1824: The Arkansas War

by Eric Flint

  Madness was what it was. There was no skill involved, no way a man could use his reflexes and cunning. The “risk” was no risk at all, but a certainty. Such-and-such percentage would die; such-and-such percentage would be mortally wounded; such-and-such percentage would survive but would be permanently maimed or disfigured; such-and-such percentage would suffer temporary wounds; and such-and-such percentage would somehow, miraculously, emerge entirely unscathed.

  The only question was which one of those percentages you wound up falling into. Which was determined by nothing but pure, blind, stupid luck.

  “You white people are insane,” he muttered to his fellow lieutenant and instructor, Thomas Talley.

  Belatedly, he remembered. Talley’s answering grin was all the brighter because the white teeth stood out so sharply against skin the color of old coffee.

  “You right,” Talley said. “We is definitely crazy. On the other hand, we ain’t color-blind.”

  Harrison was up on his horse by now. Everyone—except the Arkansans—was moving too slowly.

  Much too slowly. He had the sick sensation a man gets while watching a carriage sliding off a bridge. Every moment of the disaster as clear as crystal, and seeming to take forever. But with no way to move fast enough to stop it from happening.

  “God damn it! Get that artillery over there!”

  The familiar clap of six-pounders jerked his eyes to the front. He saw two companies of the 1st Infantry staggering back from the enemy. McNeil still hadn’t gotten them into a proper line, and already the Arkansan artillery had hammered his lead companies with a volley. Canister, from the looks of it.

  Thankfully, Arbuckle’s regiment was almost in position. Within a few minutes, that leading Arkansas regiment would be matched up against two American ones, and good ones at that. Coming around the fort the way they were, the Arkansans were hemmed in, too. Even with understrength regiments, McNeil and Arbuckle would have that leading enemy regiment outnumbered, without enough room for the Arkansans to bring their other regiment into play very quickly or easily.

  It’d be brutal, though, if the Arkansans stood their ground. Brutal as all hell.

  “Fire!” Sheff yelled, echoing Captain Dupont’s command. He did his best to emulate that high-pitched, piercing tone that both Driscol and Ball had mastered on battlefields. With his natural tenor voice, he thought he did pretty well, too.

  Not that anyone—including him—could possibly tell. The whole regiment fired the volley on cue, as if six hundred and fifty men had one single brain and one single trigger finger. Anyone’s voice, in that incredible white-clouded thunderclap, vanished without a trace.

  His ears were ringing, worse than he remembered them doing at the earlier battle at Arkansas Post with Crittenden’s army. That was probably because he, now an officer, was standing slightly in front of the line of muskets instead of being part of them. A bit off to the side, of course, but that didn’t compensate.

  His brain felt muzzy, too. He shook his head to clear it, squinting at the gunsmoke that obscured everything. They should be—

  The answering clap came. Not as loud, perhaps oddly.

  Sheff sensed a bullet whizzing by his head. Felt something—another bullet, maybe—that seemed to tug briefly at the uniform which was slightly bunched at his waist.

  Other than that, he was quite uninjured. Glancing behind, he could see that at least three of his men had been hit. But looking farther down the line, he was relieved to still see his uncle Jem, now a sergeant in the company, urging the men forward as if he were Samuel himself.

  These were no border adventurers they were fighting today. These were U.S. regulars. Wretched men, as a rule, taken one at a time. Recent immigrants, at least half of them, mostly from Ireland or Germany. Drunkards, gamblers, blasphemers; life’s failures; flotsam and jetsam.

  It didn’t matter. They were professional soldiers, trained to do a job and able and willing to do it. Crittenden’s men had crumpled under a single mighty blow. These wouldn’t. The regulars would stand and fight.

  The regiment had reloaded.

  “Ten paces forward!” Sheff led them into the gunsmoke.

  Houston was standing in the stirrups, straining to get as good a view as possible.

  No use. The damn fort was in the way! Somehow, in all the planning, nobody had thought of that. He could see the two regiments of U.S. regulars that Harrison had brought out to meet the 3rd Arkansas on the road. And it was obvious just from the gunfire and the shouting and shrieking that the other two enemy regiments had broken into the Post and were fighting its Chickasaw defenders.

  But he had no idea at all where the Georgia and Louisiana militias might be found. They were hidden from his view, somewhere behind that hulking fort.

  Driscol and Ball trotted up.

  Patrick had a wry smile on his face. “Never fails, does it, lad? Scheme all you want; the god of battles will roll his dice.”

  Ball was scowling. “Very funny. Patrick, we can’t risk it without knowing. If they’re too close to the regulars, we’ll get torn to pieces. Especially after Harrison pulls the rest of the regulars out of the Post. Which”—Ball pointed at the fighting on the road ahead—“he will. He’ll have to.”

  Sam was already studying that fight and had come to the same conclusion. The U.S. regulars were accounting adequately for themselves, true. No signs of panic, at least not yet. But they’d been caught off guard by the speed of the Arkansas attack, and they still hadn’t recovered. Even as Sam watched, another perfectly timed Arkansas musket volley went off, followed by an almost equally perfect volley of canister from the six-pounders McParland had positioned slightly to the north.

  Whichever that American regiment was, up in the front, it was being hammered very badly indeed. Its companion regiment had been partly shielded from the Arkansas muskets, but McParland was concentrating his guns on them.

  The solution was obvious. It wasn’t as if Sam really had any other duties, anyway, unless the Georgia Run was on.

  “I’ll reconnoiter,” he said. He spurred his horse into a trot, not bothering to wait for permission from the two generals. He and Patrick and Charles went a long way back together, now. Ten years and counting. After a point, formalities were just silly.

  Harrison’s horse was shot out from under him by a volley from the six-pounders. Caught by surprise—he’d been looking at the Post, trying to gauge from the outside how well that fight was going—he couldn’t free one of his feet from the stirrups in time.

  Fortunately—great good fortune—the horse’s knee crumpled under the carcass. Just enough to leave him room to kick his boot free.

  He’d lost his sword. Where—

  Lieutenant Fleming came up with it. “Here, sir.” The youngster even had the presence of mind to proffer it hilt first. “Are you all right?”

  He was helping Harrison to his feet as he asked the question.

  “Never mind that!” Harrison pointed at the Post. “Get in there and find out—God damn you, sir!”

  Fleming was staring at him empty-eyed. Empty-headed, too. A heavy three-ounce canister ball had caught him right in the forehead. Most of his brains were lying on the ground behind him.

  Slowly, he toppled over onto his back. Falling as stiffly as a pine tree.

  “Oh, damn you, sir,” Harrison repeated. He looked for another aide.

  He found Lieutenant Riehl a minute or so later. But John Riehl was equally useless. Another one of those deadly Arkansas canister balls had taken his left hand off at the wrist. Riehl was holding it in his right hand, just staring down at it. Completely oblivious, it seemed, to the blood pouring out of his left stump.

  “Bind yourself up, you idiot,” Harrison snarled. “Or you’ll bleed to death.”

  Riehl turned puzzled blue eyes up to him. “My hand seems to be no longer attached, sir. What should I do?”

  “Bind yourself—Ah! Here!”

  Quickly—he was the commanding general, he had no bus
iness being distracted like this!—Harrison tore a strip of cloth from Riehl’s uniform. That was easy because the uniform was torn. There was another wound somewhere on the lieutenant’s ribs. Probably nothing serious, though, judging from the small flow of blood.

  He tied the tourniquet roughly, crudely, and most of all quickly.

  “Report to the rear, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir, my hand seems to be no longer attached. What should—”

  “Shut up!” Harrison looked for another aide. He’d started the battle with three of them.

  Sheff was a little amazed that he still hadn’t been hurt at all. Not very amazed, but that was because only a tiny part of his brain was paying attention to the problem.

  Which was just as well, since that part of his brain was gibbering like a monkey.

  But he simply ignored it. Victory was all that mattered. The regiment was all that mattered.

  He looked over and saw that Captain Dupont was lying on the ground. He was groaning and moving a little, so he was still alive. But from the looks of the wound—what Sheff could see of it, which was a coatee blood-soaked above the waist—he might very well not be in a few days. He’d probably been gut-shot.

  That put Sheff in command of the company. He raised his sword and went at the enemy.

  “Ten paces forward!”

  By the time Harrison found a soldier who could substitute for the missing aide and sent him into the Post and got back to the front lines, he knew that the situation was rapidly becoming critical. Outnumbered or not—their other regiment still unused or not—that initial hammering blow from the leading Arkansas regiment had caught his own men off guard and off balance.

  They’d been kept off balance ever since. The Arkansans were relentless, despite the heavy casualties they were suffering themselves. They kept coming forward, steadily—ten paces, fire; ten paces, fire—no matter how hard the 1st and 7th fought. By now, the battle was centered just north of the Post, with the Arkansas right and the American left anchored on the fort’s wall.

  McNeil was dead. He’d been killed just before Harrison returned, a musket ball right in the heart. Arbuckle was still in the fray. He’d even finally managed—God damn him, as well—to get his regiment into line.

  McNeil had been succeeded in command of the 3rd by Captain Jeremy Baisden. The major who should have succeeded him had been killed in the same volley that slew the regiment’s commander.

  Just as well. Harrison had thought the major was an incompetent. Baisden seemed to know what he was about.

  “You’ll have to hold them, Captain!” Harrison shouted. “Until I can get the 3rd and the 4th out of the Post!”

  Baisden waved his hand. Then, calmly, went back to his business.

  Good man. Best of all, he didn’t talk much. If Harrison had to lose one of his experienced regimental commanders, it was really a pity the Arkansans hadn’t killed Arbuckle instead of McNeil.

  He needed another horse. Unfortunately, he seemed to have lost all of his young aides. One dead, one maimed—and God only knew where that useless Lieutenant Whatever-His-Name-Was had gotten off to.

  The terrain in the Delta was generally flat, but there were small rises here and there. Sam found one of them within a couple of hundred yards that—finally—gave him a decent view of the entire battlefield.

  He spotted the militia units right away. They were hugging the river, at least a third of a mile from the regulars, who were now completely tangled up with the 1st Arkansas or the Chickasaws in the Post itself.

  “Oh, what a beautiful sight.”

  There was no need to stand on ceremony. Rising again in the stirrups, he could easily see Patrick and Charles. That meant they could see him also, if they were watching.

  He laughed. As if they wouldn’t be!

  He swept off his hat—a proper one, not that blasted fur cap—and waved it around.

  “Come and get it, boys! Dinner’s on the table!”

  CHAPTER 36

  The first companies of the 3rd and 4th Regiments had just come out of Arkansas Post and were moving into position in support of the 1st and 7th when Harrison spotted the second Arkansas regiment coming forward.

  He’d been expecting that, of course, and already had a battery of six-pounders in position to guard his right flank. He’d take casualties from the coming assault, but for once the Arkansans had been sluggish.

  “Get up there!” he shouted at the two captains leading the companies emerging from the Post. He stood up in the stirrups and pointed to the battery. “Take position! They’ll be coming at our flank!”

  It didn’t occur to him until after they passed by that he hadn’t inquired as to conditions within the Post itself.

  Stupid. He might have a sally from the Chickasaws to deal with soon.

  But, thankfully, it seemed there wasn’t much chance of that. The battle was finally turning his way.

  “No, sir.” Captain James Franks took off his hat and wiped his brow with a uniform sleeve. That only replaced the sweat there with a smear of blood, because that whole side of his uniform seemed blood-soaked.

  None of it his, apparently, judging from his demeanor.

  “No, sir,” he repeated. “There isn’t much left, except a lot of bodies. I will say there wasn’t no quit in them. There’s probably two or three hundred live Chickasaws hiding out somewhere in there—the place is a maze—but they won’t be doing no sorties.”

  There was a grim satisfaction in the words. The regulars had known of the Chickasaw reputation, and nothing that had happened in the two hours since the beginning of the assault on Arkansas Post had done anything to modify it. “No, sir. There won’t be no Chickasaws coming out of there until we let them out.”

  Captain Franks was probably right. But Harrison had had to leave much of the artillery behind at the river, anyway, to guard against the steamboats that had finally appeared upstream. The same batteries could have two or three guns moved around to bear on the main entrance to the Post, as well as the breaches. If the Chickasaws did come out, they’d be met with a storm of canister.

  Yes, indeed. The battle was finally—

  “General Harrison!” He looked up, squinting to see who had called him. One of Arbuckle’s officers. Captain…Whatever.

  “General Harrison!” The captain was pointing to the north.

  Harrison looked.

  “What in the name of…”

  The Arkansas maneuver made no sense at all. That second regiment was staying much too far to the north, as if it were simply evading Harrison’s army. What was the point of that?

  And they weren’t even developing into a line. Instead, they were—

  What were they doing?

  “Oh, how splendid!” Winfield Scott exclaimed. He was standing up in his stirrups. As tall as he was, that gave him quite a good view of whatever the 2nd Arkansas was up to.

  Bryant was considerably shorter, to begin with. Perhaps more to the point, the incredible din of the nearby battlefield had left his mind feeling numb.

  “What are you talking about, Winfield?”

  Scott pointed. He was genuinely excited, Cullen could tell. Not even making the slightest attempt to hide it under a patina of calm professionalism.

  “I’ve never seen one! Read about them, of course.”

  The infernal cacophony had also left Cullen more than a bit irritable.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s a French column, Cullen! Right out of the Revolution and the early days of Napoleon. Don’t think one’s been used in a battle in years.”

  He might as well have been gibbering in Greek.

  Well, no. Turkish. William Cullen Bryant’s grasp of the Greek language was actually rather good.

  He’d never heard it spoken. But he could read it, of course.

  “Oh, dear God,” Harrison whispered.

  The bizarre formation finally made sense. That second Arkansas regiment was ignoring the American regulars altogether
. They were sweeping around Harrison’s regiments, keeping just out of musket range, and going for the militiamen.

  Who were—

  “God damn those bastards!”

  Who were almost half a mile downriver. Figuring they’d be completely useless in a close assault, Harrison had left them to their own devices while he handled the attack on Arkansas Post. Then, in the press of affairs and the chaos after the Arkansans launched their attack, he’d simply forgotten about them altogether, even though he’d originally intended to use them to reinforce the 1st and 7th. He’d simply been overwhelmed by too much happening, too soon.

  Naturally, the wretches hadn’t come to his aid on their own. If he knew militia officers, they’d have been dancing back and forth trying to decide what to do and spending most of their time quarreling with each other.

  Well, they weren’t going to have to decide anything, any longer. The Arkansans were going to make the decision for them.

  For one tiny moment, before he suppressed it, Harrison found himself hoping the Arkansas maneuver would succeed.

  At least it meant he could concentrate on fighting that one Arkansas regiment that had been gutting his army from the first moment of the battle. If nothing else, they would go under.

  Sheff was still unhurt, but by now he was in command of the regiment’s entire right wing. Anchored against the side of the Post the way they were, those companies had been unable to maneuver at all. Nor did they have any artillery support, as the left wing did. It had just been simple, straightforward, volley against volley. Moving closer and closer, until the distance separating them from the nearest American regiment was less than thirty yards.

  “Reload!”

  He wasn’t ordering any further advance. Not unless the left wing came forward and Colonel Jones ordered a bayonet charge. Which Sheff didn’t think was likely at all. The Arkansan and American lines had met at an angle. By the Post, not more than thirty yards separated them, but the distance between the Arkansan left and the American right was still almost a hundred yards. That enabled the Arkansan artillery battery positioned on the far left to bring what almost amounted to enfilade fire on their opponents.