The Training Ground (32 page)
It seems to me the northwest side of the city could have been approached without attacking a single fort or redoubt, we would have been on solid ground instead of floundering through morass and ditches, and fighting our way over elevated roads, flanked by water where it is generally impossible to deploy forces.
What I say is entirely confidential, and I am willing to believe that the opinion of a lieutenant, where it differs from that of his commanding general, must be founded on ignorance of the situation, and you will consider my criticisms accordingly.
The letter’s addressee was never discovered, as if Grant was writing it to himself. But whatever his conflicted emotions, he was much more confident when writing to Julia: “There is no force in Mexico that can resist this army,” Grant boasted. “To fight is to conquer.”
Old Glory
S
EPTEMBER 13, 1847
T
he walls of Mexico City were now tantalizingly close to the Americans, just over a mile as the crow flew. “To the northeast, apparently at but a little greater distance, lies amid its lakes and marshes the boasted city of the Aztecs, its spires and domes, its walls and aqueducts, all plainly visible,” wrote one officer.
That short distance between the American position and the Mexican capital was bewitching — and deceptive. For in that brief divide lay still more of the soupy swamps and mud that, by necessity, defined a city that had originally existed on an islet in the southwest portion of a saltwater lake. Tribes had been settling on the shores of Lake Texcoco (an S-shaped geographic oddity known as an endorheic body of water, lacking any type of outflow such as a river or an underground aquifer) since 1700 b.c., but it was the Nahua Aztec tribe — the original Mexicas — who realized the defensive potential of this massive body. In 1325, they ventured out onto a small islet and built a great new city, which they called Tenochtitlán. Over time, as the Aztecs prospered and their expanding population outgrew that original outcropping, artificial islands were constructed. To prevent flooding, and to capture (as a source of drinking water) the fresh water that flowed into the lake from nearby rivers, the Aztecs constructed a series of dams. The aquatic barrier proved such a wondrous natural defense that Cortés required a seventy-nine-day siege to take the city in 1519.
But Cortés soon destroyed those all-important dams, and the Spanish drained those portions of Lake Texcoco on which the city had been built. Flooding became a way of life in what had come to be known as Mexico City, recurring often enough that the great salt marshes that now surrounded the city never lacked for moisture and once again formed a vast defensive barrier.
A series of narrow causeways bisected the soup between the American forces and the walls of Mexico City. The roads would make the Americans easy fodder for Mexican cannons whenever the moment for that final advance came. But before Scott’s armies could even begin to advance on those causeways, one other very formidable obstacle stood in their path. “To the north,” wrote one American officer, peering up at the fortified structure atop the tallest hill for miles around, “lies Chapultepec.”
Chapultepec was the name both of the highest point for miles around and of the castle perched atop its summit. Aztec royalty had once retreated to the verdant slopes of Chapultepec — “Grass-hopper Hill” — during the summer months, enjoying the commanding view and the cool shade of its many cypress trees. The castle was built during the Spanish occupation, by a man, ironically enough, who had been instrumental in helping America win the Revolutionary War.
Count Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid had been ordered by the Spanish government to aid the American colonists, knowing that Spain could only benefit from Britain’s misfortunes. As governor of Louisiana, he was instrumental in defeating the British at Baton Rouge in 1779 and then pushing them out of the lower Mississippi River valley with subsequent triumphs at Mobile and Pensacola. He later helped draft the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, and was then reassigned to serve as viceroy of New Spain in Mexico City. In 1785 he ordered workers to begin construction on a new summer house atop Chapultepec. What began as a simple baroque getaway soon took on the appearance of a fortress, with the great walls, parapets, and generally defensive appearance of a castle. There were rumors among higher-ups in New Spain’s government (soon communicated to his superiors in Spain) that the popular Gálvez was quietly conspiring to hole up in this mountaintop refuge and rally the local people to seek independence from their European master. That talk came to an end with Gálvez’s untimely death on November 30, 1786. Some said he was poisoned.
Chapultepec fell into disrepair. The castle on the hill was entirely abandoned during the Mexican War of Independence. By the Mexican War, it had been refurbished to house the country’s military academy, and it now claimed an area a quarter mile wide and three-fourths of a mile long. The main gate was on the east side, facing the city. Molino del Rey anchored its western end, and seven-foot-high walls of stone ringed the remainder of the facility. A gap in the south wall had been filled in with piles of sandbags, and a low, swampy ditch along the western wall had been mined. Within the complex, those cypress trees where Montezuma had once rested on hot summer days now formed a grove that led up to a second set of high white walls, which encompassed the actual castle. Inside that castle were 852 Mexican infantry, along with a handful of engineers and military cadets. They had ten cannons.
The American troops thought Chapultepec was impregnable and dreaded the moment of vulnerability when they would have to scale those white walls that led to the summit. Yet the castle was far from a military stronghold: the parapets were unfinished, the roof was too thin to deflect artillery shells, and those stone walls could easily be breached by troops carrying scaling ladders.
Scott could not afford another blunder like Molino del Rey. His army numbered just a little more than seven thousand men; Santa Anna had three times that. Scouts reported that a second Mexican force comprising two divisions and as many as eight thousand men might be approaching from Scott’s rear, potentially pinning the Americans between two vastly superior Mexican forces. If, for instance, Scott threw his army at Chapultepec, and Santa Anna was able to rush his army from the city in time to reinforce the defenders, Scott could easily be overwhelmed. Despite failure after failure, Santa Anna still had the upper hand. The American general’s next move in this tactical game of cat and mouse was of vital importance, and no one was more aware of that than he.
Scott’s solution was, as always, Robert E. Lee. The general sent his most trusted source of reconnaissance out to probe the Mexican defenses, hoping he would yet again find some brilliant alternate path toward their military objective. But when Lee, along with Lieutenants P. G. T. Beauregard and Zealous B. Tower, studied the southern approach, which would have allowed the Americans to bypass Chapultepec and head straight into Mexico City, it became obvious that Santa Anna was expecting the attack from that direction. A series of three parallel causeways a thousand yards apart ran into that side of the city. The Mexican general had connected them all with a perpendicular trench, which he soon fortified with breastworks and then filled with troops and cannons.
When Lee reported this news to Scott, the general personally rode out from his command post in Tacubaya to see the position. On the morning of September 11, Scott called a council of war in the tiny village of Piedad. Present were his engineers and his generals, the two groups of men most imperative to any victorious attack. The topic of debate was finding the best possible route into the Mexican capital. Lee argued in favor of isolating the garrison at Chapultepec and invading Mexico City from the south by hitting those entrenched positions hard and then advancing en masse up the causeways. There were obvious strategic liabilities: marshy ground; the need to follow causeways into the city, making flanking movements impossible; and carefully planned Mexican fortifications alongside the causeways, designed to pin American troops with a withering crossfire. Yet Lee saw the southern approach as the Americans’ best hope and boldly made his case.
Beauregard, on the other hand, favored an attack from the west. He presented a long and masterly dissection of the southern route, which ended with his making a strong case for the Chapultepec assault. Nobody, with the exception of Scott, agreed with him at first, but Beauregard’s argument was persuasive enough that General Franklin Pierce crossed over and took his side. “Gentlemen,” Scott finally announced, as he had been planning to do all along, “we will attack by the western gates.”
Yet Scott respected the opinions of both Lee and Beauregard enough that he combined their arguments into a single ingenious attack. On the morning of September 12, units of U.S. soldiers would march over to the southern side of Mexico City, showing themselves to Santa Anna’s army, in the hopes that he would continue to reinforce that approach. But at night the Americans would march silently over to the west and take up positions around Chapultepec.
Lee spent the night of the eleventh supervising the construction of gun batteries for Chapultepec’s bombardment. Four positions had been selected, and a host of eight-pound howitzers, along with a ten-inch mortar, were soon aimed at the fortress. The emplacement with the greatest fire was near Molino del Rey, where a twenty-four-pounder stood ready to belch forth its wrath.
Scott described their locations in his official report to Polk: “No. 1, on our right, under the command of Captain Drum, 4th artillery,” he wrote, “and No. 2, commanded by Lieutenant Hagner, Ordnance — both supported by Quitman’s division. Nos. 3 and 4 on the opposite side, supported by Pillow’s division, were commanded, the former by Captain Brooks and Lieutenant S. S. Anderson, 2d artillery, alternately, and the latter by Lieutenant Stone, Ordnance. The batteries were traced by Captain Huger and Captain Lee, Engineer, and constructed by them with the able assistance of the young officers of those corps and artillery.”
The mortars opened fire first. Starting on the morning of the twelfth and continuing into the evening, Chapultepec came under heavy fire. First the mortars and then American cannons lobbed exploding shells and solid balls at the fortress. According to plan, those volunteer divisions commanded by Generals John Quitman and Gideon Pillow drew the heated Mexican fire as they feinted toward the southern approach to the city.
It was Scott’s desire that the Mexicans abandon the castle without a fight or that the barrage destroy it altogether. This was not to be. Even when cannon fire punctured the castle’s roof and otherwise damaged the parapets, forest, and stone walls at the base of the complex, Chapultepec was very much intact — and very much occupied. The Mexicans were cowed, exhausted, and low on food, but they stood fast. For the Mexican soldiers up in the castle, the night of the twelfth was spent vigilantly, for they were unsure whether the cessation of American bombardment portended a stealthy nighttime infantry attack.
But the Americans were waiting (and resting) until dawn. Scott summoned Lee to his command post two miles to the rear, fearful that the Mexicans would spend the night repairing Chapultepec’s damage. The general was angry with Lee, who had been so consumed with observing the artillery fire that he had not seen fit to check in with his commander. This left Scott without his most trusted battlefield eyes and ears.
Lee, for his part, was exhausted. He had been so busy positioning guns and preparing for the assault that he had not slept in thirty hours. The Virginian informed Scott that the Mexicans would most likely refortify their position during the night. The general immediately prepared to order an American attack under cover of darkness.
Lee stopped him. Arguing that there was only so much the Mexicans could do to fix the damage, he reminded Scott that if the Americans succeeded in taking Chapultepec quickly, it would be easier to press the advantage and race into Mexico City during daylight.
Scott agreed. The order was rescinded. The attack would take place at dawn, as planned.
Up and down the American lines, the atrocities of Molino del Rey still fresh in their memories, U.S. soldiers girded themselves for the battle ahead with a sense of vengeance. “General Pillow addressed his men, telling them that they were to assault the castle early next morning, when he said he had no doubt they would easily carry it at the point of the bayonet in less than half an hour; which intimation the soldiers received with three cheers,” one soldier later wrote.
The barrage resumed promptly at 5:30 a.m. Santa Anna still remained convinced that Chapultepec was a diversion and that Quitman and Pillow would soon be followed by the main body of American troops. He shifted elements of his army eastward, to defend the gate at San Lázaro, clear on the opposite side of the city from Chapultepec, not knowing that Quitman and Pillow’s divisions had already moved over to the base of Grasshopper Hill.
At 8:00 a.m. the American cannons went silent. As the defenders of Chapultepec watched from the castle parapets, U.S. infantry stood ready to advance. The attack would not come from a single direction but from the four points of the compass. Lee, who was now forty-eight hours without sleep, was with General Pillow’s division, tasked by Scott to show them the way on the eastern approach from Molino del Rey. They would charge up to the castle through the hanging moss of the cypress grove. Lieutenant Thomas Jackson and his flying artillery would skirt the northern flank of the castle, in support of the Eleventh and Fourteenth infantries. Lieutenant Sam Grant was in reserve with Worth’s command, preparing to dash up the San Cosmé causeway into Mexico City once Chapultepec fell. Pete Longstreet was nearby, also with Worth’s division.
A quiet thrill coursed through the American ranks. If all went well, they would be in Mexico City by nightfall. The war might be over in a matter of hours.
The charge began just moments later. American artillery fired rounds of canister and grape overhead, up onto the highest reaches of Chapultepec. Lee guided Pillow’s men forward to the first set of castle walls. Pillow was shot in the heel by a musket ball and went down. Lee stayed with the general as the rest of the army raced forward, now supplemented by Quitman’s volunteers and 160 U.S. Marines, who had joined up with Scott’s army in Puebla during the summer.
On the other side of the hill, Jackson was so eager to see combat again that he took the concept of flying artillery to its most extreme definition. His complement of horses, men, and six-pounders left the infantry far behind as they raced forward to assault the Mexican positions. Far from merely supporting the foot soldiers, he was preparing to blast a hole through the enemy defenses so the infantry could march right through.