Soldiers of Conquest (34 page)

*

In the gray darkness, Grant sat on the hard surface of the road and marked time with the infantry of Garland's brigade. He had awaken at 3 o'clock, ate a little cold food Valere had prepared the evening before, and marched with the men from Tacubaya to participate in the battle to take the Molino. He waited silently with his thoughts turned inward to Julia and his family, mostly to Julia.

Yesterday as Garland's preparations for the assault on El Molino had been in progress, Grant had gone to him and made a strong plea to be formally assigned to join the men that would do the fighting. He had argued that the final battle to capture the Mexican capital was starting and that if they didn't win there would be no need for a quartermaster lieutenant. The battle was to be victory or death. If it was to be death, he wanted his to be fighting with his Fourth Infantry.

Without comment or expression, Garland listened to Grant's argument to the end. Then he gave Grant a bleak smile. “My orders are to help capture the Molino and to stop any reinforcements coming from Chapultepec. Your name will be on the roster of those men of the Fourth Infantry.”

A noticeable lessening of the darkness came and with it there was a stirring of the men as a whispered order from Garland at the front passed down from officer to officer. The brigade crept another hundred yards nearer the Molino and just behind Drum's battery of 6-pounders and there halted on the road to again wait.

Grant saw the grim walls of the Molino form up ghost-like out of the morning dusk. He could make out the windows opening out to the front and the parapet extending above the flat roofline. Both were excellent locations from which enemy riflemen could shoot while still being protected from return fire. Had he been the commanding general he wouldn't be attacking the Molino and Chapultepec, but rather attacking the capital from the north. He had been in that direction on a foraging expedition and examined the gates through his field glasses and knew they were less well defended than the southern and western gates. Of course he must in honesty to General Scott, admit that getting the army there could be a problem.

He rose to his knees for a better view of the battlefield. The principal assault column, the five hundred “forlorn hopes”, led by Major Wright was located in a low swale between the command post and the Molino. The name “forlorn hopes” came from the immense danger the men would face as they charged forward to capture the Mexican cannon entrenched in front of the wall of the Molino. Grant knew that many of the men of that initial charge would die. The cash bonuses and promotions promised to obtain the volunteers would mean nothing to dead men.

The WHUMP of one of the 24-pound, smoothbore cannon jarred the air. A gaping fissure appeared in the front wall near the center of the Molino as the solid ball struck. A section of the roof above collapsed, tumbling men and weapons into the void. Mexicans were dead. The battle had begun.

The two big siege guns continued to work, two shots per minute, shaking the ground. A cloud of hot gunpowder smoke formed in the quiet air and hung over the battery. Twelve rounds boomed out and then the guns fell silent. Much too soon, thought Grant. The defenses could not yet have been much weakened. He rose to his feet for an unobstructed view. The five hundred “forlorn hopes” were dashing toward the entrenched Mexican artillery. The presence of the men on the field had halted the firing of the big siege guns. Why hadn't Wright waited for the guns to knock the building into rubble with cannonballs and kill the Mexicans manning the artillery?

The Mexican cannon roared and flung a furious storm of grape and canister into the Americans. The charging blue line flinched. Men began to fall, a few, then by the tens as the cannon kept firing. The line of “forlorn hopes” was shredded and torn wholesale, the name proving too awfully true. Behind the line of soldiers still on their feet and moving forward, the ground was littered with blue-clad bodies.

Muskets crackled out from the windows and the roof parapets of the Molino, adding their blizzard of lead balls to do slaughter. Much reduced in number, Wright's men reached the cannons in front of the Molino, swarmed over them, and shooting and stabbing drove off the artillerists and the infantry stationed there to guard the guns.

The Mexican musket fire from the Molino proved too deadly and Wright's men faltered and broke. They whirled and ran toward the rear. Mexicans surged out of the Molino and onto the Americans left at the battery of cannon. Grant saw the Mexicans shooting the Americans left lying wounded on the ground. They began to search through the pockets to rob the dead.

Smith's battalion leapt forward down the slope of the hill from where they had waited and swept over the battery of cannon. Taking heavy losses, the battalion was brought to a halt. Smith stood among the hissing bullets and shouted at his men and they regrouped behind him. With Smith leading, the men again stormed toward the center of the Molino.

Grant felt a tightening of his chest for he feared for the safety of his good friend Fred Dent who was a commander of a company of Smith's battalion. Then his attention was yanked to the front by Garland's stentorian yell to charge. The brigade burst into a run at the Molino. They were met by withering canister and grape fire and Garland ordered a withdrawal to Drum's battery of guns.

Grant flung a look around to see from where the killing fire was coming. Sergeant Robertson, a man Grant knew was shouting and pointing. “There! There!” He was pointing at Mexican cannons on the thrashing floor of the Molino.

“Our boys are shooting at the wrong place,” Grant yelled back to Robertson. “Help me.”

Grant and Robertson ran to help the artillerymen place their pieces correctly and bring their fire against the Mexican guns on the thrashing floor. Taking advantage of the cover from the singing bullets provided by a stone wall, they shoved a pair of the guns to within less than two hundred yards of the Mexicans and opened fire with canister. The shells exploding among the Mexicans drove them from their guns to flee into the mill.

Grant and Robertson joined with Captain Thorn of the Fourth Infantry and his party of men and charged toward the mill. A short ways farther along, Grant halted abruptly; Fred Dent was slumped over unconscious and bleeding from a wound in his thigh. Grant swiftly examined the wound and found it wasn't too serious. He laid Dent upon the flat top of a nearby wall where the hospital orderlies could easily spot him when they came searching for the wounded.

Grant waited for a slackening in the enemy's fire, and then ran through the smoke to overtake Thorn and Robertson breaking down one of the barricaded doors leading into the Molino. As he drew near the two men he saw a Mexican running at Thorn and about to sink a bayonet into his back.

“Look out!” Grant yelled.

Thorn sprang out of the way. Robertson had heard the Grant's shout and whirled and seeing the danger, shot the Mexican through the head.

The interior of the cavernous Molino was full of the enemy and the fighting was ferocious, pistols popping and muskets banging. Grant quickly emptied his two pistols into brown-faced men. The firing stopped with all guns empty and the fighting became one of stabbing bayonets and swinging sabers.

The Americans took the big room and hurried to the door to the next one. There they halted, speedily reloaded, and shooting through the open door, emptied their weapons into the room. They charged in with bayonets and swords ready. Grant cutting ferociously with his steel blade and stepping over and trampling upon the fallen enemy, went forward with his comrades. The Mexicans gave ground slowly. He saw a young Mexican captain with a slender body and a aristocratic Spanish face swiftly dispatch two Americans with a narrow, two edged sword. After the second man fell, the Americans held back knowing their clumsy bayonets were no match for the agile man with the sword. With a taunting smile of belief in his skill, the Mexican motioned with his sword to come at him.

Robertson glanced at Grant as if to say, you have a sword so that man is yours to fight. Grant warily evaluated the captain. Mexico City was famous for its dueling schools where wealthy young men were taught the use of pistol and sword. This captain must be one of those pupils. Still there was nothing else to do but fight. Grant sprang forward and took on the Mexican. They parried, cut, thrust. Within half a minute, Grant wished he had practiced his swordsmanship more diligently. He was far out-classed.

With mastery and strength, the captain parried one of Grant's strikes. Instantly and with amazing speed he moved sideways to come in on the side while Grant's saber had been knocked out of position. Grant knew the Mexican had him. He was as good as dead.

The captain's foot came down upon a musket lying on the floor and he was thrown momentarily off balance. As he caught himself, the expression on his face of believing he had certain victory changed to one of sudden doubt.

Now! Strike! The warrior in Grant shouted. Grant lunged forward, and as he did so brought his saber in, aligned its point just so, and thrust it out fiercely at his foe. The honed steel point of the blade pierced the man's front just below his rib cage and exited out his back. With a great sense of his life given back, Grant wrenched his saber free.

The Mexican captain, his brown, pain-filled eyes locked on Grant, put out a hand to hold himself erect. His hand found only air and he fell to the floor of the mill.

Grant yelled out to the Americans around him. “Press them! Press them!”

The stalled Americans doggedly moved ahead stabbing and cutting. The Mexicans stubbornly gave ground toward the opposite side of the big room. Their backs came up against the far wall. One frightened foe spotted a door close by and broke and fled out through it. The remaining twenty or so Mexicans scrambled for the door, bunched up for a moment at the narrow opening, then broke out onto a paved courtyard. There they split up and ran swiftly into the cypress trees behind the Molino. Grant and the squad of men with him followed out onto the courtyard and watched the Mexicans fleeing in the direction of Chapultepec Hill.

He led his band of men into the next building, and there encountered a surviving squad of Kirby Smith's men. The squad corporal touched his ear and pointed upward. Grant listened and heard footsteps on the roof. He nodded and glanced around for a stairway up. He saw none, but there was a carriage with a long tongue. He motioned for the men to help him and they propped the tongue against a wall and chocked the wheels. Using the tongue as a sort of ladder that reached to within three feet of the top, he shinnied up it and came out onto the roof. Other men came close behind him.

A private was patrolling back and forth across the roof with his musket held ready to fire at nearly a dozen Mexican infantrymen, one a lieutenant. All alone he had corralled the soldiers and was holding them prisoner.

He saw Grant and smiled proudly. “Lieutenant, I always thought one of us was worth a dozen of them.”

“Ppears you're right,” Grant said.

The officer offered his sword and Grant accepted it. Then Grant spoke to his men. “Disable all their muskets.”

With pleased smiles, the soldiers broke the muskets against the edge of the parapet and tossed them over the side to the ground.

“Take them to wherever prisoners are being held.” Grant said and indicating the cowed Mexicans.

By way of a ladder at the wall of the building, Grant went down to the main floor. He joined with other Americans and they started a search through the buildings for the cannon foundry. They found a large forge for melting bronze, but there were no church bells. From the appearance of the forge, no bronze had been melted here for many months. Looking further, they discover a few old cannon molds. Santa-Anna had again made fools out of the Americans. And made them pay a terrible price in blood and death for their foolishness.

Lee felt outraged as he looked down onto the battlefield in front of the Molino where hundreds of blue-clad soldiers littered the ground like broken dolls. He had witnessed the aborted cannonading by Huger's big siege guns because of Wright coming early onto the field, and Smith coming to help but not quite soon enough, and Garland fighting into the Molino. All the fighting had ended with the Molino in the hands of the Americans. But what a terrible waste of good men. Now Huger, Drum, and Duncan had turned their guns upon Casa Mata and Lee could see the damage being done to its walls as cannon balls hit.

Beside Lee, Worth spoke to one of his aids, “Tell Major McIntosh to take Casa Mata with the bayonet.”

“General, shouldn't we wait for the cannons to do their work?” Lee asked quickly. Surely Worth had seen the horrible example of men dying because too few cannonballs had been thrown at the enemy's fortifications.

“That could take hours, and McIntosh and his boys can take it readily enough.” Worth said impatiently and motioned at his aid to mount his horse.

The aid sprang astride and raced off to McIntosh waiting with his infantry. Lee felt like striking Worth for his lack of care for his men. Instead he put his glasses upon McIntosh and soon saw him leading his brigade upon Casa Mata. The Mexicans opened up on the Americans with a murderous fire from cannon and muskets. Major McIntosh fell on the slope of the ground in front of the powder magazine. Other soldiers toppled over by platoons. The remaining Americans threw themselves down behind the embankment and firing their muskets began to pick off the Mexicans at Casa Mata. After a quarter hour of so the Americans ran out of ammunition and pulled back out of range. This freed the guns of Duncan, Drum, and Huger and they resumed bombardment of Casa Mata with a vengeance. Within half an hour, the Mexicans raised a white flag.

*

Colonel Hitchcock had come up beside Lee and now spoke. “A few more such victories and our army will be destroyed.” His voice crackled with anger.

“We must have lost 700 maybe 800 men in less than two hours,” Lee replied. Worth and his aids had left the command post to return to headquarters. Lee had stayed behind and was watching the hospital orderlies load their ambulance wagons with the wounded and hasten away to the hospital in Tacubaya.