Mexican-American War: Battle of Buena Vista

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When Lieutenant John Richey was ambushed and killed by Mexican guerrillas in January 1847, the stage was set for a disaster unparalleled in American military history. The message Richey had been carrying provided information that could deliver an entire army of United States soldiers into the hands of the enemy.

The United States and the Republic of Mexico had been at war over territorial disputes since May of the previous year. Major General Zachary Taylor’s Army of Occupation had won smashing victories over the Mexicans at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. By early September, Taylor had overrun the province of Nueva Léon and captured the fortress city of Monterrey. Shortly afterward, he linked up with a smaller army under Brig. Gen. John E. Wool. It seemed as if nothing could stop Taylor from plunging south, into the very heart of Mexico.

A young officer wrote home, ‘Taylor is short and very heavy, with pronounced face lines and gray hair, wears an old oilcloth cap, a dusty green coat, a frightful pair of trousers and on horseback looks like a frog.’ Admiring journalists had dubbed Taylor ‘Old Rough and Ready,’ though his troops preferred to call him ‘Old Zach.’

George G. Meade described the general as ‘a plain, sensible old gentleman.’ He usually lounged around camp in rumpled civilian clothes and bedroom slippers. Taylor’s men loved to tell the story of a young lieutenant, newly arrived in camp, who mistook the general for somebody’s servant. The lieutenant offered the ‘old fatty’ a dollar to clean his sword. Taylor duly sat down, polished the shavetail’s sword and pocketed the dollar.

By late November, shortly after capturing Saltillo, Old Zach was fit to be tied. In far-off Washington, D.C., President James K. Polk and Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott had come up with a new campaign that involved an amphibious landing on the Gulf of Mexico at Vera Cruz followed by a quick thrust at Mexico City. Their plan effectively dealt Taylor and the Army of Occupation right out of the picture.

Worse was to come. Taylor wrote his son-in-law: ‘I [have] been stripped of nearly the whole of the regular force and more than half of the volunteers, and ordered to act on the defensive.’ The Army of Occupation was fast becoming the ‘Army of Unemployment.’ By January 23, Taylor was shorn of all but 500 of his regulars; the remainder of his 4,759 men were volunteers, 80 percent of whom had never heard a shot fired in anger.

No one had a greater interest in Taylor’s misfortunes than the man who ultimately received Lieutenant Richey’s lost dispatch. That was Division General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who had returned from exile in Cuba to take command of the armies of Mexico. Most Americans found Santa Anna a comic figure; they mocked his arrogance, his Napoleonic pretensions and the 15 pounds of gold embroidery bedecking his coat. Yet he was a soldier of genuine talent. He was an absolute genius at procuring men, horses and guns from the impoverished countryside of Mexico. And by the middle of January 1847, he had 22,000 troops at San Luis Potosi, ready to march.

But where were they to go? Richey’s dispatch answered that, for it laid out the whole American plan in detail: Take Taylor’s best soldiers, give them to Scott and gamble everything on an overpowering surprise lunge from the sea.

To Santa Anna, the solution was clear. He would make a fast march north to Saltillo, catch Taylor by surprise and annihilate his dwindling army, then return south before Scott could make headway against Veracruz. After that, the Mexican general reasoned, it should be easy to keep Scott’s army confined near the coast, where yellow fever would surely erode the Americans faster than Mexican bullets.

On January 28, Santa Anna began his fateful march north. For three long weeks his army trudged through some of the worst terrain on the continent. Across miles of rain and ooze, along endless stretches of desert, it wound steadily north, scooping up small American patrols along the way. Reports of the advancing enemy army were rife in Taylor’s ranks. The general, however, scoffed at the rumors and the panic they inspired among his unblooded volunteers. Santa Anna, said Taylor, could never march a force larger than a corporal’s guard across the wastelands beyond San Luis Potosi. To demonstrate his disdain to the doubters, Taylor advanced his army south from Saltillo, to the sprawling Hacienda San Juan de la Buena Vista, where he set up a supply depot.

Taylor was seriously underestimating his determined adversary. On February 20, the self-styled ‘Napoleon of the West’ reviewed his forces. Thousands had perished or deserted in the hellish march, but he could still muster 15,142 of the finest soldiers of Mexico, including seven regiments of the line, the Hussars of the Guard, the Tulancingo Cuirassiers and nine cavalry regiments. Santa Anna also had 21 guns, hard to move and slow to fire, but of heavier metal than those of the Americans.

It was that same night–the 20th–when Ben McCulloch and his spy company of Texas Rangers reconnoitered the sprawling Mexican camp and started counting. By the time his report reached Zachary Taylor, it was clear that the American army faced not merely retreat but outright catastrophe. Old Rough and Ready was deep in enemy territory, facing forces fully three times the size of his own. It was impossible to run–the hordes of enemy horsemen would cut his columns to pieces. There was no choice for the tiny army but to fight for its life.

To General Wool was delegated the task of choosing a field of battle. A short distance south of Buena Vista the road entered a sharp bottleneck in the hills, where an effective barricade could be erected. To the west, a weird tangle of arroyos made the ground impassable; to the east, a series of plateaus rose sharply toward the Sierra Madre mountains, giving a small force fair opportunity to baffle a larger one. There, the outnumbered Americans would make their desperate stand.

The sun rose dazzling in a cloudless sky on the morning of February 22, 1847. To the south, dark clouds of dust heralded the approach of the Mexican army. Taylor, mounted on his horse Old Whitey, reviewed his tiny army as the regimental bands banged out ‘Yankee Doodle’ and ‘Hail Columbia.’ Taylor’s 517 regulars included two companies of dragoons as well as three artillery batteries. The volunteers consisted of the Mississippi Rifles, the Arkansas Mounted, Brig. Gen. Joseph Lane’s brigade of the 2nd and 3rd Indiana, the 1st and 2nd Illinois, the 1st Kentucky Mounted and the 2nd Kentucky Infantry.

Captain John W. Washington’s 8-gun battery was posted to block the road; in support were the 1st and 2nd Illinois and the 2nd Kentucky. The extreme left, the most vulnerable point in the U.S. position, was guarded by dismounted Arkansas and Kentucky riflemen. The rest of Taylor’s army was posted to the rear, ready to reinforce as needed. According to Taylor, ‘The features of the ground were such as to nearly paralyze the artillery and cavalry of the enemy, while his infantry could not derive all the advantages of its numerical superiority.’

By 9 a.m., Santa Anna had arrived on the field after yet another of his agonizing forced marches and wheeled his men into position. He quickly formed a plan that was as simple as it was admirably suited to the circumstances. He would use his tremendous advantage in numbers to turn the American left wing. Then, with a quick thrust of his cavalry regiments, he would seize the depot at Buena Vista and cut the road of retreat for Taylor’s army.

At 11 o’clock that morning, Pedro Vanderlinden, Mexico’s surgeon general, formally presented Santa Anna’s demand for surrender to Taylor. It was a long and formal document, beginning, ‘You are surrounded by twenty thousand men and cannot in any human probability avoid suffering a rout and being cut to pieces with your troops; but as you deserve consideration and particular esteem, I wish to save you from catastrophe….’ Taylor exploded in fury. Turning to his adjutant, Major William Bliss, he allegedly roared: ‘Tell Santa Anna to go to hell! Major Bliss, put that in Spanish for this damned Dutchman to deliver!’

Whether or not that was Taylor’s immediate reply, Bliss’ translation to Santa Anna read: ‘I beg leave to say that I decline acceding to your request.’ Three hours later, the booming of a Mexican howitzer signaled the start of Santa Anna’s attack. Four battalions of light infantry under General Pedro de Ampudia began a wide flanking movement designed to overlap the American left. The Arkansas and Kentucky rifle companies met the thrust in the foothills. What followed was a desperate race by both sides for higher and higher ground, with booming volleys of Mexican musketry pitted against the slow, steady fire of American rifles. Darkness finally brought an end to the struggle.

That night, Santa Anna stalked the battlefield like a man possessed. He shoved more and more units toward his right flank and personally surveyed emplacements for his artillery. Finally, he harangued each regiment of his army in turn, far into the night. The weary Americans bivouacked in the hills fell asleep hearing the echoes of ‘Viva Santa Anna!‘ and ‘Libertad o muerte!‘

As darkness fell, Taylor left Wool in command of the army and rode north, accompanied by Colonel Jefferson Davis’ Mississippi Rifles and a squadron of dragoons. He wanted to inspect the defenses of Saltillo against the possibility of an attack aimed at cutting his rear.

On the other side of the lines, Taylor’s counterpart continued to breathe fire. At 2 in the morning, Santa Anna ordered his footsore infantry booted awake for a long night march designed to mass maximum punch against the beleaguered American left. This time, he would strike not at the extreme left, which at that point was securely anchored in the mountains, but rather at the vulnerable hinge where the left met the center. There, at a point held by the untried volunteers of the 2nd Indiana, a good, hard push could scatter Taylor’s green soldiers like straw before the wind.

As dawn lightened the sky on the 23rd, a newly emplaced Mexican battery of five 8-pounders greeted the Americans. During the night, Wool had reinforced his left with companies of the 2nd Illinois and three artillery pieces under Lieutenant John Paul Jones O’Brien. One of those guns, a 12-pounder, was able to keep the first tentative enemy probes at bay with long-range shrapnel.

At 8 a.m. the storm broke. While Mexican bands played hymns and priests clad in red and gold robes swung smoking censers of incense, Santa Anna massed infantry and cavalry under Generals Francisco Pacheco and Manuel M. Lombardini and ordered them to the attack. Lombardini’s infantry had managed to work its way forward at dawn to the shelter of a huge ravine, from which they suddenly emerged to confront the startled Yankees. Like the professionals they were, the 7,000 Mexican soldiers in gaudy coats and black leather shakos rapidly formed columns, wheeled and launched themselves at O’Brien and the 2nd Indiana with the force of a thunderbolt.

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Tags: 19th Century, Historical Conflicts

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