1824: The Arkansas War tog-2 Page 43

  That put Sheff in command of the company. He raised his sword and went at the enemy.

  "Ten paces forward!"

  By the time Harrison found a soldier who could substitute for the missing aide and sent him into the Post and got back to the front lines, he knew that the situation was rapidly becoming critical. Outnumbered or not-their other regiment still unused or not-that initial hammering blow from the leading Arkansas regiment had caught his own men off guard and off balance.

  They'd been kept off balance ever since. The Arkansans were relentless, despite the heavy casualties they were suffering themselves. They kept coming forward, steadily-ten paces, fire; ten paces, fire-no matter how hard the 1st and 7th fought. By now, the battle was centered just north of the Post, with the Arkansas right and the American left anchored on the fort's wall.

  McNeil was dead. He'd been killed just before Harrison returned, a musket ball right in the heart. Arbuckle was still in the fray. He'd even finally managed-God damn him, as well-to get his regiment into line.

  McNeil had been succeeded in command of the 3rd by Captain Jeremy Baisden. The major who should have succeeded him had been killed in the same volley that slew the regiment's commander.

  Just as well. Harrison had thought the major was an incompetent. Baisden seemed to know what he was about.

  "You'll have to hold them, Captain!" Harrison shouted. "Until I can get the 3rd and the 4th out of the Post!"

  Baisden waved his hand. Then, calmly, went back to his business.

  Good man. Best of all, he didn't talk much. If Harrison had to lose one of his experienced regimental commanders, it was really a pity the Arkansans hadn't killed Arbuckle instead of McNeil.

  He needed another horse. Unfortunately, he seemed to have lost all of his young aides. One dead, one maimed-and God only knew where that useless Lieutenant Whatever-His-Name-Was had gotten off to.

  The terrain in the Delta was generally flat, but there were small rises here and there. Sam found one of them within a couple of hundred yards that-finally-gave him a decent view of the entire battlefield.

  He spotted the militia units right away. They were hugging the river, at least a third of a mile from the regulars, who were now completely tangled up with the 1st Arkansas or the Chickasaws in the Post itself.

  "Oh, what a beautiful sight."

  There was no need to stand on ceremony. Rising again in the stirrups, he could easily see Patrick and Charles. That meant they could see him also, if they were watching.

  He laughed. As if they wouldn't be!

  He swept off his hat-a proper one, not that blasted fur cap-and waved it around.

  "Come and get it, boys! Dinner's on the table!"

  1824: TheArkansasWar

  CHAPTER 36

  The first companies of the 3rd and 4th Regiments had just come out of Arkansas Post and were moving into position in support of the 1st and 7th when Harrison spotted the second Arkansas regiment coming forward.

  He'd been expecting that, of course, and already had a battery of six-pounders in position to guard his right flank. He'd take casualties from the coming assault, but for once the Arkansans had been sluggish.

  "Get up there!" he shouted at the two captains leading the companies emerging from the Post. He stood up in the stirrups and pointed to the battery. "Take position! They'll be coming at our flank!"

  It didn't occur to him until after they passed by that he hadn't inquired as to conditions within the Post itself.

  Stupid. He might have a sally from the Chickasaws to deal with soon.

  But, thankfully, it seemed there wasn't much chance of that. The battle was finally turning his way.

  "No, sir." Captain James Franks took off his hat and wiped his brow with a uniform sleeve. That only replaced the sweat there with a smear of blood, because that whole side of his uniform seemed blood-soaked.

  None of it his, apparently, judging from his demeanor.

  "No, sir," he repeated. "There isn't much left, except a lot of bodies. I will say there wasn't no quit in them. There's probably two or three hundred live Chickasaws hiding out somewhere in there-the place is a maze-but they won't be doing no sorties."

  There was a grim satisfaction in the words. The regulars had known of the Chickasaw reputation, and nothing that had happened in the two hours since the beginning of the assault on Arkansas Post had done anything to modify it. "No, sir. There won't be no Chickasaws coming out of there until we let them out."

  Captain Franks was probably right. But Harrison had had to leave much of the artillery behind at the river, anyway, to guard against the steamboats that had finally appeared upstream. The same batteries could have two or three guns moved around to bear on the main entrance to the Post, as well as the breaches. If the Chickasaws did come out, they'd be met with a storm of canister.

  Yes, indeed. The battle was finally "General Harrison!" He looked up, squinting to see who had called him. One of Arbuckle's officers. Captain:Whatever.

  "General Harrison!" The captain was pointing to the north.

  Harrison looked.

  "What in the name of:"

  The Arkansas maneuver made no sense at all. That second regiment was staying much too far to the north, as if it were simply evading Harrison's army. What was the point of that?

  And they weren't even developing into a line. Instead, they were What were they doing?

  "Oh, how splendid!" Winfield Scott exclaimed. He was standing up in his stirrups. As tall as he was, that gave him quite a good view of whatever the 2nd Arkansas was up to.

  Bryant was considerably shorter, to begin with. Perhaps more to the point, the incredible din of the nearby battlefield had left his mind feeling numb.

  "What are you talking about, Winfield?"

  Scott pointed. He was genuinely excited, Cullen could tell. Not even making the slightest attempt to hide it under a patina of calm professionalism.

  "I've never seen one! Read about them, of course."

  The infernal cacophony had also left Cullen more than a bit irritable.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "It's a French column, Cullen! Right out of the Revolution and the early days of Napoleon. Don't think one's been used in a battle in years."

  He might as well have been gibbering in Greek.

  Well, no. Turkish. William Cullen Bryant's grasp of the Greek language was actually rather good.

  He'd never heard it spoken. But he could read it, of course.

  "Oh, dear God," Harrison whispered.

  The bizarre formation finally made sense. That second Arkansas regiment was ignoring the American regulars altogether. They were sweeping around Harrison's regiments, keeping just out of musket range, and going for the militiamen.

  Who were "God damn those bastards!"

  Who were almost half a mile downriver. Figuring they'd be completely useless in a close assault, Harrison had left them to their own devices while he handled the attack on Arkansas Post. Then, in the press of affairs and the chaos after the Arkansans launched their attack, he'd simply forgotten about them altogether, even though he'd originally intended to use them to reinforce the 1st and 7th. He'd simply been overwhelmed by too much happening, too soon.

  Naturally, the wretches hadn't come to his aid on their own. If he knew militia officers, they'd have been dancing back and forth trying to decide what to do and spending most of their time quarreling with each other.

  Well, they weren't going to have to decide anything, any longer. The Arkansans were going to make the decision for them.

  For one tiny moment, before he suppressed it, Harrison found himself hoping the Arkansas maneuver would succeed.

  At least it meant he could concentrate on fighting that one Arkansas regiment that had been gutting his army from the first moment of the battle. If nothing else, they would go under.

  Sheff was still unhurt, but by now he was in command of the regiment's entire right wing. Anchored against the side of the Post the way they
were, those companies had been unable to maneuver at all. Nor did they have any artillery support, as the left wing did. It had just been simple, straightforward, volley against volley. Moving closer and closer, until the distance separating them from the nearest American regiment was less than thirty yards.

  "Reload!"

  He wasn't ordering any further advance. Not unless the left wing came forward and Colonel Jones ordered a bayonet charge. Which Sheff didn't think was likely at all. The Arkansan and American lines had met at an angle. By the Post, not more than thirty yards separated them, but the distance between the Arkansan left and the American right was still almost a hundred yards. That enabled the Arkansan artillery battery positioned on the far left to bring what almost amounted to enfilade fire on their opponents.

  Sheff didn't know whether it had happened by pure accident or by conscious design on the colonel's part. Either way, in effect, he'd used the companies on his right-Sheff 's among them-to pin the Americans while the companies of his left and the artillery pounded them into pieces. Much the way a barroom brawler might use one hand to hold his opponent while he flailed away with the other fist.

  It wouldn't have worked if the Americans had had guns of their own to bring counterbattery fire. But they didn't. Sheff was guessing, but he was pretty sure the American guns were still stuck in front of the Post or by the river, guarding against a sally by the riverboats upstream.

  As battle tactics went, this one was dandy. But it was rough on Sheff 's people.

  "Fire!"

  The musket volleys were starting to get a bit ragged, as many casualties as they'd suffered. But not as ragged as the ones coming in return. Sheff was impressed that the one American regiment was still fighting at all. Tough bastards, for sure.

  Sam joined up with Colonel Street after the 2nd Regiment had bypassed the U.S. forces tangled up at the Post and were heading straight for the militias. He'd bided his time, since he wanted to gauge how well the militia commanders would handle the sudden crisis they'd found themselves in.

  Just about as he'd expected. Officers running back and forth, shouting orders most of which countermanded one another. The men, for their part, doing whatever struck their fancy.

  Some of them had formed a line. Not much of a line, but a line. They'd even gotten two of their four-pounders into something that approximated a decent position.

  Approximated, no better. The guns weren't far enough forward. That was typical of militia artillery. It took experience and confidence for artillery crews to be willing to position themselves far enough in advance of their infantry to do much good. Militias could almost never manage the thing properly.

  Sam couldn't really blame them. Not only did the gun crews need to be confident that they had the skill to pull their guns back into the shelter of the infantry in time; also they needed to be confident that the infantry would be there to shelter them in the first place. More often than not, militia infantry would break, leaving the artillerymen they were supposed to protect high and dry. Ten years earlier, some of the men who were now serving in the Arkansas artillery had been cursing militiamen who'd left them exposed to the mercy of British regulars at the Battle of Bladenburg.

  Another chunk of militiamen-several chunks, rather, and big ones-were obviously making preparations for a hasty retreat. "Rout," to call things by their right name.

  Those were the complete idiots. They had to be idiots. There were two thousand Choctaw warriors out there, and at least two hundred men from Brown's Raiders. They'd been lying low, as instructed. But if the militiamen broke and ran, they'd be like rabbits at the mercy of predators.

  Most of the militiamen, about half, were doing neither. They were just milling around in confusion, not sure what to do.

  "It ain't complicated, boys," Sam murmured, kicking his horse into motion to rejoin the 2nd. "You can stand and die, or you can run and die. But either way, lots of you are gonna die today."

  Sheff finally received his first wound. A small one, just a bullet that grazed his ribs. Barely even a flesh wound, and he was too busy anyway to take the time to bind it up. The uniform would be a ruin by the end of the day, but he didn't care anymore. He could barely remember the thrill of that first day he'd put it on.

  Truth be told, he was a little relieved. His luck had been too good. Maybe this would even things out a bit.

  Then, not fifteen seconds later, he saw a musket ball catch his uncle Jem in the throat and rip his neck open. Jem had been standing just in front of the line and slightly off to the side. He collapsed to the ground like a pile of rags, dropping his musket.

  Sheff stared at him blankly for a moment. But there was nothing he could do.

  Nothing at all. With that wound, his uncle would bleed out long before any aid could get to him-and no possible medical treatment could prevent his death, anyway.

  Ruthlessly, Sheff stifled the spike of anguish that started to come. Only victory mattered. Only the regiment mattered.

  "Reload!" he shouted, channeling the grief into his voice, bringing it to just the right high pitch for a battlefield. More like a shriek than a shout. It was the first time he'd ever really done it right-and he knew he'd never forget how to do it again, no matter how many battles he fought.

  Harrison was just plain astonished. That first Arkansas regiment was still fighting. Staggering some, to be sure, especially the companies on their right. The volleys no longer came with their earlier crispness. But they were still recognizable volleys-and at the range the fight was now taking place by the wall of the Post, aiming was completely meaningless. That was sheer murder.

  He'd never seen anything like it. The closest comparison had been that last charge on Tecumseh at the Thames. But that had been quick, however desperately fought. This was like fighting some sort of mindless machine. Black ants, wearing uniforms and armed with muskets.

  "God damn you!" he shrieked at the Arkansans.

  There came no response except another volley.

  Sam found the final moments of the 2nd Arkansas' charge on the militias rather fascinating. The regiments had been trained in the tactic, and Driscol had predicted its success-so had Robert Ross-but Sam had wondered.

  The term "column" was a misnomer, he now realized, applied to the fighting formation of the French armies of the Revolution. This bore no resemblance at all to a long, slender line of men marching down a road.

  It was more like a sledgehammer. Or perhaps a very blunt spear. Fifty men across, at the front, firing as they came, with the rest of the regiment in close support. The formation relied on speed and impact, more like a cavalry charge than anything else Sam could think of.

  Watching it in action, he could now understand why the formation had eventually been abandoned. Very well trained and disciplined professional armies, formed into lines, could bring too much fire to bear on the front of the column. Hundreds of men against fifty.

  But that presupposed the sort of professional armies trained and led by generals like the Duke of Wellington, or Napoleon and his marshals. Against levies raised by French noblemen-or Georgia and Louisiana gentry-the French column did very splendidly indeed.

  It struck the Georgians like a hammer. An axe, rather, since the bayonets came down at the final moment.

  The Georgians, not the Louisianans. The militia units had very distinctive and different colors, naturally, and the Arkansans knew what to look for. Any Louisianan or Alabaman who got in their way would get dealt with, to be sure. But on this day, July the 23rd of the Year of Our Lord 1825, Sam Houston and the 2nd Arkansas were looking to kill Georgians.

  Another hybrid. Black people didn't actually have any reason to detest Georgians more than any other Southern militia. But the Cherokees and Creeks hated them with a passion. And, whatever strains might exist in the Confederacy between its different races and peoples, there was also much that united them. Some of those black men in uniform now had Cherokee or Creek wives or paramours-either way, usually with children in the barg
ain-and all of them had Cherokee and Creek neighbors.

  The Georgians had made the mistake of coming to Arkansas to commit their depredations. The nearest friendly jury was four hundred miles away as the crow flies-and not one of them had a pair of wings.

  The Louisianans peeled away before the blow came and were already racing in a panic downriver. The Alabamans put up a bit of a fight before-very wisely-sidling out of the way and scrambling upriver for the shelter of the regulars.

  The 2nd Arkansas let the Louisianans go. The Choctaws and Brown's men would deal with them. They wanted the Georgians.

  David Ross was half fascinated and half appalled. Officially attached as an observer to the battery that was part of Houston's column, he had an excellent view of the fighting that erupted on the north bank of the Arkansas when the 2nd Regiment struck the Georgians. He didn't even have any specific duties to keep his attention elsewhere. His status in the Arkansas Army was still unsettled, since no one was ready to accept him as a straightforward soldier except David himself. His father and the Laird-and Sam Houston, apparently-all felt the possible diplomatic complications were still too uncertain, should word get out that the son of a British major general was actively serving against the United States.

  In practice, everyone understood that being an "observer" also meant that he would be getting informal training as an artillery officer. But since no one really wanted him getting underfoot in the furious fire that the battery was leveling on the Georgians, he spent most of his time just watching.

  That was another massacre taking place down there on the riverbank. But the most fascinating-and appalling-thing about it was the lack of any apparent murderous frenzy. David thought he finally understood, deep in his bones, why the Laird had ordered that massacre of Crittenden's army the previous year. Many of the soldiers in the 2nd were veterans of that affair, and they'd imparted the lessons and the attitudes to the newer recruits. What resulted was an implacable determination to kill as many men as the regiment possibly could, today, coupled with the confidence that they could.