The British had been so roughly handled that they were unable to advance for three or four days, until the entire army came up. When they did advance it was only to find that Jackson had made good use of the time he had gained by his daring assault. He had thrown up breastworks of mud and logs from the swamp to the river. At first the British tried to batter down these breastworks with their cannon, for they had many more guns than the Americans. A terrible artillery duel followed. For an hour or two the result seemed in doubt; but the American gunners showed themselves to be far more skilful than their antagonists, and gradually getting the upper hand, they finally silenced every piece of British artillery. The Americans had used cotton bales in the embrasures, and the British hogsheads of sugar, but neither worked well, for the cotton caught fire, and the sugar hogsheads were ripped and splintered by the round shot, so that both were abandoned. By the use of red-hot shot the British succeeded in setting fire to the American schooner which had caused them such annoyance on the evening of the night attack; but she had served her purpose, and her destruction caused little anxiety to Jackson.
Having failed in his effort to batter down the American breastworks, and the British artillery having been fairly worsted by the American, Pakenham decided to try an open assault. He had ten thousand regular troops, while Jackson had under him but little over five thousand men, who were trained only as he had himself trained them in his Indian campaigns. Not a fourth of them carried bayonets. Both Pakenham and the troops under him were fresh from victories won over the most renowned marshals of Napoleon, and over troops that had proved themselves on a hundred stricken fields the masters of all others in continental Europe. At Toulouse they had driven Marshal Soult from a position infinitely stronger than that held by Jackson, and yet Soult had under him a veteran army. At Badajos, Ciudad Rodrigo, and San Sebastian they had carried by open assault walled towns whose strength made the entrenchments of the Americans seem like mud walls built by children, though these towns were held by the best troops of France. With such troops to follow him, and with such victories behind him in the past, it did not seem to Pakenham possible that the assault of the terrible British infantry could be successfully met by rough backwoods riflemen fighting under a General as wild and untrained as themselves.