A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (12 page)

Now outside Vermillionville, Franklin immediately saw the danger
they were in. The army's sixty-five-mile-long line of communications
back to Brashear City was wide open. He had argued with Banks against
this expedition, but "Bobbin Boy" had had his eye on the political payoff
of a victory and how well that would sit in Washington. With the British rampaging in New York and Maine, the administration desperately
needed a success. For Franklin, the professional officer who had slugged it out with Stonewall Jackson, every atom of his experience had rejected
this move. Banks should have keyed on the defense of New Orleans by
making sure the enemy could not pass through Brashear City again to
threaten the city from the south. It was clear that once that barrier was
passed, New Orleans would he next to impossible to defend. Holding
Brashear City with its long difficult approach was the only way to defend the city.

Once again he remonstrated with Banks. "I tell you, again, General,
we are in a trap. All the enemy has to do is fix our front and sweep south
and cut us off from our line of communications."

Banks was one of those men who only got stubborn when confronted by his own mistakes. "We shall meet them on this field, General.
Now, sir, rejoin your command."

Franklin was not through. "By God, sir, you will hear me out!" He
was a forceful man, and Banks almost seemed to cringe from the power
of his personality. "Not only are we about to be cut off from our communications, but you have placed us with our backs to this lake and the
bayous beyond. Why, all the enemy has to do is push us back and we
tumble down the bluff and right into Bayou Capucin. We must quit this
field and march south immediately, sir!"

Confronted with a barrage of the obvious, Banks simply retreated
into stubbornness. "Rejoin your command, sir!"

In disgust, Franklin spurred his horse away from the command
group to take his place with his small corps of barely six thousand
men on the right of the line just as his skirmishers were rushing back
through the line of battle. In his obtuseness, Banks reminded Franklin of
Burnside, the bungler of Fredericksburg. It was a telling comparison for
Franklin and Burnside had been mortal enemies. He muttered to himself
that since he couldn't outright shoot that damned fool Banks, he was going to work out his anger on the approaching French instead.

Bazaine had declined to oblige him. Instead of the French line, it
was Walker's Texans who surged toward XIX Corps. The Frenchman
had reserved the full weight of his own regiments for Washburn's large
sixteen-thousand-man XIII Corps on the left. By Taylor's account, it
was a veteran formation that had seen much action in the Vicksburg
Campaigns. Bazaine had also given much thought to Taylor's analysis of Washburn and Franklin, and it was clear to him that he would rather
attack the large veteran corps commanded by a political general than a
small corps led by a pugnacious veteran. He would leave that tough nut
to Walker's Greyhounds and the glory to the French.

Bazaine had Taylor's shrewd biographical intelligence analysis of
Banks and his corps commanders to thank for this unfolding opportunity. He had been suspicious when Taylor's scouts reported that Banks's
line of communications had been left wide open. Surely it was a trap. It
was a rare European general who would have blundered so. He sent the
scouts out to confirm. Once Bazaine had realized what an imbecile opposed him, he sent his large Confederate cavalry division ten miles south
to cut the Union line of communications and himself marched straight
for Vermillionville. He almost licked his lips.

Bazaine's first move was to send the bulk of his remaining cavalry
with two battalions of Chasseurs a Pied south within sight of the enemy to
cut the road to Brashear City. "Oui, messieurs," he mused to his staff, "Let
General Banks observe. It is always wise to give the enemy something
to be nervous about." He also thought to himself that the nervousness
would be shared by the rank and file as the word flitted through the
ranks that they were cut off to the south. Amazingly, Banks had not put
his cavalry division on this open flank but held it in reserve.

The men of the Union XIII Corps had a lot to think about. As word
of the French cavalry's appearance on their flank spread, they could
see the French line moving to engage. Their colorful ranks ate up the
intervening ground as their drums beat to quicken the advance. French
brigades seldom made a uniform appearance. Regiments of the line were
brigaded with Zouaves or other individual units as the Foreign Legion
or Tirailleurs Algeriens. But it was more than martial splendor that closed
on the American lines. It was the reputation of the French. American
military models had been uniformly French-from the kepi to tactics to
the popular bronze smoothbore cannon personally developed by Napoleon III himself. Any military observer of the period would have identified the French as the foremost martial race in Europe. Prussia's glory
still slept.

And that reputation was swiftly closing the beaten ground between the two armies. The artillery of both sides, smoothbore and rifled,
opened up, sending the first clouds of black smoke through the clear fall air and ugly death into the ranks of both armies. But the French kept
coming.

At four hundred yards, the American line erupted in a sheet of
flame and black smoke. Frenchmen tumbled forward or pitched backwards. An eagle standard went down only to be snatched up again. But
the French kept coming as the American fire became continuous. At
three hundred yards, the French line stopped and delivered its first rifle
fire. American bodies crumpled. Then the French drummers beat the pas
de charge all along the line. The air throbbed until it built to crescendo,
and on they came, the field echoing with " Vive I'Empereur!"

HMS CAWNPORE, THREE DAYS OUT FROM ROYAL NAVY
BASE HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, 4:30 PM, OCTOBER 21, 1863

The Royal Navy troop transport lumbered through heavy seas, bearing
the second great wave of reinforcements for the garrison of British North
America since the Trent Affair of late 1861. Eight thousand had been sent
then; twenty thousand-horse, foot, and artillery-were at sea or about
to depart the British Isles, the greatest movement of the British Army
since the Crimean War.

Cawnpore carried the nine hundred men of the 41st Foot fresh from
the garrison of Dublin. Their officers were particularly irked over the
men's appearance and conduct, for it was their lot that the ship also carried the commander of British forces in North America, Lt. Gen. James
Hope Grant. The men's resentment evaporated when they realized Hope
Grant, as he was commonly called, was only interested in their welfare.
A historian would later write of him, "Not many men have better understood war than this kindly, pious, daring lancer who could play as
skillfully on the hearts of his men as on the strings of his beloved violon-
cello."24 A contemporary, the notorious Harry Flashman, had a different
take, "He wasn't much of a general; it was notorious he'd never read a
line outside the Bible; he was so inarticulate he could barely utter any
order hut 'Charge!;' his notions of discipline were to flog anything that
moved.... But none of this mattered in the least because, you see, Hope
Grant was the best fighting man in the world."25

If he fit the bill as the eccentric British officer, he did not care. He
was an accomplished musician and a deeply thoughtful man. It was said
that he chose his aides and staff for their musical abilities so that the te dium of the long voyages around the world in the service of the queen
could be relieved by his heart's delight. That he had become recognized
the finest of the queen's generals only added to the image.

Hope Grant had started his military life with the 9th Lancers in
India, but he got his first foot on the ladder of fame as brigade-major to
Lord Saltoun during the First China War. "Saltoun-a hero of Houge-
mont [at Waterloo] in 1815-had selected Grant for both his military and
musical abilities, he himself being a keen cellist." He came out of that
war with Saltoun's patronage and the CB (Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath). He added wars, decorations, and promotions
relentlessly - from the Second Sikh War to the Great Mutiny where he
commanded the 9th, then a brigade, and finally the cavalry division with
great skill and uniform success in almost every one of the great actions
of the war. He earned the KCB (Knight Commander of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath) and promotion to lieutenant general, and his
lancers won no fewer than fourteen Victoria Crosses. His reputation won
him the command of the expeditionary force in the Second China War
of 1860, where he took the Taku Forts, routed the Chinese repeatedly in
open battle, and took Peking. The loot from the imperial summer palace
was immense, though he distributed his huge share to his men.

He commanded the Madras Army in India 1862-63 and was then
posted home to become Quartermaster General of the British Army. He
did not even have time to get used to his title before Britain was plunged
into war with America. His reputation in the Army and favor with the
queen guaranteed him the command of British forces in North America.

Time had not rested heavily on his hands during the voyage. He
had the original war plan against America developed during the Trent
Affair to review as well as the astute studies of the Northern states that
Wolseley had sent him. They were of even more current value now that
British armies were holding Albany and besieging Portland. He was
particularly interested in the maps of these areas, and of these the maps
of Maine held his attention the most, for without Maine and its loop of
the Grand Trunk Railroad, Canada could not be held. He was most interested in the ability of the Americans to relieve the siege of Portland and
fully expected them to be undertaking it as he steamed across the pond.
Cawnpore's destination had been Halifax, but he directed the captain to
change course to Portland.

Map study had not completely consumed his time. His devotion to
God was as fully a part of him as his love of music. That devotion found
him on the quarterdeck as a member of an officer string quartet playing
for the crew and the 41st. They were not playing Mozart, Bach, or Vivaldi. Instead, the delicate and haunting music to Henry F. Lyte's 'Abide
with Me" came from their instruments-a hymn beloved on both sides
of the Atlantic since its writing in 1847. They were accompanied by a
sweet voiced naval rating, and the beauty of their music floated upward
like incense to the Almighty and seeped through the souls of the men
crowding the deck: