A Gallant Little Army

by Timothy D Johnson

  Back on the south side of the river, Twiggs’s men remained in a bloody stalemate with the convent garrison. Captain Taylor had been compelled to withdraw his crippled battery after a daring duel. Here and there, small groups of Americans attempted to crawl forward through the cornfield to gain some advantage, but the enemy fire was deadly and constant. Lieutenant Don Carlos Buell fought with the Third Infantry in the cornfields just west of the convent. Buell, a “robust” man with a “vigorous physique,” was known as a strict disciplinarian who often tested his soldiers at night while they did guard duty by seeing how close he could get before they demanded the countersign. If he succeeded in getting close without being challenged, he would jerk the musket out of the guard’s hands and give him a tongue-lashing for his carelessness. On this day, Buell was unable to get close to the Mexican line because he was seriously wounded in the chest.37 The fire of the San Patricios under John Riley’s leadership was not only constant but also accurate and effective. Remembering their harsh treatment in the American army, they exacted revenge by taking careful aim at the dark-coated officers in the cornfield.

  Both sides attempted to break the stalemate at the convent by outflanking their opponent along the riverbank. Twiggs sent portions of Riley’s brigade toward the river in a futile effort to flank the Mexican right, only to find the fighting in that quarter just as hot. Riley’s Second Infantry was hit particularly hard, as evidenced by descriptions offered by three of its lieutenants. As Joseph R. Smith and seven of his men tried to inch their way forward, they came under heavy fire but stubbornly refused to withdraw. Only one of them would escape the battle uninjured. Smith was hit twice—in the hip and the left elbow. The ball that entered the elbow shattered the joint, and although he would later succeed in talking the surgeon out of amputation, he was disabled for life. John Wilkins described this part of the battle four days later in a letter to his mother: “such showers of lead & Iron I have never before heard.” Another, Nathaniel Lyon, described his advance amid the corn as “necessarily blind and confused.” Twice the Mexican defenders attempted their own flanking move. Several hundred emerged from their concealed positions around the convent and, under cover of the cornstalks, tried to make their way around Twiggs’s left, but both times they were beaten back.38

  It was on Worth’s front that the stalemate was finally broken. However, it was Scott’s decision to stretch his lines north with Pierce’s and Shields’s flanking move that made Worth’s breakthrough possible. The attack north of the river had not gone particularly well and had become bogged down around the hacienda Portales. Indeed, the behavior of many of Shields’s men cowering around the ranch buildings was suspect, and one observer described the New York volunteers who lodged themselves “behind a large building and fence, a position many of them did not quit till the enemy were out of Sight.”39 Nevertheless, the presence of American forces north of the river had forced Santa Anna to take men from the bridgehead to help defend his line of retreat. Worth then complicated Santa Anna’s situation by getting some of his men across the river to the east of the road. The Mexican defenders had fought courageously for over two hours, but with constant and determined concentric pressure applied by the Americans, their line finally broke in midafternoon.

  At about 3 o’clock, after being pinned down in a cornfield to the right of the road for almost two hours, Captain James V. Bomfield of the Eighth Infantry sprang to his feet and started forward. Instantly, Lieutenant James Longstreet jumped up and followed with the regimental colors in his hands. Others followed their example until the entire Fifth and Eighth Regiments of Clarke’s brigade became the spearhead of a general assault on the tête de pont. They splashed through the water-filled trench in front, scaled the parapet by climbing on the shoulders of comrades, and, in the words of one staff officer, “put their muskets in the very faces of the Mexicans.” After a sharp handto-hand fight, they finally seized the stronghold, and Longstreet planted the regiment’s flag atop the walls. Ralph Kirkham of the Sixth Infantry informed his wife that “the troops behaved splendidly, and the wonder is how they had courage enough to storm a fort which poured such an excessive fire upon them.” As the defenders took flight toward the capital, the Americans turned one of the captured 4-pounders to the southwest and opened an enfilading fire on the convent.40

  Duncan at last succeeded in moving his battery forward to a position on the road so as to fire at the same obstinate defenders. For another twenty minutes, the San Patricios, knowing what their fate would be as captured deserters, stubbornly continued to fight. Duncan’s guns quickly knocked out three of John Riley’s pieces; then a round ignited the remaining powder in the convent, killing several of his gunners. Americans, primarily of the Third Infantry, began to pour into the courtyard, clubbing and bayoneting those defenders who were unable to make it inside the church. Now the San Patricios and their Mexican comrades barricaded themselves inside the building, and when American troops battered down the door, they unleashed a deadly volley of musketry. As the defenders worked their way to the second floor, one of the Mexicans raised a white flag, but another one pulled it down. A second and third time, Mexican soldiers tried to surrender, only to have the white flags torn down by other members of the San Patricios Brigade. In the midst of this hand-to-hand carnage, which packed the upstairs corridor, Captain James Smith of the Third Infantry waved his handkerchief and yelled at his men to stop the bloodbath. The fighting ceased, and a wounded and exhausted Riley, along with his companions in arms, slumped to the floor.41

  North of the river, reinforcements arrived as Pierce and Shields were organizing their brigades for another effort to take the road. They ordered their units forward through the cornfield, and the fight was just becoming hot when Mexican troops began to fall back and join their comrades, who were by that time streaming north along the road. Worth’s men were crossing the river at several points, in full pursuit of Santa Anna’a retreating army. After an intense and bloody battle that lasted over two hours, the capture of the tête de pont had caused the Mexican line to disintegrate, and the northern flight that started just after dawn at Padierna now resumed in earnest toward the capital. After having their flank attack blunted and finally mustering the courage to try again, the men of Pierce’s and Shields’s brigades now could only watch as the enemy disappeared up the road.

  Soon Captain Phil Kearny rushed by with members of his First Dragoons—and what a fine-looking set of horsemen they were, all mounted on gray steeds. Kearny “went dashing by with rein in one hand & drawn sword in the other his head was bent to his saddle low & his eye flashing fire.” The glorious scene created a temptation that Major Frederick D. Mills could not resist. A native of Connecticut, Mills was a member of the Fifteenth Infantry in Pierce’s brigade. He had just shared with his sergeant a drink from his flask when the dragoons galloped by, and he impetuously decided to join the pursuit. The sergeant, knowing that Mills was not a good horseman and that his horse was “rather vicious,” begged him not to go. “You have done your duty, let the Dragoons attend to theirs, stay with the Regiment,” the sergeant implored, but Mills said, “No I am bound to go!” Then, after saying something about capturing Santa Anna, he jumped on his horse and joined the chase.42

  The infantry pursued for two miles before Scott ordered them to stop. Most of the mounted soldiers heeded the bugle call to halt, but Kearny, Lieutenant Richard Ewell, and several others galloped on toward the San Antonio garita, a fortified gate at the southern entrance to Mexico City. There the retreating foe had placed a battery, and Kearny, along with his handful of rash dragoons, were determined to charge the enemy guns. As the horsemen approached the gate, even riding past Mexican infantry who were trying to get to the safety of the city, the gunners unleashed a volley that killed their own men as well as some of the Americans. Ewell had a horse shot from under him for the second time that day, and grapeshot mangled Kearny’s left arm.43

  As for Major Mills, his fate was unknown. His strong
, powerful, and spirited horse was reportedly one of the finest in the army. He accompanied the dragoons right up to the city gate, and according to witnesses, his horse leaped over the Mexican works. Because none of the other horses could accomplish such a feat, Mills found himself alone, slashing with his saber before he was overcome by both soldiers and civilians. There were rumors that he actually got close to Santa Anna’s carriage just inside the city wall. He was wounded and captured, but what happened after that has remained a mystery. His friends held to the hope that he was a prisoner inside the city, but they tried in vain to discover his fate. Stories persisted that he had been either run through with a lance after surrendering or that he was killed and his body mutilated. Mills, a thirty-year-old lawyer, was a graduate of Yale who had joined the army only because friends had talked him into it.44

  Some of the same soldiers who had marveled as Kearny bolted north toward the city were stunned to see him an hour later returning “with his arm dangling by his side.” A surgeon amputated it near the shoulder. The fearless trooper had studied cavalry tactics in France and had fought with the French army in Algiers, earning the nickname “Kearny the Magnificent.” He and his companion, Richard Ewell, who rode together up the causeway that day, as if daring the Mexicans to shoot them, would both rise to the rank of general officer but on opposite sides in the Civil War. In the Second Bull Run Campaign in 1862, Ewell would lose a leg fighting for the South, and Kearny would lose his life fighting for the North.45

  Grisly scenes were everywhere in the battle’s aftermath. Areas all around the Pedregal had been killing fields during the battle’s various stages: the terrain surrounding Padierna, the road that ran along its western edge to San Angel, the area where Colonel Clarke’s brigade smashed into Bravo’s retreating column on the northeast side of the Pedregal, and farther north around the convent and the bridgehead. Corpses, both Mexican and American, were strewn for miles, as were the wounded. For Ralph Kirkham, the sight of “bodies without heads, arms and legs, and disfigured in every horrible way . . . was awful” and unforgettable. One American soldier who had his leg “nearly severed took his knife & completed the amputation.” Another who had been wounded in the foot and left behind by his friends crawled on hands and knees and hopped on one foot until he rejoined his unit at 10 o’clock that night. One of the Voltigeurs recalled that even before the battle ended, a wounded sergeant was calmly smoking a cigar while being carried off the battlefield in a “hand barrow” with bullets flying about.46

  At the San Mateo Convent, the dirty, ragged remnants of the San Patricios Battalion stood segregated from the other one thousand prisoners taken in and around the church. Captain Smith had to step in front of his men to prevent them from bayoneting the deserters on the spot. Customarily, an opponent who “fought like devils,” as the Irishmen did at Churubusco, would elicit grudging respect from their foe, but these traitors won no such admiration, especially when captured Mexicans confirmed that the artillerists indeed had been taking aim at the American officers. Word quickly spread through the army that the San Patricios prisoners had exacted a heavy toll that afternoon. “These wretches served the guns . . . and with fatal effect, upon . . . their former comrades,” reported General Worth.47

  The price had been high for the Americans—higher than in the two previous engagements combined. Out of 8,500 engaged, 137 were killed and 877 wounded. The casualties resulted from a stubborn Mexican defense in the afternoon, which their strong position made possible. As the day wore on, Santa Anna’s lines constricted into a tightly packed defensive position from which they were able to deliver concentrated firepower. It was not the kind of fight Scott would have chosen, but in the day’s fluid movements, it was the way the battle evolved. Still, the advantage that Santa Anna’s position afforded was insufficient to bring him a much-needed victory, and ultimately his casualties were significantly higher: out of 25,000 engaged, over 4,000 were killed and wounded and 2,700 captured, including eight generals and 200 other officers. The Americans also captured thirty-seven artillery pieces, a large quantity of muskets and ammunition, and hundreds of wagons. After the day’s battle, and despite the heavy losses, Scott was in “fine spirits.”48 The day had been long and the fighting bloody, but the result was another one-sided victory.

  In the fighting around the Pedregal, Scott conducted affairs in his customary style. He put his army in the most favorable situation possible, and when he was not present, he gave his subordinates the latitude to make decisions based on circumstances. However, the commanding general was never far from the front, issuing orders, seizing opportunities, and capitalizing on enemy mistakes. And his men noted his omnipresence on the battlefield. John Wilkins recounted how surprised the troops were to see how Scott held up under the rigors of the campaign. The general “always reconnoiters with his engineers, examines for himself, is always about on the field of battle & ever ready to take . . . [any] advantages offered.” After almost four decades of reflection, Ulysses S. Grant remembered in his Memoirs that the “strategy and tactics displayed by General Scott in these various engagements of the 20th of August, 1847, were faultless as I look upon them now after the lapse of so many years.” The one thing that Wilkins did not get entirely correct, as far as the fighting around Churubusco is concerned, is the failure to conduct exhaustive reconnaissance.49

  The fighting courage of the army’s rank and file warrants acknowledgment. Ultimately, as at Cerro Gordo, once the armies were positioned and the battle joined, it became a soldier’s fight, and victory or defeat hinged on the conduct of lone soldiers or small groups as well as the execution of orders at the company and regimental levels. Many acts of individual bravery are recorded in correspondence and diaries, but no doubt many more are unknown and lost to history. Forlorn Mexican soldiers tried to explain in letters why the Americans, with only a third as many men, succeeded in such a desperate conflict. One wrote that “We trusted for safety to our numbers,” but another concluded that “valor is superior to numbers.” Captain Lee was impressed with the day’s success, and he wrote home to his wife explaining how it was accomplished: “The whole was done with the bayonet. . . . [and] Santa Anna’s force melted away.” Perhaps it was a lesson too well learned by the Virginian, for he later would rely on the bayonet on numerous Civil War battlefields after the rifled musket had rendered it obsolete as an effective shock weapon.50

  Soldiers will risk all if they believe their commander to be worth such sacrifice. Faith in the general’s competence and trust in his judgment mean everything on the field of battle. In the same letter in which Wilkins described Scott’s movements around the battlefield, he went on to write about the pride Scott felt for his men and how confident they were in his abilities. “General Scott has the entire confidence of the whole army and is more popular by far than ‘Old Zack.’ Indeed I have never in my life seen such an entire change of opinion as has taken place in the army with respect to him. Everyone expected to see him quite differently from what he is.” D. H. Hill, after writing one of his diary tirades about Pillow, ended a paragraph with a note of gratitude for Scott. “Sage general the Army appreciates you if the Country does not.”51

  chapter eleven

  Mortification and Mistake

  Armistice and Molino del Rey

  Genl. Scott has mortified his troops and no doubt has displeased the people of the United States, but he has acted as a patriot and maybe will succeed in gaining for his country the boon of peace.

  —Daniel Harvey Hill, Fourth Artillery

  Next morning officers detached burial parties from each regiment to gather and bury the dead. The soldiers detailed for such an unpleasant task collected the corpses by unit, removed their equipment, and placed them in large pits close to where they fell. Sometimes the bodies were stacked in layers, and in the case of the dead from Worth’s division, many of whom fell in and around cornfields, stalks were used to separate the layers. When that part of the chore was completed, a chaplain read a
funeral oration, soldiers fired a salute, and the work crews covered the bodies with dirt. Hospital stations remained overflowing with the wounded. The dying and the dead littered the floors so thickly that it was difficult to walk, and the doctors and attendants, who had worked through the night, remained inundated with suffering men pleading for assistance.1

  While the doctors and burial parties worked, Scott made his way toward Tacubaya to oversee the army’s movements as it closed in on the capital. A few hours earlier, his contacts in the city had sent him word that conditions in the capital were favorable for peace, which he hoped would signal the end of the bloodshed. With him rode Nicholas Trist. Before reaching their destination, they met a “fine carriage” coming toward them, and inside rode the Mexican army’s chief engineer, General Ignacio Mora y Villamil, who stopped them on the road. Scott and Trist dismounted as the Mexican climbed out of his carriage, and the three walked over to the shade of a tree, where Mora handed two letters to Scott. One was from the minister of foreign relations, José Ramón Pacheco, proposing peace negotiations, and the other was from the British minister, Charles Bankhead, expressing his desire that hostilities cease and requesting that the Americans not sack the city when they entered. Their exchange brought about two days of discussions wherein Scott consented to “a short armistice” during which neither army could be reinforced nor could they strengthen their respective positions. Scott agreed that the Mexicans could take provisions into the city in return for permission for his quartermaster department to purchase supplies in the capital. In addition, Scott agreed to release his prisoners, which in fact relieved him of the responsibility of having to house, feed, and guard them. Either commander could end the armistice by giving forty-eight hours’ notice.2