El capitan hermoso, "the handsome captain," was a phrase as common with the Mexican ladies of the Mexican capital as "Fighting Joe" is now with the American public. El buen mozo was another phrase among them; while more intimate admirers called him El guero, "the light-haired." The light brown hair is now much tinged with gray, and, until lately, El buen mozo, the comely youth, despite the ravages of time, was a splendidly preserved young gentleman of fifty. But the tall, erect, muscular figure of El capitan hermoso has been bent and weakened, but not by age. His animal spirits are just as great as when he marched through Mexico, but his physical endurance is gone, perhaps, forever. His full, clear eye is just as bright to-day as it was when he was simply captain and chief of staff to General Pillow, but he can not spring as nimbly into the saddle at the sound of opening battle. On the 20th of November, 1865, while assisting at the reception of General Grant at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, he was suddenly stricken with paralysis, and was carried to his residence in a helpless state. He lost the use of his right side, leg, and arm, and will, it is feared, become a confirmed invalid. His physicians declare that the paralytic stroke was the result of a blow received by Hooker at the battle of Chancellorsville nearly three years before. The general became very much reduced by this disease; his frame became bent and emaciated, and something of the symmetry of his features was lost. Very little hope of his ultimate recovery is entertained by any other person than himself; but nothing can convince the sanguine general that his health will not return to him in time.
LOVELL H. ROUSSEAU.
CHAPTER VI.
REMINISCENCES OF ROUSSEAU.
All failures find their special apologies, and some curious ones were originated by the admirers of McClellan to account for the singular ineffective policy of that officer. That policy is now generally known as the "McNapoleonic," in contradistinction to the Fabian policy, from which it differed only in that Fabian attained valuable results, while McClellan did not. Every thing was to have been effected by the young Napoleon, according to his admirers, by pure, unalloyed strategy, and the rebellion and its armies were to be crushed without bloodshed. This great strategist, according to these authorities, was without parallel; all the rest of the generals, like Thomas, Grant, Hooker, etc., were, according to the McClellan theory, only "fighting generals." Their battles were mere massacres; Grant was a butcher; they quote his Wilderness campaign even to this day to prove it, and declare that he lost a hundred thousand men in his battles north of the James, but never reflect that McClellan lost ninety thousand without doing any fighting, and while retreating instead of advancing to that same river. Sheridan, to their mind, is a mere raider, without an idea of strategy, and Thomas, Hooker, Hancock, and all the rest, were "only fighting generals."