outrages were perpetrated. One night a wealthy family in Mexico drove
home in their carriage from a party. They stopped at their
porte-cochere, which was opened by their servant, and closed tight
behind them as they drove in. Two men, however, had fastened on to the
carriage behind. They overpowered the portero as he barred the door,
while the noise of the carriage rolling on the flags of the patio
smothered the sound of the scuffle. They opened the door to their
accomplices, and easily overcame family and servants, all of whom were
bound hand and foot. Then the robbers ransacked the premises, and having
packed all the valuables into the carriage, one of them took the
coachman's clothes, mounted on the box, and coolly drove off in
style--carriage, horses, and all.

In a wild, sparsely populated country like Mexico in 1862, where
communication was difficult, where the police of even large cities, when
not in direct sympathy with the malefactors, were overawed by them, and
where forty years of civil war had hardened men to the sight of blood,
it is not to be wondered at if impunity had multiplied such occurrences
and destroyed all sensibility with regard to human suffering.

Much excitement was created both in France and in the United States,
during the French intervention, by the relentless spirit with which the
conflict was conducted between the opposing parties, and by the wanton
destruction of life and property which characterized the struggle. But
when one realizes that the Mexican armies at that time were on both
sides to a great extent made up of such predatory material, and that
even their officers were frequently little more than chiefs of
guerrillas, who rallied sometimes under one flag, sometimes under the
other, but in either case were always ready for rapine, the brutal
character of the conflict can scarcely excite surprise.