the vertical fire of mortars, the long renowned castle of San Juan de
Ulloa, the chief defense of Vera Cruz. It was still the day of
sailing-ships, both of war and of commerce. But a few years had elapsed
since a man of considerable scientific attainment had pronounced the
crossing of the Atlantic to be impossible to vessels depending upon
steam power alone; and only in the same year as the French attack on
Vera Cruz (1838) had been seen the falsification of the prediction by
the passage of the Sirius and Great Western from England to New York.

As a first means of compulsion, the French Government had in 1837
established a blockade of the Atlantic ports of Mexico. In two months
the Mexican treasury lost two million dollars in duties, which would
have been collected if the ships turned away had been permitted to
enter; but the Government and people seemed little moved by a result
that merely added one more to the many ills with which they were already
afflicted. The question was then raised by the French authorities,
diplomatic and military, whether the possession of the fortress of San
Juan de Ulloa, which commanded the city of Vera Cruz, the most important
of the coast ports, would not also confer control of a great part of the
seaboard, and thus enforce a security not otherwise obtainable for the
persons and property of French subjects. Blockade, though a less extreme
measure, was difficult, protracted, and productive of serious loss. The
violent northerly gales of winter exposed the ships to peril, and the
yellow fever of the summer months was deadly to the crews. Moreover, the
deprivation of commerce, though a bitter evil to a settled community
whose members were accustomed to the wealth, luxury, and quiet life
attendant upon uninterrupted mercantile pursuits, had been proved
ineffective when applied to a people to whom quiet and luxuries were the
unrealized words of a dream. The French Government speedily determined
to abandon the half-measure for one of more certain results; and in
October, 1838, began to arrive the ships of an expedition destined to
proceed to open hostilities, under the command of Admiral Baudin, a
veteran of the Napoleonic wars. Appointed in the navy in 1799,
immediately after the return from Egypt and the establishment of the
Consulate, by the direct intervention of Bonaparte, who was a friend of
his father's, Baudin had served with distinction until the fall of the
empire, losing his right a