Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/36

20 it was plain that they were under an illusion. The way through the pass was armed with a few cast-iron cannon and some guns of position, which were difficult to manœuvre; they enfiladed but badly the winding-road which opened up from the sea, and the pass might be easily turned by means of the neighbouring heights; so it is a matter of certainty that the resistance would not have been of long duration. But, at all events, it would have been preferable to suffer some loss, even at the risk of delaying the succour to the sick men left at Orizaba, than to allow it to be thought that we had broken our word. Good right, on this occasion too, seemed to be on the Mexican side, who did not fail to make the most of our neglect of treaties among the population generally.

We shall not attempt here to describe the military operations commenced under such unhappy auspices, which resulted in such a painful issue, on May 5, 1862, under the walls of Puebla; but we must say that our government committed a series of errors which attest a complete ignorance on their part of the country in which they were waging war, as well as a strange forgetfulness of the feeling in our own country which had given rise to the allied invasion.

General de Lorencez was commissioned to open a campaign of this sort at the head of a force which was ridiculous for its insufficiency. The responsibility of his non-success is to be justly traced back to the government, who had neglected to follow out the rules of the simplest foresight. The laurels so rapidly gathered in China by a few fortunate battalions had no doubt caused them to hope for a fresh harvest of glory in Mexico. It needed all the heroism that a handful of men could show, that the check experienced under the forts of Guadelupe and Loreto did not result in a