Decisive Battles of America

by Unknown

Worth came up almost immediately; and, directing the Sixth to advance as best they could along the causeway in the teeth of the tête de pont, despatched Garland and Clarke’s brigades through the fields on the right to attack it in flank. Every gun was instantly directed against the assailants; and, though the day was bright and clear, the clouds of smoke actually darkened the air. Hoffman, waving his sword, cheered on the Sixth; but the shot tore and ripped up their ranks to such a degree that in a few minutes they had lost ninety-seven men. The brigades on the right suffered as severely. One hundred men fell within the space of an acre. Still they pressed on, till the Eighth (of Clarke’s brigade) reached the ditch. In they plunged, Lieutenant Longstreet bearing the colors in advance—scrambled out on the other side—dashed at the walls, without ladders or scaling implements—bayoneted the defenders as they took aim. At last officers and men, mixed pell-mell, some through the embrasures, some over the walls, rushed or leaped in and drove the garrison helter-skelter upon their reserves.

The tête de pont gained, its guns were turned on the convent, whence the Mexicans were still slaughtering our gallant Second and Third. Duncan’s battery, too, hitherto in reserve, was brought up, and opened with such rapidity that a bystander estimated the intervals between the reports at three seconds. Stunned by this novel attack, the garrison of San Pablo slackened fire. In an instant the Third, followed by Dimmick’s artillery, dashed forward with the bayonet to storm the nearest bastion. With a run they carried it, the artillery bursting over the curtain; but at that moment a dozen white flags waved in their faces. The whole fortified position of Churubusco was taken.

Meantime, however, a conflict as deadly as either of these was raging behind the Mexican fortifications. Soon after the battle commenced, Scott sent Pierce and Shields’ brigades by the left, through the fields, to attack the enemy in the rear. On the causeway, opposed to them, were planted Santa Anna’s reserves—four thousand foot and three thousand horse—in a measure protected by a dense growth of maguey. Shields advanced intrepidly with his force of sixteen hundred. The ground was marshy, and for a long distance—having vainly endeavored to outflank the enemy—his advance was exposed to their whole fire. Morgan, of the Fifteenth, fell wounded. The New York regiment suffered fearfully, and their leader, Colonel Burnett, was disabled. The Palmettos, of South Carolina, and the Ninth, under Ransom, were as severely cut up; and after a while all sought shelter in and about a large barn near the causeway. Shields, in an agony at the failure of his movement, cried imploringly for volunteers to follow him. The appeal was instantly answered by Colonel Butler, of the Palmettos: “Every South-Carolinian will follow you to the death!” The cry was contagious, and most of the New-Yorkers took it up. Forming at angles to the causeway, Shields led these brave men, under an incessant hail of shot, against the village of Portales, where the Mexican reserves were posted. Not a trigger was pulled till they stood at a hundred and fifty yards from the enemy. Then the little band poured in their volley, fatally answered by the Mexican host. Butler, already wounded, was shot through the head, and died instantly. Calling to the Palmettos to avenge his death, Shields gives the word to charge. They charge—not four hundred in all—over the plain, down upon four thousand Mexicans, securely posted under cover. At every step their ranks thinned. Dickenson, who succeeded Butler in command of the Palmettos, seizes the colors as the bearer falls dead; the next moment he is down himself, mortally wounded, and Major Gladden snatches them from his hand. Adams, Moragne, and nearly half the gallant band are prostrate. A very few minutes more, and there will be no one left to bear the glorious flag.

CHARGE OF THE “PALMETTOS” AT CHURUBUSCO
(From a print of the time)

But at this very moment a deafening roar was heard in the direction of the tête de pont. Round-shot and grape, rifle-balls and canister came crashing down the causeway into the Mexican ranks from their own battery. Worth was there just in time. Down the road and over the ditch, through the field and hedge and swamp, in tumult and panic, the Mexicans fled from the bayonets of the Sixth and Garland’s brigade. A shout, louder than the cannon’s peal—Worth was on their heels, with his best men. Before Shields reached the causeway he was by his side, driving the Mexican horse into their infantry, and Ayres was galloping up with a captured Mexican gun. Captain Kearny, with a few dragoons, rode straight into the flying host, scattered them right and left, sabred all he could reach, and halted before the gate of Mexico. Not till then did he perceive that he was alone with his little party, nearly all of whom were wounded; but, in spite of the hundreds of escopetas that were levelled at him, he galloped back in safety to headquarters.

The sun, which rose that morning on a proud army and a defiant metropolis, set at even on a shattered, haggard band and a city full of woe-stricken wretches who did nothing all night but quake with terror and cry at every noise, “Aqui viene los Yanquies!” All along the causeway, and in the fields and swamp on either side, heaps of dead men and cattle, intermingled with broken ammunition-carts, marked where the American shot had told. A gory track leading to the tête de pont, groups of dead in the fields on the west of Churubusco, over whose pale faces some stalks of tattered corn still waved, red blotches in the marsh next the causeway, where the rich blood of Carolina and New York soaked the earth, showed where the fire of the heavy Mexican guns and the countless escopetas of the infantry had been most murderous. Scott had lost, in that day’s work, over one thousand men in killed and wounded, seventy-nine of whom were officers. The Mexican loss, according to Santa Anna, was one-third of his army, equal probably to ten thousand men, one-fourth of whom were prisoners, the rest killed and wounded. As the sun went down the troops were recalled to headquarters; but all night long the battle-field swarmed with straggling parties, seeking some lost comrade in the cold and rain, and surgeons hurrying from place to place and offering succor to the wounded.

It would have been easy for Scott to have marched on the city that night, or next morning, and seized it before the Mexicans recovered the shock of their defeat. Anxious, however, to shorten the war, and assured that Santa Anna was desirous of negotiating; warned, moreover, by neutrals and others that the hostile occupation of the capital would destroy the last chance of peaceable accommodation and rouse the Mexican spirit to resistance all over the country, the American general consented, too generously perhaps, to offer an armistice to his vanquished foe. It was eagerly accepted, and negotiations were commenced which lasted over a fortnight. Early in September the treachery of the Mexicans became apparent. No progress had been made in the negotiations; and, in defiance of the armistice, an American wagon, proceeding to the city for provisions, had been attacked by the mob and one man killed and others wounded. Scott wrote to Santa Anna, demanding an apology, and threatening to terminate the armistice on the 7th if it were not tendered. The reply was insulting in the extreme; Santa Anna had repaired his losses and was ready for another fight.

MOLINO DEL REY

On the evening of the 7th of September Worth and his officers were gathered in his quarters at Tacubaya. On a table lay a hastily sketched map showing the position of the fortified works at Molino del Rey, with the Casa Mata on one side and the castle of Chapultepec on the other. The Molino was occupied by the enemy; there was reason to believe it contained a foundry in full operation, and Worth had been directed to storm it next morning. Over that table bent Garland and Clarke, eager to repeat the glorious deeds of August 20th at the tête de pont of Churubusco; Duncan and Smith, already veterans; Wright, the leader of the forlorn-hope, joyfully thinking of the morrow; famous Martin Scott and dauntless Graham, little dreaming that a few hours would see their livid corpses stretched upon the plain; fierce old McIntosh, covered with scars; Worth himself, his manly brow clouded and his cheek paled by sickness and anxiety. Each officer had his place assigned to him in the conflict; and they parted to seek a few hours’ rest. At half-past two in the morning of the 8th the division was astir. ’Twas a bright, starlight night, whose silence was unbroken as the troops moved thoughtfully toward the battle-field. In front, on the right, about a mile from the encampment, the hewn-stone walls of the Molino del Rey—a range of buildings five hundred yards long and well adapted for defence—were distinctly visible, with drowsy lights twinkling through the windows. A little farther off, on the left, stood the black pile of the Casa Mata, the arsenal, crenelled for musketry and surrounded by a quadrangular field-work. Beyond the Casa Mata lay a ravine, and from this a ditch and hedge ran, passing in front of both works to the Tacubaya road. Far on the right the grim old castle of Chapultepec loomed up darkly against the sky. Sleep wrapped the whole Mexican line, and but few words were spoken in the American ranks as the troops took up their respective positions—Garland, with Dunn’s battery and Huger’s twenty-four-pounders, on the right, against the Molino; Wright, at the head of the stormers, and followed by the light division, under Captain Kirby Smith, in the centre; McIntosh, with Duncan’s battery, on the left, near the ravine, looking toward the Casa Mata; and Cadwallader, with his brigade, in reserve.