Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/412

392 Felícitas de Saint Maxent, a native of Louisiana and of French extraction, was a lady of surpassing loveliness, charitable, gracious, and intelligent. Scarcely more than fifteen years had elapsed since the young general had been in Mexico in an humble position and with scanty means. He had served as a subaltern in Portugal in 1762. The marqués de Croix gave him a commission in the Corona regiment. He finds himself a little later a captain in the same regiment, serving as comandante de armas in Nueva Vizcaya, where he punished the Apaches in several encounters, being himself wounded several times, once quite severely. He afterward went to Habana, and in 1772 to Spain, where he continued his military service, and followed it up in America with brilliant success, obtaining rapid promotion till he reached, with other honors, the highest rank but one in the army.