Soldiers of Conquest (31 page)

Grant and Hazlitt continued to move forward with the Fourth Infantry as the Sixth pulled back nearly in a rout for two hundred yards or so. They saw the officers moving among their men shouting at them and finally rallying them and sending them forward. Withering fire knocked scores of the men and several officers off their feet and the regiment broke and retreated. The remaining officers of the Sixth once more tried to rally their rattled men.

“We're next,” Grant called to Hazlitt as he saw Lieutenant Buckner, one of Worth's aids, rush up to Garland and call out to him.

Garland shouted orders and the infantrymen of his brigade sprang off the causeway to the right and hurried forward through the corn standing six feet tall. A battery of American artillery, unable to leave the road, began to set up their guns to fire. The ground was muddy from the rain of the night just past and the men slipped and slid. They had gone but a short ways when crossfire from muskets and cannon firing canister and grapeshot struck them from the Mexican position around the convent and the entrenchments along the river. Cornstalks were mowed down. Men, riddled by lead, fell. It was the hottest fire Grant had ever seen. He hated grapeshot worst of all.

He glanced at Hazlitt, and found him looking in his direction. Grant motioned ahead for he knew there was no turning back; they had to take the Mexican positions. Hazlitt nodded and shouted at the men near him, and led forward blindly through the tall corn and across the muddy field into the withering fire. Within a few yards, they came to an irrigation canal too wide to jump and too deep to wade.

“Build a path,” Grant shouted and holstered his pistols to grab up an armload of cornstalks cut by Mexican bullets and threw them into the canal. Others quickly joined him and a ford was built and the men ran across. They had advanced only a few more yards when they collided with the wounded and shattered companies of the Sixth Infantry hurrying to the rear.

Grant drew his sword and jumped in front of the leaders of the mass of frightened men, and shouted at the top of his lungs for them to halt. Every man was needed in the fighting and couldn't be allowed to abandon the battlefield. Coming straight at him was a soldier without his musket and his scared eyes seeing nothing but some place far away from the deadly bullets. Grant had to stop the first men. He swung the flat of his sword and struck the man a powerful blow across the chest. The fellow stumbled and went down on his face. Grant hit the next one, knocking him to his knees.

Grant heard shouts beside him where Hazlitt and other officers of the Fourth, and a few from the Sixth were cursing and striking the men with the flat of their swords to stop the rout. The officers brought the stampeding soldiers to a standstill. The shamefaced men began to respond to orders to form ranks. Within a few minutes order was restored and the Fourth and the remnant of the Sixth were advancing across the field. Here and there cornstalks and men fell from their rows under the hail of bullets.

Hazlitt came up close beside Grant. “We almost didn't stop them,” Hazlitt said above the sound of the cannons and muskets.

“Yes, but look at them move now. If the men had had time to prepare for the firing, they wouldn't have broke.”

“It was all Worth's fault. We'd be better off if he let Garland or Clarke lead.”

“Or even you,” Grant said.

“Or even you,” Hazlitt said. He tried to smile, but his taut face refused to obey and gave only a grim stretching of the lips.

They came to an area where more than a hundred of Clarke's men lay dead or wounded in less than an acre of corn. Agonized moans came from the wounded and suffering. A private struggled to his feet and gazed around with a dazed, befuddled stare. Another sat up and started to yell plaintively for help. There wasn't any help to be had.

The Fourth and Sixth kept on and reached an irrigation canal, and there the officers ordered the men to take shelter. Standing in water to their waists, the men fired over the lip of the canal and returned the sheets of musket fire from the breastworks and convent. Grant heard heavy firing, both cannon and musket, coming from what he judged were other American units. He listened closely and knew not one unit was making headway against the Mexicans. This couldn't go on, men exposed to the guns of entrenched positions must take them or retreat.

Lee was just behind the squad of Worth's men creeping through the cornfield when they reached the causeway that carried the Acapulco Road. He hoisted himself upon it, scuttled swiftly across, and dropped back down onto the ground. He was now in Pillow's portion of the American line. He hastened on toward Coyoacan.

Scott's army was stalemated. His eight thousand men couldn't break Santa-Anna's force, a number Lee estimated that more than doubled that of the Americans. The battle had gone on for three hours with the Americans constantly on the verge of defeat. A crisis lay upon the small American army and a way had to be found to breach the Mexican fortifications.

The army lay in an irregular arc around the south side of the Mexicans in the San Mateo Convent and the entrenchments near the bridge and north of the Churubusco River. Worth's men were on the east, Pillow's in the center and Twiggs's on the west. All three divisions had been stopped and lay exposed and taking heavy losses. Worth's division in the cornfield was in the worst condition for the general had botched his advance and sent his men into concentrated fire from the strong fortifications and they had suffered terribly.

Twiggs was next in the difficulty of his position. Twiggs exultant and over-confident after the victory at Contreras had attack the walled convent without reconnoitering. The rapid and accurate volleys of fire coming from the enemy in the convent were deadly. Lee had counted seven cannons and estimated a garrison of two thousand. The sound of firing had been one continuous roll throughout the fighting. He pitied the men standing under the deadly storm of metal.

Lee, weary to the bone for he had now been on his feet and moving for a day and a half, passed through Pillow's and Twiggs's positions and went swiftly the quarter mile to the village of Coyoacan. He climbed into the tower of the village church to where Scott and part of his staff officers stood out of musket range and glassing the battlefield.

Scott lowered his glasses. “Well major, what's the situation?” he asked.

“Bad, sir. I'd estimate that nearly fifteen percent of our men are down and out of action. General Worth is in the worst condition with half of Clarke's brigade gone. We must do something quickly.”

”We dare not retreat!” Scott exclaimed. “To lose this battle means our total defeat and all the fighting our brave boys have done would have been for nothing.”

“General Worth and I talked about flanking the Mexicans north of the river,” Lee volunteered. “He said that if he had another regiment, he'd try to get round them on the east. I asked Clarke about the river in front of him and he told me it's shallow enough for a man to wade and but twenty feet wide.”

“If the General Worth could do that then he could rollup the Mexican entrenchment. Anything else.”

“Yes, sir. I believe there's another reason to give General Worth a regiment. We've got our men too much concentrated on the convent. It's too strong to take because it's too well supported by the crossfire coming from the entrenchments that are within musket range.”

“We need to block the escape route toward the city,” Scott said as he raised his glasses to look at the battlefield. “It appears Riley's brigade is nearest to Worth,” Scott was reading the battle flags visible along the American line.

“Yes, sir,” Lee said.

Scott lowered his glasses and turned to Beauregard standing nearby and listening. “Lieutenant, go with these orders. Riley is to send Worth one of his regiments. Worth is to move upon the entrenchments north of the river as soon as he gets the regiment into position. Further, inform Twiggs and Pillow they are ordered to assault the convent with every man when Worth reaches the entrenchments.”

“Yes, sir.” Beauregard left at a trot to the cornfield were the Mexican cannonballs and musket balls slashed and chopped the cornstalks as if an invisible reaper was moving through them.

“Major Lee, carry orders to General Shields to ford the river west of the convent and circle around to the Acapulco Road. Then he's to turn and come south blocking the road and striking the convent. He's to prevent the escape of the enemy. General Pierce is unable to ride, so have Shields take that brigade along with him.”

Scott pointed down at a company of Mounted Rifles and a troop of Dragoons. These men were to protect Scott from capture by the enemy. “Take all of those men with you,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Lee said. Scott had now committed every man of the small American army to the battle. With no reserves, it truly was win or die. He hurried down from the church tower and went to his horse tied to a tree in the yard.

*

“I'm going to go have a look around,” Grant said to Hazlitt standing in the water of the canal near him.

After more than an hour of intense firing from Americans and Mexicans alike, Grant could wait no longer to see what was happening. He pulled himself up over the top of the canal and crawled off with bullets whizzing close above his head and cleaving the cornstalks to fall upon him. He made it safely to where the corn ended and the land rose a few feet. Cautiously he raised his head and saw he was within easy musket range of the Churubusco River.

Through his glasses he surveyed the scene, focusing first on the convent some two hundred yards distant. The deadly musket and cannon fire from that place had struck many of his comrades of the Fourth. He saw white faces sighting over the guns at the walls and in the convent windows. It was the San Patricio Battalion made up of Irish deserters fighting for Santa-Anna. Looking to the west, he saw at least a regiment of Riley's division moving to reinforce Worth's penned down men.

Worth's order to prepare to advance came down the line. The bugle sounded and the Fourth with the remainders of Garland's and Clarke's division rose to its feet and with a whoop raced for the river. Grant sprang to his feet and joined in. The men plunged into the river to the right of the bridge, their front overlapping the Mexican entrenchments on the right. Holding their muskets and cartridge boxes above the water, the men waded the river and climbed up the far bank. They stormed over the parapets and pushed through the embrasures of the breastworks. Stabbing and slashing, they struck the Mexicans.

The fighting was fierce hand-to-hand, the Mexicans defending bravely, stoutly. Grant emptied his pistols one after another at point-blank range. Two men fell. He turned to his saber, cutting and stabbing with every ounce of his skill and strength. The screams, curses, and blows of the men in mortal combat around him were reduced to a muted, unimportant murmur for his mind was totally fixed upon but one thought, kill the armed Mexican in front of him, and then the next one. The passage of time was lost to him as he fought beside his comrades in the trenches.

Grant again sensed the flow of time when there were no more enemy soldiers coming at him with a bayonet or sword or swinging a musket. He stood gripping his sword and drew a long, deep shuddering breath. He was alive and uninjured. He glanced around at the dead, and wounded, and the living. The men still standing wore blue.

He looked about and saw that all along the river, the Mexicans were breaking and fleeing. He saw James Longstreet and George Pickett, off some hundred feet on his left, plant their regimental flag upon the Mexican breastworks. Some men hurried to the captured guns and turned them upon the fleeing Mexicans. Others began to round up prisoners.

Grant looked at the convent. Americans had captured a 4-pound cannon on the bridge and had turned it against the convent. American gunners at artillery pieces outside the convent, no longer pinned down by enemy fire from the bridge, had wheeled their batteries up close and were blowing gaping holes in the convent walls. Infantry were closing in on the east side of this last Mexican holdout. Grant saw defenders, some looked like the Irish deserters, fleeing over the walls on the opposite side of the convent.

Grant joined with Hazlitt and a few of his men and splashed back across the river to help take it. They merged with nearly a hundred of Twiggs's men and twenty of so of the Mexican Spy Company and struck the front door of the convent.

They were met inside the tall entryway by three score of the San Patricio Battalion wielding their empty muskets like clubs. The deserters fought madly for they knew a noose waited for them if captured. Grant, both pistols empty, swung his saber to parry a ferocious swing of a musket at his face, and speared the man in the stomach. Jerking the blade free, he brought it up and swung down and half severed the man's shoulder from the body. He jumped to the right and moved forward along the stone wall and on the right side of the melee. There he bore in swinging and cutting. The fighting was savage with men crying wild animal sounds. Men fell bleeding, wounded, dead.

The San Patricios were forced back and back. At a stone archway leading into a large adjoining room, they made a stand and held their ground for a few minutes. Then they were caught from behind by a number of Americans that had entered through one of the cannon ball holes in a wall. The deserters, something over a dozen still on their feet, threw their muskets down on the floor and raised their hands above their heads.

“By, God, we got Riley himself,” shouted a man of the Fourth. “You bastard, you'll surely get the hangman's rope.”

Grant recognized Sergeant John Riley among the bloody San Patricios. He had known him in northern Mexico before he swam the Rio Grande at Matamoras and joined the Mexicans for the promise of three hundred and twenty acres of land. In total three hundred Americans had deserted at Matamoras for the same promise.