BATTLE OF MOLINO DEL REY. 



413 



ry, striking down eleven out of the fourteen officers who composed 

 the command, and, for the time, staggering the staunch assailants. 

 But this paralysis continued for an instant only. A light battalion 

 which had been held to cover Huger's battery, commanded by Cap- 

 tain E. Kirby Smith, rushed forward to support, and executing its 

 bloody task amid horrible carnage, finally succeeded in carrying 

 the line and occupying it with our troops. In the meanwhile Gar- 

 land's brigade, sustained by Drum's artillery assaulted the enemy's 

 left near the Molino, and after an obstinate contest drove him from 

 his position under the protecting guns of Chapultepec. Drum's 

 section and Huger's battering guns advanced to the enemy's posi- 

 tion, and his captured pieces were now opened on the retreating 

 force. While these efforts were successfully making on the Mexi- 

 can centre and left, Duncan's battery blazed on the right, and 

 Colonel Mackintosh was ordered to assault that point. The advance 

 of his brigade soon brought it between the enemy and Duncan's guns, 

 and their fire was of course discontinued. Onwards sternly and 

 steadily moved the troops towards the Casa Mata, which, as it was 

 approached, proved to be a massive stone work surrounded with 

 bastioned entrenchments and deep ditches, whence a deadly fire 

 was delivered and kept up without intermission upon our advancing 

 troops until they reached the very slope of the parapet surrounding 

 the citadel. The havoc was dreadful. A large proportion of the 

 command was either killed or wounded ; but still the ceaseless fire 

 from the Casta Mata continued its deadly work, until the maimed 

 and broken band of gallant assailants was withdrawn to the left of 

 Duncan's battery where its remnants rallied. Duncan and Sumner had 

 meanwhile been hotly engaged in repelling a charge of Mexican 

 cavalry on the left, and having just completed the work, the brave 

 Colonel found his countrymen retired from before the Casa Mata 

 and the field again open for his terrible weapons. Directing them 

 at once upon the fatal fort he battered the Mexicans from its walls, 

 and as they fled from its protecting enclosure he continued to play 

 upon the fugitives as relentlessly as they had recently done upon 

 Mackintosh and his doomed brigade. 



The Mexicans were now driven from the field at every point. La 

 Casa Mata was blown up by the conquerors. Captured ammuni- 

 tion and cannon moulds in El Molino were destroyed. And the 

 Americans, according to Scott's order previous to the battle, returned 

 to Tacubaya, with three of the enemy's guns, (a fourth being spiked 

 and useless,) eight hundred prisoners including fifty-two commis- 

 sioned officers, and a large quantity of small arms, with gun and 



53 



