St. Patrick Battalion

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Only once in my life, Señor, did I ever feel the murderous passion that those gunners must have felt. I shall tell you of that, in its time. It is so different from every other state of being that, even though it is the greatest and worst passion in any man’s life, it is hardly possible to remember it, once it is over. Soldiers have to bring themselves to it by the force of their own minds and hearts, or they cannot overcome the natural fear of pain and death. But I am digressing from the tragedy at Churubusco.

  It went on for two or three hours in the terrible heat and deafening din. General Twiggs’s soldiers surely were as infuriated by Major Riley’s green flag as his were by the West Pointers’ dark blue coats. The Yanquis, though they could not stand up and march through that hail of metal, they could crawl through the corn and grass, shooting while lying on their bellies. The road and the fields were strewn with the bloody dead and dying. American artillery eventually came up, and returned the San Patricios’ cannon fire. One by one, the Irishmen and Germans were hit, and their bodies stacked up within the emplacements. The cannons were sizzling with heat, the smoke was blinding and choking the gunners, and they were so blackened by gunpowder that they looked like coal miners. These are the sights and sufferings as they were experienced by the great Irishman himself, that sobrehumano. As I have said already, I was myself seeing it from another high place, four miles distant, and to me it was just a rumbling cloud of smoke, both thrilling and squeezing my heart. But I can tell you how it was for him because I relived his last battle myself. You doubt. But you will see.

  Eventually, three of Major Riley’s cannons were hit by your artillery, more than half of his soldiers were dead or wounded, and his shot and powder were nearly exhausted. His soldiers took up their muskets and fired out through embrasures. Yanqui snipers brought more of them down with their long rifles. The Mexican infantry under General Rincón had expended almost all of their powder and ball, and General Worth’s division was gaining control of the bridgehead. When the fire from the monastery waned, the infantry of General Twiggs rallied and charged the parapets with scaling ladders. The San Patricios fought them mano a mano. As Major Riley was loading his one last cannon with grapeshot to sweep the Yanqui soldiers off the wall, a muzzle flash or something ignited the remaining gunpowder and burned several of his men. They fell among the bodies in the courtyard, and their comrades smothered their flaming clothes. His last load of grapeshot tore into the attackers, and then he pulled down his green banner and ordered his remaining men in through the doors to the inner rooms of the monastery. The remnants of General Rincón’s infantrymen were already inside. The Yanqui infantry charged across the courtyard with bayonets, battered the doors open, and poured into the building.

  For the next half an hour or so, Señor, it was inside that religious place the most violent chaos—shooting, bayoneting, stabbing, clubbing, fists and boots, down the corridors, from room to room, up the staircases . . . the kind of murderous brawling at which Irishmen and young Yanqui men excel. Señor Riley said it was like—it was an Irish term—like Donnybrook Fair. But desperate and full of true hatred. The American soldiers knew that these were the San Patricios, and the San Patricios knew their fate.

  They had carried the green banner into the building, and it inflamed the Yanquis. Some Mexican soldiers were mixed into the fight, and many of them were killed in those rooms. At least twice, some of the Mexicans wanted to surrender, and waved white cloths. But the Irishmen snatched the cloths from them and threw them on the floor, and kept fighting. An Irish gunnery officer with his saber was fighting several soldiers who had him cornered with their bayonets. An Irish soldier seized an American lieutenant and in their struggle bit his nose off. Some of the Mexicans and a few San Patricios found a corridor and fled down to emerge near the river, where some escaped and others were caught. But the remainder of the deserters, about eighty of them still alive, were forced into a calle sin salida—a, a cul-de-sac—and cornered. Senor Riley refused to surrender to anyone less than a general. But of course no general was that close to the fight. So he fought on, choking in smoke, wet with blood. The corridor roared with curses and screams and pistol shots and the clanging of metal. Then all went dark for him.

  There is a reason why I can relate so vividly what his defeat was like, Señor. It is that I, a few days hence, would endure the very same. The very same.

  But I must not get ahead of the story you came so far to hear. I was speaking of Don Juan Riley’s last battle.

  Señor, I am so little a believer in miracles; I have seen too many instances in which miracles were needed but not provided.

  It was, though, much like a miracle that Major Riley and his San Patricios were not all killed at once on the bayonets of your soldiers who captured them in the monastery at Churubusco on that terrible day. Almost every one of your soldiers wanted to do so. They were mad for vengeance and seething with contempt, for hundreds of their comrades-in-arms had been torn to pieces that very afternoon by the shot and shell of those cannoneers—those who once had served right alongside them in the American ranks. It was only by the orders of their captain, screaming over and over above the din, that the San Patricio prisoners were spared an immediate massacre.

  Most of them had been wounded, some severely. They were of course given no medical care. Already there were too many hundreds of Yanqui soldiers lying in the fields around the monastery bleeding to death and screaming in pain. An army never has enough surgeons or healers to handle even a few casualties. General Scott’s army had sustained more than a thousand. Numbers of course are meaningless in the measure of suffering. But the injuries of those few dozen San Patricios were their just desserts, for the carnage they had caused, and who was to pity them? The more they suffered, the more justice, the Yanquis felt. They were dragged out into the battery where they had fought before. There they lay amid the corpses, the blood, and the excrement. Yes, Señor Reportero, if you have been on battlegrounds, where bayonets and cannons have been used, you know about the excrement stirred in with the glorious gore.

  In the evening those who could stand were made to get up and form ranks, to be shown to your commandante. General Winfield Scott was led in by a flock of junior officers. In the torchlight, he glinted and shone with as much gold braid and ornamentation as if the day had been a parade instead of a matadero. You know the war-like visage of that old Martes. Here was your god of war, come to the old temple of our god of war. The San Patricios were such a prize, they had to be displayed to him. Those proud captors had thought General Scott would give them permission to execute the deserters then and there. The old general looked at them but said nothing to the prisoners. The prisoners said nothing. They all had agreed to say nothing; they were not replying to insults. They had agreed not to be provoked. They defied in silence.

  General Scott spoke instead to his officers. He told them they must prevent the guards from attacking the prisoners. More officers, he said, to keep order here. Your god of war was un abogado by profession. And that perhaps was the miracle! For even in victory, your General Scott meant that there should be law if there could be law. Señor Riley heard the general tell other officers that the fate of these traitors must be determined by courts-martial. For, he said, civilizations were all watching, and none was in approval of the invasion. There must be no massacre of the prisoners.

  I believe, Señor, they would have been killed that night, but for his visit with them. The prisoners were held without water or food or care for their wounds, for the rest of the night, among the corpses of their comrades. In the night there came a long, cold rain that at least washed off the soot of battle and faded their bloodstains. A few bled to death. One with both legs shot off was somehow kept alive by the care of the others. The thought of that one returns to me often even after all these years and moves me to empatía, because . . . well, Señor, as you see. The worst sufferers were those who had been burned by the exploding powder. Many of the San Patricios would have died of thirst th
at night, if the gift of that rain had not come, for them to collect and drink. Though some died of it from the chill. The Yanqui soldiers set to guard them resented such duty, and some prodded them with bayonets to add to their suffering. One soldier was heard to say to the prisoners, “Why don’t you try to escape, you filthy micks, then I would have an excuse to put this bayonet through your foul guts!” But the guard officers had their orders not to permit that to happen. Está milagro!

  At that time, of course, I was in the cadet barracks at Chapultepec four miles away, knowing only that Churubusco had fallen, and understanding that the last good defense south of Mexico City had fallen. Our anguish, in the academy, cannot be described.

  I did not yet know that General Scott’s losses on that day had so stunned him that, for the moment, he was afraid to go on and attack Mexico City. It was by good fortune that an emissary of your government, one Señor Trist, was with General Scott’s army. He had been in correspondence with English diplomats in Mexico City. An overture for a truce was brought down the road from Mexico City and presented to General Scott. Thus the negotiations for an interval of peace began, and two badly wounded armies, within five miles of one another, drew back to lick their wounds.

  We, the boy cadets up on the Citadel at Chapultepec, we knew only that the thunder and smoke of war had stopped, that a quietness had descended with the dusk upon the Valley of Mexico. We were left to wonder.

  What was to be the fate of our country?

  CHAPTER XXI

  PADRAIC QUINN’S DIARY

  San Angel, Mexico Sept. 5, 1847

  JOHN RILEY TODAY was sentenced to be hanged!

  A court-martial here sentenced him and 28 other deserters to hang four days from now. It will be done here. Gen. Twiggs is to oversee it. Probably because his troops captured them. And suffered the most casualties by the deserters’ cannons.

  That is a total of 70 of the San Patricios sentenced. The others were court-martialed up at Tacubaya and are to be hanged on Sept. 13th, with Col. Harney in charge of that execution.

  .... ...will probably enjoy it. He told Ma he wishes he could hang Riley himself. She said, “Maybe killing 43 will be so tiring you’ll be glad not to have another, Bill, dear. Mustn’t wear yourself out.” I can hope she will find him so repulsive as an executioner of Irishmen, she’ll leave him. She’s not forgot where she was born.

  I don’t know why Gen. Scott put Harney in charge of the hangings. They hate each other. Different politics, for one thing. Col. Harney says the general isn’t letting him hang Mister Riley for that very reason—that he hates him.

  Gen. Scott took advantage of the truce to get these courts-martial over with. The trials need a lot of officers, and this army is kind of short on officers because Mister Riley’s gunners killed so many of them.

  I wish I could have heard the trials. Only certain people could be there. I was outside where they tried him. He and the other prisoners were being guarded in a big dirty storehouse kind of place. Very heavy guard. I got to see him from a distance as they took him over to the court. They hadn’t let him wash or shave. Still had on his Mexican officer uniform, I guess so he couldn’t deny he had been fighting for Mexico. He was in chains, powder-smudged, had blood caked all over, his coat tattered, and a dirty, bloody bandage on the left side of his head. None of that kept him from walking proud, though. He was in there for hours. I saw them take him out and back to the prison building. He didn’t see me. Too many guards around him. There were some newspaper correspondents who came out and it was by following them and listening that I heard he had been found guilty. The correspondents were so satisfied that you would have thought he had killed somebody in their own family. They were making mockery of his testimony, from what I could hear, some yarn about the Mexicans capturing him when he went to Mass near Matamoros, and forced him to join them. I don’t know whether he actually told the court that, as his excuse, or if the correspondents were making it up. I saw Capt. Merrill and Capt. Chapman of his old 5th Regt. who had been in there as character witnesses but couldn’t get near them, either, for the correspondents and other officers all around.

  So then I just walked away from all that. Feeling so low I just can hardly bear it.

  My poor Ma & Col. Harney are up at Tacubaya, closer to Mexico City. That city sure is beautiful, with churches pointing up everywhere. There are Catholic churches in all these little towns, like this one here. I would go in and get my feelings in order, but all the churches are where the officers idle and smoke and have their officer meetings. Gen. Scott has the Bishop’s mansion.

  This truce is a strange thing, just about more than I can understand. Here these Armies have been killing each other and now they’re not. In fact, our Quartermaster company is allowed to take wagons into the city and buy grain and meat for our Army! In our part of the bargain, we don’t bother the farmers and ranchers going into the city with their stuff. Gen. Scott seems a shrewd man.

  Neither Army is permitted to make defensive or offensive improvements while the diplomats work out peace terms. But some of the Quartermaster troops say they saw the Mexicans hauling cannon batteries through the streets. Of course we’re cheating, too.

  A rumor is that one of the terms Gen. Santa Anna keeps demanding is that the San Patricios must be released back to him. Sure and that isn’t going to be done! It must work like that; you keep back at least one thing you know you can’t agree on, so that when you’re set to break down the truce, you bring that up to do it with. From all I’ve read and heard of politics, this truce thing is a kind of politics. I expect the war to start up again as soon as everybody’s rested and all the amputations and buryings caught up with, and all the cheating on the truce terms.

  There are officers who are mad at Gen. Scott for stopping for this truce just when we had broken the Mexicans and chased them into their capital. I hear officers say the whole war could have been finished off the day after Churubusco if Gen. Scott hadn’t stopped to negotiate. Then there are others who say if we had gone in after them, we’d all be dead by now.

  I don’t reckon those officers know what the President wants done, any better than I know. He did send down that ambassador. Gen. Scott knows things they don’t know. From what I’ve heard of him, he’s not one to think out loud. Some speculate he wants to go home and be put up for Presidency. But others say he wouldn’t have the job if you served it to him on a gold tray.

  The surgery is close by here and you can hear screaming most any time day or night. There’s a pile of arms and legs outside always black with flies. Yesterday a scrawny Mexican hound ran past me with a bloody hand in its mouth. Almost made me vomit. Made me wonder whether some cur ran off with mine after Buena Vista. Col. Harney was haranguing me the other evening when he was drunk as usual. Said I need only one hand for my one knack, pulling my inchworm. He really thought that was wit, and laughed till he nearly choked to death.

  San Angel, Mexico September 8, 1847

  END OF TRUCE!

  Bloody war started back up. Another 700 or 800 American casualties—all to capture a cannon foundry that existed only in a rumor! Another victory more costly than it was worth. And it didn’t get us any closer to winning Mexico City. Lt. Grant said another victory like these last two and we won’t have anybody left to occupy Mexico City.

  It got the Army’s spirits down low. Something else got them down about as bad. It’s another rumor, yet to be seen—that John Riley won’t hang tomorrow after all! Can’t say I’m depressed by that news. Here is the rumor:

  Gen. Scott being a lawyer by profession reviewed all the deserters’ court-martial verdicts. Law is, the penalty for desertion is death only if war has been declared. Mister Riley crossed the Rio Grande to Matamoros a whole month before Congress declared war! Most of the Army furious that the Arch Traitor won’t hang, while those who followed him and served under him will.

  A few others escape the noose for the same reason. Some for various other reasons perceived by Gen.
Scott.

  He is visited all day by Mexican officials and priests petitioning for him to pardon the deserters. And many women from round & about have come crowding to his headquarters to plead mercy for the San Patricios. The newspaper correspondents are angry about everything that is being done to save the “Irish Catholic turncoats.” I can innocently edge up next to any correspondent and any officer he is interviewing, and in half an hour I know the kind of impression the reporter’s story will aim to make upon his readers in America. They are gloating over the example of faithless, immoral, violent Irish Catholics that can be made by these trials. This confirms what their newspapers have been saying. Now I can see that Gen. Scott will pay dearly in public sentiment at home, for sparing John Riley the noose. Such scrupulous lawyering will assure that the Nativists in the United States will all be against him, even if he goes home the conqueror of Mexico.

  Even that is in doubt, after the futile bloodletting which took place this morning at the imaginary cannon foundry.