1812: The Rivers of War Read online

  “Oh, you will. Have no doubt about that.” His tone was now harsh. “Whether those bast—ah, people in Washington like me or not, they have to live with me now. They’re counting on me to keep the British at bay here in the South—and I daresay I’ll have more success than they’ve had dealing with them in Canada.”

  He cleared his throat noisily, almost triumphantly. “I’ll write several letters for you to take along, Sam. You’ll get to see the secretary of state. Count on it.”

  Sam rose to his feet. “Best I be off, then. It’ll take me several months to convince the Cherokees to send another delegation to Washington. If I can do it at all, which I rather doubt.”

  “Just do your best. If nothing else, just go yourself. See if young Ross will accompany you. He’s said to be a rising man among the Cherokees. And he’s too young, I assume, to have seen the capital?”

  Sam shrugged. “So far as I know. I’ll find out. But even if he agrees to come with me, he’s not on the council. So he won’t represent anyone but himself.”

  “Well, you never know how these things will work out, in the end. Ross might well grow into his new role. And, remember, you’ve still got a few years before . . .”

  Jackson smiled grimly. “Before you call in your promise—or I drive over whatever promise you couldn’t come up with.”

  Sam nodded. “And in the meantime?”

  “I’ll have Colonel Williams release you from the Thirty-ninth, for detached duty. But by the end of the year, I expect, I’ll be facing the British. Either in New Orleans or Mobile. So come back from Washington as soon as possible. I could use an officer like you then, Sam. I’ll find a suitable place for you, be sure of it.”

  “By the end of the year . . .” Sam mused. “That should be enough.”

  The general stuck out his hand, and Sam shook it. “In eight months then, Captain Houston. I’ll expect you back no later than mid-December.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow. Jackson just grinned.

  “One of those letters will include my strong recommendation that you be promoted to captain.” He cleared his throat again, just as noisily and even more triumphantly. “And I daresay they’ll listen to me this time. After the Horseshoe Bend, I daresay they will.”

  Part II

  THE NIAGARA

  CHAPTER 11

  JUNE 4, 1814

  Near Buffalo, New York

  Training camp for the Army of the Niagara

  Two soldiers manhandled each condemned man, forcing them to their knees just in front of the graves. The five condemned men were dressed in white robes, with hoods of the same color covering their faces. Their hands were tied behind their backs.

  General Jacob Brown, commander of the small Army of the Niagara, had left the training of the regiments in the hands of his subordinate, Brigadier Winfield Scott. Scott was a stickler—many of his soldiers would have said a maniac—on the subject of camp sanitation, as well as discipline in general. “Efficiency,” he liked to say, “is just one of many necessary soldierly qualities.” The same bullets that slew the deserters would serve to transport them to their graves.

  Four of the condemned men made no sound. The fifth, on the far right, was sobbing uncontrollably. The sound was quite audible, despite the hood that was covering his face.

  And well he might sob, thought Sergeant Patrick Driscol harshly, as he made his final inspection. The condemned man’s name was Anthony McParland, and he was a “man” in name only. McParland had tried to desert the army not two weeks after his seventeenth birthday. “Desperately homesick,” the little puler had claimed at his court-martial.

  Driscol wasn’t moved by McParland’s age, much less the puling. He might have been, except that the young soldier was another Ulsterman. Came from that stock, at least, even if he’d been born in America.

  Like many of the United Irishmen who had taken refuge in the United States after the British crushed the rebellion of 1798, Sergeant Driscol hated two things above all.

  First, England.

  Second, any man—or boy, and be damned—who capitulated to the Sassenach.

  For Driscol—who’d spent several years in the French armies before emigrating to America—“capitulation” most certainly included desertion. And the penalty for desertion in time of war was death.

  He came to the end of the line, and examined the trembling figure for a few seconds. Then, he straightened up and stalked off.

  The five condemned men were well separated, to allow for the large firing squads. There were a dozen men in each squad—a preposterous waste of effort, to Driscol’s mind, not to mention a waste of ammunition that could be better used against the enemy. But Brigadier Scott had been firm on the matter. He’d said he didn’t want any one man knowing for sure that he’d been the agent of death.

  There’d been a sixth man convicted of desertion also. But, in light of extenuating circumstances, the court-martial had not sentenced him to death as it had the other five. Instead, he’d had his ears cut off, the letter D branded into his cheek, and he had been dishonorably discharged from the service.

  Once he was out of the line of fire, Driscol turned and squared his shoulders.

  “Ready!” he called out. The sergeant had a loud voice, trained over the years to penetrate the cacophony of battlefields.

  Sixty muskets were leveled, a dozen at each condemned man.

  “Arm!”

  Sixty hammers were cocked.

  Driscol gave a last glance at the shrouded figure of young McParland. The front of his robe was stained wet.

  Let the little bastard remember that, too. And if he forgets, I’ll make sure to remind him.

  He turned his head and looked at the general. Brigadier Scott was sitting on his horse, some forty yards away.

  Scott looked every inch the officer, despite his youth. The sergeant had known plenty of peacock officers in his day. Scott might have the vanity of a peacock, but he had the soul of a fighter.

  That was all Sergeant Patrick Liam Driscol cared about. He’d been born in County Antrim, in Ireland, of Scottish Presbyterian stock. His father and older brother had been members of the United Irishmen and had died in the rebellion of 1798. Patrick himself had participated in the final battle, near the town of Antrim, that had seen the rebels broken.

  Patiently, he waited for the general to steel himself. Driscol knew the moment, when it came. The general had a little way of twitching his shoulders to steady himself. Another man might simply square them, but Scott was too energetic.

  This past November, when he’d still been a colonel, Scott had ridden a horse through sleet and snow for thirty hours straight in order to join a battle. That alone, in an American army whose top officers were more prone to spending thirty hours straight in taverns or lying in bed complaining about their illnesses, had been enough to endear Brigadier Scott to the sergeant from County Antrim.

  Scott gave him a little nod. Not bothering to turn his head—he had a very powerful voice—the sergeant called out the command.

  “Fire!”

  Sixty muskets roared. The sound of them—one-fifth, to be precise, an entire bloody squad—was off a bit.

  He turned his head to see the results. Young McParland was lying curled up on the ground.

  As if the pitiful wretch had actually been shot!

  Worthless little shit. It was all Driscol could do not to heave a sigh. He had his orders, after all.

  The sergeant’s eyes quickly scanned the other four men. Three of them were no longer visible. The volleys had done their work, hurling them into the pits. To Driscol’s disgust, however, one of the men was sprawled across the edge of his grave. His robe was soaked red, and the body under it would be a broken ruin. But the man seemed to be twitching a bit.

  Driscol drew his pistol and stalked over, glaring at that particular squad along the way. He’d be having some words with those sluggards later that day, they could be sure of it. From the sickly look on their faces, they knew it themselv
es.

  The sergeant reached the man lying at the edge of the grave. He cocked his pistol, took aim, and blew the deserter’s brains out. Then, with a boot, rolled the corpse into the pit.

  That done, he walked down the line, taking a moment at each grave to inspect the body lying in it. They were all dead.

  That left McParland.

  Driscol marched over to the white-shrouded figure, twitching and trembling on the far right. The sergeant still had his weapon in his hand, since the barrel was a bit hot yet. For a moment, he was tempted to pistol-whip the sobbing wretch.

  Orders, orders.

  Driscol was a squat, powerful man. He reached down with his left hand, seized McParland by the scruff of the neck, and jerked him to his feet.

  “Get up, you sniveling bastard.”

  With the same hand, he snatched McParland’s hood off. Under normal conditions, McParland’s eyes were hazel, but the tears had left them looking more like slimy mud at the moment. The boy’s legs were shaking, too.

  “If you fall down,” Driscol snarled, “I’ll give you the boots. I swear I will. And my boots will make you think you’re being trampled by cattle. I swear they will.”

  McParland stared at him. Then, slowly, he peered down at his own body.

  “I’m still alive,” he whispered.

  “No thanks to me,” Driscol growled. “You’re a shame and a disgrace to Ulstermen. I’d have shot you dead and not thought twice about it. But the brigadier there”—the sergeant twitched his head toward Scott on his horse—“was of the opinion that a bawling babe might still be able to learn a lesson. Waste of time, in my opinion. But . . . he’s the commander, and I’m the sergeant, and so you’re still alive. The muskets of your firing squad were loaded with blanks.”

  McParland was still staring down at his unmarked body. Unmarked by blood and gore, at least. The urine stain was quite visible—as was the smell of feces. The boy had beshat himself as well.

  “I can’t believe it,” McParland whispered.

  “Neither can I,” grumbled Driscol. “The brigadier also instructed me to pay special attention to your training from now on. God help me.”

  Driscol hefted the pistol, looking at McParland with a speculative eye. He smiled. It was a very, very, very thin smile. “You’ll be doing me the favor, I hope, of trying to desert again. Then we can just shoot you properly and be done with it.”

  McParland started shaking his head violently. “Never do it again!” he choked.

  Driscol didn’t try to suppress his sigh, this time. “I was afraid you might say that.”

  That evening, after Driscol had finished stripping the hides off the squad that had done such a slovenly job of executing their assigned deserter, the sergeant went to visit the brigadier. Scott had instructed him to make an appearance after the men were settled down.

  Scott wasn’t one of those officers who made a show of sleeping in a tent like his men, at least not when the army was camped at a proper base. There’d been a farmhouse on the grounds, vacated by its residents. Two years of fighting on the contested soil that lay between the United States and Canada had left half the towns on either side of the border nothing much more than burned shells. The house, however, remained intact, and the brigadier had cheerfully sequestered the building and turned it into his headquarters.

  Most of the soldiers of the Army of the Niagara had ascribed that action to Scott’s desire to sleep in a real bed, and eat his meals off a real table. There was some truth to that, of course, but Sergeant Driscol knew that Scott’s principal motive had been more straightforward. The brigadier was bound and determined to make full and proper use of the months he’d had since General Brown had turned command over to him, while Brown himself returned to his headquarters at Sackets Harbor. Scott had used those months, that blessed lull in the fighting, to train an American army that, for the first time since the war began, had a real chance of matching British regulars in a battle on the open field.

  Scott was a superb trainer of troops, as efficient with the business as he was energetic. Efficiency, however, meant that his headquarters was exactly that—a military headquarters, not a lounging area for officers looking to idle away the day in chitchat, and the evenings in drinking bouts.

  So the brigadier had his feather bed, and ate on his table. But most of the farmhouse was devoted to keeping and maintaining the records of the army’s training, supplies, and sanitation. And God help the subordinate officer whom Scott discovered using the headquarters for any purpose other than that.

  The sentry ushered Driscol into the room that served Scott as a combination study and chamber he used for discussions he wanted to keep private. Then the man left to find the brigadier and tell him the sergeant had arrived.

  While he waited, Driscol took the time to admire Scott’s bookcase. That bookcase had become famous, in its own way—notorious to the soldiers who got the assignment of lugging it around. It was five feet tall, solidly built and heavy, and contained the brigadier’s impressive military library. Scott took it everywhere he went—except directly into battle, of course.

  As with so many things about Winfield Scott, the library was contradictory. On the one hand, the thing could be looked upon as an extravagant affectation. On the other hand . . .

  Scott had read the books in that library. Done more than simply read them—he’d studied them thoroughly and systematically, with a mind that was acute and a memory that was well-nigh phenomenal. Each and every one of them: the writings of the great French military engineer Vauban, Frederick the Great’s Principes Généraux de la Guerre, Guibert’s Essai Général de Tactique along with several other French military manuals, Wolfe’s Instructions to Young Officers, and dozens of other volumes relevant to the duties of an officer. Many of them were biographies of great military leaders of the past.

  When Sergeant Driscol had first showed up in Scott’s camp, he’d been astonished to discover that Scott was organizing and drilling his men using the same principles and methods that Driscol himself had learned in Napoleon’s army. Granted, the brigadier’s grasp of those methods was a bit on the academic side, but he’d been ready enough—even eager—to modify them in light of the practical suggestions made by Driscol and the handful of other men in the Army of the Niagara who had experience with European wars.

  If Scott could be prickly in his dealings with other officers—and he could—he was never prickly dealing with competent sergeants. Driscol had also noted that Scott’s abusiveness toward other officers was usually well deserved, and that the often-rude brigadier could get along quite well with officers who showed a fighting spirit.

  General Wilkinson had been a sluggard, not to mention a thief, even if it had been most impolitic for Scott to say so publicly. And if Scott had initially been abrasive toward General Jacob Brown because he felt—correctly—that Brown was an amateur from the New York militia who’d been jumped over him due to political connections, he’d warmed to the man after Brown had demonstrated that he was willing to fight the British, instead of finding reasons to avoid them.

  Since then, in fact, Scott and Brown had developed quite a friendly and productive relationship.

  Driscol’s musings were interrupted by the brigadier’s voice, coming from the door.

  “I’ve told you before, Sergeant, you’re welcome to borrow any of those books should you choose to do so. Just make sure you bring them back in good condition.”

  Driscol turned and saluted. “ ’Twould be a waste, sir. I know my letters, well enough, for practical matters. But those writings are a bit beyond me, much as I can admire them from a distance. I’m afraid my schooling was interrupted—permanently, as things turned out—by Lord Cornwallis. May he and all his ilk rot in hell.”

  Scott’s eyes tightened slightly. The brigadier was six feet four inches tall, with a well-built frame and a head so handsome it would have suited an ancient statue. For a moment, as he peered down at the squat, broad-shouldered sergeant who wa
s almost eight inches shorter than he was—and whose visage no classic sculptor would have even considered for a model—he resembled a refined aristocrat casting a cold eye upon a crude peasant.

  It was all Driscol could do not to laugh. Despite the ease of his working relationship with Scott, the two men were very far apart in the way they looked upon matters other than military. Winfield Scott was as close as Americans ever got to having a nobility, born as he’d been into the Virginia gentry. And, leaving aside his birth, Scott’s social and political attitudes were such that many people accused him of being a barely veiled Federalist in a poorly fitting Republican costume.

  The sergeant, on the other hand, possessed—gloried in, rather—the kind of ferociously egalitarian ideology that made any proper Federalist splutter with indignation. Like all United Irishmen, Driscol had been weaned on the ideals of the French Revolution, and after his emigration to the United States, he’d promptly sided with the radical wing of Jeffersonian democracy. Insofar as he favored any American political figures, the most promising of the lot looked to be that notorious southerner Andrew Jackson. The man was said to be a maniac by the gentility, at least, which was always a promising sign.

  And, needless to say, Driscol lifted his glass in salute once a year, on July 11. The anniversary of the day when Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton dead in a duel, before the Federalist schemer could foist a new aristocracy on the great American republic.

  The brigadier issued a little exasperated sigh. “Irishmen and their feuds,” he muttered. Manfully, and as befitted a mere sergeant, Driscol refrained from pointing out that the record of personal feuds between officers in the U.S. Army made Irish history look like a chronicle of brotherly love. As frequently as the brigadier himself participated in those follies, he was by no means the worst offender, either.

  Something of Driscol’s sarcastic thoughts must have shown on his face, though, because Scott’s glower was replaced by a wry smile. “Though I suppose the fault can be found elsewhere, as well.” The brigadier clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward.