again to his studies only for a time. In the so called war of the reform he distinguished himself, and during the intervention was conspicuous as a military leader. In the disaster of Puebla, when, after the brilliant repulse of the Cinco de Mayo, the Mexicans had to give up the city to the French, Diaz escaped being taken prisoner, and hastened to Oaxaca, the city of his birth, which, with forces raised by his own efforts, he succeeded in putting in a state of defence. Bazaine himself marched against the resisting city, and it was obliged to capitulate. Porfirio was carried a prisoner to Puebla, and there held; but he managed to escape after some months by letting himself down from his window with a rope in the middle of the night. This was in September. The next month, returning with a new army, Diaz besieged his own town, now in the hands of those who were lately its besiegers. While his brother Felix held the siege, Porfirio routed a column of French coming to the aid of the troops within the city, and after two weeks he compelled a surrender and entered it in triumph. Porfirio, always successful in his contests with the French, continued so after their support was withdrawn from the imperialists. His military fame reached its height after the taking of Puebla, which was the last act in the French intervention, and the peaceful occupation of the city of Mexico. All these feats of arms gave to the general who accomplished them a military prestige of great importance in a country where military prowess means so much as with the Mexicans. The revolution of
