Ballesteros’s death enraged them. “¡Mueran los Americanos!”—Death to the Americans!—one cried. “¡No hay cuartel!”—No quarter! One or two men reached up and grabbed the barrels of the rifles protruding through the ports, then rose and fired their pistols point-blank into the dark interior. “¡Incendiar la casa!”—Burn the house!—another Californio shouted. “¡Hacerles asado!”—Let them roast!
Like virtually all adobes in southern California, Don Julián’s was roofed with cane and covered in a thick coating of water-resistant but flammable bitumen or tar. Hurriedly gathering grass and cornstalks, the Californios twisted them into makeshift torches, while Don José, braving a barrage from the American rifles, galloped to the adjacent ranchería of Don Julián’s Indian workers, and brought back a burning faggot from a cooking fire. The torches were lit and tossed onto the roof, igniting the tar and producing thick clouds of black smoke.
A few moments later, through the smoky haze, the Californios saw the form of a man on the roof of the adobe. It was Don Julián, a daughter in each arm, his frightened son clinging to his knees. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he cried. “Quarter for my motherless children!” Lugo was suddenly overcome with panic. In his passion for the fight he had forgotten his nieces and nephew, and now they were in deadly peril. He hurried to the backside of the house, where the adobe wall of an adjoining corral provided a step up to the roof, and shouted to his brother-in-law to hand the children down.
By that time, overcome by the acrid smoke, the Americans had ceased firing, and Don Sérbulo was conducting negotiations with Wilson through the locked front door. “I am your friend,” he shouted. “Neither you or any of your friends shall be injured.” Suddenly the door swung open and the Americans spilled out, coughing and spitting. Several had been seriously wounded. As they lay on the ground, recovering from the ordeal, Lugo approached his brother-in-law, Don Julián. “I told him that he should thank me for saving his children,” he later recalled, “but neither he nor they gave me any sign of thanks afterward. The little boy, who then was eight years old, died soon after. The girls are still living and care nothing about their uncle.” The war divided families as well as neighbors.
That afternoon the Californios and the Americans mounted their horses and began the journey to Los Angeles. They had traveled only a little distance when the column suddenly halted. Wilson and Varela, riding together at the rear, saw men dismounting ahead. “There’s some deviltry going on there,” said Don Sérbulo, and with Wilson following he charged forward. Ranchero Diego Sepúlveda, responding to the general clamor of his men, was preparing to execute a number of the prisoners. Don Sérbulo jumped from his saddle, drew his short sword, and placed himself between the Americans and Don Diego. He had given the extranjeros his personal guarantee of safety, he declared, and would kill the first man who attempted to harm them. For a moment the two Californios stood facing each other; then, without a word, Don Diego turned and remounted. The crisis passed quickly, but Wilson never forgot it. “His voice was stentorian,” he wrote of Varela, “his deportment very gallant, and his conduct on that occasion made him worthy of our admiration and respect.”
BY THAT EVENING the Americans were imprisoned in a cell at Paredon Blanco. The following morning Wilson was summoned by Commandante José María Flores, who asked that he compose a note to Captain Gillespie. “Say to him that General Flores is a Christian as well as a soldier,” he instructed, “and wishes to avoid the spilling of blood unnecessarily. That my men are very anxious to attack him, and one charge from them would cause the destruction of himself and all his soldiers.” Looking around at the Angelenos assembled at Paredon Blanco, Wilson saw the truth of what Flores said. Elated by their victory at Chino, they were certain they could defeat Gillespie. Flores had the upper hand, but he proposed an honorable capitulation. If Gillespie would agree to evacuate Los Angeles, he would guarantee the safety of all the Americans. He would permit them to march out with their arms and ammunition and proceed unmolested to the port of San Pedro, where they would be required to embark on the first vessel headed north. Wilson wrote what Flores told him and added a personal postscript, urging Gillespie to accept the offer, “in the interest of himself and all Americans in the country, whether prisoners or not.” Otherwise Wilson feared the worst. “Many of the old Californians who had been ill treated by Gillespie felt revengeful,” he noted. They were drinking heavily and taking bets on which of them would have the luck to kill the American commander.
Wilson’s note forced Gillespie to face the hopelessness of his situation. That afternoon negotiations began between his representatives and Angeleno leaders at El Aliso, the vineyard of Luis Vignes. The bone of contention proved to be the artillery Gillespie had found at Government House, which he insisted on hauling to San Pedro for the protection of his men. Finally the negotiators arranged a compromise. Flores would permit the Americans to take the guns as long as Gillespie agreed to abandon them on the beach before his embarkation. The truce, signed late on the afternoon of September 29, was followed by an exchange of prisoners, twelve Californios held by Gillespie for twelve Americans held by the insurgents. Wilson and most of the prominent captives, however, remained in Californio custody for the duration.
The following morning, as hundreds of Angelenos lined the road heading south to San Pedro, the Americans marched out of the pueblo, drums beating and flags flying, every man in arms, cannons loaded and primed, with slow matches burning. “I marched out of the city with colors flying,” Gillespie reported, “having endured more suffering in those seven days, than my service of seventeen years could equal.” Flores supplied carts and horses, which enabled a full evacuation in a single long day of travel. The advance guard arrived at San Pedro just after sunset and established a camp on the bluffs in the enveloping evening fog.
The following morning the Americans awoke to find the merchant vessel Vandalia at anchor in the roadstead. The articles of capitulation stipulated that their stay be “only long enough to prepare for embarkation for Monterey,” but Gillespie had other intentions. “Hoping that my courier might have reached Commodore Stockton,” he wrote, “I determined to remain a few days at San Pedro roads, for the arrival of one of the ships from the north.” In direct violation of the agreement he had signed, Gillespie unlimbered his guns and positioned them in battery. Flores sent a note of protest and ordered Carrillo’s squadron to take up a position a mile or so distant. But not until October 4, when Carrillo began pressing forward, did Gillespie finally issue an order for his men to begin loading their baggage onto the vessel. Even then he planned to remain in port, again in violation of the truce, hoping for the arrival of relief. That strategy, however, created a problem, for he feared the Californios would use the abandoned cannons to bombard the vessel. Gillespie called a council of officers to consider the situation, and they decided to render the guns “perfectly useless.” They were spiked, packed hard with gravel and sand, and rolled into the sea. Gillespie did not consider himself honor bound by an agreement made with “dishonored men.” The hard feelings created by American disrespect and contempt would cost the lives of many men and produce a postwar environment of distrust and suspicion.
•
CHAPTER 8 •
THE OLD WOMAN’S GUN
AGAINST THE ODDS, Gillespie’s courier made it to San Francisco Bay, riding more than five hundred miles in only six days and delivering his intelligence to Stockton, who later that same day dispatched the USS Savannah, with 350 sailors and marines under the command of Captain William Mervine, on a rescue mission to San Pedro. The Los Angeles insurgents had fallen on “our little band of brothers,” said Stockton, “like cowards, like miscreants, like assassins.” Have no fear, he proclaimed to a crowd of Americans, “the Sons of Liberty are on the way,” and “we go this time to punish as well as to conquer.” Later that evening, after several rounds of toasts at a banquet held in his honor, Stockton spoke even more bluntly. If any of Gillespie’s company
had been harmed, he vowed to “wade knee-deep in my own blood to avenge it.” The Californian of Monterey, the territory’s first newspaper, applauded those sentiments. The uprising, it informed its readers, amounted to “lawless violence.” But “retribution will follow fast on the heels of crime.” The ringleaders of the revolt were doomed. “There is only one resting place for them in California, and that is in the grave.” There could be no negotiations with such men.
The Savannah entered San Pedro harbor on the afternoon of October 7 to the cheers of the Americans aboard the Vandalia. Gillespie ferried over in a launch and met with Captain Mervine. A large man of imposing bearing, with a record of nearly forty years of service, Mervine expressed scorn at Gillespie’s evacuation of Los Angeles. He intended to seize victory from the jaws of defeat, he announced, immediately marching on the pueblo and striking the Angelenos decisively. Gillespie cautioned that such an operation would require vehicles and draft animals to convey ammunition and baggage, as well as to evacuate the dead and wounded during the inevitable engagement. The Angelenos, he informed Mervine, possessed a troublesome artillery piece, and he suggested mounting the six-pounders from the Vandalia on carretas and hauling them along to even the score. That would take far too long, answered Mervine. His sailors and marines would manage with what they could carry on their backs. Mervine shared Commodore Stockton’s view that the Californios were cowards and would flee at his approach. There was “nothing to fear,” he declared. His men would retake the city, where “all the necessary means could be procured to enable me to sustain myself.” He issued orders for his sailors and marines to disembark at dawn.
The following morning the entire force of 379 men, including Gillespie’s company, was on the road to Los Angeles. Small detachments of mounted Californios appeared on the ridges of the Palos Verdes Hills to the west, but they scattered when the rifleros fired on them, confirming Mervine’s expectations. Leaving the hills behind, the Americans continued north across a flat alluvial plain, overgrown with tall stands of wild mustard. The road was rough and proved heavy going. Few men carried canteens, and they found no source of fresh water along the way, “for the want of which we suffered greatly, render[ing] our situation truly miserable,” wrote Midshipman Robert C. Duvall. At two in the afternoon, after marching fourteen miles, the advance guard came to a cluster of adobes on a hillside, the headquarters of Rancho San Pedro, owned by the Domínguez family. The site included a spring as well as cleared ground suitable for an encampment. Mervine wanted to press on, but when Gillespie objected that the men were too exhausted to march farther, he agreed to remain there for the night.
The American rear guard had not yet come up when José Antonio Carrillo and a force of fifty or sixty mounted lanceros presented themselves on elevated ground some three hundred yards west of the American camp. Don José had orders to harass the Americans but avoid a general engagement until Commandante Flores arrived with the old woman’s gun. Gillespie’s rifleros advanced on the Californios, taking potshots and scattering them. But with nightfall that tactic proved impossible to sustain. Circling the perimeter of the American encampment on horseback, filling the air with shrill cries and the occasional blast of their pistols, the Angelenos kept the exhausted Americans from getting any rest. Sometime after midnight Flores and thirty or forty lanceros arrived with the artillery piece, which they deployed on the rise overlooking the Domínguez compound. “Let us give the morning salute, boys,” said Don José, and his gunners fired off a round that smashed through one of the adobe walls. No one was injured, but the blast announced to the Americans that they would face artillery fire in the morning.
REVEILLE SOUNDED at first light, and after a cold breakfast the Americans dragged themselves into formation, “quite as much fatigued as when we arrived from San Pedro,” according to Gillespie. “For myself,” he continued, “I was so stiff and lame I could scarcely walk.” The sailors formed into columns by platoon, with marines and rifleros on the flanks, acting as skirmishers. They had proceeded north about two miles when, according to Midshipman Duvall, “the enemy appeared before us, drawn up on each side of the road, mounted on fine horses, and armed with a lance and carbine each man.” At the center was the old woman’s gun, lashed with rawhide thongs to the forward axle of a wagon and drawn by the reatas of several horsemen, who handled the piece as they might wrangle a bull.
Mervine called out an order to advance, with skirmishers firing at will. When the Americans were still several hundred yards away, Carrillo gave the signal and his gunners fired the swivel. With no means of aiming but line of sight, their first shot went high, passing well over the heads of the Americans, who continued their advance, shouting jeers and catcalls. The Angelenos wheeled and retreated several hundred yards farther north, repositioned, reloaded, and as the Americans came within range, fired a second round. This ball too passed over the sailors’ heads, shattering a pike held aloft by one of them. “Bejabers, I’m dismasted!” the man shouted in jest as the Americans roared their approval, confident now that the gun could do them no harm.
Again the Angelenos withdrew several hundred yards. “¡Muchachos!” Carrillo shouted, “¡vamos a divertirnos!”—let’s have some fun!—and he ordered his lanceros to charge. At a distance of perhaps a quarter mile, it would take no more than thirty seconds for the horsemen to reach the Americans. Mervine barked out the order for his men to “form squares,” the standard infantry defense against a cavalry charge, in which troops assumed a rectangular formation, the front rank kneeling, and presenting their bayonets or pikes to repel the enemy, the second rank standing directly behind with rifles aimed at the horsemen, ready to fire off a volley when they came within range. But untrained in infantry maneuvers, Mervine’s sailors and marines had only the roughest idea of what they were doing. Instead of forming ordered ranks, they pressed together in a compact mass as the lanceros bore down on them. Then, when the riders were no more than a hundred yards away, they veered off, and at the same moment Don José shouted an order to fire. This time his gunners aimed low, and the ball struck the hard ground some distance in front of the Americans, shattering and sending chunks of iron shrapnel careening into their crowded ranks. One man was killed instantly, his leg torn away. Two or three others were mortally wounded.
The Americans hesitated, but Mervine cried out an order to advance, and the officers pushed the sailors forward again, the Angelenos giving ground before reforming their line once more. As the Americans closed the gap, the lanceros charged again. The use of “flying artillery” against infantry squares was a classic cavalry maneuver, and Don José executed it brilliantly, not once but several times. “Shot after shot told upon the Marines and sailors with dreadful havoc,” wrote Gillespie. The running fight continued for three miles, at which point the road passed over the dry bed of a small watercourse, today’s Compton Creek. As the Angelenos pulled the gun across, the wheels stuck in the sandy bottom and Gillespie’s skirmishers nearly captured it. But bending low over the backs of their mounts, as the balls whistled past them, the riders spurred their horses and succeeded in pulling it away.
It was a moment of extreme frustration for the Americans. With another ten miles to Los Angeles, how many more men would fall to the old woman’s gun? Mervine’s strategy had proven an abject failure. He ordered the bugler to sound retreat, and the Americans turned back, abandoning much of their equipment on the field, including a battle flag. Piling the dead and wounded into a carreta they had confiscated from the Domínguez compound, the men retreated south as Gillespie and the rifleros protected the rear. The Californios positioned the old woman’s gun on a rise to the west and lobbed grapeshot at the retreating Americans, mortally wounding another sailor. With two or three blasts of the gun, they consumed the last of their powder.
Several Californio officers wanted to attack the retreating Americans with their lances. “Let’s eat some Yankee meat!” one of them exclaimed. But Don José refused. “Let us content ourselves with what
we have done,” he said. “We own the ground.” No Californios had been killed in the battle, although a number were seriously wounded and two died some days later. The lanceros returned to Los Angeles in triumph. The enemy “left behind weapons, equipment, food, tobacco, and a flag that I have the honor to place at your disposition,” Don José announced in his official report to Commandante Flores. “When it is convenient, you can take the flag to the supreme government as proof of the triumph of ninety volunteer horsemen, showing that Californios are no disgrace to the Mexican people.” Disputing the charge of cowardice, defending the honor of his people, remained uppermost for Carrillo. “I feel the need to recognize the courage and enthusiasm manifested by the citizens that accompanied me,” he wrote, “all of whom displayed their patriotism.”
The Americans reached San Pedro at sundown. “We presented truly a pitiable condition,” wrote Duvall, “many being barely able to drag one foot after the other from excessive fatigue.” It was the young midshipman’s first taste of battle. The slaughter horrified him, but he found the conduct of the sailors and marines inspiring. “I can assert that no men could have acted more bravely,” he wrote. “Even when their shipmates were falling by their sides, I saw but one impulse and that was to push forward, and when the retreat was ordered I noticed a general reluctance to turn their backs to the enemy.” Two Americans had been killed on the battlefield and nine seriously wounded, three of whom died before day’s end. The five bodies were buried on a rocky outcropping at the harbor’s entrance known thereafter as Dead Man’s Island. Mervine had promised them grapes in Los Angeles, the men joked darkly, but all they got was grapeshot, and they afterward referred to the engagement as “the Battle of Captain Mervine’s Grapes, vintage 1846.” Mervine comforted himself with the thought that it could have been far worse. Had Carrillo “made use of the advantages he possessed over us,” he wrote in his report, “not a man could have escaped. By his cowardice alone were we saved.” That idée fixe died hard.
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