It was known, and the warning had been repeated from Washington, that the enemy intended sending a formidable expedition against Louisiana, but when Jackson arrived early in December the Legislature had voted no money, raised no regiments, devised no plan of defense, and was unprepared to make any resistance whatever.
A British fleet of about fifty sail, carrying perhaps a thousand guns, had gathered for the task in hand.

The decks were crowded with trained and toughened troops, the divisions which had scattered the Americans at Bladensburg with a volley and a shout, kilted Highlanders, famous regiments which had earned the praise of the Iron Duke in the Spanish Peninsula, and brawny negro detachments recruited in the West Indies.

It was such an army as would have been considered fit to withstand the finest troops in Europe.

In command was one of England's most brilliant soldiers, General Sir Edward Pakenham, of whom Wellington had said, "my partiality for him does not lead me astray when I tell you that he is one of the best we have." He was the idol of his officers, who agreed that they had never served under a man whose good opinion they were so desirous of having, "and to fall in his estimation would have been worse than death." In brief, he was a high-minded and knightly leader who had seen twenty years of active service in the most important campaigns of Europe.
It was Pakenham's misfortune to be unacquainted with the highly irregular and unconventional methods of warfare as practiced in America, where troops preferred to take shelter instead of being shot down while parading across open ground in solid columns.

Improvised breastworks were to him a novelty, and the lesson of Bunker Hill had been forgotten.
These splendidly organized and seasoned battalions of his were confident of walking through the Americans at New Orleans as they had done at Washington, or as Pakenham himself had smashed the finest French infantry at Salamanca when Wellington told him, "Ned, d'ye see those fellows on the hill?
Throw your division into column; at them, and drive them to the devil." Stranger than fiction was the contrast between the leaders and between the armies that fought this extraordinary battle of New Orleans when, after the declaration of peace, the United States won its one famous but belated victory on land.