Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/143

Rh foes. Men who had been accustomed for so long a period to military rule did not immediately acquire the habit of self-government. National police required a national army. Officers who had distinguished themselves in an epoch when laws were silent and the only authorities recognized wore the insignia of military life, did not forsake willingly the power they enjoyed. Indeed, they were the only authentic personages capable of enforcing obedience; and their adherents were soon armed against each other in all the contentions for political position which vexed the republic during the dawn of its national existence. Civil wars became habitual. An army was an element of strength and success which no military chieftain thought proper to crush. Rallying his disciplined partizans, as long as his friends or his fortune supplied their support, he was ready at a moment to take the field either for the maintenance of a leader's cause or to secure his own elevation. Nor was this mode of life disagreeable to the body of the army and inferior officers who were lodged and fed at the public expense during a period when it was difficult to find easy or agreeable civil employments in the distracted realm. Each petty subaltern and even every common soldier, clad in the livery of the state and carrying arms, was regarded by the unshod leperos and homeless vagrants as a personage of superior position; and thus, whilst the army became at that epoch popular with the people it had liberated from Spanish bondage, it ripened into a necessity of the aspiring politicians who craved a speedier access to power than by the slow and toilsome process of a republican canvass. The state, itself, perceiving these manifold causes of military favor, utility, and supposed need, preserved the army from all assaults by patriotic congressmen, and thus the greatest curse and burthen of the nation,—the origin and means of all its woes and all its despots,—was, from the first, riveted to the body politic of Mexico.

It must not be supposed, however, that in speaking of the Mexican army we design to compare it, either in detail or as an organized body, with the troops of this country or of Europe. Neither in the mass of its materiel, nor in its officers, does it vie with the trained and disciplined forces of other civilized countries. Soldiers in Mexico are rather actors in a political drama,—dressed and decorated for imposing display,—than efficient warriors whose instruction and power make them irresistible in the field. In all the engagements, or attempts to engage, which occurred in Mexico since the termination of the war of independence, there has been a laudable desire, at least among the troops, to avoid the shedding of