This precipitate action--the British envoy protesting against such informal occupation--was justified at home on the plea of strong grounds of suspicion that England herself might suddenly assert sovereignty over the same territory under secret treaty with Spain. Amid these rude and revolutionary proceedings, all within a decade of years, necessarily there followed a tumult of differing sentiment and contentions among the Spanish, French, and American people of the section. Fortunately the French element were of a nativity whose country had been for generations the inveterate enemy of the English, our common foe. If there were any who felt resentment before over the enforced change of allegiance from beloved France to the stranger sovereignty, when the crisis of campaign and battle came none were more gallant and brave in meeting the invading enemy. On the ninth of December the great English flotilla appeared off Chandeleur Islands, and came to anchor near to Ship Island, the shallowness of the water not permitting the nearer approach to the main shore of vessels so large. The British authorities yet believed that the destination of this fleet was unknown to the Americans ashore; but in this they were mistaken, as they afterward admitted. The inadequacy of men and means and measures to properly meet and repel such an invading force, as mentioned before, was mainly due to the tardy negligence of the department at Washington. The sleepless vigilance and untiring energy of General Jackson was in marked contrast to this, not only within his own military jurisdiction, but in the whole region around. His trusty spies, pale and dusky, were everywhere, and little escaped his attention. The situation was now critical in the extreme. Fortunately, the unbounded confidence all had in their military chief inspired hope and infused energy among the people. He had never been defeated in battle. If any one could wrest victory now out of the inauspicious and chaotic conditions that threatened disaster, they believed it to be General Jackson. [Illustration] Marvelous was the change wrought by his timely appearance on the theater of active operations. The partial attempts to adopt measures of defense were of little avail. The joint committee of the Legislature to act in concert with Governor Claiborne, Commodore Patterson, and the military commandant, had done but little as yet. There was wanting the concentration of power always needed in military operations. Latour, in his "Memoirs of the War of 1814-15," graphically describes the condition of affairs as he saw and knew them to exist: