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.