Between 1805 and 1814, the privateer Jean Lafitte led 1,000 men in one of the largest, though illicit, business enterprises of its day. With an alleged 99 vessels, Lafitte and his band of Baratarians supplied slaves and luxury goods to wealthy planters along the Mississippi and to residents of New Orleans. Because he wanted it so, few facts are known about Jean Lafitte's life. He provided supplies and men to General Andrew Jackson in the successful defense of New Orleans against the British in 1815, but the events of his life before and after that moment remain shrouded in the mists of the swamps and bayous through which he moved.