Thus seven or eight hundred tired, ill-armed, and unprotected militia, divided in two bodies a mile apart, waited on the west bank to be attacked by a British column which was then in the act of crossing the river. Their defeat was almost certain. A thousand British troops could easily drive them away, capture all the batteries on the west bank, destroy the “Louisiana” as they had destroyed the “Carolina,” thus turning all Jackson’s lines, and probably rendering necessary the evacuation of New Orleans. For this work Pakenham detached the Eighty-fifth regiment, about three hundred strong, the Fifth West India, two hundred seamen and two hundred marines,--about twelve hundred men in all,[553]--under command of Colonel Thornton, who had led the light brigade at Bladensburg and across Lake Borgne to the Mississippi. The movement was ordered for the night of January 7, and was to be made in boats already collected in the Villeré canal. With some hesitation[554] Pakenham decided to make a simultaneous attack on Jackson. The arrangements for this assault were simple. The usual store of fascines and ladders was provided. Six of the eighteen-pound guns were once more mounted in battery about eight hundred yards from the American line, to cover the attack. The army, after detaching Thornton’s corps, was organized in three divisions,--one, under Major-General Gibbs, to attack Jackson’s left; another, under Major-General Keane, to attack along the river-side; a third, the reserve, to be commanded by Major-General Lambert. “The principal attack was to be made by Major-General Gibbs,” said the British official report.[555] The force assigned to Gibbs consisted of the Fourth, Twenty-first, and Forty-fourth regiments, with three companies of the Ninety-fifth,--about two thousand two hundred rank-and-file.[556] The force assigned to Keane consisted of “the Ninety-third, two companies of the Ninety-fifth, and two companies of the Fusileers and Forty-third,”[557]--apparently about twelve hundred rank-and-file. “The first brigade, consisting of the Fusileers and Forty-third, formed the reserve” under Major-General Keane, apparently also twelve hundred strong. Adding two hundred artillerists and five hundred black troops of the First West India regiment, employed as skirmishers along the edge of the swamp, the whole body of troops engaged on the east bank in the assault, according to the official report and returns of wounded,[558] numbered about five thousand three hundred rank-and-file, consisting of the Fourth, Seventh (Fusileers), Twenty-first, Forty-third, Forty-fourth, Ninety-third, and Ninety-fifth regiments, of whom twenty-two hundred were to attack on the right, twelve hundred on the left, and twelve hundred were to remain in reserve.