THE REVOLUTION
There had been a curious impression upon the minds of some American
statesmen that General Santa Anna would return to his native country
with a purpose of making peace. It was for that reason that he was
permitted to pass unhindered through the blockading fleet in the Gulf,
but he had no such idea in his cunning and ambitious head. His real
objects in returning were to take vengeance upon his enemies, to restore
himself to the supreme power which he had lost by the revolution of
1840, and, for that purpose, to prosecute the war with the United States
with all possible vigor. His personal feeling in that matter might have
been understood by recalling the fact that his downfall had resulted
from his severe defeat in attempting to conquer the earlier American
settlers in Texas. On his arrival in Vera Cruz, on the 16th of August,
a proclamation which he at once issued, denouncing alike the
monarchical ambition of President Paredes and the wicked invasion of
Mexico by the armies of the northern republic, opened the eyes of all
concerned. When, however, with all the troops at his disposal, he slowly
approached the city of Mexico, he put on a cloak of patriotic
moderation. The existing government, consisting of Vice-President Bravo
and the Congress, had succeeded in imprisoning and then in banishing
their would-be emperor, Paredes. They now, as the returning exile drew
near the capital, offered him a temporary dictatorship of the disordered
national affairs, but he modestly replied that he did not desire so
much. He had returned, he said, as a pure and unselfish patriot, only to
serve his country. All that he would be willing to accept would be the
absolute control of the army, as if any power worth speaking of might be
supposed to remain outside of his bayonets and lances. This small
request was readily granted, and from that hour onward he was, for the
time being, more completely the dictator of Mexico than he or any other
man had ever been before. He entered the city and assumed command on the
15th of September. Only a week later, on the 22d and 23d, the fall and
surrender of Monterey strengthened his hold upon the people, for it made
them feel more keenly than ever their need of a good general. He
certainly did act with great energy, for, as early as the 8th of
October, he had advanced with his army as far north as San Luis Potosi,
and was straining every possible resource to prepare for his coming
conflict with General Taylor. It is said that he even mortgaged his
private property to obtain the money required for his military supplies.
During all these weeks and months there had been stormy times in the
Congress of the United States, and the war of the politicians was by no
means ended. General Winfield Scott, however, had been left at the head
of the army, with authority to invade Mexico in any manner he might
choose, but with about half as many troops as he declared to be
necessary for such an undertaking. It was late in December, 1846, when
General Scott in person arrived at the mouth of the Rio Grande and
assumed the direction of military operations. As he did not propose any
considerable further advance into Mexico, except by way of Vera Cruz, he
decided to take his best troops with him to that field of the coming
campaign. This meant that General Taylor was to lose nearly all his
regular army men and officers, their places being filled, as to numbers,
by new regiments of exceedingly brave but untried volunteers. He was
therefore left to face, with raw troops, any intended onslaught of Santa
Anna, who would bring with him several times as large a force, of all
sorts, most of it composed of recent levies, imperfectly organized and
disciplined. It remained to be seen which of the two kinds of men, the
Mexican Indian or the American rifleman, could be the more rapidly
changed into a trained soldier, fitted for a hard day's fight.
Throughout all the interior of Mexico there was a fair degree of peace
and order, although robber bands were reported here and there. No signs
of a coming revolution appear to have been discovered, for nearly all
the great leaders who might have set one on foot were either banished or
shot, or were serving in Santa Anna's army, half hoping for his defeat
and destruction that he might be taken out of the way of their
ambitions.
There came one cloudless day near the end of February, when a kind of
cool and beautiful summer seemed to rule over all the fair land of
Anahuac, except among the snow-clad Cordilleras. There were roses in
bloom in many gardens of the city of Mexico, and all things in and about
the national capital wore an exceedingly peaceful air. The very guards
at the citadel were pacing listlessly up and down, as if they were
lazily aware that all evil-minded gringos and other foes of their
comfort were several hundreds of miles away. At the city gates there
were no sentries of any kind, and a young fellow who rode in on a
spirited pony, at an hour or so after noon, was not questioned by
anybody as to where he came from or what he was doing there. He cast
sharp glances in all directions as he rode onward, but he seemed to have
no need for inquiring his way. He went steadily, moreover, as if he
might have business rather than pleasure on his hands, and he did not
pull in his pony until he had reached the front of the Paez mansion.
There was no one on the piazza but a short, fat old woman, in a blazing
red cotton gown, who sprang to her feet almost as if he had frightened
her, exclaiming:
"Senor Carfora!"
"Dola!" he responded, sharply. "Don't say another loud word! Are either
of the senoras at home? I must see them right away."
"Oh, yes!" she said, turning to run into the house. "I will tell them.
They are in the parlor, and the senorita."
Down sprang Ned and hitched his pony to a post, but then he hurried
through the front door as quickly as Dola herself had done. Perhaps it
was well that he should get in without being recognized by too many
eyes. He did not have to actually get into the parlor before he was
welcomed, for a light form sprang out into the hall, and Felicia herself
shouted, eagerly:
"Oh, Senor Carfora! Are you here? This is wonderful!"
"Senorita," he interrupted her, "I have letters for your mother and
Senora Paez. Where are they?"
"They are right here," she said, "but we have letters, too. All the
flags in the city are out and they are firing salutes of rejoicing."
"I saw the flags," he said, "and I heard some firing, but what on earth
are they rejoicing over? Is there any news?"
The two grown-up women were standing behind her, with faces in which
there was no joy whatever when Felicia exultingly told him:
"Why, have not you heard? General Santa Anna has beaten your gringo army
all to pieces. The United States fleet is coming to Vera Cruz with
another army, and the American soldiers will not dare to come on shore.
All they can do will be to sit there in their ships and look at the
city."
"Come in, Senor Carfora," said Senora Paez. "I cannot tell you how glad
we are to see you. Yes, we have very important letters. I may suppose
that yours are from the general. Please let me have them."
"Do, Senor Carfora!" said Senora Tassara. "I cannot wait a moment. We
will retire to read them, and, while we are gone, Felicia may tell you
all the news from the great battle at the north."
"Yes, so I will," she exclaimed. "And I want him to tell me all about
the places he has been in, and what he has been doing."
In a moment more they two were alone in the parlor, and she was
repeating to him the substance of Santa Anna's report of the manner in
which, at the hard-fought battle of Angostura, or Buena Vista, on the
22d of February, he had shattered the American army under General
Taylor. He had, he said, effectively prevented its further advance into
Mexico, and there was really a strong appearance of truth in his way of
presenting the consequences of the battle, for the American army seemed
to have retreated. Horse after horse had been ridden to death in taking
such great tidings to the city of Mexico, and, for the hour, at least,
the great Mexican commander was more firmly fixed in supreme power than
ever.
Of course, the triumphant bulletin did not make any mention of the fact
that General Taylor had had no intention of advancing any further, being
under express orders from General Scott not to do so, and that Santa
Anna's well-planned and at first nearly successful attempt to crush the
northern invaders had really proved a failure. Ned Crawford listened to
Felicia's enthusiastic account of the battle with a curious question in
his mind which he was too polite to utter.
"Why," he thought, "if Santa Anna was so completely victorious, did he
not make General Taylor surrender?"
There was no one to inform Ned that the Mexican commander had invited
General Taylor to do so before the fight was half over, and that the
stubborn old American had unkindly refused the invitation. At this
moment, however, the senorita's tongue began to busy itself with quite
another matter. The United States fleet, under Commodore Connor, had,
indeed, begun to arrive in front of Vera Cruz on the 18th of February,
with a vast convoy of transport ships under its protection, having on
board the army of General Scott. Neither Ned nor the senorita was aware,
however, how many important questions have to be answered before so many
military passengers might undertake to land, with all their baggage,
within possible reach of the artillery of an enemy. Felicia, for her
part, was positive that they all were too badly scared by the Castle of
San Juan de Ulua and by the bad news from Buena Vista to so much as try
to make a landing.
"General Santa Anna himself is now marching down to meet them," she told
him, "with his whole victorious army, and he will crush them as fast as
they can get out of their ships."
Owing to the grand reports from their army, this was precisely the idea
which was forming in the minds of all the people of Mexico.
"Oh, Senorita Felicia!" said Ned, as if he were quite willing to change
the subject. "I've had a wonderful time. I've been travelling,
travelling, travelling, everywhere with the general."
"Tell me all about it!" she commanded him. "I want to know. It seems to
me as if I had been shut up here and had not seen anybody."
"Well, I can't tell it all just now," he said, "but when we left here we
hurried all the way to Oaxaca. Then we stayed there awhile, among his
own people, and nobody gave us any trouble. No, I mustn't forget one
thing, though. A band of those mountain robbers came one night, and we
had an awful fight with them--"
"Did you kill any of them?" she asked, hastily. "They all ought to be
killed. They are ready to murder anybody else."
"Well," said Ned, "we beat them, and ten of them were shot. I was firing
away all the while, but I don't know if I hit any of them. It was too
dark to tell. The rest of them got away. But I've hunted deer, and I
killed a good many of them. I shot a lynx, too, and a lot of other game.
There's the best kind of fishing on the general's estates. I like
fishing. Then we went south, to the Yucatan line, and I saw some queer
old ruins. After that, the general's business took him away up north of
Oaxaca, and I went with him, and I saw half the States of Mexico before
we finished the trip. I've seen the silver mines and Popocatepetl and
Istaccihuatl, and I don't care to ever see any higher mountains than
they are."
"I have seen Popocatepetl," she said, "and it almost made me have the
headache. They say it is full of sulphur, to make gunpowder with."
Before she could tell anything more about the possible uses of the tall,
old volcano, her mother reentered the parlor.
"Senor Carfora," she said, "Felicia will have to give you up. Here are
some letters for you that came while you were absent. You had better
read them now, for I cannot say how long it will be best for you to
remain here. Step this way a moment, if you will."
Ned followed her, all in a sudden whirl of excitement at the unexpected
prospect of hearing from his far-away home, but she still held his
promised envelopes in her own hand, while she said to him:
"My dear young friend, you know that Colonel Tassara is with his
regiment. He was in the thickest of the fight at Angostura. He was
wounded, but he hopes to recover soon, and we have not told Felicia. He
writes me that it was really a lost battle, and that the fall of Santa
Anna is surely coming, but that nobody can foretell what course he will
take, cruel or otherwise, when he and his army return to fight with
General Scott, on the road from the sea to this city. Go and read your
letters, and then I will see you again."
Felicia had to give him up, and away he went. The best place to read
home letters seemed to him to be the library, and when he entered the
dim old room, he half imagined that the man in armor nodded at him, and
tried to say how d'ye do. After that, Ned almost forgot that he was in
Mexico, while he devoured the news from home. It was a grand thing to
learn, too, that the letters which he had feared would never get to New
York had all been carefully delivered under the kindly care of the
British consular system. He had never before felt quite so high an
admiration for the British Empire as he acquired just then.
"I'll do something good for the next Englishman I get hold of!" he
declared, with energy, and then he sat still and stared around the room.
"It was just as well," he said, "that I did not stay here and try to
read all those books. I read enough about the ancient times, too. What
father wanted me to know about is Mexico as it is now, and I've seen a
great deal of it. What I want to see next is our army, and I'm going to
find my way to Vera Cruz. Then I'll get on board an American ship,
somehow or other. I wonder if the Mexican officers will manage to arrest
me between this and the seacoast."
That was a point worth thinking of, for General Zuroaga had told him
very plainly that some ignorant or overhasty patriot might easily find
an excuse for calling him a spy, and having him shot at a moment's
notice. He did not have a long time to consider that matter, however,
for the door opened, and the two senoras walked in, with clouded faces.
"Senor Carfora," said Senora Tassara, "you will have no time to lose.
General Zuroaga is right, and his letter must go at once to his friend,
General Morales, who is now in command at Vera Cruz. So must one from my
own husband. It is important, for the best interest of Mexico, that
Morales should know the whole truth. That is, he must be informed that
he cannot expect any help from Santa Anna's beaten army. Are you too
tired to set out immediately? I can give you a fresh horse."
"I'll go!" exclaimed Ned. "My pony isn't tired. He is a first-rate
traveller. I want something to eat, though, and I wish I knew whether or
not the army patrols will stop me on the way."
"I can take care of that," said Senora Paez. "I have had to send special
messengers before this. You will be able to show a government pass."
As she spoke, she held out to him a sealed envelope. Where or how she
had obtained such a thing, she did not explain, but it was an official
envelope, and on it was a printed lettering which might have been
translated: "Government Business. From the Headquarters of the Army.
Despatches from His Excellency, General Bravo." In her own handwriting
was added, moreover: "To His Excellency, General Morales, Vera Cruz."
"There!" she said. "If it becomes necessary, show that, and any man
hindering you will be promptly punished. Do not show it if you can help
it, however, for there are many kinds of army officers nowadays."
"I have seen some of them," said Ned, but what he was really thinking
about most seriously, at that moment, was the supper he had asked for,
and he was well pleased to be led down into the dining-room.