The Freebooters. Gustave Aimard
and despise a profession regarded with so little honour by the respectable classes of society. In a corps so badly organised, where discipline does not exist, and military education is a nullity, any esprit de corps must be unknown, and that is the case. And yet this army has been good, and it counts magnificent exploits on its books; its soldiers and officers displayed great bravery in the critical phases of the War of Independence.
But at the present day everything is dead, the feeling of duty is despised, and honour—that powerful stimulus to the soldier—is trampled under foot. Duelling, that necessary evil to a certain point to make the soldier respect the cloth he wears, is forbidden under the severest penalties; and if you horsewhip a Mexican officer, or call him a coward or a scoundrel, the only risk you run is of being treacherously assassinated.
It needs a lengthened apprenticeship to become a soldier and obtain the proper spirit; it is only after long and serious study, when he has suffered great privations, and looked death several times in the face, that a man acquires that knowledge and coolness which enable him to sacrifice his life without calculation, and fulfil the duties of a true soldier.
Most of the Mexican generals would blush at their ignorance if they found themselves face to face with the lowest non-commissioned officer of our army; for they know absolutely nothing, and have not the least idea of their art. With Mexican officers all is reduced to this: changing the scarf. The colonel wears a red one, the brigadier-general's is green, and that of the general of division white. It is for the purpose of obtaining the last colour that all the pronunciamentos are made.
Badly clothed, badly fed, and badly paid, the Mexican troops are a scourge to the civilian population, whom they shamelessly and pitilessly squeeze upon the slightest pretext. From what we have written, it is easy to see how an armed corps thus disorganised must be dangerous to everybody, for it knows no restraint, and lives beyond the law which it despises. The present state of Mexico proves the incontestable truth of our assertions.
We have not wished to enter into personalities, but treated the question generally, seeking to show what it is really. There are, we allow, some officers of merit—a few truly honourable men—in this unhappy army; but they are pearls lost in the mud, and the number is so limited, that if we quoted all their names, we should not reach a hundred. This is the more sad, because the further Mexico goes, the nearer it approaches the catastrophe; and, ere long, the evil that undermines this fair country will be incurable, and it will sink for ever—not under the blows of strangers, but assassinated by its own children.
General Don José Maria Rubio was in no way distinguished from the herd of Mexican officers, but he possessed over those who surrounded him the immense advantage of being a soldier of the war of Independence, and in him experience amply compensated for his lack of education. His history was simple, and may be told in a few words.
Son of an evangelista or public writer at Tampico, he had with great difficulty learned a little reading and writing under the auspices of his father; this pretence at education, slight as it was, was destined to be of great utility to him at a later date. The great uprising, of which the celebrated Fray Hidalgo was the promoter, and which inaugurated the revolution, found young José Maria wandering about the neighbourhood of Tampico, where he gained a livelihood by the most heterogeneous trades. The young man—a little bit of a muleteer, a little bit of a fisherman, and a good deal of a smuggler—intoxicated by the smell of gunpowder, and fascinated by the omnipotent influence Hidalgo exercised over all those who approached him, threw his gun over his shoulder, mounted the first horse he came across, and gaily followed the revolutionary band. From that moment his life was only one long succession of combats.
He became in a short time, thanks to his courage, energy, and presence of mind, one of the guerillas most feared by the Spaniards; always the first in attack, the last to retreat. Chief of a cuadrilla composed of picked men, to whom the most daring and wild expeditions appeared but child's play, and favoured by constant good luck, for fortune ever loves the rash, José Maria soon became a terror to the Spaniards, and his mere name inspired them with indescribable terror. After serving in turn under all the heroes of the Mexican war of Independence, and fighting bravely by their side, peace found him a brigadier-general.
General Rubio was not ambitious; he was a brave and honest soldier, who loved his profession passionately, and who needed to render him happy the roll of the drum, the lustre of arms, and military life in its fullest extent. When he fought, the idea never occurred to him that the war would end some day or other; and hence he was quite surprised and perfectly demoralised when peace was made and independence proclaimed.
The worthy General looked round him. Everybody was preparing to retire to the bosom of his family, and enjoy a repose do dearly purchased. Don José Maria might perhaps have desired nothing better than to follow the example; but his family was the army, and he had, or at least was acquainted with, no other. During the ten years' fighting which had just elapsed, the General had completely lost out of sight all the relations he possessed. His father, whose death he learned accidentally, was the sole person whose influence might have brought him to abandon a military career, but the paternal hearth was cold. Nothing attracted him to the province, and he therefore remained under the banner, though not through ambition. We repeat that the worthy soldier did himself justice, and recognised the fact that he had attained a position far superior to any he might ever have dared to desire; but he could not live alone or abandon old friends with whom he had so long suffered, combated—in a word, shared good and evil fortune.
The different Chiefs, who immediately began coveting power, and succeeded each other in the presidential chair, far from fearing the general, whose simple and honest character was known to them, on the contrary sought his friendship, and lavished on him proofs of the most frank and real protection; for they felt convinced that he would never abuse their confidence in him.
At the period when the Texans began agitating and claiming their independence, the Mexican Government, deceived at the outset by the agents appointed to watch that state, sent insufficient forces to re-establish order, and crush the insurgents: but the movement soon assumed such a distinctly revolutionary character, that the President found it urgent to make an effective demonstration. Unfortunately it was too late; the dissatisfaction had spread: it was no longer a question of suppressing a revolt, but stifling a revolution, which is not at all the same thing.
The President of the Mexican Republic then learned at his own cost that, in every human question, there is something more powerful than the brute force of bayonets: it is the idea whose time has come and hour struck. The troops sent to Texas were beaten and driven back on all sides; in short, they were compelled to treat with the insurgents, and withdraw ignominiously.
The government could not, and would not, accept such a dishonouring check inflicted by badly-armed and undisciplined bands, and they resolved to make a last and decisive effort. Numerous troops were massed on the Texan frontiers; and to terrify the insurgents, and finish with them at one blow, a grand military demonstration was made.
But the war then changed its character: the Texans, nearly all North Americans, skilful hunters, indefatigable marchers, and marksmen of proverbial reputation, broke up into small bands, and instead of offering the Mexican troops a front, which would have enabled them to outmanoeuvre and crush them, they began a hedge war, full of tricks and ambushes, after the manner of the Vendeans, the first result of which was to enormously fatigue the soldiers by compelling them to make continual marches and counter-marches, and produced among them discouragement and demoralization, by compelling to fight against a shifting foe, whom they knew to be everywhere, and yet could never seize.
The position became more and more critical. These outlaws, branded with the epithets of bandits, border ruffians, and freebooters, whom they affected to confound with the villains who congregate in these countries, and whom they obstinately treated as such by granting them no quarter, and shooting them without trial wherever they were captured: these men, now disciplined, hardened, and strong in the moral support of their fellow citizens, who applauded their successes, and put up vows for them, had boldly raised the flag of Texan independence, and after several engagements, in which they decimated the troops sent against them, compelled the latter to recognize them as the avowed defenders of an honourable cause.