by others would have wasted many minutes, and he had eagerly suggested to Magruder that the guns should be attached to the waggon-limbers instead of to their own.  Permission was given, and in a few moments his section was thundering past the cliffs of Chapultepec.  Coming into action within close range of the flying Mexicans, every shot told on their demoralised masses; but before the San Cosme Gate the enemy made a last effort to avert defeat.  Fresh troops were brought up to man the outworks; the houses and gardens which lined the road were filled with skirmishers; from the high parapets of the flat house-tops a hail of bullets struck the head of the pursuing column; and again and again the American infantry, without cover and with little space for movement, recoiled from the attack.

The situation of the invading army, despite the brilliant victory of Chapultepec, was not yet free from peril.  The greater part of the Mexican forces was still intact.  The city contained 180,000 inhabitants, and General Scott’s battalions had dwindled to the strength of a small division.  In the various battles before the capital nearly 3000 officers and men had fallen, and the soldiers who encompassed the walls of the great metropolis were spent with fighting.* (* 862 officers and men fell at Chapultepec.  Scott’s Memoirs.) One spark of the stubborn courage which bore Cortez and his paladins through the hosts of Montezuma might have made of that stately city a second Saragossa.  It was eminently defensible.  The churches, the convents, the public buildings, constructed with that solidity which is peculiarly Spanish, formed each of them a fortress.  The broad streets, crossing each other at right angles, rendered concentration at any threatened point an easy matter, and beyond the walls were broad ditches and a deep canal.

Nor was the strength of the city the greatest of Scott’s difficulties.  Vera Cruz, his base of operations, was two hundred and sixty miles distant; Puebla, his nearest supply-depot, eighty miles.  He had abandoned his communications.  His army was dependent for food on a hostile population.  In moving round Lake Chalco, and attacking the city from the south, he had burned his boats.  A siege or an investment were alike impossible.  A short march would place the enemy’s army across his line of retreat, and nothing would have been easier for the Mexicans than to block the road where it passes between the sierras and the lake.  Guerillas were already hovering in the hills; one single repulse before the gates of the capital would have raised the country in rear; and hemmed in by superior numbers, and harassed by a cavalry which was at least equal to the task of cutting off supplies, the handful of Americans must have cut their way through to Puebla or have succumbed to starvation.