The city of Baltimore redeemed itself more bravely. Against that place General Ross now proceeded with his army and the fleet. In attacking the enemy's outposts, General Ross was slain, and the command devolved on Colonel Brooke. Six thousand infantry, four hundred horse, and four guns, protected by a wooden palisade, disputed the passage of the British. With a shout and a cheer Wellington's veterans attacked the obstructions, and, in fifteen minutes, were masters of the field. The American army fled, leaving behind them six hundred killed or wounded, and three hundred prisoners, September 13. The next morning, the British were within a mile and a half of Baltimore, but they found fifteen thousand men, with a large train of artillery, in possession of the heights commanding the city. Colonel Brooke, not willing to incur the risk of attacking in daylight, with three thousand men, a fivefold number, resolved on attempting a surprise by night. He learned, however, that the enemy, by sinking twenty vessels in the river, had prevented all naval co-operation. The inevitable loss of life in an assault far counter-balancing any prospective advantage, Brooke wisely abandoned the design, and withdrew unmolested to his ships. The fleet and army which had been baffled at Baltimore sailed for New Orleans, with the object of capturing the chief cotton port of the United States, then a city of seventeen thousand inhabitants. The fleet arrived off the mouth of the Mississippi on the 8th of December. It was opposed by a flotilla of gunboats, but they were all soon captured and destroyed. Amid very great difficulties and hardships, resulting from the severity of the weather and the wretched condition of the roads, the army under General Packenham advanced to within six miles of New Orleans. Here General Jackson, the American commander, had constructed a deep ditch and an entrenchment of earthworks, strengthened by sand-bags and cotton- bales, a thousand yards long, stretching from the Mississippi to an impassable swamp in the rear. Flanking batteries enfiladed the front. Behind these formidable works was posted an army of twelve thousand men. Packenham resolved to send Colonel Thornton, with fourteen hundred men, across the river by night, to storm a battery which swept the front of the earthworks, and to menace the city of New Orleans. At the same time, the main attack was to be made on Jackson's lines, in two columns, under Generals Gibbs and Keane. Packenham had only six thousand men, including seamen and marines, "to attack twice the number, entrenched to the teeth in works bristling with bayonets and loaded with heavy artillery." [Footnote: Allison's "History of Europe," Chap. lxxvi., American ed., vol. iv., p. 480.] The rapid fall of the river retarded the crossing of the troops, and prevented a simultaneous attack on the right and left banks.