Advancing northward, the Greeks, with strong odds in their favor, easily took care of the Turkish force at Elassona and continued their advance toward Salonika.
Advancing southward, the Serbs, one hundred thousand strong (that is, the army of their first line), moved on Kumanova among the hills, where the forty thousand Turks defending the city of Uskub would make their stand as inevitably as a board of army engineers would select Sandy Hook as a site for some of the defenses of New York harbor. Confidently, the Turkish commander staked all on the issue.
The Serbs did not depend alone on mass or envelopment by flank. They murderously and swiftly pressed the attack in the front as well as on the sides; and the cost of victory was seven or eight thousand casualties. Two or three fragments of the Turkish army escaped along the road; otherwise, there was complete disintegration.
Uskub was now undefended. It was the ancient capital of Servia; and the feelings of the Serbs, as they marched in, approximated what ours would be if our battalions were swinging down Pennsylvania Avenue after a Mexican proconsul had occupied the White House for five hundred years. Meanwhile, at Monastir were forty thousand more Turks. So far as helping their comrades at Kumanova was concerned, they might as well have been in jail in Kamchatka. You can imagine them sitting cross-legged, Turkish fashion, waiting their turn. They broke the precedent of Plevna, which the garrisons of Adrianople and Scutari gloriously kept, by yielding rather easily. There must have been a smile on the golden dome of the tomb of Napoleon, who thrashed the armies of Europe in detail.
A Servian division, immediately after Kumanova, started southwest over the mountain passes in the snow and through the valleys in the mud to clinch the great Servian object of the war with the nine points of possession. To young Servia, Durazzo, the port of old Servia, is as water to the gasping fish. It stands for unhampered trade relations with the world; for economic freedom. When that division, ragged and footsore, came at last in sight of the blue Adriatic—well, it may safely be called a historic moment for one little nation.
Now we turn from the side lines, where the Serbs and the Greeks were occupied, to the neck of the funnel through which the Turkish reenforcements from Asia Minor were coming. There the Bulgars had undertaken the great, vital task of the war against the main Turkish army.
The Bulgarian army was little given to gaiety and laughter, but sang the "Shuma Maritza" on the march. This is the song of big men in boots—big white men with set faces—making the thunder of a torrent as they charge. "Roaring Maritza" is the nearest that you can come to putting it into English. The Maritza is the national river, and the song pictures it swollen and rushing in the winter rains or when the snows on the Balkans melt, on its way past the Bulgarian border into Turkey; and the gray army was now to follow it to the Aegean, in the spirit of its flood, and make the harbor at its mouth Bulgarian.
Yes, a gray army, bent on a grim business in a hurry, in gray winter weather and chill mountain mists, with the sun showing through overcast skies—something of the kind of weather that bred the Scotch. Cromwell or Stonewall Jackson would have felt at home, saying his prayers at the double-quick, in such company. As mementos from home, the soldiers wore in their caps and buttonholes withered flowers and sprigs of green which their womenfolk had given in farewell. The women were just as Spartan as the Spartans; perhaps more so. If any soldier lacked innate courage, the spur of public opinion drove him forward in step with his comrades.
Naturally, Bulgarian generalship had to adapt its plan of campaign to the obstacles between it and its adversary. For armies are cumbrous affairs. In all times they have been tied down to roads and bridges. The main highway and the main railway line from Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to Constantinople both ran through Adrianople. Nature meant this city, set in a basin among hills, for defense, and for the center of any army defending Thrace. On the near-by hills is a circle of permanent forts that commands all approaches for guns or infantry. In front of it is the turbulent Maritza, and to the northeast lies the town of Kirk-Kilesseh, partly fortified and naturally strong, which formed the Turkish right. The left rested at Demotika, to the south of Adrianople, in a rough country inaccessible to prompt action by a large force.
The Bulgars must turn one wing or the other. Foreign military experts thought that Kirk-Kilesseh could be taken only after a long operation, and then only by a force much larger than the Bulgars could spare for concentration at any one point of the line. Let two weeks pass without a definite victory, and the Turks would have numbers equal to the Bulgars; a month, superior numbers. As it was, the Turks had altogether, including the Adrianople garrison, a hundred and seventy-five thousand men in strong position against the Bulgars' first line of two hundred and eighty thousand.
A branch of the Sofia-Constantinople railway line runs northeast to Yamboli, on the Bulgarian frontier. Between Yamboli and Kirk-Kilesseh is a highway—the Turkish kind of highway—and no unfordable streams or other natural obstacles to an army's progress. At Yamboli the Bulgars concentrated their third army corps, under General Demetrief, and a portion of their second. The rest of the second faced Adrianople, while the first corps operated to the south and east.
Swinging around on Kirk-Kilesseh, the third army would not take "No!" for an answer. The Bulgarian infantry stormed the redoubts in the moonlight. They knew how to use the bayonet and the Turks did not. Skilfully driven steel slaughtered Mohammedan fanaticism that fought with clubbed guns, hands, and teeth, asking no quarter this side of Paradise. Kirk-Kilesseh fell. The Turkish army, flanked, had to go; Adrianople was isolated. The Bulgarian dead on the field could not complain; the wounded were in the rear; the living had burning eyes on the next goal.
"Na noj!"("Fix bayonets!") had won. "Na noj!Give them the steel!" was the cry of a nation. Soldiers sang it out to one another on the march. Children prattled it at home as if it were a new kind of game:
"Give them the steel and they will go! Nothing can stop Bulgaria!"
Not more than two Bulgarian soldiers out of twenty ever reached the Turk with a bayonet. The Turk did not wait for them. So the bayonet counted no less in the morale of the eighteen than of the two. Frequently they fixed it at a distance of five or six hundred yards. Their desire to use it made them press close at all points with the grim initiative that will not be gainsaid. When they charged, the spirit of cold steel was in their rush.
There was a splendid audacity in General Demetrief's next move after Kirk-Kilesseh. He did not pause to surround Adrianople. To the east was a wide gap in the investing lines. Through this the garrison might have made a sortie with telling effect. But Demetrief knew his enemy. He took it for granted that the garrison was settling itself for a siege. With twelve thousand Turkish reenforcements a day arriving from Asia, even hours counted.
As yet, the Turks were not decisively beaten; only the right that fought at Kirk-Kilesseh had been really demoralized. On the line of Bunar Hissar to Lüle Burgas they formed to receive the second shock. They were given scant time to prepare for it. "Na noj!" For three days this battle, the Waterloo of the war, raged. The advancing Bulgarian infantry went down like ninepins; but it did not give up, for it knew that "they would go when they saw the steel." Again the turning movement in flank crushed in the end. This time the Turkish main army was shattered. It hardly had the cohesiveness of a large mob. It was many little mobs, hungry, staggering on to the rear, where the ravages of cholera awaited.
In two weeks the Bulgars had made their dispositions and fought two battles, each lasting three days. They had advanced seventy-five miles over a rough country where the roads were sloughs. The loss in killed and wounded was sixty thousand; one man out of five was down.
When officers and men had snatched any sleep it was on the rain-soaked earth. The bread in their haversacks was wet and moldy. When they lay in the fire zones they were lucky if they had this to eat. By day they had dug their way, trench by trench, up to the enemy's position, crouching in the mud to keep clear of bullets. By night they had charged. They were an army in a state of auto-intoxication, bent on the one object of driving the Turkish army back to the narrow line of the peninsula. This accomplished, all the isolated forces in European Turkey, whether at distant Scutari or near-by Adrianople, were without hope of relief. The neck of the funnel was closed; the war practically won.
All the world knows now, and the Bulgarian staff must have known at the time, that for a week after Lüle Burgas the utter demoralization of the Turkish retreat left the way open to Constantinople. Why did not General Demetrief go on? Why did that army which had proceeded thus far with such impetuous and irresistible momentum suddenly turn snail?
For the reason that the Marathon winner when he drops across the tape is not good for another mile. The Bulgar was on his stomach in the mud, though he was facing toward the heels of the Turk. Food and ammunition were not up. A fresh force of fifty thousand men following up the victory might easily have made its own terms at the door of Yildiz Palace within three or four days; but there was not even a fresh regiment.
It was three weeks after Lüle Burgas before Demetrief was ready to attack; three weeks, in which the cholera scare had abated, the panic in Constantinople had come and gone, reenforcements had arrived and been organized into a kind of order, while they built fortifications. The Turkish cruisers supported both of Nazim Pasha's flanks with the fire of heavier guns than the Bulgars possessed. There was an approachable Turkish front of only about sixteen miles. Without silencing the Turkish batteries, Demetrief sent his infantry against the redoubts. He lost five or six thousand men without gaining a single fort. Against a stubborn and even semi-intelligent foe there is no storming a narrow frontal line of fortifications when you may not turn the ends.
Adrianople lay across the straight line of transportation by railroad and highway to the peninsula. All munitions for Demetrief's army had to go around it in the miserable, antiquated ox-carts. It was the rock splitting the flood of the Bulgarian advance. While the world was hearing rumors of the city's fall, the truth was that it was not really invested until a month after Lüle Burgas was fought.
For a month the garrison reported to be starving was drawing in supplies from a big section of farming country. When the armistice was signed it still had pasturage within the lines of defense for flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. The problem for the Bulgars first and last was to keep this fact masked and to check the savage sorties and spare all the guns and men they could for the main army. Volunteers from Macedonia still in native dress, clerks still in white collars, old men who had perjured themselves about their age in order to get a rifle, and the young conscripts of twenty years came to take the place of the regular forces on the investing lines, who moved on to re-enforce Demetrief. Fifty thousand Servians, two divisions, were spared after Kumanova, and speeded across Bulgaria on the single-line railway with an amazing rapidity to assist, according to plan, the Bulgars in the investment operations.
To the Turk, Adrianople is a holy city. Here is the most splendid mosque in all the empire, that built by the conqueror Sultan Selim. With the shadow of the minarets over his shoulder, the Turkish private in a trench was ready to die for Allah. But death must come for him. He is not going to hustle intelligently after paradise. In short, he is a sit-and-take-it fighter. While any delay of the Bulgarian advance was invaluable in gaining time, he made no use of his opportunities in a country of hills and transverse valleys and ravines, which nature meant for rear-guard action. A company of infantry posted on a hill could force a regiment to deploy and attack, and a few miles farther on could repeat the process. Cavalry could harass the flanks of the attacking force. Field-guns could get a commanding position above a road, with safe cover for retreat.
At Mustapha Pasha, twenty miles in front of Adrianople, was a solid old stone bridge over the Maritza, whose floods in the winter rains would be a nightmare to engineers who had to maintain a crossing with pontoons. If ever a corps needed a bridge the second Bulgarian corps needed this one. They found that a small and badly placed charge of dynamite had merely knocked out a few stones between two of the buttresses, leaving the bridge intact enough for all the armies of Europe to pass over it; and the Turks did not even put a mitrailleuse behind sandbags in the streets or use field-guns from the adjacent hills to delay the Bulgars in their crossing.
The soldier who is good only for the defensive can never win. What beat the Turk was the Turk himself. His army was in the chaos between old-fashioned organization and an attempt at a modern organization. His generals were divided in their counsels; his junior officers aped the modern officer in form, but lacked application. They had ceased to believe in their religion. Therefore, they did not lead their privates who did believe. In the midst of the war, captains and lieutenants, trustworthy observers tell me, would leave their untrained companies of reservists to march by the road while they themselves rode by train. They took their soldiers' pay. They neglected all the detail which is the very essence of that preparation at the bottom without which no generalship at the top can prevail.
The Bulgarian officers, two-thirds of whom were reservists, enjoyed a comradeship with their men at the same time that discipline was rigid. They believed in their God; at least, in the god of efficiency. They worked hard. They belong in the world of to-day and the Turk does not. Therefore the Turk has to go.
"We will not make peace without Adrianople!" was the cry of every Bulgar. Its possession became a national fetish, no less than naval superiority to the British. Adrianople stood for the real territorial object of the war. It must be the center of any future line of defense against the Turk. Practically its siege was set, once there was stalemate at Tchatalja. With no hope of beating the main Bulgarian army back, there was no hope of relieving the garrison, whose fate was only a matter of time.
At the London Peace Conference the allies stood firm for the possession of Adrianople. The Turkish commissioners, after repeating for six weeks that they would never cede it, had finally agreed to yield on orders from Constantinople, when the young Turks killed Nazim Pasha, the Turkish commander-in-chief, and overthrew the old cabinet. "You can have Adrianople when you take it!" was the defiance of the new cabinet to the allies.
The Peace Conference came to naught and hostilities were resumed on February 14, 1913, because of the impossibility of agreement between the allies and Turks on three important points: the status of Adrianople, the disposal of the Aegean islands, and the payment of an indemnity by Turkey. Bulgaria and Turkey both maintained that Adrianople was essential to their national safety. Moreover, its possession by Bulgaria was absolutely necessary were she to secure the hegemony in the Balkans at which she aimed. On the other hand, to the Turks, Adrianople is a sacred city around which cluster the most glorious memories of their race. Thus they would yield it only as a last necessity. The ambassadorial conference, anxious to bring to an end a war which was threatening to embroil Austria-Hungary and Russia and desirous also to make the settlement permanent, had already on January 17th in its collective note to the Porte unavailingly recommended to the Porte the cession of Adrianople to the Balkan States.
The question of the Aegean islands presented similar difficulties. They are inhabited almost exclusively by Greeks who demand to be united to the mother country; but Turkey insisted that the possession of some of them (e.g., Imbros, Tenedos, and Lemnos) was necessary to her for the protection of the Dardanelles, since they command the entrance to the straits, while others (e.g., Chios and Mitylene) are part of Asiatic Turkey. The Greeks asserted that to leave any of them to Turkey would cause constant unrest in Greece, and subsequent uprising against Turkey, thus merely repeating the history of Crete. Moreover, the Greeks maintained that they must have the disputed islands because they are the only large and profitable ones; but they expressed a willingness to neutralize them so that the integrity of the Dardanelles would not be endangered. The difficulty was complicated by the retention of a number of the islands by Italy until Turkey should fulfil all the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne arising from the Tripolitan war. The Greeks asserted that their fleet would have taken all the islands except for the Italian occupation. Moreover, they are suspicious of Italian intentions, especially with regard to Rhodes. The ambassadorial conference in its collective note to the Porte had advised the Porte "to leave to the Powers the task of deciding upon the fate of the islands of the Aegean Sea and the Powers would arrange a settlement of the question which will exclude all menace to the security of Turkey."
The third question in dispute concerned a money indemnity. The war had been a fearful drain upon the resources of the allies. They were determined not to share any of the Ottoman debt and to compel Turkey, if possible, to bear the financial burden of the war. But to yield to this demand would absolutely destroy Turkish credit. This would result in the financial ruin of many of the subjects of the great Powers. Hence this demand of the allies met with scant favor in the ambassadorial conference.
The war dragged on during the entire month of February without changing the relative positions of the belligerents. In the mean time, the relations between Austria-Hungary and Russia were daily becoming more strained. This was due to the determination of Austria-Hungary to prevent Servia from securing a seaboard upon the Adriatic. In the slogan of the allies, "the Balkan peninsula for the Balkan peoples," Austria-Hungary found a principle which could be utilized against their demands. She took the stand that the Albanians are a Balkan people entirely distinct from Slavs and Greeks and particularly unfriendly to the Slavs. It would be as suicidal to place any of the Albanians under the Slavs as to put back any of the Slavs under the Turks. Albania must be an autonomous State; that it may live in peace, it must possess its seaboard intact. In this position Austria-Hungary was seconded by Italy, which has interests in Albania as important as those of Austria-Hungary. Neither State can afford to allow the other to possess the eastern shore of the Adriatic; and both are determined that it shall not fall into the possession of another possibly stronger power.
As early as December 20, 1912, the ambassadors had recommended to their governments, and the latter had accepted, the principle of Albanian autonomy, together with a provision guaranteeing to Servia commercial access to the Adriatic. This had aroused the intense indignation of the Serbs, whose armies, contrary to the express prohibitions of Austria-Hungary, had already occupied Durazzo on the Adriatic and overrun northern Albania. The Serbs denied the right of any State to forbid them to occupy the territory of the enemy whom they had conquered, and Servia sent a detachment of her best troops and some of her largest siege guns to help the Montenegrins take Scutari. Moreover, numerous reports of outrages committed upon Albanians by the "Liberators" in their attempts to convert both Moslem and Catholic Albanians to the orthodox faith reached central Europe and caused great danger in Vienna. Count Berchtold's statement to the Delegations that Austria-Hungary would insist upon territory enough to enable independent Albania to be a stable State with Scutari as the capital, aroused in turn much excitement in Russia. Scutari was the chief goal of Montenegrin ambition. To possess it had been the hope of King Nicholas and his people during his long reign of half a century. To forbid him to possess it would be to deprive him of the fruits of the really heroic sacrifices his people had made during this war. Hence the excitement in all Slavdom. On February 7th Francis Joseph sent Prince Hohenlohe to St. Petersburg with an autograph letter to the Czar which had the good effect of reducing the tension between the two countries.
The ambassadorial conference at London then directed its attention exclusively to settling the status of Albania. After more than a month of acrimonious discussion a settlement was reached on March 26th in which the principle of nationality which had been invoked to justify the creation of an independent Albania was quietly ignored. The conference agreed upon the northern and northeastern boundaries of Albania. In order to carry her point that Scutari must be Albanian, Austria-Hungary agreed that the almost exclusively Albanian towns of Ipek, Djakova, Prizrend, and Dibra should go to the Serbs. On April 1st King Nicholas was notified that the powers had unanimously agreed to blockade his coast if he did not raise the siege of Scutari. His answer was that the proposed action of the powers was a breach of neutrality and that Montenegro would not alter her attitude until she had signed a treaty of peace. At once the warships of all the powers save Russia (which had none in the Mediterranean) engaged in the blockade. On April 15th, owing to the pressure of the powers and to the strained relations that had arisen between Servia and Bulgaria, the Servian troops were recalled from Scutari. Nevertheless the Montenegrins persisted alone and Scutari fell April 22, 1913. Two days later the Austro-Hungarian government demanded that vigorous action be undertaken by the powers to put independent Albania in possession of Scutari according to the agreement of March 26th. At once the greatest excitement prevailed throughout Russia. Street demonstrations against the Austro-Hungarian policy were held in many of the large cities. In Austria-Hungary military preparations became active on a large scale, and on May 1st the Dual Monarchy gave notice that it would undertake individual action should Montenegro not agree to the ultimatum. Italy, which is determined never to permit the Dual Monarchy individual action in Albania, announced that she would support her ally. As the result of all the pressure brought to bear upon him, on May 5th, King Nicholas yielded and placed Scutari in the hands of the powers, just in time, as Sir Edward Grey informed the English House of Commons, to prevent an outbreak of hostilities between Austria-Hungary and Russia.
While the chancelleries of the great powers were thus straining every nerve to agree upon the status of Albania and thereby to prevent a conflict between the two powers most vitally interested, the war between the allies and Turkey was prosecuted during March with greater vigor and with more definite results. On March 5th, Janina surrendered to the Greeks and on March 26th Adrianople fell. The powers had already offered to mediate between the belligerents, and their good offices had been accepted by both sides. The allies at first insisted upon the Rodosto-Malatra line as the western boundary of Turkey, but were informed that the powers would not consent to giving Bulgaria a foothold on the Dardanelles.
After much outcry and violent denunciation by the allies, an armistice was signed at Bulair on April 19th by representatives of all the belligerents except Montenegro, which was thereby only incited to more heroic efforts to capture Scutari. Nevertheless the allies had profited so much by delay in their relations with the powers since the very outbreak of the war that they now hoped to secure advantages by a similar policy, and it was not until May 21st that their representatives reassembled at London. Even then there appeared to be no sincere desire to come to terms, and on May 27th Sir Edward Grey informed the delegates that they would soon lose the confidence of Europe, and that for all that was being accomplished they might as well not be in London. The delegates were very indignant at this strong language, but it had the desired effect, for on May 30, 1913, the Treaty of London was signed by the representatives of all the belligerents. Its principal provisions were those already suggested by the powers,viz.:
(1) The boundary between Turkey and the allies to be a line drawn from Midia to Enos, to be delimited by an international commission:
(2) The boundaries of Albania to be determined by the powers.
(3) Turkey to cede Crete to Greece.
(4) The powers to decide the status of the Aegean islands.
(5) The settlement of all the financial questions arising out of the war to be left to an international commission to meet at Paris.
It was time for a settlement, since the problem was no longer to secure peace between Turkey and the allies, but rather to maintain peace among the allies. The solution of the great problem of the war, the division of the spoils, could no longer be deferred. From the moment that Adrianople had fallen, the troops of Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece maneuvered for position, each state determined to secure possession of as much territory as possible, in the hope that at the final settlement it might retain what it had seized.
Mexico has loomed large in the affairs of the world during recent years. The overthrow of Diaz in 1911 did not, as the world had hoped, bring into power an earnest and energetic middle class capable of guiding the downtrodden peons into the blessings of civilization. On the contrary, the land passed from the grip of a cruel oligarchy into that of a far more cruel anarchy. Hordes of bandits sprang up everywhere. The new president, Madero, was a philosopher and a patriot. But he failed wholly to get any real grasp of the situation. He was betrayed on every side; rebellion rose all around him; and in his extremity he entrusted his army and his personal safety to the most savage of his secret enemies, General Huerta. Madero died because he was too far in advance of his countrymen to be able to understand them. After that, Huerta sought to reestablish the old Diaz regime of wealth and terrorism; but he only succeeded in plunging the land back into utter barbarism.
The Mexicans are the last large section of the earth's population thus left to rule themselves in savagery. Hence the rest of the world has watched them with eagerness. Europe repeatedly reminded the United States that by her Monroe Doctrine she had assumed the duty of keeping order in America. At last she felt compelled to interfere. The picture of those days of anarchy is here sketched by two eye-witnesses, an Englishman and an American, both fresh from the scene of action.
There is a saying in Mexico that it is much easier to be a successful general than a successful president. Inasmuch as almost all Mexican presidents during the hundred years since Mexico became a Republic, owed their presidency to successful generalship, this saying is significant. At all events, no Mexican general who won his way into the National Palace by his military prowess ever won his way out with credit to himself or to his country.
General Victoriano Huerta, Mexico's latest Interim-President, during the first few months that followed his overthrow of the Madero Government found out to his own cost how much harder it is to rule a people than an army.
As a matter of fact, General Huerta was pushed into his interim-presidency before he really had a fair opportunity to learn how to command an army. At the time he was so suddenly made Chief Magistrate of Mexico he was not commanding the Mexican army, but was merely a recently appointed major-general who happened to command that small fraction of the regular army at the capital which was supposed to have remained loyal to President Madero and his constitutional government. Huerta had been appointed by President Madero to the supreme command of the loyal forces at the capital, numbering barely three thousand soldiers, only a few days before Madero's fall. Even if he had not turned traitor to his commander-in-chief, as he did in the end, Huerta's command of the loyal troops during the ten days' struggle at the capital preceding the fall of the constitutional government could not be described as anything but a dismal failure.
Before considering General Huerta's qualifications as a President, one should know something of his career as a soldier. During the last few years it has repeatedly fallen to my lot to follow General Huerta in the field, so that I have had a fair chance to view some of his soldierly qualities at close hand. I accompanied General Huerta during his campaign through Chihuahua, in 1912, and was present at his famous Battle of Bachimba, near Chihuahua City, on July 3, 1912—the one decisive victory won by General Huerta against the rebel forces of Pascual Orozco. Before this campaign I was in Cuernavaca, in the State of Morelos, during the time when General Huerta had his headquarters there in his campaign against Zapata's bandit hordes in that State after the fall of General Diaz's government.
General Huerta then took charge of the last military escort which accompanied General Porfirio Diaz on his midnight flight from Mexico City to the port of Vera Cruz. During the ten hours' run down to the coast, it may be recalled, the train on which President Diaz and his family rode was held up by rebels in the gray of dawn, and the soldiers of the military escort had to deploy in skirmish order, led by Generals Diaz and Huerta in person; but the affair was over after a few minutes' firing, with no casualties on either side.
Before this eventful year General Huerta had but few opportunities of winning laurels on the field of battle. Having entered the Military Academy of Chapultepec in the early 'seventies under Lerdo de Tejada's presidency, Victoriano Huerta was graduated in 1875, at the age of twenty-one, and was commissioned a second lieutenant of engineers. While still a cadet at Chapultepec he distinguished himself by his predilection for scientific subjects, particularly mathematics and astronomy. During the military rebellion of Oaxaca, when General Diaz rose against President Lerdo, Lieutenant Huerta was engaged in garrison duty, and got no opportunity to enter this campaign.
After General Diaz had come into power and had begun his reorganization of the Mexican army, young Huerta, lately promoted to a captaincy of engineers, came forward with a plan for organizing a General Staff. General Diaz approved of his plans, and Captain Huerta, accordingly, in 1879, became the founder of Mexico's present General Staff Corps. The first work of the new General Staff was to undertake the drawing up of a military map of Mexico on a large scale. The earliest sections of this immense map, on which the Mexican General Staff is still hard at work, were surveyed and drawn up in the State of Vera Cruz, where the Mexican Military Map Commission still has its headquarters. Captain Huerta accompanied the Commission to Jalapa, the capital of the State of Vera Cruz, and served there through a period of eight years, receiving his promotion to major in 1880 and to lieutenant-colonel in 1884. During this time he had charge of all the astronomical work of the Commission, and he also led surveying and exploring parties over the rough mountainous region that extends between the cities of Jalapa and Orizaba. While at Jalapa he married Emilia Aguila, of Mexico City, who bore him three sons and a daughter.
In 1890 Huerta was promoted to a colonelcy and was recalled to Mexico City. As a reward for Indian campaign services Huerta was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. In Mexico's centennial year of 1910, when Francisco Madero rose in the north, and other parts of the Republic gave signs of disaffection, General Huerta was ordered south to take charge of all the detached Government force in the mountainous State of Guerrero. Almost simultaneously with his arrival in Chilpancingo, the capital of the State of Guerrero, almost the whole south of Mexico rose in rebellion. The military situation there was soon found to be so hopeless that Huerta was recalled to Mexico City.
After General Huerta saw General Porfirio Diaz off to Europe at VeraCruz, he returned to the capital and placed himself at the dispositionof Don Francisco L. de la Barra, Mexico's new Presidentad interim.President de la Barra dispatched him with a column of soldiers toCuernavaca to restore peace.
Huerta placed himself at Señor Madero's complete disposition when the latter was elected and inaugurated as President at Mexico. Madero, for reasons that are self-evident, was anxious to propitiate the military element, and to secure the cooperation of the more experienced officers in the regular army for the better pacification of the country. Accordingly, when Zapata and his bandit hordes gave signs of returning to their old ways, refusing to "stay bought," President Madero sent General Huerta back into Morelos, at the head of a strong force of cavalry, mountain artillery, and machine guns, numbering altogether 3,500 men, with orders to put down Zapata's new rebellion "at any cost." At the same time President Madero induced his former fellow rebel, Ambrosio Figueroa, now Commander-in-Chief of Mexico's rural guards, to cooperate with General Huerta by bringing a mounted force of three thousand rurales from Guerrero into Morelos from the south so as to hem in the Zapatistas between himself and Huerta at Cuernavaca. Figueroa's men, though they had to cover three times the distance, struck the main body of the rebels first and got badly mussed up in the battle that followed. General Huerta's column did not get away from Cuernavaca until the second day of the fight, and did not reach the battlefield in the extinct crater of Mount Herradura until Figueroa's rurales had been all but routed. In the battle that followed, General Huerta succeeded in driving the rebels out of their strong position, but the losses of the federals, owing to their belated arrival and hastily taken positions, were disproportionately heavy.
This affair caused much ill-feeling between the rurales and regulars, and Figueroa sent word to Madero that he could not afford to sacrifice his men by trying to cooperate with such a poor general as Huerta. The much-heralded joint campaign accordingly fell to the ground.
President Madero thereupon recalled General Huerta, and sent GeneralRobles, of the regular army, to replace him in command. This furnishedHuerta with another grievance against Madero.
Some time afterward I heard General Huerta explain in private conversation to some of his old army comrades that he had been recalled from Morelos because of his sharp military measures against the Zapatistas, owing to President Madero's sentimental preference for dealing leniently with his old Zapatista friends. At the time when General Huerta made this private complaint, however, it was a notorious fact that his successor in Morelos, General Robles, had received public instructions from Madero to deal more severely with the Morelos rebels. General Robles did, as a matter of fact, handle the Morelos rebels far more ruthlessly than Huerta, leading to his own subsequent recall on charges of excessive cruelty.
Meanwhile the Orozco rebellion had arisen in the north, and became so threatening that General Gonzalez Salas, Madero's War Minister, felt called upon to resign his portfolio to take the field against Orozco. General Salas, after organizing a fairly formidable-looking force of 3,500 regulars and three batteries of field artillery at Torreon, rushed into the fray, only to suffer a disgraceful defeat in his first battle at Rellano, in Chihuahua, not far from Torreon. General Salas took his defeat so much to heart that he committed suicide on his way back to Torreon. This, together with the panic-stricken return of his army to Torreon, caused the greatest dismay at the Capital, the inhabitants of which already believed themselves threatened by an irresistible advance of Orozco's rebel followers. None of the federal generals at the front were considered strong enough to stem the tide.
The only available federal general of high rank, who had any experience in commanding large forces in the field, was Victoriano Huerta. President Madero, in his extremity, called upon Huerta to reorganize the badly disordered forces at Torreon, and to take the field against Orozco, "cost what it may." This was toward the end of March, 1912.
General Huerta, whom the army had come to regard as "shelved," lost no time in getting to Torreon. There he soon found that the situation was by no means so black as it had been painted—General Trucy Aubert, who had been cut off with one of the columns of the army, having cleverly extricated his force from its dangerous predicament so as to bring it safely back to the base at Torreon without undue loss of men or prestige.
Thenceforth no expense was saved by General Huerta in bringing the army to better fighting efficiency. Heavy reenforcements of regulars, especially of field artillery, were rushed to Torreon from the Capital, and large bodies of volunteers and irregulars were sent after them from all parts of the Republic.
President Madero had said: "Let it cost what it may"; so all the preparation went forward regardless of cost. "Hang the expense!" became the blithe motto of the army.
When General Huerta at last took the field against Orozco, early in May, his federal army, now swelled to more than six thousand men and twenty pieces of field artillery, moved to the front in a column of eleven long railway trains, each numbering from forty to sixty cars, loaded down with army supplies and munitions of all kinds, besides a horde of several thousand camp followers, women, sutlers, and other non-combatants. The entire column stretched over a distance of more than four miles. The transportation and sustenance of this unwieldy column, which had to carry its own supply of drinking water, it was estimated, cost the Mexican Government nearly 350,000 pesos per day. Its progress was exasperatingly slow, owing to the fact that the Mexican Central Railway, which was Huerta's only chosen line of advance, had to be repaired almost rail by rail.
After more than a fortnight's slow progress, General Huerta struck Orozco's forces at Conejos, in Chihuahua, near the branch line running out to the American mines at Mapimi. Orozco's forces, finding themselves heavily outnumbered and overmatched in artillery, hastily evacuated Conejos, retreating northward up the railway line by means of some half-dozen railway trains. Several weeks more passed before Huerta again struck Orozco's forces at Rellano, in Chihuahua, close to the former battlefield, along the railway, where his predecessor, General Gonzalez Salas, had come to grief. This was in June.
Huerta, with nearly twice as many men and three times as much artillery, drove Orozco back along the line of the railway after a two days' long-range artillery bombardment, against which the rebels were powerless. This battle, in which the combined losses in dead and wounded on both sides were less than 200, was described in General Huerta's official report as "more terrific than any battle that had been fought in the Western Hemisphere during the last fifty years." In his last triumphant bulletin from the field, General Huerta telegraphed to President Madero that his brave men had driven the enemy from the heights with a final fierce bayonet charge, and that their bugle blasts of victory could be heard even then on the crest.
Pascual Orozco, on the other hand, reported to the revolutionary Junta in El Paso that he had ordered his men to retire before the superior force of the federals, and that they had accomplished this without disorder by the simple process of boarding their waiting trains and steaming slowly off to the north, destroying the bridges and culverts behind him as they went along. One of my fellow war correspondents, who served on the rebel side during this battle, afterward told me that the federals, whose bugle calls Huerta heard on the heights, did not get up to this position until two days after the rebels had abandoned their trenches along the crest.
The subsequent advance of the federals from Rellano to the town of Jimenez, Orozco's old headquarters, which had been evacuated by him without firing a shot, lasted another week.
Here Huerta's army camped for another week. At Jimenez the long-brewing unpleasantness between Huerta's regular officers and some of Madero's bandit friends, commanding forces of irregular cavalry, came to a head. The most noted of these former guerrilla chieftains was Francisco Villa, an old-time bandit, who now rejoiced in the honorary rank of a Colonel. Villa had appropriated a splendid Arab stallion, originally imported by a Spanish horse-breeder with a ranch near Chihuahua City. General Huerta coveted this horse, and one day, after an unusually lively carouse at general headquarters, he sent a squad of soldiers to bring the horse out of Villa's corral to his own stable. The old bandit took offense at this, and came stalking into headquarters to make a personal remonstrance. He was put under arrest, and Huerta forthwith sentenced him to be shot. That same day the sentence was to be put into execution. Villa was already facing the firing squad, and the officer in charge had given the command to load, when President Madero's brother, Emilio, who was serving on Huerta's staff in an advisory capacity, put a stop to the execution by taking Villa under his personal protection. President Madero was telegraphed to, and immediately replied, reprieving Villa's sentence, and ordering him to be sent to Mexico City pending further official investigation.
This act of interference infuriated Huerta. For the moment he had to content himself with formulating a long string of serious charges against Villa, ranging from military insubordination to burglary, highway robbery, and rape. It was even given out at headquarters that Villa had struck his commanding general.
Huerta never forgave the Madero brothers for their part in this affair,and his resentment was fanned to white heat, subsequently, whenFrancisco Villa was allowed to escape scot-free from his prison inMexico City.
Meanwhile Huerta kept telegraphing to President Madero for more reenforcements of men, munitions, and supplies, more engines, more railway trains and tank cars, and, above all, for more artillery. Madero kept sending them, though it cost his Government a new loan of forty million dollars. Every other day or so a new train, with fresh supplies, arrived at the front.
At the end of several more weeks, when Orozco had slowly retreated half-way through the State of Chihuahua, and when he found that the destruction of the big seven-span bridge over the Conchos River at Santa Rosalia did not permanently stop Huerta's advance, he reluctantly decided to make another stand at the deep cut of Bachimba, just south of Chihuahua City. This was in July.
By this time General Huerta's Federal column had swelled to 7,500 fighting men, 20 pieces of field artillery, 30 machine guns, and some 7,500 camp-followers and women, making a total of more than 15,000 persons of all sexes and ages, who were being carried along on more than twenty railroad trains, stretching over a dozen miles of single track. The column was so long that some of my companions and I, when we climbed a high hill near the front end of the column at Bachimba, found it impossible to discern the tail end through our field-glasses. All the hungry people that were being carried on all those twenty railroad trains had to be fed, of course, so that none of us were surprised to read in the Mexican newspapers that the Chihuahua campaign was now costing Madero's Government nearly 500,000 pesos per day.
The battle at Bachimba must have swelled this budget. During this one day's fight nearly two million rifle cartridges and more than 10,000 artillery projectiles were fired away by the Federals. Huerta's twenty pieces of field artillery, neatly posted in a straight line on the open plain, barely half a mile away from his ammunition railway train, kept firing at the supposed rebel positions all day long without any appreciable interruption, and all day long the artillery caissons and limbers kept trotting to and fro between the batteries and ammunition cars. Orozco had but 3,000 men with two pieces of so-called artillery, with gun barrels improvised from railroad axles, so he once more ordered a general retreat by way of his railroad trains, waiting at a convenient distance on a bend of the road behind the intervening hills. As at Rellano, at Conejos, and at other places in the campaign where the railroad swept in big bends around the hills, no attempt was made on the Federal side to cut off the rebels' retreat by short-cut flanking movements of cavalry, of which Huerta had more than he could conveniently use, or chose to use. The whole ten hours' bombardment and rifle fire resulted in but fourteen dead rebels; but it won the campaign for the Government, and earned for Huerta his promotion to Major-General besides the proud title of "Hero of Bachimba."
President Madero and his anxious Government associates were more than glad to receive the tidings of this "decisive victory." The only trouble was that it did not decide anything in particular. Orozco and his followers, while evacuating the capital of Chihuahua, kept on wrecking railway property between Chihuahua City and Juarez, and the campaign kept growing more expensive every day.
It took Huerta from July until August to work his slow way from the center of Chihuahua to Ciudad Juarez on the northern frontier. Before he reached this goal, though, the rebels had split into many smaller detachments, some of which cut his communications in the rear, while others harried his flanks with guerrilla tactics and threatened to carry the "war" into the neighboring State of Sonora. So far as the trouble and expense to the Federal Government was concerned this guerrilla warfare was far worse than the preceding slow but sure railway campaign. General Huerta himself, who was threatened with the loss of his eyesight from cataract, gave up trying to pursue the fleeing rebel detachments in person, but kept close to his comfortable headquarters in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City. This unsatisfactory condition of affairs gave promise of enduring indefinitely, until President Madero in Mexico City, whose Government had to bear the financial brunt of it all, suddenly lost his patience and recalled Huerta to the capital, leaving the command in General Rabago's hands.
For reasons that were never quite fathomed by Madero's Government, Huerta took his time about obeying these orders. Thus, he lingered first at Ciudad Juarez, then at Chihuahua City, then at Santa Rosalía, next at Jimenez, and presently at Torreon, where he remained for over a week, apparently sulking in his tent like Achilles. This gave rise to grave suspicions, and rumors flew all over Mexico that Huerta was about to make common cause with Orozco. President Madero himself, at this time, told a friend of mine that he was afraid Huerta was going to turn traitor. About the same time, at a diplomatic reception, President Madero stated openly to Ambassador Wilson that he had reasons to suspect Huerta's loyalty. At length, however, General Huerta appeared at the capital, and after a somewhat chilly interview with the President, obtained a suspension from duty so that he might have his eyes treated by a specialist.
Thus it happened that Huerta, who was nearly blind then, escaped being drawn into the sudden military movements that grew out of General Felix Diaz's unexpected revolt and temporary capture of the port of Vera Cruz last October.
General Huerta's part in Felix Diaz's second revolution, four months later, is almost too recent to have been forgotten. He was the senior ranking general at the capital when the rebellion broke out, and was summoned to his post of duty by President Madero from the very first. He accompanied Madero in his celebrated ride from Chapultepec Castle to the National Palace on the morning of the first day of the famous "Ten Days," and was put in supreme command of the forces of the Government after the first hurried council of war. President Madero, totally lacking in military professional knowledge as he was, confided the entire conduct of the necessary war measures to General Huerta; but it soon became apparent that the old General either could not or would not direct any energetic offensive movement against the rebels. From the very first the Government committed the fatal blunder of letting the rebels slowly proceed to the Citadel—a fortified military arsenal—the retention of which was of paramount importance, without even attempting to intercept their roundabout march or to frustrate their belated entry into the poorly guarded Citadel. Later, when it became clear that the rebels could not be dislodged from this stronghold by street rushes, no attempt was made to shell them out of their strong position by a high-angle bombardment of plunging explosive shells.
After it was all over General Huerta explained the ill-success of his military measures during the ten days' street-fighting by saying that President Madero was a madman who had spoiled all Huerta's military plans and measures by utterly impracticable counter-orders. At the time, though, it was given out officially that Huerta had been placed in absolute, unrestricted command. When the American Ambassador, toward the close of the long bombardment, appealed to President Madero to remove some Federal batteries, the fire from which threatened the foreign quarter of Mexico City, President Madero replied that he had nothing to do with the military dispositions, and referred the Ambassador to General Huerta, who promptly acceded to the request. On another occasion, later in the bombardment, when Madero insisted that the Federal artillery should use explosive shells against the Citadel, General Huerta did not hesitate to take it upon himself to countermand the President's suggestions to Colonel Navarrete, the Federal chief of artillery. Afterward General Navarrete admitted in a speech at a military banquet that his Federal artillery "could have reduced the Citadel in short order had this really been desired."
Whether General Huerta was really able to win or not is beside the issue, since the final turn of events plainly revealed that his heart was not in the fight, and that he was only waiting for a favorable moment to turn against Madero. Before General Blanquet with his supposed relief column was allowed to enter the city, General Huerta had a private conference with Blanquet. This conference sealed Madero's doom. Later, after Blanquet's forces had been admitted to the Palace, on Huerta's assurances to the President that Blanquet was loyal to the Government, it was agreed between the two generals that Blanquet should make sure of the person of the President, while Huerta would personally capture the President's brother, Gustavo, with whom he was to dine that day. The plot was carried out to the letter.
When Huerta put Gustavo Madero under arrest, still sitting at the table where Huerta had been his guest, Huerta sought to palliate his action by claiming that Gustavo Madero had tried to poison him by putting "knock-out" drops into Huerta's after-dinner brandy. At the same time Huerta claimed that President Madero had tried to have him assassinated, on the day before, by leading Huerta to a window in the Palace, which an instant afterward was shattered by a rifle bullet from outside.
Neither of the two prisoners ever had a chance to defend themselves against these charges, for Gustavo Madero on the night following his arrest was shot to death by a squad of soldiers in the garden of the Citadel, and President Madero met a similar fate a few nights afterward. General Huerta, who by this time had got himself officially recognized as President, gave out an official statement from the Palace pretending that Gustavo Madero had lost his life while attempting to escape, and that his brother, the President, had been accidentally shot by some of his own friends who were trying to rescue him from his guard.
Few people in Mexico were inclined to believe this official version. Yet the murder of the two Maderos, and of Vice-President Pino Suarez, as well as the subsequent killing of other prisoners, like Governor Abraham Gonzalez, of Chihuahua, was condoned by many in Mexico on the ground that these men, if allowed to remain alive, were bound to make serious trouble for the new Government. It was generally hoped, at the same time, even by those who condemned these murders as barbarous, that General Huerta might still prove himself a wise and able ruler, no matter how severe.
These fond hopes were changed to gloomy foreboding only a few weeks after Huerta's assumption of the presidency, when he was seen to surround himself with notorious wasters of all kinds, and when he was seen to fall into Madero's old error of extending the "glad hand" to unrepentant rebels and bandits like Orozco, Cheche Campos, Tuerto Morales, and Salgado.
Victoriano Huerta, whether he be considered as a general or as a president, can be expressed in one phrase: He is an Indian.
Huerta himself proudly says that he is a pure-blooded Aztec. His friends claim for him that he has the virtues of an Indian—courage, patience, endurance, and dignified reserve. His enemies, on the other hand, profess to see in him some of the vices of Indian blood.
From what I have seen of General Huerta in the field, in private life, and as a President, I would say that he combines in himself both the virtues and the faults of his race. In battle I have seen him expose himself with a courage worthy of the best Indian traditions; nor have I ever heard it intimated by any one that he was a coward. One of his strong points as a commander was that he was a man of few words. On the other hand, his own soldiers at the front hailed him as a stern and cruel leader; and some of the things that were done to his prisoners of war at the front were enough to curdle any one's blood.
It was during a moment of conviviality that General Huerta once revealed his true sentiments toward the United States and ourselves. This was during a banquet given in his honor at Mexico City on the eve of his departure to the front in Chihuahua. On this occasion an Englishman, who had long been on terms of intimacy with Huerta, asked the General what he would do if northern Mexico should secede to the United States and the Americans should take a hand in the fray. This question aroused General Huerta to the following extemporary speech:
"I am not afraid of thegringoes. Why should I be? No good Mexican need be afraid of thegringoes. If it had not been for the treachery of President Santa Anna, who sold himself to the United States in 1847, we should have beaten the Yankees then, as we surely shall beat them the next time. Let them cross the Rio Bravo! We will send them back with bloody heads.
"We Mexicans need not be afraid of any foreign nation. Did we not beat the Spaniards? Did we not also beat the French, and the Austrians, and the Belgians, and all the other foreign adventurers who came with Maximilian? In the same way we would have beaten thegringoeshad we had a fair chance at them. The Texans, who beat Santa Anna, at San Jacinto, you must know, were notgringoes, but brother Mexicans, of whom we have reason to be proud.
"To my mind, there are only two real nations in the world, besides our old Aztec nation. Those nations are England and Japan.
"All the others can not properly be called nations; least of all the United States, which is a mere hodge-podge of other nations. One of these days England and Japan and Mexico will get together, and after that there will be an end to the United States."
[Footnote 1: Reproduced in condensed form fromThe World's Workby the kind permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.]
In order to understand the situation in Mexico, it is necessary to get firmly in our minds that there are in reality two Mexicos. One may be called American Mexico and the other Mexican Mexico.
The representative of the new, half-formed northern or American Mexico was Francisco Madero—rich, educated, well mannered, honest, and idealistically inclined. The representative of the old Mexico is Huerta—"rough, plain, old Indian," as he describes himself, pugnacious, crafty, ignorant of political amenities, without understanding of any rule except the rule of blood and powder.
By the law of 1894 Diaz changed the character of the land titles in Mexico. Many smaller landowners, unable to prove their titles under the new system, lost their holdings, which in large measure eventually fell into the hands of a few rich men. In the feudal south this did not cause so much disturbance. But in the north the growing middle class bitterly resented it. Madero became the spokesman of this discontent. In his books and in his program of reform, "the plan of San Luis Potosi," he attacked the Diaz regime. And then in 1910 he joined the rebel band organized by Pascual Orozco in the mountains of Chihuahua. With his weakened army Diaz was unable to cope with this revolution, and in October, 1911, Madero became President.
The country was then at peace, except for the band of robbers led by Zapata in the provinces of Morelos and Guerrero. These are and have been the most atrocious of the many bandits with which Mexico is infested. No outrage or barbarity known to savages have they left untried. Madero attempted to buy them off, but to no avail. He then sent military forces against them, one column commanded by General Huerta, but with no success.
In the mean time, Pascual Orozco, who emerged from the Madero revolution as a great war hero in his own State, was given no post of responsibility under the new Government, but was left as commander of the militia in the State of Chihuahua. The adherents of the old Diaz régime took this opportunity to win him over to their side, for Orozco's fighting was done purely for profit, not for principle. A reactionary movement, with Orozco at its head, broke out in February, 1912. Five thousand men were quickly got together. The Madero Administration—a Northern Administration in the Southern country—was not fully organized, and, with the army not yet rehabilitated, found itself seriously embarrassed. Had Orozco been an intelligent and competent leader he probably could have marched straight through to Mexico City at that time, as the only governmental troops that were available to fight him were only about sixteen hundred, which he defeated and nearly annihilated at Rellano in Chihuahua. Their commander, General Gonzalez Salas, Madero's war minister, committed suicide after the defeat.
The only general available at the time who had had experience in handling large forces in the field was Victoriano Huerta. Although he had never especially distinguished himself, Huerta's record shows that he was one of the most progressive members of the army.
Huerta's column encountered little resistance. Chihuahua City was occupied on July 7th, and later, Juarez. The rebels were not pursued to any extent away from the railroads. They separated into bands, keeping up a guerrilla warfare, raiding American mining camps and ranches, and seizing and holding Americans and others for ransom. Prominent among these leaders of banditti was Inez Salazar, a former rock driller in an American mine, who raised a force in Chihuahua and declared against Madero. Little was done to destroy these rebel bands by the Federals, and no engagements of any size took place. In fact, it was a current rumor that the Federals did not wish to put them down. In the first place, the regular army was the same old Diaz organization which considered Madero largely as a usurper and which remained with the established Government in a rather lukewarm manner. Besides, the bands of Orozco, Salazar, and others were instigated and supported by the adherents of the old regime, and, although opposed to the Mexican army, both had many ideas in common regarding the Madero Administration. Furthermore, the officers and men of the army were receiving large increases of pay for the campaign.
An instance showing this disposition on the part of the Federals occurred in the State of Sonora in October, 1912. General Obregon, now the commander of the Sonora State forces, was at that time a colonel of the army and had his battalion, composed largely of Maya Indians, at Agua Prietá, just across the border from Douglas, Ariz. Salazar's band of rebels had crossed the mountains from Chihuahua and had come into Sonora. Popular clamor forced the Federal commander at Agua Prietá to do something, and accordingly he ordered Obregon to take his battalion, proceed south, get in touch with Salazar, and "remain in observation." Salazar was looting the ranch of a friend of Obregon's near Fronteras. The rebel had taken no means to secure his bivouac against surprise; his men were scattered around engaged in slaughtering cattle, cooking, and making camp for the night. Obregon deployed his force and charged Salazar's camp. Forty of Salazar's men were killed, and a machine gun and a number of horses, mules, and rifles were captured; whereupon Salazar left that part of the country. Upon Obregon's return to Agua Prietá he was severely reprimanded and nearly court-martialed for disobeying his orders in not "remaining in observation" of Salazar, and attacking him instead. Had Obregon been given a free hand, he undoubtedly could have destroyed Salazar's force.
After Salazar's defeat at Fronteras, he moved east again, and about a month later appeared near Palomas, a town about three miles from the international boundary south of Columbus, N.M. At Palomas there was a Federal detachment of about one hundred and thirty men under an old colonel. They had been sent there to protect various cattle interests in that vicinity; and they had a considerable amount of money, equipment, and ammunition for maintaining and providing rations and forage for themselves and for some outlying detachments. Salazar, hearing of this, demanded that the money and equipment be immediately surrendered. Upon being refused, Salazar, with about three hundred and fifty men, attacked. A furious battle was fought, ending in a house-to-house fight with grenades—cans filled with dynamite, with fuse attached, which are thrown by hand. Salazar's force captured the town after the Federals had suffered more than 50 per cent. in casualties, including the Federal commander, who was wounded several times; the rebels suffered more than 30 per cent. casualties. The town, in the mean time, was wrecked. This particular instance shows that the Mexicans fight and fight well from a standpoint of physical courage. The general idea that the Mexicans would not fight, which Americans obtained during this period, was obtained because they did not care to in the majority of cases.
Meanwhile, General Huerta, having "finished" his Chihuahua campaign in the autumn of 1912, was promoted to the rank of General of Division (Major-General) and decorated for his achievement. It was rumored in many places at that time that General Huerta was about to turn against the Madero Government. Madero, suspecting his loyalty, ordered him back to Mexico City. Huerta took his time about obeying this order, and, when he reported in Mexico City, obtained a sick-leave to have his eyes treated. Huerta was nearly blind when Felix Diaz's revolt broke out in Vera Cruz in October, 1912, and probably thus escaped being drawn into that unsuccessful demonstration.
From this time until thecoup d'etatof February 8, 1913, there was no large organized resistance to the Madero Administration, although banditism increased at an alarming rate in all parts of the Republic. The Diaz-Reyes outburst, in Mexico City on February 8, 1913, which resulted in the death of Madero and Suarez and the elevation of Huerta to practical military dictatorship, was brought about by the adherents of the old regime, who looked upon Madero's extinction as a punishment meted out to a criminal who had raised the slaves against their masters. This view prevailed to a considerable extent in Mexico south of San Luis Potosi. In the North, however, the people almost as a whole (at least 90 per cent. in Sonera, and only to a slightly lesser extent in the other provinces) saw in it the cold-blooded murder of their political idol at the hands of unscrupulous moneyed interests and of adherents of the old regime of the days of Porfirio Diaz.
The resentment was general in the North—this new, largely Americanized North, Venustiano Carranza, the governor of Coahuila, organized the resistance in the provinces of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas, while Maytorena, the governor of Sonora, and Pesqueira (later in Washington, D.C., as Carranza's representative), with Obregon as the head of their military forces, rapidly cleared that State of Federals, with the exception of the port of Guaymas. These fights were no mere bloodless affairs, but stubbornly contested, with heavy casualties, as a decided principle was involved in the conflict. Villa, the old bandit and personal enemy of Huerta, organized a force in Sonora, and Urbina did likewise in northern Durango. Arms, and especially money to buy them with, were hard to get. Funds were obtained from the tariff at ports of entry, internal taxation, amounting at times to practical confiscation, contributions, and gifts from various sources. It is said that the Madero family put aside $1,000,000, gold, for this purpose.
Though a few individuals went over to the Constitutionalist cause, the Mexican regular army remained true to thead interimGovernment. The revolutionists either held or rapidly possessed themselves of the great railroad lines in the majority of cases. Huerta, who is an excellent organizer, soon appreciated the magnitude of the revolt and rushed troops to the north as rapidly as possible, his strategy being to hold all railroad lines and cities with strong columns which would force the revolutionists to operate in the intervals between the railroads. Then Huerta, with these columns as a supporting framework, pushed out mobile columns for the destruction of the rebel bands.
The Carranzistas understood this plan and, to meet it, tore up all the railroads that they could and adopted as their fixed plan never to risk a general engagement of a large force. For the first few months, the rebels, who had adopted the name of Constitutionalists, continued recruiting their forces and destroying the railroads. The Federals tried to repair the railroads and get enough troops into the north to cope with this movement. They obtained new military equipment of all descriptions, the army was increased, and old rebels, such as Orozco and Salazar, sympathizers or tools of the old régime, were taken into the Federal forces as irregulars and given commands.
To understand the apparent slowness of the Federals in moving from place to place and their inability to pursue the rebels away from the railroads, some idea must be given as to their system of operating. The officers of the regular army are well instructed and quite competent. The enlisted men, however, come from the lowest strata of society, and, except in the case of a foreign war, have to be impressed into the ranks. They bring their women with them to act as cooks and to transport their food and camp equipage. Military transportation, that is to say, baggage trains of four-mule wagons and excellent horses for the artillery, does not exist in the Mexican army. In fact, when away from a railroad, the "soldaderas," as the women are called, carry nearly everything; and they obtain the food necessary for the soldiers' rations. A commissariat, as we understand it, does not exist. This ties the Federals to the railroads, as they can not carry enough ammunition and food for any length of time.
On the other hand, those who first saw Obregon's rebel forces in Sonora and Villa's in Chihuahua were surprised at their organization. There were no women taken with them. They had wagons, regular issues of rations and ammunition, a paymaster, and the men were well mounted and armed.
With Obregon, also, were regiments of Yaqui Indians, who are excellent fighting material. These forces were mobile, and could easily operate away from the railroad. They lacked artillery, without which they were greatly handicapped, especially in the attack on fortified places and on stone or adobe towns. As most of the horses and mules were driven away from the railroads, the insurgents could get all the animals they wanted.
The first large battle occurred on May 9-10-11-12th outside of Guaymas, between Ojeda's Federals and Obregon's Constitutionalists, at a place called Santa Rosa. The Federal advance north consisted of about twelve hundred men and eighteen pieces of artillery. They were opposed by about four thousand men under Obregon, without artillery. Eight hundred Federals were killed and all their artillery captured. The Constitutionalists lost two hundred and fifty men killed and wounded. Comparatively few Federals returned to Guaymas. Each side killed all the wounded that they found, and also all captives who refused to enlist in the captor's force. This success was not followed up and Guaymas remained in the hands of the Federals. The artillery captured by the Constitutionalists had had the breech blocks removed to render them unserviceable; new ones, however, were made in the shops at Cananca by a German mechanician named Klaus.
In the summer, Urbina captured the city of Durango, annihilating the Federals. The city was given over to loot and the greatest excesses were indulged in by the victors. Arson, rape, and the robbing of banks, stores, and private houses were indiscriminately carried on. Horses were stabled in the parlors of the homes of the prosperous citizens, and many non-combatants were killed by the soldiers before order was restored.
At this time the only points held by the Federals on the boundary between the United States and Mexico were Juarez, in Chihuahua, and Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas. The railroads south of these points were also in the physical possession of the Federals but subject to continual interruption at the hands of the Constitutionalists. Venustiano Carranza had established headquarters at Ciudad Porfirio Diaz (Piedras Negras) across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Tex. He started on a trip, during the late summer, through the northern provinces to confer with the leaders of the Constitutionalist movement in order to bring about better coordination of effort on their part. He went through the States of Coahuila, Durango, Chihuahua, and Sonora and established a new headquarters in Sonora. Since then the efforts of the Constitutionalists have been much better coordinated, with the result that they have had much better success.
Jesus Carranza and Pablo Gonzalez were left in charge at Ciudad Porfirio Diaz by Venustiano Carranza when he left on his trip. Shortly after this a Federal column was organized under General Maas for the capture of the railroad between Saltillo and Ciudad Porfirio Diaz. This column slowly worked its way to Monclova and then to Ciudad Porfirio Diaz, which it occupied on October 7th; the Constitutionalists ripped up the railroad and destroyed everything that might be useful to the Federals and a good deal that could not, and offered very little resistance. Villa, in the mean time, having been reenforced by men from Durango and some from Sonora, had been operating in Chihuahua with considerable success. He had fallen on several small Federal columns, destroyed them, and obtained about six pieces of artillery, besides a fresh supply of rifles and ammunition. In September, he had interposed his force between the Federals at Chihuahua City and Torreon, at a place called Santa Rosalía. Villa and the Federals each had about four thousand men. The Federals from the south were making a determined attempt to retake Durango and had started two columns for Torreon of more than two thousand men each, one west from Saltillo, another north from Zacatecas. These had to repair the railroad as they went. Torreon was being held by about one thousand Federal soldiers.
Villa was well informed of these movements, and also of the fact that, in their anxiety to take Durango, a Federal force of about 800 men, under General Alvirez, was to leave Torreon before the arrival of the Saltillo and Zacatecas columns. Having the inner line, Villa with his mobile force could maneuver freely against any one of these. He accordingly left a rear guard in front of the Federals at Santa Rosalía, and, marching south rapidly, met and completely defeated General Alvirez's Federal column about eighteen miles west of Torreon, near the town of Aviles. General Alvirez and 287 of his men were killed, fighting to the last.