REFLECTIONS ON THE BATTLE. 195 3d infantry, was wounded, losing a part of his left hand. It was in the midst of the thunder-crash of battle, when the dying fell thickest, and when the crisis was at hand. It was a plunging fire; and after thus wounding Captain Patten, the ball struck a rock which it broke into fragments, one of which cut down and wounded the second sergeant of Captain Patten's company. While Captain Patten was yet in the field, holding with his right hand the arm of the shattered left, General Scott rode slowly by, "under a canopy," to use Captain Patten's expression, "of cannon-balls." Seeing a wounded man, and supposing him to be a soldier, he exclaimed, slacking his pace, "There is a brave soldier badly wounded, I fear;" and then, being told by an officer that it was Captain Patten, the general halted, and called to Captain Patten to inquire the nature of the wound; but in the roar of battle he was not heard. Captain Patten spoke with enthusiasm as well of the calm and soldierly bearing of his gallant commander, amid the thickest and hottest of this murderous cannonade, as of his ready sympathy with, and attention to the wounded men and officers. When the battle was closed, the hoped-for victory had become reality, and the future no longer absorbed all the mind, Scott hastened to the side of the wounded. It was from a hospital of wounded and sick, that his first official report, dated April 19th, was despatched. An officer who was present in these scenes, relates that General Scott visited in person the wounded, and saw, himself, that they were attended in the best manner. His men were in all cases, when the events of the campaign allowed him any time for thought on other subjects, his first care. He was ever as humane as heroic. He attended the bedside of the sick with cholera in the Northwest, and he now visited and aided, in the hospitals of the wounded of Cerro Gordo. Soon after this event, and on the occupation of Jalapa, he caused the removal of the wounded and sick to the more comfortable and healthier quarters in that town. Among these was the brave Shields, in whose dangerous condition he deeply sympathized. can army It will be recollected that Santa Anna's carriage, with a large amount of specie, was captured, just after the Mexifled from the field. Whatever of this property belonged personally to Santa Anna, Scott was most careful to return to his agent and man of business. It was a principle with General Scott, which he has most carefully carried out, that war was not a scheme for robbery, but the honorable contest of nations for national rights. He suffers no plunder of private property, no aggression on the rights of citizens, and he is most anxious to vindicate the American soldier and the American name from that barbarism which would convert war into the pillage of plunderers, and the glory of victory into the grossness of brutality. The following is the official despatch of the commander-in-chief : HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, PLAN DEL RIO, 50 miles from Vera Cruz, April 19, 1847. SIR: The plan of attack, sketched in General Orders, No. 111, forwarded herewith, was finely executed by this gallant army, before two o'clock P. M. yesterday. We are quite em barrassed with the results of victory-prisoners of war, heavy ordnance, field batteries, small-arms, and accoutrements. About 3,000 men laid down their arms, with the usual |