pieces) and a supply of ammunition up the steep to the summit, remounted it, and to the consternation of the Mexicans made the Palace untenable. The garrison was driven out and pursued by the infantry, the Saltillo road cleared, and Worth's division closed in. The fate of the Mexican army was thus sealed, they were driven from house to house, towards the great square of the Cathedral, and there compelled to surrender. Duncan had redeemed his pledge to take his guns wherever infantry could go.

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But it was at Buena Vista that the artillery crowned its work in the Mexican War. Here, in February, 1847, whilst Scott's army was preparing to land at Vera Cruz, General Taylor, with a force of less than 5000 volunteers, the regulars consisting of only three batteries and two squadrons, met on the open field, and defeated, four times his number led by President Santa Anna in person. At the close of two days' fighting the Mexican army, reserves and all, were driving our troops before them. At the vital point, General Taylor and his adjutant-general, Bliss, with two guns of Washington's battery under O'Brien, tried in vain to check the onset. The horses and men were all killed or wounded, and having fired the last gun with his own hands O'Brien hobbled off, being himself wounded, and barely escaped capture. Captain Bragg, -now commanding Ringgold's old battery, Ridgeley having died at Monterey, -seeing the imminent peril, left the position at which he had been posted, and came up through the retreating infantry, under whip and spur, to General Taylor, who ordered him at once into battery. Bragg, with a rueful look at the retiring infantry, remarked as he was doing this, "I will lose my guns, for I have no supports." "Oh!" replied General Taylor, " Bliss and I will support you."

The remainder of the story is best told in Taylor's own words, copied from his official report:

"The moment was critical. Captain O'Brien with two pieces had sustained this heavy charge to the very last, and

was finally obliged to leave his guns on the field, his infantry support being entirely routed. Captain Bragg, who had just arrived from the left, was ordered at once into battery. Without any infantry to support him, and at the imminent risk of losing his guns, this officer came rapidly into action, the Mexican lines being but a few yards from the muzzle of his pieces. The first discharge of canister caused the enemy to hesitate, the second and third drove him back in disorder and saved the day."

Of the artillery in general he says,—

"The services of the light artillery, always conspicuous, were more than usually distinguished. Moving rapidly over the roughest ground, it was always in action at the right place and at the right time, and its well-directed fire dealt destruction in the masses of the enemy. While I recommend to particular favor the gallant conduct and valuable services of Major Munroe, chief of artillery, and Captains Washington, 4th Artillery, and Sherman and Bragg, 3d Artillery, commanding batteries, I deem it no more than just to mention all the subaltern officers. They were nearly all detached at different times, and in every situation exhibited conspicuous skill and gallantry."

There is no need of reciting the exploits of the artillery on General Scott's line, from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, which sustained the already well-established reputation of the arm. We may, however, pause a moment to acknowledge the debt of gratitude due by the artillery, the army, and the country, to Secretary Poinsett, to whose personal care and foresight it was due that we had any instructed field artillery, or even a drill book by which batteries could be trained; and to General Scott for making these batteries, when mounted, schools in which eight or ten lieutenants in each regiment had received practical instruction before the Mexican War broke out. Nor were we less fortunate in the officers selected for such instruction, the names of a few of whom may still be

recognized: Duncan, - the ablest soldier of the Mexican War,- Ringgold, Washington, Taylor, Bragg, T. W. Sherman, O'Brien, Mackall, Hays, George H. Thomas, John F. Reynolds, Fitz John Porter, D. H. Hill, Stonewall Jackson, Couch. With such names, taken from the very short list of light artillery officers in Mexico, we cannot doubt that if now allowed to do so the artillery would soon make itself, either as an arm of service or as a scientific corps, second to none in

our own or in any other army.

Now one word in illustration as to the foot artillery. A siege train was formed for service at Vera Cruz and brought out by an ordnance detachment. It was of the new model which no artillerist present had probably ever seen. After the batteries were constructed by the engineers, and the guns placed in position by the ordnance, details were called for from the artillery regiments, which were serving as infantry, to man them. Then was presented a curious spectacle. Officers of artillery regiments, which had been in service nominally as such for twenty-six years, were seen pencil and paper in hand devising a drill, and the next day the men received their very first lesson in the use of their arm, whilst under a heavy cannonade. No comment is necessary.

At the close of the war the artillery was exultant. It had shown the stuff of which it was composed, the defects in its organization had been made manifest, and, it was assumed, would be remedied, for Congress had responded to every official suggestion in its favor,-had, for instance, in 1847, doubled the number of light batteries, and a bright future seemed before it. Its hopes were soon blasted by the War Department, which immediately dismounted the four new batteries, and soon after, temporarily, two of the old ones. It was also attempted to deprive them of their permanent designation, and convert them into "patronage." An effort was also made to oust the foot artillery from the fortifications, as it had been previously ousted from the armories and arsenals, and to con

vert it practically into infantry. These attempts were foiled, but a bill presented by General Shields, chairman of the Military Committee of the Senate, to reorganize the artillery and give it a chief, was defeated by active opposition coming from officers of the War Department. General Shields then asked for and obtained, in spite of official opposition, a specific appropriation for remounting the four light batteries of 1847. This was granted, on a direct issue made by the Secretary of War, Mr. Conrad, to decide if it was the intention of Congress to keep these batteries permanently mounted. The new Secretary of War, Mr. Jefferson Davis, delayed carrying out the law for months, then, on the plea that the appropriation was insufficient for all four, refused to mount Magruder's battery and sent the three newly mounted ones to remote expensive frontier posts, where it was impossible to make or keep them efficient, and where, even if efficient, they would be useless. At the end of three years he dismounted them again. The sequel is interesting. The next spring Colonel Magruder applied to Davis' successor, Secretary Floyd, to mount his battery. Mr. Floyd wished to do so, but told Magruder that he was advised there were no funds available. A gentleman present remarked that there was some mistake about that, for there had been for several years on the books of the Treasury-of which he was an official - a special credit for that very purpose. On this being verified, Magruder was mounted. It was the old special appropriation procured by General Shields four years before. The extravagant expenditures, worse than useless, on the three other batteries, had been made from the ordinary appropriations, and showed of just what value was the plea of want of means to keep the batteries mounted and efficient, for they had been sent to stations that trebled their necessary mounted cost. To an application to remount the other three batteries, Mr. Floyd replied that it would be presumptuous in him, a civilian, to do this when Mr. Davis, an educated soldier, had just dismounted them as unnecessary. He was

then informed that fortunately Mr. Davis in his last annual report had given his reasons for dismounting them, that they were unsound, and that the War Department had settled, adversely to the arm, an important professional artillery question, without giving the artillery itself a hearing. Permission was asked, and granted, to present the artillery side through General Scott; and a brief statement of the argument may be of interest. The Minié rifle had just been tested in the Crimean War, and pronounced "the queen of weapons," and rifled cannon were as yet unknown. Straightway military sciolists rushed to crude conclusions, and Secretary Davis reported to Congress that the "improvement in small arms, whereby their range is greatly increased, must to a certain extent supersede the necessity for cannon of small calibre," and he had therefore dismounted half the light artillery. To this it was replied that when small arms were still further improved, so that they could demolish field works and other cover, it would be early enough to consider how far they could replace artillery; that the tendency to resort to such cover would now be greater than ever; that heretofore artillery could take position beyond musket range, and do their work in comparative safety; that this work must still be done, but under greater disadvantages, for it must now be under infantry as well as artillery fire. Hence the legitimate result of the improvement in small arms was an absolute necessity for a more numerous, powerful, and better instructed artillery. At the very time that Mr. Davis was destroying our field artillery, the "Grand Staff" added a field battery of eight guns to each Prussian army corps. As to open field fighting, which alone Mr. Davis could have had in view, his whole argument rested necessarily on the assumption that artillery could not contend with infantry within musket range. Yet at Buena Vista, when the Mexican army was sweeping our infantry regiments before it, Bragg's battery passed through the retreating troops and proved itself superior to our own infantry for defence, and to the Mexican infantry for