Chapter XXVII.

General Twiggs told them that to x\mpudia, xYrista,__and Santa Anna did these men owe their deaths, for they stooped to the low business of soliciting desertion from our ranks, and had succeeded in seducing from duty and allegiance the poor wretches who had to pay so dearly for their crimes." This was in September. On the 13th of the 7iext month, we have an official despatch to General Scott, from Colonel Childs, dated at Puebhi, in which he says, " T should be unjust to myself, and the Spy Company under Captain Pedro Aria, if I did not call the attention of the General-in-Chief to their invaluable ser- vices. From them I received the most accurate information of the movements of the enemy, and the designs of the citizens ; through them I was enabled to apprehend several officers and citizens in their nightly meetings, to consummate their plans for raising the populace. The Spy Com^M\j fought gallantly, and are now so compro- mised, that they must leave the country when our army retires." Says the Neio Orleans Picayune, " The Mexi- can Spy Company is described as a rough-looking set of men. They fight with ropes about their necks, as the saying is, and therefore they fight gallantly. We under- stand that we have altogether about 450 of this description of men in our pay." Thus it appears, we had in our army a corps of Mexican scoundrels—and, as the news- papers state, organized and taken into pay by order of General Scott himself. These men joined the invaders of their native land—-betrayed their fellow-citizens into the hands of a foreign enemy—went with that enemy into the battle, and gallantly aided them in slaughtering their neighbors and countrymen, and all this for pay ! " They fight with ropes about their necks." Should any of them be hereafter suspended by these ropes, may they not be told that they o-n^e their death to the General, who " stooped to the low business of seducing them from duty and allegiance?" Fifty Irish deserters are hanged as miserable convicts ; but a gang of 450 Mexican spies, traitors, and murderers, are recommended by an American Colonel to the attention of the Commander-in-Chief, for their "invaluable services." Such are the honor and mo- rality of war.