his ancient seaport
had passed away, and with it the fleets of galleons whose sailors heard
the mission bells and saw the brass guns gleam from the stout fortresses
which in those earlier days guarded the rich commerce of the overland
trade route to St. Augustine.

Aforetime one of the storied and romantic ports of the Spanish Main,
Pensacola now slumbered in unlovely decay and was no more than a village
to which resorted the smugglers of the Caribbean, the pirates of the
Gulf, and rascally men of all races and colors. The Spanish Governor
still lived in the palace with a few slovenly troops, but he could no
more than protest when a hundred royal marines came ashore from two
British sloops-of-war, and the commander, Major Nicholls, issued a
thunderous proclamation to the oppressed people of the American States
adjoining, letting them know that he was ready to assist them in
liberating their paternal soil from a faithless, imbecile Government.
They were not to be alarmed at his approach. They were to range
themselves under the standard of their forefathers or be neutral.

Having fired this verbal blunderbuss, Major Nicholls sent a sloop-of-war
to enlist the support of Jean and Pierre Lafitte, enterprising brothers
who maintained on Barataria Bay in the Gulf, some forty miles south of
New Orleans, a most lucrative resort for pirates and slave traders.
There they defied the law and the devil, trafficking in spoils filched
from honest merchantmen whose crews had walked the plank. Pierre Lafitte
was a very proper figure of a pirate himself, true to the best
traditions of his calling. But withal he displayed certain gallantry to
atone for his villainies, for he spurned British gold and persuasions
and offered his sword and his men to defend New Orleans as one faithful
to the American cause.

If it was the purpose of Nicholls to divert Jackson's attention from New
Orleans which was to be the objective of the British expedition
preparing at Jamaica, he succeeded admirably; but in deciding to attack
Jackson's forces at Mobile, he committed a grievous error. The worthy
Nicholls failed to realize that he had caught a Tartar in General
Jackson--"Old Hickory," the sinewy backwoodsman who would sooner fight
than eat and who was feared more than the enemy by his own men. As might
have been expected, the garrison of one hundred and sixty soldiers who
held Fort Bowyer, which dominated the harbor of Mobile, solemnly swore
among themse