s brevetted a Major-General
in the United States Army.

In the meantime, war having been declared to exist between the United
States and Mexico, provision was made to reinforce General Taylor; and
he was ordered to march into the interior of Mexico. He next marched
upon Monterey, arriving there on the nineteenth of September. He
commenced an assault upon the city, on the twenty-first; and on the
twenty-third, was about carrying it at the point of the bayonet, when
General Ampudia capitulated. Taylor's forces consisted of four hundred
and twenty-five officers, and nine thousand two hundred and twenty men.
His artillery consisted of one ten-inch mortar, two twenty-four-pound
howitzers, and eight field batteries of four guns, the mortar being the
only piece serviceable for the siege. The Mexican works were armed with
forty-two pieces of cannon, and manned with a force of at least seven
thousand troops of the line, and from two to three thousand irregulars.

Next we find him advancing farther into the interior of Mexico, at the
head of five thousand four hundred men, not more than six hundred being
regular troops.

At Agua Nueva, he received intelligence that Santa Anna, the greatest
military chieftain of Mexico, was advancing after him; and he fell back
to Buena Vista, a strong position a few miles in advance of Saltillo. On
the twenty-second of February, 1847, the battle, now called the Battle
of Buena Vista, was commenced by Santa Anna at the head of twenty
thousand well-appointed soldiers. This was General Taylor's great
battle. The particulars of it are familiar to all. It continued through
the twenty-third; and although General Taylor's defeat seemed
inevitable, yet he succeeded by skill, and by the courage and devotion
of his officers and men, in repulsing the overwhelming forces of the
enemy, and throwing them back into the desert. This was the battle of
the chiefest interest fought during the Mexican War. At the time it was
fought, and for some weeks after, General Taylor's communication with
the United States was cut off; and the road was in possession of parties
of the enemy. For many days after full intelligence of it should have
been in all parts of this country, nothing certain concerning it was
known, while vague and painful rumors were afloat, that a great battle
had been fought, and that General Taylor and his whole force had been
annihilated. At length the truth came, with its thrilling details of
victo