At six o’clock in broad dawn the columns of Gibbs and Keane moved forward toward Jackson’s works, which were lined with American troops waiting for the expected attack. Gibbs’s column came first under fire, advancing near the swamp in close ranks of about sixty men in front.[563] Three of the American batteries opened upon them. Coming within one hundred and fifty yards of the American line, the British column obliqued to the left to avoid the fire of the battery directly in face. As they came within musketry range the men faltered and halted, beginning a confused musketry fire. A few platoons advanced to the edge of the ditch, and then broke. Their officers tried in vain to rally them for another advance. Major-General Gibbs was mortally wounded, according to the official report, “within twenty yards of the glacis.”[564] Pakenham himself rode forward to rally Gibbs’s column, and was instantly struck by a grape-shot and killed, nearly three hundred yards from the American line.[565] “As I advanced with the reserve,” said Lambert’s report, “at about two hundred and fifty yards from the line, I had the mortification to observe the whole falling back upon me in the greatest confusion.” Keane’s column on the left moved along the road and between the river and the levee. Pressing rapidly forward, greatly annoyed by Patterson’s battery on the west bank, the head of this column reached the American line, and stormed an unfinished redoubt outside the main work at the edge of the river. The concentrated fire of the whole American right almost immediately drove the column back in disorder; the men who reached the redoubt were killed; Major-General Keane was severely wounded and carried off the field, while the casualties among officers of a lower grade were excessive. The Ninety-third regiment in Keane’s brigade lost its lieutenant-colonel and two captains killed, and four more captains severely wounded; three hundred and forty-eight rank-and-file were wounded, ninety-nine were reported missing, and fifty-eight killed. These losses amounted to five hundred and five in seven hundred and seventy-five rank-and-file.[566] Lambert’s report continued:[567]-- “In this situation, finding that no impression had been made; that though many men had reached the ditch, they were either drowned or obliged to surrender, and that it was impossible to restore order in the regiments where they were,--I placed the reserve in position until I could obtain such information as to determine me how to act to the best of my judgment, and whether or not I should resume the attack; and if so, I felt it could be done only by the reserve.”