ons, are scarcely altered. The bravery and ferocity of the
Mexicans, who were--and are--among the most expert horsemen in the
world, would have rendered the advance over the intervening
topographical wastes between Mexico's frontier and her capital of
extremely doubtful issue. Attack was made, therefore, by sea, and an
army of 12,000 men under General Winfield Scott landed at Vera Cruz on
March 9, 1847. By September of the same year Vera Cruz, Puebla
Contreras, Molino del Rey, Chapultepec, had all been the scene of
strenuous engagements; but Mexico was to lose, and the invading
Anglo-Saxons, having eaten their way to the heart of the Latin
Republic, against considerable odds, occupied the capital on September
14, 1847.

Split into factions by political strife, which even the hammering at
their gates of a common enemy had not sufficed to heal, Mexico received
a terrible lesson. The history of Mexico had repeated itself. Just as
Cortes and his Spaniards had penetrated from Vera Cruz to Tenochtitlan,
thanks to dissensions among the Aztec inhabitants of the country, so
had the Americans ascended over the same route to a similar victory by
analogous circumstances. Even whilst the victorious forces of the
Anglo-Saxons were marching onwards, the mad political generals and
transient Presidents of Mexico were launching _pronunciamientos_,
fighting among themselves, and shedding the blood of their own
countrymen; and not until February 2, 1848, was peace entered into with
the Americans, and the treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo signed. Mexico
ceded to the United States under this agreement the area of an empire!
Texas had already been lost; California and New Mexico[21] were given
up now, rich and extensive regions, although little known at the time,
as indemnity for which the United States Government paid the sum of
fifteen million dollars.

[Footnote 21: The English reader may ask, Where is New Mexico? It is
that territory lying between Arizona and Texas, forming part of the
American Union.]

So was concluded what the Mexicans have termed "the unjust war," and
the historian will probably not feel called upon to dispute the
designation. Great bitterness of feeling between the two nations was
aroused on account of this conquest and cession of territory, which,
among the Mexicans of the great plateau, is, even at the present day,
far from being forgotten. It was but a short time after the cession of
California that gold was discove