This afternoon the camp of the First Division and Cadwalader Brigade
was proud but saddened: proud, when the men learned that with their
thirty-one hundred they had defeated fourteen thousand concealed within
ditches and behind walls or massed for support, with General Santa Anna
himself looking on; saddened, when they learned what the victory had
cost.
“The bloodiest fight, ag’in fortifications, in American hist’ry,” old
Sergeant Mulligan pronounced.
General Worth had acted rather blue. Out of his thirty-one hundred he
had lost one hundred and sixteen killed, six hundred and fifty-seven
wounded, and eighteen missing――probably dead or wounded; total, seven
hundred and thirty-one, almost a fourth of his whole number. And the
list of officers was appalling: fifty-one of the one hundred and
seventy had fallen.
Of the First Brigade, Lieutenant Thorn, Colonel Garland’s aide-de-camp,
was severely wounded; so were First Lieutenant and Captain Prince and
Second Lieutenant A. B. Lincoln and Assistant Surgeon Simons, Fourth
Infantry; Lieutenants Shackleford and Daniels, of the Second Artillery,
were dying, Lieutenant Armstrong had been killed outright; Captain
George Ayers and Lieutenant Ferry, of the Third Artillery, had been
killed; Captain Anderson wounded.
In the Second Brigade brave Colonel McIntosh, who commanded, was wounded
mortally; his aide, Lieutenant Burwell, was dead. Lieutenant-Colonel
Martin Scott, leading the Fifth Infantry, had been killed. Major Waite,
commanding the Eighth Infantry, was wounded. And so on, down through the
captains and lieutenants.
In the storming column Major Wright, commanding, and the two engineers,
Captain Mason and Lieutenant Foster, had been wounded. One volley from
the Mexican breastworks had felled eleven out of the fourteen officers!
The Eleventh Infantry had lost its commander also――Lieutenant-Colonel
Graham――killed. Major Savage, of the Fourteenth, and Major Talcott, of
the Voltigeurs, had been wounded. Four officers of the Sumner squadrons
had been struck down.
Lieutenant Grant had escaped again; but Lieutenant Frederick Dent, of
the Fifth Infantry, whose sister was said to be Lieutenant Grant’s
sweetheart, had been wounded, and the lieutenant was much concerned.
Jerry, too, was on tenterhooks until he found out that Hannibal Moss,
drummer boy, was not among the casualties. He and Hannibal met while
looking for one another. A number of comrades were looking for one
another this evening. They, too, shook hands thankfully, and sank for a
talk.
“Well,” said Hannibal, “the First Division did it again, but it was
awful. Did you fellows have a hard time?”
“Did we! Not a one of us expected to get away alive. Expect you other
fellows had it worse, though.”
“The poor old Eighth Regiment Foot,” Hannibal murmured soberly. “That
hurt General Worth, I guess, to see us cut up so. We’ve lost ten out
of twenty officers. The storming column didn’t hear a sound from those
breastworks――didn’t see a sign of life, hardly, beyond the cactus. It
was the same with the Second Brigade at the Casa-Mata. Then when we
were right at the trenches, the Mexicans opened on us, just mowed us
down. Eleven officers of the fourteen! Think of that! I got two bullets
through my uniform and a handful through my drum. See those holes? Talk
about ‘brushing away the enemy!’ My eye! Old Fuss and Feathers was
fooled for once. We didn’t gain much.”
“We showed what we could do again.”
“You can’t show those Mexicans anything. Listen to that music?” For the
bells of the City of Mexico were ringing madly. “The bells weren’t in
the mill at all. Now they’re being rung for victory, because we didn’t
take Chapultepec. The Mexicans think we stopped short, and they’re
celebrating.” Hannibal shook his grimy fist at the city. “You wait till
we get breath,” he warned.
“Suppose we’ll take Chapultepec next.”
“I dunno.” And Hannibal wagged his head. “This division ought to be
given a rest. We’re reduced almost to fourteen hundred. Since we
started in at San Antonio we’ve lost eleven hundred men, some sick, but
mainly killed and wounded. The whole army’s lost only nineteen hundred.
I guess the First has done its share of fighting.”
“That leaves General Scott with about eight thousand.”
“Nearer seven thousand in the field. And Santa Anna has twenty-five
thousand still, I’ll bet a cooky.”
“We’ve licked that number before. Odds don’t make any difference to
Scott men.”
“Not much they don’t,” Hannibal agreed. “One more of these little
‘brushes’ and we’ll be in the Halls of Montezuma.”
All the able-bodied troops were paraded at nine o’clock the next
morning, September 9, to witness burial. A long trench had been dug
just outside the village of Tacubaya. The wagons, covered with United
States flags and bearing the bodies of the killed in the battle of the
eighth, were escorted by funeral squads from each of the regiments. The
fifes and drums and a band, playing the funeral march, accompanied; the
troops followed with muskets at a support. The tattered battle flags
had been draped with crape. The cannon fired minute guns in solemn
fashion.
General Scott and staff, and all the general and field officers, stood
with heads bared; the troops, in a half square, presented arms, while
the Episcopal church burial service was read by Chaplain “Holy Joe”
Morrison. Then the sappers and miners filled in the trench.
It was a bright day. The high parapets of Chapultepec, to the north,
were thronged with Mexican soldiers looking down upon the ceremony.
“B’gorry, you’d better be attindin’ your own funerals,” old Sergeant
Mulligan growled at them, when the parade had been dismissed.
Following the battle of Molino del Rey, General Scott seemed to be in
no hurry to take Chapultepec. Rather, he acted as though he might
side-step Chapultepec. The First Division and the Cadwalader brigade
rested at Tacubaya. The other Third Division brigade――that of General
Pierce, who was still in the hospital with his crippled knee――under
General Pillow himself had been moved about two miles east, where with
the Riley brigade of the Twiggs Second Division it was covering the
city’s southern gates.
The engineers of Captain Lee were down there, also reconnoitring.
“Dar’s gwine to be anodder big battle,” Pompey kept insisting. “Gin’ral
Scott, he got somepin’ up his sleeve.”
Before daylight of September 12, Jerry, in the camp of the First
Brigade, was half-awakened by the tread of marching feet in the dusky
outskirts of Tacubaya. At reveille they all might see that there were
two camps between Tacubaya and the city. The Pillow camp had been
transferred nearer and was established down toward the King’s Mill in
front of the town; while a second bivouac appeared not far on the east
or right of it under Chapultepec.
The General Quitman Fourth Division had arrived at last from San
Augustine: Brigadier-General Shields’ New Yorkers and South Carolinans,
and Lieutenant-Colonel Watson’s Marines and Second Pennsylvanians! Now
the only troops left in the rear were General Persifor Smith’s brigade
of the Second Division, being the First Artillery, the Third Infantry,
and the dismounted Rifles. But Taylor’s light battery of the First had
come up, it was said, and so had General Twiggs.
There was another suspicious sight. During the night batteries had
been emplaced down in front of Tacubaya and facing Chapultepec. They
seemed to be four sections, in pairs. One pair, about to open up, was
located on the right of the hill slope, near the Quitman division and
the road leading from Tacubaya to the eastern foot of Chapultepec. The
other pair, not yet quite ready, was located near the King’s Mill and
the Pillow brigade. The engineers and the artillerymen had worked all
night planting the batteries.