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

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  Dahlgren had just finished giving his instructions to his ordnance officer when he heard the shots. He rode over to the guide and put his pistol in his face. “If we are not at Enfield Lock in fifteen minutes, you are a dead man.”

  Wilson had more than a small advantage of time; he knew the shortcuts through field and wood, especially fords through the shallows of the Lea River that ran parallel to the community of Enfield and the factory. His horse clawed its way up the bank trailing water and right onto the road to the RSAF worker’s village. Wilson put spurs to the animal and galloped down the long street of Enfield Lock paralleling the river shouting, “The Americans are coming! The Americans are coming!” Doors opened and men stumbled into the street to see what was causing all the noise. Wilson rode back down the street, “Men of the 41st, to arms, to arms!” He stopped in front of a public house as a crowd gathered, and there he explained the danger to the factory and gave his orders. He was the soldier again in the crucible of crisis. The men of Enfield Lock knew him, though their own colonel was nowhere to be found, and his orders were obeyed. They rushed home to hurriedly put on their uniforms and snatch their Enfields as others ran through the community passing the order. In three minutes he had a squad, in five a platoon, and in ten two companies. That was enough. Men were still buttoning coats and uniform details. “Hang the buttons!” he shouted. “Fix bayonets!” There was rasp as the bayonets were drawn, then a wave of clicks as they were fixed over their rifle muzzles. He waved his pistol at the Royal Small Arms Factory, and bellowed, “Forward, march!”

  That moment found Wilson’s groom pounding on the door of Naseing. As soon as it opened he rushed through the scandalized butler and shouted, “Colonel Palmer, Colonel Palmer, call out the Yeomanry!” Palmer emerged from his study, recognized the groom, and got the story out of him. It was simply unbelievable, Americans in Essex and the powder mills and factory in danger. Yet, Wilson was a serious man who had earned the Victoria Cross. He was no fool. The Yeomanry was Palmer’s pride and joy for thirty years, organized to protect those very threatened places. In ten minutes the men on his estate were galloping through the neighborhood to rouse the rest of the Yeomanry. He retained the presence of mind to send one man was off to the nearest telegraph station.

  NUMBER 10, DOWNING STREET, SUNDAY, 6:40 P.M., APRIL 3, 1864

  Disraeli could hear the huge crowd collecting outside the prime minister’s residence demanding news. The content of the telegrams from Liverpool had leaked out and spread faster than cholera. More insistent than the crowd was the press, and Disraeli had personally given a brief but official interview to a committee of reporters. He was determined to inform the public fully. Extra editions were printing at this very moment throughout London and humming over the wires to every newspaper in the island.

  Now though he had a more immediate problem. The shadow of his cabinet sat in council; almost every head of ministry was missing, as were most of their deputies, and the government would have to report to Parliament before the day was out. Disraeli did see one comforting face, the Duke of Cambridge, one that he never thought he would. The commander-in-chief of the British Army may have been obstinate in the face of doctrinal and organizational innovation, but he knew the establishment of the British Army better than any man alive. Right now he was spreading out a map of the stations of the army in Great Britain.

  “The most proximate reinforcements that can be sent to Ireland from western England and Scotland are those from Glasgow and Manchester. Unfortunately, those closest to ports on the Irish Sea consist of only one regiment of foot, one of cavalry.2 After them, the next closest are three cavalry regiments and one regiment of foot in Birmingham, Sheffield, and York in central and eastern England. I have given orders that they entrain at once for Liverpool.3 But it is infantry that we will need to recapture Dublin, and our infantry is concentrated at Aldershot, London, and the Channel ports, many of those regiments preparing to depart for North America.”

  As he was speaking a secretary entered and placed a telegram in Disraeli’s hand. He waved Cambridge silent. “From Brookham in Essex,” he said. “American cavalry has seized Romford. Claim to be the advance of an army of invasion under General Grant. Arrived on the London, Tilbury, Southend Line. Several hundred departed north toward Hainault Forrest.”

  Cambridge snorted in contempt. “Damned rumors. The news from Ireland conjures Americans under every bed.”

  The secretary came back with another telegram. Disraeli scanned it and said, “The telegraph office reports that all lines north of Brookham have gone dead.”

  In the stunned silence a rattling tremor began to creep through the building, trembling the table and the glass ceiling lamps. Pictures bounced on the walls. Disraeli watched an inkwell dance over the side of the table. Everyone was transfixed, until screams rose from the crowd outside. Then the sound of a deep roar shattered window panes as the cries of the crowd turned to a primal moan. Disraeli rushed to north window and looked out at what the crowd had seen. There far to the north, a black cloud rent with streaks of red was billowing skyward until its head gushed out to the sides, framed by the pale late-afternoon light.4

  ROYAL SMALL ARMS FACTORY ENFIELD, 6:45 P.M., SUNDAY, APRIL 3, 1864

  Dahlgren’s ordnance team had successfully blown the individual buildings at the powder mills, which had caused the inkwell to dance off the cabinet room table. What they had not counted on was a sympathetic explosion of a thousand tons of gunpowder loaded on a string of barges on the Lee River adjacent to the mills. It was that explosion that had broken the windows of London twelve miles to the south, raised the hellish specter of that cloud, wiped out the ordnance team and their fifty man escort, and wrecked Waltham Abbey.

  Wilson had just led the 41st over the Lea River bridge into the factory yard as Dahlgren, and his troopers rode in from the other direction. Neither man had time to order his men into action before the individual powder mills buildings began to explode one by one, each sending a shock wave through Enfield Lock. The conflict of men stood in silent awe of this terrible force of nature. The following explosion of the powder barges sent a shock wave that threw men and horses to the ground, blew out the factory’s sawtooth windows and tore great gaps in the roof. In moments chucks of debris in every size and shape began to rain down, much of it smashing through the factory roof and striking men already prostrated in the yard by the shock wave. Abel’s papers from his laboratory fluttered to the ground like a huge flock of seagulls.

  As the explosion waned to a rumble, the yard was a seeming battlefield strewn with lifeless corpses, but in minutes the corpses began to stir as men sat up and struggled to their feet. Some just sat heads in their hands moaning. The Americans were worse off for having been thrown from their horses by the blast. Rimsky-Korsakov shook the ringing from his ears and looked around. He saw the imperial standard on the ground, Sailor Sergei’s hand still clutching the staff, his head smashed from a chuck of debris. Kolya staggered over to pick it up. He heard a familiar voice. “There, boy, there; poor boy, poor boy.” It was Dahlgren pinned under his stunned horse flailing its legs as it tried to get up. The Russian took the bridle and helped the animal up, pulling Dahlgren with it as he clung to the pommel of his saddle. Luckily the horse had fallen on his cork leg. Blood ran from his nose and ears, and he slumped in the saddle.

  At the same time, Wilson was being helped up by a few of the volunteers. He took a deep breath, pulled himself together, and walked among the men urging them to find their weapons and get into line. He could see a fire gushing out of the broken sawtooth windows of the factory where flaming debris had ignited combustible material in the vast workshop hall. Dahlgren was getting his own command back into order, though most of the men were now on foot, many of the horses had fled or were in no shape to mount. They had been broken to the saddle at their horse farms but not trained to the discipline of a cavalry horse nor developed the affection for a particular rider that would keep them there despite the ter
ror. Frederick Abel may have been used to a life of research, but his wits were quick enough to grab the reins of a loose horse. He slipped away in the gloom to take with him Lincoln’s last hope to find a way out of the niter shortage.

  With so much mayhem inflicted on man and beast, not a shot had been fired. The English and the Americans at first were too caught up in their own misery that all thought of combat had evaporated. But that was not to last for long as Dahlgren and Wilson got their men into some order. The afternoon was now fading into twilight as the last glow of the sun was giving way to the faint purple blue of the horizon. Wilson’s men began to murmur about the fire in the factory stirring with unease as the flames poured from window after window in the roof.

  Wilson acted first. Grabbing the color bearer of the 41st, he walked across the yard toward the Americans. Dahlgren trotted out to meet him carrying his own color. Kolya darted after him with the imperial standard. They came to a halt six feet apart.

  They exchanged salutes. Wilson said, “Captain Wilson, 9th Lancers, commanding the 41st Middlesex Rifle Volunteer Corps.”

  “Colonel Dahlgren, United States Army.” He wasted no time on formalities. He knew his plan was in shreds and could only possibly be mended by bold effrontery. “I demand the surrender of your command, sir. My regiment is on the vanguard of the army of invasion. We will be in London in two days. Your position is hopeless.”

  “The hell you say!” The adamantine self-confidence of the island race reared up in Wilson’s entire being. “Army of invasion! When pigs fly. You can be nothing more than a raid, sir. The game is up. You have failed. It is you who will surrender.”

  Dahlgren took a quick glance at the burning factory and the huge black pall from the powder mill and thought to himself that he had not entirely failed. Yet he could not deny he was in a fix, and this man Wilson was no green volunteer. He knew his business. He could only spin this out in hope that some advantage would turn up or he would, indeed, have no choice but to surrender. Seated on his horse he could see men by the score joining the rifle green ranks of the volunteers. They already outnumbered his men by more than three to one.

  DUBLIN CASTLE, 6:42, SUNDAY, APRIL 3, 1864

  Meagher allowed himself a few minutes to take a deep breath by himself in the private apartment of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the former Lord Lieutenant, he told himself. It all seemed a dream; in less than twelve hours he seized the capital of his country, destroyed eight hundred years of British rule, and declared the Irish Republic to the delirious joy of his men and the Fenian crowds that swarmed into the castle yard. The telegraph has sent the joyous news of liberation to every corner of the island. “Rise,” the wires sang, “Rise for Ireland, rise for freedom!”

  After that deep breath, he took an equally deep drink of the Lord Lieutenant’s fine Irish whiskey. A glorious warmth spread through him, beckoning for another such rush. He took the bottle when the door opened to admit Sergeant Major Wright. A look of consternation fell on his face but hardened to resolve as he walked over and simply took the bottle from the general’s hand. Meagher let him. “Ah, Sergeant Major, you are my guardian angel.” He had given Wright a veto on his habit that he allowed to no other man since that night early in the last year before Fredericksburg when Wright had saved him from falling drunk into bonfire in the camp in the dark of night.

  “It is time, sir. The council and Mr. Adams are waiting.”

  “And so it is, Sergeant Major.” He clapped him on the shoulder. “A long time since Fredericksburg.” He meant more than being saved from the fire. Fredericksburg had been the last time he had led the Irish Brigade into battle, more a slaughter pen than an honest man-to-man fight. He had resigned rather than lead his men into that again and in protest to Secretary of War Stanton’s refusal to let him recruit back to strength again. Six month of regret had followed until the war with Britain when in one day he recruited fifteen thousand New York Irish and earned Mr. Lincoln’s gratitude and the stars of a major general. His reputation had flown to the heavens with his victories at Cold Spring and Clavarack. In this one, glorious day he had added the liberator of Ireland to his deeds.

  The guards to Presentation Hall presented arms as Wright flung open the polished double doors for Meagher’s grand entrance. The dozen men of the Provisional Council of the Republic of Ireland and Charles Adams came to their feet around a table of rosewood so polished that the light of the candles danced in ruddy reflection. The twelve were the secret leadership of the Fenians who had been taken as much by surprise by Meagher’s coup de main as the Lord Lieutenant. Meagher had been at pains at their hurried meeting as he cemented control of Dublin to explain that it had been necessity that had kept them in the dark. No word of this enterprise of Ireland could be allowed to leak out. Any umbrage was cowed by the realization that all their dreams and conspiracies had come to life. Now it was not just daring talk, but action, commitment, life or death, and the awful clarity that they were in it to the knife. Bold talk was one thing, a daring military coup still another, but the burden of organizing a government and rallying a people to it was entirely of a new order. Revolutionaries by their very nature were long on eloquence and short on the necessary executive experience. The men in this room were no exception. Carried away by the elation of the moment Meagher perhaps as well as his cabinet did not fully understand the nature of the task ahead.

  This moment, though, was symbolic, ceremonial, and political. Meagher stood before the sword-draped throne as both the head of state and head of government of the Irish Republic. The foreign minister designate introduced Mr. Charles Adams as the representative of the President of the United States. Adams bowed to Meagher, who had already been a party to these arrangements, but the formalities of diplomacy required this show. “Your Excellency, on behalf of President Lincoln, the United States of America extends its recognition of the sovereign authority of the Irish Republic and its government. Mr. Lincoln also charged me with conveying his great personal satisfaction that the United States is the first nation to extend recognition to the Irish Republic. I am also charged with proposing a treaty of alliance between the United States and the Irish Republic, for which I have full authority to negotiate.” Neither Meagher nor he had mentioned that the treaty had already been written in Washington.

  ROMFORD, ESSEX, 6:43 P.M., SUNDAY, APRIL 1864

  The railway station burned around the Americans. Dead men in blue and rifle green were strewn about the platform and the high street leading up to it. The only thing that had kept them from being overrun were the two Gatling guns that done much slaughter among the men of Hornchurch. The alarm brought to the 15th Essex RVC while at drill put them immediately on the road the two miles north to Romford. On the outskirts of the town they had been fired on by American pickets, and the first of them had died. They met death, not the death of the old or sick in bed, but red-handed death in all its primal violence. Every man underwent that shock as they marched past the dead on the road.

  Their colonel had the wit to send out a company as skirmishers down the high road as he questioned local men eager to tell them that the Americans were at the station. The sudden outbreak of rifle fire told him that his skirmishers had made contact, and he rushed the RVC forward down the high street to meet the survivors of his skirmishers falling back, some dragging wounded men with them. He put his companies column, each company deploying across the street, and ordered the advance—straight in the fire of two Gatlings. The forward company simply melted away in the bullet streams and the added fire of Spencer repeaters, the colonel at their head. The rest just panicked at the leaden hell tearing into them, turned, and fled back up the high street pursued by the Gatlings until they spilled into side streets, doorways, and safety.

  Death had sorted them in those minutes in the profoundest sense. The cool men, those who could keep a clear head in the midst of man-killing chaos, rose to the moment. An officer here, a sergeant or corporal there, and often just a private man who was will
ing to lead. The others instinctively followed for there is a magnetism of courage that attracts the ordinary man as a magnet draws iron filings. Now they benefitted from their amateurishness. The rigidity of the regular army had not sunk to their bones. There would be no more charges up the high street. Instead, guided by local men they went by side streets to surround the railway station, found their way into upper floors of surrounding buildings and on rooftops and began to fire. The first to fall, the object of their special wrath, were the Gatling crews.

  The same wave of warnings that had brought the Hornchurch men to Romford had also reached seven and a half miles up the railway line to Brentwood. In a half hour the 3rd Essex RVC was assembled and marched south. It would not be until nine that night that they filed into Romford guided by the orange-red glow from the burning station. Warned off from a direct assault on the station, their companies added to the ring of fire hemming in the Americans. Night assaults by platoons darted onto the station platform or broke into the outer buildings and warehouses held by the Americans. Then it was as much a contest of rifle butts and bayonets as of bullets. Slowly the ring tightened.

  Inexperienced as they were, they were Englishmen, filled with that granite-like resolve of their warrior race that had broken the ambitions of every tyrant thrown up by the continent. In them was the same defiance of the invader of the Saxon shield wall at Hastings as their ancestors had shouted, “Out! Out!” to the Norman host as it crashed into them again and again. They did not know if there were thousands more of the enemy marching across their fair Essex. The enemy here was all they cared about.

  That enemy tasted desperation. Half were dead and wounded and ammunition all but gone. Their surviving officer knew that Dahlgren’s route of escape the way he had come was now slammed shut. Dahlgren was on his own. The officer now had only a responsibility to his surviving men. He pulled out his blood-stained handkerchief, stuck it on the point of his saber, and went to the bullet-splintered door.