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

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  He quickly found that despite the local guides and a good supply of oil lanterns, torches, and the pale glow of a dimming moon, the night acted like a lead weight on every action. Feeling one’s way in the dark was a deep phobia of the human race, and it was compounded infinitely when tens of thousands of men were trying to do it at the same time and half of them wanted to kill you.

  McBean was too good an old soldier to not know how to take advantage of that very fear. He had barely five hundred men left on their feet now. He had given Wolseley his hour or as close to it as he dared. First the companies at the bridge slipped away hidden by the stone barricade. Then he pulled back the flanking companies. One by one they broke contact and hurried into the dark. It was now that the value of a long service army organized into brotherhoods that were formally called regiments showed its value. They held together despite the dark, dragging their wounded with them. The Americans kept firing into the ghostly shadows long after the last Scot disappeared.

  6

  “We Cannot Lose a Fleet”

  FIVE MILES NORTH OF SCIOTA, NEW YORK, 4:03 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  Custer had pushed and bullied his command along a single, poor country lane hemmed in by forest and swamp. And when that gave out, it was through those thick woods that his cavalry picked its way. Men were constantly getting lost in the dark. Then crossing the frozen tributary of the Great Chazy and Bear Creek slowed them down even more. The horses had to be walked carefully over the ice. He had lost touch with the infantry brigades, and the guns had already been left behind. He called another halt. His aide lifted a lantern over the map. “If this is Bear Creek that we have just crossed, then all we have to do now is follow it as it feeds into the Great Chazy. Then it’s only a three miles to Champlain.” Champlain was his objective, the cork in the bottle that would trap the enemy. That’s if he arrived with any troops.

  He paused a moment before giving the command to resume the march. “By then it should be daylight.” Even in thick gloves his hands were cold. “God, I have come to hate the night.”

  COOPERSVILLE ROAD, NEW YORK, 4:10 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  That was a sentiment shared by just about everyone on both sides. As soon as the battle became mobile, the dark had broken down command and control. Lost men were wandering all over the area between the Little and Great Chazy Rivers. Most of the soldiers in both armies were now going into twenty-four hours with no sleep, and everyone could have used a hot meal to ward off the energy-draining cold. The countryside was full of stragglers from both armies who had slipped away to find shelter from the cold around makeshift fires or broke into the farmhouses, barns, and sheds scattered about.

  Sharpe’s plan had been brilliant, but he had not counted on a boatload of friction that a night winter operation would bring on. As long as the plan was on a static river line, it was relatively easy to control, but now that most of his two corps had marched off into the night, things that could go wrong suddenly all seemed to wrong at the same time. At least he was encouraged by the sound of a serious fight to the north. He could only hope his subordinate commanders were pressing forward.

  For Wolseley his problem was immediate and only a few hundred yards away. He galloped forward and ran into a courier who couldn’t wait to blurt out what he had seen. The enemy was at strength in front of the Coopersville bridge. They had engaged the withdrawing column. The man had no idea of what was going on with all the firing to the east.

  That fight had started when the advance guard of the 1st Montreal Brigade pitched into the rear guard of Colonel Hecker’s brigade. Both units were traveling along the road to Coopersville, but the British brigade had picked up a few American stragglers which gave them warning that an American brigade was not too far ahead.

  Col. Pitt Rivers was just the man for that moment. A Grenadier Guardsman, he had found himself in command of the 1st Rifles after their commander had been killed at Clavarack. That certainly would not have gone down well with the Rifles had not Rivers been well-known for his talent for organization and improvement of the rifle in the British Army. After the fight at Rouse’s Point, he replaced the fallen brigadier and had handled the brigade well. With the brigade’s right on the river, he wheeled the Rifles and the Canadian Queens Own Rifles out into the fields on the left with orders to swing right as soon as they heard firing from the advance guard, the Victoria Volunteer Rifles of Montreal. The Prince of Wales Regiment he held in reserve. He passed the word down the column that the Americans ahead stood between them and a hot meal across the river.

  The Canadians in the advance guard picked up their pace to close with the tail of Hecker’s brigade, a few companies of the 82nd Illinois. Fortune, then having given Rivers the advantage of picking up stragglers now threw its favor to the Americans. The Canadians did not see the straggler sitting by the road, emptying the pebble from his shoe. Pvt. Daniel Spindler at first thought it was another American regiment, but a few British accents convinced him otherwise. In the darkness both sides looked much alike in their dark-blue greatcoats and headgear. Spindler could only think of his friends up ahead. He realized what was going to happen. The patriotism of this eighteen-year-old recent immigrant from the Rhineland burned with a bright-blue flame like so many other Germans. His company, Company C, was the rearguard. They were almost all Jewish immigrants, from Chicago, as was their able regimental commander, Col. Edward Saloman. Spindler had been recruited with his entire Deutsches Sport Verein (German Sport Club). He was a champion runner, lithe and quick.

  He simply stepped onto the road between companies. The Canadians were intent on what lay ahead, not what was marching with them. No one cared if they noticed how Spindler trotted up ahead passed the ranks on the road. If they did notice, he was probably a messenger. Then he simply disappeared into the field on the left. He sprinted forward and almost immediately caught his foot on a stone and fell face forward onto the frozen ground. His nose bloody and the wind knocked out of him, he lay still for a moment, only to hear the rustle and crunch of a large body of men behind him. He barely got up on one elbow before a boot stepped on his back, then another kicked him in the head as it went by. His body nearly tripped one man who swore, “Bloody hell,” but moved on. Spindler pulled himself up with great effort; the blood from his nose was freezing on his wispy blond beard. His hands had been scrapped in the fall, and his knees ached from their impact on the hard ground.

  He was completely disoriented as he got to his feet, peering around into the night washed only by the palest of moonlight. The sound of the enemy unit that had walked over him receded in the dark. He realized that his weapon was missing. No use to look for it now. He stood still for the barest moment and then remembered that the moon had been on his right. Maybe two minutes had passed. He headed off back to where he thought the road was.

  He found it, rather, he heard it by the thudding shuffle of a unit on the march. The moonlight glinted off their bayonets and brass. For what he had to do, Spindler could not join the column again. He would risk the parallel field again. Now he began to run, risking the furrows, and he flew past the column on the road. The cold air burned his lungs, but he quickly found his pace, all fluid grace, that took him past company after company. If any head turned in the column, he was gone before they could think about it. One, two, three companies he passed, then a break and more marching troops, and again he passed them like a ghost, one company after another. Then the road was empty and quiet. He veered onto it and ran for all he was worth. All he could hear was the smooth workings of his lungs and the blood rushing through his heart. Then again the clink of accoutrements and the glint of metal.

  “Kameraden!” he screamed as he kept running. “Kameraden, Alarm! Alarm! Die Englander!”

  First Lieutenant William Loeb stopped suddenly as the shout reached him. He was at the tail of Company D and commanded the rear guard of the 82nd Illinois. A Rhinelander, like Spindler, Loeb was a good soldier whose quick wits had earned him a com
mission from the ranks. Even before Spindler reached him he gave the order to halt and turned his rearguard around to block the road.

  Spindler flew out of the dark almost into Loeb’s arms. Between deep gulps of air, he got out what he had seen. Excited he spoke in German, “Die Englander, Herr Oberleutnant, die kommen.” As soon as Spindler was able to explain that not only were the enemy approaching up the road but had swung out into the field in a great arcing movement, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg flamed through Loeb’s mind. On both those fields, the Germans had had the great bad luck to be struck in the flank. It is a rare army that does not buckle and break under such an attack, yet the Germans had been blamed for both disasters, and earned by it the derisive epithet of the “Damned Dutch.”

  Loeb said out loud, “Nie wieder!” (Never again!) and sent his fastest runners up the column to warn its regiments of the impending blow out of the night. As they got the word, company after company halted and formed line of battle to their left. They had only minutes to spare as the swinging door of the British flanking movement began to close with the Americans just as the Queen’s Own Rifles ran into the fire of the American rearguard.

  The Rifles had been the base of the arc and were the first. Out of the darkness they emerged into the weak moonlight and right into the volleys of 82nd. At that range it was like a hammer. The Rifles staggered as their ranks thinned suddenly. Then their superb training took over as they returned fire. Pitt-Rivers’s horse had gone down in the volley, and he leapt off the dying beast and landed on his feet. “Forward the Rifles! Give them the bayonet!” He raced through the ranks to lead them and felt a red hot poker slam through his left ear. He put his hand to the ear and felt the hot blood and mangled flesh, and he just kept on running forward.

  STETSON ROAD NEAR COOPERSVILLE, NEW YORK, 4:20 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  Wolseley had had little time to enjoy the irony of having succeeded to effective command of an army a second time in this war. Clavarack had been bad enough, but at least that had been in daylight. Three hours now, and it would be light enough to see, and Coopersville was less than a quarter mile away. He had found the Dublin Brigade and marched north with it.

  He worrying about what had happened to the couriers he had sent to the officer commanding the depot north of the Coopersville bridge. That officer had been ordered to make preparations to receive the army, resupply and feed it.

  His worry was answered by a burst of gunfire ahead. Minutes later another burst of gunfire came from the northeast followed by sustained firing. Then artillery joined in.

  He looked at the Dublin Brigade’s commander, who was looking off into the dark in that direction. “The Americans cannot have beat us to Coopersville,” he said.

  Rear guards would turn on their pursuers again and again to engage the enemy and force them to deploy, which took time. Then before becoming decisively engaged, they would slip away to repeat the process. So who was firing at Coopersville? It was more than ominous to hear the noise of the delaying actions in their rear and what was starting to sound like a good knock-down-drag-out battle in their front. And over ten thousand British and Canadian troops were in between.

  He paused to consider what the hell was going on. He had the Dublin Brigade in column behind him. From the silence to his left rear 12th Brigade must have disengaged successfully and be on the way north on a parallel road with the Dublin Brigade. Thank God for McBean. He hoped he had got some of his Scotties out of that forlorn hope. The Hamilton Brigade—the 1/47 and its Canadian battalions? He had no ideas if his couriers had reached them with the orders to withdraw. That left only the Montreal Brigade, which would have been pulling out to the east, and that’s where all the firing was coming from. If so, who were they fighting, and where did they come from? He’d have to tuck those questions away for later. In any case, there was a major fight in the direction of the bridge the Dublin Brigade had to cross. The question then was should he throw Dublin Brigade into the fight in order to get across the bridge or sidestep west, avoid the fight altogether, and march directly to Champlain where he hoped the advance elements of the 2nd British Division would be arriving. That would require him to abandon the Montreal Brigade to its fate. There was no time to dawdle. The Americans were pressing on their rear. He muttered to himself, “Damn this confusion.”

  Had he known how confused the Americans were at that moment, he would have wept with relief.

  Sharpe too had heard the sudden sound of battle that had mystified Wolseley, but he had a better idea of what it meant. He struck the open- gloved palm of his left hand with his right in exclamation. “By God, the Pole has done it!” He turned to his staff. “Now all we have to do is keep pushing the enemy up against our men on the Great Chazy, and we’ve got ‘em trapped.” T’wer easier said than done, though. Control was needed to do just that, and control was what had broken down in the darkness. He sent couriers, aides, and staff officers off into the night, but they had to pick their way slowly over unfamiliar ground abounding in moving units and stragglers, all of whom reacted with fear and violence to any unexpected approaching horse and man. Two of his couriers had actually been fired upon, and one wounded, by nervous troops. Hardly any of Sharpe’s couriers and aides had returned. Worse yet, the British rearguards had done their work of delay all too well. Sharpe’s divisions were moving at a snail’s pace, and every time they were forced to deploy, they shed men lost in the night. The pursuit had broken down. The fact that he had very little staff left was proof that his need for information was not being met.

  It was then that firing started from the regiment trailing him. Then cries of “Cease fire! Cease fire!” came out of the dark. “General Sherman! General Sherman!” The firing rippled to an end, as an officer rode up to the lantern light around Sharpe. “My God, sir, you’ve nearly killed General Sherman!” Then a party of a dozen emerged onto the road drawn by the light. At the head was a very angry William Tecumseh Sherman.

  “Where’s Sharpe?” he barked. His unkempt red beard seemed to bristle as the light picked out its color. He didn’t wait for an answer but rode right up to Sharpe. “Well, General, aside from nearly killing your new commanding general, you have plainly lost control of this battle. Shot at three times as we tried to find you.”

  Before Sharpe could answer, Sherman leaned over and clapped him on the shoulder. “We rarely fight at night, and never on this scale, General, for just this reason.” But the anger had drained away, as he began to gather the threads of command into his hand. “But, I tell you, Sharpe, you popped the enemy out of his position like a pine knot in a fire.” He was without question in command. “Now, Sharpe, it will be daylight in a few hours. Tell me what you have set in motion, and let’s see what we can do.”

  At that moment Wolseley decided that abandoning the 1st Montreal Brigade was unthinkable. The British Army would never live down such a thing. The Dublin Brigade, less one battalion as rear guard, deployed across the Stetson Road and advanced in the direction of the battle.

  Wolseley was fortunate not to know that Custer’s lead cavalry regiment, the 6th Michagan, was riding into Champlain, the key crossing point over the Big Chazy River, on the British main supply route, that very moment. Sharpe’s trap had been sprung.

  In fifteen minutes firing erupted along the entire front of Dublin Brigade as they encountered the makeshift barricades that Krzysanowski had thrown up in front of the bridge over the Great Chazy. Just when speed of flight was most necessary, Wolseley had committed himself to a time-consuming, bloody pounding.

  TWO MILES NORTH OF CHAZY, 5:10 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1964

  McBean’s Higlanders kept their pursuers at bay, turning again and again with a deadly snarl on the narrow country road through the woods. Their rearguard actions allowed the rest of 12th Brigade to move as quickly north as the narrow, rutted road and the darkness of the trees hemming the road and blocking the wan moonlight.

  The brigade commander’s withdrawal orders had
stated he was to take a position north of the Great Chazy at Champlain, but the sound of the guns to his right overrode those orders. As soon as the road left the woods, he marched them across country to the sound of the guns.

  At Champlain Custer was congratulating himself as the hero of the battle, despite the fact that he had only his old 6th Michigan Cavalry with him as the rest of his cavalry brigade was dibbling in. The infantry division following his cavalry was still laboriously crossing the creeks and woods. He gave little thought to them, though it had been the infantry that had stormed Sciota when his cavalry had been repulsed. As it was, his own men were so exhausted that few pickets were set and then haphazardly. Exhaustion had set in; these early morning hours were the most seductive of sleep, and the men were further lulled by a breeze from the west that blew deliciously warm. So it was that they did not detect the approach of the British 2nd Division, well-warned of the American presence by Denison’s scouts.

  The command sped down the column of the 11th Hussars (Prince Albert’s Own) to prepare for action. The “Cherry Pickers” had received their regimental motto from having been attacked in Spain by the French while raiding a cherry orchard. Their cherry-colored trousers, unique in the British Army, though, were adopted from the colors of the late Prince of Wales House of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha when he became the regiment’s colonel. Victoria had personally provided each man of the regiment on their departure with small box of chocolates with Albert’s picture as a sign of royal favor. She would be intent on their performance, wishing them to add luster to their glory won in the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea.

  The only officer to win the Victoria Cross in that charge and the first Canadian to win it was now sitting his six-foot-three-inch frame on a very large horse at the head of the column. His long sword wielded by a long arm had emptied many Russian saddles to save the lives of two Hussars on that day in the Crimea. Now he drew it deliberately from its scabbard to let the rasp sound like a plucked harp string. Lt. Col. Alexander Robert Dunn was acting commander of the Cherry Pickers that day; his colonel was down with fever in Montreal. For York-born Dunn (present-day Toronto), the transfer of the Hussars to North America was more than defending the Empire, it was defending his home. He vowed never to let an American cross the border as long as a Hussar was alive.