The whole day had been spent in fighting, and when night came, the field was covered with dead. It was an anxious season for our battered troops, and whilst all were solicitous for the event of a contest, which it was supposed would be renewed on the morrow, the greatest efforts were not only made to inspirit the troops who had borne the brunt of two days' battle, but to bring up reinforcements of artillery and cavalry that had been stationed between Saltillo and Monterey. At day dawn, however, on the 24th, the enemy was found to have retreated.
This wonderful battle saved the north of Mexico and the valley of the Rio Grande; for Miñon and Urrea were already in our rear with regular troops and bands of rancheros, ready to cut up our flying army, and descend upon our slender garrisons. Urrea captured a valuable wagon train at Ramos, in the neighborhood of Monterey. From the 22d to the 26th of February, he continually threatened our weakened outposts, and from that period until the 7th of March inflicted severe injuries upon our trains and convoys from the gulf. In the meantime Santa Anna retreated to San Luis Potosi with the fragments of his fine army, and not long after, General Taylor retired from a field of service, in which he was no longer permitted to advance, or required except for garrison duty.
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In the months of October and November, 1846, Tobasco and Tampico had yielded to our navy; the former after a severe attack conducted by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, and the latter without bloodshed.
CHAPTER XI.
1846–1847.
SANTA ANNA'S RETURN—CHANGES HIS PRINCIPLES.—SALAS EXECUTIVE.—CONSTITUTION OF 1824 RESTORED—PAREDES.—PLANS OF SALAS AND SANTA ANNA—HIS LETTER TO ALMONTE—HIS VIEWS OF THE WAR—REFUSES THE DICTATORSHIP—COMMANDS THE ARMY.—STATE OF PARTIES IN MEXICO—PUROS—MODERADOS—SANTA ANNA AT SAN LUIS.—PEACE PROPOSITIONS—INTERNAL TROUBLES.—FARIAS'S CONTROVERSY WITH THE CHURCH.—POLKO REVOLUTION IN THE CAPITAL—VICE PRESIDENCY SUPPRESSED—IMPORTANT DECREE.
When General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna landed from the steamer Arab, after having been permitted to pass the line of our blockading fleet at Vera Cruz he was received by only a few friends. His reception was in fact not a public one, nor marked by enthusiasm.
By the revolution which overthrew Paredes, General Salas came into the exercise of the chief executive authority, and as soon as Santa Anna arrived he despatched three high officers to welcome him, among whom was Valentin Gomez Farias, a renowned leader of the federalist party, in former days a bitter foe of the exiled chief. Santa Anna, in his communications with the revolutionists from Cuba, had confessed his political mistake, in former years, in advocating the central system. "The love of provincial liberty," said he, in a letter to a friend dated in Havana on the 8th of March, 1846, "being firmly rooted in the minds of all, and the democratic principle predominating every where, nothing can be established in a solid manner in the country, which does not conform to these tendencies, nor can we without them attain either order, peace, prosperity or respectability among foreign nations.