When this new disaster was reported in the capital and among the highlands of Mexico, it spread consternation among the more secluded masses who now began to believe that the heart of the country was seriously menaced. They had doubtless trusted to the traditionary, proverbial strength of San Juan de Ulua, and believed that the danger of disease and storm on the coast would serve to protect Vera Cruz from the attack of unacclimated strangers, during a season of hurricanes. Indeed, it was fortunate that our troops were landed from the transports and men-of-war as early as they were in March, for almost immediately afterwards, and during the siege, one of the most violent northers that ever ravaged these shores raged incessantly, destroying many of the vessels whose warlike freight of men and munitions had been so recently disembarked.
But if the people were ignorant of the true condition and strength of Vera Cruz or its castle, such was not the case with the military men and national authorities. They had made but little effort to guard it against Scott, of whose designed attack they had been long
apprised, and they were probably prevented from doing so chiefly by the plans of Santa Anna, who supposed that Taylor would fall an easy prey to the large Mexican forces in the field at Buena Vista, especially as the American army had been weakened by the abstraction of its regulars for the operations at Vera Cruz. Victorious at Buena Vista, he could have hastened, by forced marches, to attack the invaders on the eastern coast, and under the dismay of his anticipated victory in the north, he unquestionably imagined that they too would have fallen at once into his grasp. Besides these military miscalculations, Mexico was so embarrassed in its pecuniary affairs, and disorganized in its Central Civil Government, that the proper directing power in the capital,—warned as it was,—had neither men nor means at hand to dispose along the coast of the Gulf, or to station at points in its neighborhood whence they might quickly be thrown into positions which were menaced.