1812: The Rivers of War (70 page)

Driscol eyed the distance. The British would be in a direct line of sight for more than two hundred yards before they could reach his fieldworks—and Driscol had taken advantage of the
past two days to turn his section of the “Morgan Line” into something deadly serious.

“They’ll probably launch a bayonet assault immediately, Sergeant. So they’ll get here more quickly than they normally would. We’ll shift to canister after the first round.”

“Yes, sir.” Quickly, Ball left to pass along the order.

He was back within half a minute or so. Driscol’s section of the “Morgan Line” was more in the way of a bastion than anything else. In fact, his men had started calling it
Fort Driscol
. Deliberately, almost sure that the Kentuckians would break, Driscol had designed the bastion so that it could protect his men from three sides. Only the rear was left open.

Of course, the fieldworks had been hastily erected, using nothing more elaborate than dirt and logs. But his freedmen had set to the work with a will, and had managed to create something quite substantial in a very short time. Best of all, before they’d left the city they’d somehow scrounged up—stolen, most likely—a fair amount of wrought-iron fencework. The fancy fake spearpoints that tipped those fences had been designed for decoration. But, embedded into the walls of the bastion and slanted outward, they made an effective barrier. Decorative iron was still iron.

The three hundred men of the Iron Battalion were anchored on the twelve-pounder, with the six-pounders positioned on the flanks. Driscol had placed the remaining ordnance—three four-pounders and two three-pounders—in the spaces between. About half his men would work the cannons, under the direction of Ball and his naval veterans. The other half were armed with muskets, pikes, and swords.

The pikes had been made up in the iron shops. The “swords” were rarely that. Most of them were just the biggest knives the men could find, although some of them were armed with cutlasses that Houston had sweet-talked from Lafitte’s Baratarian pirates. The Baratarians had been willing enough, since Jackson was using them as artillerymen on the Jackson Line.

Driscol thought the pikes and blades would be more useful than the muskets. He’d concentrated his training on the cannons, of course. There really hadn’t been time to train men properly in the use of muskets, as well. And freedmen, unlike white frontiersmen, didn’t grow up with muskets in their hands.
So Driscol had simply taught them how to load and fire a single round. Some of them, either from a bit of experience or simply because they had the knack for it, would probably manage to reload and get off another shot. Most of them, after firing the first round, would drop the muskets and take up simpler weapons.

On an open field, Driscol’s battalion would have been mincemeat. But here, especially facing the headlong bayonet charge that Driscol expected, he thought they’d do quite well. They were nervous, of course, but they were also burning with a determination to prove themselves—a sentiment Driscol had spent the past weeks nurturing as assiduously as he could.

Which … was assiduous indeed. If soldiers had been flowers in a garden, Patrick Driscol would have been reckoned one of the world’s finest gardeners.

The British were almost here
, he thought. He had just time enough left for a little speech.

“All right, lads.” His rasping voice, half-shouting, carried superbly well. “There is nothing complicated about this. There are no maneuvers required of you. All you have to do is stand your ground and fight.”

His pale eyes ranged across the faces of his watching soldiers. Their attention was riveted on him.

“The enemy will attack and try to kill us, or drive us off. The first might happen.
The other will not
. We will win on this ground, or we will die on this ground. But whichever it is, we will not retreat. It’s nothing but stand and die, or stand and win. Do you all understand?”

A wave of nodding heads came in response. There was no hesitation.

He smiled then. That thin, cold smile of his, but a smile nonetheless.

“’Tis normally at this point in my little speech that I threaten my men with the consequences, should they fail me. Grinding bones for my soup, and such.” A tittering little laugh swept the soldiery. “But I’ll not do that here. Not today. Not with the men of the Iron Battalion. There’s no need. You will do what your mates and your nation require of you, I am certain of it.”

He paused, wondering what he might add.

Nothing, it seemed. Henry Crowell, standing with a ramrod by the twelve-pounder, swept off his cap and waved it in the air.
“I saw the major break the bastards at the Capitol, and he’ll do it again today! A cheer for the major, boys!”

Driscol was genuinely astonished at the cheer that went up. Loud, vigorous, full of confidence and enthusiasm. More than he’d ever hoped for, in truth.

To be sure, he thought the cheer itself was ridiculous. As if the simple name
Driscol
chanted over and over again was some sort of magical talisman.

But he made no protest. Perhaps it was, to such men.

As soon as he caught sight of the American line—much more substantial, this one, ranging across hundreds of yards of front—Thornton paused just long enough to assess the thing. The American left, anchored on the river, would naturally be the strong point. There’d be some regulars there, manning the battery. Musketeers and a handful of light ordnance were spread across the middle. There would be the weakest point, but he didn’t want to charge with batteries firing on him from the two flanks. Even if he broke through, his casualties would be severe.

He studied the solid-looking fieldworks to the left of the field. That was where the new freedmen battalion was positioned. For a moment, he was tempted to turn the charge to head directly for them. As a rule, a unit like that would break easily. But…

He was mindful of the possibility that the Capitol veterans might be there. Probably were, in fact, now that he finally got a good look at their fieldworks. Someone with determination and authority was in charge there. Remembering the carnage in Washington, he decided that a direct assault would be too risky.

“Right,” he said to his aides. They clustered about him while the men took a moment to rest. “We’ll avoid the American right, and make our drive along the river. That new unit looks to be solid—but with as little training as they’ve received, they’ll be like lost lambs once the line gives way. If we can break the American line at the river, the entire line will come apart. The freedmen and militia won’t retreat for the good and simple reason that they don’t know how. They’ll run like rabbits, and we’ll hunt them like hounds.”

He waited just long enough to see if any of his lieutenants had any doubts they wanted to express. As he expected, none did.

“Right, then. Nothing fancy.” He raised his voice so it could be heard by the men at the head of the column. “It’ll be a column charge with bayonets, lads! We’ll do or die!”

A cheer went up.
A very good one
, Thornton thought.

He drew his sword, held it high, and took his place near the head of the column.

“
To victory!”

“Damnation,” Driscol growled, seeing the British angling toward the other end of the line. He’d been expecting them to attack him at once, and had prepared accordingly.

But Ball was already giving the order to replace the grape with round shot. At the range the British column was keeping, all the way across the field, grapeshot would be a hit-or-miss affair.

Ball’s method for switching rounds was simple and sanguine. The entire battery fired the grapeshot that was already loaded, and then started reloading with round shot. “Hit-or-miss,” after all, isn’t the same as “miss.”

If the freedmen battalion was poorly trained with muskets, they knew how to deal with heavy ordnance. Very soon, they were ready to fire again.

“Rake ’em, boys!” Charles Ball yelled. “Rake the bastards!”

Again, the battery erupted, all but the one six-pounder that was too far out of position on the right. It was as neat and sweet a volley as any Driscol had ever seen.

Grazing shots, too, the most of them. Ball had veterans aiming the guns. The cannonballs hit the ground in front of the column, and skipped into the mass of men at waist level. The effect wasn’t as devastating as it would have been if the cannonballs had struck stony ground, scattering splinters of rock to accompany the balls themselves. But not even the soggy ground along the banks of the Mississippi could keep those balls from caroming into the British column with deadly force.

One ball missed entirely, from what Driscol could tell through the cloud of gunsmoke. But the rest hit the enemy column like mauls wielded by a giant.

The only thing that kept the casualties from being worse was that Driscol had only a few guns and was firing on the British column from an angle across the field. “Enfilade fire,” as it was called, was usually devastating against a line, because the shot
could strike so many men. But it was much less effective against a column that was no more than a few men wide. If Driscol’s guns had been firing head on, a single ball might have slain and maimed a dozen British soldiers. As it was, Driscol saw one of the balls—must have been from the twelve-pounder—pick up four men and hurl their broken and shredded bodies into the river.

Ross could feel his face tighten. Two volleys, fired like thunderclaps. Even from the distance, there was no mistaking the thing.

That’ll be Driscol
, he thought. The man like a stone.

Near its head, Thornton ignored the havoc being wreaked on the center of the column. He’d known his men would take casualties from the other American battery while they charged the one by the river. At the moment, he was far more concerned about the damage he was taking from straight ahead. The battery they were charging was doing quite well itself.

Grapeshot killed two men in what was now the front rank. Thornton simply leaped over their bodies. The battery on the American left was within fifty yards. Thornton knew how terrifying a mass of bayonets would be, coming at the run. That battery would
break
, so help him God.

“
Forward!”
he cried. He was no longer waving the sword. Now, he had it gripped for the killing stroke.

“Rake ’em, boys, rake ’em!”

Ball was doing a splendid troll imitation himself, so Driscol let him be. The one time he started to move forward to assist, John Rogers held him back with a hand on the shoulder.

“Just stay here, Patrick.” The Rogers brothers had no use at all for military protocol. “He’s doing fine, and if you get crushed by a cannon recoil scurrying around like a fussy hen, me and James will never hear the end of it from Tiana.”

Driscol didn’t try to fight off the restraining hand. John’s words were true enough. The first bit, at least. The idea that Patrick Driscol would let himself get carelessly behind a cannon being fired was just ridiculous.

“Rake the bastards, you blasted currees! You got no excuse to miss since they ain’t firing back! Any crew misses its shot I’ll cut your ears off and fry ’em up! My voudou queen got one hell of recipe for it, too!”

Granted, Ball’s version involved a lot of unseemly leaping about, but Driscol made allowances. You couldn’t reasonably expect African trolls to have the same customs as northerly ones.

And he was getting the result they needed. Between Ball’s energetic leadership, and the sure confidence of the core of veterans from Barney’s unit, the men of the Iron Battalion were going about their work swiftly and effectively. Even, to all appearances, calmly. The sweat now coating their dark faces and bodies was simply that caused by the heat of the rising sun and the work of firing cannons.

It was everything Driscol could have hoped for. He might lose this day—die this day—but not before gutting the Sassenach.

Stoically, Robert Ross sipped his tea. The sound of the batteries was almost continuous now. But, always, with that regular punctuation. One battery maintaining volley fire while the other simply blazed away as best it could.

Miles away, out of sight, Ross could see it as if he were there. Thornton had done exactly what he would have done—avoid Driscol’s unit and attack the American line across the field. By the river, probably. He’d suffer bad casualties in the doing, of course. But once the hinge was shattered …

Yes, it might work.

Undoubtedly
would
work, if Thornton had enough men. Once the flank gave way, men as inexperienced as the Kentucky militia and the hastily trained freedmen would be lost. Orderly retreat, disciplined regroupment—all that would be completely beyond their grasp. They’d simply break and run, peeled away like rind from a fruit.

“Unless,” he muttered.

Tiana gave him a blank-faced look. In fact, there’d been no expression on her face at all, since the battle began. “Unless what, Robert?”

Ross took a deep breath. “Unless Driscol does what I damn well think he’s going to do, the stubborn Scots-Irish bastard. Simply stand, like a stone. He’ll
force
Thornton to come at him.”

There was still no expression on her face. “Stand and die, you mean.”

The British general reminded himself sharply that the man he was speaking of was loved by the girl across the table. Deeply
loved, in fact. Of that, he was by now quite certain, even if he often found her Cherokee way of expressing it puzzling.

“Perhaps. You never know, in a battle. Believe it true, Tiana. You simply never know until it’s over.”

When Sam Houston encountered his first Kentuckian, fleeing from the battle he could hear in the distance, he neither shouted nor waved his sword. He wasn’t holding his sword in the first place, having recognized what a dangerous practice that was in a long march so forced it was almost a run. He simply grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck as he raced past, spun him around, and sent him sailing back toward the front lines.

“You so much as look back at me once, and I’ll break your neck! You
will
fight, so help me!”