Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

---

[52] four months respite had enabled him to reorganize, offered them another chance in the game he had once lost at Cerro Gordo—double or quits. This time, profiting by experience, he fully intended to take advantage of those solid buildings which the Spaniards had scattered around Mexico. The position of Scott's army was a difficult one. In sacrificing his communications, he had deprived the enemy of one of his principal resources—the attack of isolated detachments—but at the sight of the preparations for defence made by the latter, he must have acknowledged that he had not brought one man too many with him, in order to avoid a disaster the gravity of which no line of posts established en echelon on the route could have lessened. His troops, full of confidence in him, had not been in the least alarmed at a step which would have disconcerted less experienced soldiers.

It was necessary at all hazards for them to conquer this formidable adversary in the positions he had chosen. They fortunately passed through this ordeal so trying to the morale of the soldier, and success justified the daring of their chief. They may probably have been sustained by the example of that adventurous genius who was the first to subjugate Mexico; for the Americans, who are far from wanting in imagination when the greatness of the nation is in question, were no doubt incited by the remembrance of Cortes and the hope of equalling his exploits.

Nature has done everything to render the approaches to Mexico difficult:—On one part, lakes and marshes intersected by narrow causeways, which the redoubts erected by Santa Anna fully commanded. On the other, along the mountain sides which surround this interior basin, a ground singularly uneven, traversed by immense petrified streams of ancient lava, in which enormous blocks with sharp angles are piled up in heaps. These streams of lava, called pedregales, were impracticable for cavalry and artillery; the infantry even could not keep their ranks; and the small but compact villages of Contreras, San Antonio, and Churubusco formed a line on that same ground difficult to carry. Nearer the capital rose the rock of Chapultepec (the ‘hill of locusts’), crowned with strong Spanish fortifications of the seventeenth century which command all its approaches. Finally, the city itself,