A Ballad of Love and Glory(62)
“I appreciate your concern, Ximena. Truly, I do. And I shall be careful. But for now, the commander has afforded me this opportunity, and I won’t lie to you, ’tis the best thin’ that has ever happened to me in my military career. I believe in my soul I can prove to him ’tis not folly to put his trust in me.”
“I understand. Now, tell me, your banner.”
“Will you sew it for me?”
She laughed. “My grandmother taught me to stitch flesh. Fabric not so much. Don’t worry, the nuns at the convent have excellent sewing. I will ask them to make for you.”
“You think they’ll help me? I have the design already. I can see it plain in my head.” He closed his eyes and said, “There… it flies over my cannons!”
“Tell me, tell me what it looks like!”
“It is green, as green as my isle, and embroidered on it are the words that will forever be etched on my heart: Erin Go Bragh!”
“What it means, John?”
“Ireland forever!”
Unable to control himself, he lifted her aloft and twirled her around. She let out a yelp of surprise, and some of the passersby stopped and gave them disapproving looks, but he didn’t care.
23
November 1846
San Luis Potosí
Over the course of the weeks, Santa Anna’s army began to take shape. Many states of Mexico, including Jalisco, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, and San Luis Potosí, provided all the troops and supplies they could. Riley was surprised that other states hesitated to fulfill their duty in supporting the campaign; some, such as Durango and Zacatecas, refused to send reinforcements altogether. It baffled him that instead of uniting and cooperating to defeat the enemy to the north, some state leaders were allowing their animosity for Santa Anna to cloud their judgment, looking for any pretext to oust him. The governor of Zacatecas, a rival of Santa Anna, had even tried to get a group of states to form an alliance against him, going so far as to proclaim that he would rather see the Yankees win the war than see Santa Anna triumph. Riley was perplexed. This was their chance to defeat the invaders and get them out of their country, especially now that the fighting had spread to New Mexico and California. Mexico was in dire danger. Why couldn’t the Mexican leaders see that and put their squabbles aside to unite for this single cause?
With the federal government providing a minimum of resources, Santa Anna had been compelled to mortgage his own properties to have enough funds for his army. Yet there wasn’t enough food, clothing, weapons, or ammunition to train the men, so progress was slow. Santa Anna forced a loan from the Church, and due to great opposition from the clergy, he only got a part of what he’d requested. Still, the general persisted in his efforts to raise an army. Riley couldn’t help but admire him, for in no time at all, he had built up his troops to more than twenty thousand men.
* * *
As Riley and Santa Anna had predicted, once news of the Saint Patrick’s Battalion got out, deserters flocked to its standard. Every day foreign soldiers arrived in San Luis Potosí after having separated themselves from Taylor’s forces still stationed in Monterrey and Camargo. Santa Anna put out the call to all Mexican civilians to aid these foreigners and deliver them to him. Rancheros and priests were largely responsible for guiding the deserters safely across the deserts and mountains to San Luis Potosí. Riley soon had more than one hundred and fifty men in his unit—mostly Irish, some Germans, with a sprinkling of Scots, French, Poles, Italians, and Prussians, three runaway slaves, and even an Englishman. Capitán Moreno and Riley welcomed the new recruits together, but trusting Riley’s gunnery skills, the captain allowed him to organize and train the gun crews and wagon teams to man the caissons and the 16-and 24-pounders that Santa Anna had turned over to them. With the brand-new Saint Patrick’s Battalion banner—which he’d taken to the church to be blessed—flying in the breeze, Riley drilled the recruits daily until he was satisfied with their speed and precision. He shouted his instructions in English, Irish, Latin, and even German, using the few phrases he’d learned, and timed his crews as they hitched the cannons to the horse-drawn wagons, hauled them to specific spots, and fired practice rounds. As he watched the drills taking place under his green banner, Riley couldn’t have been prouder of what he’d accomplished.
And yet his mind was troubled. General Santa Anna had secured 21,553 men for his army, but that gave him an advantage only in numbers. The Mexican rank and file was, by and large, composed of prisoners or barefoot and ragged Indian conscripts armed with machetes or discarded muskets purchased for almost nothing from the English. Santa Anna had managed to acquire twenty-one pieces for his artillery to command, but the quality of the weaponry and the ammunition was inferior to what the Yanks had in their possession. Riley knew that the superb training of his crew couldn’t overcome the poor caliber of the cannons, which had a third of the range of the Yankee guns.
“We might not have the quality, but we have the quantity,” Santa Anna reassured him when Riley brought up his concerns. Taylor had a third of the troops Santa Anna now had at his disposal. Riley hoped the general was right, that their superiority in numbers would supersede the Yanks’ superiority in weaponry. But past experiences had taught him otherwise—thus far, the Yankee general had beaten the Mexican forces in spite of his deficiency in troops.