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

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  THE WINTER PALACE, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA, 11:15 A.M., FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 1864

  The great bronze bells of the imperial city rang the whole day as word brought by the Almaz of war with Great Britain spread through the city. On the heels of that came news that the Lisovsky’s squadron was savaging the commerce of the Irish Sea after landing an American expedition that had seized Dublin and that an American landing in England had struck panic throughout the proud island. The Emperor paraded his household troops, the Guard du Corps in their white crested Greek helmets and shining breastplates, manned by the sons of Russia’s nobility, and the Preobazhensky and Semenovsky Guards Regiments. The crowds filled the aquamarine sky of the far north with thundering shouts of “Uhrah! Uhrah! Uhrah!” Alexander II and his sons, all in uniform, were met with even greater shouts when they appeared on the balcony of the Winter Palace. The crowd began to chant, “Constantinople!” over and over.

  The public had already heartily approved the award to Lisovsky and Meagher of the Military Order of the Holy Great-Martyr and the Triumphant George first class with its enameled white cross and superimposed gold star hanging from a stripped orange and black ribbon, the colors of Russian military glory, fire, and gunpowder. This order had been awarded only twenty times before to senior commanders against an exterior foe of Russia. It was a heady honor indeed to be included among the likes of the great Suvorov and Kutuzov, the Prussian von Blücher, and the Briton Wellington.

  From another window Prince Aleksandr Gorchakov, the imperial foreign minister, and Cassius Clay, the American ambassador, were watching. “You see, Mr. Clay, the people, the army, and the emperor, they are all one.” At sixty-six, Gorchakov was already one of the most respected and influential diplomats of the century. He was a great gentleman in his bearing and restraint, with delicate features.

  “I am positive that the news of our joint expedition will be received in the United States with no less enthusiasm.” Clay was a Kentucky abolitionist, the rarest of southern birds, and had successfully employed his famous bowie knife in a number of duels fought to defend his principles. Lincoln had rewarded him with the ambassadorship to the court of the tsar.

  “The country senses when war is necessary. We have a better educated population now than we had even in the Great Patriotic War against Napoleon.” He smiled delicately as if reminded of something. “Every Russian knows why this war is necessary: to humble the insufferable pride of Great Britain.” Then he looked off into the distance. “And to replant the cross on the dome of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

  “Yes, yes, it is not some minor thing,” he said. “Do you recall the Decembrist Revolt in the first year of the reign of His Imperial Majesty’s father? A cabal of young officers became intoxicated on the ideas of the French Revolution and attempted to replace Nicholas I with his brother Constantine. The troops were told to shout, ‘Constantin y Constitutsiya!’ [Constitution and Constitution!] The lads duly shouted, but thought Constitutsiya was Constantine’s wife. We have come a long way since then.”

  “Indeed, sir, your country as is mine is alive with energy and progress.”

  “More important at this moment is that we share the same enemy.”

  “Of course, Prince, of course.”

  THE FIELD OF TALLAGHT, SOUTHWEST OF DUBLIN, 10:25 A.M., FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 1864

  Had he known of the Order of St. George, Meagher would have been immensely flattered, but if asked to choose, he would have gladly traded every such European bauble for a more hearty response to his call for volunteers. He had expected a flood and got barely a trickle.

  Ireland held its breath waiting to see who would have the upper hand. The seething hatred of England in the hearts of the million and half Irish who had fled the famine had conditioned the exiles to imagine that that same hatred burned as deep and as hot still in the Old Sod. They did not consider that those most cruelly used by the famine and English indifference were either dead or fled the country. Many of those who remained were the better off, those who had something left to keep them home, and those who had survived the great dying. Too, the boldest and most desperate had gone.

  Reinforcing that caution in the Irish population was uppermost in the mind of the Lord Lieutenant. The Duke of Abercorn had ridden directly to the garrison at the Curragh and ordered it to Dublin as well as the remaining regiments in the country to converge in as well. His prompt action secured the telegraph as the communications means by which the military resources at hand could best be used. He too, like Meagher, knew that the first days of the crisis would be critical. The numerous military depot battalions were ordered to assemble what troops they had, secure weapons and ammunition storage, and make themselves visibly apparent to the local population. The northern Protestant counties on their own had called out their militia, much of which was marching south to Dublin.

  Abercorn was lucky to find on a visit of inspection to the troops at the Curragh, Lt. Gen. Sir James Yorke Scarlett, Adjutant General to the Forces, who had commanded the Heavy Brigade so well in the Crimean War. As senior officer, Scarlett took command of the forces at the Curragh with dispatch and by the next morning had them on the road to Dublin.

  Working for Meagher, though, was the diversion of British attention and resources to the invasion of Essex. The initial news staggered the Protestant Anglo-Irish and Scots-Irish who were the bedrock of local support for the Crown. If ever there was a time for their nerve to crack it was then. A hysteria blew through them, akin to that brought on by the terror of the Armada in the time of Elizabeth I. But it was Abercorn’s strong hand that kept them in check, for the man refused to take counsel of his fears. Then that momentary panic passed on the clarifying news from London that the invasion of Essex had been nothing more than a daring raid. A few regiments began to arrive from garrisons in eastern England and Scotland, those initially ordered there by the Duke of Cambridge.

  By that time, British cavalry patrols were probing the outskirts of Dublin. Meagher had not entirely wasted his time in that week; his Balloon Corps company had kept its four balloons around the periphery of the city and were able to warn him of the Scarlett’s approaching force. That warning was vital, for it gave him the initiative to strike first.

  His advance guard of the 69th New York made contact with the 15th Hussars, the British advance guard on the outskirts of Tallaght, only a few miles from Dublin to the southwest and immediately deployed with the 28th Massachusetts on the right and the 83rd New York on the left, with three batteries of artillery on a rise behind them. His two Republic of Ireland regiments he placed in reserve.9 Meagher climbed the old bell tower of the rebuilt church of Tallaght and saw the scarlet lines approaching. He raced down, leapt on his horse, and seized the national color from the color bearer. He rode down the front of his little army waving the green flag, shouting, “The eyes of Ireland are upon you, my boys!” An ovation rippled along the ranks as he passed, for the Irish knew their history. Tallaght was the site of a monastery built in the eighth century by St. Mael Ruain that was to become along with the monastery at Finglas known as the “Eyes of Ireland” centers of learning in the island’s golden age of memory.

  Lord Scarlett had scrapped together every fit man he could lay his hands on. That meant three regiments of infantry in the Curragh Brigade, an engineer company, and the Hussars. He had no artillery at all. All the Royal Artillery companies in Ireland, those that had not already shipped to America, had been in Dublin with the 8th Artillery Brigade. Some of their Armstrongs were now manned by Meagher’s Irish volunteers, a few of them former members of those very batteries. Guns or no, Ambercorn had ordered the commander to strike for Dublin immediately lest any delay in the government’s reassertion of control give heart to a rising throughout the island. In the last two days he had been reinforced by the 4th and 5th Dragoon Guards from Cahir and Dundalk, giving him a small cavalry brigade. Scarlett was delighted to see the 5th Dragoon Guards, for that had been his regiment and the one he had led in th
e Crimea before acceding to command of the Heavy Brigade.10

  If the British had no artillery, Meagher had no cavalry. It was an even trade of sorts. The Hussars had given Scarlett a clear picture of Meagher’s force. He concluded that without guns he could not afford a pounding match. He would have to be quick and deliver a shock of cold steel with his infantry while the Dragoons swung around to strike the Irish from the rear in a grand charge. He did not think of the enemy as anything but the Irish, not the Americans. He did not like the way so many hostile faces had peered over stone field walls and through windows as they had forced marched here. Should he fail today, those faces would become more than hostile.

  At six hundred yards the case shot, canisters of large lead balls, burst into the oncoming British, who did not hesitate but closed ranks over the dead and dying and kept the pace. At three hundred yards the enemy’s rifle fire erupted and the front ranks began to drop men. Scarlett had expected this all as the necessary butcher’s bill to cross the beaten zone, but the fire did not slacken as he assumed it would as the enemy laboriously reloaded their muzzle loaders. Unknown to Scarlett, the Irish had Mr. Spencer’s and Mr. Gatling’s new toys to send a continuous sheet of lead into the redcoats, more than ten times the firepower of the most well-drilled regiment in any army firing muzzle-loaders.

  The British battalions were simply melting away in that blaze when 1,200 Dragoons struck Meagher’s rear. The two volunteer regiments in their path were ridden down and scattered. They had been turned about to face the charge too late. They were too green, and the charge was nearly upon them. The leavening of British Army deserters in their ranks had not had time to transmit the discipline of the regulars. It was the hardest test of untrained men to face a determined cavalry charge, and few had ever passed. They got off a scattered ill-aimed volley and the broke, proving over again Homer’s description of “Panic, brother to blood-stained rout” the horsemen washed over them, and one rode away waving a regimental color.11

  The Dragoons sabered their way through the fleeing mass toward the artillery on its rise. Meagher rode in among the volunteers, desperately trying to rally them, and only drew the Dragoons toward him. Brigadier General Kelly was more effective. He ordered the reserve companies of the Irish Brigade to turn about as the Dragoons surged over the guns, just in time to receive their now disorganized ranks with sustained repeater fire. The Dragoon wave went down in a screaming tangle of dead and dying animals and their riders. Again and again they charged only to add to the carnage. In the midst of the dragoon swarm was Meagher, his color bearer, and small escort, in a ring desperately fending off the Dragoons. One by one they went down, until the 69th concentrated its fire to clear a path for them to escape into their ranks. They cheered as Meagher of the Sword rode in among them and turned again to face the enemy waving his blade in defiance.

  At last the Dragoons retreated, leaving a heap of men and horses along the Irish Brigade’s firing line. When Scarlet heard the Irish cheer, he knew he was beaten. He ordered a retreat. As his shrunken ranks turned about, their faces reddened as the Irish waved their fists at them shouting, “Boyne! Boyne! Boyne!”12

  Meagher could claim the victory since he still occupied the field, but the word “Pyrrhic” seemed to describe it in reality. His two Irish volunteer regiments were effectively destroyed, the survivors would barely make only a half-dozen companies. His artillery crews had been savaged as well by the Dragoons, but many of them had hidden under the guns and caissons. Fortunately, the losses of the Irish Brigade were light. But it was a victory all the same, one that would reap great profit if properly used. The Glorious Field of Tallaght would suit his cause very well. The bells of Dublin rang again that day. He would have had less cause to rejoice had he known that every port north and south of Dublin was unloading reinforcements from Britain and even less had he bothered to pay attention to his ordnance officer’s report of ammunition expenditure in this most glorious of battles.

  Nor did he see a Dragoon ride up to a downcast Lord Scarlett and throw at his feet the colors of the 1st Regiment Brian Boru.

  NUMBER 10 DOWNING STREET, LONDON, 2:00 P.M., SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 1864

  For a seemingly frail wisp of man, the Prime Minister had shown the strength of Tantalus over the last week, or as he put it, the most interesting week of any prime minister. In a single day, he had ridden through a triple storm—the Russian declaration of war, the fall of Dublin, and the thankfully so-called invasion of England. He alone in the cabinet could put such a positive interpretation on it.

  The political storm that erupted had been the least of his immediate worries, the most important being Russia, Ireland, and Essex, in that order. It had become clear by the sixth of April that there was no invasion of England by the American army of U.S. Grant. It had been, after all, only a raid, the most daring of raids to be sure, but only a raid. Essex had been swarming with troops to find the invaders, but a hundred thousand men (regulars, yeomanry, militia, and RVCs) instead only rounded up the survivors of the raid, men captured at Romford, Enfield, and Maldon and a few dozen roaming the countryside, barely three hundred in all. Another three hundred dead and wounded had been found. The ships they had arrived on at Southend-on-Sea had disappeared to the mortification of the Royal Navy, triply so when it was discovered that the American ships included the Kearsarge.

  Although it had been only a raid in the strength of fewer than a thousand men, it had done real damage and not just to the Royal Powder Mills and Royal Small Arms Factory. It had forced the British to take their eyes off the Irish ball when the fall of London seemed imminent. And now this fellow Meagher had made more than good use of that distraction by beating the British Army at Tallaght, the first defeat of British arms in the isles for God knows how long, at least since Bonnie Prince Charlie tried to throw out the house of Hanover.13

  All this was correctable. The powder mills and factory could be rebuilt, and the rising in Ireland suppressed. These would be done. As he sat in his office, Disreali could see the reverse flow of British military power to Ireland. The first good news had been of Captain Cole’s victory over the Lisosvky’s flagship and escort off Wales. The second was the interception and taking of the other two Russian frigates a few days later. The Irish Sea was again the British mare nostrum. The third was the conclusion reached by Lieutenant Colonel Freemantle that the Americans had shot their bolt; they could not repeat these forlorn hopes much less launch a real invasion of the British Isles.

  So it was safe to concentrate on crushing the American expedition in Ireland. How much it would cost was another matter. The news of Tallaght had forced a lot of fence-sitters in Ireland to jump for the rebellion. News was coming across the Irish Sea of district after district, town after town, declaring for Meagher. Not only rebellion but civil war loomed over Ireland, for not only the Protestants remained loyal but a significant part of the Catholics as well. Disraeli suspected that the harsher the Crown’s treatment, the more it would fan the rising. He definitely did not want to summon the ghost of Judge Jeffrys. To the Duke of Cambridge’s rage, Disraeli had issued the order that the Irish were to be treated with leniency.

  Cambridge was already in a constant foul mood for having been so badly humbugged by the Essex Raid and had been more than ready to make the Irish pay for it, but Disraeli had made that impossible. Instead, the focus of his ill-temper had become Dahlgren, the man who had made him into a fool. It was bad enough to be so publicly embarrassed but having been made so by a one-legged “boy” had cast him into an abyss of ridicule. He had been the one to insist that the queen be evacuated, that the London was in imminent danger and could fall at any moment, and he had very publicly pledged that he would die at the gates of London before a single American would enter. Punch was having a field day with it. Dahlgren embodied the whole damned mess, and he desperately wanted to parade him as a trophy. For that reason, Cambridge had kept too many troops, it was said, still in Essex to hunt the raider down. He had feared he had
escaped with the American ships, but had brightened when the 12th Lancers reported a brush with him that indicated he was being hidden by Irish traitors somewhere in Essex or nearby. So he redoubled his efforts until every home great and small, every barn, every gamekeeper’s lodge, every pigsty, haystack, and dunghill had been searched and searched again.

  Disraeli could only imagine the site of Dahlgren being dragged through the streets of London, hopping along on one good leg behind the duke’s horse. It was too ludicrous to imagine that the British government or public would be so lost to decency as to permit such a thing. That only would, of course, have made Dahlgren more of the international hero than he already was, if the reports of the foreign press were to be believed. In his ancestral Sweden he was a sensation. In Prussia he was the toast of every officer’s mess as the ultimate blond Nordic hero. The French were enjoying themselves enormously at Albion’s shame and referring to Dahlgren as a chevalier, the gallant knight, another Lancelot to put the English in their place. In Vienna every dollop of whipped cream (Schlag) into a cup of coffee was accompanied by a snigger. He did not want to think what would be the effect when the news reached India where the embers of the Great Mutiny hid here and there concealed only by the ash of British reprisals.

  Then there was Russia, the true north of Disraeli’s strategic compass. He had warned against taking sides in the American Civil War. But official London had done just that with its blatant sympathy for the Confederacy that had turned a blind eye to the building of commerce raiders for its navy which in turn had provoked Lincoln into threatening war. So much tinder and so many matches. It had been mocking fortune to ignore the real, inherent danger. And war did come, and Disraeli, ever the master of opportunity, had used it and the Palmerston government’s bungling to ride into office with a Tory majority. He had championed the preservation of the Empire now that war with the United States threatened British North America. He had had no animosity to the United States before the war and had discerned no reason to make it a permanent enemy for the next century through a Carthaginian peace.