Page:A series of intercepted letters in Mexico.djvu/18

 the enemy thought it a feint, keeping his principal force in the direction of the Piedad. The firing continued all day on both sides with very little effect.

It was resumed the next morning, and continued about three hours, when it ceased by order of the general, the cessation being the signal or time determined for the advance of two assaulting parties of 250 men each, supported by strong columns, the artillery resuming its fire as soon as the movement was in full operation, and in about an hour the heights were ascended by our troops and the scaling ladders being placed against the walls, our intrepid officers and soldiers passed over into the main work, driving the enemy either out of the work altogether, or into buildings where they surrendered at discretion. The enemy, during the night of the 12th, had sent additional force to defend Chapultepec, though evidently at a loss to know where the real attack was to be made. The defence, however, was desperate, the fight being maintained at a multitude of points in the woods near the hill—at batteries and breastworks at the base of the hill, and from various points and different positions on the sides of the hill. This fight was, on the whole, one of the most remarkable that has occurred during the war.

But I design merely an outline. As the military school was at that place, the superintendent, professors and students, became prisoners of war, with a large body of other officers and men, including the celebrated veteran, general Bravo.

Chapultepec having fallen, our troops were directed in two columns along two causeways, one leading directly to the city, and the other to the left, to intersect the San Cosme causeway, and now the fight was resumed inch by inch upon each route, but the infantry of the enemy was driven, and his batteries taken in rapid succession along a distance upon each causeway of more than a mile and a half, and at night both columns had made a lodgement within the gates of the capital.

Our force at Piedad was not unoccupied on either of the two days. A field battery opened its fire upon the enemy, and movements were made as if to attack in that direction, thus occupying the enemy, already strongly in the belief that the real attack was to be there—but after Chapultepec was taken, and our forces had nearly penetrated the city, the force was withdrawn from Piedad, and sent to the support of one of the attacking columns in the city. The deeds of valor by our troops oh this day, as on previous occasions, deserves to be recorded by a Tacitus, or a Livy. or a Thucydides, and therefore we do not attempt it.