Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/295

Rh so often availed ourselves of in the numerous encounters in which we had gained the day by our greater speed. It was well known at Paris that the treasury of the monarchy was wretchedly poor, and the offer which was made to buy them for ready money was necessarily rejected as illusive.

What was to become of them? Our regiments being forced to go down to Vera Cruz with their horses, and our batteries being drawn by their draught-horses and mules as far as the railway at La Soledad, they were there compelled to get rid of a considerable quantity of animals, which could not be sold except at a miserable price. The Remounting Board published and printed notices, announcing that as the various columns reached Paso-del-Macho, the terminus of the railway, a miserable village situated between La Soledad and the Chiquihuite, successive public sales would take place. But the Mexicans, who knew beforehand that these horses were condemned to remain in the country, rightly enough cared but little to give four or five hundred piastres each (a price which they would readily have produced on the high plateaus) for Arabian horses that they knew they would be able to obtain ultimately at a miserable price.

The embarkation had commenced. Each of our regiments, entering the Terres Chaudes in the morning, reached the port the very same evening. The delicate operation of shipping a corps d'armée and a vast amount of stores in the roadstead of Vera Cruz, at a time when the blast of the norte and the attacks of the vomito are always to be dreaded, stringently required that the concentration of ships in the port should last as short a time as possible. Some of the troops, therefore, passed direct from Cordova to the sea. The hacendados, as well as the guerillas, whose costume in no way