Cresting a small knoll, Mix could see the enemy force in and among the buildings of the farm his rear guard was using as cover, drawn up in single column and moving forward. They sat astride the road and at a right angle to it as they formed in the open space afforded by the houses. Mix was on slightly higher ground, but not enough to form a defense. Only by getting momentum himself might he blunt what was about to descend upon him.
“Forward!” Mix shouted, and his companies moved at a slow gait. The enemy in his front was already in motion and picking up speed. Force and will. Whoever had the force and the will would prevail in any attack made on an opposing force. When two parties struck on horseback, it would be a meeting of equal force as the intimidation factor of several hundreds of pounds of horseflesh charging down upon a man did its best to lessen the will to stand. The men would be reduced to individuals again as they met in a swirling of individual combat, and whoever had the will to remain would be the force that stood its ground.
Captain Mix had a goal: retain control of the bridge to prevent its destruction. The enemy had a goal: recapture the bridge and destroy it. Whoever’s goal was the more important would prevail.
Mix was already at a disadvantage in numbers but had succeeded so far in keeping the enemy from brushing his little force aside. He believed in leading by example, and he pushed forward in the charge upon the enemy’s advancing horsemen in grand style.
In moments, the neat little lines of mounted men vanished in the coming of their foes and the first clang of sabers. Infantry fought as a group, pouring fire into whomever appeared in their front, with the bayonet charge reserved for those moments of desperation when morale was flagging or an opportunity presented itself. Cavalry was different. At the collision of his line, Mix was rendered useless as a commander as his troopers turned to face whomever was nearby. They would have to fight and struggle all on their own, and whoever had the will to keep going was going to tell the success or failure of the charge forward. Charging an enemy line on horse hearkened back to the days of yore, the cavaliers and the armored horsemen who rode down the flanks of barbarian hordes to slash and scatter terrified infantry. The musket had changed the shock value of massed cavalry, and the cannon had rendered his presence on the battlefield moot in a frontal charge. Still, every man who volunteered for the cavalry hoped and wished for the time when he could charge upon an enemy and pretend to be the master at arms in individual combat.
Mix was conspicuous as he fought his way through the mob of troopers, feeling that to be seen was to keep his men from bolting too soon.
Like his men, Mix fought with one hand steady the animal and the other holding his weapon of choice—a manifestly inefficient way to engage in combat. Pistol shots rang out from every corner as troopers took quick potshots at one another, most of the time missing even at close quarters. The sabers were long and heavy, and unless a trooper was schooled and experienced in their use, he would end up slashing clumsily about, not striking anything. If the horse was skittish, even the best aimed attack would be fouled by the constant movement of the horses. Put these men on foot and run them into one another, and death and bloodied ground would be the results. Put them on horseback, and they would be exhausted by numerous attempts to fell an opponent. Few saddles would be emptied.
The slashing of sabers made for a picture of deadly grandeur but had produced few casualties. More saddles were being emptied by random pistol fire than by heroic individual combat by saber. But the desired effect was being produced: the enemy was pulling away, disorganized by his countercharge and attempting to reposition themselves for another go.
“Sound recall!” Mix shouted, his bugler several hundred feet to the rear where Mix should have been. He found himself surrounded by gray in a matter of moments as the mass of troopers still fighting flowed around him. A particularly heavy blow swept down on him, and he had enough time to raise his saber in a parry that fairly rang his arm with its savagery. His arm collapsed, and he felt the strength to raise it once more melt away when a pistol shot nearby unhorsed his assailant.
Giving his mount a good kick, Mix forced his way back out of the trap, his still-aching right arm dangling by his side.
“Are you injured?” Mix’s sergeant major asked as he darted toward the bridge, followed by his remaining troopers.
“No, just hurts like hell,” Mix heard himself saying—a very un-officer-like thing to tell a subordinate.
Several of his troopers tried to pursue the retreating enemy as the other half gathered around him. “Sound recall again!”
Ignoring the pain as best he could, Mix took in the situation once more. Fending off the assault on his rear had taken him and the other companies several hundred yards from the bridge.
“Get the companies back to the bridge,” he shouted to Captain Wells, and with his bugler he spurred his horse back over the knoll to the important roadway. The racket on the other side had abated. The bridge was still in his hands.
It was feeling a bit crowded, however. The creek was not wide though deeply cut, plunging four to five feet down a steep embankment and swollen with a further three feet of water at this time of the year—water that was icy cold. The bridge was a small affair of sturdy wood planking. The backs of the two companies on the north side crowded behind hastily constructed barricades of logs and fence rails, and the company horses were picketed on the south side where Mix was gathering his remaining three companies into a final defense, having given up hope that the infantry supports were ever going to arrive on time.
In the lull, Captain Mix saw to his wounded and the several prisoners they had managed to come away with.
The wounded lieutenant, his arm bandaged as best as could be in the field, was sitting with three other men they had nabbed. He was a man of bearing: his collar showed the peculiar rank system the Confederacy had developed, with a single star on either side of his lapels and a dirty white shirt underneath. He had finely groomed mustachios and kindly blue eyes. The prisoners as a whole sat dejected and quiet. They did not appear to be in high spirits despite the predicament the Michiganders were in.
“How many companies?” Mix asked.
“All of them.”
“Your whole regiment in the neighborhood?” Mix asked, surprised.
“Whole division in the neighborhood, Wheeler’s,” the man said with neither bravado or impudence.
Mix took a moment to digest the news. General Joseph Wheeler commanded one of the cavalry brigades under Bragg, Wharton the other. Not as flamboyant as Wharton or as notorious as Nathan Bedford Forrest, Wheeler was neither a slouch nor a fool. That General Stanley had sent Mix with a bare eighty men to take and hold the bridge while an entire brigade of Rebel cavalry was in the neighborhood seemed to be folly. The enemy was in greater strength than anyone had thought.
“I guess you supposed to fire the bridge,” Mix said.
“Delay you Yankees, fire the bridge if needed,” the man said with a nod. It had become eerily quiet, with only the rush of the creek and the occasional snuffling of a horse from the picket. The troopers were scattered about and finding whatever cover was present and waiting, keeping a watchful eye on their front. The pike was still clear; Palmer’s division was nowhere to be seen. Mix could use that artillery about now.
“You boys keep your heads down, it’s likely to get lively soon again.” Mix stood. He’d made every preparation he could to receive the enemy. They would either overrun him, or he’d hold out and the infantry would break the stalemate. The ground around the bridge had proved to be more advantageous for defense than he’d thought, with the enemy having to attack a small front and spread out enough to blunt his advantage in numbers. Surrounded and now well aware of the fact, Mix braced for what was to come next.
* * *
Will gathered his troopers under cover of a copse of cedars and out of sight of the Yankees clustered around the bridge. One charge: that was all it was going to take to break through to the other side of t
he creek or force the enemy away from the bridge long enough to reunite with the rest of the 1st Alabama. He was a few saddles short now, some men having already headed back the long way around the enemy bastion to get to the safer north side of the creek. But Will had counted Yankee noses; there were only fifty of them on the south side. He had seventy himself. A matter of numbers.
“Sergeant Harvey, take your squadron and work around to their left flank. Wait for the sounds of our firing, then charge from that quarter. Stay horsed. I’ll take the remaining squadrons, and we’ll charge their front once again. They is in a tight little circle about the bridge; we charge hard enough, they’ll have to give way. We force them away from the bridge opening and try to hold. Maybe Allen will join in once he knows we’re pushing them.”
Will nodded to his noncommissioned officers. “Get your squadron going, Harvey; we’ll step off in ten minutes.”
Will watched as the fifteen men of Harvey’s squadron moved off into the trees. The enemy would see Will’s men as they crossed the road and note that they were moving against their flank, but hopefully the Yankees would be distracted enough by the frontal assault to forget them. They had been at this an hour or more now. The passage of time from the first contact with the enemy as he appeared down the pike to now had been rapid. The Union infantry was not far behind, though the running skirmish had carried these Yankees far from their supports. This might be the last opportunity to brush them aside or destroy them.
A rider came nosing his way through the cedars to Will’s side. “Sir, infantry coming up the pike, brigade strength with artillery.”
“Form line,” Will said to all and nudged his mount to the center of the troop line. “Double column. First line will halt at the first fire and give them a volley; second will charge through followed by the first. We’ll get through to the bridge and see what havoc we can create. Rally back at the ford we crossed to the west.”
As his men formed, Will said calmly, “Forward at the trot, march.”
Breaking cover, the troop marched into the clear. They had five hundred yards to cover before the bridge. The ground was rolling and broken by cedars and open fence lines, dismantled by the Yankees for cover. Spread out two hundred yards from the bridge, the enemy was dismounted and waiting in a thin line. Will stacked his column more to the right of the road and across it so as to push the enemy to the left, giving Harvey’s squadron a clearer path to aid in putting them to flight.
Keeping the pace steady for alignment, Will marched his troopers into the open. They were astride the road and pressing forward, feeling the collective presence of each man horsed next to the other and the collective momentum of their powerful mounts. A feeling of invincibility always came with guiding a heavy animal that could be used as a battering ram.
A scattering of fire greeted them as they neared the bridge, carbines poking out of every concealment along the roadside and drawn up in thin lines in the open. Enemy troopers knelt and waited for a close shot, drawn up in tight compaction about the opening to the bridge.
Within two hundred yards, Will gave the order.
“Double-quick time, march!”
The sounds of staccato clip clop, clip clop beat upon the clod, the dead grass of the field giving rise to a thunder of hooves pounding the earth, a sound of dread that rolled along the creek valley.
Sharp cracks from Union carbines blended into a continuous roar.
Zips and zings whistled close to ears, and jolting nicks on arms or legs told how close the fire was coming to maiming or killing a man. With a violent burst of fire and a well-aimed volley from the enemy, the first saddle was emptied. With a muffled cry, almost covered by the pounding horses and growing carbine discharges, a hapless man tumbled to the earth. Will heard it even as he was about to shout the order to charge sabers.
Another man went down, slapped from his saddle and trampled by the rank behind.
Then another.
Then another.
Will by this point was beyond noticing that his charge was fast diminishing, too taken with the raw power he wielded with each moment.
Another horse and rider fell out, accompanied by a cry of agony from the horse and a cry of surprise from the man as he tumbled over its head. The only thing keeping them all horsed now was that they were moving targets. Each moment they drew nearer, the enemy fire grew more accurate.
Giddy with bravado, his arms and legs tingling with energy, Will was shaken out of the moment as a man in his front rank flew off his mount in a wild, careening somersault. Quick glances to the left and right revealed the true state of affairs. He wasn’t winning this.
It was too late to take the charge back, but closing the remaining hundred yards would decimate his command. Emboldened, the enemy was standing in the clear and firing away without a care. Will needed to make them care!
A mix of fear and anger welled up and pressed against his chest, and his heart skipped a few beats, the pounding in his chest stilling for an uncomfortable moment. He had to silence the enemy fire. Will made his choice.
“Sound the halt!” he shouted. His bugler, riding next to him, brought his instrument to his lips and sounded the first part of the command before the instrument was crushed by a round and torn from his hands.
Reining to a halt, the first line readied their carbines without command and fired into the enemy line, reloading quickly. Return fire was furious and deadly, with the cry of both horse and man intermixing with the small-arms fire as more of Will’s troop were struck. Will tried to put the images of his men going down out of his thoughts. Poor or sound tactical judgment was at this point moot.
Will touched off several rounds from his pistol. He was firing too quickly and wildly, merely adding to the din of noise and heightening his own anxiety. With wobbly aim and a growing desperation for the enemy to break, Will shouted “Fire!”
Another volley was fired into the enemy, several of the enemy number now also going down.
“Rear rank, advance at the double-quick!” shouted Will, swinging his carbine forward as if it were a saber. Passing between the front rank, the rear rank gave a shout and spurred their mounts forward in a leap of momentum that quickly carried them up to and over the enemy front line.
“Front rank, at the double-quick march!” Will shouted. He joined his troopers in pushing forward. Already the second rank was within the enemy perimeter and tussling with blue-clad troopers on foot in a brief melee.
The enemy swung forces around from their right flank to deal with the breach. Sergeant Harvey’s detachment had yet to make their presence known. Harvey was supposed to open up to prevent the enemy from shifting his forces about like this. Craning his neck to look over the enemy and his own men in the direction of the road and seeing no movement, Will shouted Harvey’s name with an oath and watched his gamble crumble.
Will and the front rank had made it to the enemy’s line, but instead of feeling elation he was watching his troopers start to scatter. He was no longer in command of the action; each individual trooper was in command of his own fate now, and those who were seeing the helplessness of sticking around to be captured or shot were taking to their heels.
Stalking about with an empty pistol and carbine and yelling for his men to push on, Will realized that he’d failed. The fire from all three sides was too much. More of his men were down, either unhorsed by rounds or grabbed from their saddles. A mass of confusion prevailed as blue- and gray-clad men wrestled one another and those still able began a precipitous retreat.
Will swallowed hard and joined in the rush.
Before a full-on retreat could start, a mounted company of the enemy rushed at Will’s first line of mounted troopers, wildly swinging sabers and shouting for all they were worth. It didn’t matter that the enemy’s charge constituted only twenty men: Will watched the reactions of his troopers as if they were being charged by two hundred yelling, fearsome warriors. Slashing, cursing, shouting, shooting soldiers in blue rippled through Will’
s troopers and put the final impetus to their voluntary retreat. Mounted troopers grabbed those who had lost their mounts and rode away as fast as they could. A few were left behind as prisoners as the Yankee ranks closed the breach.
Crestfallen, Will collected the majority of his troop and headed for the ford, waiting briefly on the enemy’s side of the creek for Harvey’s recalcitrant squad to catch up. He had sixty men still mounted, five dismounted, and five missing. He’d seen a few of those killed outright; others had been wounded on the field and taken prisoner. But for the lack of support, he might have succeeded in taking the bridge.
Crossing the creek, Will set his command in motion to rejoin the rest of the 1st Alabama. Confident that he had done all that could be done, Will relished the moment despite the defeat. This day, December 27, surely heralded what the coming days would be like: the quick dash and the quick retreat. He was finally doing what he’d always imagined cavalry to do.
Chapter 7
His Legions
Three miles south of Murfreesboro and astride the Franklin pike, the Smith house had been the hub of activity for the past several days. General Braxton Bragg, commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, was pacing back and forth nervously. The wood floor was scuffed and marked by boots with steel heel plates, the rugs dirty with muddy footprints and careless ash from innumerable cigars.
“How many columns?” Bragg asked again.
“Three, sir. Nashville pike, Lebanon pike, and Wilkinson pike; several corps each.”
“He wants to force us out of Murfreesboro, but where will he concentrate?” Bragg asked of no one. “Have we identified who’s in command of each column?” Bragg looked at his chief of staff quizzically, but instead of letting the man speak, he barked “Well?”
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