The time to plant artillery had now arrived, and the ideal spot was found on the sixteenth; but after a battery had been laid out there, access to it proved to be dangerously exposed. Two days later, however, a fairly good point was discovered, near the cemetery and Worth’s position, about half a mile south of the town, which screened it somewhat from the castle; and preparations to establish two mortar batteries there, about one hundred yards apart, began the following night. At the same time a deep road, wide enough to admit a six-mule team, was under construction.[21]
SIEGE OF VERA CRUZ
AMERICAN BATTERIES
Most of this labor had to be done at night, and the utmost possible silence observed. As the transports lay a mile off shore, while the only wharf was an open beach, and a norther blew violently from the twelfth to the sixteenth, the work of landing ordnance and ordnance stores proceeded slowly. Fortunately the work on the batteries was not discovered; but the fire of Paixhan guns and heavy mortars from the city and castle, though irregular and singularly unfruitful despite the undeniable skill of the gunners,[19] compelled the Americans to adopt extreme precautions. Nor were these embarrassments the only ones. Notwithstanding seasonable orders, only fifteen carts and about a hundred draught horses had arrived. Not more than one fifth of the ordnance requisitioned by Scott about the middle of November and due at the Brazos—he now reminded Marcy—by January 15, had yet appeared. A great many artillery and cavalry horses had been drowned, injured or delayed; and there was a shortage of almost every requisite for siege operations.[20] But the army and the navy coöperated zealously; soldiers took the places of draught animals; and in spite of every difficulty three batteries, mounting seven 10-inch mortars, were in readiness by two o’clock on the afternoon of the twenty-second, and the soldiers felt eager to hear what they called the “sweet music” of these “faithful bull-dogs.”[21]
THE BOMBARDMENT
At this hour, therefore, Scott formally summoned the town, intimating that both assault and bombardment were to be apprehended. The reply was a refusal to surrender; and at a quarter past four, accompanied by a deafening chorus of joyous, frantic shouts and yells, the American batteries opened, while the “mosquito fleet” of two small steamers and five gunboats,[22] each armed with a single heavy cannon, stationed themselves behind Point Hornos, and fired briskly.[24]
Like “hungry lions in search of prey,” a soldier thought, the shells from the mortars flew “howling” to their mark. With heavier metal and vastly more of it, Vera Cruz and the castle replied. The city wall blazed like a sheet of fire. Shot, shell and rockets came forth in a deluge, it seemed to the men; and the two columns of smoke, rolling and whirling, mounted high and collided as if striving to outflank and conquer each other. Still more terrible was the scene at night. A spurt of red fire; a fierce roar; a shell with an ignited fuse mounting high, pausing, turning, and then—more and more swiftly—dropping; the crash of a roof; a terrific explosion that shook the earth; screams, wailing and yells—all this could be distinctly seen or heard from the American lines. During the twenty-third and the following night the fire still raged, but on the American side more slowly, for although ten mortars were now at work, a norther interrupted the supply of ammunition.[24]
But while the bombardment made an interesting spectacle, as a military operation it was proving unsatisfactory. The ordnance thus far received by Scott was inadequate for the reduction of the city—to say nothing of Ulúa. With mortars, especially as the distances could not be ascertained precisely, it was impossible to be sure of hitting the bastions and forts. Shells could be thrown into the town, but while the houses suffered much, the fortifications and garrison escaped vital damage, and there was no sign of yielding. Not a few in the American army, who had supposed that a fortified city could be taken at sight like a mint julep, grew impatient; the officers eager for assault fumed; Worth, proud of his quick work at Monterey, sneered; Twiggs grunted. As an army man Scott naturally desired that branch of the service to reap all the glory of its campaign, but he now found himself compelled to ask for naval guns heavy enough to breach the wall, and make an assault practicable; and when Perry, who had taken Conner’s place on the twenty-first, insisted that men from the squadron should work them, he consented.[24]
The new battery, constructed by Robert E. Lee and mounting three long 32’s for solid shot and three 68’s for shells, was planted just behind the bushy crest of a slight eminence, only some 800 yards from the city wall, where the enemy did not suppose that such an enterprise would be ventured; and until the guns were about ready to be unmasked on the morning of the twenty-fourth, its existence was not suspected.[23] Here were instruments of power and precision, and they told. The Mexicans concentrated upon them a terrific fire, but with no serious effect; and when on the next morning a battery consisting of four 24-pounders and two 8-inch howitzers joined the infernal chorus, the fire, though hindered occasionally by the tardiness of ammunition, was “awful,” said Scott and Lee, while the city appeared like one dense thunder-cloud, red with flashes and quivering with incessant roars.[24]