After three hours of this bloody work, the Americans withdrew to works four miles from the city. They had lost twenty-four killed, one hundred and fifteen wounded, and seventy-four missing. General Keane's official report made the British loss forty-six killed, one hundred and sixty-seven wounded, and sixty-four missing. Lieutenant Gleig, in his "Narrative," says, "Not less than five hundred men had fallen, many of whom were our finest soldiers and best officers; and yet we could not but consider ourselves fortunate in escaping from the toils, even at the expense of so great a sacrifice." A journal found upon a British officer {339}who was killed in the battle of January 8th, puts the loss in this action at "two hundred and twenty-four killed, and an immense number wounded." Heavy reënforcements of British troops soon arrived, and with them Generals Sir Edward Pakenham and Samuel Gibbs. Pakenham, a brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, had won considerable distinction in the Peninsular War. He found the army before New Orleans in a pitiful plight. It was encamped on a strip of low and level land, on one side a broad river where it had no vessels, and on the other an almost impassable morass. In front were fortifications that were continually being strengthened, and of the enemy behind them almost nothing was known; while two armed vessels kept up day and night an enfilading fire. With all this, alternate rain and frost left them scarcely a comfortable hour. Pakenham's first movement was to bring heavy guns and a furnace across the peninsula by night, and plant them on the levee; from which on the morning of the 27th he opened a fire with hot shot, and in half an hour had driven the _Louisiana_ up stream and set the _Carolina_ on fire, so that she was abandoned and blew up. On the 28th he made a reconnoissance in force. As the left wing approached the American lines, a {340}group of buildings which Jackson's men had filled with combustibles was fired by a hot shot from one of his guns, and amid the heat and smoke the British saw before them an impassable ditch, from behind which a few pieces of artillery, handled with the utmost skill, poured destruction through their ranks. The right wing found the left of Jackson's position weak, effected a lodgment within the lines, and might perhaps have changed the fortunes of the campaign, had not its leader been instructed that this was to be a reconnoissance, not a battle. Pakenham now resolved upon regular siege operations, and brought thirty guns from the fleet, which in the night of the 31st he mounted within three hundred yards of the American lines. His troops were encamped in the midst of sugar plantations, and a considerable portion of his new ramparts was formed of hogsheads of sugar, set on end.