blindness.

Confident in the elan of his picked troops, and, as one of his officers
afterward told me, complacently holding up to himself the example of
Cortez, who had conquered the land with as many hundreds as he had
thousands, the French general, unable with so small a force to undertake
a siege, determined to attempt the assault of the Cerro de Guadalupe.
This fort dominated the place, and its possession must, in his opinion,
insure the fall of Puebla.

The ill-advised attack was made on May 5,1862, with twenty-five hundred
men. The place was topographically strong. It was defended by General
Zaragoza with the very pick of the Mexican army under General Negrete,
and was, moreover, supported by the well-manned battery of the Fort de
Loretto. To attempt the assault of such a position without the support
of artillery seemed madness; and when the general ordered his troops
forward it was found that his field-battery, owing to the lay of the
land, could not even be brought to bear upon the fort at sufficiently
close range to reach it. One fifth of the corps of attack was thus
uselessly sacrificed.

Some months after these events (September, 1862) I witnessed in the city
of Mexico the public obsequies of General Zaragoza,* whom this exploit
had naturally placed high in the esteem of his countrymen. Upon the
elevated catafalque, drawn by a long line of horses draped in black
trappings, lay the stately coffin. Tossed at its feet was the French
flag; banners, hung everywhere, inscribed with devices recalling his
signal service to his country, proclaimed him "the conqueror of
conquerors" (el conquistador de los conquistadores). The French, it was
asserted, had measured themselves with and conquered all the nations of