Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History

by Peter G. Tsouras

  A prisoner of war camp is designed to keep people inside; the eyes of the warders are focused inward and not outward. Of all the three hundred guards, only two had their eyes on the countryside outside the camp. They had not been under military discipline long and had not acquired a healthy fear of falling asleep at their posts. They did not notice the column of men shuffling along the empty road that led past the outskirts of Indianapolis to the camp. It was a great shame. They were missing an artful demonstration of military deception. A few men in Union blue rode at the head of the column of shabbily dressed men and a few more walked along the column with bayoneted rifles. At the rear rumbled six wagons.

  Had the camp’s guards been awake, they would have seen a detachment of new prisoners under guard. The column came to a halt in front of the gate. Their breath rose in little clouds in the chill air. Big Jim looked down and smiled like a wolf. The country boy guards were soundly in the arms of Orpheus. As Jim was shaking his head, two of the guards in the column brought two prisoners forward, wrapped in blankets. They too, for an incredulous moment, stared at the sleeping guards in the light of the single lamp hanging from the guard post. Grenfell snickered, “We really must commend the sergeant of the guard after this.”

  Smoke had dismounted. He walked over to the first guard and brought down his pistol butt on the first guard’s head. As the man slumped to the ground, he struck the other. The man staggered back, awakened by the glancing blow, but Smoke was on him, striking again and again, the blood spattering the wall until he stood over the bludgeoned corpse and signaled the others forward with his dripping pistol. He stood aside as a team with a log came running up against the gate. The gate groaned with the impact. Another rush and the bar inside snapped. Grenfell and Hines rushed through, pistols in hand, their blankets flung aside, and their Confederate officer’s gray and gold in full view.17

  DANFORTH STATION, MAINE, 4:20 AM, SEPTEMBER 30, 1863

  The station manager at Danforth, the last station on the Grand Trunk before Portland, stopped the British trains by throwing the main switch. He had heard the cannon fire from the city and had seen the huge pyre of the burning railroad station. A dyed-in-the-wool Copperhead, the man had been part of the conspiracy to keep the railroad open straight to Portland. Now as the city burned and his countrymen died, he rushed to inform the British commander. His hatred for Lincoln had long ago passed beyond reason into a state of such self-sustaining bitterness that he would have his country strewn with corpses and ashes to see the man pulled down.

  Maj. Gen. Sir Charles Ashe Windham, commanding the Portland Field Force, was not a man to take the word of a Yankee for anything. He would see for himself and climbed the station’s observation tower to view the city with his glass. The man commanding the British ground assault on Portland was a man of wide experience and heroic reputation. He had led the assault on the Redan in the Crimean War and defended Cawnpore during the Sepoy Mutiny. Wolseley had come to know and admire him in Canada and said of him that “he was a man of the world, he had many charming qualities: was never hard upon others in word or deed, and always inclined to make allowances for human failings.”18

  He scanned the city carefully. His immediate impression was that the Navy had botched its end. What had promised to be a smooth coup de main was now a full-pitched battle. “Well,” he muttered to his aide, “that’s usually the way military plans go. No one’s fault, just the way things go. Reminds me of a Russian military proverb I learned in the Crimea: ‘The plan was smooth on paper, only they forgot the ravines.’”19

  He could see the Navy’s ships firing into the town. The main fort in the harbor also seemed to be firing into the town. At least the Navy had taken the fort. He quickly climbed down the spiral staircase and gave the order to dismount the trains. His lead brigade was built around the 62nd Foot with the Quebec-raised Canadian 50th Huntington Rangers, 51st Hemmingford Rangers, and 52nd Bedford militia battalions. Windham gave the command to force march the last few miles to the city.20 He left his chief of staff to dispatch the artillery and the next two brigades built around the 17th and 63rd Foot. He was pleased to see the three Canadian battalions move out smartly and with little confusion. He knew that the 62nd Foot, “the Splashers,” had shown them a good example in training. There were still many veterans from the Crimea in the ranks. Their nickname came from the battle of Carrickfergus in 1758 when they had run out of bullets and used their buttons for ammunition. Since then their buttons had been issued dented, or “splashed” (see appendix A).21

  He had not gone a mile when Union cavalry pickets fired on his scouts. More cavalry came up to thicken the firing line and force him to deploy. His men’s Enfields had the range of the enemy’s breech-loading Sharps carbines, but the Americans could fire faster. He flanked them on both sides with Canadian companies, but the enemy cavalry mounted up and moved to the rear to throw a new skirmishing line up to repeat their delaying tactics. The men were behaving—smoothly and quickly, just as in training, despite the number of red-clad bodies littering their line of advance.

  Windham had no illusions that the Americans would collapse at the first blow. It would take a rain of blows to beat them down, and he now knew that his men were up to it. He ordered them forward. They cheered him as they swept by.

  CAMP MORTON, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, 4:20 AM, SEPTEMBER 30, 1863

  Major Cline had caught the scent of the plot to free the prisoners and followed it until it brought him to the outskirts of Indianapolis in the blackness of that same morning. Hines and Grenfell had barely broken into Camp Morton when Cline and his cavalry had thundered up the darkened road and right into the Copperheads trying to push through the shattered gate. They shot the horses drawing the wagons loaded with rifles and sabered and pistoled their way through the Copperhead column, which came apart like a bursting sack of corn, spilling into the ditches and across the darkened fields.

  Cline was the first Union man through the gate. Before him the barracks were emptying of Confederate prisoners as two officers in gray ran toward them. Cline spurred on until he came alongside the officer with long white hair, waving his hat on his sword and holding a pistol. He fired down into his thick mane. The man tumbled head over heels into a heap. The first prisoner to reach him jumped for his pistol, which had fallen in the mud. Cline shot him too. His men were riding up now and firing into the mass of prisoners. The panicked men in front tried to get away only to be pushed forward by all those coming from the barracks.

  The guards were spilling out of their quarters and shooting at the heaving throng. The other rebel officer, Captain Hines, tried to rally the prisoners as he strode before them with his pistol in hand. “Come on, boys! Charge and the place is ours. Charge!” He waved his arm and ran forward, followed by a mass of rock-throwing men keening the Confederate yell. The gallant line withered in the fire from Cline’s men and the guards. Hines was the first to fall.22

  SOUTH OF DANFORTH STATION, MAINE, 5:10 AM, SEPTEMBER 30, 1863

  The commander of the 1st Maine Cavalry, immediately upon contact with the British, had sent an accurate and detailed report back to Chamberlain. In turn, Chamberlain sent it to Dow with his appraisal that the British column was the main thrust aimed at Portland. On his own authority he ordered the reserve artillery battery to accompany his brigade north to hold the peninsula against God knew how many British. The men were glad to step off now that they knew their purpose. They had waited in ranks in a state of high agitation as they heard the battle at the docks rage and watched the station burn. Chamberlain now passed to his colonels the word to march with a note of explanation that the enemy was approaching from the north. With his infantry, cavalry, and gunners, Chamberlain would have at hand just short of fifteen hundred men. He did not know that the enemy’s advance brigade outnumbered him by 40 percent or that the follow-on force doubled that. He would be outnumbered more than three to one. He sensed that if he had any chance of holding the peninsula, he had to strike hard and fast and
throw the enemy’s lead force back on its heels. He kept his cavalry out as a screen to slow and divert the enemy’s attention while he created a surprise.23

  He reinforced the cavalry with one battery and the small 10th and 16th Maine. That temporarily held the British up. The British guns weren’t up yet, and the shells from the Maine battery were tearing holes in their infantry. They may have been stopped, but they did not flinch and continued to return a heavy and accurate fire. Chamberlain stopped for a moment to admire them, but he had admired the 15th Alabama as well and had thrown them off Little Round Top. As he turned away, he was surprised to see the mayor ride up in his carriage. He waved and called out, “Colonel Chamberlain, Colonel Chamberlain.” Behind him Chamberlain saw a hurried column of men in civilian clothes and old uniforms, sporting all sorts of firearms. “Colonel Chamberlain, I have brought you the city militia and volunteers. General Dow said I was to help you with our boys. What do you want them to do?”

  The last thing Chamberlain wanted was militia in a fight with redcoats. In an open field fight, they were a liability, just as they had been in the Revolution and the War of 1812. They were good for something, though. “Dig! I want them to dig a fighting trench from the inlet on Back Cove across the peninsula to the Canal Basin by the Fore River, behind the creek that empties into the cove. Get every spade and shovel in the town but have them start now with their hands if they have to.” Before riding off, he turned to a staff officer and said, “Captain, show them how it’s done.”24

  Windham was not a man to waste time on a stalemate. He could see that the Americans had reinforced their cavalry with some infantry and strong battery, and together they had thrown up too strong a front to waste lives smashing through it when maneuver would drive them back. Again he peeled off companies of the 51st Hemmingford Rangers to circle around the American right flank. He was surprised that the obvious maneuver had not forced the Americans to pull back even as his flankers were about to slip around them.

  Then he understood as a volley from a new battery burst over his main fighting line. To the east a wave of American infantry had crested a small rise and was heading for his own rear while a larger group hit his flanking companies. He was about to be trapped. He sent an aide galloping to the rear to hurry the rest of his command forward. It soon became clear that the advancing Americans numbered not more than five hundred men while the force blocking his rear was even smaller. He concluded that his opponent had played a bold hand, but it was a bad hand. It was time to call the bluff. In the back of his mind he was already regretting leaving his guns behind in his haste to reach his objective.

  He sent off more aides with orders. The Hemmingford Rangers were to turn about and clear the Americans off the road in the rear, the 62nd Foot to wheel about to the left and strike the Americans coming on the flanks, and the remaining two Canadian battalions were to hold the front against the cavalry. Had they all been line British battalions it would have gone off without a hitch, but Windham expected too much of his green Canadians. So far they had done very well, but the body-shredding shell and case shot and the sight of their flankers being overrun had shaken them. Windham’s coolness in the face of an enemy in his rear had the opposite reaction in his Canadian militia. They approached the line of troops in faded blue—the 17th Maine—with accelerating panic. With a single fluid motion the Americans took aim and fired, and the front Canadian ranks pitched forward or flew back. The Canadians received the command to aim just as shells burst overhead, whirling jagged metal through the ranks. They could manage only a ragged, ill-aimed volley. Again they heard the command, “Fire!” from their front. It was too brutal a baptism. They simply broke.

  As the Canadians fled, the 62nd Foot and Chamberlain’s two remaining regiments locked horns. The British battalion outnumbered the 19th and 20th Maine whose original strength had been wasted by hard fighting over the last year. The remaining core was veteran and hard. The little regiments were also seething at the sight of redcoats on Maine soil, especially having that morning had to help clear the dead and wounded civilians from the streets of Portland around the station. Chamberlain threw the guns of his two batteries into the scale by directing them to concentrate on the British with canister. The guns wheeled into line. The British made for a splendid target, moving in elegant precision across the field. The Maine men took time to admire their high style before twelve guns poured tin cans filled with lead balls into them. The two regiments fired next. The 62nd Foot staggered from the blow. Windham’s aide flew from the saddle, and he himself felt a hammer strike him in the chest and throw him from his horse. He was dead when he struck the ground. The Splashers, with the amazing resilience of a British battalion, pulled themselves together and sent a volley into the Maine men, dropping dozens.

  Chamberlain rode over to his old 20th Maine and found Major Ellis Spear, its new commander. “Ellis, give them the bayonet. The boys have got that one down, I think.” He winked at Ellis, who grinned and then shouted the command, “Fix bayonets!” There was a rustle of clicks as the slim, blued blades were locked into place. “Follow me, boys!” The 19th Maine joined the charge. As the Maine men howled their charge, the 62nd got off another well-aimed volley.

  Then they showed why British infantry had maintained such a reputation over the centuries. They charged. The crimson and blue lines collided in that great rarity in military history. Bayonet charges rarely resulted in melees. Either the attacker flinched at the sight of an unbroken enemy, or the defenders panicked and took to their heels. But now it was bayonet and rifle butt and pistol in a stabbing, clubbing mob. British bayonet battle drill was deadly as the men operated in wedges of threes. The best bayonet man was at the apex in the center while his companions supported him from the sides. The Maine men knew a thing or two about the bayonet as well, but this time they were not crossing blades with the exhausted and thirsty 15th Alabama.25

  The commander of the cavalry screen saw his main chance when Chamberlain’s men charged. He ordered his three hundred men to mount and charge the two remaining Canadian battalions on his front. They unraveled in the face of the oncoming mass of cavalry and fled to the rear. The 1st Maine Cavalry harried the terrified militiamen until the roadblock of the 17th Maine stopped the survivors. They surrendered.

  By then, the Splashers and Maine men had pulled away from each other, dragging their wounded after them, and glared in silence as sweat-soaked chests heaved. The irresistible force had met the unmovable object. Chamberlain was clear sighted enough to realize that it was time to go. If the enemy’s reinforcements he could see approaching were as tough as the shrunken redcoat band in front of him, his force would bleed to death on this field. Under the fire of his batteries, he ordered a careful retreat back to the Portland militia line. At least he could put the creek between him and the enemy. Chamberlain was the last man off the field. He paused long enough to throw a salute with his saber to the shrunken ranks of the Splashers before galloping off.26

  He was surprised to see how much they had accomplished in the few hours he had bought. Fear and the need to do something physical had carved a serviceable trench over half a mile. The city had poured out its tools, and fear had supplied the will. His Maine veterans quickly jumped into the trenches and added their experience to the militia’s energy. They had bought the time for the men of Portland to build the defenses to save their own city. These men now cheered as hundreds of enemy prisoners were prodded along past to be taken into Portland.

  By the time the British and Canadian skirmishers gingerly approached, the trench system with its parapet would have earned passing marks from the Army of the Potomac’s perfection-minded chief engineer himself. Chamberlain had mixed the militia with his own men to thicken the line and leave none of it without experienced men. He figured that his veterans would steady the militia and teach them what they could not have learned on their own. The day was too far gone for the British to assault the line, even if they’d had the energy left for such a hazar
d. Night fell. The First Battle of Portland was over.27

  ALBANY, NEW YORK, 4:14 AM, OCTOBER 1, 1863

  The Guards Brigade swept away the New York militia, which had gathered in the night, and marched into Albany eight hours after it crossed the border. Copperhead employees of the rail companies had kept the railroad open straight to Albany. The government men of the Empire State had fled in their nightshirts, a rendition of events Lord Paulet was planning to dine out on for years to come. He had the honor to wipe away the stain of the 1777 failure and defeat of Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne at Saratoga on the very road to Albany. That city was in panic, but he was in no mood to keep order. He wasn’t planning to stay long. Copperhead guides were taking parties of his men throughout the city to every site that supported the war effort: factories, foundries, warehouses, boats on the Hudson, and above all the Watervliet Arsenal. All were soon in flames. The fire and smoke fanned the panic of a fleeing populace. Paulet was glad to wave the fan himself if it would send out even more residents far and wide to spread tales of terror. He needed every advantage to multiply the power of his small force. Three more brigades were arriving as the city burned, giving Paulet more than ten thousand men. Canadian Volunteer Militia companies had been left as security at every station along the railroad back to Canada.

  The reports of the British burning Albany ran ahead of the refugees and along the wires throughout the Union states. Coupled with the invasion of Maine and the initial report of the fall of Portland, the effect was stunning. New York City, the nation’s great emporium and financial center, seemed to shut down with the British Army less than a hundred miles away up the Hudson. Boston was no less afraid. Both feared a simultaneous assault from the sea, all the more real after the Royal Navy’s pursuit of Kearsarge into the Upper Bay itself. The wires to Washington burned with lurid tales of invasion as every governor with a northern border and every mayor within two hundred miles begged for massive reinforcements. This was worse than Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania in the summer for there was no Army of the Potomac nearby ready to dog the invader and bring him to battle.28