The British captured the American capitol in Washington and burned its public buildings in the War of 1812, but when they invaded the Mississippi Valley and attempted to seize New Orleans, they faced an improvised, multi-lingual army that combined volunteers from frontier settlements, nearly 1,000 well-armed and prosperous pirates, "freemen of color", former slaves from Haiti, and a convent full of earnestly prayerful nuns. The resulting battle led to a bloody British disaster with the American "dirty shirts" illogically protected and suffering only a dozen reported casualties in a confrontation that struck participants on all sides as an open miracle.

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