Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 2.djvu/136

118 Harney were permitted, however, to keep on, and when the sight of a battery led him to pull up, Captain Kearny of the First resolved to charge the guns, and galloped ahead.

"Oh, what a glorious sight it was to see Phil Kearny riding into them!" wrote a soldier. His own troop were picked men; they rode picked horses — all iron-gray — that now seemed: endowed with supernatural strength; and his other troop were fit comrades. Standing quite upright in the stirrups they looked like centaurs. Little by little the rear fours, hearing the trumpet sound the recall, dropped off; but the leader and about a dozen others kept on like a swift vessel, dashing the-billows of humanity right and left. The battery, which stood at the garita, fired upon friend and foe alike. Still the little group arrived there, leaped from their horses to carry it, and-found — that they were alone. The panic of the enemy, however, saved them. Tearing loose and springing into the saddle, they got away. But a grape-shot was faster than Kearny; and so, losing an arm but winning a brevet, he finished valiantly the battle of Churubusco.

Santa Anna's total loss for the day — the killed, the wounded and especially the missing — may be roughly estimated as 10,000. He admitted that he lost more than a third of his men. After he was able to find where he stood (August 30) the Army of the East contained 11,381 privates. Alvarez had 2447 privates (August 26); and, besides remnants of Valencia's troops, there were doubtless many small bodies of militia. Scott estimated the Mexicans killed and wounded as 4297, and 2637 prisoners, including eight generals, were reported; while the American ordnance was more than trebled, and the scanty stock of ammunition enormously increased. Out of 8497 engaged in the two battles, we lost fourteen officers and 119 privates killed, sixty and 805 respectively wounded, and some forty of the rank and file missing, who probably lost their lives.

The high moral qualities displayed by our troops made the day glorious, as Hitchcock said, "in the highest degree"; and the army, naturally overestimating the numbers of the enemy, felt exceedingly proud. Scott, riding about the field, gray and massive, was hailed by the troops as the very genius of power and command.