Joseph E. Johnston and the Assault on Chapultepec, September 13, 1847

[From George L. Kilmer, "WHERE SPURS WERE WON. SOME DEEDS OF VALOR FIFTY YEARS AGO. Young Men Who Won Glory at the Storming of Chapultepec." Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 93, Number 157 (July 29, 1897).]

Chapultepec is well named, for in the Aztec tongue the word means the "Hill of the Grasshoppers." It is an elevation of 165 feet above the level, crowned by a castle, with wings, bastions, parapets, redoubts, and batteries of heavy stone work over 1,600 feet in length. Surrounding this seemingly impregnable fortress at the time of the battle were two stone walks strongly built, and from two to fourteen feet in height. The hill is an isolated rock with steep, precipitous sides on the north and east and part of the south. It was flanked also by high walls along the main roadway or causeways and by a strong aqueduct wall twelve or sixteen feet high.

Soldiers to escalade these barriers, arms in hand, fighting their way step by step, must be as agile as grasshoppers, as sure footed as the mountain goat. The men who led off, who struck the first blows, who breached the walls, drove the Mexicans from the parapets and turned their own guns upon them, inspiring their followers to come on and send the wedge home, were also fitly named for the work in hand. They were voltigeurs. Literally vaulting soldiers, men selected and trained for daring deeds. . .

Joseph E. Johnston commanded a special battalion of Voltigeurs and foot riflemen, which he had recently organized . . . When the signal sounded for the storming parties to advance Johnston preceded them with his four companies of Voltigeurs, having received orders to force an entrance through the immense wall enclosing the castle park.

In the face of a steady fire from the walls and the gate the Voltigeurs deployed and turned their rifles upon the Mexicans on the top of the wall. After a few minutes the enemy broke from the parapet and ran across the park to a line of intrenchments. The Voltigeurs followed. Johnston leading them all in their wild run. The flag of his battalion was the first American banner planted upon the outer walls of this ancient citadel.

Infantry columns and batteries quickly advanced to seize the ground cleared by the Voltigeurs. Leaving the prizes to them, the brave Colonel, already wounded, hurried his men across the park to the rear gates to cut off the garrison from retreat.

This feat was accomplished in the face of a sharp and close fire poured upon the Voltiguers from the park terrace in their rear. One of Johnston's men. Private W. A. Gray, discovered and destroyed a train of powder leading to the mines which Mexicans had planted under the walls, and which, in consequence, they failed to explode.

[T]he gallant Reno [moved] his battery along with the storming column. Reno afterward caught up with Johnston's Voltigeurs, with one howitzer, and was wounded while firing it. . .

[Finally, US flags] flashed in the breeze far above the classic Aztec groves and gardens, above the warm and bleeding corse of a Montezuma, last of that royal line, above and in view of the doomed Capital of the Mexicans in the plains and beyond.

[The full article is available via the California Digital Newspaper Collection. Here is a link]

[Joseph Eggleston Johnston (1807-1891)
Jesse Lee Reno (1823-1862)
Picture: Chapultepec,  Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot, in The War Between the United States and Mexico, Illustrated (1851)]

[Many thanks to William Myers, Mary Davy and Sally Young for their ongoing research collaboration.]