Spanish cavalry scouting in Mexico.
Chapter Nineteen: The Battle for Mexico
The war of February 1871 to October 1872 was fought mostly by the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain, was nominally waged over a slice of Guatemala and would be decided in Costa Rica and Honduras. Naturally it was called the 'Battle for Mexico' by almost everyone.
In justice the Mexicans did suffer perhaps more than any of the involved powers, facing several bloody defeats on the field and having up to a third of their country occupied by the Americans at one point. The United States had not wished for war but having defeated the Confederates so recently the jingo feeling was still strong in Philadelphia and New York and there was deep concern over the encroachment of foreign rivals. As many troops would be committed to the invasion of Mexico as had fought in the Civil War a decade before and for a time in late 1871 the government in Washington DC openly expressed the intention to annex Sonora to punish Mexico and permanently hobble her as a power.
For the Spanish the only troops immediately available in early 1871 were those in Honduras under General Benito Asensio. Asensio commanded about twelve thousand soldiers, an mix of light cavalry and mountain artillery whose role hitherto had been as a reserve to aid the forces embroiled in South America. Asensio was under no illusions that his men could win the war unaided, but nor could he simply sit on his hands in Honduras. Faced with threats to both his south (from Costa Rica and Nicaragua) and to his north (from Guatemala) the Spanish commander marched on Guatemala. At the Battle of Guatemala City in March, Don Benito crushed the Guatemalans. After this victory the Spanish temporarily abandoned the Central American front to try and aid the Mexicans against the Americans. Asensio participated in the joint Spanish-Mexican triumph at the Battle of Rosarito in August, before his own decisive defeat at the First Battle of Nogales the following month.
The early clashes with the Americans were bloody but enlightening for the Spanish. The technology gap between the two sides was not vast; indeed most soldiers on both sides used the (French) Minié rifle, though more modern breechloaders were slowly making their way into the common infantry-man's hands. The Yankees in their heavy Prussian blue woolen uniforms and hard felt hats disdained the lightweight pinstripe blue and white 'pajamas' and straw hats used by their enemy. The Spanish, whose uniform was the result of hard won experience in the tropics claimed they could smell the enemy from a mile away as they were marinated in their own sweat. The one aspect that did genuinely distress the men from Madrid was the seemingly limitless supplies their enemy could command. American artillery could often fire three of four shots to every one Spain could command, and the food available to the common soldier from Maine or Ohio, though often bland to Spanish eyes far outpaced the scale of rations available to most Spaniards.
Theoretically the Spanish Army and the Imperial Mexican Army should have been working together. At times, such as at Rosarito they managed such a feat but often rivalries and suspicions between the two armies lingered. Many officers and men had served on opposing sides in the war of the previous decade and fights could erupt whenever the soldiers shared camp. Broken noses and grazed knuckles occasionally threatened to take more troops out of fighting condition than the conventional illness that plagued armies on the march. In one incident that left the generals aghast a... disagreement over a lady of the evening in Cócorit resulted in a duel that left a Spanish artillery captain dead and a Mexican lieutenant permanently blind.
The Second Battle of Nogales, 2 to 4 June 1872.
A far worse outcome was the disastrous Second Battle of Nogales in June 1872. General Francisco O'Donnell, a cousin of the famed Don Leopoldo had commanded the Spanish forces shipped directly to Mexico from across the Atlantic. Francisco O'Donnell was a lean fifty year old officer whose Hibernian heritage showed in his pale complexion and stark gray eyes. An expert raider, hellbent on harrying the enemy O'Donnell had inflicted several minor defeats on the enemy and even raided as far north as San Diego, putting the fear of God in the populace of California. Unfortunately for him his relations with the Mexican Army were poor even by the standards of the war. At Nogales in Sonara, not far from the Mexican-American border he faced Edward Grant, the daring Boston born general who might have been one of the finest military men of the century. O'Donnell, counting on Mexican reinforcements that never arrived found himself attacking well fortified American lines. The result was Spain's worst defeat since Cadiz in 1848. O'Donnell managed to escape but left thousands behind as either corpses or captives [1].
Second Nogales did not knock Spain out of the war, but it did have two immediate outcomes. The first was a greater effort to work with the Mexicans. Ironically the Mexican elections of 1872 that had swept the conservatives from power in México City proved helpful. The Marqués de Mendigorría regarded José María Iglesias, the new liberal leader in the Mexican Congreso as a republican (a suspicion not without foundation) but the liberals were willing to work with the Spanish as a means to outflank Don Miguel Miramón. Miramón himself remained Viceroy but his power base had been badly eroded when his conservative coalition had been defeated at the polls.
The second result of the defeat at Nogales was to look at other routes to winning the war than simply pouring soldiers into Mexico. The end of the war with Ecuador had opened up new possibilities. Spain's two greatest allies, the Confederate States of America and the Empire of Brazil had hitherto been neutral. The Richmond government would remain neutral, but it was a stance openly biased towards Madrid. Spanish soldiers were allowed to traverse Confederate territory without fear of consequences, to the chagrin of General Grant who more than once was forced to watch his opponents disappear beyond the Rio Grande. Though there were no war subsidies as such - Dixie's economy was too frail for such a thing - Spanish and Mexican brigades could count on cheaper food and textiles along those areas of the Mexican border that remained beyond the reach of the blue uniformed armies.
Brazil had no such qualms about staying out of the war and with Ecuador now firmly in Spain's orbit the Rio government answered Madrid's request. Brazil was unlikely to supply many actual fighting men for North America (Central America was another story) but her economy was robust and her navy large if old fashioned. The Armada Real Española had already enjoyed superiority along the Atlantic coast of the United States, keeping the United States Navy rotting at anchor in Norfolk. The addition of the Brazilian Armada Imperial, the fifth largest fleet afloat turned superiority into supremacy and the Spanish government began to contemplate a direct naval landing at Washington DC to capture the American capital in one swift devastating blow.
The landings at the Potomac, September 1872.
While all this was taking place the Central American front was not quiet. Guatemala, the nation over whom the entire war was being fought had surrendered as early as Christmas Eve 1871. The Mexicans had overrun the entire country and in such circumstances the peace demand from México City was lenient: the immediate annexation of the Chiapas region. Don Francisco de Lersundi y Hormaechea, the Captain General of Honduras represented Spain in the negotiations in the last days of 1871.
The surrender of Guatemala theoretically ended the war but the other powers were determined to fight on. Nicaragua and Costa Rica between them could field perhaps twenty thousand men and neither wished to abandon the chance to weaken Spain and Mexico.
At the start of 1872 Spain still had about thirty thousand men in South America. Ecuador still stubbornly held out, and would until April, but that still left six brigades 'free'. Not surprisingly the Marqués de Mendigorría wanted those soldiers moved to Mexico by sea to reinforce Francisco O'Donnell. Leopoldo O'Donnell stubbornly insisted on marching them to Mexico the long way, invading Costa Rica and Nicuragua en route. More than anyone else the Spanish War Minister had realised that control of the peninsula was key to the war, even beyond the nominally grander conflict being waged in Mexico. If Spain annexed Costa Rica and Nicuragua it would probably push Colombia into the war on the Spanish side; the government in Bogotá was friendly with both Madrid and Washington DC and had attempted to balance her neutrality til now. If that happened and the war was still stuck in Mexico then the Confederate States might be tempted to break their truce with the United States, and even if they did not that truce was bound to expire in 1874.
Don Leopoldo O'Donnell's strategy was a great gamble, and one that looked positively reckless after the Second Battle of Nogales. With the Americans across the border in force he had effectively reassigned more than forty thousand soldiers away from Mexico - the original eighteen thousand in Costa Rica, gradually being reinforced by twelve thousand from the now defeated Ecuador and another twelve thousand engaged in the Washington landings. Taken together these men represented nearly half the available brigades in the Americas.
In the first half of 1872 the Spanish under General Vincente Argüelles-Meres overran Costa Rica proper, taking the capital city of San José and the seaport of Puntarenas (the fall of the latter resulted in the only sea battle of the war where the Costa Rican Man-o'war Juan Mora Fernández (74-gun) and two armed clippers were sunk by a small Spanish squadron.) Reaching Honduras he crushed the Nicaraguans at Comayagua. On 18 May he defeated the Costa Rican Army in the field outside San Salvador before turning north and liberating La Cebia, in enemy hands for several weeks. At the Second Battle of San Salvador on 12 August Argüelles-Meres comprehensively defeated the last elements of the Costa Rican Army.
On 15 September after a long bombardment of the shore positions The Spanish landed troops on the west bank of the Potomac. The following morning the first artillery shells began falling on the American capital. The damage was minimal and President Simon Cameron and the rest of his government had already evacuated but within hours the Richmond newspapers would be printing the first (sensationalised) reports of Washington in flames [2].
The furthest extent of the American advance into Mexico, late 1872.
Even as the war had arrived on the President's doorstep peace negotiations were taking place. As early as August with the collapse of Costa Rica Cameron had been sending out peace feelers through the offices of the French embassy. By 5 September the Americans were in direct contact with the Spanish and considering terms.
Cameron would forever be hounded by the popular press for the peace he would ultimately sign. The anger felt was understandable; though the United States Army had suffered reverses in the field it was still firmly in possession of Mexican territory. A potent myth would quickly develop that Cameron, never a beloved figure, had lost his nerve at the final moment and sold of the family silver.
The truth is more complicated. Cameron's stance in September 1872 was pessimistic but it wasn't out of line with the facts. The American position was gradually deteriorating. With Central America in Spanish hands Francisco O'Donnell could look forward to thousands of reinforcements, potentially including Brazilian regiments. Once installed in San José or the Nicuraguan capital of Mangua the Spanish would prove very difficult to shift. American overseas trade had dwindled to nothing as the Spanish and Brazilian fleets patrolled the sea. Even before the first cannon was fired at the Capitol the Americans had very good reasons to seek peace.
The Treaty of San Salvador was negotiated in November of that year between the governments of Spain, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Spain and her allies agreed to respect the governments of Nicaragua and Costa Rica and to observe pre-war borders. Surprisingly the sole territorial exchange would be from the United States to the neutral Confederate States of America. At Spanish insistence the United States abrogated their gains in 1869, returning the Arizona Territory to the Confederacy in an exchange for monetary compensation. It was a severe humiliation for the United States and an unexpected delight for the Confederacy but the Marqués de Roncali had argued persuasively that it would prevent a new war breaking out within months: Arizona was of little value in and of itself but Dixie would fight for it [3].
Ultimately the Empire of Mexico 'won' the war at a fearful cost in lives; they had succeeded in annexing territory that they had claimed for over forty years. However the lingering effects meant that in a real way no one won. The governments in Madrid and Washington had been forced by circumstances only partially in their control to become bitter rivals and that sentiment seemed like it would linger. In some respects the war did not end in San Salvador, the weapons simply changed to diplomatic and economic influence rather than rifles and steamships.
North America After the Treaty of San Salvador, the end of 1872.
Footnotes:
[1] The Second Battle of Nogales was the result of me trying to be a bit too clever and timing my army to arrive with a Mexican force; naturally they changed their minds at the last minute. That said the Americans having a superb leader in Grant and my dreadful luck with the dice roll played a part in the severity of the defeat.
[2] Washington had not yet fallen at the time of peace but it had almost done so.
[3] Essentially the war was decided by Costa Rica who were the leaders of the 'American' alliance in-game. In fairness the advantage of forces was with me, so I think I could have achieved something similar the hard way. As for Arizona that was chosen because the United States does not in fact have cores there.
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