the world, and Zaragoza had conquered the French!

* Much of the credit for the achievement was due to General Negrete,
whose command bore the weight of the assault upon the Cerro de Guadalupe
and prevented its capture.

This day is proudly recorded in the Mexican annals as the Cinco de Mayo.
The historic importance of a battle is not always to be measured by the
numbers of the contending forces, and although its far-reaching
significance was at the time scarcely understood, this check must ever
be remembered by future historians as the first serious blow struck by
fortune at Napoleon III and his fated empire. The honor of France was
now involved and must be vindicated. There was no receding upon the
dangerous path. No French sovereign could dare to withdraw without
avenging the first check met with by the French army since Waterloo, and
thus was the Emperor rushed on to fulfil his own destiny. To-day the
fire from the fort of Guadalupe casts a flash of lurid light upon the
beginning of la debacle, and upon the last chapters written at Sedan.
During the whole of that fatal day the doomed men marched, as they were
ordered to march, upon the Mexican battery. They hopelessly fought, and
died heroically; and when night came they beat an orderly retreat,
carrying away with them most of their wounded.

General de Lorencez slowly fell back upon Orizaba, where he issued a
proclamation* to the army, openly laying the responsibility of the
disaster upon the false statements made to him by the French
representative.

* See proclamation, published in Louet, "La Verite sur l'Expedition du
Mexique," etc. "Reve d'Empire," p. 72.