Soldiers of Conquest (5 page)

“But I must say this about him, for audacity and cunning he can't be matched by anyone in the Mexican army or government. He can sway any crowd to his way of thinking for he is a master with words.”

“How large is the city's food supply?” Scott asked.

“General, I know what you're thinking and I tell you truthfully that you don't have sufficient time to starve the city into submission before the yellow fever would strike your men. Further the people expect an assault and the streets are defended with cannon and barricades. Sandbags protect the doors and windows of the houses, and loopholes by the hundreds have been made in the walls. Now I have answered your questions truthfully and I ask you, how much time do we have before you make your attack upon the city?”

“I believe you have been very forthcoming with me,” Scott said in an agreeable tone. “You may continue to take onboard your nationals and their possessions until further notice from me. As may the other neutrals.” Again his voice took on an edge. “However be warned that in no way will I allow anything to change my timetable or interfere with my capture of the city and fort. Once the battle begins any person, neutral or otherwise, entering or leaving the city or fort will be fired upon.”

Lee, engrossed in his letter writing, didn't hear the scratch of the iron nib of his pen on the paper, nor the pen of his long time friend, Joe Johnston sitting across the table from him. The two men were in the below deck cabin they shared on the Massachusetts. A warm, moist draft of air flowed in the open porthole and out the open doorway. Above their heads a coal oil fueled ships lantern with its mica windows hung on its brass chain and pendulumed slowly to the motion of the ship. Light from the lantern casts distorted shadows of the men to roam about on the floor.

Knowing tomorrow would bring battle and danger, Lee was preparing guidance for his wife Mary on the rearing of their children. His firm hand should be on the older ones, but that was impossible with his long army assignments in faraway places. He felt frustrated by his wife's lack of discipline of the children, too lax, too inconsistent, and too yielding to them. With a frown he signed the letter R. E. Lee, folded and sealed it.

Mary and the children lived with Mrs. Custis, her mother, in the huge manor house Arlington situated on the Virginia hills opposite Washington. Mrs. Custis was a strong woman and perhaps she could be of assistance in the matter of Mary's lack of will. He would prepare a short letter to her and request she use her influence to induce Mary to perform her motherly duties. He hoped for, but held little expectation that Mrs. Custis's effort would have much effect upon Mary.

He turned to preparing his will, beginning with listing his holdings; canal and railroad stock, and state bonds of Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, and six slaves. He estimated his wealth at thirty-eight thousand dollars. Considering five percent a reasonable rate of return, he calculated the interest on his holding would be more than his annual salary of $1,350 per year, and a sum large enough for his family to live comfortably off the interest should he be killed in the war. In addition Mary stood to inherit valuable property; the Arlington house, the White House on the Pamunky River, several hundreds acres of fertile land, and two hundred slaves. His family should be able to live very well indeed should he be killed.

Lee glanced at Johnston and saw the tall, wiry man staring out the open doorway into the black night on the deck. “Something bothering you, Joe?” he asked.

“There's going to be a lot of American boys killed in this war. Doesn't it seem foolhardy for us with but a tiny army of a few thousand men to land from vessels on the open sea and invade a nation of seven million people?”

“They do occupy a mountainous land affording the greatest possible natural advantage for defense,” Lee said. “And the officers will be creoles. But Cortez did it with five hundred and fifty men.” Creoles were the descendants of Europeans and numbered about a million. The remaining citizens were Indians, or mixed white and Indian races called mestizoes.

“Yes but the Spaniards had firearms while the Aztecs had bow and arrows. In our case, the Mexicans have weapons as good as our own. And they'll be fighting from behind strong defensive works. And don't forget that the Aztecs thought Spaniards were gods, and men don't fight as strongly against gods as they do against mortal men.”

“If any general can lead us to victory, then Scott is the one.”

“Even Scott has to have enough soldiers to do it. Some of the officers believe President Polk and Secretary of War Marcy are deliberately withholding troops from him so that he will fail in his first battle. Then they can replace him with a general of the Democratic Party and then that man goes on to be the next president.”

“You know that's not so. The newspapers call this Mr. Polk's war. I think they're right about that and winning it is more important to him than who might be the next president. He wants New Mexico and California so that our country extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I agree with him on that.”

“It has always been more than just settling the Texas boundary.”

Lee went back to his writing. His spirit rose as he composed a titillating letter to Tasy Beaumont, a nineteen-year-old girl with whom he had been corresponding for better than a year. She provided the zest and excitement that Mary lacked. He pictured her young body and smiling face as his pen moved over the paper. He frequently used words and phrases that she could interpret as having sexual meanings. He would write Markie, Martha Custis Williams a young cousin of Mary's, tomorrow after the landing on the Mexican shore. He admitted to himself that he found women, young women, ever more interesting as he aged.

*

Grant was seated outside on the main deck of Talbott's Trader. The deck was crowded with soldiers, the eighty men of Grant's enlisted quartermasters and teamsters, and Hazlitt's company of infantrymen. Many of the men were writing letters. Others talked. A number were silent, their thoughts turned inward to their private worlds.

Grant was watching the Mexican mainland barely half a mile distant. The beach was a bone white ribbon of sand lying squeezed in between the sea and dense brush. On a regular schedule, a Mexican lancer galloped along the water's edge. The enemy was keeping a close watch on the Americans.

As he watched the shore, the orange ball sun settled onto the inland mountains, and then fell behind them. In the deepening dusk, he moved along the deck among the men and entered his small cabin. In the light shining from a one-candle lamp in a gimbaled mount, Valere, a large black man and Grant's servant, was polishing one of his boots.

Valere also served Hazlitt, and the two officers shared the payment of his salary of six dollars per month. The northern officers used white men or free blacks and paid them. Many of the officers from the slave states had brought one of their slaves as servants.

Grant opened the chest at the foot of his bunk and took out his saber and brace of cap and ball pistols. The pistols were the standard army issue, .45 caliber, nine inch octagon barrel, weighing 32 ounces with fire blue finish, and a stock of curly maple stained violin red.

“What do you think you're doing?” Hazlitt said entering through the doorway.

“Checking my weapons.”

“Why?”

“Oh, just in case I have a need for them.”

“Don't do anything foolish during the landing tomorrow.”

“I don't intend to.”

Hazlitt grunted a disbelieving sound. He opened his chest and took out pistols and saber.

The young warriors cleaned their firearms, and filled their ammunition pouches with paper wrapped powder and ball cartridges. Then for a long time, there was a duet of rasping sounds as they whet the steel blades of their sabers with fine grained sharpening stones.

*

Late in the night Grant dreamed of landing with Hazlitt and his men on the white sand Mexican coast. In the dream world where the dead still live, an old man with an ancient flintlock musket was wading ashore beside him. Somehow Grant knew the old fellow was Noah Grant, the grandfather he had never seen, who had fought throughout the Revolutionary War with General Washington.

“Grandfather, are you afraid,” Grant asked.

The old man's stride remained firm and straight ahead as he turned his head and aimed penetrating blue eyes at Grant. “No. Are you?”

“No, sir.” Grant said. That was mostly true, but off in the corner of his mind there was a tinge of concern for he was a logical man and knew no man was immune to the strike of a bullet. He had always recognized that fact when going into battle, but had always been able to set it aside and go on with the fighting.

Noah nodded. “We Grants are deficient in fear. That's good if you're a soldier. Unless it leads you to do something reckless that gets you killed.” Noah smiled at Grant. “But don't worry too much about death for it's but a halfway point.”

The old man dashed ahead and disappeared into a cloud of gunpowder smoke made by hundreds of Mexican muskets being fired at them. Grant plunged into the gunpowder smoke behind Noah.

Grant jerked awake with the sulfurous-carbon stink of burnt gunpowder that he knew so well in his nostrils. He lay for a long time in the darkness of the ship's cabin and wondered why he had dreamed of his grandfather. He had never done so before, so why at this point in his life? Was it an omen of his death in the coming battles?

Lee, dressed in a blue field uniform and with a pistol and saber buckled around his waist, left his cabin on the Massachusetts and came out onto the main deck. He halted in amazement. A swollen red sun had just broken free of the wet Atlantic horizon and its rays had turned the calm waters of the harbor of Anton Lizardo a deep crimson. Every vessel of the American fleet of warships and transports seemed to be anchored in a pool of blood. He recalled the old sailor's adage that went something like “a red sun in the morning was a sailor's warning” of bad weather soon to come. He hoped this sunrise wasn't forecasting a storm that would hamper the landing.

General Scott, Captain Carmichael, skipper of the Massachusetts, and Colonel Totten, Commander of Engineers were talking near the starboard railing forward. Not wanting to approach the senior officers unless invited, Lee walked to the opposite side of the ship. He looked west at the Mexican mainland and found it covered with a dense gray fog that hid everything except the faraway inland mountains with the fifteen thousand foot, snow crowned Mt. Orizaba, “Mountain Of The Stars” the dominant feature.

Lee had his orders. Once Worth and his regulars had driven the enemy from Collado Beach and the surrounding area, he was to go ashore and ride with Scott while selecting a siege line to encircle Veracruz, and then guide Worth's men in the task of clearing the dense brush from the first third of the line. Beauregard guiding Patterson's volunteers would prepare the second third. McClellan with Twiggs regulars would complete the siege line to the sea north of the city. Then Lee and Beauregard, with labor from the infantry, would immediately begin constructing sites for the artillery batteries.

From the deck of the flagship, Lee watched the day swiftly brightened and the true blue-green of the sea return. The fleet came alive. Signal flags were hoisted to mastheads. Dispatch boats dashed about carrying messages. Other small craft ferried officers from their billets on the larger ships to their stations with their troops. Shouted orders of the naval officers preparing their ships for sea, came rolling clearly across the water to Lee.

At the sight of the American Navy and Army preparing to go into battle, Lee's heart beat a pleasant tattoo against his ribs. Finally it was to happen. In but a matter of a few hours, the opportunity would arrive to prove himself worthy of his famous ancestors.

Lee's attention was caught by the three score surfboats with a naval officer in charge and rowed by eight sailors which were spreading out through the troopships. The surfboats were constructed of wood, flat bottomed for stability, and were capable of carrying sixty men with their arms. They would take on board the soldiers and ferry them to the naval ships for transport to Mogambo Bay and the landing on Collado Beach.

By mid-morning, Worth's two brigades of twenty-four hundred men were loaded onto the Raritan and Potomac, both steam driven side paddle-wheelers. The remaining soldiers were put onto smaller vessels of the naval squadron. The decks of he ships were massed with troops, with their polished muskets and bayonets flashing bright silver sun arrows.

After unloading their cargo, the surfboats congregated at the stern of the Princeton, the first American propeller driven naval steamboat. There they were tied into two long lines for towing. Throughout the fleet, ships were made ready to move, with steam being fed to the pistons, or sails unfurled and drawn down and sheeted home.

Lee heard Captain Carmichael shout down to the lower deck where a lieutenant waited with six sailors near the windlass, “Mr. Shultz, hoist anchor, if you please.”

“Aye, captain,” replied the lieutenant. Turning to his men, he called out, “Round you go boys. Bring it aboard.”

The measured metal clank, clank of the pawls of the capstan sounded as the men tramped round and round. Foot by foot the anchor chain came crawling out of the sea up through the hawsehole and down into the chain locker.

Conner's flagship Mississippi with its red swallow tail pennant, followed by Scott's Massachusetts with its blue flag, broke from the pack of ships and started north for the nine mile run to Mogambo Bay. Cheers erupted from thousands of throats. The regimental band struck up “Hail Columbia”.

The steamers Raritan and Potomac fell into line behind Scott's ship. Then came the Princeton towing the surfboats. The remaining naval ships carrying troops; a frigate, several sloops, brigs and schooners, came next. The hospital ship with its surgeons and their instruments and medicines fell into line, followed by the two munitions ships. The ships transporting the cavalry mounts, commissary and quartermaster supplies, and those with the wagons would sail to Mogambo Bay as soon as the naval vessels could unload and sail out of the restricted waters. The fleet left Anton Lizardo behind, the great spread of white canvass of the sailing ships catching a slow wind that blew them north.