[385] paign of April, no one among these small garrisons had expected to see the enemy appear. No preparation had been made to receive him, and everybody was leading a life of the greatest unconcern amid the camps of the sick and of fugitive negroes and the immense depots of supplies, ammunition, and material which offered a prey to be coveted by the Confederates. Brashear City continued to be the centre of Federal establishments in that district. Protected by a gunboat and a large fortification mounted with heavy guns on the side of Atchafalaya, covered at the north and south by marshes which extended on one side to the lake, and on the other side, as far as the eye could reach, toward the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, this town seemed to be protected against any sudden attack. A few small posts were écheloned along the New Orleans railroad, the Bayou Lafourche, Thibodeaux, and Lafourche. Finally, at Donaldsonville, a point where this bayou emerges from the Mississippi, a fort had been constructed along the edge of the river, which was in charge of Major Bullen,1 an intelligent, energetic officer, with two hundred and twenty-five men.
At the news of Taylor's return to Alexandria and Opelousas, <*>Texans, most of whom had left him, hastened to join his force again. These daring partisans were admirable soldiers for such an expedition as he was about to undertake. Inured to the hardest modes of life, sober, active, excellent horsemen, always ready to dismount and fight on foot or on the water—but little amenable to rigorous discipline, it must be allowed, and as quick in picking quarrels as they were eager in battle, but without rancor and full of devotion to the chiefs who knew how to make themselves loved by them—they hastened the more readily to dispute the rich provinces of Louisiana to the abolitionists because, full of undeserved contempt for the Creoles whom they were coming to defend, they relied on this opportunity for showing how vastly superior they were to them. Taylor had about six or seven thousand men under his command, most of them mounted. He divided them into two columns. One, formed by Colonel Major's brigade, was ordered to descend the river in the direction of Bayou Lafourche by passing
