Advance, Halt, and Gentlemen Change
of May, almost immediately after his triumph at Cerro Gordo, he was compelled to part with seven out of his eleven regiments of volunteers, numbering in the aggregate 4,000 men.
Which left him confronting a precarious situation: Scott was now at Puebla, within two days' march of Mexico City, his army being reduced to 5,820 effective men. He must sit tight and if possible cling to what he had conquered, while the enemy, profiting by our numskullery and delay, reorganized an army of five times his number. Abandoning Jalapa, cut off from his base of supplies, Scott's marvelous victories were about to go for nothing, and his campaign seemed on the verge of collapse.
Army officers to-day insist that if General Scott's small force of regulars had then been captured, 100,000 recruits and inexperienced officers would not have been sufficient to retrieve the disaster.
Scott's little army lay at Puebla for more than two months, while regiments were being
[121]
