased his usefulness to the buccaneers until he obtained complete control over them, and ruled them as despotically as a tribal chieftain. This was when his genius for organization had succeeded in uniting their different, and often rival, efforts and interests into a sort of pirates' corporation, composed of all the buccaneers, privateers, and freebooters doing business in the Gulf, this combination of outlaws, incredible as it may seem, as effectually controlling the price of slaves and many other things in the Mississippi valley as the Standard Oil Company controls the price of petroleum to-day.

The influence of this new element in the buccaneer business soon made itself felt. At that time New Orleans was a sort of cross between an American frontier town and a West Indian port, its streets and barrooms being filled with swaggering adventurers, gamblers, and soldiers of fortune from every corner of the three Americas, the presence of most of whom was due to the activity of the sheriffs in their former homes. It was from these men, cool, reckless, resourceful, that Lafitte recruited his forces. Leaving his brother Pierre in charge of the New Orleans branch of the enterprise, Jean Lafitte took up his residence on Grande Terre, where, under his directions, a fort was built, around which there soon sprang up a veritable city of thatched huts for the shelter of the buccaneers, and for the accommodation of the merchants who came to supply their wants or to purchase their captured cargoes. Within a year upward of a dozen armed vessels rendezvoused in Barataria Bay, and their crews addressed Jean Lafitte as "_bosse_." One of the Baratarians, a buccaneer of the walk-the-plank-and-scuttle-the-s.h.i.+p school named Grambo, who boldly called himself a pirate, and jeered at Lafitte's polite euphemism of privateer, was one day unwise enough to dispute the new authority. Without an instant's hesitation Lafitte drew a pistol and shot him through the heart in the presence of the whole band. After that episode there was no more insubordination.

By 1813 the Baratarians, who had long since extended their operations to include all kinds of merchandise, were driving such a roaring trade that the commerce and s.h.i.+pping of New Orleans was seriously diminished (for why go to New Orleans for their supplies, the sea-captains and the plantation-owners argued, when they could get what they wanted at Barataria for a fraction of the price), the business of the banks decreased alarmingly under the continual lessening of their deposits, while even the National Government began to feel its loss of revenue.

The waters of Barataria, on the contrary, were alive with the sails of incoming and outgoing vessels; the wharfs which had been constructed at Grande Terre resounded to the creak of winches and the shouts of stevedores unloading contraband cargoes, and the long, low warehouses were filled with merchandise and the log stockades with slaves waiting to be sold and transported to the up-country plantations. So defiant of the law did Lafitte become that the streets of New Orleans were placarded with handbills announcing the auction sales at Barataria of captured cargoes, and to them flocked bargain-hunters from all that part of the South. An idea of the business done by the buccaneers at this time may be gained from an official statement that four hundred slaves were sold by auction in the Grande Terre market in a single day.

Of course the authorities took action in the matter, but their efforts to enforce the law proved both dangerous and ineffective. In October, 1811, a customs-inspector succeeded in surprising a band of Baratarians and seizing some merchandise they had with them, but before he could convey the prisoners and the captured contraband to New Orleans Lafitte and a party of his men overtook him, rescued the prisoners, recovered the property, and in the fight which ensued wounded several of the posse. Some months later Lafitte killed an inspector named Stout, who attempted to interfere with him, and wounded two of his deputies. Then Governor Claiborne issued a proclamation offering a reward for the capture of Lafitte dead or alive, at the same time appealing to the legislature for permission to raise an armed force to break up the buccaneering business for good and all. The cautious legislators declined to take any action, however, because they were unwilling to interfere with an enterprise that, however illegal it might be, was unquestionably developing the resources of lower Louisiana, and incidentally adding immensely to the fortunes of their const.i.tuents. As for the Baratarians, they paid as scant attention to the governor's proclamation as though it had never been written. Surrounded by groups of admiring friends, Lafitte and his lieutenants continued to swagger through the streets of New Orleans; his men openly boasted of their exploits in every barroom of the city, and in places of public resort announcements of auctions at Barataria continued to be displayed.

Then Governor Claiborne played his last card, and secured indictments of the Lafittes on the charge of piracy. Pierre Lafitte was arrested in his blacksmith-shop and confined without bail in the calaboose. Jean Lafitte promptly trumped the governor's card by retaining the services of Edward Livingston and John R. Grymes, the two most distinguished members of the Louisiana bar, at the enormous fee of twenty thousand dollars apiece.

Grymes was then the district attorney, but he resigned his office for the fee. When his successor accused him in open court of having bartered his honor for pirate gold Grymes challenged him to a duel, and crippled him for life with a pistol bullet through the hip. When the two eminent lawyers had cleared their poor, innocent, persecuted clients of the unfounded and outrageous charges brought against them, and had taught them certain legal tricks whereby they could continue doing business at the old stand and still keep on the right side of the bars, Pierre Lafitte sent them an invitation to visit Barataria and collect their fees in person. Livingston, a cautious gentleman who had no desire to risk himself among the pirates whose virtues he had just extolled so highly to a jury, declined the invitation with thanks, offering his colleague a commission of ten per cent to collect his fee for him.

Grymes, who was a hard-drinking, high-living Virginian, and afraid of nothing on two feet or four, accepted the invitation with alacrity, and until the end of his life was wont to convulse his friends with lurid descriptions of the magnificent entertainment which Lafitte provided for him. After a carouse which lasted for a week, and which, from Grymes's accounts, was a combination of the feasts of Lucullus with the orgies of Nero, Lafitte sent his legal adviser back to New Orleans in a sailing vessel, together with several huge chests containing his fee in Spanish gold pieces. It is an interesting commentary on the customs which prevailed in those days that by the time Grymes reached New Orleans, after having visited the various plantations along the lower Mississippi and tried his luck at their card-tables, not a dollar of his fee remained.

Now, it should be understood that the feebleness which characterized all the attempts of the Federal Government to break the power of the buccaneers was not due to any reluctance to prosecute them, but to the fact that it already had its attention taken up with far more pressing matters, for we were then in the midst of our second war with Great Britain. The long series of injuries which England had inflicted on the United States, such as the plundering and confiscation of our s.h.i.+ps, the impressment into the British Navy of our seamen, and the interruption of our commerce with other nations, had culminated on June 18, 1812, by Congress declaring war. So unexpected was this action that it found the country totally unprepared. Our military establishment was barely large enough to provide garrisons for the most exposed points on our far-flung borders; the numerous ports on our seaboard were left unprotected and unfortified; and our navy consisted of but a handful of war-s.h.i.+ps. The history of the first two years of the struggle, which was marked by brilliant American victories at sea, but by a disastrous attempt to invade Canada, has no place in this narrative. Early in the summer of 1814, however, the British Government, exasperated by its failure to inflict any vital damage in the northern States, determined to bring the war to a quick conclusion by the invasion and conquest of Louisiana.

The preparations made for this expedition were in themselves startling.

Indeed, few Americans have even a faint conception of the strength of the blow which England prepared to deal us, for with Napoleon's abdication and exile to Elba, and the ending of the war with France, she was enabled to bring her whole military and naval power against us. The British armada consisted of fifty war-s.h.i.+ps, mounting more than a thousand guns. It was commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, under whom was Sir Thomas Hardy, the friend of Nelson, Rear-Admiral Malcolm, and Rear-Admiral Codrington, and was manned by the same sailors who had fought so valorously at the Nile and at Trafalgar. This great fleet acted as convoy for an almost equal number of transports, having on board eight thousand soldiers, which were the very flower of the British Army, nearly all of them being veterans of the Napoleonic campaigns. Such importance did the British Government attach to the success of this expedition that it seriously considered giving the command of it to no less a personage than the Duke of Wellington. So certain were the British that the venture would be successful that they brought with them a complete set of civil officials to conduct the government of this new country which was about to be annexed to his Majesty's dominions, judges, customs-inspectors, revenue-collectors, court-criers, printers, and clerks, together with printing-presses and office paraphernalia, being embarked on board the transports. A large number of ladies, wives and relatives of the officers, also accompanied the expedition, to take part in the festivities which were planned to celebrate the capture of New Orleans. And, as though to cap this exhibition of audacity, a number of s.h.i.+ps were chartered by British speculators to bring home the booty, the value of which was estimated beforehand at fourteen millions of dollars. Whether the British Government expected to be able to permanently hold Louisiana is extremely doubtful, for it must have been fully aware that the Western States were capable of pouring down a hundred thousand men, if necessary, to repel an invasion. It is probable, therefore, that they counted only on a temporary occupation, which they expected to prolong sufficiently, however, to give them time to pillage and lay waste the country, a course which they felt confident would quickly bring the government at Was.h.i.+ngton to terms.

This formidable armada set sail from England early in the summer of 1814 and, reaching the Gulf of Mexico, established its base of operations, regardless of all the laws of neutrality, at the Spanish port of Pensacola. One morning in the following September a British brig hove to off Grande Terre, and called attention to her presence by firing a cannon. Lafitte, darting through the pa.s.s in his four-oared barge to reconnoitre, met the s.h.i.+p's gig with three scarlet-coated officers in the stern, who introduced themselves as bearers of important despatches for Mr. Lafitte. The pirate chief, introducing himself in turn, invited his unexpected guests ash.o.r.e, and led the way to his quarters with that extraordinary charm of manner for which he was noted even among the punctilious Creoles of New Orleans. After a dinner of Southern delicacies, which elicited exclamations even from the blase British officers, Lafitte opened the despatches. They were addressed to Jean Lafitte, Esquire, commandant at Barataria, from the commander-in-chief of the British forces at Pensacola, and bluntly offered him thirty thousand dollars, payable in Pensacola or New Orleans, a commission as captain in the British Navy, and the enlistment of his men in the naval or military forces of Great Britain if he would a.s.sist the British in their impending invasion of Louisiana. Though it was a generous offer, no one knew better than the British commander that Lafitte's co-operation was well worth the price, for, familiar with the network of streams and navigable swamps lying between Barataria Bay and New Orleans, he was capable of guiding a British expedition through these secret waterways to the very gates of the city before the Americans would have a hint of its approach. It is not too much to a.s.sert that at this juncture the future of New Orleans, and indeed of the whole Mississippi Valley, hung upon the decision of Jean Lafitte, a pirate and a fugitive from justice with a price upon his head.