Clouds of Glory

by Michael Korda

  Clearly, what was needed was a thorough reconnaissance, and Scott chose Lee, “that indefatigable engineer,” to lead it. The next day, the morning of April 15, Lee went forward and observed at once that whatever his other defects as a general, Santa Anna had a good eye for a defensive position. Santa Anna had effectively blocked the highway at a point about a mile and a half from the American camp. To the north of the winding road and overlooking it were two truncated conical hills: Cerro Gordo (also known as “El Telégrafo”) and the slightly lower La Atalaya, with a watchtower on its summit. A ridge ran in a northeasterly direction, more or less parallel to the road. On each hill Santa Anna had dug in a battery of guns, well situated to support each other and to flank the road. The ground to the south between the road and the river was broken up by a confusing maze of steep ravines, which were separated by three flattened ridges resembling the extended first three fingers of a hand, extending toward the American camp. At the tip of each Santa Anna had placed a battery of guns in “earthworks” and supported by substantial numbers of infantry. Santa Anna’s left was anchored on La Atalaya, and his right on the Río del Plan, the north bank of which rose in a steep cliff, forming an uneven line almost three-quarters of a mile long.

  A preliminary reconnaissance by Twiggs’s engineers had demonstrated that there was no easy way to outflank Santa Anna’s right along the river, and concluded that the only way to outflank him was therefore to advance against his left by going around La Atalaya, the lower of the two hills. When Lee himself wrote to Mary, allowing himself just the slightest degree of professional condescension about Twiggs’s plan of attack—he was, after all, a captain criticizing a major general—the sting at the tail of the paragraph was unmistakable: “The right of the Mexican line rested on the river at a perpendicular rock, unscalable by man or beast, and their left on impassible ravines; the main road was defended by field works containing thirty-five cannon; in their rear was the mountain of Cerro Gordo, surrounded by intrenchments in which were cannon and crowned by a tower overlooking all—it was around this army that it was intended to lead our troops.”*

  The Napoleonic coup d’oeil de génie of Lee’s later battles is already clear. At a glance he saw the salient points of what seemed to others merely a confusing landscape, made even more so by the tangled brush, dense thickets, and thorny chaparral. He understood at once the strength of Santa Anna’s position and the danger of attacking it frontally, but thought he saw a better way than trying to advance north of La Atalaya in full view of the enemy.

  One of Twiggs’s engineers had climbed partway up one of the steep ravines on the Mexican left, where the brush was so thick that Santa Anna believed “not even a jackrabbit could penetrate its fastness.” Lee decided to go farther forward himself, convinced that it would lead to the Jalapa road and the lower slopes of the two hills that constituted the strong point of the Mexican line. Although there were Mexican troops on higher ground to either side of him, “he worked his way” slowly through the thickets unseen until he suddenly reached a small clearing with a spring from which led a “well-trampled” path.

  As he studied the ground around him he heard voices speaking Spanish approaching, and hid behind a large log lying close to the spring. When the Mexican troops stopped to drink, Lee slipped under the log. He could not move; he could hardly even breathe for fear of revealing his presence. Two of the soldiers sat down on the log not three feet from him, and another stepped over it, almost planting his foot on Lee’s back. More soldiers came and went as the day crept by—clearly this was “the water supply for [the left] wing of that army.” Lee lay motionless in the heat throughout the day, tormented by biting insects and thirst. Although the zigzag of ravines made it hard to fix his position exactly, he concluded that he was now in fact far behind the enemy’s left wing and within reach of the road to Jalapa.

  When night came, Lee was finally able to make his way back in the dark with great difficulty, descending through the dense thickets hand over hand down to the American campfires. Lee was certain that a working party could cut a trail through the ravines with a good chance of doing so unnoticed by the Mexicans. Scott agreed, and by the end of April 16 “a working party of pioneers” had hacked out a rough trail of sorts, while Lee went even farther behind the Mexican lines than he had gone the previous day. “He did not reach the Jalapa road, which the Americans must occupy if they were to cut off the Mexican retreat,” but he had every reason to believe that he had been close to it, and that a determined thrust up the newly cut trail would cut through the center of Santa Anna’s line, following which an attack on his left around La Atalaya might then succeed in enveloping half the Mexican army, despite its hold on the high ground and its formidable fieldworks.

  Scott ordered Lee to guide Twiggs’s division up the trail the next day, and decided that the battle should begin on April 18, when Worth’s division had caught up with the rest of the army. The plan was that Twiggs, guided by Lee, would advance his division through the ravines around the extreme left of the Mexican line, flanking La Atalaya and Cerro Gordo, while Brigadier General Gideon Pillow attacked the three Mexican batteries entrenched in front of the American camp. At the same time Worth’s division could make a wide, curved flanking attack—an extended “right hook,” to use the boxing term—which would bring his men down to the National Highway behind Cerro Gordo, cutting off Santa Anna’s retreat. Once all this was set in motion, the remainder of the army would attack the enemy center down the National Highway, driving the Mexicans from their lines with no option but surrender.

  As is so often the case in war, little of this tidy plan would take place as it was intended to, except for Lee’s role. Part of the problem was that Scott’s divisional commanders were still at odds. Worth was still sulking; Twiggs was bullheaded and incautious; Patterson was still ill; and Patterson’s deputy, Pillow, was correctly thought to be an indifferent soldier and possibly a spy placed in the army by his old friend President Polk to report on General Scott. All of them resented Scott’s seniority, dominant personality, and grandiloquent manner. The spirit of the senior officers was captured best by Scott himself, who would later describe General Pillow as “the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood, honesty and dishonesty,” and Pillow’s own officers “derided him as ‘a mass of vanity, conceit, ignorance, ambition and want of truth.’” These were not relationships well calculated to fight a battle, though they are not unfamiliar in military history.

  Early in the morning of April 17 Lee guided Twiggs’s division slowly up the rough trail his pioneers had cleared. It was a grueling trek—artillery had to be heaved up the steep ravine by hand, along a path “hewed in the roughest way through oaks, mesquite, chaparral, cactus and the like and over almost impassable ground.” The intention had been to get the troops up the ravines undetected, as close to La Atalaya as possible, then “lay up” for the night and attack in concert with the other operations planned for the next morning. This plan was frustrated when one soldier slipped on a loose stone, causing “a thud and a rattle.” His company commander lunged at him with a drawn sword and shouted, “You infernal scoundrel, I’ll run you through if you don’t make less noise!” Soldiers burst out laughing, making it clear there were a good number of men scaling the hill. By the time Twiggs sent the leading company of the Seventh Infantry up to the head of the ravine to observe what the Mexicans were doing, they found to their consternation that the enemy was already advancing on them in “greatly superior numbers” from the higher ground ahead. The element of surprise having been lost, Twiggs ordered two regiments forward, to advance on La Atalaya. “I beg pardon, General,” one of the regimental commanders asked, “how far shall we charge them?”

  “Charge them to hell,” Twiggs replied enthusiastically, and his troops took him at his word. They pushed the Mexican line back; stormed La Atalaya and took it; continued to advance down its western slope, despite an effort to recall
them; and boldly started up the nearby hill, Cerro Gordo, where they were pinned down by heavy cannon fire. They would have been slaughtered if Lee had not managed to get three pieces of light artillery carried up to the crest of La Atalaya to cover their withdrawal.

  Although Freeman comments that Lee “felt thus far that all had gone flawlessly,” this can hardly have been the case. Twiggs had sacrificed the element of surprise, then jeopardized Scott’s plan by attacking in force before any of the other divisions were in place. In addition, he had lost control over two of his regiments once he had ordered them to charge. Worth was of the opinion that Twiggs not only was a hothead but seldom thought at all. Not for nothing was he nicknamed “the Bengal Tiger,” and not for nothing was he considered by many good judges of profanity to be the most profane officer in the U.S. Army.

  Lee spent a good part of the night supervising the “hauling of heavy [artillery] pieces up the hill,” something of a miracle in itself if we consider the terrain. He then had them dug into a well-sited battery on the summit of La Atalaya for the artillery duel that would begin in the morning. Scott had seemingly decided to take advantage of Twiggs’s premature attack, ordering him to assault Cerro Gordo under the cover of the artillery bombardment. At the same time Lee was to lead one of Twiggs’s brigades around the “north flank” of the hill, and try to reach the point where his earlier reconnaissance up the ravines indicated that the road to Jalapa could be reached.

  In the early morning, Scott himself rode out to watch the assault. Almost immediately the Second Brigade, which Lee was leading, came under flanking artillery fire and separated into two columns: one, under Colonel Bennett Riley, took up a position on the southeastern slope of Cerro Gordo, while the other, led by Lee, went around Cerro Gordo to attack a Mexican battery on the Jalapa road. Lee was now approaching the farthest point of his reconnaissance from the opposite direction, and his guess as to the location of the Jalapa road was correct. Although he was under continuous heavy fire, Lee paused to collect the Mexican wounded. He came upon “a Mexican boy, a drummer or a bugler, lying with a shattered arm under a dying soldier. Nearby was a little girl . . . tormented by the plight of the boy, but unable to help him. ‘Her large black eyes were streaming with tears,’ Lee remembered, ‘her hands were crossed over her breast; her hair in one long plait behind reached to her waist, her arms and shoulders bare, and without stockings or shoes. Her plaintive tone of Mille gracias, Señor, as I had the dying man lifted off the boy . . . still lingers in my ear.’”

  This was not the steely tone of a conquering hero. The authentic voice of Lee comes through in this letter to his son Custis, written just a week after the battle, with its remarkable pathos, its natural sympathy, and its gift for authentic detail. The same day, he wrote to Mary, “You have no idea what a horrible sight a field of battle is,” a feeling he would express again and again until the day when he finally “sheathed his sword” for good.

  Lee made sure that the Mexican wounded were taken care of, then rejoined the attack on the Mexican battery, which quickly surrendered. By now General Shields and Colonel Riley had taken both the hills on the Mexican left and crossed the Jalapa road, cutting off any possibility of retreat by the Mexican right. The only part of Scott’s plan that had failed was General Pillow’s attack on the three “fingers,” on the tips of which the Mexicans had dug in batteries of guns overlooking the American camp. Pillow, true to form, got lost in the ravines and attacked the wrong finger, the middle one, thus exposing part of his brigade to a “murderous” cross fire. Taking advantage of a slight wound to his arm, Pillow handed over his command and retired from the field.

  Despite the numerous errors in timing and Pillow’s failure, Cerro Gordo, as the battle became known, was a major victory for the United States. Over 1,000 Mexican soldiers were killed, and 3,000 were captured, along with five generals, forty guns, and “thousands of small arms.”* Santa Anna escaped on a mule, leaving behind his carriage, his horses, his papers, and his “money chest.” American losses were 263 dead and 368 wounded. The victory of Cerro Gordo made it possible for Scott to advance along the National Highway on Jalapa, Perote, and Puebla with no significant opposition, almost three-quarters of the way to Mexico City.

  Unfortunately, at just that moment the volunteers’ one-year enlistment expired, and almost all of them elected to go home, leaving Scott victorious, but stranded in Puebla for four months, waiting for reinforcements to arrive while Santa Anna busied himself with recruiting a new army to defend Mexico City.

  Scott’s victory at Cerro Gordo was largely due to Lee’s courageous reconnaissance. He was promoted to the rank of brevet major. General Shields praised him for his “intrepid coolness and gallantry.” General Twiggs gave him a whole paragraph in his report, remarking on Lee’s “invaluable services,” and “his gallantry and good conduct on both days.” However, the highest praise of all came from General Scott, who felt “impelled to make special mention of the services of Captain R. E. Lee, engineers. . . . This officer, greatly distinguished at the siege of Vera Cruz, was again indefatigable during these operations, in reconnaissance as daring as laborious, and of the utmost value. Nor was he less conspicuous in planting batteries, and in conducting columns to their stations under the heavy fire of the enemy.”

  Lee’s reputation as a hero spread throughout the army, and rumors of it soon reached home. He had demonstrated his skill at reconnaissance; his courage, without which no other military virtue has meaning; and his ability to keep his head when all about him were losing theirs, to paraphrase Kipling. All in all, he was the perfect warrior. These were exactly the qualities—together with good manners and a gentlemanly bearing—that had earned his father the trust and respect of George Washington.

  Like the rest of the army, Lee was stuck for the moment in Puebla de los Angeles. The landscape delighted Lee, who wrote to Mary that “it was the most beautiful country I have seen in Mexico, and will compare with any I have seen elsewhere, [but] I wish it was in the United States and that I was located with you and the children around me in one of its rich, bright valleys.” Even fairly impartial observers were as impressed by the beauty of the countryside as by the dismal poverty of its inhabitants.

  To pass the time Lee busied himself by taking an inventory of the Mexican weapons stored in Puebla and, more important, by drawing up as accurate a map as he could of the country between Puebla and Mexico City, with particular attention to the approaches to the capital, which he gleaned from “travellers and natives.” All those he talked to confirmed that every approach was “strongly occupied and fortified,” a problem made more difficult by the peculiar geography of the place, which had not changed much since the days of Cortés. To the east of the city the National Highway was surrounded on both sides by three shallow but large lakes* and by extensive areas of marshland, forming a natural causeway that at its narrowest point was less than five miles wide. Clearly any attempt to take Mexico City from the east by advancing down the National Highway was unlikely to succeed—it was a natural bottleneck, easy for the Mexicans to defend. Whether it would be better to advance around Lake Texcoco to the north and approach the city from the rear, or to go around lakes Chalco and Xochimilco to the south, was difficult to determine. The former was by far the longest way around, and everybody whom Lee questioned warned that the road along the eastern shore of Lake Chalco was merely a rough trail. The way around the two southern lakes was shorter and better, but within a few miles of the city it ran alongside an impassable moonscape of jagged, black volcanic rock called the Pedregal, an ancient lava bed whose eastern side formed a corridor less than two miles wide between itself and the westernmost tip of Lake Xochimilco. The Pedregal, with its deep fissures and razor-sharp rocks, was a formidable obstacle, difficult and dangerous for a man to cross on foot, impossible for horses and therefore artillery.

  Beautiful as Puebla might be, Scott chafed at the delay, describing his halt as “protracted and irksome.” Protracted, it
certainly was. Scott’s army had paused for nearly a month in Jalapa after the victory at Cerro Gordo; it had reached Puebla toward the end of May, and waited there until August 7. Even by mid-nineteenth-century standards this was slow, but Scott was kept busy by constant wrangling with President Polk and Congress, and, in any case, could not move forward until he received reinforcements to replace those who had gone home. These arrived slowly, and in dribs and drabs—Scott believed that President Polk was responsible for the delay, and it is hard not to sympathize with him.

  By the first week in August he had about 14,000 men, of whom over 2,500 were ill with dysentery (the plague of nineteenth-century armies owing to inadequate sanitation and poor understanding of even the most basic standards of hygiene), and another 600 had been wounded. In desperation, Scott determined to leave Puebla to be garrisoned by the sick, gathered his remaining troops from Vera Cruz and Jalapa, and all but abandoned his line of “communications with home.” It was one of the most daring exploits in the history of modern warfare—as Scott himself put it with his usual gift for the dramatic phrase, “We had to throw away the scabbard and to advance naked blade in hand.”

  Captain Lee left Puebla with Scott, accompanied by two engineer lieutenants: P. G. T. Beauregard, the future Confederate general and victor of the First Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas, as it is known in the South); and George B. McClellan, the future Union commander of the Army of the Potomac who would fight Lee to a bloody draw at Antietam (or Sharpsburg, as it is known in the South). By August 10, since Santa Anna elected to remain in Mexico City to reinforce its defenses, Scott’s troops reached “the Rio Frio range of mountains” without serious opposition. They could at last look down on the wide, fertile valley at the center of which lay “the gorgeous seat of the Montezumas, now the capital of a great republic,” while the mountain of “Popocatepetl, ten thousand feet higher, apparently near enough to touch with the hand, filled the mind with religious awe.” More important, this first view of Mexico City immediately confirmed the accuracy of Lee’s map, and decided Scott on “turning the strong eastern defences of the city, by passing around south of Lake Chalco and Jochimilco,”* just the move that Lee had anticipated as he drew up the map.