A Sinister Splendor

by Mike Blakely

  “It’s Garland’s fault, not yours, sir.” Major William Bliss stood at Taylor’s side, his pad of foolscap ready, his pencil sharpened.

  “You heard my orders to Garland this morning, did you not, Bill?”

  “Sir, you told him to lead his column off to the left, keeping well out of reach of the enemy’s shot. Then you said, ‘And, Colonel, if you find that you can take any of the little forts down there with the bayonet, you better do it. But consult with Major Mansfield first.’”

  The general was amazed at his adjutant’s recall. “You’re damned right that’s what I told him. And what the hell was Mansfield thinking? Why would Garland and Mansfield blunder in between the Black Fort and La Teneria—the two biggest forts on this side of the city?” He said this with conviction, but he could not ignore his own guilt for failing to give Garland more specific orders.

  The ghastly news from the front line held that hundreds of men had fallen to the canister and musket fire in the span of a few minutes. He could only hope that General Worth’s division was making better headway on the west side of town.

  “What are your orders, sir?”

  Taylor tried to channel his anger toward something positive. “We must not let those brave men die in vain. Order General Quitman to prepare the Mississippi and Tennessee regiments to assault La Teneria.” He thought suddenly of his former son-in-law, Colonel Jefferson Davis, who soon would be leading the Mississippi Rifles into battle.

  Bliss scribbled. “Sir, is the assault still a diversion, or do you now intend to advance into the city from the east as well as the west?”

  Taylor’s hawk’s-eye mind was peering down on the bloody battlefield. “Bill, I don’t know that yet,” he snapped. “But the men must have the satisfaction of running Old Glory up the flagpole at La Teneria. I won’t have men slaughtered for naught.”

  Colonel

  JEFFERSON DAVIS

  Monterrey

  September 21, 1846

  “Commence firing!” he yelled, as a load of grapeshot from La Teneria sang through the rank and file, killing and wounding soldiers who had marched straight into it.

  Musket balls kicked up dust almost at his toes, but the three cannon atop the enemy fort were reloading just now, causing a break in the cursed canister and grapeshot. His regiment’s rifles played a staccato drum roll, but Colonel Jefferson Davis saw only one enemy fall, back behind the sandbags of La Teneria. The rest of the rifle bullets fell short.

  He knew this was the third wave. Colonel Garland and his regulars had tried twice to assault the fort, taking heavy casualties in an ill-planned assault through the ripping cross fire of the Black Fort and La Teneria. Now Davis’s Mississippi Rifles had been thrust into the fray and Davis was determined to show the regular army officers that his volunteers could fight.

  Davis’s commander, General John A. Quitman, had already shown himself wiser than Colonel Garland by staying out of the range of the Black Fort’s canister, though the Black Fort had lobbed some solid shot into the ranks. The three guns of La Teneria, however, had taken their toll on the Mississippi and Tennessee regiments. Davis had personally seen several of his men fall, each time feeling as if pieces of his own flesh were torn away with them.

  He looked with desperate pride at his men. Wearing slouch hats and red shirts, they stood apart from the regular army’s uniformed men. They were standing their ground in the face of the enemy onslaught of lead. Turning his eyes back toward La Teneria, he estimated the distance to the fort at 180 yards—still too far away for effective rifle fire.

  “Reload and hold your fire, men!” he shouted.

  He searched for the nearest officer and found First Lieutenant Daniel Russell, commander of Company D. “Damn it, Lieutenant Russell! We must get closer! Why waste our ammunition at this distance? Move your men forward!” He turned and strode briskly toward the fort to lead the way.

  Lieutenant Russell ordered his company forward, double-quick, and Davis joined them at a trot as they caught up to him. The companies to the left of Company D followed. Grapeshot ripped into the men who had stayed behind, but it howled over the heads of Colonel Davis’s advance.

  It’s actually safer here, he thought. Now we are under the trajectory of the artillery.

  At sixty yards he halted the men. Glancing over his left shoulder, he saw Lieutenant Colonel Alexander McClung, his second-in-command, running forward with his Tombigbee Volunteers to catch up. Davis did not always get along with McClung, but he never questioned the man’s bravery.

  “Halt and prepare to fire!” Davis ordered. “Ready … Aim … Fire!”

  As the rifles of his men belched lead and smoke, he saw Mexican musketeers and artillerists fall away from the cannon on the parapets of La Teneria. For a moment, not a shot was fired from the fort.

  A screaming sense of urgency overtook Jeff Davis. “Now is the time!” he yelled. “Great God, if I had thirty men with knives I could take that fort!” And the Mississippi Volunteers indeed carried knives, with ten-inch blades, in lieu of bayonets.

  Davis heard Lieutenant Colonel McClung’s booming voice: “Follow me, boys!”

  He looked left and saw McClung careering headlong toward the fort, followed by his men from Tombigbee. The Mississippi Rifles had no explicit orders to rush La Teneria at this time, but Davis would not be left out of this assault.

  “Charge!” he yelled, drawing his sword and sprinting to catch up to his subordinate. Immediately, the entire Mississippi regiment surged forward, and a great rallying battle cry arose. Davis could also hear the Tennessee Volunteers, to the left of his own regiment, joining the assault. A tingle shot up his spine and made hair stand on the back of his neck.

  If I am to die, I will die running into it, not away from it.

  Colonel McClung now charged up the parapet to an open embrasure through which one of the artillery pieces had just fired. Pausing at the top, he waved his sword and urged the men forward. Davis, along with some of his enlisted men, passed through the next embrasure, followed closely by a throng of volunteers.

  Now atop the battlement, he noticed a fortified stone building—the tannery—guarding the rear sally port of La Teneria. To his surprise, he found the tannery under heavy fire from some U.S. troops who had somehow gotten behind the Mexican defenses and captured the nearby distillery. For the first time today, the Mexicans were the ones in the cross fire. The effect was electric. The defenders panicked and fled both the dirt redoubt and the tannery building. A man in a Mexican officer’s uniform ran from his post, stumbling through the creek coursing behind the tannery. Enemy soldiers threw down their muskets and sprinted away toward the smaller fort to the south—El Diablo.

  Volunteers from Mississippi and Tennessee now poured over the walls of the earthen lunette and pursued the Mexicans. Davis found himself plunging down to the floor of La Teneria, past dead and wounded Mexican defenders and scores of weapons that had been dropped during the rout. He saw two of his men taking down the Mexican flag from the fort’s flagstaff. With his soldiers, he chased some Mexican gunners to the stone tannery. The fleeing men tried to shut the gate in the high rock wall that surrounded the place, but the Mississippians were too close behind and kicked the gate in before it could be barred. The Mexican soldiers hid behind the pilasters of the front portico of the building, dropping their weapons and throwing their hands up in the air.

  An enemy officer stepped forward to offer his sword to Davis. A round of shot from El Diablo whistled by, but Davis ignored it and took the Mexican officer’s sword as a token of surrender.

  “Lieutenant Townsend!” he shouted, catching sight of the commander of Company K. “Take charge of these prisoners and receive their arms!”

  “Yes, sir!” Townsend said.

  Now a group of regular army infantrymen trotted around the tannery from the back side, led by a captain. The blood on the men’s uniforms suggested they had seen close combat this morning.

  “Captain! What is your name?”


  “Electus Backus, First Infantry, at your service, sir!” He saluted.

  “Was it your men who fired on the fort from the rear?”

  “Yes, sir. We took the distillery building earlier and waited there to support the next charge. Your charge, sir. It was a welcome sight.”

  Davis shook the man’s bloodstained hand. “I’m Colonel Jefferson Davis, Mississippi Volunteers. Your cross fire was crucial to our taking this fort. Well done, Captain.”

  A cheer rose, and Davis looked over his shoulder to see the Stars and Stripes running up the flagpole over La Teneria. Pride welled up in his chest, only to be smothered instantly by the sight of four men carrying a body on a colorful Mexican blanket with knots tied at each corner to help the bearers keep a tight hold on the makeshift litter. He could see blood dripping through the blanket, having soaked all the way through the fabric.

  “Sir,” one of the soldiers said, catching Davis’s eye. “It’s Colonel McClung.”

  Davis dashed to the side of the men lugging the blanket. He found McClung unconscious and moaning. Two fingers were missing from his left hand and blood ran from a wound to his left hip. “Go quickly,” he said. “See that you get him to the surgeon’s tent.”

  The American flag over La Teneria now attracted the attention of El Diablo’s artillerymen a quarter mile away. An exploding shell showered shrapnel down on the Americans.

  “Mississippi Rifles!” Davis shouted. “Prepare to advance on El Diablo!”

  Their spirits buoyed by the capture of La Teneria, the men raised their weapons over their heads and cheered their commander.

  Major

  LUTHER GIDDINGS

  Monterrey

  September 21, 1846

  The lane led his mount between a sugarcane field and an orange orchard, past sheds and adobe farmhouses, until it opened upon a view of the objective of his regiment. As he reined to a stop, twenty-three-year-old Major Luther Giddings heard hoofbeats behind him and turned to see the regimental adjutant, Second Lieutenant Andrew Armstrong, loping up to his side.

  “Is that it?” Armstrong asked.

  “Yes,” Giddings replied. “His satanic majesty, El Diablo.” He glanced back to see his Ohio Volunteers coming up behind him, double-quick.

  Two exploding shells erupted overhead at once, causing pieces of shrapnel from each to crack menacingly together in midair as others rained down on his position. A private screamed and fell in the lane to his rear. A corporal dragged the wounded man into a toolshed for some protection.

  Giddings remained exposed at the point where the farm lane ended at a shallow irrigation canal. On the other side of the canal ran a well-traveled street. Along the far side of the street, a solid rock wall extended a good one hundred yards to the left and to the right.

  Giddings pointed. “That wall could afford cover and bring us within rifle range of Diablo,” he said to the adjutant.

  “Yes, I see. But, look now…”

  Giddings turned back to the open ground to see dozens of Mexican skirmishers—some of them dressed in white cotton peasant garb—charging forward to secure the other side of the rock wall themselves.

  “Damn, they’ve taken it before us,” he said.

  A battery hidden behind a rude abatis of felled trees suddenly blasted a load of grapeshot down the lane where he straddled his mount. Giddings heard the balls whistle past his ears and thud into men behind him. A sergeant in the color guard fell dead, and the flagstaff he had been holding was shattered.

  “By God, we are in for it now,” Giddings said to himself.

  “I’ll advise the colonel of the wall,” Armstrong said, reining his horse toward the rear of the column.

  Giddings turned back to study the open ground between him and the objective. Straight ahead, two hundred yards away, stood the crescent-shaped earthen redoubt, its cannon steadily belching grape, shell, and canister in various directions, including his. Down the canal and street that ran away to his left, he could make out the American flag flying over La Teneria. He knew from dispatches that Captain Ridgely had taken over the captured Mexican artillery pieces there and was now using them to fire upon the Mexicans’ Fort Diablo.

  Looking right, up the canal and the street that ran alongside it, he found his view obscured by smoke from musket fire.

  Mexican foot soldiers intimately acquainted with the streets and defenses of Monterrey had harassed his men relentlessly for the past hour, killing a few and wounding several. His regiment’s first objective had been the Purisima Bridge, but they had found it too well fortified by a tȇte de pont at the bridgehead. So General William Orlando Butler had ordered Major Giddings and the First Ohio Volunteers to swing east and assist in the assault on El Diablo.

  He decided now that he would make the charge on foot with his men. He dismounted and tied his nervous horse to a pomegranate hedge.

  “Major!”

  He looked down the lane to see the adjutant, Armstrong, coming back with General Butler himself—the “poet general,” as he was called. Butler sat ramrod straight on the horse he rode—a handsome man, clean-shaven, with a thick shock of hair parted on the side. His eyes forever looked concerned and intelligently engaged.

  “Advance to the rock wall!” General Butler shouted, an exploding shell punctuating his order. “Take that wall!”

  Giddings now found the din of the growing artillery battle so great that he could not hear his own voice. He began waving his men into position along the canal, sending the first company to the left, the next to the right, and so on, as musket balls and grape continued to ravage his volunteers.

  General Butler now galloped to the front. He drew his saber. “Fire!” he yelled at the men nearest to him—the only ones who could make out his order over the din of battle.

  The Ohio Volunteers, anxious to burn their first cartridges in the battle, began firing at the Mexican skirmishers behind the wall.

  “Charge!” Butler yelled, spurring his horse forward.

  “Come on, boys!” Giddings shouted, sprinting toward the canal.

  Young men with wide eyes and teeth set for the wildest work of war leaped forward, ran across open ground, and plunged into the shallow canal. Some fell, soaking the powder in their ammunition pouches. A private at Giddings’s side stopped to fill his canteen and was shot down. Adjutant Armstrong rode his mount into the canal, where a grapeshot tore through his leg and into the side of his horse. The lieutenant fell into the water, his wound gushing blood, his horse floundering and stumbling away from him. Enlisted men dragged Armstrong back toward some farm huts, so Giddings continued to charge on foot, thankful that he had left his horse behind. Up the other side of the shallow ditch he scrambled, trying to stay ahead of his men.

  Climbing out of the canal to the street, he was astonished to see the Mexican defenders along the other side of the wall fleeing back to the houses of Monterrey. A few of his men still had loaded rifles and used them to shoot down some fleeing enemy soldiers.

  Giddings trotted across the street with musket balls peppering the dirt around him and grapeshot whistling overhead. He collapsed behind the wall, his heart pounding and his lungs heaving. He was relieved to have gained the protection of the wall, but he was also perplexed over how readily the Mexicans had been ousted from it.

  Why would they give up this wall so easily?

  “Stay down and reload!” he ordered, during a brief lull in the shelling.

  A corporal beside him pulled the ramrod from his rifle and used it to seat the powder and bullet he had poured down his muzzle. “We’ll give ’em hell now, Major!”

  Giddings nodded and patted the boy on the shoulder. Still, he felt strangely uneasy about having taken the wall. He looked to the right, where the smoke down the street was beginning to clear. Some four hundred yards away, he could now make out a bridge. The Purisima Bridge? He remembered the big guns behind the tȇte de pont.

  God, no, he thought. Have we been baited to the slaughter here
at this wall?

  The private beside him rose to rest his loaded rifle along the top of the wall. A flash of fire appeared at the bridge. Giddings tried to pull the private down in time, but the load of grape tore into the ranks to his right, one of the balls causing the head of the young rifleman beside him to burst like a dropped melon. Exploding shells drowned out the screams of men, and Giddings knew he could not hold this wall without a great loss of life from the guns at Purisima Bridge.

  He looked for the poet general and saw soldiers carrying the unhorsed Butler away, wounded, through a hail of musket fire. He happened to spot Lieutenant Colonel Weller across the irrigation ditch, waving for the troops to perform a retrograde maneuver.

  Thank God!

  “Fall back!” he yelled. He stood and motioned his men to the rear. Across the canal, he saw the regimental standard, the broken flagstaff having been splinted by the guard. “To the colors! Fall back! Take cover!”

  Crossing back over the canal, he grabbed a wounded man and dragged him toward safety. In the water, he saw the rippled reflection of a shell detonating overhead. The water—rather clear, the first time he crossed—was now stirred with silt and streaked with curving tendrils of blood.

  Major General

  ZACHARY TAYLOR

  Walnut Springs

  September 21, 1846

  Sitting atop Old Whitey, just beyond the range of the Black Fort’s big guns, he peered through the twilight at the distant city of Monterrey. Plumes of smoke trailed from the eastern and western extremities of the town, looking like the scorched wings of some battered angel. Major William Bliss straddled a bay horse to his left.