St. Patrick Battalion

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  We watched eastward, at first. Your army had come down from those mountains and into the Valley of Mexico. El Commandante emplaced many batteries on the hill called El Peñón between the Lakes Texcoco and Xochimilco, aimed to cover the National Road on its approaches to the city. As you know, an army must move on causeway roads to come to the city, because the ground is too soft and wet for moving wagons and cannons. The great road passes close between the hill and the lakeshore, and it always has been a natural place for strong defense. An army approaching that way is in the open for miles as it comes through the gauntlet. It is one of the great defenses we studied in the academy. El Commandante Santa Anna expected your army would come straight up that road toward the city and be destroyed in a gauntlet of shot and shell.

  But he had learned a lesson at Cerro Gordo, when your army went around his flank instead of into his frontal defense. Knowing such a tactic might be used again, the general put artillerists in emplacements along the other roads. And around the city he deployed reserve units that could be rushed to any roadstead where your regiments might appear. His plan was not to defend from within the walls of the city, but rather to keep you miles away from it. The city is itself a great fortress, in the event that you could get to its walls. But he intended to keep you from getting that close. There are many natural defenses all around Mexico City, and he was prepared to man each one as it was needed. He set cannons at bridges and crossroads. And we dared hope your long supply route would fail.

  Our studies in the Colegio Militar became very much changed as your army approached. We studied less the old theorems and histories of distant wars. The officers of the faculty now concerned themselves, and us, with the history and geography of our great city itself. All the academy had become concerned with the imminent conflict. Our studies became immediate and exciting. We were patriots before, but we became fanáticos. We had imaginative escenarios of fighting to the death to defend Chapultepec Castle from troops of the herejes. Some of the faculty mocked us for that notion. They said there was no reason for the Yanquis to make an assault on this archaic stronghold; that it would be a waste of lives for no strategic purpose, since the Citadel could not block an invasion of Mexico City.

  And so you can imagine, Señor, how our lives as students changed. We no longer thought as we had before. The offices on the Citadel were always swarming with officers coming and going. We would gaze over the parapets toward any distant road and see soldiers marching and wagons and cannons rolling, hear bands and cheers. And we were always listening for the first cannonades.

  But when it began, it did not begin east of Mexico City at El Peñón. Instead, it began in the south. Your generals had moved down between the Lakes Xochimilco and Chalco—we on the Citadel had been able to see them marching south across the causeway—which meant they were to take the road to San Agustin. That town and I are named for the same saint. From San Agustin, their route could be nothing other than straight north up the great road through Churubusco, then across the Churubusco River bridge and north four more miles to Mexico City’s southern limit.

  ¡Diga! It was an approach even easier to defend than the National Road, because of the bridgehead, and the old monastery, which was a strong fortress for artillery, covering that road. The other road coming up to Mexico City from the south was through Padierna and San Angel, a less likely route, but el Commandante put artillery and soldiers at Padierna as well. It was a brilliant defense! Both those roads met under the guns of the monastery, and therefore General Santa Anna emplaced his best cannoneers there: the San Patricios!

  You know the history of the battles down there of course, Señor. Therefore I don’t need to describe all the maneuvers. You already know how your remarkable engineer captain Lee went scouting and found a way to sneak your army through the wilderness of the lava field known as the Pedregal, which was believed by all to be utterly impassable, and thus brought one of your divisions up behind the Padierna defense. You know of that, yes? And so I shall only tell you of how it was perceived by us.

  I could tell you all the history of that defense, for I have studied that war in all these years since. Because there is little more I was able to do, after your soldiers did this to me.

  I do remember that there was a long and heavy downpour of rain the night before the battles erupted, and that we took satisfaction in the misery of your army out in it without shelter. Not that we were pitiless, but we know that miserable soldiers have poor morale, and soldiers with poor morale are less able.

  I remember that the first sound of battle was so faint that we had to shush each other and cup our ears to be certain were really hearing it. Musket fire from five or six miles distant in that kind of damp air is a dull noise, like water beginning to boil in a tin pot. That morning we were sweeping the paving stones near the gate on the south wall of the Citadel, and we stopped our push brooms and ran over to the parapet to listen. Officers were rushing to the wall, listening and peering southward.

  The musketry rose and ebbed for perhaps an hour. We guessed that it was down near Padierna, as it would prove to be.

  That noise diminished and ceased. We were still standing, listening, when a sound like faraway thunder began to throb, and it was presumed to be the cannons of General Valencia down at Padierna. Or those of Major Riley at Churubusco. Or perhaps both at once, we thought at the time, but soon enough we determined that it was General Valencia, who had espied your division making its road through the great lava field, the Pedregal, and begun bombarding you in that wasteland. I have read interviews in which some of your veterans recalled that they thought they must have died before the shooting began, because they appeared to be in the infierno already! If you have never seen that place, Señor, I recommend that you should, because it was probably the key to your victory over our army. Although other battles were yet to be fought in your push to the city, we were stunned when you marched out of that desolate wasteland and cut General Valencia off from the rest of the defenders. If my appraisal is correct, and that surprise was the mainspring of your momentum, then it must be postulated that the success of your invasion was assured by one mere captain of engineers, that Robert Lee. For it was he who circumvented our defenses three times: at Vera Cruz, at Cerro Gordo, and here.

  And now, Señor, as your United States disunite themselves and begin a war between your North and South, I understand by my reading that he, that same genius, is to be a general on the side of the seceding states. That must be disconcerting. Of course, you have brilliant generals on your side, too. So many learned their lessons of war in the invasion of Mexico, in that time of which we speak. The brave soldiers of Mexico taught them well.

  And when I think of that General Lee, and of those other bold generals taking up arms against your government on behalf of the slave states, I smile to think of the irony: that so many officers who condemned Don Juan Riley as an archvillain, for deserting a country of which he was not even a citizen, have now deserted that nation to take up arms against it! Is it not the same crime? If he was a traitor, are not General Lee, and those many southern officers now serving the Confederacy, traitors also? They are men who held high rank in the United States Army, who were privileged citizens of their native country, and they have turned against it. Señor Riley was neither privileged, American-born, high ranking, nor even a citizen. Why, then, was he a “traitor,” and they not?

  Yes, I know, Señor Periodista, these are embarrassing questions. Your country is not good at answering embarrassing questions. For example, the matter of slavery. Or the decimation of the original peoples of your country, the Indian tribes. You condemn the Catholic conquistadors for their aggression in the New World, their murder and enslavement of our early civilizations, their plundering of our riches. But what did those conquistadors do that your own leaders are not now doing? You admonish the Spaniards for imposing their Catholic religion upon the natives here in Mexico and in South America. Yet your government aids Christian missionaries in erasing
the heathen beliefs of all the tribes of Norteamérica.

  True, Catholic conquistadors destroyed and stole all the religious temples and treasures of the Aztecan king. Then, likewise, your Protestant soldiers marched through Mexico, and pilfered holy artifacts of our cathedrals, to take home as souvenirs of your conquest. And there was of course that most enormous theft, of our land itself. The Spaniards seized the lands of South and Central America in the name of the Cross. And now your United States government has seized all of North America, including much of Mexico, in the name of Manifest Destiny. Does it surprise you, Señor, that I have given so much thought to your country? Why so?

  Your country cannot be ignored. It is too great, too aggressive, and too near. When you took Texas, and then invaded Mexico, you focused Mexico’s attention upon your country. Mexicans will always watch your country, for we must. We will watch you out of fear, and we will watch you for opportunities.

  I sense, Señor, that you do not disagree entirely with my perceptions. But we were speaking of General Scott’s invasion of Mexico City. We were speaking of the twentieth day of August in 1847. The day that began with the rout of General Valencia from Padierna, and your army’s hard, costly drive through Churubusco. I was telling you of the vast field of battle that we the cadets could see from our height on the Citadel of Chapultepec. There is a high watchtower on the Citadel, and it was a vantage point for certain officers. From there they must have been able to see even more than we could see from the parapets, they with their telescopes. But we saw the assault mostly as smoke in the distance, and now and then as vague movements of great bodies of troops, so far that a single man was not distinguishable. We saw the smoke clouds coming northward toward us, and the musket fire grew more distinct. When the breeze was favorable, we could hear the yelling of thousands of men fighting—a strange and terrible drone. A deaf man can remember sounds, still hear them distinctly within.

  Near the middle of the morning, with the sunlight growing intense, there was a lull in the shooting, but even more yelling than before, and then we perceived that the movement of those thousands was veering eastward, along the road from San Angel to Churubusco. General Santa Anna’s main defensive force was along that road, we knew, but we did not know yet, of course, how it was reeling from the morning’s surprise.

  When one looks southeastward from Chapultepec, one sees a remarkable view. Four miles away beyond marshes and pastures and cornfields there stands the town of Churubusco. It is named for the Aztec god of war. In those ancient days there stood a great temple. Upon that height a hundred years ago the Franciscans built the great monastery of Santa Maria de los Angeles, with its magnificent domes and massive walls. It is the dominant feature of that place. Just north of the monastery is the Rio Churubusco, which has been straightened by excavation. Just beyond the town, the river drains into Lake Xochimilco, as you know, Señor. And so when we looked southeastward from Chapultepec, what we saw was the great monastery with the vast lake stretching eight miles beyond it as a background.

  In the middle of the day, the thunder of battles resumed, and it was in the fields around Churubusco. So much musketry there was that it sounded as steady and insistent as rain on a roof. The two parts of your army had come up the two roads, past the Pedregal lava field, to converge on Churubusco from the west and the south, and there our commandante was rallying our defenders. Soon there was so much smoke that the monastery was almost invisible to us. And never, Señor, have I heard such a thunder of artillery! For the monastery was the dominant place for the cannons of our defense, there at the junction of the roads and the bridge, and our army’s finest gunners had been placed there. By that you know what I mean, Señor: Sí, the San Patricios!

  Of course, I did not know at that time that our Major Riley and his cannoneers were emplaced there. I should have presumed it from the fury of the barrage. It was asombroso! Even with telescopes we could not have seen his green banner, at that distance, not through the enormous curtains of battle smoke.

  It was an example of General Santa Anna’s brilliance, that the best gunners were at that place. Your General Twiggs was attacking eastward toward the bridge on that road, and your General Worth was marching northward toward the bridge on the San Antonio road, and Major Riley’s batteries on the monastery covered both roads. Our infantry was all around Churubusco, with regiments in reserve on the other side of the bridge, guarding the road to Mexico City. I am certain that you already know of the carnage the Irishmen’s batteries were inflicting upon your army. It has been told in the reports and the histories. Your advances slowed to a halt and your soldiers dropped down behind the bodies of their fallen comrades in the fields of corn and marsh grass, but there was no protection from the deluge of canister and grapeshot, or from the volleys of musket fire from our infantry. It is almost a certainty that your soldiers, brave and able as they were, would have been stopped there and finally defeated there, four miles south of our great capital city, except for one thing. And once again, as you surely know, I speak of that man Lee, the captain of engineers.

  We must compare our historical knowledge of that day’s battles, Señor, you and I, at our leisure sometime, and with maps. The legend says—and it is a legend in your army, I believe—that Capitán Lee did not go up the road with General Twiggs’s main force. Rather, he went scouting again, and led General Shields over a small bridge more than a mile west of the battle. And when Shields’s force turned east, it was on the north side of the river, coming upon the flank of our infantry above the bridge. I believe, as do the other scholars, that our defense would have held, except for that sally, catching us by surprise yet again.

  Of course, one cannot say with perfect certainty that one single thing, or one person, changed the course of such a mighty tide of fury as a battle is. But I venture to say it of that day.

  And so, amigo, I suggest that your army, though manned with heroic soldiers, won the battles for Mexico through the intelligence of one sobrehumano, Robert E. Lee, a mere captain at that time. And his own commandante General Scott was to give him just such praise for his crucial sorties. I would drink a toast to a soldier like Lee.

  I would also like to make a toast to one whom I call the other sobrehumano on the battlefield that day. I do not mean General Santa Anna. Nor do I mean the countless other brave soldiers and officers who so valiantly and in vain defended the heart of their homeland that day.

  No, Señor, I wish to raise my glass in tribute to one who fought with ultimate skill, fury, and courage to defend a country that was not his native land, but became his land by virtue of his pure and noble conscience. I mean of course that gallant Irishman whom you call an archtraitor: Don Juan Riley! Please drink to him with me, then, even as I tell of that tragic battle, which was his last. Gracias, Señor. ¡Viva Riley!

  Would you now like to hear the true account of his last day of combat? I know it all very well. I told you in the beginning that you came to the right man to learn the truth of this story. I can tell it to you as no other man now alive can tell it to you. I swear that to be true. The Yanquis who made their reports on it did, of course, bend the truth to their own advantage. As you know, I myself was not a witness to his last fight because I was four miles away, among my fellow cadets at Chapultepec. But the story I shall now relate to you is as if seen through the very eyes of Don Juan Riley. Here is how it came about that I have seen it through his eyes. Let us tarry here for another little refreshment. You may want to sharpen your pencil while I pour. The disbelief in your face amuses me, Señor. But you will believe, soon enough.

  And you deserve to rest your poor knees, Señor. You are not so accustomed to crawling on stone and gravel as are we penitentes of Mexico. I have here a balm made from one of our desert plants, by a recipe my mother knew. Massage this into your knees, and we will sit here in this pretty spot and drink to our heroes, your Lee and my Riley.

  I don’t mind pausing again like this. Our Lady of Guadalupe will still be there when w
e eventually arrive. She has eternal patience. Have I not told you that the great lesson a Yanqui learns from Mexico is that patience is the greatest strength of all?

  Probably I have told you this before:

  Major Riley and his cannoneers knew when they deserted from your army that they had crossed un borde irrevocable y mortal. They expected no pardon. If they did not win in the battles, they would die in them, or die on the gallows. They had vowed not to surrender. In all the defeats of the war, on the Río Bravo, at Monterrey, at Buena Vista, and at Cerro Gordo, they had carried away their wounded to save them, and escaped to rebuild their batteries for the next battle.

  At the monastery at Churubusco, there was no escape for the foreigners. The Franciscans had built a place of peace and holiness upon the old temple of the Aztec war god, but on that August day it again became a temple of war. General Manuel Rincón with twelve hundred infantrymen and Major Riley’s battery had been ordered to defend the bridge, and the two divisions of Americans were closing on both sides of the monastery. The cannoneers watched them come on, until they could distinguish the dark blue frock coats of the officers from the light blue uniforms of the soldiers. Major Riley raised his green banner above the parapet, went from gun to gun reminding his Irishmen and Germans of the tortures and humiliations they had suffered under those martinets, and told them to commence killing. They set to it with vengeance, fury, and terrible accuracy. So many Yanqui officers fell at once that it was understood that this was not just defense, it was revenge.