Reminiscences of a campaign in Mexico

Front matter

Class.

Book.

REMINISCENCES k

Preface

When the author of the followin^g pages commenced the publication of his "Reminiscences" in the Nashville Union, he expected to complete his undertaking in a very few numbers, which would never go beyond the columns of the newspapers. The only objects which he had in view in writing, were to improve himself, and at the same time, to place before the country the real merits of the Regiment of Volunteers of which he had been a member. He was induced, however, by the flattering commendations bestowed on his first numbers, accompanied by the urgent solicitations of many of his companions in arms, to extend his original design, and enter into a full history of the operations of "the Bloody First" in Mexico. Before these numbers were concluded, he received numerous applications from esteemed friends, to collect and republish, in a form more convenient for preservation, the Avhole series. In compliance with these applications the following pages are submitted to the public.

In detailing the histor\ of the campaign in which-kis Regiment was engaged, he has endeavored to be strictly impartial, and he indulges the hope that in his narrations he has done injustice to none. If he has failed in this, it has resulted from his inability to procure all the facts in each transaction which he haa detailed. He has, as yet, heard of no complaint on this score, and, therefore, he trusts that his sketches will be entitled to the merit of impartiality.

Since the appearance of the original sketches in the Nashville Union, the author has carefully revised th^m ; and, by way of adding to their interest, has prefixed to them a few introductory chapters upon the history and condition of Mexico, from the Revolution to the War with the United States. In the preparation of the introductory chapters, he has availed himself of the excellent works of Mr. Ward, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Fayette Robin- Bon,to whom he acknowledges his indebtedness for much rclinblo

information.

J. B. ROBERTSON,

CHAPTER I. Primary causes of the Revolution in Mexico

The overthrow of the Spanish Bourbons in 1808, with the subsequent imprisonment of Ferdinand VII, and the attempt of Napoleon to establish his brother Joseph Bonaparte upon the Spanish throne, produced throughout all the Spanish dependencies in America a feeling of consternation and alarm. The Captain General of Cuba immediately declared his determination to oppose the estabhshment of the Bonaparte dynasty; and in rapid succession the other Vicegerents and Audicncias throughout Spanish America determined to pursue the same pohcy , and to sustain the fortunets of Ferdinand. The people of Spain, though unsustained by the nobles, who had passively submitted to their new masters, arose, with that unanimity which always insures popular success, and avowed their determination to oppose to the last the usurpation of King Joseph. In vain Napoleon hurled his armies into the peninsula, to reduce them to submission. What could the tactics of a Marmont, or the valor of a Victor, avail in opposition to the moral resolution of a whole people determined not to be conquered ? With that spirit of obstinacy, which is the predominant trait in the Spanish character, they rejected every decree of King Joseph; and cabals were formed, in every portion of the king-

8 rvTRODUCTIOX.

dom, in order to gixe more efficient direction to their inflexible spirit of opposition.

When the effects of the guerrilla system had begun gradually to fritter away* the legions of Bonaparte, a grand central Junta was established at Seville for the ministration of affairs, and to protect the interests of Ferdinand. This Junta assumed all the de facto powers of a sovereign, and dictated its orders to the Viceroys and Ayuntamientos in America. This assumption of regal powers, on the part of the Junta, produced a powerful revulsion in some of the American dependencies. Iturrigaray, the Viceroy of Mexico, having called together the Ayuntamiento or National Assembly, demanded its acquiescence in the authority of the Central Junta of Spain. The Ayuntamiento at this time, fortunately, consisted of a majority of Creoles or American born Spaniards, and it rejected with indignation the domination of the Junta. The seeds of thought and reflection had already been sown, and were rapidly ripening into a rich harvest of disaffection. The rule which had long been proclaimed and acted out, that " while one man lived in Spain, he had a right to the obedience of every American," began now to loose its force; and the Creoles of the Ayuntamiento, though long accustomed to yield implicit and unmurmuring submission to the will of the Spanish sovereign, as a duty which they imagined themselves morally bound to perform, yet, when the power and authority of that sovereign had ceased, they began rightly to judge that this obviated their obligation of obedience. The iVyuntamiento began, at length, to discriminate between the Spanish crown and the Spanish people ; their duty to the one was based upon the relation of subject to sovereign ; their submis-

LNTRODUCTIOK . 9

sion to the other had hitherto rested upon asserted superiority, and a supposed inherent right to rule. Mexico had always been considered as a distinct, though adjunct kingdom of the Spanish empire ; and though her people were willing to lend obsequious submission to the ayIII of the Spanish crown, yet they could not discover what moral obligation bound them to obey the decrees of any body of Spanish people, v^ho choose to usurp the the powers of royalty. They conceived that, as their obedience was only due to King Ferdinand, his overthrow/ and imprisonment had sundered, for the time, all their ties to the Spanish people. Consequentl}^ the council spurned the dictation of the Spanish Junta, and proposed to Iturrigaray to establish a Federal Junta in Mexico, in order to sustain the interests of the royal family, as well as those of Mexico. The A^iceroy, finding them resolute in their determination, at length agreed to the proposition of the Ayuntamiento ; but the Audiencia, or council of chief justices — composed entirely of Spaniards, and established by the Spanish sovereign in all his viceroy al ties, as a check upon the power of Viceroy — finding that Iturrigaray was yielding to the terms of the national council, they immediately interposed their power; and having deposed and arrested Iturrigaray, confided his authority, for the time, to the Archbishop of Lizana.

After this act, the Audiencia succeeded, by some unaccountable means, in overawing the the Ayuntamiento, and compelling it to submit to the decrees of the Central Junta. Things continued in this posture, until the French, having forced the Junta to fly from Seville to Cadiz, pressed it so hard, that, having appointed a regency of five to administer the affairs, it resigned its powers, and 1* resumed them no more. The regency immediately proclaimed a decree, calling upon all the Spanish provinces to elect and send representatives to the great Cortes which was to assemble in February, 1810. In this decree they announced to the people of the provinces, that " they were raised to the dignity of freemen, and that their lot no longer depended on the will of kings, viceroys or governors, but would be determined by themselves." This was the first recognition of their freedom that had ever come from their haught}^ masters, and it seemed to unfetter the minds of the Mexican people ; it aroused them from that mental lethargy, in which they had so long been slumbering ; it awakened a spirit of investigation, and they began to examine into their real situation ; and this spirit, when persevered in, is the first step to elevation in an enslaved nation; for a nation needs only to be made fully acquainted with its rights and its wrongs, and the innate principles of humanity drive them to claim the one, and devise means to remedy the other.

For nearly three centuries the Mexicans had been bowed by a m_ost grinding system of servitude ; for with their political independence they seemed to loose their independence of thought ; and mind, soul and body became enslaved. — Moral turpitude must necessarily ensue mental degradation ; hence the Mexicans became mere animals, whose minds were ojily occupied with devising means to gratify the appetites of the body; and absorbed in this, they never ventured or aspired to the contemplation of their social or political condition. The Spaniards and the Spanish kings seem to have thought that the Mexicans were only made for their use, and in tNTROt»UCtlO^. il

order to make them more fit for their purposes, they consigned them to the profoundest ignorance of every thing beyond the animal gratifications. The ministers of this task were the priests. — > Cathohcism, in its best form, has never been favorable to the advancement of human knowledge ; its policy is to keep the minds of its votaries shrouded in the deepest ignorance ; and no where has this policy been more effectual than in Mexico ; it here aimed at almost a total eradication of thought, and it had well nigh succeeded. The priests have thus been the most effectual auxiliaries in bringing about that loathsome servitude, which has so long oppressed this unhappy country. Ignorance is the parent of slavery, and the Spanish rulers were well aware of this fact ; hence their sedulous endeavors to obstruct every attempt at enlightenment in Mexico ; and for centuries they pursued, with the most unabating rigor, their iron annihilative policy ; an annihilation that embraced not only the mind, but the body ; for, notwithstanding the astonishing ferocity of the Mexicans, the Abbe Clavigeso, himself a Mexican, states that at the beginning of the present century, Mexico contained not one tenth part of the population that it did at the time of the conquest of Cortes. There were more than nine millions of people assembled in the city of Mexico alone, a short time before the conquest, to witness the dedication of the great temple, a number equal to the whole of tht; present popul-ation. Thus, from oppression alone, the Mexicans present the single instance in the history of the world of a prolific nation, existing as a nation, upon its own soil, for three hundred years, and Avithout migration, destructive wars, pestilences or famines graduaHy

12 ES'TRODUCTION.

decreasing to a tittle of their former populatiori . But, as aprofoiind historian remarks, "there is an ultimate point of depression, as well as of exultation, from which human affairs natui'ally return in a contrary progress, and beyond which they never pass, either in their advancement or decline." This Ultimate point, IMexico seems to have reached at the time of the revolution ; they had sunk so low in the scale of depravity and degradation, that further depression was impossible; and an attempt at elevation became the only means of securing a farther existence. They had been steeped so long in the dye of darkness and ignorance, that the gloom itself had become Intolerable, and was about to produce a reaction. At this ju.nctm*e, Don Francisco Xavier Yanegas was appointed Viceroy of Mexico, a man of excitable and vindictive temperament, who was utterly opposed to a pacific or temporizing policy, but was ready to carry to the most rigorous extent the wishes of the Audiencia. It was unfortunate that such a man should have assumed the direction of affairs, at this juncture, as he hastened events to an issue before the legitimate period had arrived. And it is not unfrequently the case, that premature haste is more fatal to a cause than delay. The flame of discontent had begun slowly to kindle in Mexico, and the odious and tyrannical exercise of power by Yanegas caused it to make itf§ appearance, here and there, in slight eruptions ; but the stern Yiceroy was ever on the watch, and succeeded in suppressing every attempt at revolution ; and in Slay, 1810, when a formidable outbreak was brewing at Yalladolid, the leaders were arrested and executed without mercy. — These were but the premonitory drops of the storm that was about to burst upon the country.

iJJTROiJUCtlO!^, 15

CHAPTER ii

Hidalgo, and the cause of his Insurrection— Commencement of the Revolution — Operations of Hidalgo — His capture and execution— "Don Ignacio Lopez Rayon — The Junta of Ziticuaro — Mina's expedition — Guadalupe Victoria.

As a mouse may sometimes put in motion the avalanche, which buries whole cities in its course, BO it frequently occurs that the mightiest political convulsions date their beginning from the most trivial events. The revolution that severed Mexico from the Spanish crown owes its immediate origin to the simple burning of a small vineyard.

It was a settled rule in the selfish policy of Spain, to foster only those arts and employments among the Mexicans which would redound to her own interest, emd sedulously to prohibit every employment or manufacture that, in the slightest measure, came in competition with the arts and products of the parent country. With this view, therefore, it had long been an established law that the cultivation of vineyards and the manufacture of wine vv^ere prohibited in Mexico, except in a very small section of country, which was too remote, from market ever to affect the interests of Spain. In the small and sequestered town of Dolores, in the department of Guanajuato, there lived an humble padre or parish priest named Miguel Hidalgo, he had spent much of his life in study, and being a true friend to the interests of his country, he had endeavored to introduce several useful and profitable arts among his parishoners. He had persuaded them

14 tNtHODUCTION.

to the culture of the silk-worm; and, as a recreation in his own hours of leisure, h^e had planted and nursed a small vineyard near his humble house. Thus endeavoring, by his influence and example, to encourage two branches of industry which the peculiar soil and climate of Mexico must one day make important items in her domestic economy. In an evil hour, the Audiencia issued orders to the quiet curate to cut down his humble vineyard ; he hesitated, and at length disobeyed the order of the justiciary. — A party of soldiere were sent to enforce the order, and the powerless padre was compelled to witness the demolition of his vines, and to see them burned before his eyes ; and that which had cost him months of care, labor -and watching, was consumed in an hour. Hidalgo was a man of keen sensibilities, and this act of injustice and tyranny, awakened him to a full s^nse of the wrongs and oppression of hims^elf and his countrymen, and it excited in him a deep thirst for revenge. Being long accustomed to laborious thought, he set himself to work to discover the most effectual means of gratifying his revenge ton^ards the government. He vras not ignorant of the fact that an extensive revolution was taking place in the minds of the nation, and he was conscious that the despotic oppressions of the Audienciahad made a large portion of the people of Mexico sharers with him in wrongs ; and these, he well knew, still rankling with the spirit of vengeance, would lend him their sympathy and support. Maturing his plans he determined upon a bold scheme, which would at once gratify his own revenge, and secure his country from further oppression. On the 13th of September, 1810, being supported by his parishioners he iNTROlDUCtlOls*- 15

commenced the revolution, b}^ seizing on seven Guachupines, as the native-born Spaniards were called, and confiscating their property, which he divided among his followers. The news of his success spread, with astonishing rapidity, over the country, and thousands rose in arms and flocked eagerly to his standard.

On the 17th, thcCura of Dolores found himself at the head of a sufficient force to march against the town of San Felipe, which fell into his hands, and on the next day San Miguel el Grande was similarly occupied. He invariably seized upon the Spaniards, and divided their property among his supporters ; this course rapidly filled up his ranks, until finding himself at the head of twenty thousand men, he marched against the city of Guanajuato, containing seventy-five thousand population. His troops, though mostly armed with bows, machetes or swords of volcanic glass, and lances of the same material, assaulted the town, and after driving the garrison into the Alhondiga or granary, succeeded in carrying that building, after a fierce conflict, and put ever}' European to the sword.

In the Alhondiga he captured five millions of money, with which he armed and equipped his forces, and moved against Valladolid. This city fell without a struggle, and here Hidalgo received reinforcements sufficient to swell the insurgent army to sixty thousand men. Among these reinforcements was Don Jose Maria Morelos, padre of the town of Nucapetaro, a man of deep thought and powerful intellect, and withal possessed of a bold spirit of indomitable perseverance. His remarkable firmness, combined with great gentleness of manner, pointed him

16 istJioDuc'riois^

out as a man well suited for a leader : and as he had been an old friend of Hidalgo's, the patriot padre, who was now considered, by universal consent, as the supremedirector of the revolution, bestowed upon Morelos the command of all the south-western coast, where he rendered most efficient service to the insurgent cause.

Hidalgo now determined to move against the the city of Mexico. Vanegas, the Viceroyj speedily assembled an army of seven thousand Spanish troops, and placed them under the com* mand of Col. Truxillo, and Col. Augustino Iturbide, a Mexican officer, vvho was now fighting in the Spanish service. Truxillo and Iturbide advanced with their forces to meet the insurgents before they could reach the capital. On the 30th of October, the army of Hidalgo attacked the royal troops where they were fortified, in the mountain pass of Las Cruces, between Mexico and the city of Toluca. After a severe conflict, in which the insurgents lost a considerable number of troops, Hidalgo was victorious, and the ro^^al army fell back upon the capital. Hidalgo advanced rapidly towards the city, which was now^ in the utmost consternation. When within a few miles of the capital, and in sight of its domes and spires, Hidalgo was seized with one of those unaccountable dreads that sometimes paralyze the greatest malitary geniuses. He halted, and notwithstanding the advice and protestations of some of his best officers, he commenced a retreat upon Valladolid with all his forces. But, on the 7th of- November, he encountered a portion of the Viceroy's forces, under the command of Calleja, at Aculco. A fierce battle ensued, the line of the insurgents

INTRODUCTION. . IT

was broken, and a route and indiscriminate slaughter ensued, and ten thousand insurgents were slain upon the field.

Collecting a considerable army from the fugitives, Hidalgo reached Valladolid, and proceeded directly on to Guadalajara, where he made his headquarters, until he could again equip an army. Calleja was again sent in pursuit of him. Hidalgo had received such a plentiful supply of artillery from Morelos, at San Bias, on the Pacific, that he determined to risk another engagement. He advanced to the bridge of Calderon, sixteen leagues from Guadalajara, and fortified, to await the approach of the Viceroy's army.

On the 16th of January, Calleja advanced on Calderon, and commenced the conflict. The insurgents were at first successful, but were finally compelled to commence a retreat. Leaving Guadalajara to fall into the hands of Calleja, Hidalgo, with his army, retreated to Saltillo, where it was determined to leave the forces under the command of the licentiate Rayon, while Hidalgo, with Allende and several of the other principal generals, were to proceed to the United States, to purchase e^rms and procure assistance. These patriot chieftains set out on their mission, and had reached Chihuahua, where on the 21st of March, 1811, they were betrayed by a former partisan, and delivered up to the viceroy al authorities. After a tedious and disgraceful trial, Hidalgo and his associates were condemned and shot. Thus lived and died the father and originator of the Mexican revolution. He lived long enough to fulfil his destiny, and to sever the first link of the galling chain that fettered his enslaved country; he had kindled and inflamed the spirit of liberty that was

IS INTRODUCTION.

eventually to shake off the despotism of the Spanish crown. If his hands were sometimes stained with innocent blood, his conduct has some palliation from the circumstances by which he was surrounded. The Viceroy and Audiencia had declared that the ordinary usages of war were not to be regarded in the contest with the insurgents ; wherever their leaders were arrested they were forthwith shot. This provoked that terrible system of retaliaticn which Hidalgo adopted ; and it is said that, under his direction, more than seven hundred Europeans were taken out, by tens and twenties, to secret places, and shot, for no other offence than that they were Guachupines or Spaniards.

During the life of Hidalgo no regular system of union had been adopted; the insurgents seemed to fight from impulse, not from principle ; they had as yet no aim to their endeavors. The masses, who had been so long oppressed, seized upon the insurrection as a fa\T>rable opportunity to obtain temporary reUef from their sufferings, and to wreak their vengeance upon the Guachupines. This system of conducting a revolution was manifestly wrong ; the fitful ebullitions of impulse were of too ephemeral a character to lead to any great results ; it required some basis resting upon principle, where all could unite in combined action, to ensure any permanent benefit to the country. Hidalgo, Morelos and Allende were capable of leading, controlling and disciplining the turbulent and multifarious masses that composed the army of the insurgents, but they v/ere incapable of devising any plan of union, which would unite the whole people in a common interest, and direct their efforts to a common end. The spirit that had first actuated the insui-gents was beginning to sink under repeated misfortunes; the fires were waning, and it required some new stroke of policy, some master mind, to devise means to rekindle them. Fortunately there was one man found equal to this emergency ; this was the licentiate Rayon, w^ho had joined Hidalgo at Guadalajara previous to the defeat of Puente Calderon. Immediately on joining the insurrectionary movement he perceived the want of unity of action, and his active mind began to search out some means to supply so material a want. He at length proposed the plan of a national council, the members of which were to be elected by the people, and the council to be recognised as the civil government by the officers of the army. Having proposed the plan, he set about its execution ; and upon the 10th of September, 1811, he, as the head of the army, formally instituted the Junta of Ziticuaro. This council gave tone to the subsequent events of the revolution, and formed the basis of the Congress of Chilpanzingo, which gave birth to the Constitution of 1814.

After the death of Hidalgo, Morelos became the head of the revolutionary party, and after various successes and reverses, he was captured, while conducting the Congress from the forest of Aputzingan, w^hereit had been driven for shelter, to Tehuacan. It is needless to say that he was immediately executed, which event took place in December, 1815. With the death of Morelos the hopes of the insurgents seemed to sink. There w^as no great leader w^ho could unite all the forces, and when Don Manuel de Mier y Teran, to whom had been entrusted the care of the Congress, found himself unable to support that body, he was forced, in self defence, to dissolve It; this destro^'Cd the last hope of union, and the insurgent chiefs were scattered throughout the country, with separate commands. Rayon, Teran, Nicholas Bravo — the last of that patriot family, and the gallant officer who so lately commanded the fortress of Chapultepec, and was there captured by the Americans — were successively crushed in detail by the forces of the Viceroy. Apodaca, who had now succeeded to the viceroyalty, by his mild and temporising policy towards such of the insurgents as would lay down their arms, and the inflexible rigor with which he pursued those who retained them, at length succeeded in disarming the greater part of the revolutionary troops.

At this time Don Xavier Mina, (who had been compelled to fly from Spain, when Ferdinand, being restored, disregarded and overturned the constitution in 1814,) sought an asylum in the United States, where he conceived the idea of raising and equipping a force for the aid of the insurgent party in Mexico. Having matured his plans, he succeeded in raising a force of upwards of three hundi^ed men, with which he embarked in the Chesapeake, on the 1st of September, 1816. After numerous delays he finally succeeded in landing his forces, on the 15th of April, 1817, at Soto La Marina, between Tampico and the Rio Grande. Notwitstanding the activity of the Viceroy, who had ordered out a fleet to intercept him, Mina succeeded in landing his troops, without molestation, and throwing up speedily a fort in which he left one hundred and thirty men, he commenced his march to the provincias interna^, where he effected a junction with Father Torres, the prototype of the late Padre Jarauta, who was commanding in the Baxio of Guanaxuato. After a series of bold and brilliant efforts, this chieftain was at length betrayed and captured and immediately executed, while his associates, most of whom were Americans, were, after severe losses in battle, captured and imprisoned in the dungeons of San Juan de Ulloa and other fortresses; and I have seen it asserted that the only sm'viving member of this ill-fated expedition is the senior editor of the St. Louis Reveille. Father Torres and Guadalupe Victoria were now the only chiefs in arms ; the latter had been deputed, in 1814, by Morelos, as the commander of the Eastern coast.

He had established his position in the vicinity of Vera Cruz, where, by a series of bold and energetic strokes, in the neighborhood of Puente de San Juan and Puente Nacional, he succeeded in keeping the Viceroy in continual alarm. His system of tactics was a peculiar one ; he kept an army of about two thousand men, who, in case of a reverse, were dispersed in a moment, to reassemble at some distant point, whence he would again renew his attack, while the enemy were utterly unconscious of his proximity. Apodaca determined to put down so dangerous and vexatious an enemy, and accordingly sent his best troops in large numbers. Victoria was well acquainted with the barrancas and mountain fastnesses, and managed long to elude pursuit, but at length his followers onQ_ by one were cut off, until he was left entirely alone ; but even then the Viceroy set a price upon his head, and for six months kept a large body of soldiers pursuing him, like blood hounds, through the dense forests and thorny chaparral with which the State of Vera Cruz abounds. No nation ever famished a prouder instance of patriotism than this of Victoria. After he was defeated, deserted and hunted with unrelenting fury by his pursuers, the Viceroy offered him not only pardon, but the highest offices within his gift, if he would only desert the patriot cause. Victoria indignantly spurned every offer. The Viceroy redoubled his exertions to capture him ; he was forbidden to be received into any house, and wherever he was known to pass, the houses in the vicinity were consumed with fire.

The Indians and Zambos, therefore, shunned him, or joined, through self defence, in his pursuit. He was, at length, forced beyond the pale of habitation, and, seeking the most inaccessible mountains within his reach, he remained for thirty months without tasting bread, and without clothes. His body became covered with hair, and he subsisted upon fruits and berries, and during the winter he was frequently compelled to go four or five days without food, until he was so far famished that he would gladly have devoured a meal from the carcasses of such dead animals as he could find. During all this time he saw no human being, and the Viceroy was convinced, at length, that his bones had been found. When his pursuers were pressing him hard, and two faithful Indians alone remained with him, he directed these to leave him for their own safety; as he separated from them and' dived into the almost impenetrable forest, they enquired of him where he might be found, if his country should again have need of him ; he pointed to a steep and inaccessible mountain, and told them that there they might probably find his bones. When the events had taken a turn, in 1821, the Indians sought the spot, and searched six whole weeks in vain for Victoria ; at length they discovered his footprints in a small stream, where it appeared he occasionally crossed. Their food had now nearly given out, and they determined to return home, to procure more and renew their search. One of the Indians, however, suspended four cakes of maize or tortillas in a tree, directly over the footprint, in the hope that Victoria might again pass and perceive that some friend was in search of him.

The plan succeeded ; Victoria passed again, in a few days, and discovered the tortillas, and as he had been four days without food, he devoured them before he reflected on the singularity of finding food in such a desert place. Revolving the matter, at length, in his own mind, he concluded that whoever had placed the food there would anon return, and he determined to await near the spot, to ascertain, if possible, their object in visiting so wild a spot. The Indian soon returned, and Victoria recognising him as he approached, was so overcome with joy that he leaped from his hiding place, and rushed forward to embrace him. The Indian, seeing the apparition of a man springing from the bushes, with a naked sword in his hand and his body covered with hair and partly wrapped in a tattered cotton cloth, fled in affright, and it was not until he heard himself repeatedly called byname andbeseeched to retm'n that he ventured to stop. As Victoria approached him, the Indian recognized his old master, and was so affected at his pitiable condition that he wept like a child. Such a remarkable life of trials and adventures it would scarcely be believed could occur in the present century; and were the facts not so well and abundantly authenticated, they would hardly be worthy of narration. So soon as it was known that Guadalupe Victoria still lived, and had again appeared, his name acted like magic, and the hardy Jarochas, or men of the tien^a caliente flocked by