Chapter Three.
Fighting in Mexico.
I give now some accounts written by Mayne Reid of the various engagements of the American army in Mexico. Some of these were written from the seat of war, and others subsequently.
“The capture of Vera Cruz was an affair of artillery. The city was bombarded for several days by a semicircle of batteries placed upon the sandhills in its rear. It at length surrendered, and with it the celebrated castle of San Juan d’Ulloa.
“During the siege a few of us who were fond of fighting found opportunities of being shot at in the back country. The sandhills—resembling Murlock Banks, only more extensive—form a semicircle round Vera Cruz. The city itself, compactly built, and of picturesque appearance, stands upon a low sandy plain—semicircular, of course—the sea-shore being the boundary diameter. Behind the hills of sand, for leagues inward, extends a low jungly country, covered with the forests of tropical America. This, like all the coast lands of Mexico, is called the tierra caliente (hot land). This region is far from being uninhabited. These thickets have their clearings and their cottages, the latter of the most temporary construction that may serve the wants of man in a climate of almost perpetual summer. There are also several villages scattered through this part of the tierra caliente.
“During the siege the inhabitants of these cottages (ranchos) and villages banded together under the name jarochos or guerrilleros, but better known to our soldiers by the general title rancheros, and kept up a desultory warfare in our rear, occasionally committing murders on straggling parties of soldiers who had wandered from our lines.
“Several expeditions were sent out against them, but with indifferent success. I was present in many of these expeditions, and on one occasion, when in command of about thirty men, I fell in with a party of guerrilleros nearly a hundred strong, routed them, and, after a straggling fight of several hours, drove them back upon a strong position, the village of Medellini. In this skirmish I was fired at by from fifty to a hundred muskets and escopettes, and, although at the distance of not over two hundred yards, had the good fortune to escape being hit.
“One night I was sent in command of a scouting party to reconnoitre a guerilla camp supposed to be some five miles away in the country. It was during the mid-hours of the night, but under one of those brilliant moonlights for which the cloudless sky of Southern Mexico is celebrated. Near the edge of an opening—the prairie of Santa Fé—our party was brought suddenly to a halt at the sight of an object that filled every one of us with horror. It was the dead body of a soldier, a member of the corps to which the scouting party belonged. The body lay at full length upon its back; the hair was clotted with blood and standing out in every direction; the teeth were clenched in agony; the eyes glassy and open, as if glaring upon the moon that shone in mid-heaven above. One arm had been cut off at the elbow, while a large incision in the left breast showed where the heart had been torn out, to satisfy the vengeance of an inhuman enemy. There were shot wounds and sword cuts all over the body, and other mutilations made by the zopilotes and wolves. Notwithstanding all, it was recognised as that of a brave young soldier, who was much esteemed by his comrades, and who for two days had been missing from the camp. He had imprudently strayed beyond the line of pickets, and fallen into the hands of the enemy’s guerrilleros.
“The men would not pass on without giving to his mutilated remains the last rites of burial. There was neither spade nor shovel to be had; but fixing bayonets, they dug up the turf, and depositing the body, gave it such sepulture as was possible. One who had been his bosom friend, cutting a slip from a bay laurel close by, planted it in the grave. The ceremony was performed in deep silence, for they knew that they were on dangerous ground, and that a single shout or shot at that moment might have been the signal for their destruction.
“I afterwards learnt that this fiendish act was partly due to a spirit of retaliation. One of the American soldiers, a very brutal fellow, had shot a Mexican, a young Jarocho peasant, who was seen near the roadside chopping some wood with his macheté. It was an act of sheer wantonness, or for sport, just as a thoughtless boy might fire at a bird to see whether he could kill it. Fortunately the Mexican was not killed, but his elbow was shattered by the shot so badly that the whole arm required amputation. It was the wantonness of the act that provoked retaliation; and after this the lex talionis became common around Vera Cruz, and was practised in all its deadly severity long after the place was taken. Several other American soldiers, straying thoughtlessly beyond the lines, suffered in the same way, their bodies being found mutilated in a precisely similar manner. Strange to say, the man who was the cause of this vengeance became himself one of its victims. Not then, at Vera Cruz, but long afterwards, in the Valley of Mexico; and this was the strangest part of it. Shortly after the American army entered the capital, his body was found in the canal of Las Vigas, alongside the ‘Chinampas,’ or floating gardens, gashed all over with wounds, made by the knives of assassins, and mutilated just as the others had been. It might have been a mere coincidence, but it was supposed at the time that the one-armed Jarocho must have followed him up, with that implacable spirit of vengeance characteristic of his race, until at length, finding him alone, he had completed his vendetta.