by Mike Blakely
Otherwise, his horsemen presented a splendid sight, their hundreds of lance points jutting skyward as they rode.
“A la lope!” he shouted. “Marcha!” His mount knew the order for the canter and lunged forward, the columns behind him soon joining him in the quicker gait, the order having been passed back through the companies. On he charged, knowing the enemy must have seen him by now. Still, catching glimpses of the Yankee line through the scattered brush, he saw no opposing force moving to protect the American right. The surprise would devastate the enemy.
Suddenly, Torrejon’s mount balked and floundered. He spurred, but the charger slung his head, then slipped in a soft patch of dirt, almost tumbling.
“Alto!”
The ground here, though covered with the same grass as the good terrain behind him, had turned into a bog he never could have seen coming. The units behind piled into the forward riders, causing horses to kick and rear. Men cursed; some were thrown and trampled.
Torrejon waved frantically to his right. “To the road! Use the road. Quickly!” He now regretted holding to the cover of the scattered chaparral. Any advantage he had won by the concealment had already been lost in this quagmire.
The young officer nearest to him reined to the right, but only found softer footing that sucked at his mount’s hooves. He had led his entire regiment into an invisible bog that had surrounded him on three sides. He would have to back out, though the last of his men were still piling forward.
“To the rear!” he railed. “Damn you, fools! To the rear!”
Captain
EPHRAIM KIRBY SMITH
Palo Alto
May 8, 1846
He could see that the enemy cannonade had rattled the nerves of his soldiers. He himself fought back the dread of death and violence. His company would look to him for leadership. He could not fail them, would not disgrace his family’s legacy.
“Stand firm, men!” This was all he could think of to say, but it seemed to help. His men stood at order arms, awaiting the directive to attack.
“Sir, are we gonna charge or not?” a private demanded.
Captain Ephraim Kirby Smith, a company commander in the Fifth Infantry, U.S. Army, understood the soldier’s anxiety. Anything was better than standing here, waiting for the next cannon shot to scream their way. He looked sternly into the eyes of the private.
“I have sent a request for orders to our regimental commander, Colonel McIntosh. I have expressed to him that we would rather advance than stand here and dodge cannonballs.”
The soldier’s eyes cut away from Smith to watch two infantrymen carry a wounded man to the rear. A cannonball had severed the victim’s foot.
Out of habit, Smith looked toward his brother, Captain Edmund Kirby Smith, also a company commander in the Fifth. Standing with his troops a stone’s throw away to the right, Edmund seemed to feel his brother’s gaze. He looked back at Ephraim and gave a quick nod.
Ephraim Smith nodded back and scratched at sideburns that grew thick from his ears to the corners of his mouth.
“Captain!”
Smith’s first sergeant came sprinting toward him. He slid to a stop and pointed down the Matamoros Road. “There’s enemy cavalry riding out of the brush. Hundreds of them.”
Through the artillery smoke, Captain Smith saw the enemy movement a half mile away. It struck him as a deadly but beautiful sight, like a gaily patterned viper slithering out into view. The gaudy colors of the uniforms and the fang-like lances made his heart leap.
“They aim to flank us, Captain,” said the first sergeant.
“Report to Colonel McIntosh. Hurry!”
As he watched his first sergeant run toward McIntosh’s position, Smith noticed that the Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Walker had arrived, horseback, at Colonel McIntosh’s side and was already pointing out the enemy movement. Good. Captain Smith now noticed some twenty horsemen in civilian attire nearby: Walker’s Spy Company of Rangers. The presence of these hard-riding men tendered some confidence.
He looked toward Edmund. Edmund glanced back and forced a smile.
Now Smith looked back to the Matamoras Road. Torrejon’s cavalry were still pouring out of the chaparral. They seemed disorganized and took some time forming up for the charge. Some of the horses and riders looked as if they had fallen in mud.
Searching with his eyes across the battleground to his left, Smith could see that Lieutenant Randolph Ridgely, of Ringgold’s flying artillery, had spotted the Mexican cavalry on the road. His gunners were busy limbering two six-pounders, hopefully in preparation to support the flank.
The artillery, like the Rangers, gave Ephraim Smith more comfort. Yet he knew the Fifth Infantry would take the brunt of the coming attack. Hundreds of veteran Mexican riders could only be turned by an equal number of muskets in the hands of trained foot soldiers. He feared that, if American bullets failed to stop the Mexican horsemen, the bayonets of the Fifth would prove virtually useless against the long lances of Torrejon’s men—ten-foot poles with ten-inch razor-sharp blades and a triangular pennon below the blade to absorb and prevent the slick blood of slain men from running down the spear shaft and spoiling the lancer’s grip.
Now Smith’s first sergeant returned at a run, gasping, having overheard the conversation between Colonel McIntosh and Captain Walker.
“Sir, the regiment is to make an oblique move ahead and to the right. We will form a hollow square to defend the flank, sir.” The veteran noncom propped his palms on his knees as he bent to catch his breath.
The order to march came by drum roll, bugle call, and shouted orders. Smith’s company advanced at double-quick time over four hundred yards with the rest of the regiment. Arriving at the far right flank, winded, they prepared to form a defensive square, as they had done scores of times at drill, each company aware of the movements required to create the square from column formation. Some marched forward, some back. Others wheeled and swung like hinged gates bristling with bayonets.
Smith listened as first sergeants barked orders to their companies:
“Platoons! Right half-wheel, march!”
“Left oblique, march!”
“Forward, left wheel!”
“Halt! Right dress!”
The square took shape between the Matamoros Road and the duck ponds to the west. Each side of the hollow formation was two ranks deep. Inside the square, a reserve unit waited to reinforce any breach in the ranks from any direction. The regimental colors and the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel James S. McIntosh, also occupied the center of the hollow formation. The entire five-hundred-man formation covered a patch of prairie no more than thirty yards square. A small target for distant enemy artillery, it bristled in every direction with musket barrels and fixed bayonets.
Smith felt reasonably confident that the square would answer any flanking attempt. No matter where the enemy cavalry swarmed, American muskets and rifles would aim—left, right, front, or rear. He found himself guarding the forward face of the square—the position most likely to take the initial cavalry charge. He stood less than a quarter mile from the enemy now, and he could make out the horsemen waving the tips of their lances in the air. He glanced at the men around him. Fear blanched the faces of some. Others visibly trembled. But none broke ranks.
Captain Smith thought of his forebears from Connecticut. His grandfather had fought at Bunker Hill and throughout the War of Independence. His father, during the War of 1812, had charged at Lundy’s Lane, later earning the rank of colonel. Service in the regular army was a family tradition. Smith himself was nearing forty years of age. Like his brother, Edmund, he had served in the army for almost two decades and had never seen combat. He was determined to meet it with honor.
“Stand firm, men!” he cried, hoping his voice would not crack. “We will not fire until they are upon us! Stand firm and prepare to fight!”
“Here they come!” his first sergeant announced.
My God. They are eight hundred strong. T
he colors! Such power! The gallantry! Can we stop them? Yes, we must. Trust the hollow square.
The enemy horsemen formed a broad line, several ranks deep. They galloped headlong at the Fifth Infantry’s square, looming ever larger. At one hundred yards, they suddenly stopped, their forward rank drawing escopetas from saddle rings or scabbards. This front rank unleashed a hailstorm of lead toward the Fifth’s square. Smith heard the bullets popping against U.S. uniforms. Wounded men screamed. Some fell. Others carried on as if mindless of their wounds.
“Hold your fire!” Smith ordered. He stepped aside so a soldier could drag a gutshot comrade into the middle of the square.
The front rank of the lancers veered right with muzzles smoking. The entire cavalry formation charged again, then halted, the second rank drawing and firing the old blunderbusses into the Americans’ square, then curling aside to reveal the third rank, which also advanced, halted, fired, peeled away.
A few more men fell from the square, wounded or dead.
“Hold your fire, men! Stand firm!” Smith had never seen or heard of a cavalry maneuver like the one he was witnessing, yet the old flintlocks had not blasted any gaping holes in the hollow square. He heard an order in Spanish and saw the horses leap forward toward him, the lances leaning low to draw American blood. Fifty yards away now …
“Hold your fire!” He knew he could not let the men pull their triggers too soon.
Forty yards … Thirty …
“Fire!”
The front rank of infantry released a long-awaited barrage. Enemy riders fell and horses tumbled in earth-jarring wrecks, yet still more charged gallantly on, live mounts leaping over dead ones. Each soldier in the front rank, having fired, dropped to one knee and braced the butt of his weapon on the ground, bayonet jutting up and out. The second rank took aim behind the kneeling men of the first rank.
Twenty yards … Ten …
“Fire!” Smith yelled.
That did it!
American lead tore riders from Mexican mounts and turned others back, wounded. Scores of cavalrymen veered and pressed the far right flank of the U.S. line, only to find Captain Samuel Walker’s Texas Rangers guarding the extreme right, west of the road. The Rangers fired rifles, Colt revolvers, and shotguns from their saddles, forcing the Mexicans to veer farther to their left, onto boggy ground. They milled in confusion as the men of the Fifth reloaded using paper cartridges holding powder, ball, and buckshot. Smith’s men fired at will now, driving the riders out of musket range.
“Cease firing and reload!” Smith shouted. His heart was beating so hard that the words came out in surges.
A shout from Colonel McIntosh at the center of the square now ordered a side movement of the formation toward the middle of the battlefield. Wondering why, Captain Smith looked toward the rear and saw that Ridgely’s two six-pounders were rapidly taking up a position behind the square. As the ground was too boggy to the right of the square, he could see that the Fifth would need to move left to open up a path for the flying artillery to blaze away at the rallying Mexican horsemen.
“Carry the wounded to the middle of the square!” Smith yelled. “Left face! Company, march!”
As his men tripped over dropped weapons and dragged wounded men, the entire regiment nonetheless moved haltingly toward the left. Glancing back over the battlefield as cannon roared between the two armies, he saw Torrejon’s riders trying to organize a second charge. Behind them, the two fieldpieces at the rear of the Mexican charge were finally ramming home loads. The defensive square continued to slide toward the middle of the American line. Smith thought of draperies being pulled gradually from the edge of a window to reveal the dark pupils of two peering eyes. Only, these eyes shot fire.
The Mexican fieldpieces erupted, but fired high. Smith’s relief was short-lived, as he saw the lancers charging yet again. They were either unaware of Ridgely’s two guns or were simply too brave to falter. At fifty yards, the flying artillery unleashed two loads of spherical case shot, blasting a hole into the Mexican advance. Yet the survivors charged on.
“Fire!”
Smith’s men resumed their musket fire, then Ridgely’s two pieces—having reloaded with miraculous speed—slung another lethal dose of hell into the lancers, almost point blank. Finally, the beleaguered Mexicans peeled away. The soldiers of the Fifth cheered as the fleeing enemy riders picked up their dead and wounded as best they could under the withering fire of the flying artillery.
Ephraim Smith looked over his shoulder, across the inside of the square, and waved at his brother. Through thick gunpowder smoke he saw Edmund wave back.
Turning back to the front, Smith thought he might vomit, but he choked back the urge through sheer will. A fallen cavalry mount writhed just two paces in front of him, its entrails bulging from a wound in its belly. The paunch of the warhorse had been ripped open and the pungent odor of offal made him gag. As he wondered if he should order a soldier to shoot the suffering steed, the beast rolled its eyes and shuddered, releasing its last breath in a blessed death rattle.
Brigadier General
ZACHARY TAYLOR
Palo Alto
May 8, 1846
The long days of incessant drill on Corpus Christi beach had paid off, he thought. It gratified him to see infantry and artillery working together so smoothly under fire to turn Torrejon’s attack, but he had expected such professionalism for months. What he could not have foreseen was the overall lethal efficiency of the flying artillery. Ringgold’s batteries had been able to rush to any given position, sling shot after shot accurately at the enemy, then wheel away to new ground before the Mexican artillery could range them. This swarming offensive, coupled with the firepower of the Bull Battery’s eighteen-pounders, had thus far made the expected infantry charge unnecessary.
Taylor knew this could change at any minute, depending on what Arista had in mind across the way. But for now, in this first battle of an infant war, he was content to let his artillery speak for the U.S. Army. That contentment ended suddenly when a Mexican ball hit a caisson behind one of the siege guns, rendering four gunners dead or unconscious.
“Bill!” he shouted.
“Sir!” Captain William Bliss responded immediately.
“Write a note to Ringgold. A Mexican gun has ranged the eighteen-pounders. Tell him to find that gun and destroy it.”
Bliss was using an empty ammunition crate as his makeshift desk. He scrawled the note and handed it up to the general. Taylor spread the paper across his thigh to sign his rank and name with the plume Bliss handed to him. Bliss then carried the signed order at a run to a dragoon waiting nearby.
“Godspeed,” Taylor said, as he watched the dragoon gallop into the maw of the battle. The messenger rode a light gray horse, making him easy to follow with the naked eye, even at a distance. Through the battlefield gun smoke, Taylor saw the mount arrive at the side of Major Ringgold astride his big bay horse he called Old Branch.
Another Mexican cannonball shattered the wheel of a limber and bounced through the ranks, finally hitting and mortally injuring one of the oxen used to pull the eighteen-pounders. Taylor watched as an infantry soldier walked over to the crippled ox, took aim at its head, and put the beast out of its misery with a single shot.
“There will be beef for supper,” he said to Captain Bliss, who had just returned to his side.
“I don’t know that I will have the appetite, sir.”
“The war has begun, Bill. You must never pass up a chance to eat or sleep when the opportunity presents itself.”
“Yes, sir.”
Looking back toward Ringgold’s position on the battlefield, the general saw the gunners limbering two pieces. Apparently Ringgold had already judged the source of the shot that had damaged the works of the Bull Battery. This would be interesting. Where would Ringgold move next to deal with the offending enemy cannon?
Within a minute, horses, artillery, ammunition, and gunners were racing toward the right flank of th
e battlefield to take up a new and advantageous position. Taylor thought Ringgold would move perhaps a quarter mile, but he kept going, galloping right. Four hundred, five hundred, six hundred yards. A half mile, and the flying artillery still had not slowed its pace.
My God, he’s going all the way to the enemy flank. He’s attempting to enfilade the entire Mexican line!
Bliss was looking through a spyglass. “Sir? Are you watching Ringgold?”
“Yes.”
“He’s going to flank them!”
Taylor shrugged. “Why not? The Mexican cavalry has fallen back in confusion on that flank.”
“The order I wrote only said to eliminate the artillery hitting our siege guns, not to enfilade the enemy line!”
“I know, Bill. I read it before I signed it. Ringgold is seizing the moment. Perhaps he couldn’t determine exactly which enemy gun had ranged us, so he decided to line them up and bring them all under fire.”
This is gallantry beyond the pale of imagination.
“It’s reckless.”
“Yes.”
The flying artillery swung into position and unlimbered before the Mexicans recognized them as the enemy. Tubes were swabbed and loaded. Canister and grape tore into the nearest infantry to hold them at bay, then Ringgold’s men reloaded with exploding shells that they lobbed farther down the Mexican line, blasting enemy gunners away from their pieces and effectively ending the bombardment of the Bull Battery. It was astonishing how quickly Ringgold’s men could reload and how accurately they could fire. Yet Taylor worried for the major’s safety now. In his courageous maneuver, he had drawn the attention of Arista’s entire army. From atop Old Whitey, Taylor could see enemy fieldpieces pivoting to fire back at Ringgold’s six-pounders.
