To his wrathful disgust, Don Tiburcio learned that Father Fischer was also gone with Marquez. The priest had disguised himself in an officer’s cloak, and for the moment none in the town knew of his flight. The fat padre, it appeared, no longer hoped for the luscious bishopric of Durango. His was the rat’s instinct, as regards a sinking ship.
The Leopard and the Rat got away only in time. The 379very next day ten thousand ragged Inditos, largely conscripts, arrived from the Valley of Mexico and filled the gap in the besiegers’ line. Investment was now complete, against a paltry nine thousand within the town.
380CHAPTER XIII
A Buccaneer and a Battle
“The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man.”
–Bacon.
But the paltry nine thousand were the best army of Mexicans ever yet gathered together. For weeks they kept more than thirty thousand Republicans out of an unwalled, almost an unfortified town. But while the Republicans were largely chinacos, or raw soldiery, they inside were trained men. There were the Cazadores, a Mexican edition of the Chasseurs, organized by Bazaine under French drill masters. There was Mendez’s seasoned brigade. There was Arellano’s artillery, though numbering only fifty pieces. There were the crack Dragoons of the Empress, the Austro-Mexican Hussars, and a squadron of the Municipal Guards. There were veterans who had fought at Cerro Gordo, and steadily ever since in the civil wars. There was the ancient Battalion de Celaya, mainstay of the Spanish viceroys, and later of the Emperor Iturbide, its colonel. There were the Battalion del Emperador, the Tiradores de la Frontera, a company of engineers, and several well-disciplined regiments of the line.
But the day came when they began to starve, and being hungry took the heart out of many things. It took the heart out of bombarding Escobedo in his hillside adobe; out of taunting “uncouth rebels.” The rebels were in trenches often not a street’s width distant, and for reply they pointed to certain dangling acorns who had been “traitors” caught slipping through the lines. Being hungry took the heart out 381of the quick-time diana, played after a brilliant sortie. Out of the embrace Maximilian gave Miramon. Out of Miramon’s call for vivas for His Majesty the Emperor. Out of standard decorating and promotions and thrilling words of praise. Out of the anniversary of Maximilian’s acceptance of the throne. Out of a medal presentation for military merit, which the generals bestowed on their Emperor in the name of the army. Out of being made a caballero of the Order of Guadalupe, especially as the monarch could give only a ribbon, since the cross must wait until his return to the capital. And being hungry certainly made pathetic his prediction that some among those present would one day wear the medal for twenty-five years of faithful service to the Empire. Being hungry took the poet-hero’s glow out of his wan cheek as he declared again that he, a Hapsburg, would never desert, for even then he heard Imperialist platoons shooting recaptured deserters. Or he thought of the wounded left to die on the grassy plain and lying there unburied. No, all the heart was being taken out of these things, for Marquez still did not come with the help he had gone to bring, and the noose was tightening day by day. Attempts were made to send some one through to depose Marquez, but each one failed. Splendid sallies resulted in prisoners taken, which were only so many more mouths to feed. The Roman aqueduct had long since been cut off, and now the wells were giving out. Mules and horses drank at the river, while sharpshooters picked them off. The feebler animals were butchered and distributed as rations. And still the sorry Marquez gave no sign. Even hope failed the empty stomachs.
But for those who waited outside as Vengeance enthroned, expectation began to take on a creepy quality. The besiegers were preparing against themselves a host, not of men, but of frightful spectres, of famished maniacs, of unearthly ghouls, who would clutch and tear with claws any man that stood between 382them and a morsel of food. And the fury of desperation sharpened with each succeeding irony of a dinner hour.
The siege had endured six weeks. Marquez had been gone a month. But the Republicans held ready for whatever force he might bring. Their key to the situation was the Cimatario, the highest hill on the south. Between it and the wooded Alameda stretched the grassy plain. Republican trenches from base to shoulder of the peak opposed Imperialist trenches under the Alameda trees. Republican troops flanked the Cimatario on either side, lying in wait for Marquez. On one side Driscoll’s Grays guarded the Celaya road.