There was another rocket that hit the corner of the House, but it caromed off harmlessly into the darkness and exploded a few seconds later, after it had landed on open ground.
Most of the rockets accomplished nothing. Some of them landed far short, others veered wildly to the side, and two sailed over the Capitol entirely.
“Sound and fury, signifying nothing,” Houston murmured.
“Is that from the Iliad as well, sir?”
“No, Lieutenant. It’s from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.”
“Didn’t know they had rockets in his day.”
“I don’t believe they did. But he was more or less meditating on the folly of excessive ambition. I only saw the play performed once, and I suspect the troupe which put it on took some liberties with the text. But I liked that line, and I looked it up later in a copy I found in the possession of a traveling salesman. That line is in the play. I couldn’t find the horse race anywhere, though. Or the bearbaiting scene.”
The British fired another volley of rockets. Driscol decided that a pleasant literary discussion, conducted in the midst of a rocket cannonade, would have a splendid effect on the troops. Several hundred of them now had their heads sticking out of the windows. And while many were ogling the oncoming rockets, most of them were anxiously watching to see how Houston and Driscol and Ross were behaving.
So he turned away from the oncoming rockets and ignored them completely.
“I’ve never seen a horse race—much less a bearbaiting—performed on a stage. That sounds rather hard on the flooring.”
Houston laughed—and, to Driscol’s complete satisfaction, he was still laughing when the second volley of rockets began to land. “Oh, it wasn’t performed on a stage. They held it at the race grounds in Nashville. Horse racing is all the rage in Tennessee, you know.”
“Cherokees are fond of the sport, too,” Ross chimed in. “Not as fond as we are of our ball game, of course.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Driscol saw a third volley fired.
“That’s quite fascinating,” he stated, as if he cared passionately about the entertainment habits of frontiersmen and Indians.
Houston turned to face Driscol squarely now, leaning over the shorter man as if they were both engrossed in conversation. As a display of what the French called sangfroid, it was as good as any Driscol had ever seen on the part of a commander in battle.
Twenty-one years old. Great God, what this man could accomplish with his life! And probably the same for Ross, who’s not much older.
Some distance to the east, General Robert Ross lowered his telescope. Then, took a long, slow breath.
This would be no Bladensburg—and Bladensburg had been costly enough.
He hadn’t been able to make out the features of the three figures in the distance who seemed to be the American commanders. Even in full daylight, he couldn’t have done so. But there’d been enough illumination to make their comportment obvious.
With officers like that to lead them, Ross had no great hope that a simple headlong charge would rattle the enemy enough to send them scampering. He’d been able to do it at Bladensburg because the few stalwart units among the American forces had been left isolated on the open field, after most of their fellow soldiers were routed. Eventually, they’d had no choice but to retreat.
Here, with a fortress to shelter them . . .
Still worse, he was reasonably sure that the soldiers who’d been rallied at the Capitol were stalwart units, in the main. Ross had rallied troops himself, in the past, and that was almost invariably the pattern.
“Damn all admirals and their cocksure schemes,” he muttered under his breath.
But there was nothing for it. Ross had proposed a flanking attack, but Cockburn had objected—and given Admiral Cochrane’s support for this expedition, Ross hadn’t felt it possible simply to override the objection.
“A flanking attack? That’ll take half the night! No, no, Robert—just roll right over the bastards. A few volleys of the Congreves and one staunch charge, and it’ll be all over. Cousin Jonathan will be scampering up Pennsylvania Avenue and we’ll follow him to burn their president’s mansion.”
Nothing for it.
Ross took another deep breath and turned his head. “Send forward the Fourth,” he commanded his aides. One of the two immediately sped off.
Ross would have preferred using Thornton’s Eighty-fifth Foot Regiment. A very stalwart force, that. But the Eighty-fifth needed a rest. The regiment had been handled roughly at Bladensburg, storming a bridge under American artillery fire. Thornton himself had been severely wounded a bit later by grapeshot. The Fourth, on the other hand, had faced only militiamen, who’d soon enough run away.
Looking over the terrain, Ross knew it would soon be covered with carnage. If the Americans held their ground . . .
His remaining aide said it aloud. “This may prove something of a desperate business, sir.”
Do tell, Ross thought sarcastically. A direct frontal assault on a fortress, with riflemen in every port and heavy field artillery well positioned in the middle. And me with nothing but Congreves and three light field pieces.
As if on cue, the six-pounder and the two three-pounders opened fire. That was the entirety of Ross’s “battery.” It was a pathetic sound, compared to the ferocity of the hissing rockets. But, glumly, Ross knew full well that what little damage the field pieces would do against the heavily built Capitol would probably exceed the effect of the Congreves.
The British general wasn’t fond of the cantankerous rockets. Yes, the things were splendid for the morale of his own men—and sometimes shattered an opponent’s nerve. But, as actual weapons, he thought they were more trouble than they were worth.
Wellington, he knew, had come to the same conclusion in the course of the Peninsular War. But this expedition fell ultimately under naval command, and admirals loved the blasted things. So, whether he liked it or not, Ross had been saddled with a multitude of rockets, instead of the one good battery of real guns he would have preferred.
Again, as if on cue, one of the Congreves exploded not more than a second after it was fired. Fortunately, the rocket had traveled far enough not to injure the men who had fired it. Ross could only hope that the fragments didn’t land on the backs of the Fourth marching across the field.
A flash of white caught his attention, and drew his eyes back to the center. He saw Admiral Cockburn prancing his horse not far behind the men of the Fourth, exhorting them onward. The conflagration at the Navy Yard was now great enough to spill a devil’s light over the entire area. The admiral’s gold-laced hat and epaulettes gleamed quite brightly.
Cockburn favored a white horse, in a battle. The admiral was nothing if not a showman. For one brief, savage moment, Ross found himself fervently hoping the animal would provide the enemy with an especially clear target.
But that was an unworthy thought, and he drove it under.
Besides, unless Ross was much mistaken, he’d soon enough be joining the admiral. Surpassing him, in fact, because when the battle was most desperate Robert Ross had always been a general who’d led his men from the front, as he had at Bladensburg and many places before it.
He’d do so on a brown horse, though. Courage was essential for a commanding officer—but there was no reason to be stupid as well.
“Bring me my horse,” he commanded. The second aide sped off.
“Damn all admirals and their cocksure schemes,” Ross muttered again. Louder this time, since there was no longer anyone to hear.
CHAPTER 25
A wave of relief swept over Sam Houston when Charles Ball finally nodded to him. Even the delay at the Horseshoe hadn’t seemed as long as the time that had just passed. The Thirty-ninth Infantry at the Horseshoe had waited for an hour and a half before beginning their assault, yes; and the time that had elapsed since the British began their assault on the Capitol hadn’t taken but a few minutes. Still, those minutes had seemed endless.
br /> Seeing Ball and the gunners placing their hands over their ears, Sam did the same. “Fire!” he bellowed, in his best imitation of an Achaean captain ordering a charge.
Sam supposed—
The roar of the battery was enough to numb his mind for an instant.
—that his anxiety was due to the intrinsic difference between being on the defense versus the offense. However long they might have waited at the Horseshoe, they hadn’t been worrying that the Creeks were going to attack them. It was one thing to settle your nerves when danger was an abstraction. Quite another to do so when danger took the form of a red-coated machine, grinding steadily toward you in the flickering illumination of a massive bonfire.
Sam peered intently into the darkness, trying to discern what effect the salvo had had on the British. It was hard to see much of anything, since his eyes were tearing up. He’d been standing not far away from Ball’s twelve-pounder when it went off, and a little gust of wind had blown the acrid and sulfurous gun smoke back into his face.
After wiping the tears away, Sam glanced at Ball and saw that his eyes looked quite normal.
Ball glanced back at him, then smiled. “Next time, sir—if you’ll pardon my boldness in saying so—I suggest you close your eyes. That powder never burns completely, and it can blow anywhere.”
Sam nodded. “I’ll do so, be sure of it. But what effect did we have? Can you tell?”
“Oh, very good, sir. It’s perfect range for grapeshot, and those poor bastards don’t have any cover at all. They’ll be hurting now. Not enough, of course. Not yet.”
As Sam and Ball had been conferring, the gun crews had hurried through their practiced motions. Sooner than Sam would have thought, they were ready to fire again.
At least, this crew was. Looking up and down the line of the battery, Sam’s vision was still too impaired to tell if the same was true for the other guns, as well.
He decided he’d done his Homeric duty well enough, for the moment. “Mr. Ball, why don’t you take charge of the battery from here on?”
“If you say so, Captain.” Ball’s eyes flicked back and forth, checking the dispositions of all the crews. Then—
Sam hastily covered his ears again—and closed his eyes.
“Fire!”
Ball’s voice was suitably Homeric, too, Sam observed. More so than his own, he suspected, feeling more than a bit chagrined. Embarrassed, too. Belatedly, it also occurred to him that a commander who insisted on doing his men’s work for them was a blithering nuisance.
“And yet again,” General Ross sighed. American artillery was going to be just as murderous on this field as it had usually proven to be, since the war began.
His horse had been brought to him, by now. He moved immediately toward it. There wasn’t a chance in creation that this assault was going to succeed if he wasn’t seen by his men in the lead.
Damn all cocksure admirals and their schemes.
James Monroe and his party of dragoons drew up to within a hundred yards of the western side of the Capitol. There were no enemy soldiers anywhere to be seen, although Monroe assumed the cannon roar they’d just heard emanating from the other side of the buildings indicated that the British were beginning their assault.
Now was the time to make their final dash for the Capitol, therefore. Even going up a hill, they’d be within the relative safety of the buildings in less than a minute. They’d have to leave their horses behind, of course.
Alas, one problem remained. The young dragoon lieutenant put it into words.
“How do we keep our own people from shooting us?”
A bit ruefully, Monroe pondered the problem. The illumination thrown over the area by the burning Navy Yard wasn’t sufficient enough for the soldiers who were crouched at the windows to distinguish friend from foe, certainly not at a distance.
This would all become a humiliating farce—quite possibly a fatal one—if the secretary and his party were to be driven off by gunfire from the Capitol’s defenders.
He decided to risk a straightforward and open approach, moving forward alone and waving a white handkerchief. One man would be less likely to be considered a threat.
Then he heard the sound of wheels coming up the street. Heavily laden wagons, from the clatter they were making.
“Into the shadows!” he hissed, guiding his horse into the darkness that lay between two nearby buildings. His dragoons quickly followed suit.
Half a minute later, they saw three wagons rumbling onto the ground just below Jenkins Hill. The wagons were, indeed, heavily laden—with ammunition, Monroe thought, and there were a couple of three-pounders being towed behind the first two wagons. The driver of the lead wagon was a Negro. The two others were driven by white men wearing some sort of uniform. There were other white men riding escort, all wearing the same uniform.
“They’re ours,” Monroe stated firmly. The British army had a variety of uniforms beyond the well-known red coats, but these uniforms—for such young men—were too elaborate and fancy for British dragoons. They were exactly the sort of flamboyant uniforms that well-to-do militia volunteers would design for themselves.
There came the sound of another cannonade. Monroe realized that whatever decision he was going to make, it had to be made now. Once the British assault neared the walls of the Capitol, entry would be impossible.
He set his horse trotting forward into the half-lit street.
“Hold!” he cried. “We’re Americans!”
Startled, the black driver stopped the lead wagon and stared at him. A couple of the more alert soldiers raised their weapons. Monroe was both amused and relieved to see that the white dragoons, as if acting by sheer reflex, looked to the Negro for guidance.
That was a familiar reaction to a Virginia farmer and slave owner like Monroe, and one he was quite sure he’d not have seen from British soldiers. Many times in his life—he’d done it himself—he’d seen white men engaged in some enterprise about which they knew little turn to a slave to show or tell them what to do. As if, for an instant, the relationship of master and slave was reversed. He’d once commented on the matter to his good friends Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and discovered that they had observed the same thing—and, in the case of both, found yet another subtle sign from Providence that slavery was a dubious institution. For any nation, much less a republic.
Monroe wasn’t sure about the matter himself, although he’d learned never to underestimate the philosophical acuity of his two friends. But unlike Jefferson and Madison, Monroe was not inclined toward theoretical ruminations on political affairs. His prominence in the new nation’s politics was due to hard work, practical ability, skill in the daily business of legislative committee work, a tightly-focused mind—and the fact that most everyone liked him, because he was a likable man.
All qualities that would be of good use here, as well, especially the latter. Monroe gave the wagon driver his most winning smile and trotted forward in a confident and relaxed manner, as if he had every right and reason to be there, and there was no cause for anxiety on anyone’s part.
All of which happened to be true, fortunately. Monroe wasn’t really a good liar, despite his years as an ambassador.
“I am James Monroe, the secretary of state,” he announced loudly.
The dragoons’ eyes grew wide. Those of the driver narrowed.
“By the Lord,” the black man said, “so you are. I recognize you, sir!”
Monroe nodded graciously. The driver sat up a little straighter. Clearly enough, he was relieved himself to discover that Monroe and his party of soldiers were not the enemy.
“I’ve seen you any number of times, sir,” the man continued. “My name is Henry Crowell, and I make regular deliveries to the State Department. The War Department, too.”
Now that Monroe had pulled up alongside the wagon, he realized that he recognized Crowell himself, although he hadn’t known the man’s name. He’d seen Crowell a few times, making deliveries. That
wasn’t surprising, of course. For all that it was the capital city of a nation, Washington, D.C., was still more in the way of a large town than a small city.
He glanced into the wagon. Ball and powder, as he had surmised, along with some tools. He pointed toward the Capitol. “I assume you’re taking these supplies in there.”
“Yes, sir. I told Captain Houston I was pretty sure I could make the trip and be back before the British attacked.”
Captain Houston, then, indeed. And how delightful it was for Monroe to discover that at least one piece of their intelligence had been accurate!
The sound of a third cannonade rolled over the buildings.
“Lead the way then, Crowell, if you would.”
“You’re coming, sir?”
“Oh, yes.” Suddenly, Monroe heard the lighter and sharper sounds of a multitude of muskets being fired. The British must be close now.
“And best quickly, I think.”
Robert Ross’s horse was shot out from under him by a salvo from the American guns. A grapeshot that shattered the poor beast’s skull. It was no new experience for the general, so he landed safely and was on his feet within seconds. He never even lost his grip on his sword.
He could even, for a moment, bless the soggy ground that was causing so much trouble for his advancing soldiers. The mucky soil had cushioned his impact.
His aides were at his side already. One of them started brushing the mud from the general’s uniform.
“Leave that alone!” Ross snapped. “Get me another horse.”
He had to get in front of this charge and lead it, or it would collapse. The American gunnery was proving even worse than he’d feared. He was certain now that he faced the worst eventuality he might have faced. Those were U.S. Navy sailors manning the guns.
Most British army officers derided Americans as “Cousin Jonathan.” But, with a few exceptions like Cockburn, British naval officers did not, and for good reason. Not after the Guerriere and the Frolic and the Macedonian, and Lake Erie.