The front line worked its way clear to the outer wall of the castle. There the Colonel Andrews Voltigeurs crouched in holes and behind rocks and picked off the gunners and sharpshooters upon the parapets. The detachment under Lieutenant-Colonel Joe Johnston filed rapidly to the right for the southern face of the wall. Cheers drifted up from below. The reinforcements were nearing.
But the stormers and the Ninth and Fifteenth, with the ladders, arrived first. The Voltigeurs had been halted by a wide deep ditch at the foot of the wall. The bundles of fascines were passed forward and tossed into the ditch by the stormers for pathways; squads of men rushed with the ladders; fell; rushed again—Look! Lieutenant Armistead, of the volunteer stormers from the Sixth Regiment, had planted his ladder! Down he sank, wounded—his men swarmed up nevertheless—other ladders were in place—some lurched aside or were hurled back—the Mexicans upon the walls threw hand grenades, stabbed with swords and bayonets and fired downward, but men were climbing to them hand over hand like monkeys, paused for an instant to shoot and stab and club, then disappeared. By tens and twenties the files mounted and leaped over, faster and faster; and the next thing that Jerry knew he was inside, himself.
Huzzah! The reinforcements had joined. They were the Clarke Second Brigade—they bore the colors of the Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Infantry. Jerry dimly saw Hannibal in the ranks of the Eighth. There was a company of the Quitman New Yorkers, also—and of Marines, who somehow had got mixed in with the right of the brigade on the way up.
The space within the walls on the west and southwest of the castle formed a large yard. All the yard fumed with smoke from the belching castle and from the return fire.
The Reno howitzers had been dragged in, the captured guns of the outer wall were being reversed. The storming squads with the ladders ran, heads down, across the yard for the castle walls; the Voltigeurs and the infantry regiments (the New York company and the Marines, too) fired furiously from cover or in the open, helping the cannon drive the castle defenders from parapets and windows. The clangor was prodigious.
Jerry seemed to see everything at once: the struggling flags, the waving swords of the officers, the figures, rising, falling, rising and charging on; the red caps of the Mexican soldiery and the pompons of the boy cadets fringing the parapets and the windows; the cannon and the muskets smoking, and the bodies now and then sprawling in a lax heap.
Huzzah! Somebody was up—an officer in blue, his head bare, the flag of the Eighth Infantry at his back. He was Second Lieutenant Joseph Selden, of Hannibal’s company. A moment he stood, but for only a moment. Down he fell, sweeping his party from the ladder. The wall had been saved. Not for long, though! Huzzah! The great embroidered flag of the castle had drooped; a grape shot had severed its staff. No—it was hoisted again; a slender little fellow—a Mexican military cadet—had wriggled up the staff and refastened the banner. Brave boy! The troops cheered him.
Now there was another, louder cheer. The parapets were being occupied by fighting blue coats. Two flags had been planted: a Voltigeur flag and a New York flag, upon a terrace, by two officers. The Voltigeur officer was Captain Barnard; the New Yorker was said to be Lieutenant Mayne Reid. The men were battling their way through, everywhere—into the doors and windows and over the portico and the cornices. Another officer—Major Seymour, of the Ninth—springing high, tore down the Mexican colors from the broken staff; the Stars and Stripes rose in their place.
The Mexican soldiers were crying “Quarter!” or fleeing. Among them were many of the cadets. There was another hearty cheer; the banners of New York, South Carolina and Pennsylvania were tossing over a mass of blue jostling through a breach in the out-walls on the south and southeast, and charging into the yard. General Shields was here, his left arm reddened.
The castle of Chapultepec had been taken, but heavy firing continued in the east. The Marines and the General Persifor Smith brigade, of the Second Division, were being held by batteries down toward the road on that side. The cannon of the castle were turned in that direction; they and muskets and rifles volleyed into the backs of the enemy. Now the Marines were fighting hand to hand with the nearest battery. The Mexicans burst from the breastworks, went streaming for the northeast and the city. The Marines came on.