Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/384

364 While the Mexican general by unskilfulness threw away all chance of victory, Taylor's action has not escaped unfavorable criticism. It is maintained that if at Palo Alto he had ordered a charge to be made when the enemy's final attack had been repulsed by Duncan's battery on the left, the whole field would have been swept and the Mexican army been dispersed. His hesitation to attack on the following morning when Arista was moving off has also been condemned as enabling the enemy to take up a position which threw out of action one half of the American artillery, Taylor's most effective arm. His victory was thus due to the bravery of subordinates and soldiers, not to any remarkable generalship.

Meantime the garrison at Fort Texas, as the American work in front of Matamoros was called, had well sustained itself during a bombardment of 168 hours. Though the casualties were trifling the fatigue was great. Finding that the enemy's cannonade did little harm, and that his own fire on the city produced no great effect, and an attempt to set fire to it with hot shot having failed, Major Brown confined his firing to periodical discharges at regular intervals, mainly as a signal to his general that the fort still held out. On the 6th he was struck on the leg by a fragment of a shell, and the command then devolved on Captain Hawkins of the 7th. The same afternoon Arista summoned the garrison to surrender. Hawkins convened a council of his officers, and the unanimous decision was to defend the fort to the death. When