by Mike Blakely
* * *
Arriving at the docks, he found a handful of his trusted agents, a single platoon of infantrymen, a small brass band, and a gathering of curious citizens. Juanito returned from the boiler room in time to help him across a gangplank to the pier. Still feeling the sway of the open seas, Santa Anna felt obliged to hold his manservant’s shoulder as he trudged toward his supporters.
The first to step forward was Manuel Escandon, a profiteer who had benefited from dictator Santa Anna’s takeover of abandoned church properties, which he sold to chosen investors, including Escandon.
“Viva México!” Escandon shouted. “Viva Santa Anna!”
No one added the customary echoes.
“Manuel,” Santa Anna said, shaking Escandon’s hand, “just one cannon shot as a salute to my return? Only one?”
Escandon shrugged his apology. “The generals did not want the Americans to mistake your salute for an act of aggression.”
“This fear of the Yanquis is disgusting,” Santa Anna groused. Then he smiled and added, “But this will change.”
“Ah, senora!” Escandon said, bowing before Maria.
Santa Anna looked past Escandon to the others who had come to greet him. He recognized the familiar faces of Haro y Tamariz, Tornel, Sierra y Rosso, Valencia, Canalizo … Generals, politicians, bureaucrats. All useful men, if closely supervised. He stepped forward, shook off his manservant’s helping hand, and pointed at the soldiers on the jetty.
“Why are these soldiers not standing at attention? Where are their officers?”
“The officers all went to a tavern in the town,” Escandon admitted. He turned to the men in uniform. “Fire a musket salute to Santa Anna’s return!” he shouted.
A few of the men loosed random shots out over the Gulf.
“Strike up the band!” Escandon goaded. “The Hero of Veracruz has returned!”
As he listened to the band butcher a haphazard version of some march, General Antonio López de Santa Anna inhaled a breath of Mexican air and offered his elbow to Maria. With his comely wife, he hobbled up the pier toward sacred ground. Though he fumed inwardly at the disorganized welcome he had received, he forced himself to smile and swagger as if reviewing the troops. Soon, he told himself, there would be parades in his honor. There would be banquets, festivals, concerts, and celebrations. Just like old times.
“I have returned,” he said to himself, under his breath. Just then, he noticed an old man standing in his path on the dock. As Santa Anna limped nearer, the graybeard shook his fist at the general.
“Santa Anna, you scoundrel!” the curmudgeon railed. “For more than twenty years you have endeavored to ruin our country! Why did you not stay in Cuba, where you could reign as king of the cockfights?”
Santa Anna drew himself up into a defensive posture, though the tirade had done little to ruffle him. He had been called worse than king of the cockfights.
“Sir, you stand with two good legs upon the very pier where I lost one of mine in defense of Madre México!” Now he looked the old man in the eyes and smiled at him. “There was a day, and my heart expands with the recollection, when leading forward the popular masses and the army to demand the rights of the nation, I was hailed by the enviable title Soldier of the People! Allow me again to assume that selfsame title—nevermore to be given up—and to devote myself until death to the defense of the liberty and independence of the republic!”
The words had come straight out of the speech he had been rehearsing for days, but the old man before him seemed to swallow them as impromptu and sincere.
The aged citizen’s glare softened as he glanced down at the peg leg. “God save Mexico,” he said, stepping aside to let Santa Anna and Doña Maria pass.
Captain
JOHN RILEY
Monterrey, Mexico
September 19, 1846
Captain John Riley traced the pattern of a crucifix across his chest as he rose from the altar. His daily prayers attended to, he now turned back to his preparations for war. With a touch of sadness, he glanced around the unfinished interior of the chapel. Almost complete and ready for mass, its construction had been halted by the American invasion. Now it served as an ammunition depot for the earthen fort recently built around it. Where lines of new wooden pews had once stood in ranks, crates of powder, shot, shells, and fuses now crowded the floor. Riley wended his way among them as if navigating a maze, until he passed under the stone arch of the cathedral door.
Stepping out into the dazzling Mexican sunlight, he visually inspected the earthen walls of the fort that had been built around the Catholic temple. The intended churchyard was now surrounded by a rectangular rampart with arrowhead-shaped bastions projecting from all four corners. Eight heavy artillery pieces were in place, ready to hurl shot, shell, grapeshot, and canister at the American invaders coming from the north. These were modern eighteen-pounders of English manufacture, far superior to the ancient Spanish six-pounders he had fired at Fort Texas on the Rio Bravo.
Looking around, Riley’s eyes fell upon the new pine pews that had been removed from the chapel, now piled haphazardly against the outer wall of the stone church. Nearby, he saw several women smoking cigarettes rolled with corn husks. The Mexicans called these women soldaderas. They traveled with the army to cook and clean, and sometimes to tend wounded men, reload muskets, or even fire upon the enemy themselves. It was rumored that some of them provided other services of a more intimate nature.
“Buenos dias, mujeres!” Riley sang, flashing a smile.
The women returned his greeting, some nodding or smiling.
Riley gestured toward the pews stacked against the church wall. “Aqui es mucha lena para los fieros del campo.” His Irish brogue tainted his limited vocabulary. Here is much firewood for the camp.
One of the soldaderas snuffed out her cigarette. She wore a tattered palmetto hat, a common cotton dress, and sandals. Around her trim waist she had tied her red-and-yellow rebozo as a colorful sash.
“Si, Capitan,” she replied, grabbing a nearby ax and marching forward to bury the blade in a wooden pew.
The rest of the women searched for tools or began stacking the wood split from the lumber. They had learned to respect the big foreigner, not only for his size and his swagger but also for his obvious skills in leadership and knowledge of artillery.
In large strides, Riley now climbed the steep dirt slope to the northeast bastion and looked back at the beautiful, white-walled city of Monterrey, a thousand yards to the south. This small fortified churchyard, which the Mexicans called the Citadel, stood as the first line of defense for Monterrey, the capital city of the state of Nuevo León. It guarded the road to the town of Marin—General Taylor’s most likely path to Monterrey. It was here—at the Citadel—that John Riley expected to exact his revenge on the sadistic nativist officers of the U.S. Army.
He walked among young Mexican enlisted men serving as gunners and returned their salutes. He approached privates Barney Hogan and August Geary—U.S. deserters like himself—who were watching the senoritas chop up the church pews. General Ampudia’s plan, at least for now, was to mix the U.S. deserters with Mexican soldiers in these artillery units. But Riley had already spoken to his superiors about his dream of forming a mostly Irish battalion of gunners. The Irish and other immigrant soldiers in the U.S. ranks were still being abused by nativist officers and continued to come over to the Mexican ranks—the Catholic side of the conflict.
“Top of the day, lads,” he said, greeting the two privates.
“Good day, sir!” Hogan replied.
“Top of the day, Captain!” Geary puffed on his clay dudeen.
Riley smiled and propped his fists on his hips. “Shouldn’t you scalpeens be on the lookout for the enemy instead of gazing upon the soldaderas?”
“Begging the captain’s pardon, sir. We couldn’t help but wonder…”
“Speak your mind.”
“Sir, is it right to chop up such furniture? Pews ri
ght out of the church?”
“The Lord provides in ways most mysterious and wonderful. You will thank the Almighty later when you fill your bellies with a hot meal cooked over the sacred fires fueled by that holy wood.”
Geary smiled. “Amen, Captain. So I will.”
Hogan nodded. “Aye, we both will, sir. Sure we will.”
Riley leaned forward and towered over the privates. “This churchyard is now your fortress, men. It is your shield and your stronghold protecting from harm. Defend it well and by the glory of God we will prevail over the heretics from the north!”
“Aye, Captain!”
“Aye, sir!”
Riley turned away from the men and ambled toward fellow Irishman Patrick Dalton, who had deserted the U.S. ranks back at Camargo and had become a lieutenant in the Mexican Army. Dalton was peering northward through a telescope resting on freshly placed sandbags.
“What do you see, Lieutenant?”
Dalton’s green eyes angled his way. “Some riders are approaching from the bosque.”
Bosque de San Domingo, Riley thought—the Americans’ camp. “Rangers? Engineers?”
Dalton shrugged. “Too far away yet to say, Captain.”
“Keep your glass trained upon them, Patrick. Today could be the day.”
“Yes, sir.”
Riley’s journey from Matamoros to Monterrey had begun four months ago with a hellish retreat through the desert to the town of Linares—two hundred miles of thirst, starvation, and exhaustion covered in just ten days. Many of the soldiers had lost their shoes crossing the Rio Bravo in that chaotic retreat from the Resaca de la Palma. Their feet suffered horribly from sharp rocks and cactus on the forced march. Countless men died of sickness and exposure on the trail. Many others used their muskets to end their own sufferings. The bedraggled survivors—including Riley’s band of deserters—stumbled into Linares to drink at the town’s fountain, their uniforms in tatters. The local citizens gaped upon them in shock. What horror had reduced the Army of the North to this?
The same citizens rallied to feed the survivors and mend their uniforms. It was in Linares that General Arista faced court-martial and was dismissed as commander of the army for his losses at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. General Mejia took his place. The rank and file loathed Mejia, who looked disdainfully down at them through his blue-tinted spectacles.
It soon became obvious that General Taylor intended to march upon Monterrey, so Mejia led his three thousand survivors northwest from Linares, over mountains and through canyons that reminded Riley of his time with the British Royal Army in Afghanistan. The march was a slow one along steep trails. One day he watched a hapless soldier slip and fall to his death in a remote gorge.
Finally Riley crossed a high pass to see the gleaming city of Monterrey below, a silver strand of clear mountain water—the Santa Catarina River—running past the southern limits of the capital city. Steep, treeless hills called cerros rose to the south and west of the little city of stone. Orchards and cornfields grew just outside the town walls. Cattle—mere dots on the landscape from this distant ridge—grazed in open pastures. From his vantage on the mountain pass, Riley could make out a large, ornate cathedral at the east end of town, an open plaza standing in front of it. North of town he saw the new cathedral that he would come to know as the Citadel. To the west, the fortresslike Bishop’s Palace overlooked the town from a formidable hill.
“’Tis beautiful, is it not?” a fellow Irishman had said to him, as they gazed down on Monterrey after the arduous march.
“Aye,” Riley said, thinking sadly of the wife and son he had left behind in Ireland. “It brings to mind the Glens of Antrim back on the auld sod.”
At Monterrey, the army rested and ate well. Riley was promoted from lieutenant to captain for his bombardment of Fort Texas. Fresh Mexican recruits arrived on the southern road from Saltillo, along with artillery, ammunition, and even gold and silver coin to pay soldiers. Riley learned that the Mexican government had passed legislation that would award land grants and farming equipment to deserters from the U.S. ranks. As an officer, he would receive a league and a labor—some 1,200 acres—for his service to Mexico. The captain could not help but dream of bringing his wife and son to Mexico, after the war, where he would live out his life as a landed patrón and a celebrated veteran.
At night, Riley would stroll through the streets and plazas from the cathedral to the town fountain, his captain’s uniform attracting shy glances from senoritas who smoked small cigars and wore dresses that bared their shoulders and ankles. He enjoyed the music and dancers, sampled intoxicating drinks like tequila, mescal, and pulque. His taste buds savored beef, pork, mutton, and poultry; potatoes, beans, squashes, and tomatoes—all enlivened with spices and herbs and aflame with peppers of varied volatility, ranging from tepid to explosive. These street victuals were almost always consumed without a plate or silverware, by wrapping them in the ubiquitous corn tortilla.
Before long, the foreign deserters from the U.S. Army became celebrities in Monterrey, especially the hulking and handsome Captain John Riley. For a few weeks, Riley enjoyed life in the city and practiced his Spanish. General Ampudia arrived to take over the army, much to Mejia’s consternation. Mejia had made almost no preparations for Monterrey’s defense. Ampudia, on the other hand, ordered every enlisted man to labor on entrenchments and fortifications. He hired civilian workers, too, and Monterrey quickly became a fortified city. Besides the Citadel, the army added two small earthen forts to protect the eastern edges of the capital city. One was dubbed La Teneria, after a nearby tannery. The other was called El Rincon del Diablo, the Devil’s Corner. Each was shaped like a horseshoe, the open side facing back toward the town.
The Bishop’s Palace—El Obispado—stood on a high slope west of town known as Independence Hill. The ornate palace, built long ago by Spaniards, had now been fitted with embrasures and artillery that had been dragged up the gentle eastern slope of the cerro by men and beasts. The bishop himself consented to Ampudia’s plan to use the main cathedral in town for ammunition storage. More recruits and conscripts arrived, swelling the ranks of the Mexican Army of the North to 7,300.
In the city, citizens used sandbags to build snipers’ nests on the flat rooftops of houses. Riley learned that most of the houses included roof access via ladders or stairs, either from the outside of the house or within. These ladders or steps facilitated access for maintaining the stucco roofs after rainstorms and for stargazing on pleasant nights. They also gave soldiers easy access to their parapets of sandbags.
And now, on this fine Saturday, the battle for Monterrey seemed poised to commence. General Torrejon’s lancers had kept a close eye on General Taylor’s approach from the north. Taylor’s force, now numbering over six thousand men, had arrived at the patch of timber known as Bosque de San Domingo, a favored picnic site blessed with a strong spring of sweet water. Riley expected General Taylor to attack from his position in the timber, about three miles from the Citadel. He had requested and been granted the command of a battery of two guns on the northeast corner of the Citadel. He had organized his crates of shot, shell, and canister; his ramrods and sponges; his fuses and lanyards. He had drilled his mixed crew of Mexican and Irish gunners. He was ready for battle.
“Captain Riley!”
He turned to Lieutenant Patrick Dalton and found him peering through his telescope. “What is it, Lieutenant?”
“The riders continue to approach from the bosque. One rides a pale horse.” He looked away from his lenses and smiled at Riley. “I’m damned if it’s not Old Whitey. The rider wears a broad-brimmed panama.”
Riley leaned over the parapet. With his naked eye he could just make out the distant shapes of the riders. “And almost in range.”
“Aye, and that’s not all. Another rider looks like your old friend Bragg.”
He turned back to the interior of the Citadel. Glancing over the Mexican troops standing or strolling about, he located t
he plumed campaign hat of his superior officer, Colonel Francisco Rosendo Moreno, who spoke English.
“Colonel Moreno, sir!” he shouted.
The artillery veteran looked up at him.
Riley pointed in the direction of the bosque. “Americanos, sir! A dozen riders, más o menos. One looks like General Taylor himself! I ask permission to fire, Colonel!”
Moreno cocked his head sideways and stared up at Riley for a few seconds. “Prepare to fire, Capitan.” The colonel began strolling casually toward Ridley’s battery.
Riley smiled and turned to his men as he felt his pulse quicken. “To your posts! Turn this gun!” he ordered. “Vuelva te!” he said to the Mexican gunners under his command. “To the right. Derecho!”
Together, the men lifted the trail piece of the gun from the ground and muscled the big eighteen-pounder a few degrees to the right.
“There! Alto! Lieutenant Dalton! Range?”
“They’re beyond the stake we drove for fifteen hundred yards, sir.”
Riley felt his temper flare. “Give me the range to the target, Lieutenant, not the bloody stake!”
Dalton seemed shocked by the outburst but pulled his wits together and replied, “Nineteen hundred yards, sir.”
Colonel Moreno had climbed to the bastion now and strolled to Dalton’s position. “The glass,” he said, holding out his hand.
Lieutenant Dalton gladly handed the telescope to the colonel.
Captain John Riley fetched the tangent scale from the gun’s tool case. Cut from a flat sheet of steel, the scale’s curve on the bottom matched the arch of the gun’s breech. He placed the scale on top of the breech and looked down the long tube toward the muzzle. Eyeballing the stair-step notches cut in the top of the tangent scale, Riley chose the notch for 1,900 yards and sighted the target.
“Higher!” he ordered. “Alto!” He had become accustomed to giving orders in English and Spanish so all the men in his battery would understand.
