Soldiers of Conquest

by F. M. Parker

  “What happened to you two?” asked Scott looking down at the two dusty, disheveled lieutenants.

  “We were standing in the wrong spot when a Mexican shell landed and exploded,” Grant said.

  “You both are very fortunate,” Scott said and amused at Grant’s reply.

  He spoke to Lee. “Captain, what is our success in damaging the city’s walls?”

  “Sir, we are averaging one hundred and twenty-five shells an hour with nine out of ten exploding,” Lee was proud of the number and wanted Scott to know. “The houses and businesses of the city are suffering badly, and I’m sure the citizens are terrified. But the fortifications and their garrisons are escaping with nothing but minor damage. I saw but a few stones broken loose from the walls. Further, I believe the 24-pounders that we’ll have ready by tomorrow morning won’t do the job either. We must have more powerful weapons.”

  Scott cast a look at the sea. “As you know, Commodore Conner and I have discussed the use of his heavy naval cannons in the event that out siege guns didn’t arrive in a timely manner. I’ll signal him that I accept his offer.”

  Scott spoke to Lee. “Captain, you will see that they are sited as rapidly as possible after they’re landed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And have these two dirty lieutenants get into clean uniforms.” Scott gave Grant and Beauregard a hint of a smile, reined his horse around, and rode off toward headquarters.

  CHAPTER 12

  Lee led through the darkness, finding the way among the sand dunes by the pale light of a quarter moon. Behind him in the dunes, a thousand soldiers and two hundred sailors labored, hooked with shoulder straps to long ropes fastened to six giant cannons. He had formed the men into teams of two hundred each to drag the Navy’s three 8-inch howitzers, hurling 64-pound exploding shells, and the three 32-pounders firing solid iron balls to their emplacement sites.

  Lee halted in the gloom of the night and stared backward. The noise of more than two thousand booted feet churning the sand, made Lee think that some great night beast might make the same sound. Above the noise of the boots came the rumbling chant of the men. “Heavy metal” pause “to the front.” repeated over and over in rhythm to their strenuous breathing.

  General Scott had signaled Admiral Conner aboard the Mississippi that he wished a parley. Conner came ashore accompanied by Admiral Perry who had arrived two days before with orders to relieve the ailing Conner. Perry out of respect for Conner and upon seeing the fierce cannonading in progress against Veracruz, had placed himself temporarily second in command of the war fleet. The two admirals had readily agreed to Scott’s request for the loan of their most powerful cannons. They made one condition, their naval gunners must service the six weapons.

  By nightfall the seamen had the guns floated ashore. Lee working with Naval Lieutenant Aulick began the tortuous task of moving the guns to their firing positions two and one-half miles distant. The guns were extremely difficult to drag for they were mounted on ship’s carriages that had no wheels and thus dug deep furrows in the sand. The men were willing, and with muscles and tendons straining, snaked the weapons over the dunes and through the lagoons, some of the water two feet deep.

  In the small hours of the morning, the guns had been dragged to the brush-covered ridge of sand that Lee had chosen. He set Aulick and his sailors to preparing the battery sites on the backside of sand ridges, fill sandbags to build parapets, and dig trenches to dive into when the enemy’s shells came crashing down. The soldiers were sent to the beach to bring forward the powder and shot for the weapons.

  In the first faint blush of dawn, the sailors wrestled the six guns into the prepared sites. Lee released all from duty. As they walked wearily away among the dunes on the way to the beach, the naval gun crews came into sight.

  Lee’s heart gave a sudden surge of pleasure for in the front of the sailors was his younger brother Naval Lieutenant Sidney Lee who had duty on Conner’s flagship the Mississippi. Lee hastened forward and clasped his brother’s hand.

  “Sid, so you’re going to be with me?”

  Sidney, black headed and clean-shaven, beamed happily at the unexpected encounter. “’Ppears so. Until the city falls.”

  “Which guns are yours?”

  “I’m boss of the howitzers. They should knock the walls down.”

  “We just can’t do without you sailors,” Lee said with a smile.

  “The navy is always there when you need help.”

  Lee spoke in a serious tone, “Sid, keep your head down. And have your men to do the same for the Mexicans are getting good at hitting what they aim at.”

  “Right,” said Sidney.

  “Come and let me point out the targets.” Lee said. He put his arms around Sidney’s shoulders and they moved toward the howitzers where the gun crews were sponging the barrels to clear out the sand in preparation for action. Lee worried about his brother being permanently located on the coast for yellow fever was running rampant through the sailors of the fleet. One ship had left its blockading station off Tampico for the States with two hundred seamen suffering from the disease. Now Sidney would also be in the thick of heavy cannon bombardment. It was strange to first see combat with his brother. How terrible it would be to see him killed before his eyes. A heavy feeling of responsibility for Sidney’s safety swept over Lee.

  They stopped by the howitzers and Lee brought from his pocket a copy he had made of the map Giffard had given Scott. He pointed at the map and then at buildings in the city that could be seen and were targets. Others that were also targets but couldn’t be seen from the dunes, he marked on the map.

  “Now let’s set the guns for the first salvo,” Lee said. “Cut the fuses of your first shells to ten seconds, and then adjust the length more finely after you see where they explode,” Lee said.

  “Yes, big brother,” Sidney said, his eyes laughing.

  *

  “My, God, look at that!” Lieutenant Aulick shouted excitedly as he stared through his field glasses at the walls of Veracruz.

  Yes indeed, a wonderful sight, thought Lee as he too observed the American cannonballs striking the city’s walls. He was with Aulick at the battery of naval 32-pounders that he were aimed for concentrated fire at a section of walls near the Mexican infantry and cavalry barracks.

  The brush that had been piled across the top of the sand ridge to hide the naval cannons had been flung aside and the powerful guns had opened fire on Veracruz. The ground shook with the thunder of the guns and the air was full of shells as the bucking and snarling guns let go as rapidly as the men could reload them. The crash of the shells exploding against the city’s walls returned sharp and savage. Lee felt satisfaction as the heavy iron balls blasted large segments of wall loose and sent fragments of iron and stone raking the army barracks and nearby casemates.

  The Mexican artillerymen returned a terrific fire with every ball aimed at the new American batteries. The city’s forts and walls were covered with a dark cloud of gun smoke through which red lances of fire flashed. Cannonballs rained down upon the American gun crews. Deadly iron fragments whined about in all directions. A ball with a sputtering fuse landed and rolled past the guns and exploded harmlessly far behind the men.

  The air around the battery of 32-pounders was bitter with the stink of burnt gunpowder, and Lee’s eyes and lungs burned. He groped out of the smoke and hastened the hundred yards to the battery of howitzers to be with his brother in this dangerous battle of solid shot and exploding shells.

  Sidney was moving among his gun crews and calling out encouragement to them. His shouted orders were swiftly obeyed. Lee thought his brother had become a fine, brave officer.

  Sidney noted Lee standing behind the guns and gave him a wave and a white-toothed smile through his smoke begrimed face. He spoke to one of the gun sergeants, and then came and stood beside Lee. Neither brother said a word, simply glad to be near each other and uninjured.

  *

  In the middle
of the night, Grant and the other quartermaster officers released their weary men from duty. All of the army’s supplies had been ferried from the ships and transported to the central supply depot and stored under canvas. The men kicked sand over the fires that had been built to mark the landing place of the boats on the beach, ships’ lanterns had shown the location of the vessels on the water, and went off into the darkness to find something to eat and their blankets.

  Grant passed by his tent without stopping and went into the dunes in the direction of the American cannons growling angrily at the Mexicans. Siege and bombardment were the duties of engineers and artillerymen; still he wanted to see the fight. He came to a battery of large naval howitzers and stopped to watch the gun crews at work. Their actions were as smooth as a machine; firing, swabbing the barrels, powder boys running up with the measured powder charge, the powder tamped down, shot shoved into the mouth of the barrel and rammed home with long wooden staffs, and the gun touched off with the slowmatch.

  He left the battery of howitzers and climbed upon a nearby sand hill for a better view of the cannonading. The ground shook incessantly beneath his feet as the battery steadily boomed out. The ear bursting roars and red fire spurting from muzzles constantly shattered the night. The sky was full of shells that seemed to pause at the peak of their arc, then turning and dropping ever more swiftly to their targets. Giant explosions erupted in Veracruz. Scores of fires burned in the city, the flames leaping high above the buildings.

  In a short moment of quietness between gun bursts, the screams and wails of women and children in pain and horribly frightened in the city came across the dunes to Grant. His skin crawled at the pitiful cries. This wasn’t the right way to fight a war. General Morales may have been correct in a military sense in not surrendering to Scott’s demands, however he should have forced the women and children to leave the city. He was glad when the cannon resumed firing and masked the anguished cries.

  Grant’s weariness overrode his desire to observe the guns at work. He had labored eighteen hours straight and he could hear his blanket calling to him. He climbed down from the sand hill and into the sunken road and walked toward the sea.

  *

  Lee had a bursting headache. He had spent too many hours on the siege line with the earth jarring blasts of the cannons and the shrill whistling screams of the different calibers shells. On this fourth day of bombardment, as it had been for the previous three, the gun crews fired their cannons as rapidly as humanly possible and a storm of four or five explosive shells and solid shot was always speeding across the hot, blue sky. Gray-white banks of smoke were piled above every battery.

  The Veracruz defenders were firing three times as many cannons as were the Americans and the walls and forts were alive with flashes of flame and jets of smoke. The preponderance of the enemy balls struck the front of the sand hills and did little damage, or passed overhead to land beyond. The American cannon balls had pounded large segments of the enemy’s walls to rubble, and caused great destruction to the buildings within the city.

  The number of Americans killed and wounded was but eleven and forty-seven, with the sailors suffering disproportionately large. The young seamen wouldn’t obey warnings to keep down behind the parapets, they just had to rise up to see where their shots landed, and four of them had their heads blown off by Mexican cannon balls.

  To Lee’s surprise, part of the Mexican gun fell silent, and in but a few seconds all were quiet. He quickly raised his field glasses and looked at the city. Atop every fort a white flag rose on a tall staff.

  In response to the flags, the American batteries ceased firing one by one. In half a minute, the only sound on the battlefield was the whisper of the slow wind blowing the mountains of gun smoke away.

  Were the Mexicans surrendering? Lee struck out for headquarters at a fast pace.

  As Lee approached the headquarter tents, he saw three horsemen leaving at a cantor under a white flag along the beach toward Veracruz. He recognized British Consul Giffard but not the other two Anglos both richly dressed and seemingly men of importance.

  Lee hurried on and halted near Colonel Totten standing in front of headquarters and watching after the departing riders.

  “Colonel, is it a proposal for surrender?” Lee asked.

  “No. The consuls wanted a truce to allow the women and children to leave the city. They said they have taken hundreds into their buildings and there is no room for more. Many are hiding in the vaults of the mercantile establishments, in basements, and some are living on the stone breakwater to stay out of range of you guns. Even the priests are frightened and won’t leave their churches to perform the last rites for the dead.”

  “May I ask what the general said to the request?”

  “He told them no. And he reminded them that he had given them the opportunity to take all noncombatants from the city and they refused. Further he told them that any person who tried to leave the city would be fired upon. The consuls didn’t like that worth a damn. We can’t halt our bombardment for we have information that Santa-Anna has already passed through Mexico City with a large army and plans to break our siege of Veracruz.”

  Scott came out of the headquarters tent, and seeing Lee called out to him. “Captain Lee, go quickly back along the line and tell the artillerymen to begin firing.” Scott smiled grimly. “And, captain, aim a few balls somewhat closer to the foreign consulates. Shake those fine gentlemen up even more so that they’ll go crying to the Mexican general to surrender the city to stop the bombardment.”

  Lee returned the general’s smile. “Yes, sir, a little closer.”

  CHAPTER 13

  When General Scott and the aid to British Consul Giffard, a blond headed young man in civilian clothing, came out of the headquarters tent, the score of assembled generals and staff officers ceased talking among themselves and waited expectantly. Giffard’s aid had come out from behind the walls of Veracruz just before sunrise the day following the visit by the foreign consuls and made his way through the cannon fire to the American lines. He had been brought under guard to Scott. After a brief look at the message carried by the man, Scott had sent orders for all his generals and staff to report immediately to headquarters.

  Scott raised the consuls’ message above his head. “I have news to share with you,” he said.

  Lee, standing with the officers, saw the general’s pleasure in his flashing eyes and the stance of his tall body as he looked down upon his subordinates. “Mr. Campion here has braved our cannon balls to bring us a message signed by all the foreign consuls in Vearcruz. They state they are speaking for the Mexican military and desire a truce to discuss surrender. We are requested to cease firing and appoint delegates to negotiate terms. I am agreeable.”

  Scott gave a broad smile to his officers. “We won’t be dealing with General Morales for it seems he has been taken suddenly ill and has turned over the command of Veracruz and Ulua to General Jose Leandro.”

  The officers broke into laughter. It was a time worn stratagem for a general to protect his name from dishonor by releasing command to a junior officer to surrender a military fortification and thus have that man’s name forever tied to the capitulation.

  When the laughter died away, Scott spoke to Beauregard. “Lieutenant, ride and order all our guns to cease firing.”

  Beauregard saluted. “Yes, sir.” He hurried toward his horse.

  Scott spoke to Campion. “You may return to the city at any time. Those troopers who brought you here will escort you back through our lines.”

  He turned to his generals and aids. “Come inside and we shall discuss the terms of the surrender and choose our representatives.”

  *

  “A magnificent day to accept the surrender of an enemy,” General Scott said to his staff officers gathered about him. With Veracruz and Ulua soon to be in his hands, he was in a buoyant mood and a broad smile of satisfaction wreathed his face.

  Lee agreed with Scott. It was an enchantingl
y summer-like day. The drenching rain that had begun during the night had ended at daylight after washing the sky and land to a sparkling newness. A delightfully cool breeze came off the nearby sea. The domes of Veracruz a mile away were gilded with golden sunlight. Directly overhead a sailing hawk held station in a thermal updraft and eyed the goings on of the earth bound men below.

  The time was mid-morning on March 29 and twenty days after the landing upon the Mexican shore. The American army was drawn up on the Plain Of Cocos, a green meadow shaded with scores of coconut palms. The general and his officers mounted on horseback had ridden to a position from where they could view the formal surrender. Directly in front of them Worth’s two brigades of regulars with their officers were in formation, with Patterson’s volunteers opposite and facing them some seventy yards distant. At the end of the space separating the two brigades, the Dragoons and a battery of cannon loaded with exploding canisters, faced the city. All the troops carried loaded weapons and full cartridge boxes. Worth, on horseback, waited near a large white flag waving from a tall pole in the center of the assembled Americans.

  Scott had met with his commanders and chose Generals Worth and Pillow and Colonel Totten as the negotiators to meet with the three Mexican representatives for arranging the conditions for surrender. Lee understood the reason why Scott had included Pillow. He wanted Polk’s man involved so that he couldn’t complain to the president about the terms. The six negotiators had met at Scott’s headquarters and haggled for hours. Worth had become exasperated by the interminable argument and had ended the meeting, sending the Mexicans back to the city. He reported to Scott the Mexicans weren’t going to surrender, but were trying to gain time for Santa-Anna to arrive and force the Americans to lift the siege. Scott, who had been grimly pacing and waiting, asked Worth whether or not the Mexicans had left a written proposal behind. Worth produced a document and gave it to Scott.