ICO. 



497 



. Mihstantially under tin- control 



nixl t> the south were tho 



: .ruling th-' iMhmus of Tehnaiitepee, 



.nder tin- control of tin; Republicans, mid 

 those loriniiii: I Yucatan, which 



:,<.!iiiii:illv in the han<U of the Imperial- 



i reality the descendants of the 



SpaiiianK \\hetherlmpcriali-ts or Republicans, 



'\n against the aboriginal 



- I o\\er li:id ne\er been broken. 



;hat tlie military situation, 



:t of JSi'.ti, did not differ 



materially frointhnt of January, 1865 ; thelmpe- 



'iali central portion of the country, 



while en their thinks, both north and south, bung 



unscrupulous, and vindictive foe, 



\ity kept them in continual alarm, 



and whose otieii.Mve power was still formidable 



!; to -excite serious apprehension. The 



'a may be said to have been omnipresent, 

 and was especially active in those parts of the 

 rountry held, by tho Imperialists, where moun- 

 tain ranges afforded a place of concealment or 

 relugc. whence he could" sally unexpectedly upon 

 Upon this class of belligerents the 

 Imperial leaders inflicted the most summary 

 punishment, insomuch that it has been com- 

 puted that upward of fifteen thousand of them 



hot or hanged previous to 1866. But the 

 de-iiv ot vengeance or the hope of plunder seems 

 to have rendered the Mexican guerilla insensi- 

 ble to danger and indifferent to death, and he 

 carried his depredations to the very gates of the 

 capital. In parts of the country, where the Im- 

 perialists were in force, these operations were, 

 i. f course, conducted with caution, and guerillas 

 rarely showed themselves by day unless in over- 

 powering numbers. At night they roamed at 

 will, and from their superior knowledge of the 

 country, their mobility, and tho ready assistance 

 all'onled them by the native population, they 

 prov. d in reality more formidable opponents 

 than if they had met their enemies in the open 

 Held. To fight these, men with their own 

 weapons the Imperial government organixed 

 a force known as " Contra-Guerrillas," which, 

 under the lead of Colonel Dupin, a man of im- 

 mense energy, coolness, and audacity, succeeded 

 in exterminating the guerillas in certain quar- 

 t-Ts mi..-t ini'f-ted by them. " The exploits of 

 this man," writes a correspondent from Mexico, 

 ;ii known in every Mexican household, and 

 his name is a terror everywhere, lie conceived 



lea of organizing a command to operate 



: the bandits that infest every road in tho 

 empire. He < ommenced by* hanging or shoot- 

 ing every robber that ho caught, and, strange 

 y, he calculated that ninety-nine in every 

 hundred .Mexicans wererobberfi. When he ap- 

 pears in a neighborhood a Liberal or robber 

 cannot bo found. I hey avoid him as they 

 would a sweeping pestilence, llis acts are 

 often cruel, and his power abused ; but in some 

 localities in the mountains robbers have under- 

 gone complete annihilation. The merciless ban- 

 dits were swung up to trees without ceremony, 

 VOL. vi. 32 A 



and often without trial. So brigandage to not 

 so popular a profession as formerly in ] 



\ico." 



ly in January, th- Imperialists being then 

 in possession of the chief towns in Nort! 

 ern Mexico, some excitement was caused by an 

 expedition, undertaken by American sympa- 

 thizers with the Liberal cause, from the Texas 

 .-bore of the Rio Grande to Bagdad on the Mexi- 

 can side of the river, near its mouth. The Im- 

 perial garrison, numbering about 200 men, was 

 captured, together with the commander of the 

 post, and tho town was given o\er to indis- 

 criminate plunder. To preserve order and pro- 

 tect the interests of resident Americans, a body 

 of American troops was ordered to occupy the 

 place, but, upon the remonstrance of the com- 

 mander of the French fleet off Bagdad, they 

 were subsequently withdrawn. The capture 

 and pillage of Bagdad was after wards disavowed 

 by General Weitzel, commanding the United 

 States forces in Texas, who also issued an order 

 directing the arrest of all armed persons found 

 lurking in the district of the Rio Grande. This 

 action of the authorities served to quiet the ap- 

 prehensions entertained in some quarters, that 

 the occupation of Bagdad might complicate our 

 relations with the French government. 



A minute account of military operations in 

 Northern Mexico, which was, at the comraence- 

 ment'of 1866, the chief theatre of resistance to 

 the Imperial rule, would be incompatible with 

 the limits or the scope of this article, and would 

 besides possess little interest to the general 

 reader. The Republican leaders were, for the 

 most part, unknown or obscure men, and the 

 battles, sieges, and* marches of the opposing 

 forces, although magnified into great propor- 

 tions in the newspaper accounts, were in reality 

 conducted on too small a scale to render them 

 of value as military precedents. President Jua- 

 rez still remained at El Paso, in the extreme 

 northern part of Chihuahua, on tho Rio Grande, 

 and Escobedo, the chief Republican general in 

 the north, after suffering defeat before Mata- 

 moras, had retreated to Camargo, in tho north- 

 ern part of the State of Tamaulipas. llis lieu- 

 tenants, Cortina^ and Trevenio, were somewhere 

 in Tamaulipas or New Leon, and in Southern 

 Tamaulipas the partisan chiefs, Mendez and 

 Gomez, were operating. Farther to the west 

 Corona in Sinaloa, and Pesquiera and Morales 

 in Sinora, harassed the Imperialists by constant 

 demonstrations of greater or less importance. 

 In Southern Mexico the veteran Alvarez, with 

 his Pinto Indians, held the mountain fastnesses 

 of Guerrero ; Regules was in Michoacan, and in 

 Oajaca Porfirio l)iaz, one of the ablest leaders 

 tho Republicans had, in spite of all kinds of rc- 

 verses,.undauntedly kept tho field against the 

 Imperialists. Every day demonstrated the diffi- 

 culty, not to say the impossibility, of holding 

 the northern States with the forces at the dis- 

 posal of the Imperial government. Tho total 

 strength in January of the French Army of In- 

 tervention, probably did not exceed 30,000 men ; 



