1824: The Arkansas War (27 page)

The four-pounder in the rear went off again, followed closely by Crowell’s gun. The same steamboat took another hit, this one in the hull. A keelboat rocked wildly, breaking loose its tether and starting to drift with the current. With that hole torn in its side, though, it likely wouldn’t drift more than a few miles.

Didn’t matter. A few miles would be enough, even if the boat didn’t sink at all. The sounds of the Laird coming were starting to fill the dawn. There was no time at all, now, for Crittenden and his men. No time at all.

“All right, Henry!” Anthony shouted. “You can get us under way again!”

In the blockhouse, Zachary Taylor had come to the same conclusion. And he made it a point to jot down in his unwritten mental notebook that the two oncoming regiments of the army of Arkansas were able to march faster and for longer than any regiment of the U.S. Army he’d ever known. It remained to be seen how well they’d been trained in battlefield tactics. But one thing was now sure and certain. Driscol must have had them practicing marches—relentlessly—for months.

Taylor was not guessing. He was one of the few field-grade officers in the U.S. Army who was adamant himself about keeping troops well trained and in good condition. Part of the reason his whole career had been spent on the frontier, with none of the usual assignments to Washington that might have advanced him more rapidly, was that he had a reputation for being a commander who could be sent to a poorly trained and dispirited garrison stuck in a fort out in the middle of nowhere and rapidly bring order and discipline to what had been not much more than a half-trained and three-quarters-drunk mob of gamblers, whoremongers, and idlers.

From what Taylor could determine thus far, on the other hand, Driscol’s tactics didn’t seem particularly sophisticated. Not that Taylor was fond himself of fancy tactics on a battlefield. But still, this was about as crude and blunt as it got.

Driscol had shifted his regiments from column march into lines, not more than three hundred yards from the outlying units in Crittenden’s army. Risky, that. Taylor himself wouldn’t have chanced getting that close to an enemy while still in column formation. Not regular troops, at any rate. It took even a well-trained army two minutes or more to shift from column to line formation, during which time it was vulnerable to a vigorous counterattack.

Against a force like Crittenden’s, admittedly, there wasn’t much risk. They were just as sluggish as they were brutal and undisciplined. But trained soldiers under good officers would have been able to take advantage of that recklessness on Driscol’s part.

And now that he had his two regiments formed up, Driscol was just advancing them forward, side by side. No cavalry screen on the flanks—in fact, he didn’t seem to have any cavalry at all—and not even any use of light infantry as a substitute. He did have a small battery of four-pounders, but those were still a considerable distance to the rear. The artillerymen were trying to bring them up on the flank, but the horses were having a rough time of it. The terrain was awfully soggy this close to the river.

Clearly enough, though, Driscol had no intention of waiting until he could bring his artillery to bear. He’d go at Crittenden with his infantry alone, relying on discipline and impact to keep his enemy off balance and prevent them from using their own artillery to good effect.

It was going to be a pure and simple slugging match. A sergeant’s sort of fight. About twelve hundred men under Driscol’s command, against a slightly larger force of Crittenden’s.

Under the circumstances, Taylor was pretty sure this was going to be as one-sided a slugging match as he’d ever seen. Whether between armies, pugilists, or rams in a field, for that matter. Unsophisticated Driscol’s tactics might be, but those two regiments were advancing in perfect order and in perfect cadence. Trained and trained and trained. Not blooded yet, most of them, but even green recruits, with good enough training and enough of it, could acquit themselves very well on a battlefield.

He shifted the glass to observe Crittenden’s forces.

Forces.
Could ever a term be so misused?

One large group of men, near the center of Crittenden’s army, looked to be in something you could call a formation. Taylor had been told by Major Totten that the Lallemand brothers had joined Crittenden’s expedition, along with what was left of their French troops and some Alabamans they’d recruited. That was probably them. But fewer than three hundred men were in those ranks taking shape. What was worse was that none of the other loosely knit groups of men in Crittenden’s army were following their example. Not even the groups clustered around his handful of field guns. In fact, they looked more disorganized than anybody.

One man in a fancy-looking uniform, some fifty yards from the Lallemand unit, was racing back and forth and waving a sword. Taylor couldn’t make out his features at the distance, but he seemed like a young man, which Crittenden was.

Probably Robert Crittenden himself, then. Taylor had met him once on one of the several visits he’d paid to John J. Crittenden when he’d still been a U.S. senator from Kentucky. Taylor liked John quite a bit but hadn’t been much impressed with the younger brother. By all accounts, Robert Crittenden was something in the way of the black sheep of that very prominent family.

For all the good Crittenden was doing, he might as well have been ordering the tide to recede. Even from the distance, it was as clear as the day itself—now that the sun was well over the horizon—that none of Crittenden’s men were paying him any attention at all.

That was hardly surprising. From his years serving on the frontier, Taylor was quite familiar with the sort of men who filled the ranks of Crittenden’s army. Basically, they were gangs. Sometimes outright loners, with maybe a partner or two. But usually they were part of a group of perhaps half a dozen to several dozen men, loosely organized and led by one or a few dominant characters. Many of them were outright criminals, and a goodly percentage of those who weren’t simply hadn’t been convicted yet.

Their motives were about as rudimentary as their organization. Adventure, of course. Loot, whether in the form of money or—mostly, in this situation—slaves; evading debts; evading the authorities of one state or another. Often enough, evading other men like themselves. If the officer corps of the U.S. Army stationed in frontier garrisons was notorious for its dueling habits, men like these made them seem veritable pacifists—except that their “duels” were rarely formal affairs.

There was another sort of a man in that army, to be sure. A different layer, it might be better to say. There’d also be men like Crittenden himself, with money to invest. Looking for the cheapest land there was, at least in financial terms. Conquered land, paid for only in blood.

Someone else’s blood, they’d thought. They were about to learn otherwise.

Julia finally gave up trying to keep the girls from watching at all. At least the slit they were now peering through was just a half-inch gap between two logs on the lower level of the fort. Only the most extreme bad luck would bring a musket ball to either one of them.

If any got fired at the fort at all. Julia was now peering through the same slit, and from what she could tell that was getting less likely by the minute. She couldn’t see much, since almost none of Crittenden’s army was visible from this angle through such a narrow aperture. But she had a decent enough view of the army of Arkansas as it marched up to the riverbank. They were spread out wide now, in clearly delineated ranks, and were starting to bring their muskets level.

Julia had no military experience of any kind. But a person facing such a completely menacing sight would have to be a lunatic to waste any shots at a fort all the way on the other side of a river. She figured the girls were safe enough.

From musket balls, anyway. Of course, there were other perils in life.

“I’m so scared,” Imogene whispered.

“Me too,” her sister chimed in.

Julia made the mistake of being the reassuring mother. “We’re safe enough here, girls. I don’t think those men are even going to be attacking us at all.”

Her daughters gave her a dismissive sideways glance.

“Not worried about
us,
Mama,” Adaline said.

“Our beaus might get hurt,” Imogene explained. “Might even get killed.”

“You don’t even know those boys! And you too young to be thinking such thoughts, nohow!”

Her daughters ignored her and went back to their intent peering. Softly—though not softly enough—Julia banged her head against one of the logs. Once, twice, thrice.

“Imogene, your father finds out you eyeing that one boy! That currie be black as coal!”

“He sings pretty.”

Adaline, as usual, couldn’t resist the sibling rivalry. “
My
beau’s white.”

“So what?” came Imogene’s cool response. “Bet he can’t sing at all. And even if he can, who’d want to listen? That funny accent he got.”

“He’s from New York originally.” Adaline’s tone was defensive. “I axed him. Not his fault he don’t talk right yet.”

“‘
Doesn’t
talk right,’ ” her mother hissed. “And it’s ‘asked,’ not ‘axed.’ I swear, if you two—”

The rest was buried under an explosion of gunfire coming from across the river.

“Oh!” Imogene shrieked. “They’re being hurt!”

CHAPTER 18

Arkansas Post

O
CTOBER 6, 1824

Sheff dealt with the first fusillade fired by Crittenden’s men by just gritting his teeth and marching forward. He’d been trained; and, now, clutched to that training the way he’d clutched at the Bible in other frightening moments of his life.

They’d been told—told and told and told—to expect this. It was a lesson the Laird himself insisted on imparting to the units in their training.

Let the bastards shoot first. Some of you will die. Some of you will be crippled and maimed. We all die soon enough anyway, and old age will cripple you and maim you as sure as any musket ball. Just take it. Take it and keep coming. You do that, boys—don’t fire till you get the word—you’ll hammer ’em. And then you’ll hammer ’em again, and again, and again, and again. Until there’s nothing left but victory. Those of you who survive standing tall, and the bastards lying bloody in front of you, wailing like whipped curs.

You don’t matter. The regiment matters. Victory matters. That’s all that matters.

“Level arms!” Colonel Jones had a good battlefield voice. Real high-pitched. Much more so than when he talked normal-like.

Sheff had to fight off an instant’s urge to aim, reminding himself that he was holding a regular musket now, not a rifle. There was no point in aiming, in line formation on a battlefield. Just level the weapon at the mass of the enemy.

“Fire!”

He even remembered to yank the trigger instead of squeezing it. So he didn’t embarrass himself by having his shot go off after all the others.

For a moment, the world seemed to dissolve in a thunderclap. Everything he could see was white. Well, some gray. Gunsmoke always had impurities.

There wasn’t much wind, so the clouds lingered. All he could see ahead of him was maybe twenty feet—and that, only here and there. But he was too busy reloading to be looking around much anyway, especially since he had to be sure to be the first one in his squad ready.

“Ten paces forward!”

That was Sheff ’s cue, since he was the corporal. A half step ahead of the others, he led them through the paces.

“Level arms!”

The next man over to his left stumbled back, falling on his rear end and dropping his musket. He’d been shot in the head by one of the many shots being fired by Crittenden’s men, but Sheff paid him no more mind. He didn’t matter. Only the regiment mattered. Only victory mattered. At the moment, Sheff couldn’t even remember the dead man’s name.

“Fire!”

Another thunderclap, another dissolution of the world.

Victory mattered. And Sheff could start to feel it coming. The first angel he’d ever seen approaching in his life.

Taylor was genuinely shocked by that first volley fired by the Arkansans. He’d never in his life seen such a clear, crisp, perfect volley—from even a company, much less two regiments working together.

True, his whole experience had been on the frontier, almost entirely fighting Indians. Traditional battlefield tactics weren’t very applicable under such conditions. Still, he’d trained his men no differently than Driscol had. But he’d never gotten results like this. Not really even close, being honest.

Winfield Scott had, probably. Jacob Brown, too. But they’d served in the Canadian theater in the war, fighting British regulars.

It took a few seconds for the huge cloud of gunsmoke produced by that first volley to roll sluggishly over Crittenden’s men. So Taylor was able to see, very clearly, what effect it had.

The first thing it did was eliminate Crittenden himself. Still racing back and forth when his men began firing singly and indiscriminately, he was picked up by the volley and hurled a good five to ten yards. The sword went flying, along with the hand holding it. When his body hit the ground, his right leg came loose at the knee, held to the rest only by the cloth of his trousers and maybe some ligaments. It flopped over onto his hip like the limb of a broken rag doll.

Which was a pretty good depiction of him, Taylor knew. Those two wounds alone would probably have killed Crittenden, just from blood loss. But he had to be dead already. At least two or three other rounds must have struck him to have thrown him that far.

Except for the Lallemands’ unit, Crittenden’s whole army reeled back. Gunfighters and roughnecks they might be, most of them, but this was something completely outside their experience. Driscol’s tactics might leave a lot to be desired, but not even Napoleon’s Old Guard or one of Wellington’s elite regiments could have fired a better volley.

Truth be told, it was outside of Zachary Taylor’s experience also. But at least he understood the matter intellectually. He might not be the same sort of voracious reader of military manuals and accounts that Winfield Scott was, but he had studied his profession. And he’d talked to plenty of officers and men who’d fought against British regulars in the war.

On the battlefield, outside of artillery, the volley reigned supreme. That went far beyond any crude and simple arithmetic. By now, Crittenden’s men might quite possibly have fired just as many shots as had come to them in that opening Arkansas volley. But first, a much higher percentage would have gone wild. And second—more important still—shots fired singly hit an enemy like a hail of rocks. A volley hit like a landslide, or an earthquake. There was simply no comparison in terms of the key factor of shock.

Taylor had always known that, abstractly. Now he could see the truth of it with his own eyes. Crittenden’s men weren’t simply torn and bleeding in the body; their minds were stunned.

They weren’t going to get any respite, either. The Lallemands’ unit managed to get off a ragged volley. Some other individual shots were fired.

Then—
again.
The second volley shattered the Lallemands’ unit, and they stumbled back in the general inchoate retreat to the river.

Taylor cursed himself and started counting. He needed to get a sense of the timing.

Driscol’s regiments were still advancing. That same, steady, disciplined cadence. Again, the guns came level. Again, a volley.

He stopped the count and hissed in a breath. He knew for a fact that not more than one or two regiments in the U.S. Army could fire two disciplined volleys in that short a time—and the Arkansans were going to do it yet again.

Half dazed, Charles Lallemand stared down at the corpse of his brother.

“Henri-Dominique…”

There was no time for that. He turned to steady his men and bring them ready.

But there was no time for that, either. All of them were running away. To a river that was nothing but a trap.

He leveled a silent curse on Robert Crittenden and his own folly. Then he turned back, thrust his sword into its scabbard, squared his shoulders, and faced the enemy.

He had no illusions. But he was still a general in Napoleon’s army, even if the emperor himself was gone. A condemned officer would die by firing squad. Not a hangman’s noose.

The fourth volley came and granted him his last wish.

There was nothing left of Crittenden’s army but a shrieking mob, fighting with itself for space in one of the surviving boats along the riverbank. You could hardly call this a battle any longer. That first volley had broken the freebooters like a rotten stick. Now it was going to be nothing but a massacre.

For the first time, Taylor was able to get a good look at the banners being carried by the Arkansas color-bearers. That wasn’t the regular Confederate flag, with its simple salmon field and a blue triangle with the six stars of the chiefdoms. The triangle was still there, with the white stars, but the field was now five stripes. The outer two, salmon; the next in, white—and the fifth and center stripe, pure black.

That’d probably cause a political ruckus amongst the Confederacy’s politicians. But Taylor was pretty sure Driscol was making a point to them, here, just as much if not as brutally as he was to the men who’d invaded Arkansas.

That black stripe was only one of five, true enough. But even from this distance, Taylor could sense the spirit of those oncoming Arkansas regiments and the man who commanded them. They might as well have been flying the solid black flag of no quarter.

“There ain’t no more room!” Thompson shouted. But the man trying to clamber into the already overloaded flatboat wasn’t paying him any attention at all.

Cursing, Scott Powers managed to pry his musket loose from the mass of men pressed against him in the boat. No way to aim, so he just jammed the butt against the ribs of the man next to him, half leveled the musket—good enough, at this range—and pulled the trigger.

The man trying to clamber into the flatboat went into the river, with the top of his skull missing. The man next to Powers, against whom he’d jammed the musket butt, screamed and grabbed his ribs. A couple of them were probably broken.

There were
still
too many men on the boat. Even as frontier flatboats went, this one was on the small side.

The man whose ribs he’d broken was at the flatboat’s port rail. Powers brought the butt up against his jaw—then again, and again—and shoved him over the side. He’d probably drown, now stunned as well as having some broken ribs. But Powers didn’t care in the least. He didn’t care about anything except getting out of this nightmare.