1862 (52 page)

Arrayed on a low hill were ranks of redcoated soldiers, Napier’s British rearguard was arrayed before them.

“Do you hate the English?” Flynn asked.

“With all my heart,” Cleburne answered. It was a response that would not have been uttered a year earlier.

The men of the Legion had gotten over their shock at seeing their ancient enemy suddenly before them. Their fatigue dropped away and was replaced by primal anger. There was cursing and growling, and officers had a difficult time keeping the battle line from surging forward,

A messenger rode up and handed a dispatch to Cleburne, who read it and grinned. “According to General Thomas, we are to exert pressure on them.”

“Will you rest the troops?” Flynn asked.

The sound of yelling and cursing grew louder. “No, they’re refreshed enough by the sight of the redcoats. Besides, if we wait, the British will entrench.” Cleburne gathered couriers and sent orders to his commanders, In a few moments, he waved his sword and the Irish Legion moved forward,

Across the field, Lord Napier watched as the Union force moved with a deadly cadence, Where had the Union gotten such armies? They grew like mushrooms. Or perhaps dragon’s teeth, he thought, He recognized the American flag in the fore, but what was the other one, the green thing?

“Who are they?” he asked his staff.

It took only a few moments before someone made the connection, “Irish,” came the report,

Napier nodded grimly, He had the high ground and the larger force, and his men were British regulars. His only regret was that they had only been in position a moment and had not had an opportunity to throw up barricades or entrench. It would not matter. ’Then let us send them back to their damned bogs.”

British cannon and rifle fire scythed the Irish advance. Men screamed and died, or screamed and fell wounded, The British line was thin but their discipline was magnificent, Fire from their Enfields was deadly.

At three hundred yards, the Irish advance slowed, and at two it was a bloodied crawl. By the time the bravest had reached to less than a hundred yards of the British, it stopped and became a rifle duel between the red line of soldiers and the groups of blue soldiers who knelt, lay prone, or sought cover where they could, Now, the British began to die, and gaps appeared in their ranks where men toppled to the ground,

Cleburne, at the head of his men, made a quick assessment, He was hurting the British, but they were hurting him more, He had gotten his men too far in advance of the rest of the army and the Legion was going to be cut to pieces. If he withdrew, it would be under fire and they would be mauled.

The only way was ahead.

General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne stood and waved his sword, “Forward,” he commanded, Nothing happened, His men simply watched his act of madness and wondered what to do, The fight was almost out of them.

Ignoring the hail of bullets that sought him, Cleburne grabbed the Legion’s fallen flag. A quick breeze extended the green flag with the harp of Brian Boru in the middle.

“For Ireland!” he screamed and ran forward.

“For Ireland!” a thousand throats yelled, and the cry was picked up along the battle line. Five thousand men got to their feet and began to move towards the enemy.

British fire ignored the one man with the flag and concentrated on the advancing horde, Dead piled up, but still the Irish advanced, screaming through wide-open mouths. Their ancient enemy was in their sights, and their blood was up.

Cleburne reached the British, paused, and hurled the Legion’s flag over the ranks of redcoats like a spear. “After it!” he shrieked. Then he began to hack at the redcoats with his sword.

The insane howling of the Legion’s men reached a keening peak as they raced the last few yards to the British ranks. There, they grappled with bayonets, rifle butts, knives, fists, and teeth. It was a battle from the days before the dawn of time as vengeance, justified or not, was taken for centuries of abuse, murder, burnings, persecution, and starvation,

The British outnumbered the Legion, but hundreds of battle-crazed Irish surged through the thin British line like a sharp knife through soft meat. The Irish were beyond fear and many later said they felt no pain from wounds that should have stopped them in their tracks, They didn’t care if they died, They had become berserkers, They just wanted to kill English soldiers,

The British soldier was as brave as any man and more disciplined than most, They were, however, humans of flesh and blood, They were hungry, cold, and tired, and had already been retreating, which further sapped their morale. Almost as one, those who could turned and began to pull back from the awful carnage and their insane enemy. The Irish moved towards them and the British walk became a trot, and then the rout was on. Lord Napier and other officers waved their swords and cursed as the British infantry streamed past them. Then, confronted with the reality of defeat, they. too. moved away from the field of death as quickly as they could.

Attila Flynn had not advanced with the army. Although far from a coward, he was not a soldier and saw nothing to be gained by putting himself in jeopardy. The cause of Ireland needed him, and his death in battle would solve nothing.

As the sounds of fighting diminished in the distance, Flynn walked across the field over which the Legion had advanced. A great victory had been won. Victoria’s army was shattered and running away. But what a price had been paid! The Union newspapers had referred to casualties in other battles as the “butchers bill.” which was an apt description. Human meat carpeted the field. These were the dead: as the wounded had been dragged to the rear. Some of the dead were whole and lay as if sleeping, while others, equally whole, were contorted and twisted in their final agonies. Worse were those who’d been blown to bloody parts by the British cannon. Limbs, heads, and torsos lay scattered like a child’s broken toys.

He found the pile of flesh where red uniforms were mixed with blue. It gladdened him to see so many English lying dead. The Legion had fought the finest infantry on the face of the earth and had driven them away.

The Irish Legion had won an epic victory that would ring through the ages, and the anniversary of this day would be toasted by Irishmen forever. But the Irish Legion had been destroyed.

Someone had taken the Legion’s pennant and jammed it into the ground by a corpse. With a sinking heart. Flynn approached the body. It was Cleburne. The general’s jaw had been blown off and he had bled to death into the earth of his adopted land.

Attila Flynn sat on the ground and wept for the future. The men who would have formed the core of an Irish army of liberation lay dead on a field in Maryland. The charismatic and ferocious general who might have led them to victory was a lifeless husk. Irishmen had paid for acceptance in the United States with copious amounts of their blood, but there would be no freedom for Ireland this day, this year, this century.

   Lord John Russell entered his old friend’s bedchamber and looked sadly on what lay on the bed. It was the ruins of what had once been a vital and intelligent human being, a man who had compared himself to the Caesars.

“How long has he been like this?”

The doctor, an old friend who’d attended Palmerston for decades, was grief-stricken. “His servants found him this morning when they tried to waken him. We believe it was a stroke and it obviously occurred sometime during the night.”

Palmerston’s eyes were closed and his mouth was open. He breathed deeply but each inhalation was a croaking strain. “He will recover?” Russell asked hopefully.

“I doubt it,” said the doctor, recovering his professional demeanor. “Miracles have happened but none that I have seen. You’ll notice the slackness of his mouth. That and the fact that there is no response to our probings on the left side of his body indicate that a degree of paralysis has set in. Once that occurs, there is little hope of recovery. He may open his eyes and he may try to speak, but no one will understand him. Even if that does occur, he will likely forever remain a prisoner of his own body.”

Russell shuddered at the thought. The Americans have won another battle, he concluded. Only yesterday, they had received the grim news that Lee’s foray into Washington had finished as an utter disaster. In a series of battles to the north and west of Washington, the Anglo-Confederate army had been mauled and Lee critically wounded. As a result, the command of the army had fallen to a nonentity named Beauregard, who had retreated back below the Potomac as quickly as he could. The Union general George Thomas was on his heels and Grant was coming up quickly with the main force. The newspapers were castigating this Beauregard, but he did appear to have saved as much of the army as he could have under the appalling circumstances confronting him.

Even worse than the Confederate defeat was the crushing of Napier’s British contingent by the Union army and culminating in a savage attack by a horde of crazed Irishmen. Almost half the British soldiers who’d marched north at the beginning of the campaign were killed, wounded, or missing. The missing were the most perplexing as. while many had been captured in battle, a large number seemed to have just walked away. British soldiers don’t desert, Russell told himself. Something was terribly wrong.

Each report of a new disaster had struck Palmerston almost physically. His old body and heart could no longer take it. causing his collapse. Palmerston still breathed, which made him technically alive, but there was little doubt that he would never return to his duties.

Gladstone had entered the room and was given the same briefing by the doctor. “What now?” he asked bluntly.

“Poor Pam,” Russell said, using the prime minister’s nickname. “He wanted nothing more than to strengthen the empire against its enemies, yet he appears to have weakened it.”

“Not fatally. I trust.” said Gladstone.

“Not if we can stop the bleeding soon enough. I think yesterdays news was enough to sway even the staunchest opponent of peace. We must end this thing, and the sooner the better.”

Gladstone nodded. “Will you be prime minister?”

Would you rather it be you. Russell thought? Ambitious, aren’t you? “No. at least not for a while. We must permit enough time to pass to be sure that Palmerston won’t recover. With Parliament’s permission and Her Majesty’s acquiescence, I shall take on much of the responsibilities of prime minister without assuming the title. I shall need help and will be calling on both you and Mr. Disraeli for assistance. May I count on it?”

“Of course, and I’m certain I speak for Disraeli.”

With whom you have probably already spoken, thought Russell. “We must find a way towards peace that will preserve at least a semblance of our honor. Our political lives depend on it.”

“Indeed,” said Gladstone. “Have you any thoughts as to how this might be achieved?”

Russell smiled thinly. “One or two. Though nothing that will serve to end a war by themselves. We need something more dramatic.”

General Napier was puzzled. “Why on earth would a Negro woman wish to see me?”

The general had been at his headquarters outside Richmond for little more than a day, and most of his time had been spent catching up on the maddening paperwork that London seemed to think was more essential to the war effort than defeating the enemy that was massing for a push on Richmond. Thomas’s army had been merged into Grant’s and had established bridgeheads on the southern bank of the Rappahannock. This meant that no significant body of water lay between the Union armies and Richmond. A major thrust, or thrusts, was expected almost momentarily. Grant was no McClellan, and his subordinates, such as Thomas and Sherman, were at least as good as the Confederacy’s generals. Desperate times were in store for the outmanned and outgunned Confederacy.

Confronted by the Union’s weight of numbers and overwhelming advantages in materiel, the Confederacy, in Napier’s opinion, was doomed, He thought it could fight on for quite a while, but the proverbial handwriting was writ large on the wall. Defeat was inevitable. Napier was concerned as to how he would extricate the remains of his army, which was now encamped south of Richmond near Petersburg in the event of the Union’s capture of the Confederate capital. It was not lost on him that he was not that far from Yorktown. the scene of British ignominy less than a century earlier. He was consumed with a desire not to repeat it. His army would evacuate via British shipping should it be necessary.

He was also concerned by cryptic messages received from London regarding the British army’s continued presence in the war, which had also been a topic in Richmond’s newspapers. The Southern newspapers acknowledged that the British army had been terribly mauled in support of the Confederate cause, but wondered if it would ever give such support again. Napier wondered as well. It appeared to him that the new government under Russell was looking for a way out of the war. Napier hoped they would find it soon.

So why should he make a moment for a colored woman?

“She says she’s from General Hampton and bears a personal message that she must hand directly to you.” The aide, a Captain Clarke, was as perplexed as the general. “Do you wish me to have her escorted away?”

Napier thought for a moment. Hampton was an influential man in the Confederacy. “No. send her in.”

Abigail Watson entered the office with an air of confidence that was a total sham. She paused and stood before the intimidating general in the brilliant red uniform. She prayed her nervousness would not be seen.

Napier held out his hand. “Please give me the message. If there is to be a response, I will send it directly.”

“Sir, I am charged to ask you a question first.”

Napier raised an eyebrow. “Indeed?”

“Sir, is it true that there are no slaves in England?”

He took a deep breath. Slavery was evil and before him stood a victim of that evil. He should rebuke her for her impertinence, but he would not. “It is true.”

Abigail’s confidence grew. He hadn’t thrown her out. “Is it not true that England’s alliance with the Confederacy is based on the fact that the South’s slaves will be freed following this war?”