CHAP. II. take fire at his approach as he had promised the courts of Paris and Vienna. It was evident that the force on the ground was entirely inadequate to the work to be done; and General Lorencez came with reënforcements in the course of the spring, which so far encouraged Almonte and his faction that they assured the general that if he would march on Puebla the city would throw open its gates at his approach. Deceived by these promises Lorencez went forward and encountered a prompt and severe defeat under the walls of Puebla; he was forced to retreat to Orizaba, whence he reported his misadventure and asked for reënforcements. Several indecisive engagements took place between his force and the Mexican army. The French had generally the advantage in battle, but the vomito rapidly avenged the Mexican losses by the sword. Even if the Emperor of France had now been able to perceive the unfortunate tendency of the enterprise upon which he had entered with so little judgment and foresight, it was out of his power to withdraw from it. Not only was the honor of France seriously engaged in this contest with a people so weak and so torn by internal dissensions that defeat of the French arms by them would have been an irreparable disgrace, but he knew also that the political effect of confessing a failure in this adventure would be disastrous in the extreme. He therefore sent over in October, 1862, a reënforcement of 35,000 men under command of General Forey. This force comprised, besides the picked troops of the French army, a force of Egyptian black troops, a friendly loan to the Em peror from Said Pasha.1 Threatened by this for- CHAP. II. midable army, Juarez still did not lose heart, but exerted himself to the utmost to prepare an adequate reception for the invaders in their next march towards the capital; the city of Puebla was as strongly fortified as the slender resources of the republic would permit. The Mexicans did not wait this time to receive an assault within their fortifications; they went forward, meeting the advance of Forey, and almost destroyed a force of 4,000 men under General Berthier, and when at last Forey came with his main force before Puebla it was only to repeat the disaster of Lorencez in the spring. When winter came on, Tampico and Jalapa, which had been held for some time by the French, were evacuated to allow Forey to bring all his troops to the defense of his threatened lines, and small-pox took up the work of destruction which the vomito, at the approach of cold weather, had relinquished. With the close of the year the only result which the French commander could report to his Emperor was a sadly diminished force and a pressing necessity for reënforcements. After their refusal to join the European powers in the proposed intervention in Mexican affairs, the Government of the United States saw no necessity of further action, except to define their attitude with the utmost clearness for the benefit of all parties. A circular of the Secretary of State dated the 3d of March, 1862, contains the following statement: 1 "Mr. Seward told me the French Minister had applied to us for negroes to go as soldiers to Mexico, and being refused had ap plied to the Pasha of Egypt and СНАР. ІІ. The President has relied upon the assurance given his Government by the allies that they were in pursuit of no political object, but simply the redress of their grievances. He entertains no doubt of the sincerity of the allies, and if his confidence in their good faith had been disturbed it would be restored by the frank explanation given by them that the governments of Spain, France, and Great Britain have no intention of intervening to procure a change in the constitutional form of government now existing in Mexico, or any political change which should be in opposition to the will of the Mexican people. In short, he has cause to believe that the allies are unanimous in declaring that the revolution proposed to Mexico is solely prompted by certain Mexican citizens now in Europe. There is reason to think that the President was not quite so naïve as to receive with absolute credulity the assertions of the allied powers as to their innocent intentions towards the Mexican republic, and in reading that diplomatic circular and others like it, one cannot but recognize a certain tone of courteous sarcasm in these repeated assertions of perfect faith in the representations made by the allied monarchs. But it was not in the power of the Government of the United States to take any different action at that moment, and, though giving utterance to no expressions of indignation at the aggression upon a sister republic or of gratification at disasters which met the aggressor, the President and Mr. Seward, while continually asserting, at every proper opportunity, the adherence of the American Government to its traditional policy of discouraging European intervention in the affairs of the New World, simply bided their time. |