yet recovered from their weariness and exhaustion. An exchange of prisoners was negotiated on the 24th, and completed on the following day. On the 26th the Mexican army commenced a disastrous retreat, leaving large numbers of their wounded to be cared for by General Taylor's army. The Americans resumed their position at Agua Nueva on the 27th of February. Colonel Belknap was dispatched with a command to Encarnacion, on the 1st of March, and found the roadside strewed with the dead and dying of the discomfited host hurrying onward to San Luis Potosi, with a dark cloud of vultures hovering constantly on their track.[1]
While the American and Mexican armies were contending on the field of Buena Vista, General Urrea and his cavalry made their appearance in the valley of the San Juan. They arrived before Marin at noon on the 23rd of February, and threatened an attack upon the force at that place, which consisted of three companies of the 2nd Ohio infantry under Lieutenant Colonel Irvin. Information was immediately sent to Monterey that the post was in danger, and Colonel Ormsby, of the Louisville Legion, then in command in that
- ↑ The capture of three pieces of artillery, and a few company marking-flags, were the only trophies borne from the field by Santa Anna; but these were pointed to as affording conclusive evidence that the victory had been won by the Mexican army. General Taylor was not moved from his original position; yet the Mexican commander declared that he would have done this if his army had not been almost destitute of food and water. A few more such victories might have caused General Taylor to repeat the lamentation of Pyrrhus, but Santa Anna never could have entered Saltillo except as a prisoner of war. There was food in plenty behind the American lines, and why did he not take it? He knew he lacked the power, and hence his retreat, to which he applied the milder term of "countermarch," was ordered.
