1812: The Rivers of War (63 page)

Ross chuckled. “You’ve such a cold way of looking at the world, Patrick. But I’ll grant you there’s a great deal of truth in it. Put a Calvinist and Catholic and a proper Church of England man in the same pasture and they’ll quarrel, right enough. But it’s only when the Anglican becomes the owner of the land that the Calvinist and the Catholic will make regular visits to the gaol or the whipping post. Mind you, the same would happen if
you made the Calvinist—or the Catholic—the landlord and master.”

“Oh, aye.” Driscol shrugged. “A man doesn’t become a superior being simply because he’s exploited or oppressed. Often enough, if he reverses the situation, he’ll do the same himself. Or worse. It’ll only end when a nation arises that can finally abandon the barbaric business of class rule altogether. Not by becoming angels—no chance of that, in this world—but simply because they agree to change the rules.”

Ross looked out the window. It was a gray and cloudy day, as was common for this time of year in New Orleans. “Do you really think your Americans can manage that?”

“Not easily, no. Certainly not quickly—and there’s no chance at all it’ll happen without bloody conflict. There will be at least one civil war waged on this continent before it’s done. Of that much I’m certain. And I suppose, in a way, it’ll never be entirely done. I suspect class arises naturally, like weeds in a field. The key is to develop a society that knows how to pull up weeds before they take over the garden. That’s what Thomas Jefferson meant, I think, when he once said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

Ross chuckled again. “So you see yourself here as a knight leveling his lance against the inequities of class, do you? Forgive me, Patrick, but I’m afraid that reminds me more than anything else of Cervantes’s man from La Mancha. He was the Spanish knight who tilted at windmills, if you’ve never read
Don Quixote
.”

“Please!” Driscol snorted. “I’m no knight of any sort. Certainly not a snooty Spaniard one. I’m a
sergeant
, General. So I’ll go about it the way a proper sergeant would.”

Ross examined him for a moment. “You’ve come up with a campaign plan, then?”

“I wouldn’t dignify it with the name of ‘campaign plan.’ Generals design those fancy things, and—I told you—I’m a sergeant.”

Driscol was still standing next to the window. He turned and gazed through it, out over the city.

“I’ll build a redoubt, here in New Orleans. A fortress of sorts, you might call it, although it won’t exactly be a military one. I don’t have the wherewithal to plan and lead a campaign. Someone else will have to do that. Maybe Sam Houston, as he ages
and matures. He’s got the mind and the will and the heart for it, if he chooses to. Or someone else. But whoever it is, Patrick Driscol will see to it that his general has a bastion upon which he can anchor his forces. If I can manage that, before I die, I reckon I’ll have lived a good enough life to be allowed into whatever paradise God has set aside for sergeants.”

Ross laughed. “Lord in heaven, Patrick! What I’d have given to have had you as
my
master sergeant, in any force I’ve ever led!”

Still looking out the window, Driscol smiled. It was an unusually gentle smile, on such a face.

“Well, I’m afraid that’s not likely to happen. But when the war is over, in the years ahead … If you’ve the time and the inclination, Robert, do come visit me, would you?”

It was the first time Driscol had ever addressed the British general by his given name. Perhaps the oddest thing of all that had happened to Robert Ross since he came to the New World was the sudden, deep warmth that gave him.

“You tried to kill me!” he protested.

“Oh, aye. Did my level best. And I’d do it again, in an instant, if I saw you coming at me with a sword in your hand, leading men in redcoat uniforms. Don’t take it personally, Robert. I’d do the same for any bloody officer coming at me and mine with class in his heart, and damn the color of the uniforms.”

Tiana came into the room, then. “Sergeant Ball is here, Patrick. He says the battalion is ready to—”

She broke off, flashing Ross an apologetic smile. “Go where you’re supposed to go,” she finished.

“Good lass,” Driscol murmured. He lowered his head again, giving Ross a very stern look. “Never impart information in front of a Sassenach officer. Injuries, illness, death’s door—all that be damned. The treacherous fellow is likely to be feigning it. Ready in an instant to leap from his bed, cut whatever throats he must, and race back to his own lines with the news.”

Ross grinned. “Pay no attention to him, Tiana. Just another sullen Irishman. I’m too weak to cut the throat of a mouse, and if I tried to leap out of this bed I’d be lucky to roll off on the floor. Still, I’ll not pry. Not even after the brute is gone.”

Tiana grinned herself.

Driscol didn’t, but he gave Ross a friendly nod before he and Tiana left the room.

After they were gone, Ross went back to staring at the ceiling. All traces of good humor faded away quickly, as he pondered the matter.

The battalion is ready to go where it’s supposed to go
.

Driscol’s battalion
.

And where would that be, I wonder?

Ross had never met any of the men in Driscol’s new battalion, but he’d seen a few of them when they’d accompanied the major on his visits to Tiana. One of them, in particular, had caught the general’s eye. He was a black man, like all the rest except one young white soldier, but seemed to carry himself with an unusual degree of poise.

When he’d inquired, Driscol had told him that was Charles Ball, a veteran from the U.S. Navy. The man who’d been in charge of the American artillery at the Capitol.

A freedmen’s battalion, it was, made up almost entirely of former slaves who were now mostly ironworkers. The lowest stock of all, other than outright slaves, who’d need time and experience to develop the self-confidence that such men would naturally lack from their life’s experience.

Normally, Ross would have dismissed such a formation without a thought. A unit made up of men like that would usually break in an instant, without lengthy training, once the crush of battle fell upon them. But with men like Charles Ball to serve as a crystallizing core for the force …

And Patrick Driscol to lead them! Ross had seen him do it, from the receiving end. Driscol could impart
confidence
to common and uncertain men like no other sergeant in his experience.

Oh, that was another matter altogether. If they fought behind defensive lines, at least, where they wouldn’t need the months of training in the intricate steps and practices needed to maneuver and fight on the open field of battle in a hail of destruction.

Ross closed his eyes.

Where are they going? Where is Jackson placing them?

It was possible, of course, that Jackson simply intended to fit them somewhere into the forces already in position at the Rodriguez Canal.

But Ross didn’t think so. The fieldworks at the canal covered little more than half a mile of front, and by now Jackson had thousands of soldiers available. Not the fifteen thousand Keane
had feared, no, but both Ross and Pakenham were sure that Jackson had amassed at least five thousand men on that line—and plenty of artillery with them.

Driscol’s unit would just be an encumbrance there. His men, still poorly trained, were more likely to get in the way of other units than do much good.

So where else?

Fort St. John was a possibility. Quite a good one, actually. If Jackson had the usual American distrust of the capabilities of black men as combatants—unlike the British, who had many black units in uniform—he might very well decide the fort on Lake Pontchartrain was the best place to put them.

Except…

With anyone other than Driscol in command, Fort St. John probably was where Jackson would put them. But Driscol
was
in command. Jackson wouldn’t have had the success he’d had as a general—not leading mostly militia forces, certainly—if he wasn’t a good judge of an officer’s caliber as a combat leader. By now, Ross would give very long odds that Jackson had sized up Driscol and come to the same conclusion that Ross had.

And I’d have put that man in charge of whatever unit might come under the fiercest blows, on any battlefield in my life
.

He opened his eyes. The ceiling was a blank, cold, empty bitterness.

Jackson was moving Driscol and his freedmen battalion across the river. With their ordnance. Ross was well-nigh certain of it. Just as he was almost certain that Jackson would have made plans to reinforce them, if necessary. As had happened so many times before, the British had
almost
caught Jackson napping.

But not quite in time.

Robert Ross sighed. On a battlefield, “almost” was more deadly than grapeshot. Nine battles out of ten were won or lost because something
almost
happened—but didn’t.

Ross rolled his head slightly so that he could peer out of the window. It faced toward the British army, where Pakenham would even now be crouching like a tiger, ready to pounce. He’d be launching the assault very soon, within a few days.

“Please, Edward,” he whispered. “Oh, dear God.
Please
.”

He knew exactly what thoughts—emotions, rather—would be filling Pakenham’s breast. The same that would have been
filling his own, had Ross still been in command. Doubts, hesitations, fears, second thoughts, quibbles, uncertainties—all those, Pakenham would be burning on the altar this very moment. Purging them from every corner of his soul, steeling himself for what was coming.

There was nothing harder for such a general to do, once he reached that needed state, than to call it all off and just walk away. He had once overheard an officer remark that Robert Ross on the edge of a battle was like a satyr on the edge of a seduction. Consequences be damned.

He’d chuckled, at the time, and taken no offense. He still didn’t, because it was largely true.

“Please, Edward.” Pakenham would most likely die himself, of course. So would Gibbs. Probably Keane. Not the least of the reasons that the British army was the most feared in the world was that the casualties of its top officers in a battle—won or lost, it mattered not—were usually worse than among the soldiery.

But it was Ross’s soldiers that he cared about. If officers died in a battle, they did so with all the perquisites and honors of their class. Statues would be erected, here and there, honoring their memory. A moment of silence would be held in churches across the land, perhaps even in Parliament. Their names would be remembered for generations, sometimes centuries.

Soldiers simply died. Within a few years, no one remembered their names except perhaps a widow, or orphans, or parents grieving an old age without a child. Often enough, no one remembered at all. Their regiments would celebrate their example, true; but the name that went with the example would be forgotten, even in the regiments.

The hardest thing, for a leader of men, was to understand when a battle was lost, sometimes even before it began. That the only thing he could do that made any sense, as inglorious as it might be, was simply to retreat. Find another place, another ground, another time, where another battle might be won. Not to confuse a battle with a campaign, a campaign with a war, or to forget that even a war has an ending—and that the wars to come would begin with
that
ending as their opening ground.

Ross could only hope, now, that Pakenham would be able to find that rare, precious wisdom.

Several miles to the southeast, another man had come to the same conclusion. John Ross had hesitated for months, torn between two impulses. In many ways, every instinct he had was repelled by Houston’s scheme. It was inglorious, unjust—and it amounted to giving up the battle before it was even fought. Before, really, more than a few minor skirmishes had taken place.

But … Reality was a stubborn thing. John could also see no point in starting a war that couldn’t be won.

Having made his decision, he’d come to stand beside Major Ridge. Ridge was studying the British forces across the field from the vantage point of the fieldworks. Chalmette, that expanse was called, named after the plantation.