Bayonets, Balloons & Ironclads: Britain and France Take Sides With the South

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  Col. Wladimir Krzysanowski walked at the head of his brigade, his feet crunching on the ice. Like so many other men in XI Corps he had rushed to the colors to defend his adopted land when the war broke out. He had raised the 58th New York, known as the Polish Legion, in New York City, and recruited into its ranks not just Poles but Russians, Danes, Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians. The regiment was trudging right behind him now, this little foreign legion, as were the other two New York regiments of the brigade. Krzysanowski went over in his mind his objective on the map that Sharpe had shown him—the bridge over the Great Chazy at Coopersville, barely four miles from the spot where Wolesely and McBean were conferring. Just across the river, the British had set up their base of supply at a railroad siding that allowed trains to come down directly from Montreal. Hope Grant’s route of withdrawal was directly up the Stetson Road to the bridge at Coopersville.

  “Damn! I’ve been too clever by half,” Sharpe said to himself when he read Knight’s message. He laughed. “Grant’s humbugged me. The British are on the move. I had hoped to fix them not scare them away. Now it will be a race for the Coopersville Bridge.” Von Steinwehr was too polite to comment on what happened to damn fool schemes. The wind picked up just then, and he pulled the collar of his greatcoat tighter around his neck. He looked up at the clouds racing east past the moon.

  ON THE ICE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN, 1:20 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  The thunder of an explosion of artillery fire to the southwest jerked every head in the two brigades on the ice in that direction. They could see the fiery arcs of the shells raining down on where the British had been. Krzysanowski was suddenly worried; the artillery bombardment had not been part of the plan he had been briefed. Instead of hesitating, he passed the order to quicken the pace.

  Sharpe had decided to toss the humbug back into Grant’s hands. It was one thing to withdraw quietly in the night out of contact with the enemy. It was quite another to retreat while still engaged with an aggressive enemy. Sharpe calculated that Grant might find it preferable to stay put and fight it out.

  Hope Grant was just then riding down the Stetson Road to hurry up the withdrawal when the American guns opened up a quarter mile north of Chazy. The trains had already been put on the road, and now they panicked. The American artillery had set range tables for just this critical road in the days before. Their shells burst up and down its length, smashing wagons and butchering teams with jagged metal. Grant now found himself in the face of a stampede of terrified drivers and teams as they raced up the road. He and his lancer escort barely bounded into field to escape the panic. They took off across the field in the direction of the Little Chazy now illuminated by a burning farmhouse.

  RUINS OF SCIOTA, NEW YORK, 1:30 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  Custer had retreated out of Sciota faster than he had charged into it. His scouts had assured him that there were only a few Canadian companies guarding this little hub of rural roads. He needed it if he were to fall on the enemy’s flank and rear near the border. Instead of a few companies he found a full battalion of their volunteer infantry who seemed to have learned a thing or two at Clavarack, and three companies of British troops of the 1/47th Foot who had forgotten more than the Canadians had learned.

  Custer liked to take things at the bounce, at the charge, but he had found a stoutly defended cluster of houses and barns. So he sent a cavalry brigade to cut all the roads leading into Sciota and waited with a studied lack of patience for the first infantry brigade of the following division to arrive and reduce the place. It had taken several hours of repeated assaults under heavy artillery support. Everything that could go wrong in a night battle did go wrong. Only as the houses and barns began to burn was there sufficient illumination to keep regiments from firing into each other.

  Barely fifteen minutes before he had taken the surrender of the remaining enemy and congratulated the wounded Canadian captain who surrendered the heap of ashes and corpses that had once been a happy village (the British had not single officer left). He rode off into the night hoping to catch up with his cavalry brigade that he had ordered ahead and hurry them on. The infantry would have to trudge on behind. He was already behind schedule, an intolerable state that he would move heaven and earth to correct. For him the dark, cold, and snow on the ground were no excuses.

  SOUTH BANK OF THE LITTLE CHAZY RIVER, NEW YORK, 1:45 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  Along a three-mile stretch of the river the bugles sounded the advance; their noise, magnified by the darkness, shrieked like banshees across the frozen water. Regiment after regiment pounded the air with hurrahs.

  The sudden artillery bombardment had caught the British in the middle of their preparation to withdraw. Casualties had been relatively light given it was mostly unaimed fire, but horses had bolted and men run to cover. More dangerous were the coffee mill guns spraying bullets across the river, but it was the American gunners that had served their purpose in disrupting the enemy’s departure. Into this chaos rode Hope Grant. He knew that if he did not extricate his men quickly, two American corps would be surging over the frozen river.

  He sent couriers racing up and down the river to order an immediate withdrawal across open fields to the Coopertown bridge. Riding along the north bank of the river, he ran into Wolseley riding toward him. Grant leaned over to him. “Damned clever chap over there, Joe. Get everyone out now. Can’t wait. I want …” then he lurched in the saddle as a coffee mill bullet stream sought out the gleam of his escort’s lance heads and stitched through the mounted group on the road. Wolseley caught him in his arms as he fell from his horse. His own horse, badly wounded, fell to its knees. With strength he did not know he had, he threw himself and Grant from the slashing hooves and into the bushes.

  Grant was bleeding from leg and shoulder, but no arteries were spurting, good sign. A lancer stumbled into the bushes and collapsed next them. Grant roused himself to one elbow. “Help him, Joe,” he grunted and then fell back. Wolseley looked the man over, but he was dead. He bent over Grant, and heaved him up over his shoulder, and thanked God the general had been thin as a rail. The coffee mill gun had gone silent, and now his surviving escort was stumbling over the road looking for Grant. He cried out, “Here, here, the general.” They rushed to him. Field bandages came out and wrapped his wounds. Lances were lashed to saddle blankets to form a litter and four men heaved him to their shoulders. One sergeant leaned over the general and held his hand. “We was with ye in India, sir. Not to worry.”

  LAKESHORE, ONE MILE EAST OF THE COOPERSVILLE CROSSING, 1:30 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  Will Mason held up his lamp and swung it back and forth as he looked out onto the blackness of the shoreline. “Do you see anything yet?” His partner was also swinging a lamp and answered, “No, nothing, but do you hear that?” The two scouts left there by Sergeant Knight listened intently to the dark, and gradually a shuffling noise, then the clink of accoutrements, became inescapable. The scouts now began to shout as they waved their lamps. In moments an officer came scrambling up the shore, saying a heartfelt if heavily accented, “Thank God!” Seconds later a wave of infantry came out of the darkness and crunched onto the beach sand, followed by one after another.

  Leaving his staff to organize the rest of the command, Colonel Krzysanowski put the 58th New York on the road paralleling the Great Chazy on its south bank, the road to the Cooperville bridge, barely a mile away. The sound of artillery and bugles flew through the night air from the south. “Hurry, boys, hurry,” he said as he set the hard pace.

  THE BRIDGE AT CHAZY, NEW YORK, 1:47 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  Wolseley had no problem finding the bridge; American artillery was pouring over it from a dozen batteries. He could see the fire from their muzzles and the arc of their shells with their glowing fuses. It was a wonder and a relief to find McBean still alive. He was in a ditch with several hundred of his men. The Scotsman saw Wolseley in the glare of a burning shed, picking his way
over the debris and shouted, “Get over here, ye damned fool.” Wolseley threw himself into the ditch as a shell cut down the last two members of his staff following him.

  McBean just grinned. “Must admit it now; these Jonathans shoot better than the Sepoys. I think their infantry will be over the bridge soon.” The question of what next to do hung in the air. He went grim as Wolseley told him about Grant. “Worst luck, and Grant the best there ever was.”

  “McBean, you must hold the bridge for an hour while we get the rest of the army away.”

  “Aye, the tartan will hold.”

  “Godspeed, Scotland!” And Wolseley was off into the dark.

  Not a moment too soon. The guns stopped suddenly. He knew it was time. He climbed out of the ditch. “Fix bayonets!” A clatter of bayonet sockets fixed onto rifles echoed down the ranks. “The 78th will advance!”

  A man shouted, “Scotland forever!” and the regiment took up the cry. From across the bridge a voice replied, “Ireland for longer!” They could hear the laughter roll from the Americans massed there.

  Then the drums started to beat the charge and a shout of “Hurrah!” came from the American side. The 78th stepped forward. A man suddenly darted back out of the ranks. McBean strode forward sword in hand to run the coward through, then saw the man snatch up a bayonet from the ground and fix it to his rifle. He looked up. “I wasna’ runnin’ awa,’ sir.” He rushed back to take his place.

  On the American side of the bridge, as the men of Ruger’s brigade gave their hurrah, Sharpe shook hands with Colonel Ruger, who then drew his sword. He drove the sword through his cap and walked to the head of the assault column; the artillery resumed sending solid shot, shells, and case shot streamed over the river to converge into the barricades at the other end of the bridge. The 9th Lancers had torn the field stone field walls apart nearby to build this stout defense. Now splinters of rock and large stones flew from each impact. The first two Highland companies threw themselves behind the pile as it shuddered and heaved with each strike. The others knelt behind them as the American ordnance flew overhead. The few foolish men to poke their heads up lost them.

  Ruger bounded down the plank bridge at a run, his men following eight across, a solid mass of dark blue, the new moon dappling their blued bayonets held at port arms across their chests. The bridge sang as their feet flew across it. McBean scrambled to the top of the barricade just in time to see Ruger running ahead of his men.

  “Up, laddies,” he shouted, and two dozen men heaved themselves to the top as more men fanned out to the sides of the bridge. “Fire!”

  The first ranks tumbled onto the bridge, but the press behind them simply flowed over the bodies. Ruger miraculously was untouched as he flew at the barricade and reached the top. The Highlander who had dropped his bayonet knocked aside Ruger’s sword and rammed his blade through his chest and with a practiced twist, pulled it out. The dead man tumbled down onto the planks. He fell just as the tide swarmed over him and up the pile with a snarl. They had seen their colonel fall in those last few seconds, and the killing madness was upon them. The Scots held the top of the barricade until rifle fire thinned their number, then the Americans were over the top. McBean shot the first man and then another whose body fell on him; his sword and pistol fell from his hands as the weight of that big, dead man held him down. The fight swept past him as the Americans poured over the barricade. It was then that he heard, “Cuidich ‘n Rhi!” like the sound wave of a large gun. “Cuidich ‘n Rhi!”

  The rest of the regiment had been kneeling behind the barricade; there had been no room for all of them at its top. Now they rushed forward, their pipers keening their way, to save their colonel. The surge of men in blue stopped and then began to back up as the bayonet drill of the Highlanders stabbed and thrust them back, leaving a trail of bodies. The rear ranks fired over them to cut down the enemy on the top of the barricade. In minutes they cleared the last American from the barricade and then fired down into the packed ranks on the bridge. Again the American guns came to life; case shot swept the Scots off the top of the barricade. Helping hands threw the dead man off McBean and pulled him to his feet. “Tuts, tuts, laddies. Just find me ma’ sword.” As soon as he was handed it, a dozen men dragged boxes behind the barricade and began to pass out grenades, light their fuses, and throw them into the crowded ranks on the bridge. Each blast brought screams from the Yanks. McBean crawled to the top and peered over to see that the Americans had pulled back across the body-carpeted bridge.

  THE COOPERSVILLE BRIDGE, 2:02 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  Colonel Krzysanowski huddled with the scouts who had rejoined the column three hundred yards from the bridge. Will Mason was grinning in the lamplight hidden under a greatcoat as he pointed at something on the colonel’s map. “Wagons are almost stampeding over the bridge, sir. Something’s scared the bejezus out of them.”

  The Polish colonel almost licked his lips at the prospect of getting among the enemy’s trains. “But what of the bridge guards?”

  “Maybe a company of Canadians. Frenchies. We got close enough to hear them talk. Maybe twenty are guarding the bridge; the rest are probably asleep in their camp on the other side of the river.”

  Krzysanowski whispered to a sergeant, “Bring me Jean Pierre.” When the Frenchman arrived, the colonel explained that he wanted him and several of the other French immigrants in the 58th to wander up to the bridge as if they were fellow Canadians speaking French to get them to lower their guard. “Mon colonel,” he replied, “these Quebecois speak French, of course, but it is a very old-fashioned Norman country French. They would know instantly that I am not one of them.” The colonel looked disappointed, but the Jean Pierre suggested, “Why not send Valois? He is Quebecois.”

  “But do we trust him? To deceive his own people?”

  “Ah, mon colonel, if he had wanted to desert, it would have been easy to do it by now. He bears no great love for Canada or the Queen. The poor man married a Protestant girl. The Church excommunicated him, and her brothers beat him half to death. The Queen’s court would not hear the case. So he came south and vowed never to return. Yes, I think we can trust him.”

  So it was that Louis Michel Valois, sergeant of the Union Army, sauntered down the road with three other French speakers, and engaged the guards in a friendly conversation, pulling out a bottle of wine to make it even friendlier as they all leaned against the bridge railing to let the wagons rush by. Valois passed himself off as part of the advance party of a battalion coming up from the lake road. So the guards were not surprised when the 58th came marching out of the dark; their dark-blue greatcoats in the moonlight were indistinguishable from British ones.

  The officer of the guard sent a squad to stop the wagons to let the infantry cross; they were smiling when the first rank marched onto the bridge and suddenly rushed them. Not a shot was fired as they were disarmed. The rest of the column rushed over the bridge to capture the other guards and then overrun their camp. The wagon drivers had no idea what was going on, only that their desperate desire to get over the bridge had been thwarted. Their panic had not been wrung out of them in the two miles they had come from the Little Chazy. Krzysanowski played into their fears by ordering them over the bridge and into the wagon park with the rest of the trains that had come from the Little Chazy. Near the wagon park he found a locomotive and fifty cars on a siding fully loaded with supplies, an unsuspected bonus. The night was yielding much success.

  The rest of his brigade and the Hecker’s follow-on brigade were arriving. Krzysanowski knew he could hold the bridge and river line against anything that might come his way.

  THE STETSON ROAD BRIDGE OVER THE LITTLE CHAZY RIVER, 2:15 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  Wolseley’s orders to the Dublin Brigade to hold the next bridge over the river did not arrive in time. The brigade responded to Grant’s original withdrawal command, and despite the losses from enemy artillery had put themselves on the Stetson Road to march north to Co
opersville. Steeled to take heavy casualties, the Americans stormed over the bridge without losing a man. The British were gone. Further down the Little Chazy, the 1st Montreal Brigade, had also pulled out up the Lakeshore road paralleling the lake. Each column had about three miles to cover to reach Coopersville, about an hour or more at a good marching pace, but those wraith children of the night, confusion and caution, would slow them down.

  The 12th Brigade was also on the march north, leaving the valiant Scots to cover their departure. They had five miles to go and on a road through woods so thick that they blotted out the moonlight. They would be the last over the Coopersville bridge.

  Those valiant Scots were about to be swamped. Two more assaults over the bridge had been beaten back while the Americans were crossing the ice up and down stream by brigades. Their infantry could cross easily enough now that now no one would be contesting their way, but the bridge was vital to get horses and guns across. Still the Scots hung on as their flanks were pressed in.

  Sharpe was about to cross the river on foot with his staff, when an aide found him. “Sir, General Sherman has arrived at the railhead and will be here as soon as they unload his horse.”

  “My compliments to General Sherman, Captain. You can show him the spot where I crossed.” He could not afford to delay operations at this moment by trying to pass command in the middle of the most difficult of all military operations, a night battle.

  On the other bank, he stood to listen to the fighting around the bridge as an endless column of men marched passed him and into the night. To the east he could see only the fiery arcs of his own artillery landing where the British had been.