At daybreak Wednesday, suspecting that the Mexicans had left or were leaving El Diablo, Quitman advanced, and found that both men and guns had been withdrawn; but other works not far distant were still held too strongly to be captured. Attempts were made to gain ground in various directions; and finally, an hour or two before noon, with assistance from the Second Texas regiment, dismounted, and the Third and the Fourth Infantry, extensive and well-supported operations began to be undertaken. In particular, a systematic plan of breaking through the continuous line of houses and firing from the roofs was adopted. At each cross-street vigorous fighting had to be done, for the Mexicans, though inferior as marksmen, resisted obstinately at every favorable point; and the musketry and artillery behind their barricades swept the approaches fiercely. Five out of the twelve commissioned officers of the Third Infantry were killed, says General Grant. Two sections of field artillery came up, but the gunners were shot down rapidly in spite of all precautions; and at length, finding the pieces too light for effective service, Taylor ordered them to retire. A gun at the Tenería redoubt was tried, but after a time the advance of the Americans made it dangerous to fire toward the plaza.[10]

The infantry pushed on, however, and by three o’clock were only one square from the grand plaza. Here ammunition began to fail, and Lieutenant Grant, hanging over the side of his horse by an arm and a foot, dashed across the streets too swiftly to be fired at, and went in search of it. With a view to preparing for a general assault, however, or for some other reason Taylor ordered the troops, now working safely inside the houses, to withdraw—under fire, of course. Reluctantly, though many of them had not eaten for thirty-six hours, they marched back to the redoubts and thence after dark to Walnut Grove; and the Ohio and Kentucky regiments went on duty at the captured redoubts.[10]

Strangely enough, Taylor seems to have made no effort, after the storming of the Bishop’s Palace, to arrange with General Worth for concerted action or to give him fresh orders, although he could easily have done so, and knew that all the work assigned to that division had been completed. Wednesday morning, therefore, after the long, deep slumber of exhaustion, Worth’s men found themselves mostly in idleness, and a large part of them, concentrated near the Palace, gazed upon the city at their leisure as the dissolving mists revealed it. Not far away in the suburb were General Arista’s gardens, full of orange, lemon, pomegranate and fig trees, bananas, grapes and flowers, watered by canals that sparkled in the sun. Once in a while a blue-frocked monk, girded with a white cord and tassel, could be seen; and flashes from the streams that ran through almost every street were caught here and there. Beyond lay the white or lightly tinted houses with leafy squares here and there, dominated by the cathedral spires. At due intervals the clock bell peacefully tolled the hour or the quarter. On the left the dark citadel belched occasionally a cloud of white smoke. On the right the Santa Catarina hurried along between the city and the picturesque villas on its opposite bank. Farther away, but still near, the twisted strata and the vast, splintered buttresses, battlements and pinnacles of the Sierra Madre, thinly draped with soft clouds, towered aloft; and overhead great birds that seemed to be eagles travelled like dark planets round their orbits in the blue.[10]

But though they gazed with deep interest, these haggard fellows with bloodshot eyes were not in a mood to enjoy the scene. No orders came from Taylor. Hardly a shot had been heard this morning from the lower town. Mexicans boasted of gaining a victory on that side, and “Your turn will come next,” our men were told. Heavy reinforcements from Saltillo, it was rumored, would soon arrive by the pass. Worth, nervous and anxious, climbed to the Palace tower with his glass, and searched every quarter for news. Meantime the cannon were planted at more commanding points. A howitzer opened on the town. Preparations to make an assault were continued; and, as Mexicans from the south were now said to be approaching, a detachment went about three miles up the Saltillo highway to a strong position. An hour or two before noon, however, the roar of battle began to come from the lower town; and Worth, judging that it meant a serious attack, ordered a column forward by each of the two main streets.[10]

WORTH ADVANCES AGAIN

With a cheer that sounded like a roar the troops hurried down the slope, and burst into the suburb. For some time the work was easy, for in fear of the Libertad guns all the western section had been evacuated; and raising a fierce cry that afterwards came to be known as the “rebel yell,” which began with a growl and rose to a falsetto scream, the Americans dashed on at a run. Beyond the cemetery, however, Mexican troops opened fire, and until some of Duncan’s and Mackall’s guns came up, fought like demons. Barricaded streets and garrisoned roofs were next encountered, and again the Americans dived into the houses. Making a small hole in the wall that divided two dwellings they would drop through it a six-inch shell with a three-seconds fuse lighted, and throw themselves flat. Results followed promptly. The aperture was then enlarged; and crawling through, they repeated the operation, while the best marksmen fought from the roof.[10]

Taylor’s withdrawal from the city, however, supplied the Mexicans with reinforcements. The enemy fairly seemed to swarm, and their courage seemed to rise. “Cannons and small arms flashed, crashed and roared like one mighty storm of wind, rain, hail, thunder and lightning,” wrote a soldier; while the thud of planks against heavy doors and the blows of pickaxes on walls of stone swelled the uproar. Once the advance was halted. But Colonel Hays, a shy man with a broad forehead, a Roman nose, brilliant, restless hazel eyes, and the courage of twenty lions packed in his delicate frame, had been a prisoner in the Monterey post-office once, and had sworn a great oath to sleep this night in the post-office or in hell, and nothing could stop him. By dark the Americans were only a square from the market-place, and the Colonel had the postal accommodations at his command.[10]

Ampudia’s case was by no means desperate even now. His losses had been small—twenty-nine officers and 338 men killed and wounded, according to his report. There were provisions, ammunition and artillery enough; the strong buildings round the plaza and market-place, defended with resolution by a large garrison, could not easily have been taken; and the division of the Americans into widely separated commands invited a sortie.[10]

The situation was, however, by no means agreeable. After nightfall the Americans planted two howitzers and a 6-pounder on the top of a high building close to the western side of the plaza. Taylor’s mortar had been carried to Worth during the day, and after sunset it began to fire now and then on the cathedral, where tons of gunpowder were stored. The citadel undertook to reply, but the mortar, planted behind the stone wall of the cemetery, was not likely to be struck, and a single one of its bombs might conceivably have blown the Mexican army to pieces. In fact so might a shot from Taylor’s 24-pound howitzers, which delivered two shells effectively after dark. On the southern side of the river, opposite the town, the Fifth Infantry had planted one of the El Soldado guns at the third work on Federation ridge, where it could at least have proved annoying. The horses of the cavalry were in the way. The garrison of the citadel could not promptly coöperate with the troops in town, for it had sealed up the exit. Ampudia’s defensive policy discouraged the soldiers, for even though some of them flanked the retiring Americans on Wednesday afternoon, they were not permitted to reoccupy the houses abandoned by Taylor, and still less to attack the redoubts. Despondency was general; some of the leading officers urged surrender; and Ampudia, it was reported, keeping the choicest corps near his person, shut himself up in the cathedral until a shell dropped near it, and then fled to a private house.[10]

NEGOTIATIONS