A Gallant Little Army

by Timothy D Johnson

  Meanwhile, the impetuous and foul-mouthed Davy Twiggs was struggling to bring up the rear with his division on the south side of the lakes. He heard when the firing erupted in Worth’s front and became impatient lest his chief rival get ahead of him in battlefield exploits. So he diligently pressed his men forward, hoping to get into position to join the fight, but his column was hopelessly snarled on the narrow road. Upon investigation, he discovered that the bottleneck was the result of a single broken-down wagon. Twiggs exploded with fury, and he shouted expletives until his face turned red. “Here I am . . . lying in the road, firing ahead and me unable to go on,” and all because of an “old waggon not worth two dollars.” He condemned the wagon to everlasting damnation, then yelled at the driver, “Why the hell don’t you throw it into the ditch?”20

  While these events unfolded on the eighteenth, Lee and Beauregard had been busy west of San Agustin. Along with Captain Philip Kearny’s First Dragoons and an infantry escort, they spent the day scouting along an old mule path that ran along the southern edge of the Pedregal. They pushed along until they came to the southwest edge of the lava field, and there they ascended a hill called Zacatepec, the highest point in the area. The excellent location gave them a clear view of the San Angel Road that they had heard locals talk about during the previous days. It came up from the south and ran through the villages of Contreras, Padierna, and San Angel, all the while skirting the western edge of the Pedregal before bending around its northern edge and running into the Acapulco Road. The two engineers immediately discerned Mexican soldiers moving along the road—not many, but enough to confirm an enemy presence west of the Pedregal. Looking straight ahead, or due west, they saw more Mexicans preparing a defensive position on the high ground behind the village of Padierna. Almost as quickly as the engineers appeared on the hill, a body of Mexican lancers opened fire on the dragoons that accompanied them. Despite the enemy’s greater number, Lieutenant Richard Ewell spurred his mount and led his platoon in an attack across the rugged terrain. After failing to swing around behind the lancers, the dragoons dismounted and fought as infantry until the enemy retreated. Then, having gathered all the information they needed, the Americans retired back to San Agustin.21

  The Mexican troops that Lee and Beauregard had seen belonged to General Gabriel Valencia, commander of the army of the north. Santa Anna had ordered him to take positions so as to block the American advance from San Agustin, which he had done. By the seventeenth, Valencia had wisely placed troops in San Angel to block a move on the western side of the Pedregal, but by the eighteenth, he was unwisely moving his men further south and away from the bulk of the Mexican army to a location near Padierna. Having chosen favorable high ground behind the town, he intended to dig in and create an impregnable defensive line. This was the activity that Lee and Beauregard had witnessed from Zacatepec, although they mistook Padierna for Contreras. It was a mistake that others repeated, and one that would permanently and inaccurately label the action at Padierna as the Battle of Contreras. By moving that far south, Valencia was somewhat isolated and would need cooperation from Santa Anna to successfully hold the San Angel Road. Such was impossible, for Santa Anna and Valencia disliked and distrusted each other. When Santa Anna realized the peril that Valencia had placed himself in, he ordered him, on the night of the eighteenth, to withdraw to San Angel. Valencia refused.22

  Fighting around the Pedregal. From Donald S. Frazier, ed., The United States and Mexico at War (New York: Macmillan, 1998). Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group.

  That night, Scott summoned his officers and engineers to discuss the army’s next move. He listened to the reports of his engineers, one by one. Mason argued for an assault on San Antonio, which he believed would be successful if infantry could pick their way through the eastern edge of the Pedregal and attack the enemy in flank. Lee believed that the path he had traveled that day could be widened, cleared, and made accessible to infantry and artillery. He argued for an advance to the San Angel Road, which was not as heavily defended, and an advance up the western side of the Pedregal. Scott relied heavily on his staff officers and engineers, and he considered their advice carefully, but he had learned to place particular weight on Lee’s assessment because of the captain’s skillful insights. According to Lieutenant Raphael Semmes of the navy, who was serving on Worth’s staff, Lee possessed “a mind which has no superior” among the engineers, and he “advised [Scott] with a judgment, tact, and discretion worthy of all praise. His talent for topography was peculiar, and he seemed to receive impressions intuitively, which it cost other men much labor to acquire.” But Scott did not dismiss Mason’s recommendation. In fact, he ordered work parties from Pillow’s division to cut a road along the southern edge of the lava field, but he issued no definitive orders about the direction the army would take. His desire was to turn the enemy at San Antonio, but he would wait to see how the situation developed.23

  Next day, several hundred men of Pillow’s division began work widening the mule path to Padierna into a road, while the remainder of the division, along with that of Twiggs, advanced to cover the work party. Meanwhile, Worth held his ground so as to threaten San Antonio, and Quitman unhappily sat idle at San Agustin, protecting the wagon train and supplies. Although the ground south of the Pedregal was rough and had occasional rock outcroppings, the work of improvising a road went well all morning. They had covered over a mile when Pillow received instructions from Scott. The commanding general had made his headquarters in a hotel in San Agustin, which was the tallest building in the town. From the roof, he had watched Pillow’s progress, and he also could see what the undulation of the ground hid from Pillow’s view. About a mile in front of the work detail, Scott observed enemy troops in the vicinity of Padierna, where Lee and Beauregard had seen the activity the day before. He warned Pillow that the Mexicans appeared to be gathered in strength in his front and directed him to avoid a general engagement so that the work on the road could be completed.24

  When the road work reached the vicinity of the hill called Zacatepec, Pillow ascended it and looked west, getting his first look at what lay beyond the Pedregal. For six hundred yards, the ground, broken by jagged rocks, crevices, and defiles, sloped steadily down to a ravine through which a swift stream passed, and running roughly adjacent to it was the San Angel Road. Hidden among the rock fissures were two hundred Mexicans, waiting to pick off American soldiers as they advanced. Upon reaching the ravine and the road, the lava rocks ended, but the terrain remained rugged. At the road stood the hamlet of Padierna, which the Americans repeatedly referred to as Contreras, and there Pillow could see enemy soldiers milling about. Beyond Padierna the ground sloped up gently, and several hundreds yards from the road—perhaps a mile from where Pillow stood—was the high ground that Valencia had so painstakingly fortified. There he had positioned twenty-two guns, including 16-pound and 24-pound artillery along with howitzers. Protecting the guns were seven thousand well-entrenched infantry along with many lancers. He considered his position unassailable, and it should have been. The rough, broken ground, with its deep ravines, made it impossible for cavalry and artillery to negotiate and exceedingly difficult for infantry to maneuver.25

  Pillow’s immediate concern was the Mexican skirmishers scattered among the rocks on the slope leading down to the San Angel Road. Fearing for the safety of his approaching work parties, he decided to try to push them back toward Padierna. So at about 1 o’clock in the afternoon, Pillow ordered Major William W. Loring’s Mounted Rifles forward to clear the enemy troops from his front. Two companies (dismounted) went into the rocks and crevices, exchanging musket fire with the Mexican skirmishers as Valencia opened fire with his artillery. Loring ordered three more of his companies forward, and after an extended skirmish, they succeeded in scattering the enemy and taking possession of not only the slope but of Padierna as well.26 To counter the Mexican artillery fire, Pillow began to feed more men into the fight, and he ordered Twiggs to hurry his divis
ion up the newly cut road, thus bringing on the general engagement that Scott had hoped to avoid. Pillow ordered artillery into the ravine to fire on Valencia’s position, and he needed Twiggs’s men to cover the guns and hold on to the town.

  Twiggs arrived at the front a half hour after Loring’s Rifles descended on Padierna, and he immediately sent Brigadier General Persifor Smith’s brigade down the slope to cover the guns that Pillow had ordered forward. At the same time, his other brigade under Colonel Bennet Riley turned northwest and began to cross the southwest edge of the Pedregal in an attempt to take up a blocking position between Valencia’s troops and San Angel. The artillery that Pillow brought up was Captain John Magruder’s battery from Twiggs’s division and from his own division, Lieutenant Franklin Callender’s mountain howitzers and a rocket company under Lieutenant Jesse Reno. Valencia laughed in disbelief when he received a report of American artillery pieces moving across the lava field. “The birds couldn’t cross that Pedregal,” he scoffed, but his demeanor changed when shells began to fall on his position.27

  The Voltigeurs had also come forward and were atop Zacatepec with General Pillow in the early afternoon. From this vantage point, Lieutenant William S. Walker, nephew of the Secretary of the Treasury, Robert J. Walker, could see for miles around. Looking north, he peered across the tall, jagged, black rock of the Pedregal and remarked to a fellow officer that it looked “like hell burnt out.” Beyond that and about seven miles away, he caught a glimpse of Mexico City “crowned with her antique towers.” Off to the west, fifteen hundred yards away, he could see the enemy works commanding the road down below. He watched as Twiggs’s division marched forward, “a forest of bayonets,” Smith’s men scurrying down the slope toward Padierna to provide cover for Magruder’s guns, and Riley’s troops angling off to the north and scattering as they worked their way over the deep crevices and through the rocks that jutted out of the ground, some as tall as a man. For a few brief moments, the Voltigeurs watched as the panorama of battle unfolded beneath them. Then their brigade commander, Brigadier General George Cadwalader, rode up with orders. Looking north along the road, Pillow had seen Mexican reinforcements coming down from San Angel, and he wanted Cadwalader to take his brigade through the Pedregal and join Riley’s troops beyond the road near San Geronimo. Cadwalader, turning to his men, shouted, “Voltigeurs, I am going to lay out something for you to do! Will you do it?” Straightway he ordered them to follow Riley’s brigade through the Pedregal and join that unit along the San Angel Road.28

  It was after 2:30 P.M. when Cadwalader began his flanking move with the Voltigeurs and more than an hour after Riley’s brigade started across the Pedregal. Most accounts portray Riley’s flank march that afternoon as Gideon Pillow’s initiative because he was the one who issued the order. However, Lieutenant Isaac Stevens of the engineers claimed that he himself pressed on Twiggs the need to flank the Mexicans to the north or on Valencia’s left. “Attack his left, you cut him off from his reserves,” Stevens said to Twiggs. The general concurred with the engineer’s assessment. Stevens then went to Riley and personally delivered Twiggs’s orders for him to cut the road north of Padierna. Pillow later heaped praise on himself for the tactical genius he supposedly displayed on this day, while the veteran Twiggs remained angry for being subordinated to an inexperienced politico. As a major general, Pillow was the senior officer and technically in charge of the operations, and he certainly was aware of all the troops’ movements. However, if Isaac Stevens’s account is accurate, after the battle commenced, Pillow was more an observer than an innovator.29

  Magruder and his comrades accomplished the impossible by getting their guns down the rugged slope and into position along the San Angel Road while under fire from the enemy guns. Major James Smith, the supervising engineer, had suggested putting the artillery in the ravine as the best possible location to shield them from enemy fire. However, it was Captain Lee, who had been directing the road work all morning and had actually gone forward with the first two companies of Rifles, who charted a path for the artillery and found the most favorable location for the guns. When Magruder arrived with his four-gun battery, he sent two of the guns to the left under Lieutenant Preston Johnston and the other two up the road to the right under Lieutenant Thomas Jackson. Between those two positions, he placed Callender’s little howitzers. The American artillery was decidedly outmatched by the heavier and more numerous Mexican guns, and they quickly began to take a beating. Jackson realized that his guns were having little effect on the enemy, but although his men were falling all around, he never considered withdrawing.30

  The infantry fared no better. “The enemy cannon caused much destruction in our ranks,” wrote Guy Carleton, “and grape shot flew about us at a terrible rate.” Lieutenant George McClellan had two horses shot from under him on this portion of the battlefield that afternoon. Some men became pinned down among the lava rocks, while others made it to the ravine and crossed the road and the stream, only to get stuck on the far bank, unable to go farther. Their instincts told them to push forward and attack the enemy position on the hill, but the advance became completely stalled.31

  Lee was still with the artillery an hour later when young Preston, the nephew of Colonel Joseph E. Johnston, fell mortally wounded. A solid shot had taken off his leg, and he died a few hours later. Magruder ordered Jackson to move left, locate Johnston’s two guns, and take command. However, the deadly duel did not last much longer. The mountain howitzers were soon knocked out, and Smith’s infantry could not get across the ravine to directly threaten the enemy position. Smith, seeing that a direct approach would not work, began to move the majority of his brigade off to the right as Magruder tried to provide covering fire with his guns. Soon Magruder pulled his own men back to safety. An officer in the Rifle Regiment asserted that the casualties around Padierna and the consequent American withdrawal resulted from “the shameful mismanagement of the fool Pillow.” Lieutenant D. H. Hill, whose negative opinion of Pillow predated the battle, thought that “of all the absurd things that the ass Pillow has ever done this was the most silly. Human stupidity can go no farther than this, the ordering of six and twelve pounders to batter a Fort garnished with long sixteens, twenty-fours and heavy mortars!!”32

  When Scott saw that a full-scale battle was developing in Pillow’s front, he made ready to go there himself. The ever-ready Quitman also wanted to follow the sound of the guns, so he went to Scott and said that his passive assignment guarding the supply train had “cast a gloom” over his men. He protested that the volunteers had not been given an opportunity to distinguish themselves since the campaign began. But his protests were a bit too harsh, and when an agitated Scott “showed considerable excitement,” Quitman apologized and excused himself. Before leaving San Agustin, however, Scott changed his mind and ordered Brigadier General James Shields’s brigade of Quitman’s division to reinforce Pillow. It was some time after 2 o’clock when Scott headed west to find Pillow.33

  Meanwhile, Riley’s and Cadwalader’s brigades struggled to work their way through the hazardous Pedregal. In and out of ravines they went, jumping from rock to rock, scrambling to keep their feet under them, all producing “considerable fatigue.” As they reached the western side of this maze of rocks, they filtered out and crossed the San Angel Road near San Geronimo. The units had become badly scattered and separated while picking their way through the rocks, and the first group to emerge numbered perhaps four hundred. They were on Valencia’s flank and in position to cut him off from the capital and the rest of Santa Anna’s army. However, when they looked north, they discovered that their situation was more perilous than Valencia’s, for eight hundred yards away, they saw an endless column of Mexicans, infantry and lancers, advancing toward them. The force, seven thousand strong and commanded by Santa Anna himself, was on its way from San Angel to reinforce Valencia at Padierna. The Americans, although greatly outnumbered, were resigned to their fate and determined to fight. They quickly and quie
tly wheeled about and formed for battle while the Mexicans prepared to attack. As their bugles blew, the Mexican soldiers shouted and cheered, but across the way, the Americans, with only a few hundred men, held their position in cold, determined silence.34

  Santa Anna’s menacing force grew as his lines formed. About half a mile separated the two sides, but the imposing Mexican lines stretched across a seven-hundred-yard front. The lancers were in formation across a ridge, and in front of them, in their multicolored uniforms, were several thousand infantry. Two coincidences probably prevented a Mexican attack and saved the small band of Americans from being cut to pieces. One was the fact that as they hastily formed into battle lines, their left happened to extend into an orchard, which partially obscured the weakness of their numbers. The other occurred only moments later when additional U.S. troops arrived—those of Persifor Smith’s brigade.

  After being stymied earlier in the afternoon while supporting Magruder’s guns in front of Padierna, Smith had taken it upon himself to move most of his brigade north in an attempt to outflank Valencia. Guided by Captain Lee, Smith’s men began to work their way through the edge of the Pedregal in search of a safe place to pop out of the rocks and cross the road. When they did so near San Geronimo, they could see the Mexican force gathering to the north, so Smith got them across the road and stream and hustled them to the outskirts of the village just in time to help ward off Santa Anna’s attack. The isolated little band was relieved to see not only the additional troops but also Smith, the Princeton-educated lawyer turned soldier. Popular and respected, Smith had won a brevet to brigadier general at the Battle of Monterey the previous year and would be breveted major general for his conduct on this day. Beauregard believed that Smith possessed skill and judgment that was second only to Scott’s, and some of Riley’s men reportedly cried when they learned that Smith had joined them. Confidence rose as the remnants of Riley’s and Cadwalader’s brigades continued to arrive, along with the Fifteenth Infantry Regiment from Brigadier General Franklin Pierce’s brigade ordered over to San Geronimo in midafternoon. As the senior officer on the field, Smith now commanded the bulk of three brigades totaling 3,300 men.35