Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 2.djvu/123

Rh a mile west of Ansaldo and about three times as far from Valencia — had a stiff but victorious brush with Torrejón and three regiments of cavalry, defied Valencia's cannon, some of which now faced this way, found cover at length in broken ground between the village and his camp, and waited for the Mexicans to be routed. But the major general commanding failed in the prime essential of his plan, for he did not induce Valencia to retreat. Badly crippled, the American batteries became silent after an hour or so, the brigades that had expected to charge saw clearly they could accomplish nothing, and Riley found himself isolated. So ended wretchedly the first phase of the battle of Contreras, Pillow's phase."

But by this time a second phase was taking shape. Pillow himself perceived that Riley had been thrown into imminent peril, and sent Cadwalader's brigade, which was followed by the Fifteenth Infantry, to his support. Smith, useless where he was and probably feeling little confidence in Pillow or Twiggs, decided to regard himself as the senior officer present, gathered his men, except those employed in skirmishing, and, with a yell of endorsement from them, proceeded in the direction that Riley had taken — not, however, primarily to intercept Valencia's retreat or reinforcements, but with a direct view to attacking his left flank. At about the same time — probably by half-past three o'clock — Scott himself joined Pillow and other officers on Zacatepec, viewed with his usual battlefield equanimity the desperate state of things, now spread before him like a map on a table, studied Valencia's batteries, the heavy ranks of supporting infantry and the long lines of cavalry in the rear, and soon fixed upon woody San Gerónimo — marked at a line distance of about a mile and three quarters by its white steeple — as the key to the situation, since it both flanked and isolated Valencia, and ordered Shields's brigade also, which had followed him from San Agustín, to that point.

Smith, arriving at San Gerónimo about an hour before sunset, found all of the commands, except Shields's, that had been ordered to go there; and he also found that Santa Anna, after hurrying from San Antonio through Coyoacán and San Angel, had placed himself with Pérez's brigade and seven or eight hundred cavalry and artillery on low hills about one half or three quarters of a mile behind San Gerónimo, and — though