The Training Ground Read online

  Santa Anna had poured in reinforcements, and Ampudia had pressed local men into service, giving him an army numbering seventy-three hundred regulars and three thousand raw newcomers. Recognizing that mere manpower was not enough, Ampudia had also ordered Mexico’s two top military engineers to transform the city’s tangled streets into a deadly labyrinth. Mariano Reyes, a lieutenant colonel, and Luis Robles, a captain, designed a complex network of revetments, breastworks, gun platforms, and impromptu fortresses that offered maximum defensive protection. Cavalry and infantry alike had worked together all through the summer, filling sandbags and building walls across thoroughfares. The men had drilled holes into the sides of many homes and city buildings to serve as gun ports, placed sandbags atop flat-roofed houses to protect Mexican soldiers as they fired down on the Americans, and barricaded city streets to prevent easy troop movement. Some streets even had cannons strategically situated to fire into an oncoming force.

  There was more. Sensing that the citadel and two fortified hilltops might not be enough to stop the Americans, Ampudia had turned a former tannery into a heavily armed and manned redoubt. La Tenería, as it was known, now garrisoned 350 soldiers, and earthen berms concealed four specially built cannons atop the roof.

  Ampudia had also ordered the hasty construction of breast- works at the northwest and northeast approaches to Monterrey — the directions from which the Americans would travel. Even the La Purísima Bridge, with its prominent statue of the Virgin Mary, was defended by an earthworks and three cannons. Monterrey, one American officer noted as he surveyed the seemingly impregnable defenses for the first time, “is a perfect Gibraltar.” Remembering those great cliffs rising from the Hudson, he added that Monterrey was “a second West Point in strength.”

  With the road north from the Rio Grande now blocked by Taylor’s army, Ampudia was left with just two military choices: flee through that cut in the mountains to Saltillo or defend Monterrey until the last man.

  Quite obviously, the Mexican general wasn’t going anywhere.

  DAVIS KNEW LITTLE of the city’s amazing defensive details as he gazed across the plain. He and the other Americans were camped in an area three miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide that the people of Monterrey called the Bosque de San Domingo (American troops had misidentified the local oaks and bald cypresses and renamed the campground Walnut Springs).

  No matter what the camp was called, the First Mississippi and the other volunteer regiments were not entirely welcome. The ongoing animosity between regular army and volunteer soldiers drove a divisive wedge through the campsite, particularly now that the regulars had seen combat and were skittish about depending on the untried volunteers for support in the battle that was soon to come.

  That wariness was well founded. Even without combat experience, the regulars had endured years of training and discipline specifically designed to harden them for engagements such as Monterrey. While the volunteers had been farming or sitting in some plush office back in their hometown, sleeping with their wives, and generally coming and going as they pleased, the regulars had lived in barracks and tents and had put up with military rigors: morning reveille; brutal punishments such as flogging with a lash and “bucking and gagging,” which saw a soldier hog-tied for hours with a stick in his mouth; a meager diet of bread, salted pork, and weak coffee; and even sleeping two to a bed when posted to a barracks. Discipline was strict: an officer was allowed to strike an enlisted man at any time, without provocation and without fear of punishment. Those that chose to flee army life by deserting were whipped fifty times with a cowhide lash if caught. Then, his back still dripping blood, the deserter’s head would be shaved and he would be dismissed from the service to the beat of a drum (“drummed out of the army” was the official phrase). There was little adventure to being a soldier, and little chance for advancement. The only time of day when a man could relax and find peace was at dusk. “Later in the evening, after having answered our names at retreat, which was beat precisely at sunset, groups assembled round the tent doors, to smoke, chat, tell tales, or sing songs. . . . At nine o’clock we fell in, to answer our names at tattoo roll call, when the drums and fifes played a few merry tunes, after which the roll was called and we were then dismissed to bed. About fifteen minutes were then suffered to elapse, when the drummer beat three distinct taps on the drum, at which signal every light in tents or quarters had to be extinguished, and the most strict silence preserved, on pain of the offender being sent to the guard-house — the immediate punishment for all willful infractions of the rules of the service,” wrote one enlisted soldier.

  The volunteer regiments hadn’t gone through any such hardship. For them, becoming a soldier had been as simple as answering a patriotic rallying cry. They’d sailed off to war as bands played and women cried. Places like New Orleans and Brazos Island and even Camargo were their first introduction to military living. Their lack of discipline and disrespect for the protocol had caused immediate friction between them and the regulars. As the volunteers began drinking too much, brawling too much, arguing constantly about whether slavery was acceptable, getting sick, and deserting back to their farms and families with little threat of punishment, the divide grew.

  The Mississippi Rifles’ dandy red and white uniforms, their cutting-edge armament, and the fact that they’d taken a steamer all the way upriver to Camargo rather than walked was yet another reason for the regulars to loathe them. Military discipline was designed to immunize men against lapsing into chaotic behavior during the heat of battle. The regulars had already proved themselves in Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma; nobody knew how the volunteers would behave under fire. Thus Taylor’s decision to separate his army into three divisions — two composed solely of regular army soldiers and a third made up of volunteer recruits. The Mississippi Rifles were grouped with the First Tennessee (which had been joined by the First Kentucky and the First Ohio, under the command of Thomas L. Hamer, the congressman who had submitted Grant’s application to West Point and changed the young man’s name in the process). Taylor had marched his troops toward Monterrey in order of battle, with the volunteers taking up the rear. It was unstated but understood that the Third Division of Taylor’s army wouldn’t see action unless absolutely necessary. This subtle point was reinforced when Taylor ordered an armed reconnaissance of the city on the afternoon of September 19 but didn’t allow a single member of the volunteers’ division to join the task.

  Davis’s presence only made things worse. The majority of regular army officers were Whigs. This group included both Taylor and his boss back in Washington, Major General Winfield Scott. President Polk’s Democratic Party had a long-standing distrust of the armed forces, believing that the nation had little need for a standing army. Volunteers like Davis were his ideal soldiers. “It has never been our policy to maintain large standing armies in time of peace,” Polk had declared before the war began. “They are contrary to the genius of our free institutions, would impose heavy burdens on the people and be dangerous to public liberty. Our reliance for protection and defense on the land must be mainly on our citizen soldiers, who will be ever ready, as they have been ever ready in times past, to rush with alacrity, at the call of their country, to her defense.”

  The president’s disdain for the Whigs was public knowledge. While he was Speaker of the House during the mid-1830s, debate between the Democrats and Whigs had been particularly heated and all too often took on personal overtones. Democrats held the slimmest of majorities — 108–107, with 24 independents — so throughout Polk’s reign as Speaker he constantly battled to keep his party allied, recruiting independent votes (one Democratic measure, adopted from a long-held belief of Andrew Jackson’s, argued for the abolition of West Point, but as Sam Grant was all too aware during his plebe year, the measure failed) and jousting verbally with Whigs. Polk’s smug behavior and insults offended many Whig members of Congress, who heckled him from the floor of the House and challenged him to at least two du
els (which Polk refused to accept).

  Polk was getting his revenge as president. To the disgust of the regular army corps, he had begun appointing Democrats from the volunteer ranks to fill openings for new senior officers. Though Colonel Jefferson Davis had not been appointed by Polk, they were members of the same political party and shared a close bond. This combination of high rank, volunteer status, and Democratic allegiance, as well as Davis’s unequivocal support of Polk, threatened to make him a pariah at Walnut Springs.

  The saving grace was Taylor. His army had arrived in Monterrey eleven years, almost to the day, after the death of Sarah Knox. This sad anniversary marked a pivotal moment in the reconciliation between Davis and the general, an unlikely chance for redemption and healing that neither one could have anticipated. The regular army’s officer corps may have distrusted Davis, but Taylor did not — and that was enough. The Mississippi Rifles would not be in the first wave of attackers, yet they were a definite part of Taylor’s strategy for seizing Monterrey.

  Taylor’s battle plans were born on the evening and night of September 19. That day’s armed reconnaissance under Brevet Major Joseph K. F. Mansfield, the brilliant career engineer who had earned a battlefield promotion for his design of Fort Brown, had detailed Monterrey’s stunning new defenses. A frontal assault or an extended siege was out of the question because the American army lacked large cannons and mortars. Instead, the bulk of Taylor’s forces would take up positions on the plain north of the city walls. Jefferson Davis and the Mississippi Rifles would stand among that broad phalanx. The army’s rank and file would remain in formation, just as at Palo Alto. And just as on that prairie battlefield, the Americans would be a long-range target for Mexican cannons as they stood out in the open.

  That was the point: they were a decoy. As they drew fire and attention, Brigadier General William Worth would march west and then south in a grand loop that would circumvent the hilltop fortresses at La Federación and La Independencia. The plan was to mount a surprise attack that would block the road to Saltillo, serving the twofold purpose of sealing the Mexican army inside Monterrey and cutting the city off from the rest of Mexico. It would, in effect, become a military island. Worth would then continue his broad sweep and enter the city from the west, bypassing La Independencia and La Federación, if possible, since storming the heights by force might mean huge casualties.

  Worth’s flanking movement would also set in motion a pincer action. His Second Division would hammer the city from the high ground to the west; Taylor’s First and Third divisions — Mississippi Rifles included — would simultaneously launch a two-pronged frontal assault on Monterrey, charging in from the north and the east. The only remaining compass point would be blocked by the Río Santa Catarina, its shallow but swift current providing a neat southern boundary to the battle, hemming in the Mexicans inside the city.

  The plan was bold. Military thinking held that an attacking force should outnumber an entrenched defender by three to one in order to ensure success. The overmatched Taylor was putting that theory to the test — and then some. He was also flirting with disaster by splitting his small army, just as he had done at Palo Alto, where his had been the army on the defensive.

  The key to Taylor’s plan was stealth and speed.

  Neither one materialized.

  ON THE AFTERNOON of the twentieth, Worth and his Second Division augured northwest out of Walnut Springs, setting Taylor’s plan in motion. He led a force of 1,651 regular army soldiers, along with the First Texas Mounted Rifles. The Texans were an unusual force: trained and armed like infantry, but with every single man mounted on horseback. This made them an agile, deadly fighting machine. Another band of Texans, the Second Mounted Rifles, were being held in reserve, prepared to gallop to the rescue should Worth get in a jam. Topping it all off, Worth’s force included two companies of “flying” artillery, so called because their lightweight, horse-drawn bronze six-pounders (and on occasion twelve-pound howitzers) could easily be galloped to any strategic position on the battlefield. The British army had pioneered the concept with their “horse artillery,” but the Americans were taking it to a new level. Ten companies composed each U.S. artillery regiment, and one company per regiment was designated as “flying.” The six-pounder had a range of fifteen hundred yards and weighed less than half a ton. By attaching the wheeled gun carriage to a limber, which was then fastened to a horse, it was possible to quickly repel a surprise cavalry assault or a sudden infantry flanking movement. From the cavalry to the infantry to the lightweight horse-drawn cannons, Worth’s was a division designed for nonstop movement.

  The lot of them would march to the Saltillo road, staying hidden from the Mexicans if at all possible. They would seize the road, keeping their distance from the guns atop La Independencia and La Federación, and then invade the city from the west.

  Taylor planned to launch the second half of the offensive on his side of the city, so cutting off the Saltillo road before sunrise the next morning was paramount. If there was any general upon whom Taylor could depend to complete that task, no matter what the obstacles, it was Worth. He was fifty-two, a handsome and sometimes petulant man with wavy hair and a barrel chest. A Quaker by birth and a soldier by choice, he began his career as a private during the War of 1812 and rose through the ranks to become an officer. A round of grape had pierced his thigh at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane during that conflict, leaving him lame in one leg. Worth, who had later served as commandant of cadets at West Point, had the distinction of being Taylor’s favorite general — and easily the most capable.

  Sadly for Worth, the Mexicans had not spent the summer fortifying their city only to have him sneak around the back and invade through its weakest point. Their lookouts caught sight of Worth’s force and quickly figured that he meant to block the Saltillo road. They would give him that, for the Mexicans had no use for the winding dirt thoroughfare until the battle was won. However, the heights of La Independencia and La Federación were of vital strategic importance. Rather than bother with an attempt to hold the Saltillo road, Ampudia rushed reinforcements to La Independencia, which featured two sturdy stone forts.

  As storm clouds gathered, Worth’s army marched through the afternoon across recently harvested fields of sugarcane and corn. The rich soil caked to their feet, and the uneven stalks jutting from the ground slowed their march to an anguished plod. The horse-drawn six-pounders bogged down in the mud. By sunset, Worth’s division had managed to travel only six miles in four hours. He was reluctant to push on in the darkness, fearful of his army’s getting split or of a sudden Mexican attack. Just as much as he needed to sever the Saltillo road by daylight, Worth needed to keep his men out of danger. As the rain began, he pressed on — but carefully.

  “We were soon all wet through to the skin,” Dana wrote. “It soon turned so dark you could not see your hand before you, and the cold was keenly felt through wet clothes. We marched forward two miles farther, and there on the wet ground of a hillside with no cover, wet clothes, on a cold and cheerless night, and as dark as pitch, we lay on our arms with nothing but our coats and not even able to take exercise to keep warm.”

  The troops were exhausted, but the order to sleep in the field was hardly welcomed. The Second Division had left their tents at Walnut Springs in order to travel light. They would doze fitfully in the cool mountain air, their bodies trapped in the harsh cocoon of a strafing wind, muddy soil, and freezing rain. A warming flame would have been nirvana and would have made the night pass more quickly, but the downpour and the wartime need for concealment made campfires impossible. The result, Dana wrote to Sue, “was the most cheerless, comfortless, unhappy night I ever spent.”

  TWENTY

  Monterrey, Day One

  SEPTEMBER 21, 1846

  K nowing that his troops were paying close attention to his behavior, General Zachary Taylor oozed a calculated confidence as the time for battle drew near. His optimism wasn’t altogether feigned.

&nbs
p; The Fourth Infantry, minus Grant, had spent a long and laborious night out on the open plain in front of Monterrey. The quartermaster was watching the battle plan unfold from the safe distance of Walnut Springs. The view was unique, and one he might not have enjoyed on the front lines. He was, in effect, seeing the feints and parries of battle from the same perspective as General Taylor. Five hundred unobstructed yards of flat earth separated their forward position from the city walls. Taylor had sent two companies of artillery along with Worth, which left few cannons at his disposal. The remaining guns consisted almost entirely of Lieutenant Braxton Bragg’s and Brevet Captain Randolph Ridgely’s horse cannons. Traditional military doctrine held that artillery was static, anchored to one position on the battlefield at all times because of its ponderous weight. The two primary battlefield weapons were the traditional field gun, which utilized a low, flat trajectory when fired, making it ideal for antipersonnel rounds, and the howitzer, which featured a shorter barrel but elevated the muzzle upward, for a blast that rained down razor-sharp shrapnel from above (the third form of cannon, the mortar, launched projectiles at a severe upward angle and was better utilized as a siege gun than as a field piece).

  Bragg and Ridgely were just two of the young American officers at the forefront of the revolutionary new “flying artillery” concept. Captain Samuel Ringgold, the fifty-year-old son of a congressman, was considered by many the “father of modern artillery” and the man who had done more than any other American to promote the new concept. Ironically, he had been mortally wounded on the plains of Palo Alto while applying those tactics in actual combat for the first time. Now it was left to Bragg and Ridgely to carry on his legacy.