Each May 5, we celebrate Cinco de Mayo. It was in the spring of 1965, while a graduate student at the Pennsylvania State University that I first learned the phrase “Cinco de Mayo.” There was a construction project on campus and someone had spray-painted it on one of those plywood walls surrounding the project.

I didn’t know the meaning of it then, but thought maybe it had something to do with Fidel Castro’s revolution. Boy, was I wrong. At the time, I never pursued it, but found out many years later what it was all about.

Cinco de Mayo honors the time when 4000 Mexican soldiers smashed the French army and a Hapsburg prince by the name of Maximilian who was brought to Mexico to rule this new part of the French Empire, along with his wife, Carolota. On the morning of May 5, 1862 these 4000 men defeated an army of 8,000 at Puebla, Mexico, 100 miles east of Mexico City.

The French had landed in Mexico (along with Spanish and English troops) five months earlier on the pretext of collecting Mexican debts from the newly elected government of democratic President (and Indian) Benito Juarez. The English and Spanish quickly made deals and left. The French, however, had different ideas.

Napoleon detested the United States, and the French came to stay. Napoleon's French Army had not been defeated in 50 years, and it invaded Mexico with the finest modern equipment and with a newly reconstituted Foreign Legion. The French were not afraid of anyone, especially since the United States was embroiled in its own Civil War. (This sounds awfully familiar. George W. Bush might well take a lesson from this. The French also thought they could not be defeated.)

The French Army left the port of Vera Cruz to attack Mexico City to the west. The French assumed that the Mexicans would give up should their capital fall to the enemy as had many European countries. However, under the command of Texas-born General Zaragosa,  the Mexicans awaited the brightly dressed French Dragoons, who led the enemy columns. They also had the best cavalry in the world under the command of Colonel Porfirio Diaz, later to become Mexico's president and dictator.

General Zaragosa ordered Colonel Diaz to take his cavalry out to the French flanks. In response, the French did a most stupid thing, sending their cavalry off to chase Diaz and his men, who proceeded to butcher them. The remaining French infantrymen charged the Mexican defenders through sloppy mud from a thunderstorm and through hundreds of head of stampeding cattle stirred up by Indians armed only with machetes. Many French soldiers were killed or wounded by the time the battle ended, and their cavalry was chased into oblivion by Diaz' superb horsemen miles away.

The Mexicans had won a great victory that kept Napoleon III from supplying the confederate rebels for another year, allowing the United States to build the greatest army the world had ever seen. This Grand Army of the Republic smashed the Confederates at Gettysburg just 14 months after the battle of Pueblo, essentially ending the Civil War.

Union forces were then rushed to the Texas/Mexican border under General Phil Sheridan, who made sure that the Mexicans got all the weapons and ammunition they needed to expel the French. American soldiers were discharged with their uniforms and rifles if they promised to join the Mexican Army to fight the French. The American Legion of Honor marched in the Victory Parade in Mexico City.

If Napoleon had established his empire in Mexico and sided with the Confederacy, the Civil War might have ended differently, but who knows? Nevertheless, another attempt at empire building failed. Perhaps the American attempt at empire building in the Middle East will end in a similar fashion. Again, who knows? But, for now we might well celebrate Napoleon’s defeat in Mexico.

VIVA! el CINCO DE MAYO!!

Note: I got most of this information from the following web site: http://www.vivacincodemayo.org/history.htm . If you are interested, that site contains a number of other links to the subject.