1812: The Rivers of War (71 page)

The militiaman didn’t look back.

Encouraged by Houston’s example, other men in his regiment used similar methods of persuasion as they encountered more fleeing militiamen. By the time Houston and his men reached Patterson’s battery, they’d rallied perhaps a hundred of the Kentuckians.

“Thank God you’ve arrived!” Patterson cried. “They’re fighting hot and heavy down there! Don’t know how much longer they can hold!”

“Then why are you still here?” Sam snarled.

Patterson gave him an odd look. Confusion, mainly, not anger. Sam stopped, planted his hands on his knees, and took some deep breaths. He needed a rest. And if he did, so did his men.

“My apologies, Commodore.” Sam had spoken unfairly, and he knew it. Sam didn’t doubt Patterson’s courage any more than anyone else did, and he knew Patterson’s chief responsibility was making sure that whatever else happened, the big guns didn’t fall into enemy hands. His battery was positioned directly across the river from the field of Chalmette. If the guns of the battery were seized by the British before Patterson had a chance to spike them, it would take only minutes to shift them upstream far enough to start ravaging the Jackson Line.

His wind back, Sam straightened and peered across the river. The British forces over there were in position to launch an assault, but hadn’t so far made a move to do so. They were waiting, he guessed, to see what happened on the west bank.

Then he looked at Patterson’s battery. “Give me the two three-pounders and enough men to haul and fire them. Even if the enemy seizes them, they won’t do much damage firing across the river. But I can use them downstream.”

Patterson didn’t hesitate. “Yes, certainly.”

Five minutes later, rested, Houston and his regiment were off again. Almost running now, with two three-pounders bouncing along behind.

From the second-floor window of the Macarty house, watching through an eyeglass, Jackson saw the British break the hinge of Morgan’s line of defense by the river. The battery put up a stout fight, but before long it was overwhelmed.

The rest of the line started peeling away, Kentucky militiamen scattering like chaff in the wind.

He swiveled the eyeglass far around, looking north. Yes, there was Houston, coming fast.
Thank God
.

Swiveled it back. It was hard to tell much, more than a hundred yards past the riverbank. But he could see clouds of gun-smoke, billowing like clockwork.

That’d be Driscol and his freedmen, solid as a rock.

The general lowered the glass and hollered something. None of his lieutenants in the room understood a word. They couldn’t have, anyway, since there really weren’t any words. That had been just a shriek, half glee and half fury.

Still clenching the eyeglass, Jackson turned from the window and stalked from the room. Down the stairs, and out of the house.

He shook the eyeglass toward the southeast. “Come at me, Pakenham! Tarnation,
come at me!”

Pakenham was standing next to a tree, near the riverbank. Watching. Softly, steadily, like a metronome, he kept pounding the trunk with the bottom of his fist.

He’d wait before ordering the assault here at Chalmette. He wouldn’t act until he knew what was happening across the river.

He’d wait.

So help him God. The God who ruled battles, and all else. He … would … wait.

The American lieutenant died at his post, after firing a last round of canister from his twelve-pounder that killed three British soldiers and wounded several more. In their fury, no fewer than four of Thornton’s soldiers bayoneted the man repeatedly after they reached him, practically ripping his body into shreds.

Gasping for breath, Thornton looked down at the corpse. The lieutenant still gripped the smoldering fuse in his hand.

Sometime later, Thornton knew, he’d feel admiration for the man. The unknown lieutenant had just added to the splendid reputation which the little U.S. Navy had gotten in the course of the war. But at the moment, he felt more like stabbing the corpse himself, with his saber. That battery had hammered the Eighty-fifth worse than Thornton had expected.

After a few more breaths, Thornton regained his wind. Amazingly enough, in that last charge, he hadn’t himself suffered as much as a scratch, even though he’d been in the lead much of the way.

But what next?

A round from the battery still firing on the American right killed another British soldier and scattered his squad, right in front of Thornton’s eyes.
Damnation!
Against all logic and reason, that bloody unit was still in place and still firing its cannons with the same rate and accuracy that had ripped the Eighty-fifth throughout the charge. The rest of the American line had peeled away and raced to the rear, even before the assault overwhelmed the artillerymen on the riverbank. But the other battery hadn’t so much as flinched.

So much for logic and reason. As often, applied to military affairs, they’d proved to be treacherous beasts.

Quickly, Thornton considered his options. None of them were good.

“Shall we charge them, sir?” asked Lieutenant Colonel Gubbins, Thornton’s immediate subordinate, nodding toward the American battery a few hundred yards away.

Thornton thought about it—quickly, because the battery was continuing to fire on them. Now that the Eighty-fifth had reached the redoubt on the riverbank, the men were somewhat sheltered. But not enough, and certainly not against fire that accurate.

Standard procedure would have been to silence the battery before pressing onward. No commander wanted to leave an enemy bastion threatening his rear. But Thornton decided to risk it. He
had
to take the main American battery, farther to the north, with its big cannons. And he had to do it quickly.

“No, we’ll keep pressing on. However good that new American unit has proven to be, I don’t think its commander will risk a sortie against our troops on the open field. And if he does, we’ll turn and crush him.”

Gubbins scanned the area, then nodded. “Soon enough, too, we’ll be out of their range. Out of sight, for that matter, once the column moves a few hundred yards off.”

Thornton saw that Gubbins was right, and his grim expression lightened considerably.

The American commander had established his line at a place where the cypress swamps were fairly distant—exactly the opposite of what Jackson had done across the river. Just a few hundred yards north, the swamps closed in again, leaving an open area not more than two or three hundred yards wide between the cypress and the waterway. Once the British column reached that narrow neck, they’d be out of sight of the American battery altogether.

“Do you want to leave a detachment behind, sir?” Gubbins asked.

“Yes. They’ll serve to guide the Forty-third and the West Indians, once they arrive.” Thornton looked over the guns they’d seized from the naval detachment. One twelve-pounder and two six-pounders, neither of which the Americans had found time to spike. For a moment, he was sorely tempted to take the cannons with him. But they wouldn’t be enough to affect whatever battle started across the river on Chalmette field; and, in the meantime,
the detachment he left behind would need those guns to defend themselves against the American battery that was still in place.

“Leave as small a detachment as we can manage, but not so small that they might be overrun by those bloody bastards over there. Make sure they’ve enough experienced men to handle the guns we leave behind, as well.”

Gubbins moved off. Thornton began organizing his regiment to make a rapid movement out of the shelter of the redoubt. Such as it was.

“Give it to ’em, boys!” hollered Ball. “Any crew slacks off I’ll have their legs in with the rest of the shrimp in Marie’s pot!” Brandishing a cutlass, he glared at the crew of the twelve-pounder. “Don’t you be grinning at me, Corporal Jones! Those long legs of yours’ll fit, too! That voudou queen got the biggest cook pot in New Orleans!”

Ball was demonstrating that his superb performance at the Capitol had been no fluke. He had as much of a knack for handling novice recruits as he did the veterans he’d had with him in Washington.

Better still, Driscol knew, the men themselves were blooded now—and in the best possible manner. Bloodlessly, for them. They’d been able to prove to themselves that they could inflict damage on an enemy before that enemy could attack them directly. When and if the British came at them, they’d have confidence that fighting back would make a difference, even in the face of a terrifying bayonet charge.

When
, he thought, correcting himself. There’d be no “if” involved.

True enough, from what he could tell the British commander was getting ready to push onward, leaving Driscol and his battalion behind. But it was obvious that they’d faced only a portion of the British forces, thus far, not more than a regiment. There had to be more coming.

The British were pushing this assault far more vigorously—almost recklessly—than they ever would have for a simple diversionary movement. Driscol thought there would be at least another thousand soldiers arriving now on this side of the river. They’d be here soon enough.

In the meantime—

“Look, Sergeant! The bastards are leaving!” Excitedly, one of
the gunners pointed toward the river, where the head of the British column could be seen moving to the northwest. “They’re running away!”

Ball was there in an instant, swatting the man. Fortunately, he did it with his bare left hand, not the cutlass. “And what do I care, you stupid curree? Get back to your post! Fire on ’em, boys!
Keeping firing, the Lord damn you!
I want those bastards bled and gutted every step of the way!”

Splendid, splendid. Driscol wondered if Jackson’s quirkiness would extend as far as to allow Driscol to promote Ball to a commissioned rank.

Maybe. You never knew, with Jackson.

After the sound of the guns faded, Robert Ross looked at Tiana, sitting across from him at the table on the square. Her face had remained expressionless, but seemed tighter than before.

He started to open his mouth, prepared to reassure her, but stopped almost at once. He brought the cup of his tea to his lips, to disguise the moment’s lapse.

How
could
he reassure her? Driscol might well be dead by now.

Or not. Battles were unpredictable things. There had been many times in his life when Robert Ross had thought the peculiarly abstract nature of military terminology—those fussy and precise terms like
enfilade
and all the rest, often enough drawn from a foreign tongue—served the main purpose of shielding soldiers from the raw certainty that battles were nothing but chaos, carnage, ruin, and agony. Battles would be unbearable, faced without that prism to shield the human heart and mind.

“He’s dead now, isn’t he?” There was no tone at all in Tiana’s voice, though the voice itself seemed brittle.

Robert shook his head firmly. “There’s no way to know, girl. Trust me about this. There is simply no way to know.”

Steadily, like a metronome, Pakenham’s fist kept pounding the tree trunk. Very gently, now.

“I wonder if he’s being wise, sir,” commented Gibbs, watching the British column that was continuing north along the riverbank.

Pakenham shook his head firmly. “We shall not be second-guessing
Colonel Thornton, General. He knows he’s far behind schedule. No fault of his own, of course. So he’s leaving that bastion behind, and going for the critical guns. What other course can he follow?”

Pakenham wondered what he might have chosen to do, in Thornton’s place. He didn’t wonder more than a moment, though. The very same thing. Err on the side of aggressiveness, if err you must.

“A splendid regimental commander,” he pronounced. “I’ll see him knighted, so help me God.”

Jackson was back at his window, studying the battle through his glass. Once the British column moved past the naval battery they’d overrun, he lowered the glass and shook his head.

“I will be good goddamned,” he stated, lapsing into blasphemy. “The niggers
held
. The only ones that did except the regulars, goddamn all Kentuckians.”

He swiveled his head and glared at his aides. “What’s the name of Driscol’s chief sergeant over there? The black one, I’m talking about—black as the ace of spades. The fellow he brought with him from Washington.”

The aides glanced at each other. Reid cleared his throat. “Not sure, sir. ‘Ball,’ I think.”

The glare was joined by a grin that was, if anything, more ferocious still. “Well, he’s
Lieutenant
Ball now. Army regulations be damned, along with the whole state of Kentucky.”

Jackson turned back to the open window, leaned out of it, and shook the eyeglass in the direction of New Orleans. “Take
that
, you trembling bastards! Take
that
, you craven curs! Rot on your stinking plantations, you treacherous cowards!”

He continued in that enthusiastic vein for a time, becoming more vulgar and profane as he went. Andrew Jackson, in a mood for cursing, was extraordinarily good at it.

When Houston saw the oncoming British column, he skidded to a halt. “Hold up!” he shouted. “Form a line!”

Fortunately, the sailors from Patterson’s unit were veterans, so they had the three-pounders in line quickly enough to give the rest of Houston’s regiment an anchor point. The three-pounders were positioned directly across the narrow dirt road
that led up the riverbank. Houston placed his Baltimore dragoons on either side, and extended the Capitol volunteers in a line stretching toward the nearby swamp.

There was no time to make breastworks, of course. The British weren’t more than three hundred yards away by now. But Sam was sure that, firing in a line against a narrow column, his men would at least be able to hold the British for a few minutes.

That left Major Ridge and his two hundred Cherokees.

“Can you get through that cypress?” Sam asked.

Ridge glanced at the swamp. “It’ll take a bit of time.”

“Sure. I’ll give you the time. You get in there and hit them on the flank.” He peered into the distance. “There’s not more than two hundred yards between the river and the swamp, where I’ll stop them.”