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

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  When Denison’s men said they had identified Custer himself, Dunn said a quiet prayer in thank-you. Custer’s boasting that he would carry the Stars and Stripes into Montreal had made him a public villain in Canada. Dunn told himself that he would do his best to make sure that Custer did, indeed, see Montreal but only as a guest of Her Majesty’s Government.

  The Cherry Pickers snatched the one sleepy patrol that had wandered lazily over the Great Chazy as they trotted down Prospect Hill Road to the bridge to Champlain. Barely a quarter mile from the bridge, two of Denison’s scouts reported to Dunn that the bridge was lightly guarded. From where they stood, Dunn could see the lanterns hanging from the bridge and glow of light from the windows of the town. He was hoping the Americans were sleeping well.

  They were. Even Custer, who normally had the metabolism of a four-year-old, was nodding off when the Cherry Pickers took the bridge at the charge, running down the few guards who were still awake. Custer was instantly up and dashed out of the house he had commandeered as his headquarters without his shirt or weapons. A Hussar squad rode up; an officer pointed his sword at him and demanded the location of Custer. George instantly pointed in the opposite direction. “He took off that way.” The Hussars spurred away in hot pursuit.

  Custer’s aide and orderly dragged him inside, where they armed themselves as the Hussars swarmed through Champlain cutting down anyone in the street. The Michiganders of the 6th may have been caught unawares, but they were still good soldiers now goaded out sleep by a rush of energy. And they all had Chris Spencer’s wondrous repeaters. Every house became a blockhouse that spat fire, emptying saddle after saddle. A few men were able to get to the barns where their horses had been stabled, saddled them, and burst out firing.

  Another one of Custer’s regiments, the 1st Michigan, was just on the outskirts of the town when the Hussars charged. Bone weary, many sleeping in their saddles, they were instantly awake at the sound of the fight nearby. Now they charged, the first two companies, into town in fours to crash into milling Hussars. Saber against saber and man to man in a style a thousand years old, they fought. The remaining companies dismounted and advanced as dismounted infantry.

  Amid the swirling and hacking sabers rode Dunn, his blade dripping blood as he shouted encouragement to the Cherry Pickers. Then he saw him. The man was unmistakable. His long blond hair and red bandana had made Custer famous. With a shout, Dunn bulled his way through the press of horseman. His big horse simply rode one American down. Another tried to block his way, and Dunn’s saber cleaved him from neck to collar bone. Custer saw Dunn at the same instant as the Hussar wrenched his blade from the dead man who slipped off his horse. And before Custer knew it he was parrying a bone-numbing blow from the enemy’s saber that nearly unhorsed him. Custer’s horse was more agile and responded to his lightest pressure with his knees, carrying him away from those scythe-like swings of Dunn’s blade. And Custer used that control to turn and attack with the quickness of a serpent’s tongue that nicked Dunn’s sword arm. The saber would have fallen to the ground hand it not been tied by a lanyard around his wrist. But when he had it in hand again, the fight had carried Custer away from him.

  The American was rallying his troopers for another charge down the street when among the Hussar’s a flood of men in blue greatcoats pushed. The 55th Foot had pounded over the bridge after the Hussars, and behind them were three more British and Canadian battalions of the Portsmouth Brigade. The action in the streets of Champlain quickly was becoming an infantry fight, and the amount of lead in the air made it too dangerous for horses. The Michiganders took cover with their repeaters as the first sliver of dawn peered over the horizon, and the wind blew warm.

  HEADQUARTERS IN THE FIELD, ARMY OF THE HUDSON, 6:20 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  Sharpe had taken it well when Sherman arrived. More ambitious than most, Sharpe stifled resentment at the glory of the impending victory falling to Sherman. He dutifully slipped into second-in-command and took some comfort at Sherman’s praise. But now he had his hands full riding up and down the firing line of the dawn battle flaring south of the Great Chazy, encouraging the men and reporting back to Sherman the ebb and flow of the fighting.

  Hanging Billy1 had picked up the threads of the situation with the speed of a man blessed with coup de oui (stroke of the eye), that ability to take in a situation at a glance that marked the great captain. He realized that what must be the bulk of the British had been banging away at the Americans holding the Coopersville bridge. He had thrown his divisions at them as they came up. The British had turned half their force back to face them. The dawn was now revealing the masses of men engaged, the din of their guns, marked by the black powder cloud that would have blanketed them had not the wind blown it quickly away. Krzysanowski and Hecker’s brigades had been pressed back to an arc around the bridge. Only their coffee mill guns kept the bayonet-charging British at bay.

  Wolseley rode into just such a bullet. His own horse took a burst into its chest and fell screaming to its knees. He barely leaped off in time to miss its flailing hooves. All around him were the thinning ranks of the Rifles who stood their ground, firing with deliberate aim to bring down the coffee mill gunners in Hecker’s Brigade. Wisps of black powder smoke blew past him as he staggered to his feet. A Rifleman caught him before he fell. “There ye go, sir. Steady now.”

  Pitt-Rivers found him and offered him his brandy flask. He seemed to be enjoying himself despite the ruin of one ear. “Great fun! See how my Rifles shoot, man!” He didn’t flinch as bullets sang over and around him, dropping men at his elbow. Wolseley fixed him with his single baleful blue eye. “Break contact. Sidestep to the east and cross the river ice and come up on the other side of the bridge.” He then staggered off to find his other commanders. He did not notice the first warm raindrops that sprinkled the ground.

  Wolseley found both brigadiers from the Dublin and 12th Brigades were down, their places taken by senior regimental commanders, those that were left. By then he had found another horse and giving the orders to retreat to the northwest toward Champlain. He had no idea of the fight raging there so consumed was he to get out of the enfolding trap, for as he looked south in the light of early dawn the countryside and roads were dense with dark-blue American columns.

  If he had looked toward Champlain, he would have seen the black powder smoke and that from burning houses drifting east. The fighting there had become a race of reinforcements. Custer’s remaining Michigan cavalry regiments from his old 2nd Brigade fed into the battle as soon as they arrived. The small 3rd Brigade of cavalry should have been right behind them. Only then did he give a thought to the infantry division snaking its way through the swamp and forest. As it was he had fought the British infantry brigade to a standstill. Their repeaters had made all the difference. Yet even that was a waning asset. His ammunition wagons were nowhere in sight. He could not hold them off much longer without more ammunition.

  With the dawn, the British added artillery to the pot, and it was very good artillery. Three batteries of Armstrong guns were lacing his positions with accurate fire. He could see more troops flowing across the bridge. He glanced down the road leading west. “Come on. Damn it. Come on!” Then something caught his ear, something between the guns and din of rifle fire. He listened again. It was a high-pitched squeal that came clearer and clearer, until his aide muttered, “Bagpipes.”

  It was the 1st Battalion, the Scots Fusilier Guards, who had earned much glory on the stricken field of Clavarack October last. With the pipes now could be heard the deeper rumble of the drums of the 2nd Battalion, the Grenadier Guards, intent on revenge for the slaughter of their first battalion on that same field. The Brigade of Guards swept forward straight into the American repeater fire, the Fusiliers on the right and the Grenadiers to their left. Their ranks thinned as they swept around burning buildings, trampled over garden fences and bodies, but still they came. Their ammunition running low, the Americans fell back or were overrun by t
he stabbing bayonets of the big guardsmen. Custer fed his last arriving regiments into the fight, but they only slowed the tide of the guards and all those guns. Within a half hour Custer and what was left of his cavalry stumbled west out of what was left of Champlain. On the outskirts of the town, the Guards were halted and raised a cheer as the last of Custer’s men faded back down the road and into the woods. No one had noticed how the sky had turned black with roiling clouds. To accompany their cheers, from the clouds a crack of thunder accompanied a jagged lighting bolt. Then the clouds released their deluge. Nature herself had flung down its curtain on the battle of Chazy.

  THE COOPERSVILLE BRIDGE, 9:38 A.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  The men of Krzysanowski’s brigade would have cheered Sherman if they had not been so wet. The warm rain fell in a flood of big, heavy, warm drops that were already softening the ground into mud. The men were soaked to the bone in their sodden greatcoats. Sherman knew instinctively that the sudden and dramatic break in the weather from extreme cold to spring would explode the sick lists. Still, he did not stint his praise of the brigade, and they appreciated it even if they did not cheer. They appreciated even more the end of the battle and the rain that soaked them also was the rain that made fighting impossible. Not only were the roads beginning to ooze mud, but the very act of loading a muzzle-loading rifle by first tearing open a cartridge would be impossible, for the rain would soak the powder. Most of his men did not have repeaters yet.

  The British had disengaged and marched away, sloshing through pools of slush turning every so often to present a hedge of bayonets to the gingerly pursuing Americans whose hearts did not seem in it either. The four miles to Champlain took eight hours until the last regiment closed on the town as the columns limped along, every man sagging under exhaustion and a sodden greatcoat. That last shrunken regiment announced itself with the skirling tune of “Scotland Forever,” a bit out of tune given that their bagpipes were as soaked as they were. McBean and the 78th Highlanders were the last regiment off the field.

  TELEGRAPH OFFICE OF THE WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, DC, 5:35 P.M., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1864

  Lincoln had been there all night waiting for news of the battle. Nothing had come in despite repeated inquiries. The last news they had was from Sherman at Plattsburg at midnight on his way to take command of the Army of the Hudson. Now the telegraph began to spit out and endless stream of dots and dashes. Lincoln had almost leapt out of the big easy chair reserved for him to hover over the telegrapher and read each word as the man’s hand flew over the pad:

  I present to you a signal victory, the harbinger of victories to come. I assumed command in the midst of the night battle launched by Gen. Sharpe. The army had already driven the British from its positions along the Little Chazy River and was driving the enemy back towards the Great Chazy River when Gen. Sharpe graciously relinquished command. The enemy retreated but fought a stubborn rearguard battle. They were heavily reinforced by a second division at Champlain at which time torrential rains put a halt to further operations. The British army is now entrenching from Champlain to Rouses’s Point on Lake Champlain, a distance of four miles. Enemy losses have been heavy, and we are in possession of several thousand prisoners.2

  As Lincoln read Sherman’s telegram, another report on the battle was carried by special courier onto a fast British warship at Halifax to speed the news to London.

  To the Secretary of State for War:

  I have the honor to report the success of our arms in a series of engagements lasting from March 18th to the 23rd instant along the Canadian-American border in upper New York State.

  Lt. Gen. Sir James Grant struck in a spoiling attack at the American Army of the Hudson on March 18th, with one division of the Montreal Field Force, immediately destroying the enemy’s forward division. The First Division came to a halt along the line of the Little Chazy River. The enemy subsequently assembled the entire Army of the Hudson for a major assault employing strong flanking forces to the west and to the east across the ice of Lake Champlain on the night of March 22nd. As it was not General Grant’s intention to become decisively engaged, he ordered a withdrawal back to the line of the Great Chazy River. It was at this time that General Grant was severely wounded. I assumed command. The enemy’s attempts at encirclement were both defeated by the hard fighting of the First Division and the timely reinforcement of the Second Division. The Field Force then established itself securely on the line of the Big Chazy River when operations were brought to halt by torrential rains.

  Almost two thousand prisoners were taken and overall enemy losses cannot be less than ten thousand men. Our own losses number fewer than five thousand.

  I wish to bring to your Lordship’s attention, the gallant conduct Brigade of Guards whose charge at Champlain defeated the enemy’s attempt at encirclement form the west and of the 78th Foot which held the bridge over the Little Chazy River against the most determined assaults allowing 12th Brigade to withdraw in safety.

  I have the honor to be your obedient servant,

  Wolseley

  SAMUDA BROTHERS SHIPYARD, PORTSMOUTH, ENGLAND, 7:40 P.M., THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 864

  Oil lamps were strung from one end of HMS Prince Albert to another as the workmen and mechanics of Samuda Brothers Shipyard worked into the night to make the repairs made necessary by the ironclad’s shakedown cruise. Capt. Cowper Phipps Cole prowled the ship, supervising every aspect of the repairs, especially to the ship’s powerful engines and the ammunition hoists to the twin turrets. This thin, intense officer with the elegant, long blond beard was not a man to accept slack work or second best. Prince Albert was the Royal Navy’s first all iron, armored and turreted warship, Cole’s own design. There had been other iron, armored ironclads, but Prince Albert boasted the first turrets, and she had four, more than any American monitor. He had set the date of one week from today to get the ship back to sea again. He desperately hoped that with the repairs completed, he could prove to the Admiralty that she should be sent to North America. He lived for the chance to throw Prince Albert into a pounding match with American monitors.

  He had powerful patrons in both the queen and Disraeli, the queen because the ship was named after her late husband whom in death had assumed the aura of a saint to her, and Disraeli because it cemented his close relationship with the queen whom he genuinely admired, though it did not hinder him from using that relationship to his political advantage. Her sponsorship of the ship ensured its construction the highest priority and its inventor and captain carte blanche in his demands to the Admiralty. Unknown to him, his orders to join the fleet in North American waters had already been approved by the Prime Minister himself in a very unusually direct involvement in the details of a ministry.3

  Even by the standards of the latest American monitors, Prince Albert was an impressive ship. The turrets could turn 360 degrees smoothly in a minute on a highly efficient system of rollers. Originally, they had been rotated by an eighteen man crew, but Coles had followed John Ericsson’s example and replaced them with an engine when he found that in actual sea trials it took close to fifteen minutes to rotate the turret. He had also insisted that each turret be armed with the new sixteen-ton, 9-inch rifled muzzle-loading guns designed by Lynall Thomas that would come closer to the American 15-inch Dahlgren muzzle-loading smoothbores in striking power than any other British gun but also would have the immense advantage of being rifled which would allow it to strike targets accurately at almost double the effective range of the Dahlgrens.4 5

  Disraeli could think of no better gift to the queen than that the ship bearing her husband’s name be covered with glory. It was not mere flattery though that caused him to guide the ship to its destiny. He faced enormous opposition from the naval establishment, despite a purge of the most ossified elements of the Admiralty. They were happy to build more but improved versions of the broadside that had been lost at Charleston. The recent victory at Hampton Roads had given them comfort that turreted warships ha
d a special vulnerability that broadside ironclads did not. He was convinced, though, that it was a unique situation based upon the element surprise that was not likely to be repeated. For Disraeli then, it was his relationship with the queen that gave him an edge to push Coles’ design to the fore which in turn further deepened Victoria’s faith and reliance in him. It was a very useful relationship.

  WASHINGTON NAVY YARD, 2:44 P.M., THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 1864

  Lincoln’s carriage rumbled through the gates of the Navy Yard with his cavalry escort, sabers drawn. He was fascinated by the frenzy of construction and activity in the Navy’s foremost center of technical skill and construction. The brick yards in the area and in the rest of the country were baking brick around the clock to feed the war’s insatiable appetite for industrial construction. Huge sheds were going up where there had been open ground last year, but Lincoln had not come to see men lay brick. What he came to see was hidden by a ten-foot-high new brick wall that enclosed a large area backing onto the river. A whole company of Marines guarded the enclosure night and day.

  Its gates opened quickly for him as the Marines snapped to present arms. Inside he was met by Gus Fox and said, “Well, Gus, I’m always glad to come to the Navy Yard for another one of the Navy’s happy surprises. I was impressed with the Alligator when I saw it tested in the river here a year ago. You tickled my curiosity something fierce.”