Boys' Book of Border Battles by Edwin L. Sabin

Author:Edwin L. Sabin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

MAJOR RINGGOLD STRUCK BY A CANNON BALL

The Mexican cavalry piled up in confusion; the infantry halted in the chaparral; Colonel Montero seemed not to know what to do. The Eighth Regiment, and Captain Ker’s squadron of Second Dragoons from the wagon train hastened to the support of Colonel Duncan. Colonel Montero retreated.

But the charge on the right was making way, helped by the smoke. The eighteens, and the Ringgold guns now served by Lieutenant Ridgely, had not stopped it. The artillery battalion of Lieutenant-Colonel Childs was farthest on the right, around which the lancers of General Torrejon were swerving.

“Form square!”

The battalion formed square; the officers, including General Taylor’s staff, were inside. Only Old Zach and his orderly, Sergeant Mickey Dowling of the dragoons, remained out.

“Come in, general! For Heaven’s sake, sir, don’t expose yourself.”

But the staff called in vain, while the Torrejon ranks galloped nearer. Then said Mickey:

“Plaze, gin’ral, go inside. Sure”, sorr, go inside or we’ll all be kilt entoirely.”

Old Rough and Ready looked at him, and without a word entered the square, with Sergeant Mickey waiting for him to go first.

The eighteens changed to canister; the Torrejon horsemen scattered; they could not out-face the storm. It was the last attack of the day. General Arista slowly reformed his columns and withdrew in the dusk to the chaparral ridge on the southeast.

Guarded by double lines of sentries the General Taylor army bivouacked upon the bloody field. The officers and men, especially the hardworked red-shirted gunners, were very tired.

Their loss had been only four killed, three officers and thirty-nine rank and file wounded; but among the wounded Captain Page of the Fourth Infantry (Lieutenant Grant’s regiment) and the gallant Major Ringgold were mortally injured. Fort Ringgold on the Rio Grande River in Texas bears the name of the gallant father of the United States celebrated flying artillery.

The Mexican loss was given out by General Arista, afterward, as one hundred and two killed, one hundred and twenty-seven wounded, twenty-three missing: total, two hundred and fifty-two. And almost all the casualties were from artillery fire. It had been an artillery battle, this first battle of the Mexican war. Bayonets had not been needed, but the Americans had won, opposed by position and by number odds of nearly three to one.

Fort Mansfield, eight miles south, had heard the battle din. Old Rough and Ready was marching to its relief—he had met the Mexican army—and with what result? Had he held his ground, or had he been forced back? The fort had been under bombardment for six days and five nights; Major Brown had lost a leg and was dying—

“Men, o-o to your duties; stand by your posts; I am but one among you,” he had ordered.

Captain Edgar Hawkins of the Seventh Infantry was in command—he had been summoned to surrender and had agreed with his officers to fight to the end. The signal guns were notifying General Taylor that Fort Mansfield still resisted; but if no reinforcements came —if the column of Old Rough and Ready failed to get through with food and ammunition, then the fort was doomed.

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