ng 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 General
Robles, of the regular army, to replace him in command. This furnished
Huerta 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