 | Legends of Mexico |  |
THE BATTLES OF TAYLOR.
1. I.—THE CRUSADE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
“Ho! for the New Crusade!”
It was in the spring of 1846, that this cry, thundering from twenty-nine
states, aroused a People into arms, and startled Europe, its Kings and
Slaves, into shuddering awe.
It was in the dawn of the year, when the blossoms of spring were upon
the trees, and the Promise of a golden harvest on the fields, that a fiery
blast came from the far south, scattering the blossoms of battle over the
hills of our land, and darkening the sky with clouds of lurid grandeur—
clouds that gave Promise of a harvest of blood.
In the spring of 1846, from the distant south, there came echoing in
terrible chorus, a Cry, a Groan, a Rumor! That Cry, the earnest voice
of two thousand brave men, gathered beneath the Banner of the stars in a
far land, encompassed by their foes, with nothing but a bloody vision
of Massacre before their eyes. And the Cry, wrung from two thousand
manly hearts, said the People of the Union.—We are in danger, but the
Banner of the Stars floats above us. An army, twice our number surrounds
us, Assassins hung like vultures, in the shadows of our camp, a
Plague broods in the poisonous air, of the swamp and chaparral. Come
—help us—fight with us! Or if you cannot fight, Come, and behold us
die, for the flag of Washington!'
That groan! It was the incoherent yell, of the first American soldier,
who with the knife in his back, and the hot blood gurgling from his
throat, fell at the Assassin's feet on the shores of Rio Grande.
The Rumor! Like the hurricane of the tropics it came. First, a small
cloud in a serene sky, far on the horizon it was seen, and no one wondered
to behold it. Then darkening up the zenith, it shut the southern
sky in a wall of ebony, and flashed its quivering lightnings far over the
snow mountains of the north. And it rolled on, that brooding Rumor, and
it gathered, and it grew, until its shadow darkened the Nation, and its
thunder and lightning spoke to the hearts of fifteen millions people.
For that Rumor spoke of a battle, fought by American soldiers, amid
the sands and thorns of the hot chaparrel; it spoke of hideous charges,
made through the darkness of yawning ravines, by men heroic to despair;
it spoke of a contest, lengthening its bloody trail over the course of two
long days; of a brave foe, fighting while there was a hope, and then
crowding in heaps of wounded, through the lone desert, and choking the
calm river with their mangled dead.
As thunder at once, convulses and purifies the air, so that Rumor did
its sudden and tempestuous work, in every American heart. At once,
from the People of twenty-nine states, quivered the Cry—
“To Arms! Ho! for the new crusade!”
Never since the days of Washington, had an excitement, so wild and
universal, thrilled in the souls of freemen. From the mountains of
Maine—they are yonder, rising ruggedly in their stern grandeur, with
snowy mantles, bound about their granite brows—to the prairies of the
Texas—blossoming for hundreds of miles, a wilderness of flowers—that
cry startled a People into action, and sent the battle-throbs palpitating
through fifteen millions hearts.
Long after we are dead, History will tell the children of ages yet to
come, how the hosts gathered for the Crusade, in the year 1846.
From the mountain gorges of the north, hardy birds of freemen took
their way, turning their faces to the south, and shouting—Mexico! In
the great cities, immense crowds assembled, listening in stern silence, to
the stories of that far-off land, with its luxuriant fruits, its plains of flowers,
its magnificent mountains overshadowing calm lakes and golden cities,
and then the cry rung from ten thousand throats—Mexico! The farmhouses
of the land, thrilled with the word. Yes, the children of Revolutionary
veterans, took the rifle of '76 from its resting place, over the
hearth, and examined its lock, by the light of the setting sun, and ere
another dawn, were on their way to the south, shouting as they extended
their hands toward the unseen land—“Mexico!”
Even now I see the panorama of that wild excitement spread varied
and bewildering before me. I see the workshop, give forth its hardy Mechanic—I
see, the sturdy mountaineer, come from his gorge—the embrowned
farmer from his fields—the pale student from his desk—and all
join the army of the New Crusade, and pour with arms glittering and
banners waving upon the plains of Mexico.
The world beheld the sight and wondered. Old Germany, festering
under her chains, looked up in awe, at this strange spectacle—an every
day people suddenly transformed into a disciplined army. France, saw
it too, and sighed as she turned her eyes to the grave of Napoleon. But
England, hypocritical and ferocious, at once the fox and the hyena, crouching
on her trophies,—the skulls of Irish starvation and the corses of Hindoo
Massacre—England, whom we hurled from our shores in the Revolution,
that Carthage of Modern History, brutal in her revenge and Satanic in her
lust for human flesh, behold the American People, in arms, with trembling,
and recognized their victorious march to the south, with niggardly praise.
It must be confessed that the great national excitement of 1846, this
transformation of a plain working people, into a formidable, yes, an unconquered
army, struck the tyrants of the old world with awe. The Man
who sits upon the Russian throne, worshipped as a God, and yet never
for one moment secure from the assassin's steel, beheld the wondrous
sight, and reviewed his armies of slaves, with new anxiety, asking from
his satraps an explanation of that magic word—“The People!”
And while the world wondered, the “People” of America rushed to
arms, and marched by tens and twenties, by hundreds and thousands, by
companies, by legions, by armies, to that golden land, which rose to their
vision, rich with the grandeur of past ages.
Standing on the mountain tops, the Crusaders of the Nineteenth Century
beheld it—that golden and bloody land of Mexico.
A land rich in the productions of every clime, where the fruits are more
luxuriant, the flowers more rain-bow like in their dazzling dies, the birds
more radiant in their plumage, than in any other land on the wide earth
of God. A land where monuments arise, mysterious and awful, with the
history and religion, of those solemn ages which melt away in the abyss
of time. A land, where every stone bears some tokens of the lost nations
and the dead people of ten thousand years.
A land, where in the course of forty-eight hours, you can ascend from
the hot plains of the tropics, festering with plague, to the mild clime of
eternal spring, strewn with the fruits of the temperate zone; to the snow-clad
mountains, frozen as with the ice of the Polar waste, and with the
volcanoes throbbing with their breasts, like hearts of fire, beneath shrubs
of snow! A land, no less beautiful with its flower-framed lakes, than
magnificent with its cathedrals, with images and shrines of solid gold, no
less gorgeous with its panorama of mountain, pyramid and valley, than
bewildering with its City of Cortes and Montezuma, that dream of gold
and blood, which men call—Mexico.
“Ho! for the new crusade!”
Yes, against this land, so burdened with awful memories, the American
People, marched in deadly and determined crusade.
Why was this?
Because the infant Texas had felt the rude grip of Mexican Massacre?
Because the homes of that virgin soil, had been desolated, the men butchered
and the women dishonored, by the hordes of military chieftains,
trained to kill from childhood, and eager to kill, for so much per day?
Why this Crusade?
Was it because the Alamo, still cried out for vengeance? That gory
the blood of five hundred mangled bodies—the bodies of brave Texians
cut down by Mexican bayonets and pierced by Mexican balls, and hacked
by Mexican knives?
Why this Crusade?
Was it because the American People, having borne for a series of years,
the insults and outrages of Mexican Military despots, and seen their brothers
in Texas, butchered like dogs, at last resolved, to bear insult and
outrage no longer, at last, determined to take from the Tomb of Washington
the Banner of the Stars, and swore by his Ghost, never to stay their
efforts, until it floated over the City of Mexico!
These are some of the reasons of this new crusade, but not all. Here
is the truth of the matter—
From the dark cloud of battle was stretched forth the hand of Almighty
God, and even from the shock of carnage, an awful voice spoke out: `I
speak to Man in the thunder storm, I speak to him, in the Plague. Now,
I speak to him, in the breath of war, and write my lessons in the blackness
of the battle-field!'
Is this false? Does not Almighty God, lead the Nations to civilization,
through the reeking Golgothas of War?
But have a care, brave People! The same tide of war, that now sweeps
over the vallies, and mounts the pyramids of Mexico, may roll back upon
your American land. What Prophet shall dare to read the meaning of yonder
portentous Future? While we write our record of the war, that War is
still in the hey-day of its tempestuous career. The events that we chronicle,
have not yet reached the consummation. They ripen into history,
even as we write them down.
Strange and bewildering events!
First we hear of the Battles of the Wilderness, those glorious struggles
of the desert and chapparal, where a few hardy Americans beat back and
trampled into dust the bravery and chivalry of Mexico. Two battles,
fought on two successive days, under a burning sun, the Americans fighting
with the certainty of Massacre in case of defeat: the Mexicans looking
forward, first to triumph, then to butchery!
Next comes thundering on our ears, the story of a three days' fight,
fought by the children of Washington, against walls and bars and bolts,
and legions of armed men, a battle which for dogged perseverance and
sullen courage has no comparison in history; that glorious battle of the
city and mountain, which the Sierra Nevada beheld, and Monterey felt to
her most sacred home!
Then, another battle of three days, fought amid the snows of winter,
on the desert plain, by the Hero and his Crusaders, against the Mexicans
and their leader: a terrible triumph, which drew more tears from the
war.
Linked with this battle, in the same breath of glory, comes the story
of the conquered fort and the bombarded city, and last of all, the history
of the bloody route when the mountains of Cerro Gordo, could scarce
afford a hiding place to the dismayed leader of the Mexican legions.—
Take it, all in all, such a Crusade of a civilized People, against a semibarbarous
horde of slaves, has no parallel in history.
There is a deeper reason, in all this, than meets the superficial eye.
Beneath the bloody foam of battle, flows on, forever, the serene and awful
current of Divine truth.
Do you ask the explanation of this mystery? Search the history of
the North American People, behold them forsake the shores of Europe,
and dare the unknown dangers of the distant wilderness, not for the lust
of gold or power, but for the sake of a Religion, a Home.
An Exodus like this—the going forth of the oppressed of all nations
to a new world—the angels never saw before. All parts of Europe,
sent their heart-wounded, their down-trodden thousands to the wilds
of North America.
The German and the Frenchman, the Swede and the Irishman, the
Scot and the Englishman, met in the wild, and grouped around one
altar—Sacred to the majesty of God and the rights of man. From this
strangely mingled band of wanderers, a new People sprung into birth.
A vigorous People, rugged as the rocks of the wilderness which
sheltered them, free as the forest which gave them shade, bold as the
red Indian who forced them to purchase every inch of ground, with the
blood of human hearts. To this hardy People—this people created from
the pilgrims and wanderers of all nations—this People nursed into full
vigor, by long and bloody Indian wars and hardened into iron, by the
longest and bloodiest war of all, the Revolution, to this People of Northern
America, God Almighty has given the destiny of the entire American
Continent.
The handwriting of blood and fire, is upon British America and Southern
America.
As the Aztec people, crumbled before the Spaniard, so will the mongrel
race, moulded of Indian and Spanish blood, melt into, and be ruled
by, the Iron Race of the North.
You cannot deny it. You cannot avoid the solemn truth, which glares
you in the face.
God speaks it, from history, from the events now passing around
us, from every line of the career of the People, who followed his smile
into the desert.
As the People of the old Thirteen states, rose like one man, against
the Juggernaut of government, the British Monarchy, so the serfs of
the battle-field plant the olive tree of peace and freedom.
Thanks be to God, the time comes, when Niagara, will no longer extend
from a free land to a British despotism. Before many years that
awful cataract will sing the anthem of a free Continent.
God Almighty has given the destiny of the Continent, into the hands
of the free People of the American Union.
Not the Anglo-Saxon race, for such a race has no existence, save in
the brains of certain people, who talk frothily about immense nothings.
You might as well call the American People, the Scandinavian race, the
Celtic race, the Norman race, as to apply to them, the empty phrase,
Anglo-Saxon. This ridiculous word, has been in the mouths of grave
men, who should know better, for years: it is high time, that we should
discard it for some word, with a slight pretence to a meaning.
We are no Anglo-Saxon People. No! All Europe sent its exiles
to our shores. From all the nations of Northern Europe, we were formed.
Germany and Sweden and Ireland and Scotland and Wales and England,
aye and glorious France, all sent their oppressed to us, and we
grew into a new race.
We are the American People. Our lineage is from that God, who bade
us go forth, from the old world, and smiled us into an Empire of Men.
Our destiny to possess this Continent, drive from it all shreds of Monarchy,
whether British or Spanish or Portugese, and on the wrecks of
shattered empires, built the Altar, second to the Brotherhood of Man.
Then come with me, and look upon our Banner of the Stars, as it goes
in glory and gloom over the Continent, freedom's pillar of cloud by day,
her pillar of fire by night. Our fathers loved that Banner in the days of
old. Its stripes were painted with the blood of martyrs. Its stars flashed
through the clouds of Bunker Hill and Brandywine, and Saratoga, and
came shining out in the cloudless sky of Yorktown. Let us follow it
then, and bid God's blessing on it, as its stars gleam awfully through the
bloody mists of Mexico.
Let us not heed the miserable cant of the traitors among us, who advise
the Mexicans to give the American soldier a bloody and hospitable
grave. Though these traitors increase like vipers under a hot sun, though
they poison our air, in the Senate and the Press, let us pass them by, with
a simple prayer, that God will be very merciful to the pitiful dastard,
who—under the cloak of British or Mexican Sympathy—would turn
traitor to a land like ours.
Washington, you all remember, sate in his Camp at Cambridge, in
September, 1775, his eyes fixed upon the map of the Continent, his finger
laid upon Curada, while his unsheathed sword, reached from Labrador to
Patagoria. In the silence of night, even as he planned the conquest of
to the free.
Let us follow then, the American Banner, and while our souls are
awed by the thunder flash of battle; while the horrible world of carnage
with its shrieks and groans, its dead armies and butchered legions widens
and crimsons around us, let us never for one moment forget, that mysterious
Symbol of our destiny—the unsheated sword of Washington
resting upon the map of the New World.
2. II.—THE CAMP IN THE WILDERNESS.
The Army encamped in the wilderness, a hamlet of white tents, gleaming
from the gloom of the boundless prairie, the stars of midnight shining
serenely from the dark blue vault, that Banner, with its stars, its belts of
scarlet and snow, borne aloft, like a mighty bird, by the summer breeze!
Here, rising from the sod of the prairie, a solitary rock, glooms greyly
through the night. Like the fragment of some meteroic shower, like the
wreck of some Pre-Adamite world, like a monument, built long ages ago
to the memory of the heroic dead, the solitary rock, glooms into the
sky.
We will stand near the rock, we will lean upon its rugged front, and
gaze upon this strange sight—the camp in the wilderness!
Does not the scene strike your heart with a deep awe?
That boundless prairie, canopied by the midnight sky, with the hamlet
of white tents gleaming like altars of snow from the darkness! Far to
the south, thick and dense, like a forest blasted in its growth, extends the
chaparral; a wall of briers and thorns. Yonder, on the north, like a
silver clasp, on a robe of dark velvet, a small lake, shines from the blackness
of the prairie.
In front of each tent, the bayonets gleam, like scattered drops of light.
Here you behold the cannon, and there, the war-horses, crouching in
slumber, on the soft grass of the waste.
A silence like death prevails.
Now it is broken by the voice of the sentinel, pealing suddenly from
the camp of the wilderness. Now, the shrill neigh of the war-steed—now
the roar of the ocean, breaking on the shore, seven miles away, comes
like the hoarse whisper of a thousand men murmuring over the plain.
Now, a stillness like death; in that encampment of two thousand brave
men, not a sound is heard.
Again, hark! The howl of the jackal, comes like a funeral knell over
the waste. Hideous, prolonged, distant, that cry chills your heart with
dread, for it speaks of a loathsome beast, mangling with grey teeth and
fangs, the cold face of the battle dead.
And whether the Ocean's roar comes like a hoarse whisper, or the
along the air, or the neigh of the war-horse, quivers like a battle-shout, or
whether a silence like death, comes down upon the camp of the wilderness,
still, yonder, above the central tent, floats and swells the Banner of
the Stars.
Confess with me, that the scene is invested with a grandeur all its own.
Here, you behold no mountains rising from clustered vallies, into the
region of eternal silence and snow. Here, no undulating hills, crowned
with the golden wheat or emerald corn. Here, no awful cliffs, with a
narrow passage, winding amid their broken shadows. Only a vast prairie,
a hamlet of tents and a midnight sky!
You have seen Washington encamped among the wintry hills of Valley
Forge, or amid the sublime cliffs of the Hudson, or in the centre of the
Brandywine vallies. Encircled by scenes like these, the American Banner
floated on the air, into a background of rocks, or mountains, or undulating
woods. But here, it waves against the sky, alone. Here, man—
with nothing to break the awful monotony of the scene—is in truth, alone
with the earth and sky.
From the central tent of the encampment, with the mountains, waving
to the air, a belt of light streams far along the sod.
Ere, we enter that tent, and gaze upon the Man who watches there, let
us remember these important truths:
It is the seventh of May, 1846.
This little army of two thousand men, slumbering securely on the
boundless Prairie, are surrounded by a Mexican army of some six thousand
veteran soldiers. Yonder wall of chaparral is black with their
faces.
The morrow will bring a battle—and the end of that battle will be
Massacre and Butchery.
We enter the central tent of the Camp in the Wilderness.
A solitary light burns there, on the small table, overspread with charts
and papers.
In the far corner of this home in the wilderness, with its roof and walls
of fluttering canvass, you behold military trunks piled in a mass. Around
the light extends an open space of grassy sod.
Four men are gathered there, talking with each other, in low, earnest
tones.
The one on the right, dressed in a plain green frock, with a knife in
his belt and a rifle in his hand, is a Texian Ranger: a man of iron
frame, not so remarkable for his height as for the unpretending resolution,
written upon his sunburnt face. Broad cheekbones, an aqualine nose,
thin, firm lips, wide forehead and chesnut hair, curling in short locks, complete
the picture of his face.
He stands there, erect as the Red Indian, a fine specimen of an iron
match for at least an hundred disciplined soldiers.
Next to him, presenting a perfect contrast, you behold a tall young soldier,
clad in the blue uniform of the American dragoon, his finely proportioned
limbs, narrow waist, and broad chest, his marked face, with hair
flowing to the shoulders, and beard waving over the breast—both dark as
night—affording a picture, something like the chivalric crusader of the
olden time.
Opposite the young dragoon, stands a man of majestic stature, and imposing
presence. His fine figure is clad in the blue and buff uniform
which clings to him like a glove to the hand, with the epaulettes on the
shoulder, the sword by the side. His dark hair falls back from his broad
forehead, his full eye sparkles as with the fire of battle. In his determined
face, you may read the lineaments of his great Ancestor, an heroic
General of the Revolutionary time.
The centre of the group and the object of every eye!
An old man. An old man, not even clad in the glitter and show of a
uniform, but attired in the much-used frock coat of dark brown hues, grey
pantaloons, with a wide-brimmed hat in his hand. An old man, with a
broad chest, a figure not more than five feet nine inches in stature, a face,
bronzed by the sun and toil of thirty eight years of battle service.
His form is somewhat broad and bulky, his face bronzed and seamed
by battle toil, his hair whitened by age, and yet there is that about the old
man, which interests your eye, and impresses your heart.
His face, in repose, seems only to indicate an overflowing good humor
and abundance of social feeling. But now the full grey eye flashes wild
deep light, from beneath the strongly defined eye brow, the lips—the lower
one slightly projecting—are moulded in an expression of iron resolution,
the brow glows in every wrinkle, with the fire of Thought.
Who are these four men gathered at midnight, by the light of the solitary
candle, in this Tent of the Wilderness?
They bear names which may become famous before many days. The
Texian Ranger, is Captain Walker—the chivalric dragoon, Captain May—
the soldier of the majestic figure, Major Ringgold. And the old man in
the faded brown coat, with the broad brimmed hat in his hand, stands
there with the lives of two thousand men upon his heart, with the honor
of the Flag of Washington in his hand.
That plain old man is Zachary Taylor, General of the Continental
Army — Yes, let us call this heroic band by the name which Washington
made sacred, that name which indicates the destiny of our arms and the
course of our civilization—Continental.
Can you tell me the nature of the thought, that stamps the old man's
brow?
Even as you gaze in his battle-worn face, he starts—he mutters an
that hoarse murmur of the Signal gun. Yes, seven days ago, when—with
Mexicans swarming over plain and river—he left the Rio Grande, determined
to march to Point Isabel, distant some twenty-six miles, there remained
in the rude fort opposite Matamoras, the veteran Major Brown,
with only three hundred men.
“When you are attacked,” said Zachary Taylor, “send me word by
your signal gun.”
That signal gun has been heard for the last four days and nights. But
a few hours ago, driven almost to frenzy by its sound, Taylor, with his
men, left Point Isabel, on the sea shore, determined to march to the rescue
of his brothers on the Rio Grande—to march twenty-six miles, through
that wilderness of chaparral and prairie, swarming with the veteran armies
of Mexico. Nor with armies alone, but darkened by the wild assassin
horde of rancheros.
And now, encamped for the night, on the desert prairie, he hears once
more the signal gun, calling with its thunder throat for aid. As he starts
with anxiety, raising his hand to his brow, let us for ourselves behold the
danger announced by the Signal gun.
Away to the Rio Grande, that stream which like a huge serpent winds
languidly to the sea. Away through these wastes, across these dark
ravines, away for eighteen miles, and look upon the peril of the heroic
three hundred.
Emerging from the shadows of the chaparral, we stand upon this rock,
and witness a wildly beautiful scene. Before us, rolling through the dim
shadows like a waving belt of silver thrown down upon a black mantle,
gleams the Rio Grande. Yonder through the gloom, we behold the roofs
and steeples of Matamoras; a town built in a strange Moorish architecture,
embosomed in a country of leaves and flowers.
On this side of the river, the Fort gleams through the night, an immense
structure of earth, built by the old General, when he first displayed the
banner of the stars on the Rio Grande, and held for the last four days and
nights, by the veteran Brown and three hundred men, against thousands
of Mexican soldiers.
The night is very dark and still. The sky is obscured by clouds—the
clouds of cannon smoke which for four days and nights have veiled sun,
moon, and stars.
Suddenly, from the town, a blaze rushes into the dark sky. Is it a
Comet, with its head of fire, and long mane of flame? It sweeps over
the dark pall, it lights the winding river with a momentary glare, and then
hisses down into the rude home of the American soldiers.
All is silent, dark, and dead again.
Not a sound from the fort. Its bastions half-destroyed, its trenches
filled with earth, its soldiers standing like spectres, in the shadows, this
grave.
Where is the commander of these men, where the veteran Brown, who
seven days ago, grasped swarthy-faced Zachary by the hand, and pledged
himself to keep the fort or die?
Come! While from the centre of the Fort, lashed to the staff, the
banner of the Stars waves on the night, as it has waved since first it shone
over Rio Grande—Come! Here, we will find the first hero of the fort.
Behold him in his couch. Yes, a couch sheltered by a rude canopy.—
Certain barrels, support horizontal pieces of timber, on which sod and
clay is laid. In that dismal resting place, thus made, behold all that remains
of the hardy soldier. His brow wet with the dews of mortal
agony, he writhes there, protected by these barrels from the bomb-shells,
which cut the earth and agitate the air on every side.
Only yesterday, with his right leg, in literal words, torn from his body
by a shell—only yesterday, while calmly taking his rounds through the
besieged fort, he fell, and as he writhed in pain, uttered the memorable
words:
“Men go to your duties: stand by your posts: I am but one among
you.”
As we gaze upon him in his agony—dying here by inches, on the shores
of Rio Grande—that solitary streak of fire is followed by another, and
another, until the sky is alive with threads of quivering light. It looks
like a battle fought in the heavens, by the good and evil angels; the weapons
stars and comets.
The town, its roofs crowded with people, its cathedral towers looming
over all, comes forth gaily in the red light, Boom—boom—boom—the
cannon shout, as they hurl the brazen balls through the heated air.
The winding river glows and burns on every wave. The fort, with its
battered walls, its disfigured parapets, its three hundred solders, cowering
for want of ammunition by their voiceless guns, stands out in the glare of
that fierce cannonade.
On either side of the fort, from the river shore to the chaparral, the
prospect is terrible. The land swarms with Mexicans. Their gay apparel
of gilt buttons, glittering spangles, cloth of many dies, shines brilliantly
in the light. Here march the disciplined legions; there skulks
the knifed and bearded Ranchero, waiting until the fort is taken, that he
may cut throats, and feel hot blood spouting over his hands.
At this moment, when the brave three hundred,—these iron men, who,
since last Sabbath morning have stood, with but a few soldiers killed, the
incessant bombardment,—listen to the groans of the mangled veteran, and
behold the universe, blazing with light, the river and the shore and the
city, all black with thousands, waiting for the moment of their fall, that
they may witness their massacre,—at this moment, when the “great old
when with his two thousand, he will cut his way to the fort or die—at
this instant of light and darkness and blood, the torch is applied to the
cannon, and that signal gun calls to the General, far over the prairie, and
with its fiery throat says, help us or we die!
Let us see what difficulties intervene between the Cromwell of the
American Army, and the doomed fortress on the Rio Grande.
Search the chaparral—they gleam with bayonets. Yes, like fire flies
the sharp points glitter through the gloom. Look into the ravines—they
are black with crouching rancheroes, grim fellows, who cut a throat to
give them appetite, and inflict a stab in the back from mere exuberance of
animal spirits.
For eighteen miles or more, which extend between Fort Brown and
the Camp in the Wilderness, the Mexican forces—the regular veterans,
who have fought like wounded tigers in many a battle, and the assassin
hordes who follow the disciplined legions, as buzzards flutter in the wake
of eagles—the Mexican forces extend in terrible array, one immense
cloud of battle, armed with the thunder of cannon, the lightning of lance
and bayonet.
They await the coming of the Morrow! There will be a royal time,
by the setting of to-morrow's sun. Whoop! How the vultures will shriek,
as by its last ray, they settle on the cold faces of the battle dead, and pick
glassy eyes from their sockets.
Through the dusky chaparral, into the camp of the Mexican general!
A splendid tent, fluttering with curtains of silk and gold, and with the
light of wax candles, streaming through its crevices, rises in the centre of
a grassy glade, near a lakelet of cool, clear water.
Around this tent, all is light, glitter and motion.
Here a tawny Ranchero in his half bandit, half soldier uniform crouches
on the grass, playing cards with a soldier of the regular forces: yonder
the clatter of the drinking vessel breaks on the air, mingled with the sound
of footsteps, rioting in the dance.
And all the while, bands of music, fill the air with a thunder-chorus of
rich sounds, or die away through the dark paths of the chaparral, in a low
deep murmur, that seems like a requiem for the battle-dead.
And near the lakelet, towers the Marque of the General, surmounted
by the gay tri-colored flag of Mexico, typifying the three predominant
influences in that golden and bloody clime, Superstition, Ignorance,
Crime.
Within the tent, seated on a luxuriously cushioned chair, near a voluptuous
bed, glistening with the trappings of oriental taste, you behold a
man of warrior presence, his gay uniform thrown open across the breast,
while he holds the goblet of iced champaigne to his lips.
By his side, converses the handsome and brave La Vega, and around
keeping time with their lips, in the game of careless mirth.
The fragrance of tobacco—not your miserable weed, which is called
Tobacco, because it resembles a compound of brimstone and pitch—but the
glorious tobacco, from Cuba, pervades the tent, with a mild and delicious
perfume.
The swarthy faces of the Mexican officers, glow with calm satisfaction
as the champaigne glass and the Havana cigar, pass from lip to lip.
In the camp of Zachary Taylor, you behold nothing but a plain old
man, in a brown coat, conversing earnestly with three of his bravest officers,
on the fate of to-morrow's battle:
Here, the blaze of oriental magnificence blinds your sight, here the
laugh and the song go round, to the chorus of clattering glasses and applauding
hands. In the midst of all, sits the General Arista, that man
whom Santa Anna made a soldier, twirling his red mustache, as he presses
the delicious champaigne to his lips.
Meanwhile Ringgold, and Walker and May—three heroic men, each
the type of a different class—have gone to their quarters and the leader
of the American army is alone.
Extended on the rude camp bed he sleeps. His form still attired in
his plain apparel, his throat bared, his bronzed face turned to the light.
He slumbers for a few brief hours, in order to gather strength for the
march of the morrow.
The sentinel—a grim veteran—paces slowly up and down in front of
the tent.
All is silent. The distant roar of the Ocean, the howl of the jackal, the
neighing of steeds, have died away.
As the moon rises over the distant horizon, flinging the shadow of the
tents far over the sod, a dark object moves in the gloom—advances imperceptibly
and is still again.
Is it a jackal in search of a dead body, or a vulture impatient for the
feast of the morrow?
Still it moves on, ever keeping in the shadow. Moves on, while the
Sentinel paces to and fro, and the May moon rises over the Camp in the
Wilderness.
It approaches the tent of the General, glides under the walls, and starts
stealthy up to his bed, and stands revealed, in the form of a man of some
sixty years, with a broad chest, tawny skin, long hair, grizzled with age
and thick beard, descending to the breast of a half-robber uniform.
It is a Ranchero. He stands scowling beside the couch of the General,
his white teeth, gleaming beneath his dark mustache, while the sharp
knife quivers in his hand.
Hark—a footstep! The sentinel comes, passes the opening of the tent,
looks in, and sees nothing but the bronzed face of the sleeping general.
shadow.
The Sentinel is gone, and that dusky image of Assassination, glooms once
more beside the couch, the knife quivering in his hand. The bared throat
invites the blow. A muttered ejaculation in barbarous Spanish, and the
murderer contemplates his victim.—
An old man, soundly sleeping, as though God protected every one of
his grey hairs, and reserved his large brain, for immortal deeds.
One blow of that knife, and the old man is a corse, the American army
deprived of its Mind, the Mexicans secured forever from his sword.
Only one blow? The grizzled-haired Ranchero raises the knife, mutters
a prayer, kisses a cross, and whirls the knife home, to the victim's
heart.
That brawny arm, with sinews like whip cords never failed of its mark,
never once, in the perils of darkest battles; why should it now?
And yet it does! Hissing through the air, it grazes the General's cheek,
and cleaves his pillow.
The face of the Murderer, is convulsed in every feature. As though
astonished by his want of success, he folds his hands, bends, prays and
then crawls snake-like from the tent.
The knife was found next morning, buried in the pillow.—
Again that dim figure creeping through the ways of the camp—now
pausing, now looking like a frightened tortoise from a side, and still cautiously
crawling on, he gains the open prairie, where his steed waits for
him, with quivering nostrils and waving mane.
And still the moon arises and sheds its calm light over the city of tents,
and over the bronzed face of the sleeping old man. And the sentinel,
pacing his rounds in front of the old General's tent, feels his senses
cheered by the perfume of wild flowers, feels the cool breeze from the
ocean upon his brow, feels the throb of the fight, which is to come on the
morrow, already palpitate in his veins.
In the dusky shadow of the chaparral, a Ranchero dismounts from his
steed.
By the light of the moon, you may see twenty swarthy faces, look
from the covert in his face, and the stalwart forms of the band, encircle
with a wall of iron-sinewed chests.
The solitary Ranchero, whom we have seen, bending over the couch
of Zachary Taylor, advances, and then you hear these fierce whispered
words, spoken in barbarous Spanish—
“It is done?” cries the foremost of the band. “The Oath was taken
on the Holy Cross. We swore to have the life of the Invader. On you,
by lot, devolved the office of Executioner. You have done it. Yes—
the blood of the American drips from your steel!”
But the Ranchero with grizzled hair and beard could not reply.
Bending down among his brethren—those stern children of the wild—
he veiled his face in his hands.
“I saw him in his sleep—I felt the blood tingle in my veins—I struck
home with the knife—but there was something about the old man's face
that turned its aim aside. I could not kill him! Sworn to do the deed,
sworn upon the holy cross, to destroy the invader, I could not strike him!
There is a Providence about the old man!”
And as the Ranchero—the bloodiest of that bloody band—sank cowering
on the sod, not ashamed to confess, that he was afraid to kill the
sleeping old man, the brothers of the dark confederacy, gazed upon his
tawny face, in silent awe—in wonder—in fear—even as the moonlight
played with the blade of his assassin's knife.
In the most fearful hour of battle—that hour, when the hand is weary
with slaughter, and the eye sick of seeing forevermore wherever it turns,
the faces of dead men—this same Ranchero, with the blood pouring from
his death-wound, told the strange story to an American soldier, who knelt
by his side, and `thanked God, that there was a Providence about the
old man.'
Up over the prairie, up over the chaparral, up over the city and the
fort, rises the moon! The night wears on. Still, from the fort yells the
shriek of the signal gun, and in the plaza of Matamoras gather the forlorn
hope, who are to storm the refuge of the Americans, and put them all to
the mercy of the assassin's knife. The night wears on. Between your
vision and the moon, the vulture flaps his wings—from yonder thicket
the jackal howls for his dead man feast. The night wears on, the moon
rises, the hum of a thousand insects makes the atmosphere alive. The
Banner of the Stars still waves from its staff; the Crusaders still soundly
sleep beneath its folds.
Sleep on, brave men. To-morrow, perchance, for many of you, a softer
couch will be spread by skeleton hands. Dream of your wives, your little
ones—of all that Heaven says to us in the word—Home. To-morrow:
for many of you, that word will not mean the pleasant fireside of Pennsylvania,
nor the quiet room of your wild-wood dwelling, but merely a
dark chaparral, a dead body, with a Jackal and Vulture as chief mourners.
Pace your rounds brave sentinel, with your grey moustache and withered
cheek.
Even now, in your distant home, your daughter—oh you remember her!
how beautiful she looked, when she pressed her warm lips to your mouth
and said, playing with your hard hands—Good bye; God bless you
Father! Even now in that distant home, just a few paces from the village
path, where the old sycamore stands, your daughter comes to the
window, and looking upon the very moon which shines upon your face,
Prays God that father may come home again, and come soon!
Pace on your rounds brave sentinel, and shout —“All is well!” What
your head?
Do you know, brave soldiers, that it makes my heart feel sick, to go
among your tents, at this dead hour of the night, and listen to the words
you whisper in your dreams?
Home—Wife—Child! These words are on your lips, still you whisper
of them all. Here, a beardless boy turns him over in his sleep, and
says in one breath, the words, Mother—Glory! A ghostly marriage of a
pale face with blue eyes and grey hair, with a hideous skull wreathed
with flowers, those words form together—Mother and Glory!
Sleep on, stout old Zachary, nor dream of your Indian wars, nor turn
your bronzed face from the moon, nor restlessly reach forth your hand
to grasp your sword. Never fear the morrow. God and Destiny watch
over your grey hairs, and for you bright words are written, even upon the
battle cloud, and brighter forms beckon you on, even across the wilderness
of battle graves!
3. III.—THE DEAD WOMAN OF PALO ALTO.
And so the night passed in that Camp of the Wilderness!
While it wears on, and ere the morning dawns, let me lead you for:
little while, from the prominent personages of history, to those quiet
characters, whose destiny is woven into the fate of battles and empires,
like threads of silver with a bloody shroud.
Let me tell you a Legend of the war, a legend of the new crusade.
Legend? What mean you by Legend? One of those heart-warm stories,
which, quivering in rude earnest language from the lips of a spectator of a
battle, or the survivor of some event of the olden time, fill up the cold outlines
of history, and clothe the skeleton with flesh and blood, give it eyes
and tongue, force it at once to look into our eyes and talk with us!
—Something like this, I mean by the word Legend. So many gentlemen
have done me the kindness, to write “Legends” since I began it, and
in certain cases, to borrow mine, without so much as a bow for common
courtesy, that I am forced to define my position. “Legend” may mean
what you please, it certainly is not a thing to be stolen from the owner,
by all the highwaymen and footpads of literature. These gentlemen meet
my Legends of the Revolution in the highway of a book, or the railroad
of a newspaper, and on the instant cry, stand! strip them of all vestiges
of the owner's name, and send them forth to the world again, as gipsies
do stolen children, with their faces marked and a new name. May I be
permitted to hope, that the Rancheros of literature will suffer to pass,
without robbing or maiming, my Legends of Mexico?—
A legend, is a history in its details and delicate tints, with the bloom
of poetry, of home!
It must be confessed that the thing which generally passes for History,
is the most impudent, swaggering bully, the most graceless braggart, the
most reckless equivocator that ever staggered forth upon the great stage of
the world.
He tells us a vast deal of Kings and blood, Revolutions and Battles,
Murderers by wholesale, but not a word does he say of that Home-life
of nations, which flows on, evermore the same, in all ages, whether Kings
cut one another's throats, or the throats of their pitiful sheep, the people.
History, for example draws you a picture of a tall man on Horseback,
with a cap and sword and feather, and calls it Washington, but what does
History say of Washington, the Man, in his home, with the arms of his
wife about his neck; or Washington, the Man, in his closet, with the
thought of his country's destiny, eating like a silent agony into his great
soul?
History, deals like a neophyte in the artist's life, in immense dashes
and vague scrawls, and splashy colors: it does not go to work like the
master painter, adding one delicate line to another, crowding one almost
imperceptible beauty on another, until the dumb thing speaks and lives!
History to speak to the heart, should not lie to us by wholesale, nor
deal in vague generalities, which are worse than robust lies, for they only
tell half the truth, and leave the imagination to fill the other half with the
infinite space of falsehood: No! It should, in narrating the records of an
event or age, make us live with the people, fight by them in battle, sit
with them at the table, make love, hate, fear and triumph with them.
While it pictures the cabinet and field, it should not forget the Home.
While it delineates the great career of ambition, it should not neglect the
quiet but still impressive walk of social life.
While it eloquently pictures Washington the General charging at the
head of his legions, it should not forget Washington the Boy, in his rude
huntsman's dress, struggling for his life, on a miserable raft, amid the
waves and ice of the wintry flood. At the same time, that it delineates
Taylor, the Conquerer of the New Conquest of Mexico, sitting on his
grey steed, amid the roar of battle, his grey eye blazing with the anger
and rapture of the fight, it should remember, Taylor the man, mingling
like a father or brother with his soldiers, sharing crust and cup with them
and weeping the heroic tears of manhood, when disease or death, rends
them from his side.
Which most touches your heart, Napoleon the Emperor, sharing the
imperial purple, with the doll of legitimacy, Maria Louisa, or Napoleon,
the Man, stealing to the chamber of his divorced wife, true-souled Josephine,
weeping at her feet and sealing his remorse with burning tears?
Let us listen to the Legend of the Dead Woman of Palo Alto.
While in the camp of the wilderness, Zachary Taylor, sleeps the
rugged sleep of warrior toil; yonder, in the almost oriental city Matamoras,
a young girl in her virgin slumber, with her voluptuous form, couched on
soft pillows, dreams a sweet wild dream, amid the war of battle, and hear
the angel voices of memory, speak out, amid the hurricane of fiery shells.
Amid all the terrors of that fearful night she slept—a strangely beautiful
woman, with her loose white robe, gleaming through the intervals of
her long flowing raven hair.
It was a luxurious chamber, paved with mosaic slabs of marble, with a
cool fountain, bubbling from a bath, sunken in the centre of the place,
while four slender pillars supported the ceiling. Toward the river a
single large window, with a balcony defended by bars—toward the garden,
a wide doorway, concealed by silken curtains, which tossed like a
banner to the impulse of the night-breeze. Through the doorway, you
pass down steps of cool marble, into garden all shade and bloom,
fountains and flowers. Around the walls, were grouped vases of alabaster,
blooming with all manner of rare and delicate plants, from the wild blossoms
of the prairie to the gaudy cactus, plucked from the steeps of dizzy
cliffs, or gathered from the green spots of desert wastes.
But the most beautiful thing in all the place, was the Woman who
slumbered there!
Behold her!
A small lamp, suspended from the pillar, flings its rays over her couch;
a small bed, covered with folds of dark cloth, edged with gold. Behold
her! One of those wild, warm natures, born of the tempests and sunshine
of the volcanic south; her cheek a rich, clear brown; her eye-lashes long
and dark; her bosom full and passionate, her hair, flowing from the forehead
to the waist, a shower of midnight tresses, gleaming and darkening
over a robe of snow.
As she slumbers there, her cheek resting upon her left arm, you may see
the dark brow, gather in a frown, the ripe warm lips compress with alternate
fear and scorn, the bosom, agitated at first with a gentle motion, and
then rushing with one wild throb into light. The loose white robe falls
aside, and you behold that young breast, beating with violent emotion.
She has passed from the cool waters of the bath, to the agitated slumbers
of the couch. A loose robe, flowing from the white shoulders to the
feet—shoulders and feet, are naked and white as marble—encircles with
its easy folds, her young and voluptuous form.
Let us approach her couch, let us bend over this sleeping woman, and
listen to the words which fall quivering, as though each word was a drop
of blood, from her young lips.
Strange revelation! Even in her sleep she tells the story of her life.
Even while the lull of the fountain, is heard in the awful intervals of
of powder and blood, this beautiful child of the South, in her tempestuous
dream, beating gently her breast all the while, with her fingers, reveals to
us the history of her heart.
At first the dream bewilders us, with its light and gloom, its pictures
of loving beauty and sombre sublimity.
We stand in the shadows of the Cathedral aisle. It is the evening
hour. The setting sun flings one broad belt of light, over yonder altar
of solid silver, with the candelabra of gold above it, and the balustrade of
precious metals, extending on either side. Count the wealth of a fairy
legend, and you have it here, in this solemn cathedral. And yonder—
smiling sadly over all the display of wealth—stands the golden Image of
the Carpenter's Son of Nazareth, and by his side, beams the silver face
of his Divine Mother. It is an awful place, confounding us, by its strange,
almost gorgeously grotesque architecture, its mingling of the Aztec with
the Catholic faith, its almost blasphemous conjunction of Montezuma and
Jesus.
This Cathedral of Mexico, in which we now stand, occupies the very
spot, where stood hundreds of years ago, the temple of the bloody God
of Anahuac. Here, where Jesus smiles, once writhed the human sacrifice,
with his heart torn palpitating from his breast.
But hold! A vision breaks upon us now. Even as the shadows of
night descend, as the deep serenity of this holy place, is only broken by
the bustle of the gay plaza without, as the everlasting light, burns near
the face of Jesus—behold!
Two figures approach and bend before the altar—a Virgin in the bloom
of her southern life, dark in eyes, eyebrows and hair, luxuriant in the
fiery tinge of her clear brown cheeks, kneels beside a soldier, dressed in
the costume of the northern land, his chesnut hair, curling round a
thoughtful brow.
They kneel there, impressive types of widely contrasted races—He,
born of the land of Washington, a wanderer from the hills of Virginia—
She, a voluptuous daughter of the land of the Aztec, with the old Castilian
blood, mingling in her veins with the blood of Montezuma.
They kneel there; the awful cathedral forms their marriage canopy.
The Priest in his white robes, scatters from his withered hands, a blessing
on the strangely wedded pair. He looks into her face, his clear
hazel eye, drinking those eyes of hers, which seem at once to combine,
all that is dark and bright, in the whole world.
But at this moment—we are still in the maiden's dream, you will remember—a
footstep rings along the aisle, and a stern man, with snowy
hair, a bronzed cheek, and a white mustache, strides slowly forward, his
eye burning with the wounded pride of an old Castilian.
He tears his child from the embrace of her husband—you see a wo
borne rudely along the aisles by mortal hands, and mists and darkness
close the strange sad vision.
Yes, the maiden's dream ends here—with the stern old Castilian, standing
in triumphant scorn, alone with the affrighted Priest and the unconscious
daughter, alone in that place of religion and gold, the Cathedral
of Mexico. Even as the mists close over their forms, the light glitters
upon his uniform tinselled with stars, and the breeze gently moves the
white folds of her bridal dress.
With the dream of the past, the beautiful girl, sleeping in this perfumed
chamber of the Matamoras home, moves her round arms and uncloses her
dark eyes. She starts to her feet, with her long hair showering half-way
down her voluptuous form. She stands with bare feet on the marble floor,
and presses her hand to her forehead.
“Only six month ago”—Not in English, but in the rich, sonorous Castilian
she speaks—“And I knelt by his side, before the Altar of the grand
Cathedral. My father tore him from my grasp; this lover, this husband of
mine, rots in prison at this very hour. And I—already married, must by
to-morrow's light, wed another. Such is the decree of my father! Have
a care proud Castilian! The blood of my mother, which flows in my
veins, the blood of the Montezumas, may foil you, even yet!”
She paces along the chamber, her white robe flowing to her feet. With
one hand she dashes aside the mass of dark hair from her brow, while
that face, so passionate in its warm beauty, is softened in every outline
by a sad and tender memory.
“Even yet I remember it! Recovering from my swoon, I clung to the
arm of my father and passed from the Cathedral; on the threshold a beggar
girl started forward and clasped my arm. Even in her rags, she was
beautiful—that child of the Lepero,[1]
born in the hut, and nourished into
bloom, by hopeless misery. My father started—`She is the very image
of my daughter—of Inez!' he whispered. Meanwhile that poor girl,
still clung to my arm, gazing in my face, with her large eyes as she
whispered—`Fear not proud lady! For I do not fear, I do not despair!
I, that have nothing but rags and misery, the leper's crust and the leper's
straw, do not despair, for I am a daughter of Montezuma!”
A strange memory! The beggar girl of Mexico and the proud lady
Inez—one in rags and the other in lace and gold—and yet resembling
each other, like twin copies of some beautiful statue.
You should have seen the proud elevation of this woman's form, as
with her dark hair, streaming over her shoulders and down her back, she
exclaimed—
“I, I, too am a daughter of the race of Montezuma!”
And all the while, as she paced along in that place of fountains and
flowers, the thunder of the cannonade, mingled with the music of the
pattering fountains, and the smell of powder, choked the perfume of the
flowers.
“There is no hope!”
Terrible words, when spoken by a beautiful and helpless woman, communing
with her own heart! No hope! To-morrow, Inez at once a
Wife and Virgin, would be dragged to the altar—perchance amid the roar
of battle—and married to a man, whom her soul abhorred.
Even as she spoke, the silken curtain, which waved from the window,
leading to the balcony, was thrust aside, and a strange form stood there,
framed in the curtain folds as in a veil. It was the form of a young man,
attired in the plain blue undress of an American officer, which revealed
every outline of his slight, yet sinewy frame. His face was very pale,
yet strongly featured, the white forehead encircled by clustering curls, and
the eyes, gazing with deep and steady light, from beneath the compressed
brow!
As silent as a corse, he stood, regarding the maiden with that unvarying
gaze.
She sank on one knee, muttering a prayer, and invoking the name of
Mary, the Virgin Mother. It was a vision that she saw—a vision of the
ghost of her dead Husband.
This beautiful woman, on her knee, the white robe falling from her
shoulders, and revealing half the beauty of her bosom—that silent figure,
standing in the window, his deep eye glaring from a face pale as death,
formed together, with the light and shadow, the fountains and flowers, a
strangely impressive picture.
Her senses fled from her, even as the cross which she clasped, glided
from her stiffening fingers.
When again she looked up from that death-like trance, she felt her
young bosom beating warmly against a manly heart, she felt the smile of
her Husband upon her face.
“Come!” said the Virginian, speaking low in the deep Castilian—
“There is no time for a long story—I have dared death to meet you, and
we must dare death again, ere we escape from this place.”
Girding her gently in his arms,—clasping the waist, which quivered in
his embrace—he bore her through the curtain, and they stood upon the
balcony, with their eyes dazzled by a picture, at once horrible and
sublime.
That mansion of Matamoras, stood but a short distance from the river,
from which it was separated by a garden, whose fountains sparkled through
arcades of flowers.
The river wound before them, a fiery track of light.
Yonder arises Fort Brown, the Banner of the Stars, waving out in red
light, from the background of the midnight sky. Around that beleagued
fort, darkens the Mexican army—you see them, Ranchero and Soldier,
spread by thousands along the river shore.
But the sky was the most fearful sight of all. It was like an immense
pall, stretched over the universe, with fearful hieroglyphics traced upon it
by the blaze of a volcano.
And the light of the blazing sky, was thrown upon the face of the beautiful
girl, who clung to the breast of her American husband. His pale
face glows with crimson; her olive cheek, as with a burning blush of
passion. Even her white robe and black hair, are tinted with fiery gleams
of scarlet.
They stand upon the balcony, while the thunder of the cannon shakes
the earth, and the hoarse murmur of the Mexican army, swells terribly in
each interval of the night battle. That river, crowded with boats, that
shore darkened by legions, whose lances glitter like torches of flame, that
fort, defended by three hundred men, its banner waving on, through the
lightning of battle, it was a sight to fire the blood, and make the heart
leap, to mingle in the hurricane.
“They are there, my countrymen—fighting on, when hope is gone!”
cried the Virginian, “Inez, you will go with me? With me, over the
river, with me, through the roar of battle, with me into the shades of the
chaparral?”
It was a terrible sight, that flashed before the maiden's eyes, and yet
with the warm blood, glowing in her cheek, she answered, “I will!”
Down, from the balcony, by the ladder that quivers beneath its burden,
down into the shadows of the garden, she girded by his arm, her snowy
robe fluttering loosely around her queenly form.
They are lost to sight, but a step resounds within the chamber, and an
old man strides madly forth upon the balcony, into the light of the cannonade.
Gaze upon that tall form, clad in the Mexican warrior costume, green
faced with gold—upon that bronzed face, wrinkled with age, the white
mustache covering the compressed lips, the eyes shooting frenzy from
the lowering brow, and pray for the young girl and her lover, her
husband!
The old man stands upon the balcony, quivering with rage, the deep
curses trembling from his lips. For there is a boat upon the river, a fragile
skiff, that glides over the glowing waves bearing two forms to the opposite
shore—the young Virginian and his Mexican bride!
“Curses! They near the opposite shore! Ha! That shell—it bursts
above their heads—it crushes them into the red waves! A cloud of smoke
—it is gone! Curses! They are there again, speeding toward the shore!
May the fiend drive the bullet to his heart! He leads forth from the
through our ranks, he flies!”
And as the old man, sent up from the bitterness of his heart, a curse
upon his child, that American on the black horse, dashed through the
Mexican ranks, while the white robe of his bride floated over the dark
skin of the steed, and wrapped their forms as in a mantle of snow.
“Huzza!” he cried in defiance, as the shot rained like hail about his
horse's feet—“Blaze on! I go to the Camp of Taylor, I go to bring
succor for the beleagued fort!”
It is a glorious thing to feel a battle steed, as black as death, bound beneath
you, like a shell hurled from a mortar, it is a glorious thing to see
the glare of battle, enfolding you like a curtain, to hear its thunder, yelling
like the earthquake from the volcano's throat, but to ride through the
fury of a battle, at dead of night, a black steed bounding beneath you,
while a beautiful woman quivers in your arms—it makes the heart swell
and the blood burn like a flame!
Long upon the balcony, stood the old Mexican Chieftain, gazing—not
upon the Fort, which stood boldly out, in the fierce light of the cannonade,
nor upon the shore thronged with the legions of Mexico, nor upon
the roof of Matamoras, black with spectators of the midnight battle—but
upon the dark chaparral, where his eye had seen the last flutter of his
daughter's snowy robe.
Did you ever read of Montezuma?
Did you ever read of that Monarch, with the olive cheek, who sate
upon the Throne of [2]
Tenochtitlan, three hundred years ago, the last of a
long line of kings, surrounded by kneeling nobles, and served at the festival
table, by groups of beautiful women, dark-eyed and passionate
daughter of the south?
Did you ever hear of the strange land of Anahuac over which he
reigned, a land magnificent with its mountains of snow and fire, its vallies
of fruitfulness and bloom, its clear, calm lakes mirroring beautiful cities,
its awful Religion, smoking on every altar, with human blood?
How this land fell beneath the Spaniard, how the bloody Prophet,
whose coming had been announced by the Aztec priests for hundreds of
years, came in the person of the stern bigot, chivalric soldier, Hernan
Cortes—you have read it all.
When the empire of Montezuma fell, and the sad emperor, who had
been conquered by Fate, not by man, yielded up the last throb of her
broken heart, his blood still beat in the veins of his daughters, who were
joined in marriage with the proudest of the Castilian nobility.
It is of some of the descendants of these marriages of the Spaniard
and the Aztec noble, that we now purpose to speak.
You remember the horrible religion of old Mexico? That creed of
blood which raised its vast altar in every city, and led its human victim,
to the place of the sacrifice, and flung his quivering heart, torn smoking
from the body, in the face of its Devil-God.
A creed in fact, which in its atrocious details, all acted, in the name of
a Devil, almost rivals some of those barbarous corruptions of the Christian
faith, whose bloody sacrifices of human hearts, have been acted in
the name of Jesus and of God.
You remember that eternal flame, which burned on the altar of Montezuma,
bearing with its clouds of white smoke and radiant light, a silent
testimony to the immortality of the Aztec faith?
That flame, was first lighted, when the Ancestors of Montezuma,
hundreds of years before his day, came swarming from the north, upon
the fertile valley of Mexico. It burned on for ages, until the time of
Cortes, when it was supposed to be forever quenched, in the last baptism
of blood, offered by him upon its altar.
But it was never quenched, that awful fire of Montezuma! While the
Spaniard, crowded Mexico with his legions, and built his altars upon the
ruins of Aztec Teocalli, certain tribes of the old people, true to their race
and their religion, fled to the mountain and the wilderness, bearing with
them, flaming torches, which had been lighted at the eternal fire.
That fire has never once gone out, through the long course of three
hundred and twenty-six years. It burns on at the present hour, as it
burned in the days of Montezuma.
Where the ravine is dark and horrible, where the mountain threatens
you with death, if you dare approach its summit of eternal snow, where
the wilderness extends, fenced in from civilization by impenetrable thickets,
swarming with wild beasts—there, may you still discover, the eternal
fire of Montezuma.
Torches, lighted at this flame, have been brought forth, to the gaze of
the white man, on certain occasions, since the conquest of Cortes.
Whenever danger to the Spaniard, hovers in the air, those torches are
seen, flashing from the tops of the mountains, from the shadows of the
ravine!
When the Hero-Priest Hidalgo,—descended from the Aztec race,—
raised the standard of revolt, and declared the soil of Anahuac, free from
European despotism, that torch blazed in the faces of the Spaniards and
lit them to their bloody graves.
It blazed again, ere the battle of Palo Alto. We will journey into the
wilderness and behold its light. In the wilderness of Chaparral and
prairie, which extends from the shores of the Rio Grande, there are many
desert wilds, scarcely ever trodden by the foot of the white man. Stunted
by thickly grown vines, form an impenetrable barrier, between those
deserts and the step of the civilized intruder. Even the Ranchero, that
combination of the worst vices of civilization and barbarism, dare not
profane these silent solitudes.
On the morning of the Eighth of May, 1846, we will journey for miles
through these impenetrable thickets, and in the centre of the wild, behold
a scene, which but a short distance removed from the cities of the white
race, is yet stamped with all the traces of the people of Montezuma.
In the centre of the wilderness, a space some two miles square, bloomed
like a garden. Do you see its fields of tall green corn, waving yonder,
near a wilderness of fig trees, rich with their tempting fruit? Here, the
pomegranates hidden among large green leaves, meets your eye, and there,
dangling from the vines, the grapes come quivering into light. Wherever
you turn your gaze, all is bloom, verdure, fruitfulness. There are birds
of radiant plumage upon the trees, and flowers, that make you forget the
rainbow scattered everywhere along the sod.
Do you distinctly see this garden in the wilderness, hemmed in on
every side by the impassable chaparral?
Gaze in its centre, and you will behold a circle of huts, formed of reeds
woven together, like basket work, cemented with clay, and defended from
the sun and rain, by a roof of vines and blossoms.
The tall corn waves greenly about them, and the fig floats its perfume
through their narrow doors, and the meek-eyed dove of the tropics, a
gentle thing, looking like the holy spirit of home, murmurs its low music
in the vines above the roof. Altogether, the quiet picture, blooming under
the morning sun, in the wilderness, steels on us, like a dream from Heaven,
a delicious leaf, cut freshly from the book of eternal beauty.
Here dwells one of those remnants of the Aztec people, which have
been hidden in the desert, from the eye of the white man, for three hundred
years. You see the dark-faced men, with long black hair, stand
before the doors of their homes—the tawny children playing among the
flowers—the brown Women, with large lustrous eyes, gathering the rich
fruitage of tree and field.
But the object in the centre of the desert village, that mass of stone,
piled up, rock on rock, until it swells far over the roof into the serene
upper air?
Ascend those steps—toil slowly up the rugged stairway—stand upon
the summit—gaze upon the village that blooms below!
But the fire, that burns upon the summit of this mound of rocks, that
clear flame, burning beneath the shelter of a large flat stone, supported
by two masses of granite?
This mound of rocks, is one of the last altars of the Aztec race; a
old.
That fire, is the sacred flame, never once extinguished since the days
of Montezuma.
Before that fire, crouching on the rock, sits an old man, with long black
hair floating down his back, while a loose robe of coarse white cotton,
enfolds his withered form.
The last priest of Montezuma!
From early childhood he has watched that fire, fed it with fragrant
wood, and gazed upon its flames, as though it was a God. Before his
day, his father watched it; when he is gone, his son, tall and straight as
the desert palm, will assume the sacred duty. So from age to age, from
father to son, burns on the flame of Montezuma!
Does not the image of this peaceful people, dwelling alone by their rude
altar, in the wilderness, never trodden by the white man, gathering their
bread and attire, from the maize and cotton of the field, their knowledge
of God, from the traditions of their fathers, at once bewilder and enchain
you?
The day wears on—they have come from the fields to partake of their
simple meal—the old man still sits upon the mound, watching the sacred
flame!
The day wears on! Hark! From the east a sound like thunder. It
is the cannon of Palo Alto, the old man rises, listens, and thinks it thunder.
He knows nothing of the wars or battles of the white race.
The day wears on. The sun is yonder in the west. The mound of
rocks flings its shadow over the village. Still the sound of thunder to
the east, thunder, deep and blooming, from a sky, without a cloud.
The affrighted people of the Aztec village, throng to the altar, the
strong-limbed men, the brown women with the lustrous eyes, the tawny
children scattering flowers.
They seek to propitiate their God, by a sacrifice. That thunder
from a cloudless sky terrifies their souls. A dove, one of those gentle
doves of home, is the destined victim. Look! It flutters on the large
flat stone above the flame, and murmurs its sad music, even as the hand
of the priest is laid upon its glossy neck.
A prayer in the Mexican tongue, a wild and momentous hymn to the
strange deity.
It is a picture to remember. That solitary mound rising above the
hamlet in the wilderness, its huge shadow, blackening over the fields—
that erect old man, upon the summit, the centre of a crowd of darkskinned
worshippers—the bird fluttering in his hand, the sacramental
knife raised over his head.
At the moment a cry quivers from every lip, and every eye is turned
toward the east.
There, stealing from the forest, comes the form of a woman, her dark
hair floating over her snowy robes, while her large eyes roll from side to
side, with a look of fear.
Her dress is torn by the briers; her hair tangled by the perfumed blossom
rent from the wild vine; she totters on toward the altar—
It is the Lady Inez, daughter of the stern Mexican General, wife of
the gallant Virginian.
Within the same hour, a scene of deep interest took place on the field
of Palo Alto.
It was in the last hour of that fight—when the battle, which we will
shortly look upon in all its details, was about to close—that a solitary
Mexican officer, flying from the field, spurred his bay horse through the
devious path of the chaparral.
Look yonder, and by the light of the solitary sun, you may behold his
pursuer, a young American, mounted on a dark steed. With the uniform
torn in ribands from his right arm, he brandishes his sword—it drops
blood upon his broad chest—and dashes on.
He nears the Mexican, he is within twenty paces, when the flying soldier
is about to leave the path, and seek the shadows of the chaparral.
The American raises his pistol—fires! The bay-horse totters to and fro,
and falls on his forefeet, precipitating his rider on the sod.
Beside his dying horse—whose life-blood wells from the fatal wound
—that rider stands and confronts the enemy. The American starts in
his saddle, and pulls his bridle-rein, throwing his dark horse, back on his
haunches, as he beholds him.
For in that American officer stained from head to foot with blood, you
recognize the pale face and full deep eyes of the Virginian, husband of
the Lady Inez. Look upon that Mexican, his green uniform rent with
sword thrusts, his white moustache, dyed with crimson drops, his bronzed
face traversed by a fearful wound, and you behold her father.
Words of deep meaning were spoken there in that lonely chaparral.
“Yield, General!” cried the Virginian in Spanish. “You are faint
with wounds. I will not fight with the father of my wife.”
There was something terrible in the silent malignity which shone from
the old man's eyes.
“You are mounted,” he quietly said—“My horse is dying—” and then
wiping the blood from his sword blade with his left hand, grasped the
hilt with his right, and stood prepared for a deadly fight—“Come!” he cried
in the settled tone of a mortal hatred—“You escaped from the prison of
Mexico, but cannot escape me!”
It was interesting to notice the conduct of that young Virginian, whose
blue uniform was in many places turned to red, by the blood of his foes.
He quietly dismounted, flung the rein on the neck of his dark steed, wiped
the sod.
He then calmly advanced along the path, with the wall of the chaparral
on either side. Stern and unrelenting, the old General awaited him.
“General you see me, unarmed, defenceless before you!” said the
Virginian advancing—“Let me ask you once for all—why do you pursue
me with this unrelenting hatred? I came to your Mexican home, a stranger
from the far north, and was grateful for your generous hospitality. I
met your daughter—we loved—were joined in marriage before the altar
of your solemn cathedral. Why hurl me from your daughter's arms, into
a prison, only reserved for the vilest outcast? Why, even as I rotted in
the dungeon, did you drag my wife from the city, force her to accompany
you in your march, and last night bid her prepare, for the miserable nuptials
which were to take place to day? Come—be friends with me—in
this hour, when you are forced to leave the field, a fugitive, I will aid
your flight!”
There was an earnestness in the young man's tone, that would have
touched the hardest heart. Frankness was written on his pale face, and
honor spoke in the gleam of his large hazel eye.
“Where is my daughter?” said the Mexican General, in a low voice,
but still keeping his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Last night, when I bore the message of Fort Brown, to our General
—that message which called for help, in direst extremity—I left Inez in a
ranche (farm house) some few hundred yards to the west of this place.
When the battle is over,—I will join her again.”
“Coward! You will never join her again! After I have laid you
dead upon the sod, I myself will go and bear your message to my
daughter.”
With a ferocious look in his eye, the General dashed upon the unarmed
man, making a thrust, with all the vigor of his right arm. To say the
least, there was something cowardly in this movement, indeed, it looked
very much like Assassination.
The Virginian darted aside, but the sword passed between his side
and his left arm, transfixing a piece of his coat.
As quick as thought he turned, darted on the Mexican—who had been
almost thrown on his face by the impetus of his ineffectual thrust—and
clutched his throat with a grasp of iron.
“This your Mexican chivalry! To stab an unarmed man!”
He shook him fiercely in that tightening grasp—the General made an
effort to shorten his grasp of the sword, and use it as a dagger, but the
blade fell from his hand—he sank backward on the sod, with the knee of
the Virginian on his breast.
He uttered an incoherent groan—his eyes began to start from their
sockets.
The Virginian, touched with pity released his grasp, but seized the
fallen sword.
“I hate you”—slowly said the Mexican General, raising himself on
one hand, while his face grew deathly pale—“Not so much because you
stole my daughter, as that you are one of the accursed race, whose destiny
it is, to despoil our land, extinguish our name, annihilate our flag!”
He tore open the breast of his coat, and disclosed a mortal wound,
which had been killing him, slowly, for hours.—
“If there is one word, that may express the hatred of a dying man,
better than another, I fling it in your face and curse you with that breath,
whose passing, leaves my lips cold forever!”
There was something so terrible in these last words of a dying man,
uttered with rattling breath and a pale face, deformed by hideous contortions,
that the American soldier shrunk from his touch, and gazed upon
him in silent horror.
He never spoke again, save to murmur, in his Spanish tongue—
“Water! Water!”
Reaching forth his arms, he grasped the blade of his sword which the
Virginian held—kissed the hilt, and fell back, with a torrent of blood,
streaming from his mouth.
The Virginian turned to search for water; the murmuring of a brooklet
reached his ears; he left the dying man and rushed along the path.
Turning to the east, he saw the lakelet, spreading calm and beautiful in
the depths of the chaparral. Scarce a ray of sunlight, streamed over its
dark and tranquil bosom.
Our young soldier bent down, with his helmet in his hand, its horse-hair
plume sweeping to the ground, and filled it with the cool water, when
another sight palsied his hand, and turned his face to the color of ashes
and clay.
Before him, in a nook formed by the foliage, on the soft, short grass,
lay the dead body of a human being.
It was a woman, naked as Eve before she fell, with the blood streaming
from her white bosom. As she lay there, her hair—so intensely
dark, with a glossy richness almost every wave and curl—fell over her
arms and clotted in some places with her blood, streamed in masses over
the sod.
Not a vestage of apparel was there, upon her form, to denote her rank,
or enable the living to identify the beautiful dead.
For she was very beautiful. Had you seen the matchless outline of
her young limbs, chaste yet voluptuous, her bosom, just blossoming into
bloom, her olive cheek, which pillowed the dark eyelashes, her lips,
which death had not despoiled of their vermillion—you would have knelt
by her, and gazed for hours upon the silent beauty of the murdered girl.
Murdered? By whom? Where the weapon? Where the traces of
the wrong?
The leaves were above her, the lakelet stretched away from her feet,
and the blood welled slowly from the wound in her heart.
The Virginian forgot the dying man, dashed his helmet away, and sank
beside the dead girl.
“Inez!” and bending down, he earnestly perused those features, sealed
forever in the sleep of death.
Meanwhile but a few paces distant, the Mexican General started into a
sitting posture, with the blood pouring from his mouth, he rushed along
the path, beheld for a moment the form of the dead woman—knew it, for
a horrible agony writhed over his face—and then fell forward on his face
—dead.
While his ashy face, was stamped with a despair that fast fevered into
madness, the Virginian looked from the naked form to the dead soldier,
and murmured—
“The Murderer and the Murdered!”
It was night in the wilderness; the groans of a thousand hearts, quivering
in mental agony, palpitated through the chaparral, from the shores
of the Rio Grande, to the bloody rivulet of Palo Alto.
It was night and through the wall of woven thorns, a solitary horse,
dashed like a shell, hurled from the blazing mortar—a solitary horse, his
nostrils quivering as though they shot forth, jets of flame, his dark hide
flecked with shots of foam, his bloody mane, waving over his eyes and
about his arching neck. Those eyes seem to burn in the darkness, like
the meteors of a swamp.
The Rider! Throat bare, brow uncovered, hair damp with sweat and
clotted with blood, he shook his clenched hands on high, sank his spurs
into the flanks of the horse and whirled away. Ha! Ha! how he shouted
in horrible laughter, while the thorns tore his flesh, as though they were
living things, poisonous with venom, and the gnarled boughs struck his
breast, as though they were the arms of warriors fired with battle rage.
The chaparral darkened round him, a wall of prickly pear—the sod
beneath was broken into pits and ravines—wherever he turned his burning
eyes, was nothing but that impassible desert, upon whose wilderness
of stunted trees, cold and dimly fell the night of the midnight stars.
He was Mad, the brave Virginian. You may talk of hearts, if you
please, and of minds, steeled against the fiercest sorrow, however vulturelike
the beak, with which it may drink our heart's blood, but show me
the soul, that can gaze without madness, upon this horrible vision! A
young, a virgin wife,—whose kiss was warm upon her husband's lips this
morning—found at the setting of the sun, in the lonely chaparral, the
blood oozing slowly from her mangled breast, found a naked and dishonored
her death more horrible to look upon!
For hours the young soldier, has thundered madly through the wild,
not caring whither his horse's footsteps turned, only so that the bore him
farther from the face of man, farther into the desert, the darkness and the
night. Madly he dashed along, and yet all the while, with a consciousness
of his horrible calamity pervading his whole being, like the forked
lightning, quivering through the blackness of the thunder cloud.
At last after hours of mad wandering, he suffered the rein to fall on the
neck of his steed, his hands sank listlessly by his side, his head drooped
on his breast. The stupor had succeeded the frenzy of despair.
Slowly the horse wandered along, the Rider knew not, cared not
whither, while the moments of that night of agony, throbbed slowly away.
Hark! The Virginian roused from his stupor, lifts his head in wonder.
A low, deep monotonous chaunt breaks on the night. Look! The
impenetrable wall of chaparral, gives place to a field of corn, whose broad
green leaves wave above the horse's head.
At once, the vision of a quiet group of homes in the wilderness, and the
delicious perfume of fruits and flowers, rush on the senses of the bewildered
man. By the light of the stars he gazes wildly around, and suffers
the wounded, the bleeding steed to take his way.
Through the field of maize, by the wilderness of fig trees, among the
vines that trail luxuriantly over the ground, the horse wanders on.
At last—what new wonder is this?
Far above the roofs of that desert-girdled home, a light shines like a
star, and sheds a radiance, at once serene and vivid upon the air.
Is it a star, shining from the midnight sky? Or, one of those wild
lights, which born of the atmosphere of the swamp, bewilder travellers
on their way, and lead them on to death?
His eye grows accustomed to the darkness. That light shines from
the summit of a huge mound of rocks, and the forms of human things,
intervene between the eye and its steady blaze.
Again that deep chaunt, swelling through the night, like a requiem over
the dead!
The bewildered traveller rushes forward, springs from his steed and
darts up the rocky steps of the mound, his eye glaring madly all the
while, his chesnut hair, hanging in bloody flakes, about his feverish brow.
A strange fancy has taken firm hold of his brain. He imagines himself
in one of the last retreats of the Aztec people, in that rude mound,
he sees a Teocalli, a bloody altar of the far gone time; that flame is the
fire of Montezuma; those forms, grouped between him and the light, the
figures of the sacrificial priests gloating over their victim's writhing form.
That victim—oh! the horrible frenzy made his blood run cold, hot as
it was with the fever of madness—his own wife, the lady Inez, whom he
chaparral.
He ascended the mound of rocks, and stood with gasping breath upon
the Summit. A sight too wondrous for belief or words, met his silent
gaze.
They were Indian forms grouped upon the summit of the rock, men, with
stout arms and broad chests, women with olive cheeks and deeply lustrous
eyes, children with long black hair, about their tawny faces. Indians
did we say? No! To the bewildered traveller's eye, they looked
more like the Aztec people of three hundred and twenty six years ago.
They stood in a circle, their backs to his face, their visages bathed in the
red light, which sheltered by a huge flat stone, shone through the night
afar.
Slowly, on tip-toe the traveller drew nigh.
In the midst of the silent group, stood an old man, attired in a loose
robe of coarse cotton, gazing upon the object which held every eye
enchained.
Nearer drew the traveller, his heart choking his utterance, or he would
have groaned.
What struck him with surprise, was the universal expression which
reigned upon every face. Whether old man, or stout-armed Son of the
forest, or round limbed woman, or dark haired child, all wore one look.
It was pity, it was sympathy, it was love, yes, as the angels love! It was
religion!
Upon their rude faces, that look sat enthroned like a gem in the dust,
like one serene ray, in a night of universal cloud.
Hush every breath, as the maddened traveller, worried into a fiercer
agony, draws near, looks over their shoulders, feels the flame upon his
face, beholds the object which enchains every eye.
That chaunt, swelling low and deep from every lip, drowned the echo
of his step.
The sight that he saw—a bleeding victim, disfigured by the knife! No!
A sleeping Woman, wrapped in a white robe, with her smiling face—
warm cheeks, red lips, large lashes, and all—framed in her darkly flowing
hair!
And the sleeping Woman, smiling in her calm repose, while the tawny
people, bent over her, as though she had dropped among them, from God,
was the Lady Inez, the wife whom we left a murdered thing in the darkness
of the chaparral.
Softly she slumbered, the light of the eternal fire upon her face, the
blossoms gathered by little children's hands, wound among the tresses of
her beautiful hair.
It was a dream. Choking down the agony of his soul, he darted forward,
knelt and gazed upon her.
With one cry, the Indians shrank back, from that contrast—his frenzied
face, her smiling countenance!
It was her Ghost. He knew it. Afraid to touch the hand, which lay
with its white fingers unclosed, upon the rock, he gazed in the stern
silence of despair, upon that image of slumbering womanhood.
At last those lids were unclosed, those dark eyes met the light of his
own, the white robe, falling back, revealed the white shoulders and the
bosom of snow. The traveller darted forward—there was a form palpitating
upon his breast, a hand pillowed on his shoulder, masses of dark
hair waving about his face.
“My Husband!”
Was it a Ghost?
That throb from the virgin bosom, kindling a heaven in his veins—ah!
such electric fire, never quivered from the breast of spirit or Ghost
before!
And while the fire of Montezuma burned through the dark night, the
chaunt swelled on the air once more, and the Aztec people—I see them, now,
upon the lonely mound, their faces bathed in red light, while all beyond
is darkness—grouped wandering round the central figures, the Husband
on his knees, with his beautiful wife upon his breast, her dark hair,
waving over his shoulder.
Where is the thread to this mystery of the wilderness?
At the setting of the sun, you show us the dead body of the Lady
Inez, laid naked and dishonored in the chaparral of Palo Alto, and at
midnight, we behold the Lady Inez, calmly slumbering, on the mound
of the wilderness, her smiling face, lighted by the eternal fire of Montezuma?
—Here is all that ever was known of the dark history.
It was in the last hour of Palo Alto, when the cannon of Taylor, flamed
their lightning into the Mexican camp, that the beams of the declining
sun, stealing through the battle clouds, shone on the trappings and tinsel
of a gorgeous canopy, which towered in the heart of the dark chaparral.
Around this tent, the banquet fires were blazing, you see them smoking
and flaming beneath the luscious viands, intended for the feast of victory.
When Arista has conquered Taylor, and bound him in chains, he
will come hither in royal state, and drink his iced wine, and feast on his
luxurious banquet, while the tri-colored flag of Mexico waves in triumph
over his head.
But unfortunately old Zachary is hard to conquer. Even as we look
upon the gaudy tents, with its ornaments glittering like diamonds in the
light, we hear the rush of Taylor's legions to the north, and the tramp
of the flying Mexicans to the south.
The lacqueys have left their banquet fire; the sentinels their place by
look! how the smoke rolls yonder, up against the setting sun—the camp
of Arista is silent as the grave.
In a moment the thunder of battle will envelope this place, in smoke
and flames, but ere that moment comes, we will behold a sad, a touching
scene.
Enter the tent of Arista. Pass through the gilded curtains, and behold
the scene which speads before you.
On the rich carpet, amid piles of scattered trunks, masses of charts
and papers, heaps of plate, solid silver and gold, behold the kneeling form
of a young, a beautiful girl. Attired in a garment of richest dyes, which
half-revealing the warm bosom, girdles her slender waist, and terminates
at her knees, displaying the sculptured proportions of her voluptuous
limbs, she kneels amid the scene of splendid havoc, clasps her hands and
raises her large dark eyes!
While her bosom beats tumultuously into view, she prays, yes, in the
Spanish and the Mexican tongue, prays to the God of the Christian and
the God of Montezuma.
There is one portion of her costume, which imparts to her face and
form, a beauty almost divine.
A veil of fine lace, like a wreath of transparent mist, as white as snow,
flows from her forehead to her feet, with her long dark hair, and her bare
arms, gleaming through its bewitching folds. Jewels worth many a solid
piece of gold, sink and swell upon her breast, pearls which remind you
of a pure virgin's tears, gleam in circlets from her brow.
While the battle rages afar, she prays, not for herself but for her lover!
Is it the Lady Inez, whom we behold?
The same form: the same red ripeness on the lip, and voluptuous
swell in the outline of the form; dark flowing hair, and large full eyes,
all the same; it is the Lady Inez! And yet we know, that at this very
moment, the Lady Inez, is far away, in the tangled mazes of the wilderness!
Listen! Amid the roar of the battle, thundering afar, we hear a footstep,
and presently the form of a young soldier, remarkable for his manly
beauty, appears at the doorway of the tent. Scarce twenty years old, a
dark mustache on lip, his bold features, relieved by long curls of jet-black
hair, he silently advances, while we behold his handsome uniform, torn
in fragments and spotted with blood.
He stands behind her, contemplating her form with a mingled look—
pity and passion! Silently he unsheaths his dagger, poises it above her
head, turning his face away, prepares to strike—
“The Battle,” he cries in Spanish, “Is lost and I will not leave you,
to the mercy of the foe!”
She lifts her eyes, and beholds at once her lover and the trembling dagger.
pulseless quietude.
“Kill, for I am thine, Francisco!” she says, raising her eyes, so lustrously
beautiful to his face. “Who lifted the beggar girl from the hut
of the Lepero to the couch of the lord? Who wound these pearls upon
her forehead, and bade these jewels gleam upon her bosom? Who
shared with her, the love of her noble heart? Francisco! And to who
should the life of Mahitili belong, but to Francisco?”
She spake in the strange Mexican tongue, which, the same as fell
from the lips of Montezuma, may be heard at this day in the mountains
of Mexico.
“But the battle is lost, Mahitili,” shrieked her lover, quivering in
agony—
“For myself I care not; I will not fly; to die upon the lost field is
all that is left for me. But you Mahitili—you my own love, whom I
gathered from the huts of poverty, and wound to my heart—you, who
have not hesitated to watch by my side, in the peril of pestilence,
nor to follow my footsteps into the crash of battle! When I am dead
what will be your fate?”
Calmly she rose, and placed her small fingers on the blade of his
dagger.
“We will die together!” she said, enfolding him in her arms, until her
snowy veil, was stained with the blood which dyed his uniform.
“To die, at this hour, of all other hours! To die, when I have just
discovered that you are no child of poverty and shame, but the lost
daughter of our brave General * * * *! The twin-sister of his proud
and lovely child, with the blood of Montezuma, coursing through your
veins! Nay stare not so wildly—it is true as the Virgin's purity! From
a dying soldier on the battle field, I heard the truth, and received from
his hands, the undeniable proofs! Kill you now—I cannot—we will fly!”
He seized her to his arms, but the robber form of a Ranchero, with his
wide sombrero, and tawny face occupied the doorway of the tent. His
dark eyes shone with the lust of plunder; one hand upon his rifle, one
upon his knife, he silently confronted the youthful pair.
“Here is gold—” cries Francisco—“Secure for me, one of those riderless
steeds, now running wild in the smoke of battle.”
The Ranchero clutches the purse, hurries it in his bosom and disappears.
They wait there, in Arista's tent, trembling with suspense and
watching for the return of the Ranchero, Mahitili nestling close to Francisco's
heart, like a bird to its nest, in the hour of storm, her white veil
and raven hair, encircling his form, as with a robe of strange texture and
beauty.
He does not return, the tawny Ranchero; the battle swells nearer the
not an inch above their heads.
“Kneel, Mahitili! Kneel and pray to the Virgin until I return! I will
secure a horse or die!”
He is gone, but scarcely has his form passed through the curtain folds,
when the Ranchero stands before the tent, holding a noble black horse by
the bridle rein. On his glossy hide smokes the blood and foam of
battle.
“Come!” exclaims the Ranchero, in barbarous Spanish. “He waits
for you, yonder in the chaparral!”
Without a suspicion, she bounds to the saddle, while the Ranchero
huddles the goblet and other vessels of silver and gold scattered along the
carpet, into a capacious sack, tied to his girdle. Mahitili does not behold
this movement. Her eyes have no gaze but for yonder cloud, which gathering
volume, every moment, comes darkening over the chaparral, near and
nearer the tent of Arista.
The Ranchero, that half-savage, with the stalwart form, and bronzed
face, leaps in the saddle, and girding the trembling girl to his breast, bounds
away.
Away, into the narrow path, leading far up the darkness of the chaparral.
Deeper the shadows gather them in, fainter and more faint, the sunbeams
tremble over the dark horse, the Ranchero, and his voluptuous
burden.
“Francisco?” she cried at last, quivering with an unknown fear. They
had turned a bend of the path, and a dark lakelet, scare enlivened by a
ray, spread before them. “My Lover?”
The Ranchero surveyed with one gloating look, the warm beauty of her
face, and the luxuriant swell of her bosom—
“He is here!” he said, and Mahitili felt the blood grow cold, from her
heart to her fingers.
Not fifteen minutes passed, and on that sod, beside the dark lakelet, the
Mexican General, with the blood pouring from his mouth, the Virginian
with his heart turning to ice in his bosom, beheld the naked body of a
murdered and dishonored woman.
There was the print of horse's hoofs toward the lakelet, and a goblet
of sculptured gold, gleamed from the mire by its waters.
Francisco? Look yonder by the light of the moon, and behold a young
form, stretched stifly on the prairie, his face buried in the sod, his arms
extended, the fingers clutching the bloody grass, while the head of a dead
steed rests upon his back!
He found the horse for which he sought, it seems, and—died with him.
Perchance in the very act of mounting, for the same cannon ball, which
mangled flesh and bones.
And as we look upon them, the jackal crawls from the bushes, and
snuffs the air, turning from the dead warrior to the dead steed, and from
dead steed to the warrior, as if hesitating where to commence his horrible
meal.
How came the Bride of the Virginian, the guest of the rude Aztec
people?
Alarmed by the thunder of the battle, she had strayed from the Ranche
where her husband left her, lost her way, and wandered deeper into the
chaparral until the hidden village bloomed upon her eyes. The old priest,
the hardy people, the brown women, all hailed her, with her white attire,
and beautiful form, as a good spirit sent from God; even the little children
clung to her robe, and looked up fearfully into her large eyes.
Now, at the dead of night behold her, standing on that mound of rocks,
her husbands arm about her form, while the sacred flame bathes their faces,
and reveals the group of wondering Indians.
As we gaze, the old Priest—who received from his father the tradition
and prophecy, and who will leave both to his son, as a holy heritage—
bends down and lights a torch at the flame of Montezuma—
“There is doom for the Spaniard in the air!” he chaunts as he waves
the torch—“Even as he crushed the children of Anahuac in the days of
the old, so will a new race from the north, crush his people, in the dust
and blood of battle!
“The Murder done by the Spaniard, returns to him again; and the
blood that he once shed, rises from the ground, which will not hide it,
and becomes a torrent to overflow his rule, his people, and his altars!
“Montezuma, from the shadows of ages, hear the cry of thy children!
Arise! Gaze from the unclosed Halls of Death, upon the Spaniard's,
ruin, and tell the ghosts to shout, as he dashes to darkness in a whirlpool
of blood:
“Montezuma, and all ye ghosts, sing your song of gladness now, and
let the days of your sorrow be past! Even, above the ocean of blood,
which flows from thy mouth, over the land of Anahuac, behold the Dove
of Peace, bearing her green leaves and white blossoms to the children of
the soil!”
The outcasts of Mexican civilization, swarming by thousands in the hovels of the
city, and descended from the old Aztec race, are entitled, Leperos.
4. IV.—PALO ALTO.
An old man, dressed in a brown coat, and mounted on a grey horse,
was riding through the chaparral, as the noonday sun shone over the wilderness
of prickly pear, darkening on either side, while far behind, in all
the windings of the narrow path, two thousand swords and bayonets, rose
dazzling into light.
Look yonder, and behold Zachary Taylor and his Men, on their march
to the field of Palo Alto!
A broad brimmed hat of grey felt, shaded his ample brow. There was
no sword by his side, but he carried a spy glass in his right hand. The
old grey steed which bore him onward, was none of your fiery chargers,
shooting jets of flame from the quivering nostril and the dilating eye.
An ancient and favorite horse, dear to the warrior's heart, for he had
borne him, through many a bloody fight, through the everglades and
hammocks of Florida.
The head of the old man is slightly drooped, one hand placed within
the folds of his vest, while the other grasps the spy glass. As he rides
leisurely onward, you might take him for some substantial Pennsylvanian
Farmer, mounted on a favorite nag, but gaze beneath the shadow of
his broad-brimmed hat, and you behold a Hero's soul, stamped upon his
face. A bronzed face, with the under lip slightly projecting, as the upper
is pressed against the teeth, the brows drawn downward, the eye dilating
until it seems to burn!
The old man is thinking of Fort Brown, and of the few miles that intervene
between him and the brave three hundred; terrible miles, swarming
with six thousand Mexicans.
As he rides leisurely there,—alone, with his own thoughts—you see,
gleaming far ahead, the arms of the advance ground. Some few paces
behind, the staff officers, come riding in their chivalric array. Far in the
distance, winding with every turn and sweep of the road, the brave thousand
soldiers, with sword and bayonet blazing over their heads, come
flashing on. There, you behold the cannon, flashing back the sunlight
from each brazen tube, there the bold war-horses, moving on with a monotonous
tramp, and in the rear, the train of two hundred waggons formed
in a solid square, announce that the hour of battle is near.
And near that train we behold a sight, which for a moment winds us from
the glitter of arms—merely, a poor woman toiling painfully along, with
a babe in her arms. Her husband is in the ranks; she knows there will
be a battle soon, and as she comes along, with the hot sun pouring on her
face, her tears fall slowly, and trickle down the face of her sleeping
babe.
It is a sight of absorbing interest that we behold. Two thousand men,
of the prairie only maddens, and yet panting onward to the conflict with
six thousand foes.
The blood which flowed in the Revolution, is about to flow in battle
again, for there waves the plume of Ringgold, the descendant of John
Cadwallader; here you behold the stern, heroic face of Twiggs, the Son
of the Hero of Georgia; and in that young man, Chadbourne, with the
soldierly bearing, and eagle eye, you recognise the grand-son of Revolutionary
Lincoln.
The chivalry of the army glows before you, from the bearded face of
May, and you behold the backwoodsman of the olden time, created in the
sinewing form of Captain Walker. And palpitating with the hunger of
battle, the brave two thousand thunder through the defile, their martial
array,—relieved on either side by the chaparral—resembling an immense
serpent, as it winds brilliantly along.
Meanwhile the old man Taylor, mounted on his grey steed, rides alone,
the shadows growing deeper over his anxious face.
Hark! A murmur quivers like an electric shock along the line, as a
solitary horseman, separating from the advance guard, thunders along, to
the side of Taylor.
“General, the Mexicans await us, in order of battle, on the prairie of
Palo Alto!”
You should have seen the old man's eye flash!
“We must reach Fort Brown!” he said, in a composed tone, as the
rumor of battle quivered along the line.
Then came the moment of feverish interest.
Emerging in two narrow columns from the chaparral, our brave army
beheld, extending before them, the level prairie, three miles in extent,
bounded on all sides by the prickly pear of the desert, over whose impenetrable
wall rose the wiry timber, which gave its name to the immortal
field, Palo Alto.
It was a glorious place for a battle field. No hillocks to obstruct the
view, no ravines for ambuscade, no massive trees, to conceal the tube of
the deadly rifles, smooth as a floor, green with the rank prairie grass, in
some places, blooming in others with flowers of delicately contrasted
beauty, it seemed the very place for a battle, the convenient and appropriate
theatre for a scene of wholesale murder.
Indeed, the bronzed warrior, Zachary, in pursuing along the road some
days ago, pointed with his sheathed sword, to the prairie and exclaimed
quietly—“Not a finer place in the world for a good fight!”
Behold the battle field at the moment, when the Americans emerge
upon its level plain. Stand here, in the chaparral, our faces to the east
and gaze with hushed breath upon the scene.
A wide plain, here rank with grass, there perfumed with flowers, the
fresh water, that break upon your eye, like mirrors of silver framed in
emerald.
How beautifully the lakelets flings back the smile of the cloudless sky!
In ten minutes they will throw back sullenly, the reflection of a bloody
and darkening heaven.
Yonder, in the centre of the prairie, from the tall rank grass, gleams a
dazzling line, a mile and a half in length, a line composed of swords,
lances, bayonets, and marking by its extent, the firm position and battle
resolve of six thousand Mexicans.
They stand there in imposing array, the sunlight quivering tremblingly
on the points of lance and bayonet, the cannon glooming death from every
dark muzzle. Behind their ranks the prairie extends, then the chaparral
and the wiry timber of Palo Alto.
In this moment of breathless silence, do you hear distinctly the low
murmur of the half-dried rivulet?
It is upon this array of six thousand veteran troops, that the two thousand
Americans gaze, as they emerge into the plain. Zachary Taylor—
you see him yonder, the bronzed-faced warrior in the brown coat, mounted
on the old gray horse—gazes with a brightening eye on the array. It
must be confessed that the details are very beautiful.
Far on the right, advanced some distance in front of the Mexican line,
a regiment of lancers, in brilliant uniforms, mounted on strong-limbed
battle steeds, awaited in gorgeous array, the signal word of fight. Above
their heads, glittering against the sky, a forest of lancers, with a red flag,
waving from each deadly point of steel.
The artillery next enchains your eye; then the infantry, an iron mass,
composed of muscular forms, musquets and bayonets, all linked in one;
then the cavalry again, and so on, through the whole extent of that brave
army, alternate bodies of cavalry, infantry, artillery, or in other words,
first, men, horses, lances and swords; then men and cannon, then men
with fire and steel, girded to their hearts.
Yonder in the rear of the centre of the line, with his uniform burdened
with ornaments, you see Arista, his white teeth, gleaming below his mustache,
as with a smile, he sees rough Taylor come. Around him, glitters
a brilliant staff, and in front, the tri-color of Mexico rushes into the sky.
Taylor beholds it all. “It is certainly, my object to reach Fort Brown,”
he says in his quiet way, “And therefore, the sooner we get about it, the
better.”
The word of command passes his lips. Look! The army break into
companies, they stack their arms, and calmly marching to the brink of
those small lakes, assuage their burning thirst, with copious draughts of
fresh water.—Drink brave men, and fill your canteens with the clear
liquid, for ere ten minutes are gone, that water, will be red with blood!
As we gaze, they march from the lakes into the prairie once more;
refreshed by hearty draughts, they spring to their arms, with elastic steps
and blazing eyes, while one thunder shout, swells into the sky, as bared
to the light, the Banner of the Stars, streams over the field of Palo Alto.
That Banner speaks to two thousand hearts, and speaks of far-off
friends—of Home—of Glory—of Washington. Again that deafening
cheer, and more rapidly goes on, the determined preparation for
battle.[3]
At last the battle is formed: history never recorded a more beautiful
array.
The American line, presents three striking points; Ringgold's artillery
on the right; Churchill's two eighteen pounders in the centre;
Duncan's artillery on the extreme left—Three silent volcanoes with the
lava of death, boiling in their breasts!
Around these three points, shone the glittering array of bayonets. Each
cannon was relieved by the steady mass of infantry. It was to be, so
old Taylor said, a fight with cannon, a deadly combat of whirling horses,
brass and iron, of blazing muzzles and hissing balls; the infantry and
cavalry, had scarce a duty to perform, save to stand still, defend the cannon,
see the battle, and feel the madness of the fight blazing in their
veins.
At last the word was given to advance!
At Two O'clock, the very hour, when Washington, under as clear a
sky, came to do battle at Brandywine, did Zachary Taylor, give the word
and see his army slowly, steadily advance, over the prairie of Palo Alto.
Any man who has seen a battle, knows that the shout of carnage, is
not half so terrible, as the awful silence before the first fire. Then, as a
man hears the beating of his heart, and when the crushed grass, beneath
his feet, seems to echo his tread with a sound like thunder—so brooding,
so intense is the calm before the storm—the Soldier sees Eternity yawning
beneath him, over which he hangs suspended by a single hair.
Slowly, steadily over the prairie, men and horses and steel and banners
moved on. More clearly they began to distinguish the Mexican
banner, to see the hues of their uniforms, to note their cannon-muzzles
yawning Death into their faces. The suspense was horrible—many a
hand clammy with cold dews.
At this moment, behold a deep worthy of the age of chivalry!
A single horseman, separates from the American army, and like a
thunderbolt from a cloud, whirls away, over the plain. Both armies mark
the athletic beauty of his form, his horse with arching neck and distended
nostrils, his white plume, waving over a young face, remarkable for its
expression of cool courage. He dashes over the plain—the Americans
hold their breath, in suspense, the Mexicans in wonder.
Is he mad? Rising in the stirrups, in view of thousands, he approaches
within one hundred and fifty yards of the Mexicans, calmly
dismounts, flings his arm on his horse's neck, and taking from his pocket
a spy glass, calmly surveys their terrible array.
Dotting the sod, between the two armies, that solitary soldier and his
horse, form an object of interest for eight thousand men.
He can count their lances, their swords—tell the number of cannon
which they display—and as if astonished by the calm composure of the
audacious soldier, the Mexicans do not fire. One levelled musquet, and
he is dead! Presently you see, two Mexicans in their gaudy costume,
dash from the army and approach him.
The young soldier sees them come, waits until he has completed his
`reconnoisance', mounts his steed and rides—not directly back to his
army again—but down in front of their line, with cannon glooming and
bayonets glittering, a wall of death before him, rides with his plume
waving and the shout of his comrades, breaking in his ears!
Then, dashing like an arrow, across the plain, he approaches the General,
and calmly tells him the numbers and exact condition of the foe.
The old warrior smiles, and the army move silently on.
Little did the gallant soldier Blake, in that moment of excitement,
dream of the sad and singular fate which awaited him.
Seven hundred yards now intervene between the armies. Take care!
Do not breathe a word! A single whisper may scare the slumbering
Death into action, and send him rioting over the field.
At this moment, when the Armies glare in each other's faces, when
Arista, with a smile surveys plain Zachary's rough costume, when the
umbering wheels and monotonous hoofs alone are heard, tell me, what
means this meet of opposing hosts on the plain of Palo Alto?
Here the Americans in blue—there the Mexicans in green—here, the
tri-color of Anahuac, there the Banner of the Stars! Here, the veterans
of Mexican battles, tawny heroes from the terra caliente, of Vera Cruz,
and robust mountaineers, from the shadows of Orizaba, the men, who
butchered the Texans at Alamo, and the Rancheroes, who will butcher
the wounded and strip the dead ere an hour is gone! There, an untried
army of two thousand men, gathered from the hills and vallies of America,
mustache' from the ranks of Napoleon!
What does it mean?
It means that the Sword of Washington, is about to blaze, in conquest
and civilization over the land of Mexico. It means that one bloody battlefield
will soon call to another, until a chorus of victories, join their cries
and shout to the world, that the American People, are in arms for the
freedom of a Continent. It means, that to-day, a Beginning to be made,
to prepare the way for a glorious End. It means that Kings and Tyrants,
their panders and satelites have no business on this Continent, It means,
that the British had better look to Montreal, for the day comes when the
Banner of the Stars will crown its towers, that they had better look to
Quebec, for the hour is not far off, when the tramp of American legions
will be heard upon its rock.
It means that a great Reform, is about to commence, a Reform, that
will blaze for awhile in the distance, then envelope the borders of our
Union, and last of all, burn up the evils which threaten our peace at
home! So, whenever the sword of Washington waves in the air, let us
follow its flashing with prayer, and shout Amen! as it strikes home.
For a brief moment, in that awful suspense, the opposing enemies regarded
each other, and then—but hold! Did you ever see a summer
storm girdle the horizon, with its fantastic clouds, and while you watched
its sullen march up the sky, a flash of lightning shone, in the far north,
and shot from peak to peak, dazzling away, until the heavens were wrapt
in a belt of flame?
So on the Right of the Mexican army the contest began; the cannon
flamed out, volumes of smoke, rushed into the sky, and a storm of ball
and grape, whirled over the American army, singing their battle-song!
In an instant, that flame, that smoke, that crash, leapt along the whole
Mexican line, and the thunder and lightning of the battle-field were born.
Those columns of white smoke, mingled with belts of black rolled
slowly upward, into the serene sky.
At the same moment from the centre of the American line, two separate
volumes of fire, blazed from the eighteen pounders,—there was a cloud
in the air—and two bloody lanes were hewn, by the hurricane of iron,
right in the centre of the Mexican line; two lanes of mangled and dead.
The battle had indeed begun—the smoke of the Mexican cannon, and
the smoke of the American battery, floated slowly into the sky, met in
the serene air, and formed a bridge of cloud, above the heads of the contending
armies.
Hark! The rumbling of wheels, the heavy sound of horses hoofs beating
against the sod!
From the right of the line, Ringgold sweeps into the prairie, at the
same moment, that Duncan crushes its tall grass to the left, and from
cannon. Every shot makes a lane of dead, every ball bears a head, or
an arm away!
It is now that Ringgold is terrible. It is now that the fruits of long
years of training are seen. It is now, that these men of his band, disciplined
by him, into separate pieces of iron, forming one great machine
of battle, display their firm hearts and steady eyes. Few persons, who
beheld the erect soldier, attired in his elegant uniform, pacing along the
fashionable street of his native city, can imagine, his appearance and
demeanor now.
Reined beside the blazing battery, his white horse, fixed as a statue,
to the sod, still quivers beneath him. Erect in the saddle, his muscular
chest and arms, displayed by the close-fitting uniform, whose rich dark
blue so well relieves his boldly featured countenance, he gives the word
of command to his men, marks the effect of the shot, with his eye, and
sees whole platoons of gay uniforms go down, in blood.
The revolutionary blood of John Cadwallader burns in his veins, and
the fire of battle mounts his heart. Over his head whirls the fury of the
Mexican hurricane—were those guns, aimed with half the precision of
his own, his command would be blasted into the dust, ere a moment. But
as it is, from the want of deadly skill, on the part of the Mexicans, their
terrible missiles only hiss, in upper air.
As Ringgold, erect on his white horse, rises before us, a strong picture,
boldly marked out, by the blaze of battle, you behold a single feature of
the infernal revelry of war. The common soldier, by his side, attired in
a blue round jacket, his broad chest, laid open to the light? You behold
him, touch his cap, and stand motionless, in the act of listening to the
words of Ringgold. His swarthy face is all attention, his honest brow,
covered with sweat, assumes an appearance of thought. Look! Ringgold
in the energy of the moment bends forward extending his hand—and
at the very instant, the soldier is torn in two, by a combination of horrible
missiles, which bear his mangled flesh away, whirling a bloody shower
through the air. That thing beneath the horse's feet, with the head bent
back, until it touches the heels, that mass of bloody flesh, in which face,
feet and brains, alone are distinguishable, was only a moment past, a
living man.
And from the space between the cannon wheels, where she had sheltered
herself,—her babe slumbering in her arms amid the fierce roar of
the battle—crawls forth the Woman, whom we saw following the army
not long ago, was her husband. She placed the gory head upon her lap,
and with her face bent down, said not a word, but wept in silence.—
Ringgold turned his eyes away, and was not ashamed of tears!—A fine,
matronly woman, not twenty-six years old, with the hue of vigorous
health upon her cheeks, she had followed her husband, from the desolated
thus, with the bloody head upon her lap, she sat all day, while the fight
whirled round her. At night, when there was nothing but a pale moon,
shining over heaps of slaughter, she was still there, — upon her knee the
gory head, upon her breast the slumbering babe. Day came again, the
armies passed away, the battle whirled far to the south—the Woman, and
the Dead Man and the Child were still together, there, upon the field of
Palo Alto.
Yes, when the jackals prowled around her, when the vulture, attracted
by the scent of the festering body, swept the air, not one foot above her
head, she still kept the watch, moving her body, slowly to and fro, and
singing a wild Irish song. It was until they came with spades to hide the
hideous corruption of the field, that she could be torn from her loathsome
burden. And as they huddled the miserable thing, into the hurried grave,
she was seen, taking her desolate way, across the wilderness, her babe
still clinging to her bosom, while that low-toned, monotonous lament broke
over the dead silence of the deserted field.
To the battle once more!
While the cannon of Ringgold blaze on the right, there is a flash on
the far left, and a roar from the centre of the line. Slowly the eighteen
pounders, advance from the centre, scattering a terrible mass of balls, into
the Mexican array. Steadily on the left, Duncan, pours the hurricane of
iron, and sees, whole lines of men and horses, crushed into dust, ere the
battle flash of the cannon, leaves his face. Sternly on the right, Ringgold,
on his war-horse, pursues the work, whirling his bolts of flame,
upon those gay lancers yonder, whose points of steel fluttering with crimson
flags, cannot save them from the death, which rends their arms, crushes
their skulls, and piles them up, in bleeding heaps along the sod.
The Infantry stood in silent masses, the blood boiling in their veins as
they gazed upon the clouds of the fight, into whose whirlpool, they were
not permitted to precipitate their legions.
Behold their stern array!
Shoulder to shoulder, their voiceless musquets in their grasp, they glare
beneath their frontlets upon the battle, they mark the lanes of the Mexican
dead, they force their breath between the clenched teeth, they rend
the air, with shouts.
And every minute, there comes hissing into their ranks a shower of
grape, that bears a human head away, over their living heads, and entangles
their immovable ranks, with the howling wounded or glassy-eyed
dead. Aye, glassy-eyed! Of all the horrible things in a battle, the most
horrible, is to see the comrade by your side, crushed backward, by a ball,
which unroofs his skull—only for a single moment he moves and all is
still—only for a single moment, he rolls his glassy eyes upon your face,
no longer a man by your side, but a corse at your feet.
The battle now begins to wear its most infernal beauty! These lines
of armed men, arrayed on the prairie, these volumes of flame, blazing
from one living wall to another, this flag of three colors, and yonder banner
of the stars, seen only through the intervals of rolling clouds, these
piles of mangled and dead, with the infuriate and frenzied living trampling
over their faces, these sturdy cannoniers, stripping their bronzed forms to
the waist, and hurling the hurricane into the faces of their foe, without a
shout, the sky of God, over all, smiling through the windows of the
smoke, upon the scene of Murder!—Ah, there is in every heart, the Instinct
of Carnages and a scene like this, would make a Saint throw down
his cross, and seize a sword!
In the midst of the battle, on a gentle elevation, which commands the
prairie, in every foot of its extent, you see Zachary Taylor, in his brown
coat, mounted on his grey horse, his large eyes, rolling rapidly over the
field. His broad chest swells, as though every impulse of the fight hung
on his breath. You will understand that the scene before him is no
child's play. Defeated, and what will be the fate of his men? Look
yonder in the thicket, and see the bearded Ranchero, mangling the
wounded, whom he has dragged from the field—whom he has stabbed,
killed, stripped—mangling the dead body, and carving its features with
this gory knife!
Defeated,—Zachary Taylor and his men, will be butchered in cold
blood, their faces trampled into the sod of the prairie, mingled with gore.
Therefore, the old man,—styled, old, more in reverence to his rough,
heroic genius, in veneration of his thirty-eight years of service, than in
respect to his years—sits on his familiar grey steed, while his aids in
their gallant military array, speed to and fro, and the Cannon Battle blazes
steadily onward.
For two hours, from two o'clock until four, that terrible battle of cannon
thundering against cannon, continued without one moment's interval
in the steady work of death.
At this moment, we will cross the prairie, and hurry towards the centre
of the Mexican army.
A magnificent cavalier, mounted on a charger as white as snow, with
mane tossing to the battle breeze, is seen, the centre of a brilliant circle
of mounted officers. Over his countenance, marked with the traces of
courage, bronzed by long exposure to the fierce tropical sun, and distinguished
by a bright red mustache, waves a cluster of snow white plumes.
His green uniform, faced with buff, is heavy with ornaments of gold.
As his proud horse, arches his neck, and in fiery eagerness, to join the
battle, curvets over the sod, it must be confessed, that the rider presents
an appearance at once, impressive and chivalric.
It is General Arista, in the midst of his officers, watching the deadly
cannonade.
Among that crowd, glittering in brilliant uniforms, let me ask you to
single out one face, lowering in the brow and unmeaning in the lip; it is
the visage of Ampudia, who boasts of having boiled the head of a dead
enemy[4]
in a cauldron of oil. He is very gaily attired, and his bay horse
is one of the finest in the world, yet it were well for him, to keep out of
the range of the Texan rifles, for there is an old account to settle, and a
record of blood to be blotted out.
Around Arista, the scene is sad and touching.
The earth is crowded with mangled bodies. Here a leg, there an arm,
yonder a head; it is horrible but it is true; the air quivers with death
groans, and amid the deep boom of the cannonade, you hear the mangled
Mexican howl to Jesus, to God, to the [5]
Virgin of Gaudalupe for pity!
“We can never stand this,” exclaims Arista, as a cannon ball, passes
beneath his horse's hoofs—“We must charge! away”—he shouts to an
aid-de-camp—“And tell General Torrejon, to lead his regiment of lancers
against the Right of the enemy—we must take their artillery or be driven
from the field.”
The officer sped away, through the battle clouds, and presently the regiment
of lancers, fifteen hundred strong, were seen moving forward, in
compact order, their array looking very beautiful, very terrible, by the
glare of the cannon light, as with red pennons waving from their fifteen
hundred points of steel, they began to gloom upon the band of Ringgold.
At their head—his helmet glittering in a single ray of sunlight—Torrejon
waved his sword, and pointed toward the conspicuous form of the
Cannon Hero.
Taylor saw their beautiful array and could not help admiring the imposing
march, with which they rehearsed their funeral. A word passed
from the old man's lips, an aid de camp whirled over the field.
In a moment, the Fifth infantry, formed in square, with their bayonets
flashing back the light of fifteen hundred lances, silently awaited the approach
of the formidable lancers. On their right, behold twenty mounted
men, dressed in dark green frocks, with a young man, remarkable for his
determined visage at their head. Captain Walker, and a few of his
iron-chested, death-eyed Texan rifles.
The Lancers come on! The brave Ridgely, with a portion of Ringgold's
battery, prepares to give them a hospitable welcome, He unlimbers
his pieces; in a moment, a hot feast of grape and canister, will
smoke before their nostrils.
And in the midst of the Right Wing, erect on his white steed, his glowing
cheek marking his intense interest, in the course of those lancers, you
behold Major Ringgold.
And all is silent as the Lancers come on. Terrible silence! Look
yonder and see Zachary Taylor's grey eye fixed intently upon their approach—ha!
ha! A shout,—he cannot keep it down—echoes from his
lip, he raises his clenched hand and shouts again.
For all at once the infantry, have poured their fire into the lancer's
faces; Ridgely has delivered his message of grape and cannister; Capfain
Walker, with those twenty battle devils has poured the blaze of his
rifles, into their foremost ranks, and now, with twenty upraised knives,
charges them home.
There is much smoke; there are horrible groans. The smoke clears
away, and you behold the foremost lancers, mown down, horses and men
together, into one bloody mass. Again they form, again the Americans
wait until they can count the buttons on their coats, and the iron shower,
rained hissing from cannon and rifle and musquet, beats a hundred faces
into dust.
Hark? that hurrah! You see Walker alone, with his brave twenty
charging a detachment of the lancers, at least one hundred strong. At
first it looks like a cloud of men, horses and steel, but presently you see
the rifleman's plain uniform, come out, in strong contrast, with the gaudy
lancer's trappings—you mark the flash of the bowie knife and see the
answering stream of blood.
It would have done old Daniel Morgan good, to see this young Walker.
A very unpretending man in appearance, with a sun-burnt face, a form
altogether full of iron sinews, and yet not remarkable for gigantic height;
an arm that strikes suddenly and strikes home. In fact the modern Lee
of the American army, fighting always, on his own account, and flashing
out, in individual deeds of glory.
“Again, my brave comrades” shouted Torrejon, as his horse reared
among heaps of dead—“Charge! Turn their flanks—and the train is ours!”
Advancing over the bodies of their own dead, the Lancers raised once
more their glittering front into light, but the Fifth infantry, a solid wall
of bayonets received them. But on they pressed, the contest deepened,
lances and bayonets were locked together, when the veteran Colonel
Twiggs, his stern visage, manifesting in each lineament, the fever of the
hour, uttered the word of command, and in a moment, another band[6]
marched to the extreme right, their arms glittering in the battle light.
It was too much for the Lancers.
It is true, they thrice outnumbered the American troops, it is true, they
were the flower of Mexican chivalry, but when they saw that wall of
their dead.
At first in good order, squadron by squadron, but this gallant Ridgely
cannot see them depart without a warm farewell; again his batteries
blaze, and yonder in the Mexican ranks—horse and man, go thundering
to the sod together. Even as he directs the fire, the flanks of his horse
are torn in bloody fragments by a cannon ball—they fall to the earth, the
horse, writhing over his prostrate master. It is a fearful moment: Ridgely
is lost! But no! He rises, wipes the blood from his face, and beholds
a frightened horse, plunging before the muzzle of a cannon.
He darts forward, seizes the bridle rein, and in the full blaze of contending
fires, he wheels the maddened horse aside.
Look yonder—a glorious sight! The brilliant uniforms of the lancers
seen through the aperture of that colossal cloud, their steel points, and
red pennons, breaking together, like waves upon a rocky coast.
And Ringgold—where is he?
Unconscious of the fearful destiny, that awaits him, he pours his fire
once more, and by its light, sees whole companies splintered into fragments.
Still, with that sternly compressed lip and eagle eye, he watched
the effect of each discharge, nor hesitated, when he saw glimpses of the
clear sky, through the lanes which he made in the Mexican ranks.
At this moment, the eye of old Zachary, beheld a glorious sight to the
far left.
It was the battery of Duncan, blazing amid the bayonets of the eighth
regiment, and the horses of Captain Ker's dragoons. These horses and
bayonets encircle the battery; you see its steady hurricane, pour in unremitting
fury upon the Mexican ranks.
Note the effect of a single discharge: a band of men, arrayed yonder,
present their beautiful horses, their splendid costume, to the aim of Duncan's.
There is a blaze—a report—a mass of white smoke! Now look
for your chivalric Mexicans, and look until your tired eye sickens with
the sight of blood. By the light of the sun streaming through the battle
blaze, and looking like the eye of a mad debauchee, behold the earth
littered with horses and men, woven through each other, in all the horrible
shapes of pain.
But the battery has no heart—it only seems to know that the Mexicans
are yonder, that they are in the way of old Zachary, and then swearing
its awful thunder oath, it cuts them down.
Yet, do not think that the Mexican cannonade spends all its fury in
air! No! Could the mothers, the sailors, the wives, scattered through the
American Union, at this hour, thinking fondly of their beloved ones, at
this moment, behold them, they would see the tall rank grass, waving
over their mangled forms, undulating to each pulse of pain, while the
cannon shot, cannot altogether drown the cry of agony.
Even as our hearts writhe within us, at the horrible chorus of groans,
which fills the air, the cannon of Duncan communicates its blaze, to the tall
prairie grass, which dried and blasted, waves before their muzzles, and
withers into flame. Such a glorious flame! Over the plain, across the
space between the armies, like a flash of lightening it hisses along, burning
the cold faces of the dead to cinder, and crowding the prairie with a
mass of fire, that blazes far overhead, in a thousand points of light.
Then a dense smoke rolls up between the armies, shutting them from
each others view, and like the curtain of the theatre, closing the first act
of the glorious drama of Palo Alto.
And amid those clouds of smoke, which hide the foemen from each
other's sight, and all at once, silence the voices of battle—all but the
groans—you may see the bronzed visage of Zachary, lightened by a
smile, and gleaming gladly from the large grey eyes.
Far to the south,—aye, through the dense folds of smoke you hear it
—comes a murmuring yet welcome sound. The Mexicans are retreating
from the field, to form a new line of battle under the cover of the smoky
pall! With two thousand untried men, Taylor has beaten back six
thousand of the bravest veterans of Mexico. Taylor and his heroes
have done it: Taylor and Duncan, and Twiggs, and Ridgely and Churchill
and Ringgold, have forced the tri-color to give way before the Banner
of the Stars.
There is a pause in the dim of battle, a mighty breathing time in the
work of blood. While the Mexicans form their new line, beyond this
gloomy pall, let us take the ground which they occupied, not ten minutes
since.
Let the Banners of the regiments advance! Then Churchill's two
eighteen pounders move forward drawn by twenty yoke of oxen, complacent
beasts, who put their hoofs on dead men's faces, and crop the tall rank
grass, as they walk peacefully along.
But the wounded—yes! God pity them, we must bear them gently to
the rear, and keep stout hearts within us, for here are sights to wring the
soul of the strong man, and shame his scarred cheek with womanish
tears!
To the rear with the wounded—yes, American and Mexican, with
brows bleeding and limbs crushed, with the breath rattling through the
pierced lungs, and the mouth choked with blood—bear them to the rear?
Rather face the burst of Ringgold's cannon, than witness sights like these,
—who would not? For the dead we do not care.
Care; no! They may lie upon their faces, biting mouthfuls of bloody
dust, they may rest upon their backs glaring with stony eyes, upon that
cloud, which covers them, like a pall, they may be torn in pieces, here a
grisly head, and there an arm.—They who have wives or mothers, or sisters,
Pain, want, the world itself, to them, are now but empty names, for
they are dead.
But the wounded, oh, have you the heart to gaze upon them, as they
pass by, in the arms of sturdy living men?
A young soldier, with his coat thrown open, and the gash from the
throat to the waist laid bare. A very boy, pale and clammy in the delicate
features, his arms and legs dangling over the ground, as they bear
him away. He faced the battle, with a quickening pulse and boyish
shout, but now, in his delirium, he only mutters certain childish words
about his Sister and his Home!
Then a strong man is borne along, his skull laid open by a chain-shot.
Howling, mad with pain, he blasphemes his God, and reaches forth his
arms to choke the wounded Mexican, who, shrieking in ludicrous English
for “Water!” is carried by his side.
But now, the Soldiers to whom this sad duty is entrusted, approach a
form, hidden in the tall grass—an old man—
Yet, ere we gaze upon him, and hear words which will fill our eyes,
and make our hearts beat quicker, let me tell you a Legend of two worlds.
There was a night, when a solitary lamp burned in the Imperial Palace
of Fontainebleu. The gardens around were dark; the halls within desolate;
the fountains hushed. The Palace wore the aspect of a Tomb. It
seemed as though a cloud of mourning hung over its wide roofs and
towers: mourning for the crimes and miseries of France. The sceptre
was about departing from her hands, the laurel from her brows.
Along this corridor of the deserted palace, before a narrow doorway,
stalks the sentinel, his stealthy tread scarce arousing the ghost of an echo.
All is dark around him, yet as he approaches the deep-embayed window,
at the end of the corridor, you see the costume of a soldier clothing his
broad chest, the musquet of a veteran in his grasp. And as he walks
along, looking earnestly toward the narrow door—now pausing to listen—
he utters a subdued groan, and the tears stream down his rugged cheeks.
Within that door burns the solitary lamp of Fontainebleu. It is a small
door, and yet it leads into a spacious chamber, furnished with all the luxury
of Imperial grandeur. The hangings are of rich purple, spotted with
golden bees; the carpet glows with the dyes of oriental art; the bed is
worthy to be pressed by a young and beautiful woman, that woman the
Bride of an Emperor.
Its curtains of deep azure are gathered on the summit, in the beak of a
golden eagle—the Eagle of France.
Near the bed stands a small desk, on which the light is placed. Beside
the desk, the carpet is littered with maps and charts, and the gleam of a
half-sheathed sword arrests your eye.
As you wander through the room, wondering at this magnificence, which
the faint light invests with a graveyard gloom, starting at the echo of yon
step, which makes you shudder, you know not why, there is a movement
among the curtains of the bed, and from its shadows a half-naked man
struggles painfully into the light.
With the curtains surmounting him like a frame, he sits on the edge of
the bed, a loose dressing gown falling about his limbs. One hand dropped
by his side, grasps a phial; the other, in a gesture expressive of physical
exhaustion, rests languidly on the desk.
His head is downcast; the light falls on a forehead remarkable for its
massive outline, and reveals his large eyes, with ghastly blue circles underneath.
His cheeks are sallow, his lips white—the entire appearance
of that face, indicates a great soul sinking in the apathy of despair, a vigorous
body withering into hopeless torpor.
He sits there, on the edge of the imperial couch, grasping the phial in
his right hand, while his head sinks nearer to his breast. Not a word
passes his lips—a sense of desolation seems to enclose him, and press
down upon him, as the coffin lid shuts in the corse.
That man is called Napoleon.
Do not start and wonder, for only a few days since, a battle was fought
called Waterloo.
Alone in his deserted palace, alone, while the Idiots of Royalty, the
Bourbons, are coming back to Paris and to this Fontainebleu, on barbarian
bayonets,—alone with the despair of his great heart—this Man has taken
poison, but he cannot die.
For, as I said a moment ago, his Name is Napoleon. His mighty life
demands a sublime death-bed. An Island-Rock in the midst of an Ocean,
can alone afford a couch for his dying hour.
He has taken poison but cannot die, for Destiny does not forget her
child.
A few days ago, he pressed this couch, with a young and beautiful
woman by his side, a lovely child smiling upon his face, his own image,
hallowed by the outlines of infancy. Only a few days, and he walked
these halls an Emperor, with crowds of liveried Lords—the parasites
whom the justice of the Revolution had spared, the Generals who had
won their titles on the battlefield—Lords, I say, and Dukes and Princes,
doing him the commonest offices of menial service.
Where is the wife now? The child? Where the long lines of liveried
Princes, who did honor to the Emperor? Where the Generals and Marshals
of France, who had flashed into Kings at his word?
The wife—what better could we expect from royal blood, cankered by
the scrofula of a thousand years—has fled, taking with her the Child of
Napoleon. The Princes in livery, are even now, making their peace with
the Russian Barbarian, and doing homage to that immortal British Mistake,
My Lord Wellington.
And Nepoleon is left alone, to die, with the poison phial in his hand!
As wrapped in the apathy of despair, he crouches on the edge of the
imperial bed, he hears the sentinel's footstep, and starts to his feet. That
sound is strange to him—it speaks of the Camp, which after all, was
Napoleon's only Throne. He rises, opens the door, calls.
The Sentinel enters; you see him by the dim light, a man of some
forty years, with Aboukir, Moscow, Austerlitz, written on his bronzed
face. His dark green uniform is miserably worn, and hideously patched
with blood. A thick dark moustache covers his upper lip, and hides its
tremor.
You see him, tall and erect, stand before the Fallen Destiny, that man
in the dressing gown, with the marks of poison on his god-like face.
“Who bade you watch here?”—his voice is harsh, abrupt.
“My heart, Sire!” says the soldier, whose twenty years of service,
have left him where he began —in the ranks.
There was something in the voice of the soldier, that went straight to
Napoleon's heart.
“Your heart? Nonsense! All have deserted me—why not you?”
“It is not true, Sire,” and the Soldier rose powerfully erect—“All have
not deserted you! These lords, these princes, these dukes—Sacre!
They could not desert you, for they were never with you. But the
People, Sir, the People were with you, always with you—they are with
you now! Look you, Sire—these tears! I—weep—I, who never wept
when I saw Moscow's flame upon your face,—nor shed one tear when
Waterloo flung its clouds upon your brow—I weep now! To see you
thus, when at a word from your lips, forty thousand men, who watch
around this palace, would tear the hearts from their bodies, to serve you!
Come, Sire, say the word, and we'll raise the Eagle again!”
The head of Napoleon sunk upon his breast. The broken appeal of
that soldier stirred his leaden apathy into tears.
“Your name?”
“I have fought so long in the ranks, by a name which my comrades
gave me, that I have almost forgotten the name which my father bore,
which I took with me from my native village twenty years ago. Call
me Comrade Joseph, Sire!”
“In the ranks?” cried Napoleon—“With your years of service! What!
No Cross, no badge of honor? No token of merit? No reward?”
“Wrong, Sire, again! After Austerlitz, as I lay mangled near your
horse's feet, you pointed to me, and muttered, `Poor fellow! He has
fought bravely!' I have been rewarded.”
He brought his musquet down upon the rich carpet, with a sound like
thunder, by way of adding emphasis to his words. It is not to be concealed,
fallen Emperor opened a secret drawer of his desk.
“Come hither, Comrade Joseph—all whom I ever made rich by princely
gifts, have deserted me. You—to whom I never gave so much as a sou,
you, whose services of twenty years have been passed unrewarded by,
you are true, when all the world is false. Joseph, I have no Cross to
give—for the Legion of Honor is dead. Joseph, speak! Will you accept
a name from me —”
“Sire —” the Soldier gasped, with choking utterance.
“Take from the fallen Emperor, the name of Joseph Austerlitz!
Here is a picture—my picture—wear it next your heart, Joseph, and treat
it better than its last possessor—” he bowed his head and veiled his face
from the light—“My Empress, Maria Louisa, left it, when she fled
from me!”
And at midnight, in the silent palace of Fontainebleu, did the fallen
Man of Destiny hang round the veteran soldier's neck, that golden chain,
to which was attached his own picture, with its god-like forehead, and
large, eloquent eyes.
On the field of Palo Alto, amid the tall rank grass, behold an aged man,
whose hair and mustache white as the driven snow, contrast strongly with
his bronzed and battle-worn face. His blue uniform, thrown open across
the breast, reveals the death-wound; you see his blue eyes roll from side
to side, and hear the air rattling in his mangled chest.
His stiffening fingers grasp his short artillerist sword, as with his face
to the sky, or rather toward the cloud of prairie smoke, he bites his lips,
and chokes down the involuntary groan of pain.
“Comrade,” exclaim the soldiers, whose place it is to bear the wounded
to the rear, “We are sorry to see you in this condition —” and the sight
of the old man's head, baptized with the snows of seventy years, held
them spell-bound to the spot.
He raised himself on one arm—venerable sight! His broad chest was
bared; they could see, written in that scar near the throat, the word
Moscow.
The bronzed face, marked on each cheek, and over the brow, with the
traces of long healed wounds, spoke eloquently of Aboukir, Marengo,
Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Perchance some memory of these glorious names, was busy at his
heart, perchance the thought of France, came up to him in this moment
of agony, but he merely said —
“Go on comrades! It is but an old man lost!”—And fell back dead.
Near his wound a golden chain sparkled into light, and beneath that
wound, rising with the last pulsation of his heart, appeared the portrait of
Napoleon.
Thus, on the sod of the battle-field, miry with blood, are drawn many
pictures of wild and contrasted interest.
Near the corse of the soldier of Napoleon, a child of Poland breathes
his last, and yonder, an old man, in plain farmer's costume, sits amid the
long grass, holding on his knee, a boy not more than nineteen years old,
whose pale cheek, and closed lids, and smiling lips, announce a long and
peaceful sleep.
It needs no words, to indicate the tie which binds these two together.
An old farmer of Texas, who left his plough for the rifle, and took with
him, to battle, his only son!
His only son! The old man wipes his brow with the back of his hand,
and looks upon that serene face, smiling upon him, in its calm slumber.
His sunburnt face is unruffled by an emotion, still you may distinguish an
almost imperceptible twitching of the nether lip, while the veins of his
bared throat swell, until they resemble cords of steel.
His only son. Dying, not with convulsive howls of pain, but calmly
as an infant goes to sleep. The agitation of the old man, finds vent at
last in these rude words, spoken hurriedly, without a tear, yet with husky
utterance:
“Your Mother, boy, what 'll I say to her, when I go home, and see
her standing in the door and askin' for—you? She'll ask whar you ar',
and what can I say?”
And unable to hold the agony that was clasping him, the old man
wrapped his huge arm about the dead boy and wept terribly; as only a
strong man can weep.
It was now four o'clock. The sun was sinking in the west: his disc,
like an immense globe of fire, glared through the darkening cloud of battle
smoke. The Americans have advanced, yes, through the fire and smoke
of the burning prairie, you may see on the very spot, when an hour ago,
floated the tri-color of Mexico, now waving proudly the Banner of the
Stars.
Calmly reining his old grey horse, in the very centre of the late battle-field,
stout-hearted Zachary prepares for the second fight of Palo Alto. A
sad, a terrible prospect meets his eye beneath his horse's feet—the earth
harrowed by cannon balls, and miry with blood. But around him—ah,
that is the sight to stir the old man's heart, even through the gathering
shadows, the bayonets gleam like shattered rays of light.
On his right, he beholds Ringgold's cannon, backed by the hearts and
steel of the heroic Fourth. Beyond the cannon you behold the Fifth
Regiment, their bayonets glittering on the extreme right of the newly
formed line. Far on the left the unwearied Duncan repairs the wounds,
which his battery has endured, and brings forth fresh stores of powder
and ball, for the last fight of Palo Alto.
Churchill is not idle, you may be sure; he is teaching his terrible
eighteen pounders, how to speak in the coming battle.
To the south, the prospect stirs the General's blood. Through those
vast curtains of prairie smoke, now descending upon the fiery sod like a
pall, and now undulating like mists about the mountain top, he sees the
long line of Mexican arms, glitter far over the plain, into the shadows of
the chaparral.
“Arista has chosen his last position!” said the General, with one of
his quiet smiles.
Flutter, Banner of the Stars, flutter beautifully, and fling forth your belts
of scarlet and snow, for all that is left of the two thousand men, looks up
to you with hope, as the trumpet of battle shrieks along the breeze!
And from the Mexican line—look! That volume of flame, streaming
through the smoke of the burning prairie—hark! That hurricane of
iron balls!
Around the cannon of Ringgold, the fury of the Mexican battle descends,
in a whirlwind of cannister and grape. Arista smiles, as from afar he
surveys the effect of his fire: for every discharge flings a shower of blood
into the faces of living men, and from the solid ranks, picks out brave
forms and crushes them into the grave, dug by the cannon ball at their feet.
Behold the gallant Fourth; hear the howl of pain, as bayonet after
bayonet sinks to rise in its owner's hands no more.
It was in the heat of this terrible fire, that a scene took place, which
for its strong lights and dark shadows, has no parallel in history. Let us
behold the picture, framed as it is, in the smoke of the burning prairie.
We stand on this space of sward, burnt and blackened by the heat of
battle. Before us glooms the terrible eighteen pounders, which all day
long, have thundered their message of death into the Mexican ranks.
Around those cannon extends a circle of manly chests and glittering
steel. You see them, there, the heroes of the day, standing amid the dead
bodies of their comrades. Three figures in the picture, standing out from
all others, rivet our eyes.
Churchill, standing erect, near his cannon, his face begrimed with
powder and stained with blood. By his side Payne, the Inspector General,
a man of gallant presence, whose uniform, as yet unstained with blood,
glitters gaily in the light, as bending down he `sights' one of the remorseless
eighteen pounders, and prepares to hurl its hurricane of iron into the
Mexican army.
In the open space, near the cannon, behold the prominent figure of the
picture—a warrior, mounted on a white horse, his head thrown proudly
erect on his shoulders, as with a gleaming eye, he gazes upon the battle.
It is a beautiful horse, with neck arched, and mane fluttering to the
breeze.
That manly form, enveloped in the blue costume, relieved by ornaments
of gold, that stern face, surmounted by the helmet, over which descends
the shower of waving plumes, that broad chest, heaving with the fever of
the fight—it is a magnificent picture of manhood in its prime.
At this moment you behold Churchill standing erect, Payne bending
over the cannon, the soldier on the white horse lifts his helmet, and a ray
of sunlight warms his pale, high forehead.
Then the eighteen pounders yell forth their battle cry, and the soldier
on the white horse, is enveloped in a cloud of smoke. At the same moment,
the thunder of the Mexican cannon is heard, you see that cloud of
smoke, mingled with a cloud of dust, roused by a shower of iron balls.
The smoke is there, rolling slowly—not toward the sky—but downward,
until it shuts the soldiers and the cannon from your view.
A moment passes, and from the bosom of that smoke, shrieks a yell,
which makes your blood run cold.
And from that cloud, writhes into view, the figure of a mangled horse
—the beautiful steed which we beheld only a moment ago—his limbs
quivering, his eye horribly dilating, his flanks gored through and through
by a cannon ball.
The saddle is red with blood, and the pistols splintered from the holsters,
fall in fragments by the side of the dying horse.
But the rider—the man of the noble form, and white forehead, gleaming
in the sun?
You hear, from the bosom of that cloud, a low, and almost unutterable
groan, and then from its folds, there rushes a rude soldier, his form bared
to the waist, darkened by powder, while his rough features are stamped
with an expression of horrible agony.
“Colonel,” he shrieks rushing toward the gallant Payne,—“Look
there!”
He points to the sod, and every soldier in the group, utters a cry of
horror.
There, beside the writhing horse, you behold the soldier, who but a
moment ago, towered in all the pride of manhood. Horribly wounded,
with the bones of each leg laid bare, from the knee to the thigh, he rests
his head upon his hand, while a serene smile steals over his stern
visage.
“Leave me,” he calmly says to Payne, to Churchill, to the soldiers
who clustered round him. “There is work for you yonder! You must
drive the Mexicans before you, and save our comrades at Fort Brown!”
He reached forth his arm, and laid it upon the neck of his steed, which
quivered in its death agony by his side. Then, with that calm smile
stealing over his features, as they glowed in the red light of the cannon
flash, he took the chain from his neck, and with it the gold watch—
“Give it,” he said and his voice trembled for a moment, as the memories
sister. It will serve to remind her of Palo Alto and—
As if afraid to trust his tongue with further words, he said no more,
but laid his head upon the neck of his steed, while his wounds poured
their torrents of blood along the sod.
As for the officers who stood round him, they could not speak. In the
description of the varied scenes of a battle, we meet with many that
rend the heart, but to hear told, but this, before the eyes of Churchill and
Payne, was the most heart-rending, the most touching of all.
Ringgold dying on the neck of his dead steed.
Payne near his head, clasping his hands, as his full heart gushed to his
eyes. Churchill by his side, on his knees, veiling his face in his hands,
unable to gaze upon the sight. In the background the line of soldiers,
all awed into silence, by the spectacle before them. In front of all, a
rugged fellow, his form bared to the waist, stained with powder, as he
lifts his brawny arms to his face and shrieks the name of Ringgold, with
deep sobs.—As long as the name of the hero remains, would live the
name of that brave teamster Kelly, who although his time expired the
night before the battle, preferred to remain by his commander's side, and
die with him, or worse than all the horrors of battle,—see him die.—
In the midst of the awe-stricken spectators, curtained by the battle
clouds, the dying man was stretched upon the neck of his horse. The
cannon balls rent the earth every moment, but the steed lay still, and the
dying man did not stir. Ever and anon, as the clouds above rolled away,
the full light of the setting sun poured upon his pale forehead, and lighted
his face as with a glory.
And while the revolutionary blood of John Cadwallader, pouring from
the veins of Ringgold, crimsons the battle-field, who shall dare pierce the
shadows of that far off home, and gaze upon the Sister's face,—illumined
by the same sunset that glows over the face of the dying man—as wrapt
in a day-dream, she sees her absent brother, mounted on his own gallant
steed—sees him, come from the wars, the laurel upon his white forehead,
the glow of victory upon his battle worn cheek! Dream on sister of the
hero, dream on, Sister of Ringgold; not many weeks will pass, before
the watch and chain, placed in your hands, and stained with his dying
blood, will make your heart swell with agony too deep for tears, as you
think of the corse, which sleeps upon the sands near the Ocean Wave!
And at the very hour, when the Sister of Ringgold, thinks of the absent
brother in another home of our land, a wife sitting in the silence of her
chamber, rests her pale, beautiful cheek, upon her white hand, while the
dark eyes, fire with tender light as she pictures the form of a brave soldier,
now far away on the field of battle. How he will return, how she
and bury her head upon his bosom—she thinks of it all!
At this hour, amid the mist of Palo Alto, not one hundred yards from
the spot where Ringgold fell, that husband writhes upon the dust, his
limbs quivering in the blood, which pours from his wound, and swells in
little pools, where the horse's hoofs have broken the sod. A horrible, a
ghastly wound! The whole lower jaw torn off by a cannon ball, that
manly face, in a single moment, wrecked into deformity!
Days pass; the wife hears that her husband has been wounded in the
fight of Palo Alto.
At once she leaves her home, and hurries, like a dove through the cloud,
to the distant battle field. Over the mountains, and across the rivers, on
ship-board, she hastens to his side, hungering to behold him, to pillow his
head upon her breast once more. But a strange chance separates them,
or—can we doubt it? Providence wished to spare her yet awhile, the
full cup of agony.
While the mangled husband is borne to New Orleans, the wife is on
the gulf, hurrying toward the field of Palo Alto. She retraces her way,
and pinioned by her love, resumes her Pilgrimage, a holier pilgrimage
than was ever made by the devotee to the gilded shrine, for it was the pilgrimage
of a faithful wife to the couch of a wounded husband.
At last, she beholds him. Well may the heart of the Painter grow
sick, as his pencil delineates that scene of all the scenes the most heart-rending.
A door was opened; the wife stood quivering on the threshold.
“Enter”—they said—“Your husband is here!”
She entered, trembling all the while. Through the closed curtains, a
soft light stole round the place. It was very quiet, very dim, aye, filled
with shadows, broken by threads of sunshine and breathlessly still.
“My husband here?”—And with that volume of her woman's faith,
glowing over her cheek and gleaming through her tears, she advanced,
gathering her hands to her breast, for the swelling heart, seemed choking
the life within her.
“Where is he?” she said, standing on tip-toe, in the centre of that
darkened room, and look! as with her arms outspread, her pale face
turned from yonder sofa, and turned toward the light she listens.
Where is he? Ah, that groan, scarcely audible, sounding like a sigh
from the dying, as their lips are muffled by the cold hand of death.
She turns and gazes into the shadows of the chamber. The sofa
stands in that recess, and by degrees, the form of a man clad in undress
military costume, breaks on her eye.
But that cloth upon the face, that thing white as snow, falling over the
brow, and covering the features, as the shroud covers the heart of the
dead? What does it mean? A white hand is extended—“My Wife!”
arms are stretched forth, to clasp her home to the husband's heart.
Then looking tremblingly up, she beholds the white cloth hanging about
the face of her husband, and with her heart bursting in a flood of tears,
learns at a glance the fearful truth. She may not look upon the husband's
face. Those features which once won her love, with their chivalric
manhood, are now a mass of ruins. The husband seems to feel that
her eyes are upon his veiled face, and utters one long and prolonged groan
of anguish, as he clutches her to his heart.
The last scene of this sad history! Beneath the smile of the morning
sky, on the deck of a steamboat, which dashes the waters of the Missouri
from its prow, two figures, rivet the eyes of a weeping crowd: a dying
husband resting on the breast of a faithful wife, who even in this dread
hour, may not see those features which she loved so well, for upon the
brow and the shattered face still rests the white cloth, fluttering to the
last impulse of the warrior's breath.[7]
Gazing from the centre of his new line of battle, Arista marked with
undisguised complacency, the fire of his artillery, poured in all its concentrated
fury upon the Right Wing of the American army. As the battlelight
lit up his swarthy face, he turned his eyes to the sun—shining like a
thing of evil omen, through the dark clouds—and exclaimed, “It shall not
set before I have crushed these Americans on the field, and made them
feel the Invaders fate in the chaparral!”
His fire had wreaked all its fury upon the right wing. He now resolved
to carry the field by one brilliant effort. Yonder on the left of the
American line, beyond the smoke of the burning prairie, you behold the
train of the little army, a prize which Arista swears shall be his own,
before the setting of the sun.
At once, the glittering officers of his staff were seen hurrying over the
field. The point of attack had been the right, it was now to be suddenly
changed, and the left of the American line was to feel the last desperate
blow, stricken by the Mexican host.
The orders of Arista produced an effect like magic. His right wing,
infantry and cavalry, in magnificent array, advanced with one impulse,
toward the unprotected left of the American army. It was a sight that
would have stirred your blood, to see them come on. Men, horses, lances
and bayonets, locked together, like an immense engine of battle murder,
moved suddenly to the attack. You see their horses moving proudly on,
you hear the dead, sullen tramp of the infantry, you see the tri-color wave,
their red flags flutter against the southern sky.
Arista's white horse is seen rearing proudly, as his rider, already feels
the throb of victory pulsate in his veins. He has caught that rough old
Zachary at last. He knows not that Ringgold has fallen, nor that Page
lies a mangled wreck upon the ground, but he has seen the effect of his
deadly fire upon the right wing.[8]
He knows, that with all his dead and
dying, counted twice over, he still twice outnumbers Zachary Taylor and
his Men. To add to his joy, but a moment ago he saw that terrible Duncan,
who, all day long had poured his hurricane of iron from the left,
suddenly whirl along the American line, and with his horses, his men, his
cannon, disappear in the clouds toward the right. He has gone to supply
the place of Ringgold—it is evident that the train is the prize of Arista,
that the left wing will be turned and hurled back upon the right, that
Zachary Taylor and his men, will soon—aye, ere fifteen minutes have
passed—be prisoners of war.
And in the Mexican dialect, a Prisoner of War, means a Man who is
to be hurled into a dungeon, or shot like a dog, or cut to pieces with assassins'
knives.
In this proud moment, as men and horses and steel—that solid mass of
battle—moved toward the left wing, their joy broke forth, in the music of
a full band. You see that immense column of advancing cavalry, under
the command of Don Cayetano Montero, one of those brave gentleman,
splendid in his dress and musical in his name. In front of this column,
attired in burning scarlet, the band of the army advance, their instruments
stirring the blood of at least three thousand men, into madness, as they
blaze in the light like pieces of burnished gold. O, sweetly, O, sadly, O,
terribly that music rose into heaven, with every varied note of joy and
woe, as though it spoke of blood and tears, of Mexican mothers robbed of
their sons, and of American soldiers, who soon would bite the sod, with
their clenched teeth, and feel the hoofs of the horses trampling over their
breasts.
That man is to be pitied, who has not felt his blood dance, at the music
of a battle band. Even in the streets of the every-day city, it makes your
veins swell with frenzy. But when it comes from a band, who walk
calmly on, in front of an advancing army,—Death before and Death behind
them—when in the intervals of the drum's thunder and the trumpet's peal,
you hear the moan of pain, the short, quick cry of the dying, then this
music of a battle band, makes the blood run riot. You hunger for the
battle, and grow thirsty for human blood.
They advance in their beautiful order, secure in the confidence of victory,
warrior in yonder ranks, whose name is Zachary Taylor.
As they come on, a dark mass is seen moving through the clouds of
prairie smoke. Like a dark shadow within the cloud, it moves from the
right to the left of the American line, it grows larger and wider, spreading
forth through the smoke, like the pinions of an immense bird.
As one man, the Mexicans halt, falling back, rank on rank with a sudden
recoil, and a crash like the smothered thunder of a volcano. For that
Cloud, moving rapidly through the prairie smoke, begins to resolve itself
into shape. It begins to grow into form. From its bosom, uprearing
into the battle light, the heads of horses start into view. A rumbling
sound from that cloud, a murmur as of wheels passing over a burnt and
cindered sod, and then the brazen cannon flash into light. Then, amid
the flashing of dragoon scimiters and the circling light of bayonets, appears
the face of Duncan, black with powder, stained with blood, and terrible to
behold, for it says to the whole line of Mexico,—We are here—here to
receive you! We have seen Ringgold in his blood, and Taylor on his
grey steed! Ringgold tells us, with his dying voice, that there is work
for us ahead—Taylor bids us to end this battle, and we have come to
do it!
Arista saw them come and ground his teeth. But they did not give
him breathing time, those men of iron. Dashing from the cloud, they
arrayed their cannon in battle order, and fired. At the moment, when the
sturdy cannoniers lifted the match, you might hear the full chorus of the
Mexican band, and admire their beautiful array—their uniform blushing
scarlet, their burnished instruments flashing in the lurid light.
That cannon shout drowned their music forever. They were arrayed
in the very front, and received the battle blast in all its fury. Crushed to
the earth—not in mere poetical phrase—literally hewn away by the hail
of cannister and shell, they strewed the ground, shattered trumpets and
mangled heads, broken drums and torn bodies, mingled in one bloody pool.
It was the most horrible scene of the whole battle.
For a moment, the Mexican array quivered in every platoon, as with
one electric horror of that sight. Then with their shouts of revenge, with
their banners waving and their lances poised and bayonets fixed, they
moved forward—no music sounded this time—gradually accelerating their
pace, until an irresistible impulse seem to hurl them in one mass upon
the foe.
But Duncan was there to receive them. As they came on, he showered
once more his iron hail. Here a shell, hurled blazing from his cannon's
throat, alighted amid a circle of brave lancers, and scattered man and
horse into fragments of flesh and pools of blood. Yonder, the infantry
come charging with fixed bayonets; their green uniform and swarthy
faces tinted with red battle light. They near the guns, with a shout they
and when it clears away, you see them no more.
It was a fearful sight to see the wreck accomplished by Duncan's cannon.
Back, over the mangled forms and shattered instruments of their own
musicians, he hurled the formidable lancers, back, over the faces of their
slaughtered infantry, back, with that iron shower tearing their pennons,
splintering their spears, cutting lanes into their woven ranks, he hurled
the chivalry of Mexico, until the shadows of the chaparral alone, saved
the wreck of their glittering array.
—Taylor, viewing the scene from the saddle of his steed, turned to an
officer and coolly said, “the day is won.”—
—Arista beheld it with an expression of overwhelming chagrin, and
looked for Ampudia to head another charge, but that brave man, who had
boiled a human head from mere vivacity, was gone. Perchance, the
visage of Captain Walker, that unassuming young man, who always received
the Mexicans with Kentuckian warmth, scared the hero of the boiling
cauldron from the field?—
Again, mustering his forces for a last, a forlorn charge, Don Cayetano
De Montero came from the chaparral, with his lancers formed once more
in battle order. They moved to the attack with admirable regularity. The
battery of Duncan had, in the meantime, advanced one hundred yards, the
cannon wheels forcing a path through Mexican dead. De Montero came
on, but in the same moment, the setting sun shone over his spears, the
prairie cloud buried them in smoke, and then the hurricane of shell and
canister crushed through their ranks again.
By that mingled light, the setting sun shining its level rays through the
intervals of the clouds, and the cannon blaze, casting its red glare toward
the sky, until the smoke rolled to and fro in wreaths of crimson, you
might see the last picture of this battle day.
The wreck of six thousand brave men in full retreat, over a space of
prairie three miles in extent, their scattered legions seen through the folds
of the curtaining clouds.
Squadron crowding back on squadron, one column communicating its
panic to another in the rear, until the battle became a rout, the cannonade
a chase. In one place, a battalion of retreating horse crushes down a mass
of foot-soldiers, and over their mangled bodies, scours away from that terrible
blaze of Duncan's cannon. In another, two bands of horse and foot,
stricken with the panic, and flying in an opposite direction from the field,
became entangled and rocked to and fro like an immense wave, their arms
glittering like spray. Not a moment passed before their contest was over.
A wide lane splintered through their ranks by the cannon balls, and paved
with the faces of the dead, divided them into two bodies again, who fled
from each other's sight, as though a Plague stalked between them.
It was at this moment, when for the space of two miles, the prairie was
scene took place, in every way worthy of this day of chivalry and blood.
Arista reined his white horse on the edge of the chaparral, and beheld
his broken army, in all the panic of a retreat. Upon their frightened
ranks rolled the full volume of Duncan's batteries. A space of earth,
some hundred yards in extent, was illumined by the setting sun, shining
through the clouds. Around that space all was dim and shadowy; it
shone from the twilight of the field, like a broach of gold, set in a mantle
of rich brown. Into this illuminated space, thundered the cannon of Duncan,
pursuing a body of Mexicans, who, crowding upon each other, hurried
wildly toward the chaparral. You see the cannon unlimbered, arrayed
in battle order; the half naked cannoniers are ready; in a moment,
that band of Mexicans, at least five hundred in number, will be torn by
the cannister, and blown to pieces by the shell.
At this moment, a solitary horseman breaks from the Mexican ranks,
and holding a white flag above his head, speeds rapidly toward the foremost
of the American cannon. He rides a beautiful dark bay, whose eye
rolls with the madness of battle, as he sweeps with his master, right into
the muzzles of the formidable battery.
It is a young man with the dark hair flying back from his brow, with
the green uniform, thrown aside from his muscular throat, with the sunlight
playing freely over himself and his bay steed. For a moment the
cannoniers ceased, while a murmur of admiration ran along the American
line. He came on a message of peace, that gallant youth, for fluttering
over his head the white flag stood out against the sky.
Near and nearer; they can discern his features, see the wild light flashing
in his eye. Not fifty yards from the muzzle of the foremost cannon,
he thunders on. Look! He rises in his stirrups, he flings the white flag
from his bosom, he tears from his breast another flag—the Tri-color of
Mexico!
“Now!” he shouts in Spanish, his dark face convulsed with passion,
the frenzy of despair, as he waved that flag and crashed on, to the very
muzzle of the cannon—“Now! Let your cannon blaze—I am ready!”
The cannon spoke, and its smoke encircled him like a curtain. Every
man held his breath as the cloud rolled away. The Mexican and his
horse were gone, and the sod was covered with the fragments of gory
flesh, mingled with the shreds of a tri-colored flag.
But the object of the gallant Boy, was gained. The last of the retreating
Mexicans, had time to disappear in the chaparral, as the death rushed
upon him. Many an eye was wet along the American line, as among
the grass appeared that youthful face, smiling in death amid the ruins of
his mangled body, while far away into the crimson cloud rolled the echoes
of the Last Shot of Palo Alto.
Night came down on Palo Alto, and beside a grey steed stood an old
man, leaning on his sheathed sword, his uncovered head bent upon his
breast, as his large eyes, shone with unusual light. The monuments of
the fight—corses, arms and wounded—were scattered around him. Above
his head, hung that thin mist, pestilential with the smell of gunpowder,
and through its veil shone the glad light of the evening star. Officers and
soldiers formed a circle round the old man, leaning on his sword. All
crimsoned with the traces of the fight, all darkened by the stain of powder,
they stood in silence, their heads uncovered in respect to that old man.
He drew his sheathed sword along the sod, with an involuntary gesture.
His heart was too full for words. That day, deeds had been done, which
history would never be tired of telling, deeds that would make her say in
one breath, Washington and Taylor.
Therefore the old man stood in silence, his heart too full for words,
while with his head drooped, he mechanically made circles with the end
of his sword on the cindered sod.
At last he spoke—
“I think,” he said, as the evening star, like a good omen, shone over
his brow—“I think that we will reach Fort Brown.”
It was then that the fullness of the soldiers' hearts, found vent in words.
Even as the soldiers of Napoleon hailed their young leader, standing amid
the trophies of battle, by the name of the Little Corporal, so on the field
of Palo Alto, the heroes of that day baptized Zachary Taylor with a
name, warm from their hearts. A common soldier, feeling his heart swell
with emotions that he could not speak, pointed to the old man, and blundered
forth his admiration in three words, which leapt from lip to lip,
until they grew into a thunder shout—
“Rough and Ready!”
Night came down upon the beleagued Fort, and the town of Matamoras.
Crowding to the shore, the people had heard that terrible cannonade,
continued for two hours, and in the Fort, the voice of Taylor's guns, came
like the trumpet peal of hope. All day long the shower of shot and shell
had rained its fury on the little band, but now, crowding to the ramparts
they raised their voices in a thunder shout.
A wounded soldier, who had rent his way through the Mexican lines,
came tottering toward the Fort, shouting as the blood poured from his
wounds—“Taylor is coming! Do not give it up now! The old man is
on his way, and will be here!”
Then a shout went up again, which reached the ears of the veteran
Brown, who resting in his rude couch, racked by pain, lifted up his head
and exclaimed—“I knew that he would come!”
And by the light of the setting sun, and by the first gleam of the Evening
star, masses of Mexican cavalry and infantry might be seen crossing
for the disgrace of their flag.
It was a beautiful thing to see them glitter by thousands on the river,
while the damsels of Matamoras waved them farewell with their white
scarfs. It was a grand spectacle, their compact masses of horse, fresh as
their riders, and as eager for battle, march in battle array, from the river
to the shadows of the chaparral. They were hurrying to the aid of
Arista—to-morrow, a new wall of cannon, horses, men and steel, woven
together, as with bands of iron, would intervene between old Zachary and
Fort Brown. Beautiful it was, I say, to see the going forth of this
army—
But the coming back?
The heart grows cold to think of it.—Angel of death, hovering over
those legions, with the light of the evening star, upon your livid brow,
tell us, have you the heart to enter Matamoras now, and gaze upon those
children, who will be fatherless to-morrow, upon those wives who tomorrow
will look for their husbands, and find them floating with cold
faces, on the river's wave, or seek for them in vain, among the heaps of
battle dead?
The going forth is beautiful. To see these flags flutter so bravely
from the lances, like the foliage of those trees of death, to hear the bugles
speak out,—but the morrow? The coming back? Hark! through the
darkened air, did you not hear a sound, like the closing of a thousand
coffin lids?
Through the midnight darkness, which has descended upon the battlefield,
the glare of torches breaks suddenly, like meteors glimmering over
the abyss of a swamp. Those torches light the surgeons on their way,
as they pass from the wounded to the dead, and bend over the mangled
skulls and broken arms—the horrible summing up of the great game of
war.
There is a groan in yonder thicket. It is the cry of the wounded
wretch, as the knife of the Ranchero sinks into his heart.
A torch remarkable for its glaring light shone in the centre of the field.
Its beams lighted the faces of battle worn soldiers, who with their apparel
rent, their faces stained with blood, took counsel with their General
on the—morrow!
In the midst of that band, he stood erect, a plain and unpretending
man, his faded brown coat torn in many places by the balls of the enemy,
his brow uncovered, and his right hand resting on the hilt of his sheathed
sword.
On his left, distinguished by his portly form, his massive features, and
hair white as snow, you might see Colonel Twiggs, who like his General
had seen long years of battle toil.
By his side, stood erect, a white haired man, the veteran M'Intosh.
Near him seated on a trunk, his tired head resting in his hands, the brave
Ridgely, who had done his part in the terror and glory of that Day.
Duncan was there, covered with the memorials of his last charge, with
Churchill by his side, and the other heroes grouped around. Above their
heads, the tent canopy, moved to every impulse of the breeze, and triumphantly
in the light of the midnight stars of Palo Alto, waved the
Banner of the Stars.
“Shall we go on!”
A question to make men bow their heads and think.
By to-morrow's dawn at least nine thousand men, will build a wall of
flame and steel in our path. Defeat is Massacre. Victory against such
tremendous odds, a Miracle. At this very hour, in the American Union at
least one hundred thousand hearts, are palpitating in fearful anxiety for
us, afraid that every moment may bring the news of the utter slaughter
of Taylor and his Men.
Shall we go on?
As the question throbs from heart to heart, the cries of dying men are
heard, mingled with the jackal's howl.
Duncan speaks, Twiggs pours forth his few emphatic words; Ridgely
eloquent with the fever of to day's strife and the hope of to-morrow's
glory, looks in the old man's face, and cries with impassioned fervor—
“Go on!”
May and Walker say nothing, but clutch their swords.
But there are other voices there. Glory we have won to day, but tomorrow!—let
us not trifle with fate. Entrenched upon this field, we can
wait for reinforcements. Our countrymen will hear of our peril and our
glory, and their hearts and rifles will rush to the rescue.
As if from the excitement of the moment, Zachary Taylor draws his
sword, half way from its sheath.
Hark! that sound—every heart beats, and those soldiers who stand
erect, grasp their swords, and those who are seated, spring to their feet.
It is the signal gun of Fort Brown.
“Go on!”—the words in a deep whisper, pass from lip to lip, and
every eye is fixed on Taylor's face.
The old man quietly dropped his sword to the sheath:
“TO MORROW NIGHT I WILL BE AT FORT BROWN IF I
LIVE.”
At this moment a sublime sight was seen. Far along the eastern horizon
over the dark chaparral, a wall of clouds, black as death, without a
ray of light, to break its monotony of gloom, towers into the upper sky.
Save that wall of blackness, the sky is clear, glittering over its awful
dome, with the serene midnight of the stars. But look! As we gaze
gloomy horizon, along its border, runs a quivering thread of light. It
widens, it glows, until the cloud resembles an immense castle, illumined
on its battlements, with the rays of innumerable torches.
And then, beautiful and serene over the top of the cloud, bursts into
sight the Moon, shining her clear calm light over the tents and the banners,
over the cannon and the tired soldiers, bivouacking beneath their
muzzles, over the encircling chaparral, and the blasted field, over the
dying and dead of Palo Alto,
Viewed merely with the eyes of military men, it was a splendid plan of battle.
The Right, was formed in this manner: The Fifth infantry with Lieut. Col. Me.
Intosh; Ringgold with his artillery; the Third infantry under command of Capt. L.
N. Morris; Lieut. Churchhill, with two eighteen pounders, of the Third artillery;
Fourth infantry, commanded by Major G. W. Allen; The THIRD BRIGADE, composed
of the Third and Fourth Regiments, commanded by Lieut. Col. Garland, and two
squadrons of dragoons, under command of Captain Ker and May. The entire wing
was under the orders of Colonel Twiggs.
The left wing: a battalion of artillery, commanded by Lieut. Col. Childs; Duncan's
light artillery; eighth infantry, Capt. Montgomery; the whole forming the
First Brigade, under Lieut. Col. Belknap. Captain Cressman and Myers, were
entrusted with the train, which was packed near the water.
The brave Captain Page, wounded at Palo Alto, died on the 13th of July, 1846,
on board the steamer Missouri, while on his way to Jefferson barracks.
5. V.—RESACA DE LA PALMA.
Halting on the edge of the chaparral. The rein thrown carelessly on
the neck of his grey horse, Zachary Taylor looked back, and surveyed
the field of Palo Alto.
If the view had been ghastly by moonlight, it was horrible in the calm
clear light of that cloudless day. The Mexicans had fled through the
mazes of the southern chaparral. From that wall of prickly pear,—
look to the south of Taylor and you will see it—flashed the bayonets of
the American army. Certain companies of the heroic band were searching
the wilderness for traces of the foe, while the main body of the army
halted on the southern verge of the prairie, the chaparral darkening behind
their cannon and bayonets.
It was at the moment, that General Taylor, reining his steed, amid the
tall rank grass, near the wagons of the train, surveyed the field of Palo
Alto. A clear, bracing morning, with the song of birds in the air, and
beautiful prairie flowers blooming beneath his feet.
The wide field lay calmly beneath the smile of the morning sun.
Like an immense scar, the cinders of the prairie fire, blackened the centre
of the plain. Here and there, men with spades in their hands, moved
to and fro—they were digging rude graves for their dead.
But the horses, mangled in masses, and stretched far over the plain,
the dead men, piled in heaps, their broken limbs, and cold faces, distinctly
seen by the light of the morning sun, still remained, amid the grass and
flowers, silent memorials of yesterday's Harvest of Death.
Even the old General could not repress a shudder, as he gazed upon
the terrible evidence of Duncan's last fire—a line of dead men and horses,
darkening far away to the left.
At this moment, when in presence of the entire army, Taylor read the
alphabet of blood, upon the battle-field, was selected by Fate—by Providence—by
God—for a scene of painful and singular interest.
A young soldier, mounted on a black horse, and covered with the traces
of the fight,—the powder stain and the crimson drops of human hearts
—rode from the chaparral and dismounted near the General. He flung
the reins on the neck of his steed, and stood for a moment, regarding
with bitter thoughts, from the shadow of his downcast brow, his muscular
figure, attired in a plain blue frock coat, with a plain row of gold buttons,
presented a striking image of chivalric manhood.
Worn down, with the battle toil of the last twenty-four hours, with the
incessant hurrying to and fro, the severe duty that left no time for food
or slumber, the brave fellow, had ridden to the rear, to take some refreshment,
and an hour's repose.
The eye of the General wandered from the battle-field, to the form of
the young soldier, and an expression of admiration lighted up his bronzed
face. It was the gallant Lieutenant, who the day before, in that breathless
moment, before the first fire, had ridden into the muzzles of Mexican
cannon, and with cool composure reconnoitered their array—The Hero,
Blake.
Taylor looks upon him, as he is in the act of receiving a cup of water
from the hands of a soldier, and turns his eyes to the field again. Scarce
a moment passes, and then his gaze seeks the hero's face once more.
Where does he behold him?
Writhing on the sod, in all the agony of a mortal wound, his body rent
upward by a pistol ball!
Yes, as he took the cup of water, he flung his holsters on the
ground. One of the pistols exploded, even as it struck the ground, and
laid him quivering on the sod, beside its smoking tube.
“Alas!” cried the brave fellow, writhing in his death agony—“Alas!
That I did not fall in the battle of yesterday!”
For a few hours he lingered, and then was clay. As he yielded his
spirit, the thunder of the cannonade, echoing from the south, sung his
death-hymn.—There came a day, when Philadelphia put on mourning for
her son, and brought his dead body home, amid the tribute of a People's
tears.—
While Zachary Taylor gazed upon his prostrate form, the moment
after he fell, there came from the south, the clear, deep crack of a rifle,
that sound spoke to the old man's heart. It was the first shot of the
Twin-Sister of Palo Alto—Resaca De La Palma.
Presently there appeared on the verge of the chaparral, the form of a
sunburnt soldier, dressed in a green ranger's frock, and mounted on a steed
that flung the foam from his flanks, as he whirled his rider along to General
Taylor's side.
It was Captain Walker, bearing to the old commander, the first intelligence
of Arista and his army.
Away through the wilderness, along the road that leads to Fort Brown.
until we behold the Mexican army.
Forth from his splendid tent, erected in the depths of chaparral, issued
by the well-known red moustache, manifested not so much chagrin for
yesterday's defeat, as hope for the triumph of to-day.
The white horse splendidly caprisoned, the saddle glittering like one
mass of silver, awaits his master. Bounding into the saddle, he dashes
through the paths of the chaparral, and surveys his formidable army. It
must be confessed that he had every reason for that feeling of pride, which
gave such a glow to his face, such fire in his eyes. Behind him was seen
the glittering circle of his staff officers, all handsomely mounted and gaily
appareled. Ampudia, with his sinister look and lowering brow, alone
seemed to detract from the chivalry of that warrior's band. There, too,
bestriding an elegant brown charger, whose glossy skin shone like velvet
in the morning light, was seen the graceful La Vega, slender in form, rich
olive in complexion, luxuriant in his dark hair, and silken beard, the very
ideal of a Castilian cavalier of old.
Wherever Arista looked, to the right or the left, forward or in the rear,
the prickly pear bore a dazzling fruit, looking very much like the sharp steel
of the lance, the deadly point of the bayonet. Horses, too, in solid
legions, backed by brave riders, who, refreshed by food and slumber, were
eager to retrieve the fortunes of yesterday. And as Arista passed, a half
suppressed shout was heard, and the full bands clanged out their battle
music.
This was the manner in which the Mexicans were prepared for battle.
Behold their death-like, yes, we must confess it, their terrible array.
Across the road, leading to Fort Brown, a ravine extends near a hundred
feet wide, and four feet high. In the rainy season, the ravine becomes a
torrent, it overflows the road, and dashes away to the Rio Grande. Even
now in its depths sparkle lakelets of clear deep water, and on its southern
bank, the chaparral forms an impenetrable wall.
The ravine is called Resaca De La Palma.
Along this ravine, and on either side of the road, the Mexicans extend,
nine thousand strong, a crescent of cannon and horses, men and steel.
One line is hidden behind yonder bank, another shrouds its cannon, its
horses, its men, beneath the shadows of the southern chaparral.
In the centre of each line the battery glooms: yonder, to the right of
the first line, you see another group of these death engines.
From an open space, near the road, Arista gazed upon the battle array,
and turns with a smile to his general. That smile means much, it means
that the American flag to day will bow before the flag of Mexico, in the
depths of that ravine, whose banks shall swell with a torrent, not of water,
but of blood.
For, as you may see, old Zachary Taylor, in order to reach Fort Brown,
must pass along the road, cut a way with his seventeen hundred men,
through the breasts of some nine thousand Mexicans, who have
either side.
And there, eager to meet the old war-horse, who foiled them yesterday,
stands arrayed in battle order, the bravest band of the whole army, iron
men, hardened by the tropical sun, and the battle blaze, the heroes of a
hundred civil conflicts, the veteran Battalion of Tampico. Above their
heads waves their beautiful banner, embroidered by the hands of beautiful
women, and sanctified by the prayers of nuns, bearing beneath the
eagle and serpent, the simple legend: Battalon—Guarda Costa—De
Tampico.
Gazing on his army, Arista sent his commands to the menials of his
camp, to bring forth his choicest plate, to bury his wines in ice, and to
light the fires, in order to prepare the Festival of victory, by the setting
of the sun.
It was four o'clock, when, with a cloudless sky above, and the chaparral
far and wide, thronged with Mexican legions, the battle began its bloody
career.
It was four o'clock, when Arista saw advancing from the opposite
thickets, a bluff old warrior, dressed in a brown coat, with a grey steed
beneath him. The sun shone clearly upon the old warrior as he came on,
and Arista knew that the hour was near.
Hark! The tramp as of a thousand warriors thundering through the
northern chaparral, and as you listen, it grows near and nearer—to the
right, to the left, and yonder in the front of the ravine, the bayonets come
dazzling into the sun.
There rides Captain Walker at the head of his Texian band, there
Ridgely glorious with the mantle of the fallen Ringgold, comes with his
cannon to battle, while in the front, those bayonets, bursting like lightning
from the bushes move rapidly toward the ravine.
Sixteen hundred men advance against nine thousand—it is a moment of
breathless suspense.
All at once, as hushing your breath, with fear of the tremendous results
of this fight, you watch tremblingly for its commencement, all at once,
the Third, Fourth and Fifth regiments rush on, their bayonets forming a
crescent of dazzling steel, above their heads.
They line the bank of the ravine, and in a moment the copper hail
rushes through their ranks, and the white cloud of battle shuts them in
From the northern bank of the Resaca de la Palma, from the southern
wall of the chaparral, pours the storm of the Mexican cannon, while Ridgely
is rushing to the encounter, and Duncan unlimbering his pieces, answers
roar with roar, and lights the field with his blaze.
From the verge of the ravine pours the steady fire of our musquetry
our men come crowding to the attack, they spring upon the Mexican
bayonets, they enter the bed of the Ravine, and the chaparral, which not
bursting suddenly from the waters of a waveless sea.
Through the folds of smoke, you may see Ridgely's men, their bronzed
forms bared to the waist, plying their deadly task. Around his battery
sweep the bayonets of the Fifth infantry, with the grey-haired M'Intosh
in their midst—yonder, on the edge of the ravine, Duncan, with his cannon
ready for the conflict, pauses in his fire, unable to distinguish friend
from foe, in the whirlpool of the fight, which swells and rages through the
deadly pass.
His grey eye blazing with the excitement of the battle, Zachary Taylor
sat quietly on his grey steed, with the cannon balls of the enemy tearing
the earth all around him, and felt the moment for a decisive blow had
come.
Amid the smoke and flame that rolled and blazed above the deadly
ravine, he clearly saw the whirlpool of the fight.
On to the front bank, pressed the American infantry, pouring the blaze
of musquetry into the faces of the Mexicans, and then, hurling their solid
force into the ravine, as one man, they charged them home. On either
side their bayonets were seen glittering above the battle clouds. From
the rear ridge the most formidable battery in the second line of the Mexican
array, swept the air with a shower of poisonous copper balls. Ridgely's
blaze made answer, and Duncan, arranging his pieces in battle order, sent
his cannon shout thundering through the darkening cloud.
Beneath this pall of smoke and flame, this canopy of whirling balls,
the American infantry hurling themselves into the ravine, drove back the
foe. Charging them with bayonets, cutting them down with their short
swords, they fought for every inch of ground, and fought everywhere, on
the earth that rocked with the cannon thunder, in the lagoons that blushed
with blood, beneath the banks, where the dying and the dead began to
swell in ghastly heaps. It was, indeed, a bloody contest. Here the veterans
of Mexico, recoiling one moment, only to roll back again in all the
terror of blaze and bayonet—there, the Americans advancing without a
shout, never heeding for a moment, their comrades, who with arms torn
off and heads unroofed, sank in mangled masses, at every step, but holding
on their way, every bayonet charging against the bayonet of an enemy,
every eye glaring steadily into the face of a foe.
Amid the scene, like wrecks on the waves of a stormy sea, tossed to
and fro, the tri-color of Mexico and the Banner of the Stars.
Still from the rear ridge, swept the concentrated fury of the Mexican
batteries, their flame and copper hail curtaining the troops below, as again
and again they rushed to the charge.
Taylor saw it all, and knew the moment for the blow had come—the
blow which was to decide the battle, and hurl the Mexican army back
into the Rio Grande.
You may see him bending over the neck of his steed, his battle-worn
face glowing redly in each flash, as his eye roves from point to point, and
at a glance, takes in the panorama of blood.
At this moment, he sent to the rear for an officer of the dragoons, and
awaited his appearance in undisguised suspense.
There was a day, when an old man with white hair, sat alone in the
small chamber of a National Mansion, his spare but muscular figure resting
on an arm chair, his hands clasped, and his deep blue eyes gazing
through the window upon the cloudless winter sky. The brow of the old
man, furrowed with wrinkles, his hair rising in straight masses, white as
the driven snow, his sunken cheeks traversed by marked lines, and thin
lips, fixedly compressed, all announced a long and stormy life. All the
marks of an Iron Will were written upon his face.
His name, I need not tell you, was Andrew Jackson, and he sat alone
in the White House.
A visitor entered without being announced, and stood before the President
in the form of a boy of nineteen, clad in a coarse round jacket and
trousers, and covered from head to foot with mud. As he stood before
the President, cap in hand, the dark hair falling in damp clusters about
his white forehead, the old man could not help surveying at a rapid glance,
the muscular beauty of his figure, the broad chest, the sinewy arms, the
head placed proudly on the firm shoulders.
“Your business?”—said the old man, in his short, abrupt way.
“There is a Lieutenancy vacant in the Dragoons. Will you give it
to me?”
And dashing back the dark hair which fell over his face, the Boy, as
if frightened at his boldness, bowed low before the President.
The old man could not restrain that smile. It wreathed his firm lip,
and shone from his clear eyes.
“You enter my chamber unannounced, covered from head to foot with
mud—you tell me, that a Lieutenancy is vacant, and ask me to give it to
you.—Who are you?”
“Charles May!”—The Boy did not bow this time, but with his right
hand on his hip, stood like a wild young Indian, erect, in the presence of
the President.
“What claims have you to a commission?”—again the Hero surveyed
him, and again he faintly smiled.
“Such as you see!” exclaimed the boy, as his dark eyes shone with
that dare-devil light, while his young form swelled in every muscle, as
with the conscious pride of his manly strength and beauty. “Would
you—” he bent forward, sweeping aside his curls once more, while a
smile began to break over his lips—“Would you like to see me ride?
My horse is at the door. You see, I came post haste for this commission.”
Silently the old man followed the Boy, and together they went forth
from the White House. It was a clear, cold winter's day; the wind
tossed the President's white hairs, and the leafless trees stood boldly out
against the deep blue sky. Before the portals of the White House, with
the rein thrown loosely on his neck, stood a magnificent horse, his dark
hide smoking with foam. He uttered a shrill neigh as his Boy-Master
sprang with a bound into the saddle, and in a flash was gone, skimming
like a swallow down the road, his mane and tail streaming in the breeze.
The old man looked after them, the Horse and his Rider, and knew not
which to admire most, the athletic beauty of the boy, or the tempestuous
vigor of the horse.
Thrice they threaded the avenues in front of the White House, and at
last stood panting before the President, the boy leaning over the neck of
his steed, as he coolly exclaimed—“Well—how do you like me?”
“Do you think you could kill an Indian?” the President said, taking
him by the hand, as he leapt from his horse.
“Aye—and eat him afterwards!” cried the boy, ringing out his fierce
laugh, as he read his fate in the old man's eyes.
“You had better come in and get your Commission;” and the Hero
of New Orleans led the way into the White House.
There came a night, when an old man—President no longer—sat in the
silent chamber of his Hermitage home, a picture of age, trembling on the
verge of Eternity. The light that stood upon his table, revealed his
shrunken form, resting against the pillows which cushioned his arm chair,
and the death-like pallour of his venerable face. In that face, with its
white hair and massive forehead, everything seemed already dead, except
the eyes. Their deep grey-blue shone with the fire of New Orleans, as
the old man, with his long white fingers, grasped a letter post-marked
“Washington.”
“They ask me to designate the man who shall lead our army, in case
the annexation of Texas brings on a war with Mexico—” his voice, deeptoned
and thrilling, even in that hour of decrepitude and decay, rung
through the silence of the chamber. “There is only one man who can
do it, and his name is Zachary Taylor.”
It was a dark hour, when this Boy and this General, both appointed at
the suggestion or by the voice of the Man of the Hermitage, met in the
battle of Resaca de la Palma.
By the blaze of cannon, and beneath the canopy of battle smoke, we
will behold the meeting.
“Captain May, you must take that battery!”
As the old man, uttered these words, he pointed far across the ravine
that battery, pouring from the darkness of the chaparral.
Before him, summoned by his command, from the rear, rose the form
of a splendid soldier, whose hair waving in long masses, swept his broad
shoulders, while his beard, fell over his muscular chest. Hair and beard
as dark as midnight, framed a determined face, surmounted by a small cap,
glittering with a single golden tassel. The young warrior, bestrode a
magnificent charger, broad in the chest, small in the head, delicate in each
slender limb, and with the nostrils quivering as though they shot forth,
jets of flame. That steed was black as death.
Without a word, the soldier turned to his men.
Eighty-four forms, with throats and breasts bare, eighty-our battle horses,
eighty-four sabres, that rose in the clutch of naked arms, and flashed
their lightning over eighty-four faces, knit in every feature with battle-fire.
“Men, follow!” shouted the young Commander, who had been created
a soldier by the hand of Jackson, as his tall form, rose in the stirrups, and
the battle breeze played with his long black hair.
There was no response in words, but you should have seen those horses
quiver beneath the spur, and spring and launch away! Down upon the
sod, with one terrible beat, came the sound of their hoofs, while through
the air, rose in glittering circles, those battle scimitars.
Four yards in front, rode May, himself and his horse, the object of a
thousand eyes, so certain was the death, that gloomed before him, proudly
in his warrior beauty, he backed that steed, his hair, floating beneath his
cap, in massy curls upon the wind.
He turns his head; his men see his face, knit in the lip, and woven in
the brow—they feel the fire of his eyes—they hear, not men forward!
but Men, follow; and away, like, like a huge battle engine, composed of
eighty-four men and horses, woven together by swords—away and on
they dash.
They near the ravine; old Taylor follows them, with hushed breath,
aye, clutching his sword hlit, he sees the golden tassel of May, gleaming
in the cannon flash.
They are on the verge of the ravine, May still in the front, his charger,
flinging the earth, from beneath him, with colossal leaps, when from
among the cannon, starts up, a half-clad figure, red with blood and begrimed
with powder.
It is Ridgely, who to day has sworn, to wear the Mantle of Ringgold,
and to wear it well! At once his eyes, catch the light now blazing in the
eyes of May, springing to the cannon, he shouts—
“One moment, my comrade! And I will draw their fire!”
The word is not passed from his lips, when his cannon speak out, to
the battery across the ravine. His flash, his smoke, have not gone, when
you see it dig the earth, beneath the hoofs of May's squadron.
“Men, follow!”—Do you see that face, gleaming with battle fire, that
scimiter, cutting its glittering circle in the air? Those men, can hold
their shouts no longer. Rending the air with cries—hark! The whole
army echo them—they strike their spurs, and worried into madness, their
horses whirl on, and thunder away, to the deadly ravine.
The old man, Taylor said after the battle, that he never felt his heart
beat, as it did then.
For it was a glorious sight to see, that young man, May, at the head
of his squadron, dashing across the ravine, four yards in advance of his
foremost man, while long and dark behind him, was stretched the solid
line of warriors and their steeds.
Through the windows of the clouds some gleams of sunlight fall—they
light the golden tassel on the cap, they glitter on the upraised sword, they
illumine the dark horse, and his rider, with their warm glow, they reveal
the battery, you see it, above the farther bank of the ravine, frowning
death from every muzzle.
Near and nearer, up and on! Never heed the Death before you, though
it is certain. Never mind the leap, though it is terrible. But up the
bank and over the cannon—hurrah! At this dread moment, just as his
horse rises for the charge, May turns and sees the sword of the brave
Inge on his right, turns again and reads his own soul written in the fire
of Sackett's eye.
To his Men once more he turns, his hair floating back behind him, he
points to the cannon, to the steep bank and the certain death, and as
though inviting them, one and all, to his Bridal Feast, he says—
“Come!”
They did come. It would have made your blood dance to see it. As
one man, they whirled up the bank, following May's sword as they would
a banner, and striking madly home as they heard—through the roar of
battle they heard it—that word of frenzy—“Come!”
As one mass of bared chests, leaping horses, and dazzling scimitars,
they charged upon the bank; the cannon's fire rushed into their faces—
Inge, even as his shout rang on the air, was laid a mangled thing beneath
his steed, his throat torn open by a cannon shot, Sackett was buried beneath
his horse, and seven dragoons fell at the battery's muzzles, their
blood and brains whirling into their comrades eyes.
Still May is yonder, above the cloud, his horse rioting over heaps of
dead, as with his sabre, circling round his flowing hair, he cuts his way
through the living wall, and says to his comrades—Come!
All around him, friend and foe, their swords locked together—yonder
the blaze of musquetry showering the iron hail upon his band—beneath
soldier riots on, for Taylor has said, Silence that battery, and he will do it.
The Mexicans are driven from their guns; their cannon are silenced,
and May's heroic band, scattering among the mazes of the chaparral, are
entangled in a wall of bayonets. Once more the combat deepens, and
dyes the sod in blood. Hedged in by that wall of steel, May gathers
eight of his men, and hews his way back toward the captured battery.
As his charger rears, his sword circles above his head, and sinks blow
after blow into the foemen's throats. To the left a shout is heard; the
Americans, led on by Graham and Pleasanton and Winship, have silenced
the battery there, while the whole fury of the Mexican army, seems concentrated
to crush May and his band.
As he went through their locked ranks, so he comes back. Everywhere
his men know him by his hair, waving in dark masses, his golden
tinselled cap, his sword,—they know it too, and wherever it falls, hear
the gurgling groan of mortal agony.
Back to the captured cannon he cuts his way, and on the brink of the
ravine beholds a sight that fires his blood.
A solitary Mexican stands there, reaching forth his arms, in all the
frenzy of a brave man's despair, he entreats his countrymen to turn, to
man the battery once more, and hurl its fury on the foe. They shrink
back appalled, before that dark horse, and its rider, May! The Mexican,
a gallant young man, whose handsome features can scarce be distinguished
on account of the blood which covers them, while his rent uniform bears
testimony to his deeds, in that day's carnage, clenches his hand, as he
flings his curse in the face of his flying countrymen, and then, lighted match
in hand, springs to the cannon.
A moment and its fire will scatter ten American soldiers into the dust.
Even as the brave Mexican bends near the cannon, the dark charger,
with one tremendous leap is there, and the sword of May is circling over
his head.
“Yield!” shouted the voice, which only a few moments ago, when
rushing to death, said—“Come!”
The Mexican beheld the gallant form before him, and handed Captain
May his sword.
“General La Vega is a prisoner!” he said, and stood with folded arms,
amid the corses of his mangled soldiers.
You may see May deliver his prisoner into the charge of the brave
Lieutenant Stephens, who—when Inge fell—dashed bravely on.
Then would you look for May once more, gaze through that wall of
bayonets, beneath that gloomy cloud, and behold him crashing into the
whirlpool of the fight, his long hair, his sweeping beard, and sword that
never for an instant stays its lightning career, making him look like the
embodied Demon of this battle day.
In the roar of the battle behold this picture. Where May dashed like
a thunderbolt from his side, General Taylor, in his familiar brown coat,
still remains. Near him, gazing on the battle with interest keen as his
own, the stout form, the stern visage of his brother soldier Twiggs. They
have followed with flashing eyes, the course of May, they have seen him
charge, and seen his men and horses hurled back in their blood, while
still he thundered on. At this moment, the brave La Vega is led into
the presence of Taylor, his arms folded over his breast, his eyes fixed
upon the ground
As the noble-hearted General expresses his sorrow, that the captive's
fate has fallen on one so brave, as, in obedience to the command of Twiggs,
the soldiers, arranged in battle order, salute the Prisoner with presented
arms, there comes rushing to the scene the form of May, mounted on his
well-known charger.
“General, you told me to silence that battery. I have done it!'
—He placed in the hands of Zachary Taylor, the sword of the brave
La Vega.
Again the contest thickens in the ravine, and once more the brave Mexicans
come swarming to the rescue. Around their batteries they gather
fighting in sullen silence about their voiceless guns, and through the white
smoke you behold gleaming into light the bayonets of the Fifth Regiment
Scarcely have they rushed with one impulse and one shout, upon the
batteries, when Colonel Belknap at the head of the Eighth, is seen moving
along the road—he comes, waving the Banner of the Stars in his hand
—a whispered word to the men about him, and up the bank, and into the
ranks of the Tampico veterans—hand to hand, foot to foot, eye blazing in
eye, they engage in the deadly conflict.
These men of Tampico are no cowards. They receive the Americans
with the bayonet, and fighting over their silenced guns, stab them one by
one, with the knife. A shout—a blaze! Colonel Belknap is down, the
staff of his standard broken by a ball; a cry of vengeance thunders through
the battle air.
Then occurs the most deadly contest of the day. Amid the clouds of
smoke, even where the battle whirlpool rages in its fiery vortex, you may
see the plume of Payne, who yesterday saw Ringgold die. There, the
golden tassel, the long hair and terrible scimitar of May, the white hairs
of M'Intosh, the bloody face of Chadbourne, rising for a moment, and
then sinking to shout the battle cry no more.
It is a terrible wall of bayonet and flame, which brightens and burns
from every nook of the chaparral, but the Americans are not to be turned
back in their steady course. Every Regiment is doing immortal deeds
for the Banner—the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Eighth—they are all
there, in the ravine, among the bloody lakes and up the deadly bank.
Jourdan, you may see them in every part of the scene, their swords rising
as with one impulse, while their men follow them into the very jaws of
death. And suddenly a cloud rolls over the chaparral, and like a shroud
enfolds the scene of murder.
Hark! Shouts from the bosom of the cloud—hark! The deadly
clang of bayonet against bayonet, the death cry and the wild hurrah, mingle
in one fiendish chorus. Men are dying everywhere—you see their
ghastly faces in the waters of the lagoon, spouting blood into its bloody
pool, beneath the silent cannon, as their skulls crushed into the sod, you
hear their gurgling cry; amid the thickets of the chaparral, you count their
butchered corses.
Sixteen hundred men, you will remember, are doing battle with nine
thousand. Not on a level plain, as yesterday, but in the pass of a dark
ravine, amid the assassin-ambuscades of a tangled chaparral, through
lakelets knee deep, yes, breast high, every wave burdened with the bodies
of the dead!
In a whirlpool of carnage like this, it is difficult to forget the roar, the
smoke, the blaze, and gaze calmly upon the individual deeds of chivalry
and murder. Yet, dipping our pencil in the blood of human hearts, and
lighted in our task by the glare of battle, we will crouch here in the
chaparral, and try to paint them all.
Taylor is on his horse, too near the ravine, his face lights every instant
by the glare, the sod every moment, dashing against the flanks of the old
grey, as the cannon balls, plough the grass into furrows. The soldiers
beg the old man, not to peril his life, the officers surround him, and would
turn his steed aside, from the fury of the battle.
What is it the old man says?
“Look there!” with a quiet wave of his sword. And toward the right a
battalion of Americans, on the borders of the ravine, not two hundred
strong, are threatened by a solid mass of horse and foot, who come thundering
over the pass. Beautifully they rush to battle, their lances fluttering
with crimson flags, their sharp steel glittering in deadly lines. It is a
terrible sight, and the American battalion, quivers, it moves, not to the ravine,
but backward, with a tremulous impulse. For, a contest with such
an overwhelming force, cannot be called a fight; it is a Murder, a Massacre.
“Look there!” says the old man Zachary, and bounding from the encircling
officers, he spurs his grey steed forward, and in a moment,
plunges into the centre of the battalion's square.
“I am here, in the centre of your square!”
That old man, on his grey horse, with his form covered with a plain
brown coat, presents a sight, at once heroic and sublime. Around him
mass of Mexicans, horse and foot, at least one thousand strong.
“I am here in the centre of the square!” he says, and every foot is
rooted to the sod.
No other words are needed. Silently they receive the terror of the
Mexican charge. Bayonet to bayonet, the breast of man offered to the
war-horse chest, they receive them, as they come up the bank, without
one hurrah. But that fire, did you see that sudden flash, light up the
entire Mexican array? That smoke, did you see its pall, gather them in?
Now, they shout, now plunging down the bank, they charge the Mexicans
home, and precipitate the silent butchery of the bayonet, upon their
splendid array. Again that shout—the Mexicans quiver, every horse recoiling
on the horse behind him, every rank, falling back, on the next
line, until men and horses, whirl together, like a thousand waves, meeting
in one centre. Not a moment to recover themselves, not a pause for
thought—again that wild hurrah!
Old Zachary, left alone on the verge of the bank, laughs quietly to himself,
as he sees, beneath the curtain of clouds, that glorious sight—the
Mexican array, shattered in its centre, broken on each wing, give way and
scatter in mad disorder, along the battle ravine.
Paint for me, that picture, some Painter, whose heart glows into his
canvass, at the memory of heroic deeds—a bluff old warrior, mounted on
his old grey steed, bending forward, with extended hand, and brightening
eye, as gazing into the shadows of the ravine below, he sees two hundred
soldiers, burst like wounded tigers on a thousand, and at one charge level
their solid ranks into dust.
Beyond the ravine, the battle went on, in horrible fury.
A picture from its scenes of carnage!
Do you see that wall of darkening chaparral, with horses and men,
appearing at every interval, and lances shining from the thorns, as though
they grew there?
It lies beyond the ravine, beyond the silenced batteries. At the head
of the Fifth Regiment, a white-haired man, with his bared arm, grasping
a sharp sword, spurs the Roan war-horse, and plunges into the ravine.
He is the first of the band; beautiful and bright the bayonets of his
Regiment, sparkle through the shadows behind him. As he plunges, a
murderous fire rushes into his face—it shrieks away over the regiment—
but he is gone from the eyes of his men, gone through the chaparral, into
covert not ten yards square. The instant, he plunges into the shadow,
he feels his horse, the noble roan, quiver, and with a howl he goes down.
Springing from beneath his dead horse, the solitary warrior, darts to
his feet, and finds himself alone in the covert, and at a glance, beholds it
lined by foes with bayonet and lances, in their muscular arms.
It was worth ten year's life, to see how the solitary warrior met his
foes.
A tall old man, with firm, even severe features, his wrinkled cheeks,
whitened by his beard, his hair the color of snow, he set his lips firmly
together, and placing one foot on his dead horse, looked into their faces,
with a grey eye, that burned like a flame. His coat, had been torn from
his form, and his broad chest, with the shirt thrown open, heaved in long
deep respirations.
Even the Mexicans could not repress a yell of admiration! Alone,
in that covert, with not an arm to aid him, the grey-bearded warrior, stood,
with his foot on his dead horse, his bared arm grasping the sword that
flashed its light into twenty tawny faces.
As one man, they rushed upon him. It was a sickening sight. Here,
a lancer, bending over the neck of his horse, his lance in rest, and the
point levelled at the old man's heart; by his side, a soldier, with the
sharp bayonet, glittering near the throat of his victim; all around, a circle
of deadly knives, glittering in the clutch of bony arms.
The American warrior, merely said, between his clenched teeth—
“Come on!” and with his solitary sword, received their charge. For a
moment he beats them back, for a moment splintering this lance, and unfixing
that bayonet, he presses his dead steed with a firm foot, and maintains
his position against twenty men.
But then occurs a scene to make the curse quiver from the lips of a
saint!
They rush upon him, a cloud of lances, knives, bayonets. He is down,
upon his dead steed, battling still, against his crowding foes.
Do you see that grim figure, bending over him, as with one blow he
hurls his bayonet into the old man's throat? That piece of cold steel,
enters his mouth, and appears behind his ear!
Still, battling over his dead horse, the old warrior fights for his life. He
seizes the very musket, to which the bayonet is attached, and with his
sword, shortened like a dagger, plunges it upward, into the chest of his
foe. At the same moment, the blood gushes from his own mouth, and
from the mouth of the writhing Mexican.
Covered with the read stream, he rises once more, tears the bayonet
from his mouth, and shaking his bared arm, before his bloody face, says
to them all—
“Come on! Cowards as you are, you shall see how an old soldier
can die!”
A heroic picture! The battle flame beyond the covert, glares through
this wall of prickly pear, and flashes upon his white hairs and bloody
face, in bluish light. So tall, so firm, so erect upon his dead horse he
stands, while round him, as if spell-bound by the sight, darkens the circle
they would have spared him then!
Ask mercy from the tigress robbed of her young, or even from the
British soldier, drunk with ale and blood, but not from the Mexican Ranchero!
They hurled themselves upon him, their lances, bayonets and knives,
forming a woven circle of steel around his bloody face—for a moment he
battled against such formidable odds, and then upon his dead horse, he
fell once more. One bayonet pierced his thigh, another pinned to the
sod, his shattered arm. The blood from the wound on his throat, crimsoned
his white hairs, and trickled in ghastly patches over his chest. Now
look your last, upon that glimpse of God's beautiful sky, old man, and
feel the ties of Home about your heart once more, for there is Death, in
every blade, that flashes above your gory head.
For a moment, change the scene. Beyond the ravine, on the way to
Fort Brown, the narrow road, is broken by the waters of a lakelet or
lagoon. Look, yonder toward the north, and see the cannon of Duncan
come, with Ridgeley's glooming near, and the bayonets of Captain Smith's
infantry, the sword's of Captain Kerr's dragoons glittering on every
side.
Ridgely and Duncan—heroes of Palo Alto—come crashing over the
ravine, along the road, toward the lagoon. O, the wild excitement of the
moment, when each hero, looks upon his grim cannon, and feels that they
will speak, and speak thunder and lightning, ere you may count ten!
From the Fort Brown side of the lagoon, a deadly fire hurls its hail into
the faces of the advancing soldiers.
Duncan, his form quivering with the hope of battle, turns and looks for
an officer, who will support him with infantry, while he crashes over the
lagoon, and tells the Mexicans how much he loves them, from the throats
of his cannon.
Forth from the thicket, stalks with measured strides, a half-naked man,
his shirt thrown open on his bloody chest, his white hairs clotted with
crimson drops. For a moment he walks with that measured pace, but
then his step becomes unsteady, he stands erect, his lips compressed, as
he presses his hands to his throat.
Duncan is terrified, appalled at the sight. It is evident that the half-naked
man before him, is suffering intolerable torture.
“Colonel,” he shrieks, in a voice broken by emotion—“Can I be of
any service to you?”
As the old man unclosed his lips, the blood gushed forth—
“Water!” he gasped, and then as the memory of that horrible encounter
in the covert, crowded upon him, he exclaimed—“My Regiment?
Where is it?”
The sun of Resaca de la Palma shone on no braver man, than this veteran,
M'intosh.
For a while we leave the Battle.
We will speed through four miles of chaparral, and behold the river,
the city and the fort. It is now two o'clock, and the sunlight reveals the
devoted fortress. The cannonade from the city, from the battery yonder
in the woods, still pours its fury upon the brave three hundred. So, from
morning light, it has yelled its thunder, scattering its copper balls among
the heroic band, who have resolved to wait for Taylor, and never give up
the contest, while a pulse throbs.
From the shattered fort, still towers on high that staff, undulating with
its precious ensign—the Banner of the Stars.
Amid the hail of copper and iron, the soldiers gather in the centre of
the fort, around that bomb proof, formed by pieces of timber, supported
on barrels and roofed with earth. In all that crowd of half-clad men,
begrimed with the traces of one hundred and sixty hours incessant battle,
there is not one eye unwet with tears. Captain Hawkins, that brave
man who replied to Arista's summons to surrender, with the words—“I
do not understand Spanish!” is on his knees, gazing upon the last hour
of a dying man.
In the recess of the bomb-proof, where the hot atmosphere is almost
choked into pestilence, behold a veteran soldier stretched on his back, his
head supported by a knapsack, while the stump of his amputated leg,
tells the story of his lingering agony. That heroic face, seamed by
wrinkles is very calm. For the torture of pain has vanished at the coming
on of the Death sleep. He rolls his eyes with a softened glance, from
face to face, and tells them all how good a thing it is to die in a brave
cause. Even in a foreign land, under a hot sun, with cannon balls flinging
dust into your face.
Then, these men of iron, who since last Sabbath morn, have laughed
the fury of the enemy to scorn, and been merry with his rain of copper
and iron, turn their sunburnt faces away. Some of them look upon the
ground. Some brush their eyelids with their bony hands. One grim old
war dog, seated on the ground, his rough face with its blunt features, worn
by the perils of sixty years, clenches his huge fists, and sobs like a baby.
For the veteran Brown is dying and gliding so softly away, that not a
twitch of the muscles disturbs the mild serenity of his face, not a groan
heaves from his chest, to tell of the passing of his soul.
“Boys,” he said, slightly raising himself upon his bent arm, “Taylor
is coming.”
And he laid his head upon his arm, and closed his eyes, composing
himself for a peaceful sleep. Why does the breeze, warm with the fever
of battle, play with his grey hairs, and toss them about his brow? Can
veteran sleeps, is called—DEATH?
Two hours passed away, and the dead man lay on his rude death-bed,
when a soldier, gazing to the north, bent his head to one side—listened
for a moment—and rent the air with a shout. Two hundred throats at
once swelled that shout into thunder.
Boom—boom—boom!
They heard it; from the north it sent its voice, that cannon of Ridgely,
and to the tired soldier's ear, it seemed to say, “We come!”
Boom—boom—boom! Clang—clang—clang! Cannon and musquetry
speaking together, and saying to the Spartans of Fort Brown—“We
come!”
Then a silence like death, so terrible from the thunder which went
before it, a silence that lay upon the chaparral like a spell.
Hurrah! They are charging upon them now. Silence! Now cold
steel to cold steel, horse to horse, and man to man. Silence and suspense,
the silence so dread, the suspense so horrible. Long the soldiers listened,
quivering they gave to their ears every sound, when suddenly, from the
north, there came a noise like the trampling of nine thousand men,—not so
loud as cannon, nor so shrill as musquetry—but a subdued, half-hushed,
brooding murmur. It grew, it spread far and wide over the chaparral,
and it began to say, “Zachary Taylor Comes!”
To the Battlefield once more.
The tent of Arista rising proudly in the centre of this green space, with
the chaparral darkening around. Its gaudy curtains wave gaily in the
light, while on every side the banquet fires are blazing. The choice wines
stand buried in pails of ice, the goblets gleam along the festival table, set
in the deep shade behind the tent. But where are the menials charged
with the preparation of the feast?
Where are the glittering throng of cavaliers, who this morning went forth
to battle? Where the gloomy Ampudia, that terrible boiler of dead men's
heads, or Arista, the general-in-chief, hardened by the perils of battle and
tears of exile—where is he?
This magnificent tent, adorned with all the marks of luxury, standing
in the midst of the deserted chaparral, is your only answer.
Hark! From yonder thicket the clamor of battle, and a band of Americans
emerge from the prickly pear, and advance toward the silent tent.
While the roar of the fight yells on every side, you may note the appearance
of the leader of the band; a young man, whose well-proportioned
form, is clad in the blue and silver of the Fourth Infantry. His florid
face glows with enthusiasm, his eye sparkles with battle delight.
As he advances from the north, along this road, southward from the
tent, a solitary Lancer rides slowly along, examining with cool scrutiny,
unharmed. Again returns, and again rides laughingly away from their
fire. A third time he comes back, and whirling along like an avalanche
of horses, men and spears, comes the glittering lancer array.
As they come, the Americans pour their fire into their faces, and two
dying men bite the dust. Then every form seeks the covert, and the
lancers come dashing on. Only one man—it is their leader—stands unsheltered;
his manly chest a mark for each deadly lance. They come
charging on, a cloud of dust marks their career, their lances glittering
above it, a long and dazzling line. With a shout they charge: one man,
you see his uncovered brow glow in the sunlight, confronts their charge,
and takes its battle bolt upon his breast. Once you see his arm raised,
once he shouts, and then, falling on his face, is pinned by twenty lances
to the sod.
The lancers whirl like a cloud before the wind, away, and you see only
—the deserted tent, the dead man, and the darkening chaparral.
—So, on the field of Resaca de la Palma died the chivalric Cochrane
—while far away, by the waters of the Susquehanna, where its islands
are most beautiful, its mountains most sublime, his young Wife watched
for his return—with his face to the dust and his back to the sky, he yielded
up his breath, and in his blood they found him, the young hero of the
Land of Penn.
Look through yonder thicket, and see that face, distorted with all the
agonies of despair!
A warrior reins his horse alone in the shadows of the chaparral, near
Arista's tent. The white horse, the gorgeous battle array, the dark olive
cheek and the red mustache, all tell you his rank and his name. It is
Arista, listening to the carnage shouts of Resaca de la Palma. Leaning
his clasped hands on the pommel of his saddle, he bites his nether-lip
until the blood starts, and then dashes the cold dews from his brow.
It is not death he fears,—no, the sharpest steel or deadliest ball were
welcome now as bridal kiss to him—but it is the disgrace, the dishonor,
the loss of glory. The utter wreck and ruin of six thousand men, all
veterans and heroes, by sixteen hundred Americans, led on by a rough old
warrior, in a brown coat!
Around that solitary Chieftain roars the contest, near and nearer,
Duncan's cannon shouting to Ridgely's, and May's sabre clattering a wild
hurrah to Walker's sword. Bigger and blacker, the clouds came glooming
over the waste, every nook and path of the chaparral became the scene
of a bloody contest, and riding across the ravine, Zachary Taylor beheld
his army in full chase after the retreating Mexicans, the dust rising be
neath their feet, and the battle cloud rolling above their heads.
It was in this moment of his peril, that Arista hesitated, whether to advance
horse, upon the bayonets of the foe; but a hope, a wild, miserable hope
burned in his eyes once more, and he suffered the gallant steed to take his
own path, into the mazes of the chaparral.
But think not that the Mexicans fled without fighting. No! It is only
the part of a hired British libeller, to deny courage to a chivalric foe: let
no American be guilty of the baseness of such denial. The officers of the
General's staff were gone—some of them prisoners, some corses, some
fugitives—Ampudia, look for him yonder, his head thrown forward, his
eyes rolling with fear, as he digs his spurs into the flanks of his flying steed.
Yet still, there were Mexican men, common soldiers, who faced the foe,
in his sad hour, and wrote their courage on the sod, with the last convulsive
movement of their stiffening hands.
There was an old man, who came rushing from the chaparral into an
open space, some thirty yards square, hedged in on every side by that
wall of prickly pear.
His green uniform hanging about his broad chest in ribbands, his dark
beard and mustache silvered with the toil of sixty years, he tottered forward,
while from the thicket crashed some twenty dragoons, in hot pursuit,
every arm wielding its flashing scimiter.
Why pursue this old man, who, fainting from many wounds, still totters
on, tracking his course with his blood?
Around his right arm he bears the last memorial of the veteran band,
the Battalion of Tampico. It is their banner, embroidered by the hands
of beautiful women, and sanctified by the prayers of white-robed nuns.
He received it from the hands of a dying comrade, received it, as his warm
blood spouted over his face, and swore, never, while one throb of life remained,
to yield it into American hands.
Where is the Tampico battalion now, that went forth so steadily to the
fight, not two hours ago? Where are its bronzed faces, its iron forms?
Some are in the ravine, their cold faces washed by the bloody waters of
the lagoon, some in the chaparral, splintered into fragments, some have
flung away their arms, and rushed bare-chested upon the foe, in the frenzy
of despair.
The Battalion is dead. This old war-dog, tottering on, with its banner
wound about his arm, alone remains of all its proud array.
Planting his right foot firmly in the centre of the glade—all hope of
flight is vain—he elutches his short sword with a grasp like death, and
glares, like a maddened bull, in the faces of his pursuers.
These dragoons, brave fellows, who have done noble work in to-day's
fight, and who always doff their helmets when they see courage, even in
a foe, rein in their steeds with one impulse, at the sight.
One of their number dismounts, flings the rein on the horse's neck, and
sword in hand advances. You see his short yet robust form, manifesting
blunt face, with heavy features, short, stiff hair, and keen grey eyes,
announces the tenacious courage of a bull-dog.
“Look yer, stranger,” he exclaims—“You're faint with blood, and had
better yield—the old man's won the day, and there haint no further use
for that flag—”
His comrades, with their steeds recoiling on their haunches, and their
battle-worn faces bent forward, await the result of this scene, with deep
suspense.
But, look! The stout old veteran is dying; his eyes are half-closed;
he totters to and fro, still with the Tampico banner wound about his arm.
The American dragoon, touched with pity, springs forward to catch
him as he falls, and at the same moment, feels the short sword of the old
man driven to the hilt in his breast.
Then, with a wild yell, that veteran crashes into the thicket and is gone.
The dying dragoon breathes in gasps; he clutches the earth by handfuls,
and rolling slowly on his face stiffens into clay.
You should have seen the expression of horror which sank like a shadow,
upon every face. For a moment not a word was spoken. Only an
instant ago, that tottering old man, with his eye swimming as if by dissolution,
and that muscular dragoon, advancing with a look of rude pity, to
his aid. Now!
There was a dead man on the sod. The place of the veteran was
vacant: you hear him yonder, crashing through the thicket.
It is in vain to attempt the mazes of that barrier of thorns on horseback.
A moment's hurried consultation is held; a young dragoon springs from
his steed, and plunges into the chaparral. His comrades behold his tall
form, his swarthy face, with prominent features, shadowed by short curling
black hair, behold him for a moment only, and he is gone.
On, crashing through that wilderness of thorns, cutting his way with
his sword, or crawling on hands and knees, guided by the echo of the
old soldier's tread, he hurries, his heart palpitating with the fever of revenge.
Hark! He nears his foe—these footsteps sound heavy and sullen—the
old man is fainting from loss of blood—soon he will fall, and from
his dying clutch the victor will rend the Banner of the iron band.
At last they stand face to face. In a nook of the chaparral, where the
torrents, now dried up and vanished from the burnt soil, have formed a
deep gully, the young Dragoon beholds the old soldier, leaning against the
bank of clay, the banner wound firmly around his right arm, with the
hand still clutching the fatal short sword.
It is a sad and pitiable sight. So weak with his wounds, so near his
death hour, his head sinking on one shoulder, his bent knees, bending
beneath his massive frame, he glares into the face of the Dragoon, with
those glassy eyes fired with deadly hatred.
The Banner was given to him by dying hands, and he will keep it in
his death hour!
“Yield!” shouted the Dragoon, advancing with a firm tread, his sword
grasped by a vigorous arm, while his well-knit figure towered erect, and
the battle flush crimsoned his face from the chin to the curling dark hair.
The old man with a great effort raises himself, and with his sword
before his chest, his back against the bank, stands on his defence.
For a moment they regard one another silently, those glassy eyes, fading
into eternal darkness, glaring upon the fiery eyes of youth and vigor. The
Dragoon drops his sword—
“You murdered my comrade—aye, murdered him, as he sprang for'rad
to help you, but I cannot kill you. You'll die in a few minutes, and the
Banner will be mine!”
He silently contemplates his expiring foe.
But the old soldier—what means that long deep heaving of the bloody
chest? That convulsive movement of the arms? That swelling of the
veins in the throat? He is preparing all the strength within him, for a
desperate effort, yes, with a bound like a wounded panther, he darts upon
the young Dragoon, and pinions his throat with those iron fingers, with
the death-grip of a desperate man!
To force the American back on his knees, to crush the sinews of his
throat, until his eyes started from their sockets, to press his own knees
on his chest,—it was done like a flash. The American's stiffening fingers
dropped his sword—gurgling as in this death agony, a thick and
choking groan, he sank back on the sod. His eyes started from their
sockets. His face was discolored by streaks of blue and red; livid as
the visage of a poisoned man.
A moment longer, and that death grip will finish the career of the gallant
Dragoon. Glaring with his dilating eye, into the victim's face, he
growls a hoarse oath, tightens his clutch, and—
Did you see that form, leap into air, the face ghastly, the eyes rolling
in death, the chest heaving with a fiendish howl? It is a horrible spectacle!
He stands for a moment, rends the flag from his arm, gazes madly—almost
fondly—upon it, as it quivers in his grasp, and falls upon it,
with his face, crushing its folds into the grass.
He rests upon the flag; his face you cannot see, and yet on either side
of his head, you see a widening pool of blood, that clots the fine embroidering
of the Banner, and paints with crimson the words—Batallon
De Tampico.
The American Dragoon arose, with the livid mark upon his face, the
blood drops starting from his blood-shot eyes,and gazed with a look, wild
with terror upon the sight before him—The dead Veteran, and his bloody
Banner.
Zachary Taylor, spurring forward his favorite grey, beheld the fury of
the battle roll along the narrow road—the wall of the chaparral on either
side—swelling its waves of blood toward the Rio Grande.
“I will be at Fort Brown to night, if I live!”
And he was going there!
Would you behold his path?
Down the narrow road, hedged in by prickly pear, paved with corses,
roaring with thunder, blazing with the lightning of cannon. Gaze there,
and see the Mexicans go down at every shot, by ranks, by platoons, by
columns.
It is no battle, but a hunt, a Massacre! You have read of the Indians
firing a prairie, in a circle, and waiting patiently until the flame, roaring
toward the centre, hems the frightened deer, panthers and buffaloes into
a furnace of burning grass! Old Zachary has fired his prairie; the circle
grows narrower every moment; that circle formed by Ridgely's cannon,
by Duncan's battery, linked with the lines of Montgomery, grows narrower
every instant, and crushes and hurls and burns the Mexicans toward
the centre of death, the Rio Grande.
And now, Walker and May at the head of their deaths-men, wave their
swords and seek the game, as it issues from the flames. The heart grows
sick of the blood. The chaparral seems a great heart of carnage, palpitating
a death at every throb.
Volumes would not tell the horrors of that flight. Happy the poor
wretch who could creep into the chaparral, and bleed to death in darkness!
Woe to the wretch who pursued the road to Fort Brown! The
sword of May severed his throat, or the hail of Ridgely crushed him
down, on the cannon of Duncan, thundered over his mangled corse.
Still in the midst of the scene, old Zachary spurred his grey steed,
while the bullets riddled his brown coat, he pointed toward the Fort.
The setting sun, struggling with the black and red clouds that choked
his beams, spread over the chaparral, a pale and livid light.
Boom, boom, boom! At Fort Brown, that sound was heard, and
springing to the parapet, beside the flag staff, the soldiers beheld a strange,
a meaning sight.
From the chaparral,—while that terrible murmur grew louder in its
depths—burst a solitary horseman, dressed in the gorgeous costume of a
Mexican officer, his brow bared, and his extended hand waving a sword
in mad circles above his head. On, on, to the river, he rushed, his horse
bleeding all the while; on, and on, shouting in Spanish—“It is lost! The
Day to Mexico is lost!”
Hark! That cheer—how it went up from Fort Brown, and startled
Matamoras to its inmost home!
For the flying soldier was Ampudia, the murderer of Sentmanat; yes,
into the river he plunged his horse, looking back over his shoulder in mad
is lost!
In Fort Brown, every soldier held his breath. For look! From the
northern chaparral, where the cloud darkens up against the sun, a mass
of panic-stricken fugitives rush by hundreds and by thousands, filling the
air with the cry of their terror.
They come, scattering their arms by the way. They come, trampling
over those who fall fainting in their path. They come, the cavalry—
those gay lancers—riding down, without remorse, their own infantry;
they come, the chivalry of Mexico, transformed into a Mob, drunk with
terror and blood.
The whirlpool rushes to the river, as to the centre of its fury. By
two roads, it pours its frightened fugitives along; one above and one
below the fort, one leading to the upper and one to the lower ferry.
These roads are black and bloody, with the living and the dead.
Pouring in one steady stream, flinging their clothes upon the road, they
dash from the chaparral toward the river, man and horse, maddened by
the same fear. The wounded too, placed in sacks, borne by mules, rudely
tossed to and fro, wring the air with incessant cries.
Now cheer again, brave defenders of Fort Brown! Cheer once more,
and turn the blaze of the eighteen pounder toward the upper ferry. That
blaze carries twenty deaths with it; in the ranks of the fugitives, twenty
men, sink howling on the road.
By the shore behold this scene. A crowd of panic-stricken soldiers,
have seized the raft; with mad cries and shouts, they push it from the
shore, when like a whirlwind, a body of their own lancers rush upon
them, urging their horses through the waves, and planting their hoofs upon
the faces of their dismounted countrymen. For a moment, burdened with
human agony, a mass of faces and bodies, writhing beneath the trampling
horses, that raft quivers, rolls over the waves, agitated by its motion, and
then, like a rock from a heighth, goes crashing down.
As it sinks, you see that solitary Priest, standing amid the crowd, in the
centre of the raft, his uplifted hand, holding into light, the Cross of God.
For a moment, it glitters, and then the raft is gone, a horrible yell rushes
into heaven, and where a moment ago, was a mass of human faces, lancers'
flags and war-horse forms, now is only the boiling river, heaving with
the dying and the dead.
It was horrible to see them die, horrible to witness them clutching at
each other's throats, ere they sank below, horrible to behold the Women,
on the opposite bank, who tried to recognize a brother, or husband in that
whirlpool of waves and blood.
Four days afterward, those bodies, festering in corruption, floated blackened
and hideous, upon the waters of the Rio Grande. Upon the root of
a tree, which protruded from the river bank, left bare by the receding
Cross.
While the scenes of death, took place on the river, the eighteen pounder
in the Fort, was hushed, and the heroic three hundred, crowding to the
parapet, gazed in silence, upon that strange, wild panorama, which was
stretched before their eyes. Brown lay cold in death, but Hawkins, leaning
on his sword, his face manifesting strong emotion, looked to the north,
and looked to see old Taylor come.
Soon, from the chaparral, shone the American bayonets, flinging back
from their dazzling points the light of the setting sun, and then, from the
darkness of the thicket, a volume of blaze, a cloud of white smoke, rushing
forth together, told that Ridgely and Duncan were near.
Along the roads those bayonets extended, pressing the fugitives to
death, while through their intervals the cannons moved on, shouting their
thunder cry, as from the wood to the river, they mowed the Mexicans
into heaps of mangled flesh.
It was then, amid this hurrying scene of slaughter, when the river burdened
with corses, the town black on its roofs with affrighted thousands,
the separate roads strewed with dying and dead, the Fort crowded on its
ramparts with the Spartan band, glowed in all their strong contrasts with
the beams of the setting sun, it was then, as the American banner, which
had endured four thousand shots and still waved on, flung its belts of
scarlet and snow against the evening sky, that riding amid the battle
clouds toward the Fort, there came an old man, mounted on a grey steed,
his brown coat thrown back from his chest, and his bronzed face beaming
with a smile.
You should have heard the shout that went up from the Fort, as they
saw old Taylor come!
Nine days ago, with two thousand men, he left the Fort—the country
all around swarming with Mexicans by thousands—marched to the relief
of Point Isabel; and now, he comes back, having hewn his way through
the breasts and steel of two bloody battles; he comes back, his brows
wreathed in laurels, and behold the sungleam of victory light with one
glow, the river, the fortress and the corse of the veteran Brown.
Beside that corse, beneath the evening sky, he stood, while around,
their deep silence unbroken by a word, grouped the heroes of the Fort.
The body of the veteran bleeding from the shattered leg, even in death,
his upturned face moulded in a look of ineffable calmness, so that his
white lips seemed to say, You have come at last! The form of the warrior,
his body bent forward, his clasped hands resting on his sheathed
sword, as with downcast eyes, he surveyed that face, now cold in death
forever. Such was the picture; but what language can portray the emotions
which quivered in the warrior's breast at this still hour, as gazing
won, rushed like a torrent on his soul?
The scenes of his life passed like a vision before him.—The Child of
a Revolutionary lineage—his father fought beside Washington in the
Christmas Festival at Trenton—he stood once more, a mere boy of
Eighteen, in the presence of Jefferson, and received from his hands, his
Lieutenant's commission.
The scenes of deadly and bloody Indian wars—on the prairies of the
north and among the everglades of Florida—his long and laborious life,
long without fame, and laborious without glory, suddenly ripening into
fame and glory, on these fields of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, before
whose light the brightest names of age would bow their laurelled
heads—all glided before him, like the historic panorama of some long past
age. Standing beside the corse of Brown, with the evidences of his
success around him, waving in the Banner above his head, and glaring
upon him from the cold face of the dead soldier, he still might scarce believe
himself, plain Zachary Taylor, at once the Victor and the Hero.
Chosen by Almighty God, in the strong maturity of his grey hairs, as
the Instrument of great events, called forth in his vigorous old age, to become
the hero of glorious battles, can we doubt that in this moment of
silent thought, Zachary Taylor recognized with awe, that awful hand
which beckoned him onward, through the cloud of the Future, and felt
himself the Child of Destiny, the Champion of a People, the Man of an
Age?
Felt that in his hand was placed for deeds of high responsibility, the
Sword of Washington, and saw it flash over the battle-fields of a redeemed
Continent!
O, Tricksters of Council and Cabinet, who, while you fill the nation
with your petty broils, and swindle adroitly into your own hands, the
Money of a People, still with pursed lips and expanded eyelids, talk with
righteous horror of `a Military Chieftain,' making that phrase portentous
as the bug-a-boo of an Idiot's dream, come here to the Rio Grande, in this
silent evening hour, and learn some wisdom from this heroic old man!
Does God rule the world? Does he sleep? Do men arise and fall,
do wars go on, and lands grow rich in peace, without His awful and direct
interposition? Deny this, and you stand before that God, guilty of a coldblooded,
practical atheism, compared to which, the Satanic sneer of Voltaire
is Love and Charity. Admit it, and you must answer another
question—
Why was Zachary Taylor permitted to remain in comparative obscurity,
for the space of thirty-eight years, and then elevated suddenly into
the Hero of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey and Buena Vista?
Did Almighty God raise this man for nothing?
Did he raise this man merely for a uniformed show, a glittering pageant,
man's brown coat, and unpretending manner, and have your answer!
Or, did Almighty God, in the time of peril, when those gamblers in
fraud, those grey-beards in falsehood, termed politicians, have usurped
the control of the Nation, from the Ward House to the Capitol, and transformed
the Capitol itself into one immense gambling saloon, where the
honor of the country and the safety of the people are played away every
winter, by pot-house demagogues—in this time of peril, when the Power
of this great Union is centralized, not in a Royal Pageant, but in the tool
of a Convention, or the parasite of a Party—when the statesmanship of the
country has become so thoroughly rotten, that any act of perjury, any
abortion of infamy, is deemed a virtue, if mantled by the word—“politics”
—did the same God, who guided Washington on to Peace, through seven
years of blood, raise this man, Zachary Taylor, in his old age, to win
glorious battles in a far-distant clime, as much by his moral power as by
his bayonets, so that covered with the confidence of every honest man in
the land, he might come to the Capitol, and with one sturdy blow, split
the forehead of the Demon, Faction, and crush its worshippers into the
kennel which gave them birth?[9]
—Zachary Taylor is a Military Chieftain! Whose voice spoke there?
Some superannuated trickster of politics, who has grown grey in the shackels
of party, and without one noble deed to relieve the dotage of a
miserably spent life, snarls forth his envy, when a Man in reality, great,
crosses his little shadow.
A Military Chieftain? In what does he differ from Arista, Ampudia,
and all the mere Military Chieftains of Mexico? Why did he, with only
sixteen hundred, conquer nine thousand brave men, at Palo Alto and Resaca
de la Palma, headed by Chieftains like these? In a word, we have
the difference—in a word, the reason of his conquest—his chieftainship is
Mexican, even as he plunged into the battle's front, had no confidence in
his leaders. While he poured forth his blood, they were flying from the
field. What soldier could fight, with a consciousness like this, paralyzing
his arm? But the Americans fought directly under the eye of
Zachary—whatever might be their fate, he was there to share it—and
therefore, sixteen hundred men hurled nine thousand before them, while
in their centre, rode that plain man, in a brown coat, with his spy-glass
and old grey horse; his bronzed face lighted by his speaking battle eye,
shining its fire into every heart.
Never since the days of Washington, has a Commander so thoroughly
possessed the hearts of his men.
Let us close this Battle Picture of Resaca de la Palma, with four
sketches, delineating these respective characters, the Trickster-Statesman;
the Politician; the Military Chieftain, and the General of the People.
Let us fancy for a moment, that these scenes, take place, at the same
hour, on the same day, within a circle of two thousand miles:
It is the Senate Hall of a great nation, crowded with solemn men,
whose faces are seen, by the same light which glows upon the portrait
of Washington. Amid that crowd of renowned man, a Senator arises,
distinguished by his dark complexion, his brilliant eye, and deep, ringing
voice. He has been sent hither by the people of a state, to speak for
them, with that picture of Washington before his face. He fulfils his
high responsibility in these words:
“This is a cruel, black, horrible, murderous war. Those soldiers
whom we have sent to a foreign land, are assassins and robbers. Were
I a Mexican, as I am an American, I would say to them, have you no
graves in your own country, that you come here to die! Yes, I would
welcome them all, these robbers and assassins with bloody hands and a
hospitable grave.”
The Senator speaks his patriotic heart, in these words, and sitting
down, looks the portrait of Washington in the face.
This is a politician; but only a fancy sketch, you will remember.
Gaze yonder through the glittering circles of the Havanna theatre,
where a man of mature manhood, attired in a green and gold uniform,
with the traces of battle manifested in his amputated limb, sits smiling
quietly, his pale melancholy face and high forehead, the object of a thousand
eyes. That man is a Military Chieftain, who has carved his way
with sword, overturning the governments of his native land, at pleasure,
with his iron-faced soldiers, and playing in his tumultuous life, these
varied parts—President, Dictator, Exile. As he reclines in the crowded
theatre, pausing for a moment, ere he leaves the dance and song, for the
more intellectual amusement of the cock-pit, his native land is the scene
of bloody battles, his country's flag the object of accumulated dishonor.
And at the very moment, when rising in the Havanna theatre, he draws
a thousand eyes to his singularly impressive face, in the city of Washington,
by the lamp of a cabinet council, you behold a man of somewhat
portly form, his face dead-white in hue, his eyes clear azure, bending
over a table, in the act of writing an important paper. It is one of the
Rulers of the American People. The paper which he writes, it must be
confessed, is important in the last degree: for it is a Passport, which
worded as it may be, still bears but one meaning—it commands the Captains
of American ships-of-war, to permit Santa Anna to enter Vera Cruz,
or in other words, solicits the Military Chieftain to leave the Havanna
theatre, return to his native land, and fight old Zachary Taylor at Buena
Vista.
—And yet, the man in the city of Washington, with the dead white
face and porcelain blue eyes, is a Statesman.—You will remember, this
is still but a fancy picture.—
Or, should you wish to gaze upon another Statesman, not a military
of the highest order, gaze yonder, into the hallowed walls of Faneuil Hall,
and behold that muscularly formed man, tower above the heads of thousands,
the light shining upon his massive forehead, as with his thunder-tones,
he utters words like these:
“What shall we say of this unconstitutional war with Mexico? Where
will we find words to express our withering disapprobation of its measures
and its men? Yet hold—it is an American habit, not to count the horrors
of a war, the blood, the tears, the groans, the sighs,—but the Cost!”
With his thunder tones, in Faneuil Hall, he uttered this sentiment, and
spoke it boldly before the Portrait of John Hancock, and heard a thousand
voices answer him with deep hurrahs. He spoke it, in the birth-place of
the Revolution, where the Adamses had been, and in sight of the hill
where Warren fell, and did not feel that he was a blot upon that sacred
soil, a living scorn upon the dead, a Traitor for all his burning eyes and
snow-white hair. O, that stout John Adams could have started from his
grave, and heard the pedlar's throats of Faneuil Hall shriek like a Puritan
hallelujah, the word—“Cost!'
Yet this man is called a statesman, not military chieftain, ah, no! But
as the pious folks of Puritan land have it, a Godlike statesman.
—Still it is only a fancy picture. Remember that!—
And while the politician on the floor of the Senate, prepares for American
Soldiers, his bloody hands and hospitable grave, while Santa Anna
enjoys his game cocks in Havanna and the Statesman writes his passport
in Washington, while the Godlike Statesman in Faneuil Hall, proclaimed
to all the world, that it was an American habit, not to count the blood and
tears of a war, but the Cost—here, beside the Rio Grande, with the
evening star shining upon his bronzed face, behold the object of all their
schemes, that plain old man, in the brown coat, covered with the blood
and laurels of two victories, which all America had feared, would have
been but Massacres to himself and his little band, here beside the dead
body of his brother soldier, he stands, and murmurs—
`I SAID I WOULD REACH FORT BROWN IF I LIVED, AND I AM HERE!”
No one in the Senate dare give the Senator the lie.
The truly great men of the Nation, the Andrew Jackson's, and Henry Clay's have
never been, in the technical meaning of the phrase, party men. Their proudest
triumphs have been above all party. Jackson, a Democrat, when he would save the
Union, from Southern nullification, called to his and the Federal principle. Henry
Clay, a high protective tariff advocate, when he would restore peace to a convulsed
Nation, also held his country, dearer than his party, for he urged and carried a Compromise.
Both these men, have been repeatedly betrayed by Faction. When Jackson
commenced his war in the Infamy of Chartered Despotism, his party friends fell
away by thousands. The People sustained him. When Clay, by the force of his
Genius, had upheld his brilliant career as a statesman for forty years, the party which
claimed him, sacrificed him, without remorse, in a Harrisburg Convention.—His
fame, at this time, comes not from the leaders of a party, but from the honest sentiment
of a People.
The people who are divided into two parties, are one in feeling: alike Democratic
to the core. There is no real difference between honest men of either party. They
hold the same opinions, modified by locality. The difference between them, is precisely
such, as would exist between any two bands of honest men, who might be
arrayed against each other, by hypocrites and robbers. In the North, among both
parties, in 1844, the Tariff sentiment prevailed, as in the South, among both parties,
the Free Trade doctrine was a common opinion. This cannot be denied—And yet
the people, divided into these parties, were in North and South, arrayed against each
other, on the ground of “Principle.” Principle, by the last political dictionary,
meaneth loaves, and fishes and places. To hear these pot-house heroes, within their
tavern breaths, reel to the pools, shouting—“Principle!” is it not enough to make
the heart grow sick?
To make the matter plain, let us take the last cases of political honesty, as manifested
in two papers, published in a well-known city, one Democratic, one Whig;
holy names, which are prostituted, every day, at the head of their columns.
The so-called Democratic paper, admired the course of Taylor, applauded the moral
power, the giant intellect, displayed in his battles, in the fatherly care of his soldiers,
in his magnanimous treatment of the foe, and yet, solemnly, and with the
unctuous tears of office, in its eyes, doubted his—principles.
The Whig paper—gravely called so—edited by two or three political Jonahs, cast
up from the whales' bellies of as many factions, derided the war, and for the space of
one year, day after day, and columns after columns, called it a `black, bloody, infernal
butchery' in fact, preached that kind of treason, which would have hung the Editors,
in the days of a man called Washington, and left them on the gibbet, with the
label, Traitor on each brow—This paper, after twelve months of elaborate sympathy
with Santa Anna, came out, one fine morning, with the name of Taylor as its
Candidate for President!—The old man received the news of this nomination, just
after his battle of Buena Vista, and trampled it under foot, as Washington would
have trampled a nomination from the lips of Benedict Arnold.
Last winter, on the floor of the Senate, a grave Senator declared in his place,
that did the People know the rotteness of the government at Washington, the pestilence
of the corruption, which infected its every department—White House, Senate
and Representative Hall—they would assemble, in mass, and precipitate the `President,
Senate, Congressmen, heads of departments, all together, into the Potomac.'
6. VI.—MONTEREY.
They tell me that Monterey is beautiful; that it lies among the snow-white
mountains, whose summits reach the clouds.
It sleeps beneath us now.
While the moon, parting from the white mountain tops, sails in the
serene upper air, we will stand among the trees of the Walnut Grove,
and behold the slumbering city.
These trees, beneath whose leaves we stand, speak of the ages that
are gone. So massive in their trunks, so wide-spreading in their branches,
so luxuriant in their foliage. The moonlight trembles through the quivering
leaves, and reveals the rich garniture of the soil. It blooms with
tropical fruits and flowers. Around the giant columns of Walnut, the
jessamine and the wild rose, the lily and the orange blossom, spread their
tapestry of rainbow dyes. The air is drowsy with excess of perfume.
And from the shadows, flash the mountain streams, singing the midnight
anthem, ere they plunge below.
It is the Grove of the Walnut Springs in which we stand; a grand
Cathedral of Nature, whose pillars are Walnut trees, five hundred years
old, whose canopy is woven leaves and vines, whose baptismal font is
the pure mountain spring, whose incense is perfume, that intoxicates
every sense, and whose offerings are flowers, that bewilder the gaze,
with their fresh, their virgin beauty.
And from the grove, by the light of the moon, we gaze upon the city,
that Amazon Queen, who reclines so royally among her warrior mountains.
It is a city of singularly impressive features, that reposes yonder. To
the north, to the south, to the west, the mountains rise, girdled with tropical
fruits and foliage, and mantled on their brows, with glittering snow.
On the east, green with cornfields, and beautiful with groves of orange
trees, spreads a level plain.
Those orange groves, seem to love the city of the Royal Mountain.
For they girdle her dark stone walls, with their white blossoms, and hang
their golden fruit above her battlemented roofs. From this elevated grove,
toward the south, around the sleeping city, winds the beautiful river of
San Juan, now hidden among pomegranate trees, now sending a silvery
branch into the town, again flashing on, beside its castled walls.
Below us, with its roofs laid bare to the moonlight, we behold each
tower and dome, of the mountain city. It is a place of narrow streets,
and one storied houses, with walls and floors of stone. Above each level
roof, rises a battlement, breast high; the streets are crossed by huge piles
of masonry, and the whole town, presents the appearance of an immense
gloomy with towers of rock and steel.
Far to the west, a huge steep, crowned with a mass of stone, varied
with cannon, casts its heavy shadow,—a long belt of blackness—over the
town. That is the Bishop's Palace.
Here, before us, east of the city, their outlines seen above the river,
and the groves of orange blossoms, these castleated mounds, rise clearly
in the air. Yonder, on the north, glooms the massive citadel. Thus
girdled by defences of stone, iron and steel, thus sheltered by its mountains
of fruit and snow, the city of the Royal Mountain, may well seem
impregnable.
Yonder, toward the south, among its homes of stone, you behold an
open space; the grand Plaza of Monterey. There rise the cathedral
towers, heaving above their peaks, and domes of stone, the golden cross
into the midnight sky. Look! How it glitters above the town, smiling
back to heaven, the beams of the rising moon.
It is impregnable, this mountain city. No arms can take it; no
cannon blast its impenetrable walls. The Bishop's Palace on one side,
the three forts on the other, the citadel on the north, the river on the
east and south; it is shut in by stone, by water, by iron and by flame.
And yet, not many months ago—sit by me, while the moon shines over
the city, and I will tell you the story—there came to this grove, an old
man, mounted on a grey charger, and clad in a plain brown coat. On
the mountains that frown toward the east, through the ravines, that darken
there, he came followed by six thousand men. He encamped in this
grove of walnut trees, and the arms of his soldiers shone gaily, from the
white waste of orange blossoms. He stood, where now, we stand, he
gazed first upon his men, his horses, his cannon, and then upon the city,
which though it smiles to us, in the light of the morn, gloomed in
his face, by the beams of day—from every roof, and rock and tower—
with one deadly frown.
The old man saw it crowded by nine thousand armed men. He saw
every roof transformed into a castle, formidable with its death array of
cannon and steel, the Cathedral, with its cross, and image of Jesus, converted
into a magazine of gunpowder—a silent volcano, that only wanted
the impulse of a single spark, to make it blaze and thunder.
And yet the old man, after his silent gaze, turned to his brother heroes,
among whom Butler and Twiggs, and Worth of the Waving Plume,
stood prominent, and said in his quiet way:
“The town is before us. We will take it.”
Then every soldier in that army of six thousand men, took his comrade
by the hand and said: “If I fall, swear that you will bury my
corse!”
For every heart felt that the contest must be horrible and deadly.
The heroes of the prairie, the Men of Palo Alto and Resaca De La
Palma, were there. Mingled with these iron soldiers, you might see the
men of Mississippi and Louisianna, Maryland, Tennessee and Ohio,
Kentucky and Texas. The farms and the work-shops of the American
Union, had heard the cry, which shrieked from the twin-battle-fields of
Palo Alto, and Resaca De La Palma, heard it, and sent forth their beardless
boys, their grey haired men, to the rescue. The sugar and the cotton plantations
of the south, the prairies of the north, the mountains of Pennsylvania,
the blue-hills of Kentucky, that dark and bloody ground, the massacre
fields of Texas, all sent their men to swell the ranks of the New Crusade.
The same Banner that waved over Bunker Hill, and Saratoga and
Brandywine, from the Walnut Grove, flashed the light of its stars over
Monterey.
The fight began on the Twenty-First of September, 1847, and tracked
its bloody course, over the Twenty-Second, and did not cease its howl
of murder, when the sun went down, on the Twenty-Third.
You may be sure that it was horrible, this battle of street and square,
of roof and cliff, of mountain and gorge. It was a storm—hurled from
the mouths of musquets, cannon and mortar, wrapping cliff and dome in
its dark pall, and flashing its lightning in the face of Sun, Moon, and
Stars, for three days. You may be sure, that the orange groves, mowed
down by the cannons blaze, showered their white blossoms over the
faces of the dead. That the San Juan, sparkling in the moon, like silver
now, then blushed crimson, as if in shame, for the horrible work that
was going on. That nothing but shots, groans, shouts, yells, the sharp
crack of the rifle, the deep boom of the cannon, was heard throughout
those three days of blood. That in the battle trenches, lay the dead men,
American and Mexican, their silent groups swelled every moment by new
corses, looking with glassy eyes into each other's faces. That many a
beautiful woman, nestling in her darkened home, was crushed in her white
bosom by the cannon ball, or splintered in the forehead, just above the
dark eyes, by the musquet shot.
And amid the fight, whether it blazed in volumes of flame, or rolled in
waves of smoke, you may be sure two objects were distinctly seen—the
white plume of the chivalrous Worth, and the familiar brown coat of stout
Zachary Taylor.
It was on the morning of the Twenty-First, when the rising sun shone
over the groves of orange and pomegranate, the fields of corn, and the
girdle of rocks and waves, encircling the mountain city, that suddenly,
a mass of white smoke heaved upward from the ravines, yawning about
the Bishop's Palace, and rolling cloud on cloud, wrapt those towers in its
folds, and stretched like an immense shroud along the western sky.
Beneath that smoke, Worth and his Men were commencing the Battle
of Monterey, on the West of the town.
At the same moment, around these forts on the east, a cloud of smoke
arose, it swept away toward the citadel, and soon melted into the cloud
on the west.
Under its pall, Taylor and his men were advancing upon the town from
the north and east. Thus the city of the Royal Mountain, was girdled by
a pall of battle-smoke, and thus, from opposite sides of the town, Taylor
and Worth fought their ways of blood, toward each other, driving nine
thousand Mexicans, with Ampudia at their head, into a centre of death
and flame.
Night came and went and came again, and still the fight went on. One
by one, the three batteries on the east, fell before the arms of Taylor.
Over the impregnable heights of the Bishop's Palace, waved the Banner
of the Stars. The city saw not a glimpse of blue sky, for in the air hung
a canopy of battle-cloud, and over the roofs the gunpowder spread its pestilential
mist. There was neither food, nor shelter anywhere. God pity
the women then, who, shuddering in cellars and burrowing in dark rooms,
clutched to their breasts the children of their love! In the Cathedral no
prayer was spoken, no mass sung the deep anthem, or waved from censers
the snowy incense. The Image of Jesus was wrapt in the battle-cloud:
that divine face, for once, seemed to frown. Mild Mother Mary, above
the altar, was clad in a robe of smoke, and her sad and tender face grew
livid, ghastly, with gleams of battle flame.
There was no rest for the sole of human foot, no slumber but the slumber
of the bloody ditch, or dark ravine. None slept but the dead.
And still, from the west, the cannon of Worth hurled their message to
Taylor on the east, and evermore the cannon of Taylor thundered their
reply. Nearer grew those sounds to each other, and closer in the fiery
circle, Ampudia and his Mexicans were hemmed. Over the roofs, through
the battered houses, beyond their battered barricades, they were driven
by Worth and Taylor, until the battle gathered to one point, and above
the main plaza where the moon shines so calmly now, on Cathedral and
Cross, hung the accumulated cloud of three day's agony.
And to this grove of the Walnut Springs, where at this hour, the moon
breaks in tender light, on each massive tree and perfumed flower, the
battle mangled were brought to bleed and die. The sod, spreading so
thick with blossoms all around us, grew purple with a bath of blood.
Hearts, that had once quivered to the pressure of a woman's bosom, were
frozen in this grove, and eyes, that had looked tenderly into the eyes of
Wife, Mother, Child, grew glassy beneath the walnut leaves.
But amid all the horror of the fight, the Mountains yonder,—like calm
Demons, impenetrable to the yell of slaughter, or the howl of agony,—
lifted their snowy tops, and shone on, whether lighted by the sun, or
moon, or stars, or battle-flash.
Crouching in a darkened chamber, two Mexican girls flung their arms
about each other's necks, and buried their faces in their flowing hair.
Through the small window toward the west, half-covered with vines, a
few wandering gleams of sunlight shone. Ever and again, a red flash
bathed the room in crimson light. It was a spacious room, with stone
walls, hidden in purple hangings, and a marble floor, strewn with the
wrecks of books and harps and flowers.
In one corner stood a small couch, its ruffled pillows, yet bearing the
outlines of those two virgin forms.
From that couch they had darted suddenly, and with their half-naked
forms quivering with affright, flung themselves on the marble floor, near
the window, where a Cross glittered in its shadowy recess.
And now, as their white shoulders and uncovered feet glowed in the
feeble light, their faces were hidden on each other's breasts among their
luxuriant hair.
You may see their limbs quiver, you may see the scanty robe, which
but half-conceals each virgin form, move tremulously with each movement
of their bodies, but their faces you cannot see.
It is now near sunset, on this fearful Twenty-Third of September, 1846.
For three days, these girls have awaited the return of their father from the
battle. Three days ago, they saw him go forth on his grey war-horse,
an old but muscular man, whose olive cheek, seamed with wrinkles, and
dark hair mingled with the snowy flakes of age, were shadowed by plumes
of fiery crimson. They saw him, in his costume of national green, dash
from the door of their home toward the battle. By his side, their brother
rode; a manly boy of nineteen, whose jet-black hair, gathered in thick
curls around his young forehead, while his sinewy arm waved his sword
in the morning air.
So gallantly, from their garden-encircled home of Monterey, they went
forth together, the father and son, their uniform flashing back the light,
from every star of gold, while the necks of their steeds proudly arched,
their plumes fluttering in the breeze, their figures quivering with the impulse
of the fight—all gave omen of a bloody battle and a certain triumph.
For three days the maidens had waited for them, but they came not.
For three days and nights, the roar of the fight swelling afar, had startled
slumber from their eyes. But now that roar grew nearer; it deepened
into thunder; it spoke more plainly. Quivering in every nerve, as they
knelt on the floor, they could distinctly hear the separate voices of the
battle—now the rifle's shriek, now the musquet's peal, now the cannon's
thunder shout.
And the storm grew nearer their house; it seemed to rage all around
them, for those terrible sounds never for one moment ceased, and the red
flash poured through the narrow window, in one incessant sheet of battle
lightning.
Still the Father, the Brother came not!
Hark! That crash, which shakes the chamber, like an earthquake!
The girls lift their faces, from among their flowing hair, and you may
read the volume of their contrasted loveliness.
This, with her warm, voluptuous bosom, and the rich brown cheek,
shadowed by the raven hair—Ximena. The other, with the fair cheek,
and snowy breast, and large eyes, that remind you of the deep azure
of a starry midnight, the hair that floats, in curls of chesnut brown—
Teresa.
Their beautiful tresses twining together, in mingled dyes of light and
shade, the full, luxuriant form of Ximena, contrasted with the more delicate
figure of Teresa, those dark eyes, swimming in tears, the maidens
half-starting from their knees, presented a picture of touching loveliness.
Around them strewn, their torn books, broken harps and withered
flowers; before them, smiling from its dark recess, that solitary
cross!
Again that crash, again that red light streaming through the window!
With one bound the girls sprang to their feet, and gazed upon the door,
whose panels you may distinguish yonder, among the purple curtaining.
“They come!” shrieked Ximena, and gathered her Sister to her heart.
Deep shouts were heard, the tramp of armed men, resounding through
a narrow passage—another crash! The door gave way, and the red
battle light rushed into the place. The door gave way, and as it clanged
upon the floor, a dying man fell backward upon its panels, the broken
sword, firmly clutched in his hand, the blood, pouring in a stream from
the wound in his chest.
His throat bare, his dark hair sprinkled with silver, hanging damp and
clotted above his wrinkled brow, he glared upward with his glazing eyes
—made an effort to rise—and fell back, writhing in his death agony.
Above him, the foremost of a band, attired in blue, stood a slender, but
athletic form, his upraised arm, still waving its sword, red with the blood
of the prostrate enemy. His face, was very pale, but his hazel eye,
shone with the mad light of carnage.
At a glance, the girls behold the form of that dying man, the figure of
Murderer—and a shriek, that made his blood grow chill, though it raged
with the battle fever—filled the place.
The American, in the doorway, felt his nerveless arm drop by his side.
Even as the sword dripped its red tears upon the floor, he beheld those
girls, kneeling beside the dying man, and heard one word quiver from
their lips—
“Father!”
It was in the Spanish tongue, but he read its meaning in their extended
pressed against the bleeding chest of his foe.
They looked up into his face; they raised their eyes to this young
pale brow, and spoke once more—
“Our Father!”
The young American felt his fingers stiffen, heard his bloody sword
clatter on the floor.
“His pistol it was, that shot my comrade by my side, even as we came
charging up the Plaza, his—”
He shrieked these words, driven to madness, by their accusing looks,
but he could say no more. For he too had a grey-haired father, he too,
among the hills of Pennsylvania, in the old farm house, at the end of
the lane, where mill-stream wind among the woods, had two sisters!
That father blessed him when he left home for the wars, those sisters
pressed their warm kisses on his lips, as they gasped farewell!
Now, upon the threshhold of the Mexican home he stood, the dying
father, writhing before his eyes, while his daughters, with their bared
bosoms, sought to staunch the flowing of the blood, which hissed, warm
and smoking from his heart. There, he stood, the Murderer, in presence
of his victim, with the eyes of those beautiful sisters upon his face!
The sight was two much for him.
Waving his comrades back—they were all young men, like him, unused
to scenes of blood, their veins fired for the first time, with the lust of carnage—he
flung himself upon the floor, and with his hands, pressed over
the wound, madly endeavored to stop the blood, that glided through his
fingers, and dashed into his face.
But the dying old Mexican, with distorted features and glazing eyes,
muttered a curse with his livid lips, and feebly endeavored to withdraw
himself, from the touch of the American.
Those half-clad maidens, with frenzy in their eyes, tore their glossy
hair, and beat their breasts with their clenched hands, as they felt, that
there was no longer a hope for the old man, their father.
The American, on his knees, beside them, saw the unspeakable agony,
written on each face, and knew himself, a guilty and blood-stained man.
“He shot my comrade,” the words came faintly from his lips—“My
blood was up—I pursued him—we fought—fought on over heaps of dead,
to the door—and—but I did not think of this! To stab an old man,
on the threshhold of his home, in the presence of his children!”
Again he sank beside the dying man, but those lips, now changed to a
clayish blue, only moved to curse again. With extended arms, he fell
before the maidens, but their looks of horror, as they shrank from him
with outspread arms, gave no hope of forgiveness.
At last he rose, and standing among the curtains, near the doorway,
scene.
Here Ximena, chafing with her warm palms the chilled hands of her
father, her hair, streaming wildly over her shoulders, stained with the
warm blood of his heart; there, Teresa, with the head of the dying man,
on her lap, her fingers pressed upon his clammy brow, her blue eyes weeping
their tears like rain, on his glassy eye-balls.
“It cuts my heart like a dagger”—the American forced the words between
his set teeth—“I have a father too, away in Pennsylvania, and
sisters too, that resemble these girls.”—
He could bear it no longer. Scarce knowing what he did, only wishing
to turn his eyes away from that sight, he plunged among the hangings,
and found himself at the foot of a narrow stairway. A moment had not
passed, when he emerged upon the flat roof, with its battlement of stone.
His cheek was pale as death—before the battle he had suffered much with
fever—and the emotions, fast crowding round his heart, gave an unnatural
gleam to this eye.
He approached the battlement, and started away. The scene beneath,
was at once horrible and sublime. That roof, commanded a free view of
the Plaza of the city and all the avenues leading to it. Again he approached,
and gazed upon the Last Fight of Monterey.
Imagine a space, two hundred yards square, walled in by houses, one
story high, frowning with battlements. This space is packed with one
dense mass of infuriated soldiers, half naked, their faces scarce distinguishable
beneath the stain of powder and blood. They shout, they yell,
they roll to and fro, like the waves of a whirlpool. Here you may distinguish
the American, there the Mexican uniform.
From every battlement, lined with frenzied Mexicans, pours the blaze
of musquetry, hurling the death, alike on friend and foe. Beneath, bayonet
to bayonet, and knife to knife, over the pavement, slippery with blood,
the contest is maintained. As the ranks of the battling legions, move
aside, or part for a moment, you may behold, the cold faces of the dead,
amid their fiercest roar, you hear the deep piercing yell of the wounded.
Over this scene, glooms the Cathedral, its towers only half seen amid
the clouds of smoke which toss around them.
That cross glitters in the setting sun, but all below is dim, dark, bloody.
Just as you have seen, a mist hover above a summit, so that thick cloud,
glooms over the grand Plaza of Monterey, its edges tinted with sunset
gold, while all beside is dark.
And toward this Plaza, like separate streams of blood, rushing from
north and south and east and west, toward one great lake of carnage, the
three days battle rolls by every street and avenue, along these roofs, and
through yonder smoking ruins.
Yonder to the west, far over the heads of advancing Americans cast
in the battle light. Worth is there! Like a cavalier of old he rides to
battle, his graceful and commanding figure, clad in full uniform, his head
placed proudly on his shoulders, his broad chest, thrown forward, as if in
defiance of the danger and the death, around him.
To the east, turn your eye! Down, this avenue, where the cannon's
blaze their fire, into the faces of the recoiling Mexicans, where the clouds
now come down like Night, and now roll away, leaving the scene, to the
warm glow of the setting sun, down this lane of blood, amid the charging
squadrons, you behold a warrior, on a grey horse, with a brown coat,
thrown back from his broad chest, while a plain cap, surmounts his
bronzed face and flashing eyes. Taylor is there!
They hear each other's shouts, the Men of Worth and Taylor, charging
from east and west, toward the Grand Plaza, their cannon balls encounter
each other, in the ranks of the foe; crushing men and horses,
firm masonry and battlemented walls before them, they fight on,
toward the centre, where gleams the Cathedral cross over masses of
cloud!
This was the scene, which the young American, sick of the battle, and
thinking of his dear Pennsylvanian home, beheld, but it was not all! No
—no!
Between the rolling clouds, the sky smiled so calmly down upon him;
beneath in the bloody Plaza, the dead looked so ghastly up in his face!
Not twenty yards from the place where he stood, a dead woman lay, her
mangled breasts, clotted with blood, while her frozen features, knit so
darkly in the brow, and distorted along the lips, told how fierce the struggle
in which she died.
O, it would have made your blood dance, to stand there, and see how,
wave on wave, the Americans rolled their flood of bayonets toward the
Plaza, how flash on flash, their cannon lighted up the battle, whirling
around the cathedral, how yell on yell, the stern hunters of the west, with
clenched bowie knives, in their brawny arms, came rushing on, to the last
act of the three day's drama of blood!
At last, as if the day light was sick of the scene, the night fell—a starless,
moonless night—and in the darkness, the fight went horribly forward.
Then, through the pall that hung above the Cathedral, a mass of fire,
came blazing on, like the bloody moon in the Book of Revelations, blazing
on, with its fiery mane, flung far along the sky.
It comes from the mortar of Worth, and hisses down, among the Mexicans,
in front of the Cathedral. Old Zachary, gazing from the east, sees
that bomb, as it flashes on its meteor way, and knows that the end of the
battle is near.
Weary of the darkness and the blood, the young American tottered,
had left the sisters and their dying father.
A darkness, so dense, that it seemed to press upon the eyeballs, lay upon
the place.
The American soldier, stood among the purple curtains, listening in awe
for the faintest sound.
It was still—terribly still. To the excited fancy of the battle-worn
Volunteer, it seemed a death vault, gloomy with the darkness of ages.
The very atmosphere seemed thick with Death.
He advanced—a single step—and then, even as he could distinctly hear
the beatings of his heart—he spread forth his arms, sank on his knees,
and felt his way, through that darkened chamber.
His extended hands touched the cold face of the dead. There was
something so loathsome, in that clammy pressure, which left his fingers,
wet with clotted blood, that he started back, and remained for a moment,
motionless as the dead, as if rooted to the stone, on which he knelt.
Then, dashing forward with trembling hands, he felt the cold face
again, and another, and yet one more clammy brow. He was alone in
that room, with the dead. Three corses lay on the stone floor, beside the
kneeling man.
This was the work of War! War on the battle field, where the yell
of the dying, rings its defiance to the charging legions, wears on its bloodiest
plume, some gleam of chivalry, but War in the Home, scattering its
corses, beside the holiest altars of life, and mingling the household gods,
with bleeding hearts and shattered skulls—this, indeed, is a fearful thing.
As the American, sank back, shuddering and cold—for he, too had a
father, he too, had sisters—a glare like lightning, illumined the chamber,
laying bare, every nook and crevice, and tinting every object, with its
red and murderous light. In a moment it died away, but that moment of
sudden light, revealed this battle picture, to the eyes of the American
soldier:
The Father, dead, upon the prostrate door, his distorted features, scowling
curses, even as he lay, with his hands, clenched over his mangled breast.
By his side, two forms, their arms about each other's necks, their lips
close together, their young faces, even in that battle light, wearing a smile,
serene, as a cloudless heaven. It was the Brother and his Sister, sleeping
their last sleep. One bullet, had pierced their skulls through the temple—she,
with her glassy blue eyes and brown hair, lay with her cheek
to his, as the brother's lip, darkened by a slight mustache, was curved in
a joyous smile.
So, by their dead father, the dead children lay, crushed into eternal
silence, even as they had embraced each other, over his lifeless body.
It was evident that the young Mexican, came home from the fight, without
a wound, and died in the act of consoling his fatherless sisters.
But Ximena—where is she?
Look, beside the bodies of the dead, and tremble, as you behold that
kneeling woman, gazing fixedly, upon the three corses, her eyes dilating,
until the white circle, is seen distinctly, around each burning pupil, while
her death-like face and uncovered bosom, are darkly relieved by the volume
of her luxuriant hair.
Was she dead?
A convulsive quivering of the lip, alone bore witness, to the miserable
life, that still dwelt, in her maddened brain, a slight—almost imperceptable
heaving of her white bosom—told that her torn heart, still throbbed on.
For a moment the American saw this picture—only one of the thousand
horrible sights, which the light of battle, revealed in the Homes of
Monterey—and the darkness, fell like a pall, upon the living and the dead.
It was on the Twenty-Fourth of September, when the battle clouds had
rolled away, and the setting sun, shone over the wreck of the devastated
city, that Ampudia, surrendered into the hands of the old man in the
brown coat, his sword, and saw the Banner of the Stars, float into heaven,
from every dome and peak of the city.
In a town, that resembled one immense castle, hemmed in by fortified
mountains, and defended by forty-two pieces of cannon, with at least nine
thousand, brave men, under his command, he had been conquered by this
plain warrior, on the old grey horse, who had only six thousand men,
one mortar, two howitzers and four light field batteries.
History does not tell of many deeds like that!
Well might the old man gaze proudly round him, as he felt the sword
of Ampudia in his grasp! For encircled by his own gallant officers—
Worth of the Waving Plume was foremost there—he saw the mountains,
with their white tops, glittering in the setting sun. He saw the Cathedral
Cross, shining like a point of flame, as the Banner of the Stars, floated
around its dome. The orange groves, whose white blossoms, could not
conceal the dead, the River of San Juan, red with blood, the gloomy
Bishop's Palace, frowning under the victorious flag, the city, littered with
corses,—he saw it all, that scene, where he had fought and won!
Gaze upon the old man, as he stands triumphant, among the wrecks of
Monterey, the glow of the setting sun, upon his bronzed face, the sword
of Ampudia in his hand. His Army—his People, not his Slaves—are
there, with their tried bayonets, shining on every side. There are taller
warriors, who wear gayer uniforms, and go to the fight, in more elegant
costume, but this familiar man, in that unadorned attire, wears his battle
jewels, in the hearts of six thousand men.
And as he stands before us, the object of ten thousand eyes, yonder,
far away, in the City of Washington, the pismires of Faction, are already
busy with the Mound of his Fame. That Mound, built of the trophies
blood of at least one thousand heroes.
Toil on, heroic Insects of the Cabinet and Council! For work like
this, you were born; it is your destiny, to gnaw holes in the drapery
of greatness, and burrow hiding places, for your mighty insignificance,
beneath the Monument of Genius. Toil on! In the olden times, Pismires,
as brave as you,—although not born in the miasmatic air of caucus
and convention—swarmed over the drapery of a man, called Washington,
and went terribly to work, beneath the granite mountain of his
fame.
Where are they now? Where will you be, ten years hence?
Toil on, heroic Insects, of the Cabinet and Council! But be very
careful how you annoy heroes like Washington or Taylor—a single flutter
of their drapery will scatter you; a solitary pebble, falling from the Monument
of their fame, crush you, into dust.
These Politicians, who scheme in dark holes, while brave men, do
heroic deeds, in the face of day, are interesting personages.
Behold them, in the Continental Congress, lay their plans and weave
their plots, against one Washington, now battling hunger, cold and pestilence
among the hills of Valley Forge! Yet this same Washington,
with the ant-hills of party reared all about him, to block his way and precipitate
him into the dust, comes forth serenely from Valley Forge, and
fights the Battle of Monmouth.
Behold them, after the Battle of Monterey, sever old Zachary Taylor
from his tried veterans, leave him at the City of his Conquest, with only
six hundred men, which at last are swelled by new recruits, into four
thousand. Immortal Insects! What matter if the old man and his four
thousand are massacred?
The whole Union palpitates with quivering anxiety for the old man and
his soldiers. Superseded in his command, stripped of his veterans, he is
left among the mountains, with only four thousand, while Santa Anna
seeks for him, with twenty thousand men, eager for the fight, and confident
of victory.
Who cares for old Taylor? Let him retreat; he has won glory enough;
we Insects of Politics are afraid of his fame. Let him retreat or die.
And, even as the Insects talk thus, there came a Rumor that the old
man has discovered a path through the very dangers which threaten him,
a Beautiful Prospect through the very clouds which frown upon his head,
or to speak it in Spanish, a—Buena Vista.
Toil on heroic Pismires of the cabinet and council!
Still we stand in the shadows of the Walnut Grove, gazing by the light
of the moon, on slumbering Monterey. To see it sleep so calmly, in the
embrace of its warrior mountains, who would dream that it had ever been
Palace towers, but its guns are voiceless now. Beautifully through the
night, the silvery San Juan gleams, but its waves no longer blush with
blood. The orange groves are there, with their golden fruit mantled in
snowy blossoms; there, the cornfields waving their long emerald leaves
and tossing their silver tassels on the breeze, there the homes of stone,
with battlemented roofs, framed in gardens of flowers—Beautiful Monterey!
From the Cathedral tower, the Cross glitters through the night, emblem
of that Faith—though clouded by priests and creeds—which says forever,
“All men are alike the children of God.” Over the Bishop's Palace
waves the Banner of the Stars, symbol of that Democratic truth, which
never for a moment ceases to speak, “This Continent is the Homestead
of free and honest men. Kings have no business here. Hasten to possess
it, Children of Washington!”
—While the moon rises over Monterey, let me take you to the fireside
of yonder distant Home, in the land of Penn, among the mountains.
There is snow upon the ground, not only on the summit of the hill,
but in the deep gorges, and chasm-like ravines. Over the mantle of snow,
a ray of light quivers like a flaming arrow. It comes from yonder window;
you see it, with its deep frame sunken in the thick walls of the old
farm-house. With leafless trees around it, that pile of dark stone, with
steep roof and many chimneys, breaks on your eye. The barn is near,
one of those massive structures, which speak of glorious harvests, and
shame the Slave House of the Factory into nothingness.
By the light of the fireside, which sends its flaming arrow through the
window, into the dark night—like a ray from heaven, blessing a dark
world—behold this picture of Christmas Night.
A spacious room, its floor and ceiling white as snow, and a wide hearth,
smoking and blazing with huge hickory logs. Above the hearth, a Rifle
hangs, which blazed in the Revolution at Germantown. Altogether, this
hall of the old farm-house, with its ancient furniture, its heavy rafters, and
joyous hearth, appeals to your heart: it is such a picture of Home.
Near the fire, on one of those oaken arm-chairs, sits an old man, with a
rosy-cheeked damsel on either side. They clasp his hands and smooth
the white hairs aside from his wrinkled brow,—their fresh young faces
contrasting with his aged visage—but the old man, with his grey eyes
fixed on the fire coals, bends his head and does not breathe a word.
It is the Christmas Night, and the Christmas Fire lights his face, but
there is one absent from its glow. He is thinking of the absent one,
picturing among the fire-coals, the image of his manly form, and repeating
to himself, the last words which he said, ere he left his home:
“Father, I will come back covered with glory. I will bring you a
trophy from the fields of Mexico?”
Now, it may be, he lies writhing with battle wounds or dying in the
slow agonies of the tropical fever.
The daughters read the sorrow written in the aged lineaments of their
father, and cast their tearful eyes upon the Christmas Fire. Mary, with
the soft brown hair, and bosom that swells beneath its 'kerchief covering,
dreams a half-waking dream of that golden and bloody land called Mexico,
and sees her brother toiling through the wastes of chaparral. Anna, with
hair golden as the beams of the setting sun, and a pale cheek, tinted with
a solitary rose-bud, also dreams, but in her vision beholds her brother's
brow, bathed with the red flush of victory.
And so they dream on, the father and his two mountain flowers, while
the dismal wind, howling through the deep ravines, only serves to render
more dear, more holy, the light, the blessing of that Christmas Fire.
At last a step is heard; through the opened door, a gust of wind and
sleet rushes toward the fire. With one bound, the old man and his
daughters start to their feet.
In the doorway, they behold a tall, slender form attired in a plain blue
overcoat; they see that pale face, lighted by the eyes that flash with vivid
light, they know those curls of chesnut brown, clustering beneath the
military cap, around the white forehead.
“My Son!” and the old man spreads forth his arms.
“Brother!”—the Sisters are clinging round his neck.
Wasted by the deadly fever, the young Soldier bore in his pale cheek
and scarred brow, the stern testimonials of Monterey. He stood in the
centre of the group, his heart too full for words, gazing now upon his
white-haired father, now into the faces of those blooming sisters. It was
not very singular, but still the door remained open, and the wind and sleet
still rushed upon the Christmas Fire.
“You've come back, Harry,”—the Father surveyed his son with a look
of pride—“You've seen hard fightin' I don't doubt! A terrible scrimmage,
that of Monterey! Come sit by the fire; the girls will get you something
to eat. An' as you eat, tell us all about it—what do you think of
the old man, Zachary Taylor?”
At that name the young soldier uncovered his head; the tears started
to his eyes.
“He is the Father, the Brother of his soldiers, as much as their General!”
he said, with deep emotion.—So I have seen, time and again, the
heads of returned soldiers uncover at the name of Taylor, while the tears
in their eyes, the tremor in their voices, told how deeply in their heart
the memory of the old man's kindness had taken root and flourished.
“But come,” said the Father—“The night is bitter cold; close the
door and sit near the fire—”
The Soldier did not move toward the fire, but stayed his father's hands
as they were extended to close the door.
“When I left for Mexico, I told you I would bring back with me a
Trophy of the War. That Trophy is here!”
Flinging the door yet wider open, he led the Trophy forward to the
light. Behold it! A young, a beautiful girl, whose voluptuous outline
of form, is not altogether hidden in her cumbrous dress of furs, whose
clear olive cheek, jet black hair and dazzling eyes, glow in the light, as
they are framed in the close-fitting hood.
The snow was upon her dress, and melted in pearl drops in her hair.
She stood gazing around the place with a half-frightened glance; then
raising her large eyes to her Husband's face, she came tremulously forward
and knelt at the old man's feet and kissed his hand. With one impulse,
the Sisters flung themselves beside her, and kissed the snow drops
from her raven hair.
“It's a long story, father—” gasped the Soldier, in a voice choked by
emotion—“But I saw her father, her sister, her brother—together—dead
upon the floor of their home, at Monterey. She was without a friend—
and I had killed—”
He abruptly paused, and turned his face away. As if his soul was in
his words, he gasped again—
“I can't tell it now father! But there she is, a true woman, who has
nursed me in sickness, and followed me from her land of orange blossoms
and flowers, into this land of winter and snow. She is my wife! Your
child, father! Your sister, my sisters! Be very kind to her, for she has
suffered much, and deserves all the love in your hearts! True, she
does n't understand English, but—”
There was a language which she understood! It spoke from her large
beautiful eyes, it heaved with the pulsations of her young bosom, it
wreathed in her red, warm lips, and shone in every blush of her glowing
countenance.
As though she had been a gift, sent to them from Paradise, the old man
and his daughters took that warm southern flower to their hearts, and from
that moment she grew there!
Beautiful Ximena! Shaking the glittering snow drops from her hair, as
it fell in dark masses from her raised hood, she advanced toward the
Christmas Fire, and its warm glow bathed her cheeks as with a blessing.
The old man looked smilingly into her face. On her right stood Mary,
taking her silently by the hand, on the left her other sister, Anna, threading
her jet-black hair with her fingers.
Somewhat in the rear, stood the pale Soldier, his arms folded on his
breast, his head downcast, his eyes flashing with deep emotion as they
rested on his wife.—That beautiful Trophy, from the battle-rent walls
of Monterey.
7. VII.—BUENA VISTA.
A mother, with her mild blue eyes shining with a joy too deep for
words, was gazing upon the face of her new-born child. Through the
curtained windows of her Virginian home, shone the clear calm light of
the setting sun. A mass of golden beams fell like a glory upon her downcast
head, and baptized with warm radiance, the face of her slumbering
babe, In that darkened room, crowded with antique furniture, the bedcurtains
crimsoned by the glow of the winter fire, you might distinguish
through the twilight gloom which filled the place, those two faces, one
eloquent with a Mother's love, the other calm as a cloudless sunset, and
fresh from the hands of God.
The name of that new-born babe, slumbering so like a dreaming Angel,
beneath its Mother's gaze, was George Washington.
The winter day, on which the Mother pressed her new-born child to
her bosom, was the Twenty-Second of February, 1732.
Time passed on, and that child's name became a holy word in the
hearts of millions; the day of his birth a holy day, celebrated with solemn
prayers, with glad hosannahs, in all the homes of a redeemed People.
But there came a day, when it was celebrated with offerings of blood.
When the cannon, crushing hundreds with its thunderbolt, sung the anthem
to its praise, and the white lips of dying men—dying afar from
country and home, in the depths of bloody ravines—gasped with the last
impulse of life, these holy words—The twenty-second of February—
Washington.
It was on the Twenty-Second of February, 1847, just one hundred and
fifteen years from the day when the Mother gazed upon her new-born
child, that the same sun which had baptized their faces with tender light,
shone over a far different scene.
It was sunset among the mountains of Mexico.
Wild and rugged mountains were those, which rose against the clear
winter sky, terrible ravines yawned in the light, dreary and inhospitable
wastes wearied the eye, with their desert loneliness. It looked—that
desolate view—like the Chaos of a former world.
Through these colossal steeps, hideous with piles of rock, tossed into
the sky in every fantastic variety of form, wound a narrow defile.
It was the road from Buena Vista—a hacienda, or mansion yonder on
those northern hills,—to Agua Nueva, some miles to the South.
To the left of this defile, the valley of cliffs is broken by ridges, stretching
away, peak on peak, until they walled in by the colossal mountain, in
the east. On the right of the defile, deep gullies yawn in the light, their
of the winter sun.
And on those ridges, stretching away toward the eastern mountain—
each ridge separated from the other, by a hideous ravine—and above those
gullies, breaking the valley, into every chaotic shape, to the right of the
defile, arrayed in battle order, you behold an army of four thousand
men.
Their arms glitter in the light, with the dark mountain waste all around
them. And between their regiments and companies, the ravines darken;
among their ranks, huge granite rocks arise; they are extended, at intervals
to the right and to the left of the defile, masses of men, horses, cannon
and steel, broken by columns of shadow.
In their midst—you see him yonder, on the ridge that towers directly
to the left of the defile—sits an old man on his grey steed, his right leg
carelessly crossed over the pommel of his saddle, while his plain brown
coat, and unpretending military cap, are distinctly revealed in the light of
the setting sun.
His bronzed face, warms with a deep glow, as his grey eyes traverse
that wilderness of Mountains to the south.
The foe is there; Waterloo never beheld, gathered in one view, a more
beautiful or terrible array.
As far as eye can see, the wilderness is one dense mass of men and
horses, with cannon glooming in the intervals of their firm ranks, and
steel blazing over their heads.
The setting sun lights up that quivering mass of steel, with a red glow.
You see it blazing everywhere. Yonder, up the mountain side, it shines,
circle of steel, piled on glittering circle, until that mass of rugged rock,
flames like an immense altar, lighted for some Demon Festival. From
the depths of the ravine, those glittering points, burst into the sunset, and
far down the valley of ridges and gullies, rank on rank, column on
column, regiment on regiment, that dense and formidable array seems to
grow larger, blacker, brighter, as it melts into twilight distance. Twenty
thousand men are there, upon the mountains, and in the ravines, arrayed
in battle order.
It looks like the army of a Persian despot, so gaily flutters its innumerable
red flags, from their flag-staffs of sharpened steel, so far, so wide
it grows into space, so triumphantly it looks down, upon the little army,
arrayed upon these northern ridges.
Yonder, on that solitary ridge, towering some hundred yards to the left
of the defile—one long wave of bayonets tossing tremulously beneath
him—behold the soul of this immense mass. In the centre of a circle,
formed by the gorgeous costumes of his officers, behold, mounted on a
dark charger, a man, whose breast, blazing with stars and orders, cannot
divert your eye, from the melancholy grandeur of his face. His head is
There is intellect in every line of his bold forehead; his mouth, wears
an expression of almost painful melancholy, his dark eye, shines with
deep and steady light.
As his olive cheek, glows in the sunset, while his eye roves over the
legions of his twenty thousand men, can you call to mind his past life?
By turns, President, Dictator, Exile, for twenty years and more, the great
impulse, of his country's destiny; now lording in a royal state, in his
Palace, reared upon the very spot, where stood, Montezuma's luxurious
home; now looking with tiger-like ferocity upon the corses of slaughtered
Alamo; again a miserable outcast, resorting to opium, for oblivion
of his defeat, by a few hundred Texan hunters—behold the Man of
Mexico, covered as he is with stars, and bearing the marks of battle, in
his maimed limb—Antonio Lopez Santa Anna.
But a few months ago, sitting in the Havanna theatre, he smiled carelessly
at the dance and song, and with his young wife by his side, did not
seem to think, that among the nations of the earth, there was a land,
called Mexico.
Now—upon these wintry mountains, some thousand feet above the
sea—with twenty thousand men, one irresistable mass of horse and foot,
he proudly surveys plain Zachary Taylor, and his four thousand volunteers.
What does it mean, this terrible, this sublime spectacle?
The same power which brought Santa Anna from his place of exile in
Havanna, stripped Zachary Taylor of his veterans after the three day's
fight of Monterey, and left him, to retreat or die.
Let us behold the array of the great old man.
Yonder, above the defile, frowns Captain Washington's battery.—
Washington? Yes, it is a glorious omen! On the 22nd of February,
the Name and the Blood of the Continental General, are here!—The
crests of the ridges on the left and to the rear, are occupied by one company
and three regiments. There you may see the First and Second
Regiments of Illinois, with their commanders, Harden and Bissel; a company
of Texans under Captain Connor; the Second Regiment of Kentucky,
headed by M'Kee. All volunteers, commanded by volunteers.
All citizen soldiers, summoned from their fire-sides, by the war-cry of
Zachary Taylor. And amid that crowd of gallant men you distinguish one
manly form, and chivalric face, shown distinctly in the level sunlight.
The blood of a great man throbs in that soldier's veins; his name is
Henry Clay.
On the extreme left, beneath the shadow of the mountain, behold the
mounted men of Arkansas, with their leader, Colonel Yell, and the cavalry
of men, horses and scimitars.
The reserve, you see it yonder, on the hills to the rear, a gallant band,
formed of the Indiana Brigade, under Brigadier Lane, its two regiments
commanded by Colonels Bowles and Lane—the Mississippi Riflemen,
with their leader Colonel Davis, all heroes of Monterey—May of Resaca
De La Palma, with his dragoons, side by side, and another squadron
under Captain Steen—the cannon of Bragg and Sherman completes the
array.
These men, with but few exceptions are untried soldiers. Yesterday
Zachary Taylor, retreated from Agua Nueva, (some few miles to the
south,) and on these hills, he has determined to meet the twenty thousand
men, and thirty two pieces of cannon, in battle.
At eleven o'clock there came from Santa Anna, a messenger of peace,
bearing a white flag. He found the old General quietly seated on his
grey steed, and placed in his hand the letter of Santa Anna. The Mexican
General announced that he was surrounded by twenty thousand men,
and summoned him to surrender.
The reply of Zachary Taylor, has already become battle scripture in
the pages of history. Its succinctness and brevity, are eminently refreshing:
Near Buena Vista, Feb. 22, 1847.
Sir—In reply to your note of this date, summoning me to surrender
my forces at discretion, I beg leave to say, that I decline acceding to your
request.
Your obedient Servant,
The day is now wearing toward its close, and a pillar of white smoke
suddenly towers upward, along yonder mountain. It is the Shroud of
Buena Vista, enfolding the first dead men of the battle. Beneath that
cloud, the men of Kentucky, Indiana and Arkansaw, are engaged: you
see their arms glitter on the mountain side; they hurl the Mexican light
troops before them, and the battery of Washington whirling from the
centre to the left, pours its thunder, upon the flying foe.
The battle has begun, but night closes in, and the voice of the fight, is
stilled until the rising of the sun.
The Americans slumber upon the field, without fires—although the air
is bitter cold, and slumber upon their arms. Through the midnight shadow
the mountains rise, girdling the slumbering heroes with their wall of rock,
mantling the glitter of their arms, with immense masses of shadow.
Zachary Taylor, is summoned to the north, from Buena Vista to Saltillo.
General Minon, with a formidable mass of cavalry, hangs round
that town, like a cloud, ready to burst upon it, with a hurricane of flame
and steel. The veteran Wool remains at Buena Vista, and the Mississippi
regiment, with the second squadron of dragoons, guard old Taylor
on his way. By his side, he beholds Colonel Davis, and Lieutenant Colonel
May, brilliant with the glory of Monterey and Resaca De La Palma.
When Zachary Taylor, came to the field of Buena Vista, on the morning
of the twenty-third; the scene, that awaited him, was stirring and sublime.
The day had dawned in cloudless beauty, the mountain tops, breaking
without a frown, into the serene sky. But now, Buena Vista, lay wrapt
in one dense mass of smoke, that hung from mountain to mountain, over
a space of three miles. The roofs of the Hacienda, from which the field
takes its name, were hidden in cloud and flame. Under the shadow of
that pall, Santa Anna hurled the terror of his force, upon the American
volunteers, and bathed the mountain sides, in fire.
From rank to rank, hurried the heroic Wool, his breast exposed to the
enemy's deadliest fire, his horse, seen glancing through the clouds of battle.
His tall athletic form, rose proudly in every part of the field, as with
his hawk eye, gleaming with battle light, he hurried his men to the charge.
When riding from Saltillo, old Taylor came to Buena Vista, and reined
his grey, on the ridge, near the defile, this was the sight which he saw:
Frowning upon the left flank, the Mexicans appeared in overwhelming
force, upon the mountain side, their bayonets and lances, shining away,
one dazzling flood of steel, until they were lost in the distance.
While that belt of glittering arms was seen, girdling the mountain's
base, they poured their hail of copper and iron from every ridge, and
wrapt the Americans in a sheet of flame. The carnage was horrible. One
brave captain—O'Brien—saw every man and horse, around his cannon,
crushed with the same fire, into dust. The second Indiana regiment,
broke their ranks, and fled towards the Hacienda.
In vain the gallant Lincoln, a brave descendant of the Revolutionary
hero, endeavors to stay their flight! In vain their own commander, Colonel
Bowles, with a small and faithful band, who defy the panic and the
foe, places himself in the path, waves the flag of their Regiment, beseeches
them to turn and meet the Mexicans with firm ranks and woven
steel!
Seized with one of those sudden panics, which render powerless, the
bravest armies, they retreat and do not pause in their flight, until the
Hacienda of Buena Vista breaks on their eyes.
Meanwhile the battery of Washington, threatened by a steady column,
advancing along the centre, did its work, upon their ranks, and scattered
their beautiful array, into the shadows of the ravines.
Colonel Bissell's men, the second Illinois regiment—you behold them
yonder upon the broad plateau, beneath the mountain—perform deeds
worthy of the days of old. While Sherman's battery, aids them in the
bloody task, they face that sea of flame and steel, rushing upon them,
from the mountain side—fight step by step, as they are driven backward
—wave their banner and rush to the certain death once more.
At this moment, in fact, the army of Santa Anna, have poured their
overwhelming force from the mountain side, turned the American flank,
and girdled our rear, with one dense mass of lance and bayonet.
The moment is critical, the danger imminent. Zachary Taylor feels
that the arm which shielded him, at Palo Alta, Rasaca De La Palma and
Monterey, will not fail him now.
At his word, Colonel Davis, with his Mississippians, hurries to the left,
and the deadly rifles of the west, mow down the advancing Mexicans by
hundreds. At his word, Captain Bragg, thunders away, confronts the
formidable horde, as it pours from the mountain side, and pours his grape,
into their closely-woven ranks. The second Kentucky Regiment, with
its commander Mc Kee, fought side by side with Hardin and his Illinois
volunteers. Amid the very thickest of the fight, the Second Henry Clay,
was seen, urging his countrymen forward, as he led the way, and rushed
into the Mexican battle, sword in hand.
As we gaze upon this fight of the mountain and ravine, we see the
Mississippi Regiment, completely encircled by the Mexicans, who only
pour onward, the faster, as their ranks are blocked with dead. The third
Indiana regiment, headed by Col. Lane, come rushing to its aid, and while
Sherman and Bragg, pour their blaze from the plateau, a glittering bolt
of battle, with young May, dashing in its van, separates from the American
army, and sweeps toward the mountain, where the Mexican lances,
flash like a shower of meteors.
In that battle bolt, you may distinguish the regular dragoons, Pike's Arkansaw
horse, and the cavalry of Kentucky and Arkansaw headed by
Marshall and Yell. The whole fire of the American army was now concentrated
upon the base of the mountain: the dead bodies of the Mexicans
began to bridge the smaller gullies, and flood them with a red torrent.
As the smoke, ascending pile on pile, from the ravine to the mountain,
rolled aside, old Taylor saw the work go steadily on, and saw the Banner
of the Stars, flash beautifully where the spears and bayonets, joined in
their deadliest conflict.
The battle whirls away toward the Hacienda of Buena Vista: you see
the smoke tossing above its roof: Santa Anna would possess the train of
the American army. But May comes gallantly to the rescue, and Reynold's
with two pieces of cannon, meet the lancers, as they come, and
hews them into dust, as they fly.
Yell, of Arkansas and Marshall of Kentucky are there, battling with
the Mexicans, horse to horse, and sword to sword. That firm column is
broken, one portion rushes by the Hacienda, toward the opposite mountain,
while the other retracing its steps, seeks to gain the mountain on our left.
As they receive the fire, pouring from every point of the field, near the
Hacienda, a brave soldier, creeps from beneath his dead horse, springs on
his feet, his lower jaw, torn away, by the blow of a murderous lance.
For a moment he stands gazing upon the divided array of the Mexicans,
and he then falls to rise no more. The gallant Yell had fought his last
battle.
Look, through the mists of the battle, and behold that band of Mexicans,
at least one thousand strong, crowded in the narrow gorge, which is
raked by the American cannon. In vain they attempt to fly; their ranks
become entangled; they are crushed into the bed of the ravine; a wild
and affrighted Mob, scatters through the pass; where a moment ago, was
but one glittering array of steel, now is only a dark and hideous Golgotha.
It was at this moment, that the old General, calmly surveying the fight,
—his brown coat, visible from every part or the field, a mark for the
musquets and cannon of the enemy—was surprised by the appearance of
another messenger from Santa Anna, bearing a White Flag.
“His Excellency General Santa Anna,” said the officer bowing—
“Desires to know, what General Taylor wants?”
“Wants?” echoed the veteran—“I want him to surrender!”
This was bold language from the leader of four thousand volunteers,
to the General of twenty thousand brave Mexicans.
Willing however, even amid that hour of havoc, to hear the propositions
of the Mexican Chief, he silenced the American fire. At his command,
the second General of the day, the brave Wool, rode toward the
Mexican line, seeking an interview with Santa Anna, but was greeted with
a treacherous fire. The White Flag, was but a trick of the Mexican, to
save the portion of his force, which had been divided near the Hacienda.
Amid the clouds which rolled to the right, young Crittenden of Kentucky,
a volunteer, for that day, near the person of Taylor, rode forward,
with a summons to the commander of that immense body of Mexican
cavalry, which had been cut off from the main body of the Mexican
army.
He summoned the commander of this force to surrender, in the name
of Taylor, and was led blind-folded, through ravine and gully, until a loud
flourish of drums and trumpets, announced that he was in the presence of
Santa Anna.
“Your mission?”
—“To demand the surrender of a portion of your force, separated by
our soldiers, from your army.”
“But Taylor”—said the Mexican Chief, in abrupt tones: his words
mean to do? Surrounded by twenty thousand men, he must surrender?”
Then it was, that this young Kentuckian, born of the land of Boone,
and Taylor and Clay, felt the blood rush to his cheek, as looking the
Mexican Dictator in the eye, he uttered the phrase, which has already,
been linked with the `Come and take me!' of ancient story:
But why need we picture, the course of those ten hours of Buena
Vista, in all their details of agony and glory? Where twenty thousand
men, advancing around the base of mountains, and dashing from ravines,
level their forest of steel, their volcano of flame, upon a band, only four
thousand strong, you may be sure, that the carnage is horrible.
But when we remember, the wild and broken nature of the ground, that
valley of ridges and chasms, three miles in extent, almost impracticable,
for artillery or cavalry, it becomes plain, that there was much of the silent
butchery of bayonet to lance, and sword to sword, and breast to breast.
To speak of all the heroes of the band of Buena Vista, as they deserve,
would fill a volume. Their conduct, forever frowns into oblivion,
the silly lie, uttered by silly men, that the Citizen Soldier, is not to be
depended upon in the hour of need. These brilliant names, were that
day, painted in blood, on the American Banner—Davis, Mc Kee, Clay,
Marshall, Hardin, Yell and Vaughan, Lincoln, Pike, Lane and Wool,
O'Brien and Bryan, Bissell and Sherman, Bragg and Reynolds, Steen and
Mc Cullough, Bowles and Gorman, Kilburn and Rucker, Monroe and
Morrison, Brent, Whiting and Couch; Thomas, French, Shover, Donaldson,
May, Washington, Taylor—all brave, some wounded, some killed,
some of the regular, others of the Volunteer force, but all glorious, as
were a thousand other heroes, with the halo of Buena Vista.
From the scenes of the bloody day, let us select but two, as memorable
examples of the stern daring of Taylor and his men.
Mounted on his grey steed with one leg crossed over the saddle, the
old Man beholds the Mexicans emerge from yonder ravine, their numbers,
marked by their lances and bayonets.
Near Zachery Taylor, glooms the battery of Captain Bragg; a cool
soldier, who never fires, until he sees the color of the enemys' faces. On
come the Mexicans—on, with their lances flashing, their war-horses, beating
the earth, with a sound like thunder, their entire array, closing in the
prospect, with one dazzling battle barricade.
Taylor's grey eye begins to look, as it looked at Palo Alto!
Then the battery speaks out, and you may read the faces of an hundred
dying men by its light. Do you see that glimpse of clear sky through
God together?
Taylor bends forward; he sees those columns quiver, but still the moment
is one of absording interest. That cannister, hurled from the muzzle
of Bragg's cannon is deadly—as they press on, with but a few yards between,
it crashes them down as though a bolt from heaven had blasted
their flags and lances into blood.
Still they come on; the old man can maintain his silence no longer;
leaning forward, with every vein in his bronzed face glowing and swelling
with the impulse of that terrible hour, he lays his hand on the shoulder
of the undaunted Captain—
“A little more grape, Captain Bragg!”
He says it in a whisper, but the Soldier hears him, and feels that voice
stir his blood like a trumpet peal. Turning away with a flushed forehead,
he obeys the mild request of his General, and as the Mexicans come up
to the muzzles once more, he speaks to them with grape!
When the smoke clears away, you see the edge of the ravine lined
with dead men, and the arms of the retreating Mexicans, glittering from
the shades below.
It was near the setting of the sun, when the Man of Palo Alto, Resaca
de la Palma, and Monterey, saw the clouds come down on the last charge
of Buena Vista, that a scene, worthy of the days of Washington, closed
the day in glory.
Do you behold that dark ravine, deep sunken between these precipitous
banks? Here no sunlight comes, for these walls of rock wrap the pass
in eternal twilight. Withered trees grow between the masses of granite,
and scattered stones make the bed of the ravine uncertain and difficult for
the tread.
Hark! That cry, that rush like a mountain torrent bursting its barriers,
and quick as the lightning flashes from darkness, the dismal ravine is
bathed in red battle light. From its northern extremity, a confused band
of Mexicans, an army in itself, come yelling along the pass, treading one
another down as they fly, their banners, spears, horses and men, tossed
together in inextricable confusion.
By thousands they rush into the shadows of the pass, their dark faces
reddened by the sheeted blaze of musquetry. The caverns of the ravine
sends back the roar of the panic, and the grey rocks are washed by their
blood.
But the little band who pursues this army? Who are they? You
may see in their firm heroic ranks, the volunteer costume of Illinois and
Kentucky. At their head, urging his men with shouts, rides the gallant
M'Kee, by his side young Henry Clay, that broad forehead, which reminds
ere it falls to kill. There too, a wild figure, red with his own blood and
the blood of Mexican foes, his uniform rent in tatters, his arm bared to the
shoulder, striking terrible blows with his good sword—Hardin of Illinois,
comes gallantly forward.
This small, but iron band, hurl the Mexicans from the heights into the
ravine, and follow up the chase, far down into the eternal twilight of that
mountain pass.
Look! As their musquetry streams its steady blaze, you would think
that one ceaseless sheet of lightning bathed these rocks in flame!
Over the Mexicans, man and horse, hurled back in mad disorder, the
Americans dash on their way, never heeding the overwhelming numbers
of their foes, never heeding the palpitating forms beneath their feet, with
bayonet, and rifle, and sword, they press steadily on, their well-known
banner streaming evermore overhead.
The howl of the dying war-horse—hark! Does it not chill your blood
to hear it? The bubbling cry of the wounded man, with the horse's
hoof upon his mouth, trampling his face into a hideous wreck—does it
not sicken your soul to hear it?
A hundred yards or more, into the pass the Americans have penetrated,
when suddenly a young Mexican, rushing back upon their ranks, seizes
the fallen flag of Anahuac, and dashes to his death!
To see him, young and beardless, a very boy, rush with his country's
flag, with his bared breast, upon that line of sharp steel—it was a sight to
stir cowards into manhood, and it shot into the Mexican hearts like an
electric flame.
Even in their panic-stricken disorder, they turned; by hundreds they
grasped their arms, and rolled in one long wave of lance and bayonet, upon
the foe. Woe to the brave men of Illinois and Kentucky now! Locked
in that deadly pass, a wall of infuriated Mexicans between them and that
wall of rocks—above their heads, through every aperture among the
cliffs, the blaze of musquets pouring a shower of bullets in their faces—
wherever they turned, the long and deadly lance poised at their throats—
it was a moment to think once of Home and die!
Those who survived that fearful moment, tell with shuddering triumph
of the deeds of the three heroes—M'Kee, Hardin and Clay.
M'Kee, you see him yonder, with his shattered sword dripping blood,
he endeavors to ward off the aim of those deadly lances, and fights on his
knees when he can stand no longer, and then the combatants close over
him and you see him no more.
Hardin, rose from a heap of slaughtered foes, his face streaming from
its hideous lance wounds, and waved a Mexican flag, in triumph, as his
life blood gushed in a torrent over his muscular form. That instant, the
full light of battle was upon his mangled face. Then, flinging the captured
of Buena Vista! My Wife!” It was his last word. Upon his bared
breast, the fury of ten lances rushed, and the horses' hoofs trampled him
into the heap of dead.
But most sad and yet most glorious of all, it was, to see the death of
the Second Henry Clay! You should have seen him, with his back
against yonder rock, his sword grasped firmly, as the consciousness that
he bore a name that must not die ingloriously, seemed to fill his every
vein, and dart a deadly fire from his eyes!
At that moment he looked like the old Man.
For his brow, high and retreating, with the blood-clotted hair waving
back from its outline, was swollen in every vein, as though his Soul shone
from it, ere she fled forever. Lips set, brows knit, hand firm—a circle
of his men fighting round him—he dashed into the Mexicans, until his
sword was wet, his arm weary with blood.
At last, with his thigh splintered by a ball, he gathered his proud form
to its full height, and fell. His face, ashy with intense agony, he bade
his comrades to leave him there to die. That ravine, should be the bed
of his glory.
But gathering round him, a guard of breasts and steel—while two of
their number bore him tenderly along—those men of Kentucky fought
round their fallen hero, and as retreating step by step, they launched their
swords and bayonets into the faces of the foe, they said with every blow—
“Henry Clay!”
It was wonderful to see how that name nerved their arms, and called
a smile to the face of the dying hero. How it would have made the heart
of the old man of Ashland throb, to have heard his name, yelling as a battle
cry, down the shadows of that lonely pass!
Along the ravine, and up this narrow path! The Hero bleeds as they
bear him on, and tracks the way with his blood. Faster and thicker the
Mexicans swarm—they see the circle around the fallen man, even see his
pale face, uplifted, as a smile crosses it fading lineaments, and like a pack
of wolves scenting the frozen traveller at dead of night, they come howling
up the rocks, and charge the devoted band with one dense mass of
bayonets.
Up and on! The light shines yonder, on the topmost rocks of the
ravine.—It is the light of the setting sun. Old Taylor's eye is upon that
rock, and there we will fight our way, and die in the old man's sight!
It was a murderous way, that path up the steep bank of the ravine!
Littered with dead, slippery with blood, it grew blacker every moment
with swarming Mexicans, and the defenders of the wounded hero, fell one
by one, into the chasms yawning all around.
At last they reach the light, the swords and bayonets glitter in sight of
rock.
Then it was, that gathering up his dying frame—armed with supernatural
vigor—young Clay started from the arms of his supporters, and stood
with outstretched hands, in the light of the setting sun. It was a glorious
sight which he saw there, amid the rolling battle clouds; Santa Anna's
formidable array hurled back into ravine and gorge, by Taylor's little
band! But a more glorious thing it was to see, that dying man, standing
for the last time, in the light of that sun, which never shall rise for him
again!
“Leave me!” he shrieked, as he fell back on the sod—“I must die
and I will die here! Peril your lives no longer for me! Go! There
is work for you yonder!”
The Mexicans crowding on, hungry for slaughter, left no time for
thought. Even as he spoke, their bayonets, glistening by hundreds, were
levelled at the throats of the devoted band. By the mere force of their
overwhelming numbers, they crushed them back from the side of the
dying Clay.
One, only lingered; a brave man, who had known the chivalric Soldier,
and loved him long; he stood there, and covered as he was with
blood, heard these last words:
“Tell my Father how I died, and give him these pistols!”
Lifting his ashy face, into light, he turned his eyes, upon his comrades
face—placed the pistols in his hand—and fell back to his death.
That Comrade, with the pistols in his grasp, fought his way alone to
the topmost rock of the path, and only once looked back. He saw, a
quivering form, canopied by bayonets—he saw those outstretched hands
grappling with points of steel—he saw a pale face lifted once, in the light,
and then darkness, rushed upon the life of the young Henry Clay.
Placing his hands behind his back, with his head on his breast, a tall
old man, strode thoughtfully along the carpet, of his chamber. It was
near the evening hour, and the blush of summer, was upon those woods
and hills, which you may see through the uncurtained window.
Were you to meet this old man among ten thousand you would know
him when you saw him again, and did you once behold that wide mouth,
wreathe in a smile, that grey eye, fire with soul, that brow, high and relenting,
glow with his heart, you would be very sure to love him.
But the voice, that rings from those lips, and swells from that chest—
you should hear it, melt in pity, or hiss in scorn, or thunder forth the
frenzy of a great soul!
Plainly clad in a dark dress, his face covered with the large wrinkles
of seventy years, this old man, is thinking over his life. From a log hut
into a Senate, from the arms of a widowed mother, into the love of a nation—an
Genius.
But he is old now. Those grey hairs, tell of the coming on of the fast
crowding years. The things of political strife, who loved the old man,
as a miser loves a diamond, not on account of its pure and beautiful light,
but from the great query—how much will it bring?—seem to have forgotten
him. They have left him, to the Hearts of the People.
He paces the floor, and thinks of the days he has seen. Born in the
Revolution, he grew up among its memories and saw the greatest among
its great men.
Where are they now? Where the comrades of his earlier days?
Where the compeers of his manhood? Where the most gallant of all
his foes, whose soul, was warmed with fire, like that which gave his own
heart its energy, its love and its fate, where the Man of New Orleans and
the Hermitage?
There is grass above his grave.
Like the last column, standing erect, in a desert of ruins, the old man is
left alone.
You may take my word for it, that his thoughts at this still hour, are
strangled and contrasted in their hues, as the Ghosts of the Past, come
crowding up to him, their faces looking sadly out from the shrouds of
Memory.
The door is opened—a man appears, whose scarred face, and battle-worn
figure, speak of the land of Mexico. You gaze upon the old man,
as he motions the Stranger to a seat. He reads in that face, the volume
of a sad yet heroic history. The Stranger does not move, but stands in
the sunset glow, his nether lip, quivering faintly.
Advancing he endeavors to speak, but there is a spell on his tongue.
He can only place in the old man's hands a pair of pistols.
“Buena Vista!” he said, and turned away—unwilling to witness the
tears and agony of the Father.
When he looked again—the twilight shadow was gathering fast—the
old man, stood near the window gazing silently upon those eloquent memorials
of Henry Clay, his Son.
We left the young hero, on his couch of stone, with twenty bayonets
in his breast. That ravine, far down into the shadows, was lined with
Mexicans, who came swarming towards, the topmost rock, glittering in
the sunset glow. From every nook and cavern, they poured, like jackals
to a warrior's corse, and—their overwhelming numbers, lighting the dark
pass, with an endless blaze of steel—they advanced, to the topmost rock,
and displayed in battle order, along the summit of the ridge.
But the battery yonder, stationed on a higher ridge—what does it
mean? Washington and his sturdy cannoniers, are there! On the
with the volunteers of Indiana, with the cannon of Bragg, frowning
through the intervals of their solid ranks.
The sun, was setting, and that firm array on the plateau, looked beautiful,
as it stood prepared, to receive the last onset of the Mexican horde.
Not a shout disturbed the silence, on the American side.
The Mexicans—you behold them by thousands, horse and foot, along
the summit of this ridge—their banners, spears and bayonets, forming
one glittering pageant, as far as eye can see.
Look on them well, in this moment of their glory, for a smoke rolls
over the plateau, and the hurricane of death, is on its way!
When the smoke rolls up the Mouutain side, you see the ridge heaped
with dead, while far down the ravine, rushes the wreck of that formidable
force, retreating from the last charge of Buena Vista.
Night on Buena Vista!
It was a sad, an awful night. The stars shone serenely on the mountain
top, while all beneath was dim and dark. Through the gloom, at
irregular intervals broke the glare of torch-light, only making the darkness
more sad and dismal.
The Americans slept on their arms, without fire. The night was bitter
cold; the moans of the dying, joined in chorus, from the depths of the
ravines; and the living moved silently along, endeavoring to recognise,
their own dead by the light of the stars.
From afar, the camp fires of Santa Anna's army, were seen, ever and
again, as the battle vapor rolled aside. The Americans slept well, on
their tired arms, but in the passes of the defile, upon the ridges and over
the plateau, there were those who slumbered not.
The women of Mexico, soothing the agonies of the dying strangers!
Their garments, fluttered through the darkness, as they went to and fro,
staunching the blood, placing to the feverish lip, the cup of water, bending
beside the dying in prayer. Prayer in a strange tongue, prayer on a
strange battle field, in a strange land—how it went to the hearts of the
American soldiers, and made them remember the Homes, they should
never see again!
There were others who slumbered not, but watched in anxious expectation,
for the moment, when the conflict would begin again.
Amid the band of watchers, on the summit of yonder ridge, stands the
old man, Zachary Taylor, his form dimly revealed in the light of the
stars. Beside him his favorite grey; before him, the darkened field,
yawning with chasms, he stands with uncovered head, his grey eyes uplifted
to the sky. The morrow? What new danger will it bring, what
new conflict in those hideous gorges of Buena Vista? Through the live-long
night the old warrior prepared for the worst.
The morning came at last, and looking to the south, far through the
mountain pass, Zachary Taylor, beheld the retreating banners of Santa
Anna.
Then it was, that sitting down amid the dead of that heroic fight, the
old man penned his immortal despatch, and sent word to the Capitol,
that with his four thousand untried volunteers, he had beaten Santa Anna
and twenty thousand men, in the chasms of Buena Vista.
That word rang through the American Union, like a voice from the
grave of Washington, and thundering along the Gulf of Mexico, it nerved
the arms of the brave men, who besieged the Castle of San Juan De
Ulloa, and found its glorious consumation in the fall of Vera Cruz and
route of Cerro Gordo.
REV. C. CHAUNCEY BURR:
—When first I determined to write the Legends of Mexico—ancient and modern,
from the era of Scott and Taylor, back through the mists of ages, to Cortez and
Montezuma—it was your generous sympathy with my purposes, that gave me strength
and deepened my enthusiasm for the task. These works on Mexico—every one of
which is intended to be distinct and separate, yet forming together, a complete book
on the `golden and bloody land'—I now dedicate to you, in this the first of the series,
embodying the Battles of Taylor. This Dedication, my tried friend, is no less a
token of that brotherhood which I feel with you, than a tribute to your commanding
Genius, which having ranked you among the first orators, will soon claim admiration
for you, among the first Essayists of the Nineteenth Century.
August 15, 1847.
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