The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

Meanwhile the Orozco rebellion had arisen in the north, and became so threatening that General Gonzalez Salas, Madero's War Minister, felt called upon to resign his portfolio to take the field against Orozco. General Salas, after organizing a fairly formidable-looking force of 3,500 regulars and three batteries of field artillery at Torreon, rushed into the fray, only to suffer a disgraceful defeat in his first battle at Rellano, in Chihuahua, not far from Torreon. General Salas took his defeat so much to heart that he committed suicide on his way back to Torreon. This, together with the panic-stricken return of his army to Torreon, caused the greatest dismay at the Capital, the inhabitants of which already believed themselves threatened by an irresistible advance of Orozco's rebel followers. None of the federal generals at the front were considered strong enough to stem the tide.

The only available federal general of high rank, who had any experience in commanding large forces in the field, was Victoriano Huerta. President Madero, in his extremity, called upon Huerta to reorganize the badly disordered forces at Torreon, and to take the field against Orozco, "cost what it may." This was toward the end of March, 1912.

General Huerta, whom the army had come to regard as "shelved," lost no time in getting to Torreon. There he soon found that the situation was by no means so black as it had been painted—General Trucy Aubert, who had been cut off with one of the columns of the army, having cleverly extricated his force from its dangerous predicament so as to bring it safely back to the base at Torreon without undue loss of men or prestige.

Thenceforth no expense was saved by General Huerta in bringing the army to better fighting efficiency. Heavy reenforcements of regulars, especially of field artillery, were rushed to Torreon from the Capital, and large bodies of volunteers and irregulars were sent after them from all parts of the Republic.

President Madero had said: "Let it cost what it may"; so all the preparation went forward regardless of cost. "Hang the expense!" became the blithe motto of the army.

When General Huerta at last took the field against Orozco, early in May, his federal army, now swelled to more than six thousand men and twenty pieces of field artillery, moved to the front in a column of eleven long railway trains, each numbering from forty to sixty cars, loaded down with army supplies and munitions of all kinds, besides a horde of several thousand camp followers, women, sutlers, and other non-combatants. The entire column stretched over a distance of more than four miles. The transportation and sustenance of this unwieldy column, which had to carry its own supply of drinking water, it was estimated, cost the Mexican Government nearly 350,000 pesos per day. Its progress was exasperatingly slow, owing to the fact that the Mexican Central Railway, which was Huerta's only chosen line of advance, had to be repaired almost rail by rail.

After more than a fortnight's slow progress, General Huerta struck Orozco's forces at Conejos, in Chihuahua, near the branch line running out to the American mines at Mapimi. Orozco's forces, finding themselves heavily outnumbered and overmatched in artillery, hastily evacuated Conejos, retreating northward up the railway line by means of some half-dozen railway trains. Several weeks more passed before Huerta again struck Orozco's forces at Rellano, in Chihuahua, close to the former battlefield, along the railway, where his predecessor, General Gonzalez Salas, had come to grief. This was in June.

Huerta, with nearly twice as many men and three times as much artillery, drove Orozco back along the line of the railway after a two days' long-range artillery bombardment, against which the rebels were powerless. This battle, in which the combined losses in dead and wounded on both sides were less than 200, was described in General Huerta's official report as "more terrific than any battle that had been fought in the Western Hemisphere during the last fifty years." In his last triumphant bulletin from the field, General Huerta telegraphed to President Madero that his brave men had driven the enemy from the heights with a final fierce bayonet charge, and that their bugle blasts of victory could be heard even then on the crest.

Pascual Orozco, on the other hand, reported to the revolutionary Junta in El Paso that he had ordered his men to retire before the superior force of the federals, and that they had accomplished this without disorder by the simple process of boarding their waiting trains and steaming slowly off to the north, destroying the bridges and culverts behind him as they went along. One of my fellow war correspondents, who served on the rebel side during this battle, afterward told me that the federals, whose bugle calls Huerta heard on the heights, did not get up to this position until two days after the rebels had abandoned their trenches along the crest.