1812: The Rivers of War (74 page)

Thundered past him.

Hollering and whooping and running
way
too fast.

“Slow down, you idiots! Or you’ll be gasping for breath when a British bayonet empties your lungs. You cretins!
Obey me, blast you, or I’ll
—”

He charged after them. “
You stupid fucking bastards! I’ll skin you alive!”

The three-pounder crews brought up the rear, laughing all the way.

“One
more round!
You got time, you lazy currees! You got time! See if you don’t! Wipe that grin off your face, Jones!”

Driscol wasn’t sure the gunners
would
have the time for another round. Maybe. The iron grillwork might stall the British who came clambering up the breastworks, just that little bit needed.

After that—

He swiveled his head, bringing his pale-eyed glower to bear on that half of his battalion that had been standing by, while the gunners did their butcher work.

“One round from the muskets, that’s all. Then it’ll be the pikes and blades. D’you understand me, lads?”

“AYE, SIR!”

It was quite a splendid roar. “Gallant,” Driscol would have called it, if he’d been a bloody fool of an officer.

The reckless charge of the Baltimore and Capitol volunteers didn’t break the retreating Eighty-fifth, much less rout them. But the sheer enthusiasm of the thing did make the British regiment recoil—and far enough to expose the battery by the riverbank.

Seeing his chance, Houston and those men he still had paying any attention to him overran the battered British artillery unit within seconds. There was no quarter asked, nor mercy given. Those gunners who didn’t flee just died next to their guns, by gunshot and bayonet and saber.

What was left of the guns, anyway. After a quick inspection, Sam realized that only one of the six-pounders could be put into action.

Patterson’s gunners saw to that, while they brought the two three-pounders to bear. Sam left the bastion and did what he could to impose order on the milling mob of volunteers who were now on the open field, blazing away at the British.

He needed to do it quickly, too.

Ten feet to his left, a Capitol volunteer dropped to his knee and shot a redcoat some thirty yards away. It was a fine shot, in and of itself. The British soldier collapsed to the ground, hit in the chest. But it was obvious that the volunteer wasn’t even thinking about working with his mates, trying to put a volley together.

Worse yet—much worse—was that some of Sam’s soldiers were starting to grapple with the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. The results of that were a foregone conclusion. Even as Sam took a deep breath to bellow out an order, he saw a British veteran expertly butt aside a Baltimore dragoon’s awkward lunge, and rip the man’s throat open with his own bayonet.

“
Form a line, damn you! Form a line!”

Most of Sam’s men began to do so. But, with a sick feeling in his stomach, he could see they wouldn’t manage it in time. The British had already formed their own line facing him, and their muskets were coming up for a volley.

There was a crash like thunder, and the sight of the enemy was obscured by a huge cloud of gunsmoke. At least a dozen of the American soldiers were struck, many of them knocked flat to the ground.

It was a real, hammering, professional soldiers’ volley. For a moment, Sam was sure he’d see his volunteers crumple under the blow.

Yet, they didn’t. Their responding volley, fired at Sam’s command, was a ragged thing. But it was fired nonetheless—and even the men who hadn’t joined the volley were still blazing away on their own. Not one soldier, as far as Sam could see, was even thinking about running away.

Glory be
.

Under most circumstances, they would have. But their fighting spirits were high, and they could sense a victory in the offing. Houston’s men had driven off the Eighty-fifth, and hounded them down the road—and now, by God, they wanted some real blood.

So, for the next three minutes, a half mob of American soldiers exchanged ragged half volleys and individual fire for the professional volleys that were coming from the enemy. It should have been no contest at all, but it was turned into one by the sheer determination of the amateurs.

Sam never did bring any real order to his ranks during that stretch. He didn’t even try, after the first half a minute, realizing that he had no time, and he’d most likely just confuse his men. He simply stood his ground and kept bellowing the order to fire.

A meaningless order, in itself, since his men had every intention of firing anyway. But he’d been told that if a commander was seen to be resolute by his men—sounded resolute, anyway; the gunsmoke covering the field made “seeing” almost meaningless—that their spirits would be bolstered.

It seemed to work, too.

Then the six-pounder and the three-pounders opened up, and grapeshot started tearing at the Eighty-fifth’s flank. Finally, finally—Sam thought almost all of their officers were dead or injured by now, except low-ranked ones—the regiment gave way.

Even then, they weren’t routed. But the Eighty-fifth had had
enough
. Their retreat off the field and back to the barges waiting downriver was as precipitous as you could ask for.

Pakenham finally stopped pounding the tree trunk.

“The Eighty-fifth is in full retreat, sir.”

“Yes, I can see that.” The view across the river was quite good, even without a glass, now that the mist had burned away.

The battle was lost. Today’s battle, at least. There was no chance—certainly not at this late hour—that a charge across Chalmette field could carry the day.

Perhaps tomorrow. The Forty-third and the West Indians were still in the fray. Perhaps if they seized that battery—
finally!
—something might be possible on the morrow.

“Tell the men to stand down. There will be no assault today.”

Jackson just stared, from the window of the Macarty house. He’d finally come to realize that the British attack across the river had been no feint at all. No diversion. Houston had driven back one of their regiments, but at least two others were still in action. The only thing standing in their way, beyond Houston’s few hundred men, were Driscol and his battalion.

Why hadn’t he recognized the danger that the British might go for Patterson’s guns? He cursed himself for an idiot.

The curses were silent, of course. Andrew Jackson was as good at cursing himself as he was at cursing anyone else. But he didn’t do it out loud. He might be an idiot, from time to time, but he wasn’t a blasted fool

Tiana rose from her chair and went to stand by the riverbank. Ross remained seated, staring at an empty teacup. The noise from the south was like a constant roll of thunder.

The ironwork Driscol’s men had embedded in their breastworks did stall the British charge just that extra bit. The last round of canister, fired from Ball’s guns at point-blank range, wreaked havoc on the regiment again.

By now, it was a badly battered regiment. But the enemy had arrived and were finally at the throats of their tormentors, and they’d have blood, by God.

Colonel Rennie started up the last little slope, just behind the front rank of his soldiers. Two canister balls ripped open his left thigh, severing the femoral artery. He stumbled and fell, blood gushing like a fountain.

A young officer stooped over him, his face pale and tight.

“Help me up!” Rennie shouted.

“Sir—your leg. We must—”

“Get me up, damn you, or I’ll see you hang!
Get me up!”

The officer did as he was commanded. The colonel took two steps and was knocked down by a soldier who was falling back. The man’s chest had been torn open by a pike blade. It was a hideous wound.

“Get me up!” Rennie shouted again.

The officer did as he was told. Rennie stood, and started to raise his sword. But the blood loss from a severed femoral is enormous, in a very short time. His face suddenly turned white, his eyes rolled up, and he collapsed in a heap.

The young officer’s desperate attempt to staunch the mortal wound would have been hopeless, even if the body of another soldier falling back from the rampart hadn’t knocked him aside and left him pinned for half a minute before he could get back to his stricken commander.

The fight at the line of the guns was as ferocious a hand-to-hand melee as any Driscol had ever known. Hundreds of men, stabbing and hacking each other with bayonets, pikes, and the motley assortment of blades the Iron Battalion had managed to acquire.

Charles Ball proved as adept with his cutlass as with his tongue. Not that he ever stopped using the first.

“
Give it to ’em, boys, give it to ’em good!”

Henry Crowell was astonished to see a British soldier clamber over the writhing body of another soldier who’d gotten impaled on the ironwork. So astonished that he didn’t even feel any fear when he saw the man was preparing to leap at him with his bayonet extended.

The big teamster’s position as spongeman for his gun crew was just in front and to the right of the twelve-pounder. Henry stepped back a pace and shifted his grip on the sponge staff he’d been using to swab out the cannon and ram in another ball. When the redcoat came flying at him, he just swatted him aside. He had the reach on the man and, as strong as he was, the fact that the ramrod’s tip was covered with tightly wound fabric simply didn’t matter. The British soldier, stunned by the impact, slammed into two other redcoats who were struggling over the ironwork. The invader’s musket sailed out of his hands, and the
only damage the bayonet did was spearing yet another British soldier in the calf as
he
tried to get over the barricade.

There was something insane about it all. Despite his immense strength, the teamster was fundamentally a gentle man. He’d hardly been in any fights in his life, and those only when he was a boy.

But this wasn’t really a “fight,” in any sense of the term that Henry understood. It was just a huge, crazed melee where hundreds of men who didn’t even know one another were doing their level best to commit murder and mayhem.

Even a racial element was absent, to give it any logic. A lot of the men coming at him in red uniforms were West Indians, as black as he was.

Yet
another
British soldier clambered over the same poor fellow stuck on the ironwork. If this kept up, the man would be killed by his own mates, driving his chest further and further onto the dull ornamental spearpoints.

Some part of Henry’s mind felt sorry for him. Most of it, though, was concentrated on the task at hand. By now, so many men of the Iron Battalion were pressing forward to help repel the enemy that he realized he couldn’t keep using the sponge staff as a club.

Well enough. Blunt and relatively soft though the end was, it would make a usable spear. In Henry’s big hands, anyway.

So he didn’t let this new soldier finish his preparations. While he was still in a crouch atop his mate’s back, readying his bayonet, Henry thrust forward and smashed his face.

All the men of the battalion were fighting ferociously, but Driscol could already tell that it wouldn’t be long before they were overwhelmed. They were outnumbered, first of all, by something like three to one. Then, except for Charles and his veterans, almost all of Driscol’s men were still amateurs at this business, and the British soldiers who were attacking them were professionals.

Henry Crowell was handling it well, but few of Driscol’s men had either Henry’s strength or his quick wits. They were valiant enough, in their awkward way. But valor goes only so far in a battle. If it weren’t for the breastworks, they’d have been driven under already—and those breastworks, though very well made,
were still nothing more than hastily erected field fortifications. So be it. He’d still gut them before he went down. Driscol drew the pistol from his waistband.

Slightly behind him and to either side, James and John Rogers looked at the pistol in Driscol’s hand, and then looked at each other.

With three quick little jerks of his head, James silently laid out the plan.

I’ll fend them off. You keep the crazy one-armed Irishman from getting killed

John nodded. He shifted the grip on his war club.

The Cherokees had finally reached the edge of the woods. Major Ridge stopped to examine the scene, and John Ross came up next to him. Peering through the last line of trees, he could see the battle at the Iron Battalion’s bastion. It looked more like a man-to-man free-for-all than what John normally thought of as a “battle.”

Ridge had a thin, grim smile on his face.

“Our country, this is. I was worried a little.”

It took John a couple of seconds to realize what Ridge meant. Against regular soldiers, in formation on an open field, there would have been little point in having the Cherokees launch a charge. Even with over half of them armed with guns, they’d have had no chance at all.

Here, though …

Yes.
Cherokee country
, when it came to war.

“How soon?” John whispered.