Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/412

382 exasperating to the people and difficult of accomplishment, refrained from the exercise of a right which invaders have generally used in other countries. Our officers, accordingly, paid for the supplies obtained from the natives. Nor did they confine this principle of action to the operations of the military authorities alone whilst acting for the army at large, but, wherever it was possible, restrained that spirit of private plunder and destruction which too commonly characterizes the common soldier when flushed with victory over a weak but opulent foe. When the ports of Mexico, however, had fallen into our possession and the blockade was raised, they were at once opened to the trade of all nations upon the payment of duties more moderate than those which had been collected by Mexico. The revenue, thus levied in the form of a military contribution from Mexican citizens upon articles they consumed, was devoted to the use of our army and navy. It was, in effect, the seizure of Mexican commercial duties and their application to our necessary purposes, and thus far, only, was the nation compelled to contribute towards the expense of the war it had provoked.

Early in August, General Scott had been reinforced by the arrival of new regiments at Puebla, and on the 7th of that month, he resolved to march upon the capital. Leaving a competent garrison in that city, under the command of Colonel Childs, and a large number of sick and enfeebled men in the hospitals, he departed with about ten thousand eager soldiers towards the renowned Valley of Mexico.

In the same month, three hundred and twenty-eight years before, Hernando Cortéz and his slender military train, departed from the eastern coasts of Mexico, on the splendid errand of Indian conquest. After fighting two battles, with the Tlascalans who then dwelt in the neighborhood of Puebla, and with the Cholulans whose solitary pyramid,—a grand and solemn monument of the past,—still rises majestically from the beautiful plain, he slowly toiled across the steeps of the grand volcanic sierra which divides the valleys and hems in the plain of Mexico. Patiently winding up its wooded sides and passing the forests of its summit, the same grand panoramic scene lay spread out in sunshine at the feet of the American General that three centuries before had greeted the eager and longing eyes of the greatest Castilian soldier who ever trod the shores of America.

In order to comprehend the military movements which ended the drama of the Mexican war, it will be necessary for us to describe