That demand, history attests, they translated into action.
The Republic of Mexico consisted of twenty-four states, with a population of about six millions. It had but twenty years previously achieved its independence against the veteran army of Spain.
It had a standing army of fifty thousand, and had called into the field an additional force, chiefly volunteers, of nearly two hundred thousand.
Her soldiers were well armed and equipped, the muskets of her infantry all bearing the English Tower-stamp, and the cartridges being of the best British manufacture. Her troops were, in the main, magnificently uniformed, and we could say with literal truth that her “Cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold.” Her coast defences were provided with good armaments, her principal sea-port, Vera-Cruz, being guarded by the Castle of San Juan d’Ulloa, built of white coral rock, and mounting three hundred heavy guns. No country was better adapted by its topography for defensive warfare.
Abounding with mountain ranges, and rocky hill-slopes, the true citadels of freedom, that commanded all practicable roads to the interior, while she had a formidable ally in the deadly climate of her coast, where the tropical sun, shining upon the ever-decaying masses of rank vegetation, breeds the fatal malaria which burns up the blood with fever, alternating with the icy “norther” that within an hour will often vary the temperature from summer’s heat to an almost Arctic cold.
Three lines of operation against Mexico were now determined on:
1. General Taylor was to operate from Matamoras, along the line of the Rio-Grande.
2. A column under General Kearny was to conquer the Mexican territories of New Mexico and California.
3. A column under General Wool was to enter the Northern States of Mexico and conquer Chihuahua, and the adjacent country.
In pursuance of this plan General Taylor advanced upon the Mexican Array, then in position at Monterey, on September 5th, 1846.