The ROYAL FUSILIERS were not long permitted to enjoy repose, before an order from the Horse Guards summoned them to engage in scenes of conflict beyond the Atlantic ocean. The impressing of British seamen on board of American vessels, with the enforcing of certain Orders in Council, designed to counteract the decrees of Buonaparte, who, in the height of his power, endeavoured to destroy the commerce of Great Britain, had been followed by a war with the United States, and the SEVENTH were selected to proceed with the forty-third light infantry under Major-General Lambert, to join the troops engaged in active service against the American coast. The first battalion was completed to a thousand rank and file from the second, and embarked on the 4th of October, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Blakeney; it proceeded, in the first instance, to Plymouth, from whence it sailed to the West Indies.[24] [Sidenote: 1815] From the West Indies the regiment sailed towards the southern states of North America, and arrived, on the first of January, 1815, off the coast of Louisiana; it was there removed into small boats, to proceed along Lake Barque to join the army commanded by Major-General the Honourable Sir Edward Michael Pakenham, K.C.B., near _New Orleans_, a place of some note, situate on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. After a difficult navigation of eighty miles in small boats, the regiment landed (having lost a serjeant and sixteen men by the sinking of a boat on the lake); and on the following day joined the army at its camp on the bank of the Mississippi. Arrangements had previously been made for the attack by storm of a line of entrenchments and redoubts which the Americans had constructed behind a canal to cover the approach to _New Orleans_, and behind which they had collected an army treble the numbers of the British. A short time before day-light, on the morning of the 8th of January, the ROYAL FUSILIERS were at their post, and forming, with the forty-third, the reserve to the storming party. Some delay occurred; the ladders were not ready at the proper moment; and when the soldiers rushed forward to storm the enemy's works, difficulties were encountered which it was found impossible to overcome. A serious loss had been sustained in killed and wounded; the commander-in-chief had fallen;[25] and no chance of ultimate success remained: when the storming parties fell back, the SEVENTH and forty-third, deploying into line, and making a forward motion, presented the appearance of a renewed attack, by which the Americans were so much awed that they did not venture to pursue the retreating soldiers; at the same time the two regiments presented so steady and confident a front under a heavy fire as to excite great admiration, and the storming parties rallied and formed in support. No prospect of ultimate success appearing, the troops withdrew to their camp. The loss of the SEVENTH on