388 



LINES AROUND THE CITY. 



from Xochimilco. North of San Lazaro strong works hemmed in 

 the city to the garita of Peralvillo, and connected with defences and 

 fortified houses reaching to the garita of Santiago. Other advan- 

 ced works were begun in that quarter, while the ground in front of 

 the main line was cut into troux de loups. 



On the west of the city are the garitas of San Cosme and Belen. 

 "Works had been commenced to connect that of San Cosme, the 

 most northerly of the two, with that of Santiago, and the nature of 

 the country and of the buildings, formed obstructions to any ad- 

 vance between San Cosme and Belen. Belen was defended princi- 

 pally by the citadel of Mexico, a square bastioned work with wet 

 ditches, immediately inside the garita. Barricades had also been 

 commenced ; but the great obstacle to an entrance by either garita, 

 was presented in the rock and castle of Chapultepec, two miles 

 south-west of the city. From this hill two aqueducts extend to the 

 capital, the one, north-east, in a direct line to Belen, and the other, 

 north, to the suburb of San Cosme, where, turning at right angles, 

 it continued onward and entered at the garita. The roads from the 

 west ran along the sides of the aqueducts. Two roads enter the 

 city from the south, between the garita of San Antonio and Belen, 

 one at Belen and the other at the garita of El nino Perdido, neither 

 of these roads have branches to the Acapulco road south of the 

 Pedregal and the Hacienda of San Antonio, and, therefore, had 

 been left comparatively unfortified." 1 



These defences, overlooked by the lofty sierras and the barrancas 

 which broke their feet, hemmed in the capital, and the Mexicans 

 readily imagined that they could not be turned by an army march- 

 ing from the east, so as to reach the city on the west, except by a 

 tedious circuit which would allow them time to complete their pro- 

 tective works in that quarter. The east had claimed their chief and 

 most natural attention, and thus the soulh and the west became un- 

 questionably their weakest points. 



Such were the Mexican lines, natural and artificial, around the 

 capital in the valley in the middle of August, 1847, and such was 

 the position of the American troops in front of them. The Mexi- 

 cans numbered then, with all their levies, probably more than thirty 

 thousand fighting men, while the Americans did not count more 

 than ten thousand — under arms at all points. The invaders had 

 prepared as well as circumstances admitted, and their materiel for 



1 Ripley, 2d vol., 182. 



