Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 2.djvu/330

312 and physical strength, discipline and confidence in one another and their officers made them shrink from the American bayonet and the fixed American eye behind it, they bore infantry and artillery fire as well as we did, if not better. Many engineers proved themselves excellent; many artillery officers were brave and efficient; and hence there was no reason why the infantry and cavalry might not have been well handled.

But the military point of view was by no means the only one to be considered. The want of public virtue had filled the army with miserable officers, the legislative halls with dishonest, scheming, clashing politicians, and the whole nation with quarreling factions and wrathful, disheartened people, secretly thankful to find their oppressors, whom they could not punish themselves, punished by the Americans. The hungry and beaten conscript went into battle sure that if wounded he would starve, if killed he would be devoured by the birds, and should neither accident occur he would simply drudge on as before; and the industrious, useful citizen understood, that if he should help the leaders of the nation by paying contributions, he would then have to fatten them by paying again. "We are saved by hope," wrote the great Apostle, and the nation saw no hope. Primarily Mexico was defeated because she did not fight; and she did not fight because she had nothing to fight for. The military class, who had long pretended to be the nation, was given a chance to prove its claim, and the poor wretches who could be forced into the ranks had to support it; but the people in general, holding aloof to a great extent, said in effect, "Thou who hast consumed all the revenues without giving anything in return, thou for whom we have sacrificed so much, thou who hast used our own blood to make thyself master instead of servant — may the woe thou hast so long inflicted on us fall now on thee!"

Santa Anna, the logical hero of such a nation, was also its logical scourge — a statesman unable to guide, a general unfitted to command, a leader qualified only to win revolutions, lose battles, and alternate between dictatorship and exile. Some observers — even American officers — -impressed by the imposing front that he reared time after time, felt that he was a great man. Unquestionably he gathered troops and resources as no other Mexican of the time could have done. No doubt his lunge into the north and his defence of the capital were