Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/66

 self-confidence the inhabitants of the towns and haciendas. I shall furnish them with arms, and shall help them in organising their means of defence; but it will be impossible for me to leave them garrisons.

The duty of the movable columns is to take the place of these garrisons. Their effect is even more powerful, and military spirit and discipline will thus suffer no injury. 2em

The emperor approved of this plan, which was the result of experience; and the light columns were despatched across the turbulent districts extending from Tulancingo to La Huasteca, up to the banks of the Panuco, a mountainous and woody range of country, with ravines, abrupt declivities and steep bluffs, and known as sierras.

The reorganisation of the Mexican army was now actively taken in hand. It was, at this time, massed in two great divisions—that of General Marquez, operating in the Michoacan, at the south of Mexico; and General Mejia's division, which had taken up its position in the north, in the city of San Luis, which it had boldly captured from the liberal army after a sanguinary conflict. For some months, a permanent board had been revising the commissions of officers of all ranks. Looking at the redundance in the list of the staff and officers generally, this measure was highly necessary; it raised, however, a tempest of opposition, and was the cause of inevitable defections, because a large number of generals and colonels had illegitimately conferred on themselves these titles, merely with a view of heading bands recruited for the purposes of rapine on the main roads. At this time, half of the Franco-Mexican army was also moving towards the north. The French head-quarters, impatient to assert Maximilian's authority, had given orders to undertake a