CHAPTER XV.
1847.
It was late in the day when the battles ended. One army was wearied with fighting and victory; the other equally oppressed by labor and defeat. The conquered Mexicans fled to their eastern defences or took refuge within the gates of their city. There was, for the moment, utter disorganization among the discomfited, while the jaded band of a few thousand invaders had to be rallied and reformed in their ranks and regiments after the desperate conflicts of the day over so wide a field. It surely was not a proper moment for an unconcentrated army, almost cut off from support, three hundred miles in the interior of an enemy's country, and altogether ignorant of the localities of a great capital containing nearly two hundred thousand inhabitants, to rush madly, at night fall, into the midst of that city. Mexico, too, was not an ordinary town with wide thoroughfares and houses like those in which the invaders had been accustomed to dwell. Spanish houses are almost castles in architectural strength and plan, while from their level and embattled roofs, a mob, when aroused by the spirit of revenge or despair, may do the service of a disciplined army. Nor was it known whether the metropolis had been defended by works along its streets,—by barricades, impediments and batteries,—among which the entangled assailants might be butchered with impunity in the narrow passages during the darkness and before they could concentrate upon any central or commanding spot. Repose and daylight were required before a prudent General would venture to risk the lives of his men and the success of his whole mission upon such a die.
Accordingly the army was halted; the dispersed recalled, the wounded succored, the dead prepared for burial, and the tired troops ordered to bivouack on the ground they had wrested from the enemy.
