A Gallant Little Army

by Timothy D Johnson

  For the time being, the Americans lost sight of their original goal of attacking Valencia’s left flank. Necessity forced them to focus their attention on the larger body of Mexicans to their north. Although the Mexicans had opted not to attack, they remained in position half a mile away with their bands playing and soldiers yelling. At one point, Santa Anna came out on horseback and pranced back and forth in front of his lines with his staff in tow. “We calculated upon a fight to a certainty, but were disappointed,” remembered Walker. After Smith sized up the situation, he made preparations to take the offensive. Riley’s brigade would swing around and attack Santa Anna on the left, while Cadwalader hit him on the right. However, by the time all was ready, it was late in the afternoon, and with darkness approaching, Smith ordered his men simply to maintain their defensive posture. At dusk, Santa Anna left his lancers and artillery in place but withdrew the rest of his force to the comforts of San Angel.36

  It was about 4:00 in the afternoon when an angry Scott arrived on the western edge of the Pedregal and joined Pillow atop Zacatepec. In violation of Scott’s orders, Pillow had brought on a battle, and as historian James W. Pohl described it, he had gotten “himself in a box.” A frontal assault on Valencia’s fortified and concentrated position violated the precepts of warfare, of which Pillow was ignorant. However, because Pillow was who he was, Scott did not reprimand him. Beauregard thought that Pillow had mismanaged the affair all afternoon, that the situation was “confusion worse confounded,” and that by the time Scott arrived, the army was facing a “crisis.” Scott, however, did not seem overly alarmed, and for several minutes, he calmly surveyed his surroundings with a discerning eye. According to Beauregard, “he beheld in dismay his forces in the d—dest scattertion that perhaps he or any other general ever saw before.”37 He could see the remnants of American units sprinkled across his front among the rocks all the way down to the ravine and Valencia’s imposing position beyond Padierna. Scanning right, he saw the wooded area that hid San Geronimo, where three of his brigades sat isolated. He knew that the enemy was in force around San Angel and that the road through that town and on to Coyoacán was the key to turning the enemy out of San Antonio. He also knew that a large portion of his army was in something of a vice at San Geronimo, sitting between two enemy forces, each of which was stronger than the Americans between them. The potential for disaster was great.

  Great generals can bend events to their will and turn adverse circumstances into a positive outcome. Combat is always tense for a commander, but Scott showed no fear as he soberly examined the disposition of the troops and decided what needed to be done. Indeed, he saw the situation as a possible opportunity, so he ordered Brigadier General James Shields’s brigade from Quitman’s division to cross the Pedregal and join the other three brigades. He hoped that the additional numbers would provide the San Geronimo force with adequate strength to ensure its security while preventing reinforcements from reaching Valencia. Scott knew how to create situations on the battlefield that were most likely to lead to success, and he also knew his opponent and what he could get away with—a skill at which Lee would excel in the Civil War. Before returning to his headquarters at San Agustin, the commanding general promised to send Worth’s and the remainder of Quitman’s divisions in the morning to help force the issue with Valencia, and finally he suggested to Pillow that he and Twiggs might want to proceed over to San Geronimo and join their troops.38

  After dark, Generals Smith and Cadwalader met with Captain Lee in San Geronimo to plan their next move. A steady rain had begun to fall, making it a miserable and unusually dark night. Smith knew that he could not just sit until dawn and react to whatever his opponent did; rather, he needed to take the initiative. Engineers had been reconnoitering the area around the village, and they reported that a ravine to the south appeared to lead to the rear of Valencia’s position. Armed with this valuable information, Smith knew what to do. In the middle of the night, he would march his troops around Valencia’s force and attack it in the rear at dawn, hoping to defeat Valencia quickly, before the San Angel force to the north could respond. It was a move forced out of desperation. A demonstration by the troops that remained in front of Padierna would be most beneficial to Smith’s plans if only he could get word to Scott. So Lee volunteered to work his way back through the Pedregal and report Smith’s plan to the commanding general, and at 8:00 P.M., he set out with a few other men. In the Pedregal, he ran into men of Shields’s brigade, who were on their way to reinforce Smith. They had left San Agustin at 3:00 that afternoon and were, as Private William Johnson put it, working their way “through the confines of Purgitory . . . [in an] incesant Rain.” Lee assigned one of his comrades to direct Shields back to San Geronimo before continuing his trek through the sharp rocks. In the blackness of the night, he was guided by an occasional glimpse of Zacatepec afforded by unpredictable flashes of lightning. That Lee was able to navigate the broken terrain in pitch darkness, feeling his way among the rocks, was remarkable.39

  Meanwhile, Santa Anna had missed his best opportunity to inflict a damaging blow on Scott’s army. Combined with Valencia’s force, he had over 13,000 men west of the Pedregal with which he could have crushed the 3,300 or so Americans at San Geronimo. But Santa Anna let the opportunity slip away, he declined to attack on his own, and he gave up on trying to link his column with Valencia’s. After falling back to San Angel with the bulk of his troops, Santa Anna ordered Valencia to march north with his Padierna force and join him. But Valencia was full of himself on the night of the nineteenth, thinking that he had won a spectacular victory that afternoon. He refused to obey. Valencia tried in vain to get Santa Anna to do something about the Americans lodged at San Geronimo, but the Mexican commander opted to remain inactive, leaving his subordinate to fend for himself. Two enormous egos that refused to cooperate with each other would spell disaster for the Mexicans at daybreak.40

  Scott’s headquarters at San Agustin was a buzz of activity late into the night. His concern for the 40 percent of his army at San Geronimo induced him to send several staff officers through the Pedregal in an effort to ascertain their situation. None of them could find their way through, but late in the evening, Lee arrived and outlined Smith’s plan to attack Valencia from the rear. Scott liked what he heard, gave his approval, and promised to provide the necessary diversion in front of Padierna at dawn. Sometime after Lee arrived, Twiggs and Pillow also showed up, having failed in an attempt to comply with Scott’s desire for them to join their troops at San Geronimo. At dusk, Pillow had approached Isaac Stevens of the engineers and asked, “in much perplexity,” to be guided across the lava field to San Geronimo. Stevens, however, was unable to comply, so Pillow and Twiggs struck out on their own. The darkness made it impossible for them to know where they were going, and the rain made for slippery footing on the jagged rocks. Twiggs fell in one of the crevices, injuring his foot, and to add insult to injury, they got lost. At length they decided to retrace their steps back to Zacatepec, and from there, they made their way to San Agustin.41

  It was after midnight when Scott sent orders for Worth to be ready to move his men before daylight in clockwise motion around the Pedregal toward Padierna. If Smith’s night march and dawn attack worked, he wanted Worth’s division in striking distance to exploit circumstances. Scott then ordered the indefatigable Lee to go to the far end of the Pedregal and prepare Pierce’s brigade and the remains of various units for the dawn diversionary attack in Valencia’s front, and he directed Twiggs to accompany him. It was 1:00 A.M. when Lee, assisting the crippled Twiggs, left San Agustin.

  Scott instructed Pillow to remain at headquarters for the night. From Pillow’s perspective, it was probably a well-deserved opportunity for rest, but from Scott’s view, it was likely just a diplomatic way of keeping Pillow out of the way when the real action started. Scott tried to handle Polk’s friend with great care and tried to make him feel important without giving him too much responsibility. Everyone knew tha
t Pillow was the president’s informant, so there was a price to pay by having him with the army and staying on favorable terms. Thus far, Scott had managed the situation admirably. He had given Pillow an important but secondary role at Cerro Gordo, away from the decisive action. He had included Pillow in important conferences like the discussion regarding the bribery scheme. Clearly if Scott and Trist had pursued that course of action, the commanding general needed the cover that Pillow’s acquiescence would provide. And just that morning, Scott had given the Tennessean an important role in preparing a road for the army’s advance, but with instructions to avoid a general engagement. Now that a battle was in the offing, Scott successfully but gingerly removed Pillow from a crucial decision-making role.

  It was a miserable night, difficult for sleeping. In Worth’s division in front of San Antonio, word arrived of an American defeat that afternoon at Padierna. The same false reports had made it into the Mexican ranks along the San Antonio line, prompting cheers and celebration that kept John Sedgwick of the Second Artillery, and doubtless many other Americans, awake all night. Across the Pedregal, Twiggs, limping and exhausted, sat down near Zacatepec to rest, leaving a sleepless Lee to organize Pierce’s brigade, a portion of the Mounted Rifles, and the remains of Magruder’s battery for their dawn attack in Valencia’s front. There men huddled together in the open with the cold rain beating down on them. Lieutenant Thomas Jackson was among them. He had received his baptism by fire that day and impressed both Magruder and Twiggs with his coolness in the heat of battle. Although it would be fourteen years before he would acquire the nickname “Stonewall,” that was an apt description of his conduct in front of Padierna on August 19. He spent that night drenched to the bone, worrying that “the fire would not be hot enough for me to distinguish myself.” At San Geronimo, some of the men found shelter in the village, but others remained outdoors. John Wilkins of the Third Infantry found it impossible to sleep in the downpour. He and Israel Bush Richardson shared a blanket that night. First they put it under them so that they would not have to lie on the wet ground, but it quickly became soaked. Then they put it on top of them, seeking protection and warmth, but it provided neither. The night was full of misery for American soldiers all around the Pedregal, but back in San Agustin, Gideon Pillow slid into a soft, dry bed and went to sleep.42

  chapter ten

  The Battle of the Pedregal

  Padierna and Churubusco

  The road and its vicinity on both sides, for most of the three miles, were covered with dead and dying, bodies without heads, arms and legs, and disfigured in every horrible way! Oh, it was awful and never can I forget this day!

  —Ralph Kirkham, Sixth Infantry Regiment

  The rain continued to beat down on the weary soldiers at San Geronimo, but some had dozed off when their officers came around to awaken them at 2:00 A.M. They had hunkered down a few hours earlier cold, wet, and hungry, and without any knowledge of General Smith’s plan for a dawn attack. Warren Lothrop of the Company of Engineers was roused by his lieutenant, who told him that the enemy guns had “to be taken before Sunrise.” As Lothrop cleared his head, he “thought of home & then thought of what I was A going to do & . . . I thought of my musket & put on A new cap.” Captain Moses Barnard of the Voltigeurs was awakened when his sergeant shook him and told him to get up: “the troops are moving off by the left flank.” Quickly and quietly, men in wet uniforms arose, got their soaked gear together, and prepared to march as word of Smith’s intentions filtered through the ranks.1

  When Smith had decided the previous evening to attack Valencia’s force to the south, he worried most about Santa Anna to the north. He anticipated that Santa Anna would return to San Geronimo and attack at dawn—maybe earlier. So Smith had taken precautions. He posted pickets so close to the enemy lines that they could hear voices from their camp all night. He also sent the First Artillery to occupy a hacienda that was favorably positioned to defend the road, and during the night, the unit captured over a dozen enemy soldiers who tried to pass. General James Shields’s arrival during the evening had eased his mind, for now Shields’s New York and South Carolina volunteer regiments would remain at San Geronimo and cover the back of Smith’s flanking column. Shields’s men would also be in position, should Smith’s attack succeed in routing Valencia’s troops, to block their retreat north to San Angel.2 Perhaps the greatest contribution that Shields made that evening, however, was his agreement to allow Smith, his junior in rank, to retain command and see his plan through to completion. The Mexican army failed because its senior officers did not coordinate and cooperate, but the American army succeeded because its senior officers did.

  The march to their point of attack began around 3:00 A.M., but it was a difficult undertaking. Bennett Riley’s brigade (Second Infantry, Seventh Infantry, Fourth Artillery) led the way because his men—about a thousand—constituted the main assault group. George Cadwalader’s brigade (Eleventh Infantry, Fourteenth Infantry, Voltigeurs) followed Riley’s, but because his regiments consisted largely of raw recruits, his men were slow to move. Finally Smith’s brigade, temporarily commanded by Major Justin Dimick, brought up the rear. The extreme darkness made it difficult to keep the units together. It was “darker than any night I had every seen,” remembered Barnard. “The night was black as a wolf’s mouth,” thought William Walker, and “You could not recognize a man a yard off.” Lieutenant D. H. Hill recalled that it was “scarcely possible to see the hand before the face.” Footing was treacherous as well. The muddy ground was slippery, and in some places, water was ankle deep. “Silently we moved off plunging into mud & water at every step,” remembered Barnard. Another described the clay under foot in the trough of the ravine that was as slippery as “soft soap.” Major John Gardner of Riley’s brigade summarized the difficulties of the march in his battle report: “the darkness of the night, the flooding rain, the clayey and precipitous nature of the ground, and the intricacies of the way baffled the best intentions.” Despite the obstacles, the ridges and ravines concealed their march.3

  To try to keep the ranks closed, Smith ordered the men to stay “within touch of each other,” and that worked pretty well except when someone allowed too much distance to come between himself and the person in front. When that happened in the Fourth Artillery Regiment, an entire company got separated from the rest of the brigade. Cadwalader’s slow start created a space between his brigade and Riley’s, which resulted in some of his men losing their way. An engineer had to be detached to find them and put them back on track. The entire column was guided by the engineers, who had already been over the ground, with Lieutenant Zealous Tower taking the lead. The troops were halted on a few occasions, either to close gaps in the line or to allow the guides to get their bearings, and during those delays, some soldiers took the opportunity to remove damp charges from their muskets and replace them with fresh loads. Quietly and slowly, they continued their march around the Mexican left at a distance of eight hundred yards until they were directly behind them.4

  The eastern sky was beginning to turn gray, and a light fog had replaced the rain as Smith’s men neared their designated position for attack. But despite their stealth, their movements had not gone undetected. Mexican cavalry commander General Anastasio Torréjon had discovered and reported movement on the flank several hours earlier. Valencia had responded by detaching a strong force of infantry to face the rear “several hundred yards” from his main works, but surprisingly, he failed to assign pickets to the ravines and ridges that led to the back of his camp. He may have suspected that something was afoot, but by failing to take proper precautions, he ensured that the American attack would remain a surprise.5

  It was daylight when Riley’s men formed into two ranks in their concealed position, and after checking their muskets and taking off their knapsacks to lighten their load, they turned left to face east. The Voltigeurs and other units from Cadwalader’s brigade got into position to follow Riley’s first wave and support his right
flank. Because Dimick’s brigade (Smith’s) brought up the rear, it was further north, but in an ideal position to come in on Riley’s left. While the troops were aligning themselves, Smith had gone to the top of a nearby ridge, where he could see the enemy in his front. From there, he saw the detachment facing in his direction about halfway between his line and Valencia’s main force, so he directed the Rifles along a concealed route to a flanking position near the Mexican detachment. Meanwhile, a mile to the east, beyond the Mexican position, the men of Pierce’s brigade had been active for over an hour. They had scurried down the long, rocky slope of the Pedregal and were already drawing Valencia’s attention toward Padierna.

  All was ready at 6:00 A.M., and Smith ordered Riley’s men up out of the ravine, where they remained momentarily, still shielded by a rise in the terrain. Then they proceeded forward until they were “in full view of the enemy.” The Mexican advanced detachment fired a volley at them, only to be surprised when men of Major William W. Loring’s Rifle Regiment rose from behind a ridge on their flank and fired at them from fifty yards. Riley’s men also fired a volley at them, and they immediately broke to the rear to rejoin the main force. By now Riley’s and Loring’s men were in a full charge but still two or three hundred yards from their objective. “We rushed on to them yelling like so many Devils,” Lothrop recalled. Two hundred yards behind them were the men of Cadwalader’s brigade, who made up the second attack wave.6