by Mike Blakely
Taylor shrugged. “Arista might order his men in place for a charge just to scare the hell out of Brown—hoping for a surrender.”
Walker nodded. “That’s likely. At least we will know whether or not the Mexican infantry has moved into attack formation. But I tell you in all confidence, General, that Brown will not surrender. He has not faltered in the face of an almost continual bombardment for three days. His eyes are bright and his wits keen.”
“Captain Walker,” said General William Worth, a note of skepticism in his voice, “if you managed to ride in and out of Fort Texas last night, I would think the enemy guard around the fort rather light.”
Grant watched Samuel Walker’s jaws tighten, though his countenance otherwise changed very little. His light gray eyes blinked once, disdainfully, and cut toward Worth. There, thought Grant. There is the menacing spirit of this legendary fighting man.
“General Worth, sir, I did not ride into Fort Texas. I hid my horse miles outside the fort and walked. Then I crawled, sometimes on my belly like a snake. I crawled past Mexican guards whose throats I could have slit. I hailed our own sentries, had my audience with Major Brown, and crawled back out the same way I had crawled in. When I reached my horse, then I rode here. I assure you, Fort Texas is surrounded by a brigade of Mexican regulars.”
As he had listened to all this talk last night, Grant had felt a dread of the coming carnage creeping into his heart and guts. It was odd. He didn’t fear it for his own safety but for the impending loss of humanity—the boys who would never marry, the men who would never return to their families. The weeping of mothers, wives, and children. The moaning of men on bloody field hospital cots. He didn’t understand why he could see this coming and others could not. Damn the warmongers in Washington, so far away and safe in their tidy houses.
Now, remembering the predawn council of war, Lieutenant Grant pulled his watch from his pocket as he stood on the docks at Point Isabel. The time was 6:29. Half of the signal from Fort Texas seemed already to have been sent, for he had not heard the big siege guns all morning. All around the docks and the fortifications, officers ordered men to cease their toil and stand at ease.
Grant stared at the face of his watch. The second hand passed its zenith and continued. This watch has always run fast. He closed his eyes and waited, then waited longer. At length, he heard the pronounced rumble of Captain Loud’s battery. The signal was clear. The Mexican Army had formed up around the star fort for an infantry attack. Whether the attack had actually begun was unknown.
What Grant did know was that Taylor would be itching to head back inland at the earliest opportunity to rescue the defenders of Fort Texas. Oddly—though he disagreed with the necessity for this war—Grant also felt a certain sense of urgency for this maneuver. Duty called. He found himself aching to return to Fort Texas, even though he suspected that he would have to fight his way through.
SARAH BORGINNES
Fort Texas
May 6, 1846
The bombardment had now rattled the Great Western to her very marrow. She had almost reached the point where she hoped the enemy would just go ahead and attack the fort. For three nights now she had attempted to sleep in the bombproofs with dirt raining down on her face and hair. For three days she had carried coffee and food to the gunners on the walls, feeling the percussion of the powder charges rattle her skull. The hellish whistling of shells had become as common as the buzzing of bees or the chirping of crickets. The fort’s latrines had begun to stink to high heaven and supplies were diminishing rapidly. Fort Texas had become a living hell.
Still, she smiled at the men she encountered. They needed her encouragement now more than ever. The defenders of the fort had wakened this morning to find that large numbers of Mexican infantry and cavalry had crossed the river overnight and had taken up positions just out of artillery range, apparently in preparation to rush the fort.
Oddly, Major Brown had ordered Captain Loud to keep his eighteen-pounders silent until well after dawn. Then, about 6:30, he had unleashed a barrage of exploding shells in the direction of the enemy formations. She guessed that this was to show the enemy what manner of hell they would have to charge through, should they attempt an all-out assault. It seemed to have worked, for the Mexican lines had not moved forward. Still, Sarah kept her issued musket handy at all times and wore her cartridge box belted over her shoulder and around her waist like any foot soldier.
As she began to cook a midday stew for the gunners, she heard a shell howling through the air, sounding more ominous than most. It wailed like the scream of a panther mixed with the shrill song of a steamboat’s whistle. She looked up at the wall where Major Jacob Brown had been inspecting some damage. A solid cannonball struck his thigh and flipped him off of the fort wall like a fingernail flicking a bug aside.
“No!” she screamed, running toward the place where he had landed, on the sloping inner wall of the fort. She sprinted through a gap that had been blasted in the tunnel and slowed to a trot as a few soldiers reached the major before her. One had already tied a tourniquet around the thigh of the commander’s mangled leg. As men lifted the major, one of them cradled the broken part of his limb that dangled in a blood-soaked pant leg.
“Take him to the surgeon, boys!” she ordered.
The major groaned as they jostled him along. She ran ahead of them to the section of the bombproofs being used as a hospital.
“Doc!” she yelled into the enclosure. “A ball hit Major Brown! His leg’s damn near tore clean off!”
She stepped aside to make room for the men carrying the commander. Having done all she could do, she trudged back through the gap in the pickle-barrel tunnel to return to her cook fire. Something tugged at her bonnet as a dust cloud sprouted from the ground in front of her. She felt her bonnet to find a bullet hole in the fabric. Some sniper’s shot—probably intended for a gunner on the wall—had fallen into the fort and almost hit her in the back of her head.
Angry now, Sarah cussed under her breath. She went out of her way to angle across the fort interior to the little foundry that had been built yesterday. This had, at first, appalled her. The foundry was used to heat cannonballs red hot. The glowing orbs would then be carried to the parapets by pairs of men wielding makeshift tongs. There, the balls were rolled down the muzzles of six-pounders so that they could be lobbed into the houses and shops of Matamoros to set the city afire. The Mexican citizens had abandoned the place, but the intentional torching of nonmilitary property still struck Sarah as unnecessarily mean.
The maiming of Major Brown and the bullet through her bonnet had changed her mind. She stalked up to the foundry, where half a dozen men labored in the heat.
“Give ’em hell, boys!” she shouted above the din of big guns.
The men looked at her with weary eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” one of them said, picking up a cannonball for heating.
Another threw a barrel stave into the fire. “That’s what we’re givin’ ’em, ma’am. Pure-dee hell!”
She turned back toward her cook fire to tend her cauldron of stew. This day had started badly and gotten worse. The Mexicans had to have seen the major struck down on the fort wall. This would only encourage them. Soon they would send soldiers to cross the dry moat, she feared. She fixed her eyes on the musket that she had left near her fire. She was ready to use it, shoulder to shoulder with the men, but she prayed General Taylor would return to rescue her before the Mexicans charged. Otherwise, this might very well be her day to die.
General
MARIANO ARISTA
Palo Alto
May 8, 1846
General Arista sat astride his charger, trying to think in American. He could speak English, for he had lived as an exile in Cincinnati for three years. But words were superfluous, particularly in English, and most especially during times of war. What he had to rely upon here was his knowledge of American thinking.
“Capitan,” he said to his aide-de-camp, Jean Louis Be
rlandier, “send General Torrejon to cross the road and secure the left flank, then report back to me immediately.”
“Si, General!” The captain spurred his horse to a canter.
Arista scanned the terrain ahead. Here, he would soon engage the Americans under General Zachary Taylor. His scouts and spies had ensured him that Taylor was on his way back from the port of Santa Isabel with a large wagon train of supplies to relieve the men he had left behind at the earthen fort across from Matamoros. At the very least, Arista knew he must prevent Taylor from getting through to the fort. At best, he hoped to rout the Americans and capture their supply train.
He smiled, anxious to tangle with Taylor. He knew the old American general as an Indian fighter who had never commanded artillery or cavalry in a battle. “Come, General Taylor,” he said under his breath. “Bring to me my provisions.”
Behind him stood the tall timber—palo alto—a noted landmark on the road from Santa Isabel to Matamoros and a good place to conceal his reserve forces and supplies. The open plain stretched out for miles before him, flanked on the left by the Matamoros Road. In the distance, he could see the dust cloud of the American army approaching from Santa Isabel.
The Americans called it Point Isabel. Typical. The Protestant heretics thought more of a geographic feature than the consecrated Catholic saint whose name blessed that little port.
Though he bristled at the arrogance of the approaching enemy, he had to admit that he admired certain aspects of American culture, including many agricultural innovations he had seen while traveling from Florida to Ohio. Not the abhorrent use of slaves in the South, of course, but the advanced techniques of planting and harvesting in the northern states made possible by metal tools and machines. He greatly envied the magnificence of the industrial complexes he had seen, particularly the iron foundries and steel mills. Oh, if only Madre México possessed such works. Agriculture and industry. Together they had bred an American instinct for expansion. From the halls of Congress to the meanest tavern, Americans lusted for lands beyond their own borders.
His smile wrinkled his fair, freckled face. Not much difference between Congress and a lowly tavern, but as much could be said of Mexico, as well.
The smile slipped away as he focused again on the chosen battlefield before him.
Think in American!
They would arrive all full of Yankee bluster. The Americans actually believed in their hearts that they owned this disputed land north of the Rio Grande del Norte, however outlandish that claim might seem to a native-born patriot like Arista. They would fight. But they were untested compared to the soldiers of his war-torn nation. Some of Taylor’s troops had skirmished with Indios, but few—mostly European immigrants—knew anything of battle on a large scale with artillery, cavalry, and bayonet.
Arista knew that his second-in-command, General Ampudia, would soon arrive with reinforcements, for he had called off the siege of the Americans’ earthen star fort. With Ampudia’s troops, he would outnumber Taylor roughly 5,000 to 2,200. True, the enemy possessed better muskets than his troops, and even a number of rifles. But that would count for little after the first volley or two, when the battle became a hand-to-hand bloodbath. Here, the bayonets and lances of his professional soldiers would wreak bloody havoc on the untested army of the United States of America.
The enemy’s only real advantage lay with the spawn of the gringo ore mines: cannon. The artillery battle over Matamoras had proven that. The American guns were more modern and more powerful; their ammunition far superior to the solid brass cannonballs and the metal scrap that Arista’s batteries had to use as grapeshot. His spies had warned him of Captain Ringgold’s flying artillery, but Taylor’s two eighteen-pounders—each pulled by six yokes of oxen—concerned him more.
Arista knew his greatest advantage was in his cavalry. He commanded well over a thousand veteran horsemen. Other than a company of volunteer Texas Rangers, Taylor had no men who knew how to fight at a gallop. The Second Dragoons were essentially mounted infantrymen. Their tactics had proven useless at Rancho de Carricitos, where Torrejon’s troops could have cut them all down like lambs in a slaughter pen.
His battle plan, accordingly, seemed logical enough. He would attack with his cavalry and flank the enemy, capturing artillery batteries and provisions. His battle-hardened infantry would easily turn Taylor’s counterattack. The Americans would abandon their slow-moving supply train and ox-drawn eighteen-pounders and retreat en masse to Santa Isabel.
Taylor was an old Indian fighter, nothing more. He was out of his element here, his strategies dated. Even now, Arista’s spies had told him, the old plantation owner was riding to Palo Alto in a wagon driven by one of his slaves. Of real war, he knew nothing.
A Gulf freshet whipped into the tall timber, stirring the leaves and making the battle flag of the Tampico Battalion, to his right, snap smartly, as if anxious for combat. The tricolor banner, featuring the familiar image of the eagle and the snake, represented his most elite infantry unit. The Tampicos had been baptized in the blood of their comrades. Arista knew they would stand firm.
The general trusted that he could rely upon the rank and file above the loyalty of his own officers, for the politics of Mexico forever slithered through his army like that snake on the Tampico flag. Arista himself had been a royalist, a rebel, and an exile. Sent to this northern frontier to lead the Mexican Army of the North, he was now a conservative serving at the head of a liberal officer corps. He would be foolish to ignore the possibility of insubordination among his junior officers.
Despite these worries, Arista felt confident that his eventful journey had prepared him for this day. The son of a Spanish Army officer—born José Mariano Martín Buenaventura Ignacio Nepomuceno Garcia de Arista Nuez—there had never been any question about his path in life. He was to be a soldier, like his father. He had served honorably as a young Spanish officer during the revolution, helping to put down rebellion in Mexico. But after the liberals had succeeded in a coup d’état in Spain, he had switched alliances and joined General Iturbide to fight for Mexican independence rather than serve a liberal Spanish government. His service in the revolutionary army, helping to win and hold Mexican independence, catapulted him upward in the ranks to brigadier general.
His stand against the lawless despot Santa Anna had brought about Arista’s defeat, capture, and exile to the United States. After Santa Anna’s own defeat and capture in Texas, Arista returned to Mexico and once again resumed his service to his nation as a general. During the French invasion of Veracruz, in 1838, Santa Anna—having somehow secured his release from the Texans—summoned Arista. They met in Veracruz with the French Navy anchored in the harbor, threatening a ground invasion. Generals Arista and Santa Anna talked for hours into the night, hashing out old differences and agreeing to move forward as loyal Mexicans against the coming French attack.
Just before dawn, French soldiers snuck ashore and stormed the house where Santa Anna and Arista slept. Slipping out in his nightshirt, Santa Anna was mistaken for a servant by a French soldier.
“Where is Santa Anna?” the French invader shouted.
Santa Anna pointed up the stairs to Arista’s room. “Up there!”
General Mariano Arista suffered the indignity of capture by the French. Santa Anna escaped to the barracks, rallied some troops, and drove the French invaders down to the docks, where a cannonball fired from a French warship shattered the former president’s leg, making him once again an obligatory hero to the Mexican citizenry. Making the most of his amputation, he would become president again. And, again, he would be deposed by his enemies.
So Santa Anna was now in exile in Cuba, and this day—at Palo Alto—belonged to General Mariano Arista. He was forty-three years old. He had seen battle for more than two decades. President Paredes had named him general-in-chief of the Army of the North. His forces had covered more than fifteen leagues a day marching northward to Matamoras. His troops were inured to the hardships of the f
ield, and they ached to repulse the pompous Yankee invaders.
Hoofbeats penetrated his musings. His aide-de-camp, Captain Berlandier, returned at a gallop.
“Sir, General Torrejon has moved to the left flank, as ordered.”
“Very well,” the general said. “Now, quickly, tell General Noriega to follow his written orders and place his cavalry to the right.” Arista pointed toward what would become his right flank. “Do you see that tallest tree?”
“Si, General.”
“Tell Noriega I order him to form up there immediately!”
“Si, General!” Captain Berlandier spurred and left.
Arista was annoyed that Noriega had not yet carried out his written orders to move to the right flank. He considered it an intentional act of insubordination. Envy and jealousy forever hobbled the Army of the North.
Reining his big gelding to his right and riding along the front lines of the Tampico Battalion, he looked sternly into the eyes of a few soldiers. They snapped to attention as he passed. Some of the men possessed the fair-skinned features of the Spanish elite, as did Arista himself. The general’s red hair and freckles were especially unusual among men in the Mexican Army. But many other soldiers bore the dark features of mestizo blood. The differences in skin tone mattered little on this day. He had seen them all bleed the same crimson shade.
“Listo?” he asked, catching the eye of an enlisted man. Ready?
“Siempre!” the soldier replied. Always! Others nearby agreed.
Arista smiled. Unlike most Mexican generals, he had always enjoyed the admiration of the common soldier.
“Today you will see the faces of some gringos. Let them see no fear in your eyes. God stands with us against the heretics from the north. We will fight and defend the soil of Mother Mexico! Always!”
