CHAPTER X. THE ARMY AND NAVY OF MEXICO.

at least among the troops, to avoid the shedding of blood. Cities have been besieged and bombarded; magnificent arrays of forces have been made on adjacent fields; large camps have been formed and held in readiness; cannons, loaded with cannister and grape, have been discharged along the crowded highways of towns; marksmen have been placed in towers, steeples, and azoteas, to pick off unwary passengers; divisions have been reviewed and manœuvred in sight of each other, but, in all these revolts or pronunciamientos, no pitched battles were fought which actually terminated the contest by the gun and sword. The aspirant chief, or the hero he designed to displace, managed to secure the majority of the neighboring military forces, and as soon as the fact was unequivocally ascertained, the one who was in the minority fled from the scene without provoking a trial by battle. In 1840, 1841, and 1844, during the administrations of Bustamante and Santa Anna, there were various exhibitions of these sham contests; but, in all of them, we have reason to believe that the innocent non-combatant people were the greatest sufferers, and that the army escaped comparatively unscathed.