[US History] Just because someone over on bsky shared an article that prompted me to share one of my favorite stories about the Battle of New Orleans:

In 1815, a bunch of French pirates successfully got one up on the British Army by using video game mechanics and shooting special barrels.

The British had tried convincing said pirates to join them in fighting the Americans, but weirdly enough a bunch of Frenchman were not particularly eager to join hands and play nice with the British in fucking 1815.

So they joined Jackson's army out of spite

They also brought their cannons with them, which was nice because we were...pretty badly outnumbered

And since they were used to hitting targets from a ship, firing on solid ground was very much a "holy shit, this is MUCH easier!" experience for them and they could dial those shots in wherever they wanted (as best you can with a cannon, anyway)

the moment they realized what was in those barrels they made life HELL for the British gunners

because they didn't even have to hit the cannons, all they had to do was hit the barrels. The impact of the shot would send the sugar inside flying everywhere, and the heat (from either the initial impact or from settling on the British guns) would cause it to quickly liquify and turn into a sticky, gummy mess that made it dangerous to fire the cannon.

It's also the only battle I'm aware of, in any war, where there was a widespread adoption of the "lie down and play dead and hope they don't notice you" strategy.

Some elements of the British forces were able to get all the way up to the American line, but realized too late that the people carrying the ladders they needed to actually climb over the ramparts were too far to the rear to be of any use.

So a whole lot of them just...lied down and pretended to be dead.

Which freaked Jackson the fuck out when the order to retreat was given and a whole bunch of "dead" redcoats suddenly just...got up and walked away

(probably more than just Jackson, but considering who he was he's one of the few people with surviving records that actually wrote it down)

"what's a battle?"

Lying down was a fairly common British tactic to avoid casualties. It was also done at Waterloo

I love all of this