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.