1812-The Rivers of War Read online

  A commander unsure of himself might have kept his brigade muddling around in the open field south of the Chippewa, but Scott was no indecisive muddler. Since he couldn't attack, the only intelligent thing to do was retreat half a mile and have his brigade take up defensive positions of their own.

  "We'll move back across Street's Creek," Scott announced to his aides. "See to it, if you would."

  The junior officers trotted off to attend to the matter. Driscol, as he usually did unless Scott gave him a specific order, remained behind.

  Scott often asked his advice, though rarely when other officers were around to overhear. He was notorious for being self-confident to the point of rashness, but at least half of that was for public show. In private, Driscol had found that Scott was quite willing to solicit the opinion of his master sergeant. Whatever else, the brigadier was no fool.

  "What do you think, Sergeant? Not much chance, I suppose, that we could get Riall to come at us directly."

  From the vantage point of his own saddle, Driscol examined the terrain. Off to the right, the Niagara River formed the boundary to the east, and the Chippewa to the north. Without boats, there was no way to cross the Niagara at all, and no way to cross the Chippewa except at the bridge. To the south, where the American units were already starting to move back, lay Street's Creek, nestled a short distance back into the trees. The creek wasn't the barrier that the Chippewa was, but it would still provide the Americans with a reasonably strong defensive position of their own.

  Between Street's Creek and the Chippewa lay an open plain one mile deep and about the same distance wide. There was a dense woodland to their left, on the western side of the plain, which completed the enclosure.

  In short, it was a classic battlefield terrain. There was a clearly defined open area for the clash of arms, and no easy way for either side to maneuver around it. The trick, of course, would be to get the British to come out onto the field at all. Why should they? They were the defending force, and they were outnumbered to boot, with a very strong position from which to break any further American advance.

  "Probably not, sir," the sergeant replied. "Although..."

  A bit surprised, Scott lifted his eyebrow. "Although ... what?"

  Driscol paused for a few more seconds, studying the American troops moving to the rear.

  "Well, it's the uniforms, sir. From a distance, they look just like militia uniforms." He turned his head and scanned the British forces across the Chippewa. "Riall's an aggressive sort of general, by all accounts. We're so far ahead of the rest of the army that he has us outnumbered, for the moment. And if he thinks we're just a militia force..."

  "Interesting point," Scott murmured. "Yes, he does have us outnumbered at the moment. About seventeen hundred men, as best as I can determine, to face our thirteen hundred in the brigade."

  Scott thought about it himself, and then shook his head regretfully. "It's still not likely he'll come out. Certainly not today, as late as it is in the afternoon. And by tomorrow, General Brown will have arrived with the rest of our army."

  Driscol was amused. Most American officers would have been relieved to avoid an open battle with British regulars. Scott was disgruntled that the enemy wouldn't come out for it.

  Driscol nodded. "You're most likely right, sir. Still, if he thinks we're militiamen, Riall might just think he could rout us easily."

  "I fear it's not likely to happen, Sergeant. If I were in Riall's position, I certainly wouldn't take the chance."

  With some difficulty, Driscol managed to keep a straight face.

  He knew perfectly well that if the positions had been reversed,

  Scott would already have been marching his army onto the field.

  But he kept all that to himself.

  "I'll be seeing to the men's encampment then, sir. It's beginning to look like rain."

  Scott nodded. "Thank you, sergeant. There's nothing else to do at the moment. Damn them."

  Chapter 13

  July 5, 1814

  The Battle of Chippewa

  Brown and the rest of the army began arriving just before midnight, in the middle of a downpour. Ripley's brigade made camp south of Scott's brigade, eager to get their tents up.

  By the morning of the fifth, the rain had stopped, and the sun had returned. The heat soon dried up the traces, leaving the ground as dusty as ever. Scott's pickets started exchanging gunfire with British skirmishers who'd taken up positions in the woods to the west. The presence of the enemy there was a nuisance, but nothing worse than that. Still, after hours of it, Brown was annoyed enough to order Porter to take his Third Brigade of militiamen and their Indian allies, and clear the skirmishers out of the woods.

  Porter and his men began moving into the woods late in the afternoon. While they did so, Scott decided that he would use the rest of day to march his brigade across Street's Creek and engage in a full drill in front of the main British forces. The brigadier was frustrated by inaction.

  "If nothing else," he told Driscol, "we can thumb our noses at the enemy. Show them we're not intimidated. Besides, I don't want the men getting rusty."

  Driscol thought it was a lot of foolishness, but he went about the brigadier's business, getting the men ready for the drill. As he did so, he noticed General Brown and several of his aides trotting toward the woods. Brown had apparently decided to see how Porter was getting along.

  Not well, it seemed. There was a sudden burst of gunfire from the direction of the trees, which turned into what sounded like a small running battle. Driscol assumed the British had decided to reinforce their skirmishers in the woods.

  But he didn't see anything further. Even if he hadn't been preoccupied with his own affairs, the screen of trees and brush along the banks of the creek blocked his view of the plain to the north.

  "We've got them pinned in the woods, sir," Riall's aide said to him, after he took the report from the courier.

  Major General Riall nodded. Then, smiled rather ferociously. "Time to teach Cousin Jonathan what's what, then, wouldn't you say? Order the army across the bridge."

  When General Brown saw the first of Porter's militiamen stumbling out of the woods, he scowled. His scowl deepened when he saw the cloud of dust starting to rise in the north.

  He lifted himself up in the stirrups in order to get a better view. After a few seconds he started seeing British uniforms, flashing like gleams in the dust.

  "Good God. They're coming across the bridge."

  His eyes swept back and forth across the field. It was obvious that Riall had sent enough reinforcements into the woods to tie up Porter's brigade. If he moved his main army onto the plain quickly enough, he had a fair chance of capturing Porter and his men before they could disengage.

  Instead of simply waiting behind defensive lines, Riall had decided to lay a little trap.

  "Ha!" Brown's scowl changed into a grin. If Scott could get his brigade onto the plain quickly enough to forestall Riall's advance, that would allow them time enough for Brown himself to race back and bring up Ripley's brigade as a reinforcement...

  He jabbed a finger in the direction of the woods. "Get in there—all of you—and stiffen up Porter. Tell him to hold."

  Without another word, he turned his horse and began galloping back toward the bridge across Street's Creek.

  * * *

  Sergeant Driscol was in the leading ranks of the First Brigade as it began crossing over the Street's Creek bridge. He was on foot now, not on horseback, since in the coming drill he'd be assuming his normal position in the battle formation. General Scott and two of his officers were the only mounted men in the vicinity. They were ahead of him, and they weren't throwing up enough dust to obscure Driscol's vision.

  As soon as the sergeant saw the cloud of dust to the north, he figured out what was happening. He began to alert the brigadier, but saw that it wasn't necessary. Scott was already perched high in his stirrups, staring at the sight.

  Then, an oncoming horsem
an made the whole issue a moot one.

  It was General Brown, galloping recklessly across the field, grinning like a lunatic.

  He didn't even slow down. He thundered past Scott and Driscol, pointing behind him with a finger. "You will have a battle!" he shouted gaily, and then he was gone.

  By now, Scott was grinning himself. He began bellowing orders. By the time those orders got to the master sergeant, Driscol had already taken care of what needed doing. Seeing that, Scott's grin widened even further.

  "We shall whip them, Sergeant! Watch and see!"

  Driscol shared the brigadier's hopes, but not his anticipation. Brown's entire army might outnumber Riall's, but Scott's First Brigade didn't. Driscol doubted if Brown could get the Second Brigade moved up before nightfall. In the battle that was about to take place, Scott would face something like seventeen hundred British regulars with only thirteen hundred men of his own.

  No American army since the war began had beaten an equal-size British force on an open battlefield. Not regulars matched against regulars. Now, Scott proposed to do it while outnumbered four to three.

  So be it. It seemed a nice countryside. Not Ireland, true, but still a pleasant enough place to die.

  Half an hour later, the two armies were taking positions facing each other on the plain by the Niagara, and Private McParland was scared out of his wits. Drill was one thing. But finally seeing red-coated British troops maneuvering on a plain with all the precision of a machine—well, that was something else entirely. The enemy army reminded the teenage soldier of the brightly painted threshing machine he'd seen once at a county fair. With him and his mates as the grain about to be haplessly mangled.

  Desperately, he tried to control his terror. And, like many of the men around him, he found his anchor in the sight of Sergeant Driscol.

  He was there, of course. Where else would he? Stalking calmly back and forth in front of the troops, living up to the name his men had recently given him.

  The troll.

  Off in the distance, young McParland could see Brigadier Scott, shouting something to another group of soldiers. McParland couldn't make out the words, but he was quite sure that Scott was exhorting the troops. The brigadier was a fine speechifier, as he'd demonstrated in the past any number of times.

  Sergeant Driscol's notion of "exhortation," on the other hand, was...

  About what you'd expect from a troll.

  You will not flinch. You will not quaver. Forget those wretched Sassenach, boys. If a man so much as twitches, I will cut him up for my soup. You will face lead with serenity. You will face bayonets with a laugh. Because if you don't, you will face my gaping gullet.

  The beast went on in that vein for another minute or so. By the time he was done, McParland felt himself settling down. Not so much because he was scared of the troll's wrath any longer— the youngster would surely be dead soon, anyway, so what difference did it make?—but because he knew for sure and certain that the enemy was doomed. The British might have precision and training and experience and all the rest. But did they have their own troll?

  Not a chance. McParland didn't think there were more than six trolls in the whole world. Eight, tops.

  "We'll let them fire the first volley," Scott announced.

  Driscol nodded and walked off. He wasn't entirely sure himself that was the right thing to do, but...

  Maybe. That first hammering volley was a treasure for an army, to be sure. But if it was fired that little bit too soon, it wouldn't have any effect on well-trained troops except to prove to them that they could stand up to it. Thereafter, the force that had taken the first blow and rebounded had that little extra edge to their confidence.

  And that was what it was all about, in the end. Confidence. For all the intricacy of the firing movements and the endless training it took to get men to do it properly in the midst of carnage, musket battles on an open field—where one line of men hammered at another at point-blank range—could only be described as sheer brutality. Driscol wasn't a learned man, but he knew something of the history of warfare. He didn't think there was really anything like it, unless you went back over two thousand years to the days of the Greek hoplites.

  To win such battles, one thing was needed above all. The confidence—say better, arrogance—of Achilles and Ajax. Pain and suffering and wounds were irrelevant. All that mattered was that you did not break.

  Ever.

  You died, but you did not break.

  Once he got back to his position, he decided to brighten up the spirits of the troops a bit more.

  If you break, I will hound you to the gates of hell. If you waver, I will rend your flesh. If you hesitate—

  "Oh, just shut up, will you?" McParland hissed under his breath. But he held his musket at precisely the right angle when he said it. The musket was properly loaded, and the ramrod back in its place.

  By an odd quirk of the air, that little hiss made its way to the sergeant's ears. It was all Driscol could do not to laugh aloud. His exhortations had succeeded in their purpose. The spirits of the troops were as bright as the sunshine. In a manner of speaking.

  The British fired the first volley. When the smoke cleared, Major General Riall watched the American forces maneuvering calmly to close the gaps left by the dead and wounded. Then he saw the first American volley coming like a thunderclap, with none of the raggedness he'd expected.

  He rose up in his saddle.

  "Those aren't militiamen. By God, those are regulars!"

  One of his aides shook his head. "We still have them outnumbered, sir."

  "So we do. Still and all, I wouldn't have thought Cousin Jonathan had it in him."

  Some part of McParland's brain was astonished to discover that he was still alive. The man right next to him had been smashed flat.

  The British had a small battery of nine guns with them. From the quantity of gore splattered all over McParland, the young soldier assumed his mate had been hit by a grapeshot and not a musket ball. There was something sticking to the seventeen-year-old's trouser leg that looked like a piece of intestine.

  But he didn't have time to think about it. McParland brought his musket up on command. Noting, in some odd, new, confident part of his brain, that all of his mates had brought their muskets up at exactly the same time, and at exactly the same level. He could see them out of the corners of his eyes. Not as men, really, but simply as an endless gray line. Like a short cliff, standing on a plain.

  He didn't aim the musket, of course. Just leveled it and pointed it in the general direction of the enemy. He pulled the trigger when he heard the troll's command.

  Fire!

  To Sergeant Driscoll, that first volley fired by his own men was like a taste of the finest whiskey. In times past, he'd always been able to tell the difference between an American and a British volley, just by the sound alone. British volleys were as they should be: crisp, like thunderbolts. American volleys were altogether different; haphazard gusts trying to match a hurricane.

  Not here.

  Not today.

  On the field of open battle, the volley reigned supreme. That wasn't due to the tactics involved, but because a good volley reinforced what was essential in musket battles: confidence.

  A good, proper volley stiffened the men. A ragged one tore at their certainty. It was as simple as that. Musket battles were won by morale, not bullets.

  * * *

  When the smoke cleared, McParland saw that the troll was still standing there, untouched by the carnage. He wasn't surprised. McParland thought the troll probably had a magical shield that deflected enemy musket balls and grapeshot. Or maybe it was simply that the lead bullets were terrified of him, too.

  Reload!

  McParland went through the motions, easily, quickly. He discovered that the concentration needed to reload a musket kept his mind off anything else.

  Step forward! Ten paces!

  Somewhere in the middle of those paces, another British volley ripped
through the ranks. McParland saw a nearby soldier clutch his face with both hands, spilling his musket to the ground. An instant later, blood was gushing through the fingers and the man toppled next to his musket. There was no hole in the back of his head, but, from the completely limp and lifeless look of the body, McParland was pretty sure the big musket ball had jellied the man's brains.

  But the teenager didn't really think about it. His mind was entirely focused on the need to close ranks to make good the gaps. Between them, over the months, Brigadier Scott and his troll of a master sergeant had trained McParland to do, and do, and do—and never to think. Not in a battle.

  "I want that battery taken out, Captain! Do you hear me? Move your three guns forward. Charge them if you have to, but get close enough to take them out with canister!"