Under his command was a force of pirates who were many or few, according to the exigencies of the moment; for they could masquerade as peaceful fishermen if necessary, or they could, upon occasion, muster a force of several hundred at a word's notice--always perfectly armed, perfectly drilled, thoroughly redoubtable. Lafitte preyed impartially upon all the commerce of the Gulf of Mexico, and, when pursued, ran into one of the numerous mouths of the Mississippi or some inlet of the Gulf--into Barataria Lake, into Bayou Lafourche, or into Bayou Teche. There it was vain to follow him, for the intricacies of these passages were known only to his men or to the dwellers along their shores, who were in sympathy with him. When the British descended upon New Orleans in the autumn of 1813, they offered Jean Lafitte a captain's commission in the British naval service, thirty thousand dollars in money, a full pardon for past offenses and rewards in money and lands for his followers if he would join them in making war on the Americans. He could easily have done so. The French people of Louisiana had no keen loyalty for the Stars and Stripes at that time. As Lafitte went they might have gone. The British knew this, and made their bait a rich one. But Lafitte, although Claiborne's price was on his head, and his brother Pierre in prison in New Orleans, refused the offer. Instead, he sent the letters from Captain Lockyer, of the British navy, making this proposition, to the Louisiana legislature. Later, after Pierre had escaped, he actually joined General Jackson's nondescript army with a force of riflemen. He seems to have acted from a very honest love for the young American republic. Jackson, at first, under a misapprehension of the circumstances, had refused to accept the aid of these "hellish banditti," as he had called Lafitte's men in a proclamation on his arrival. But when he found that the British were upon him, and that a considerable proportion of his poorly equipped militia were without flints for their muskets, he not only accepted the flints that Lafitte sent him, but gave the pirate an important command on his right wing. There Jean and his men performed signal service. If Lafitte had joined the British with his men and ships, there is little likelihood that the Americans would have had in this fight the powerful aid of the vessels of war _Carolina_ and _Louisiana_, on the river. Nor is it likely that they would have had the passive support of the French population. Nor that they would have found any substitute for the flints with which Lafitte supplied them. And it is very likely that the British assault upon Jackson's intrenchments would have been attended with a different result. Jackson, indeed, might have been crushed very much as Windsor had been crushed at Washington, not long before.