Sketches of the campaign in northern Mexico : in eighteen hundred forty-six and seven / by an officer of the First Regiment of Ohio volunteers.

STORMING OF THE INDEPENDENCIA. 193
was perched upon the highest point of a hill, eight hundred
feet in hight, and which from its steepness was almost inaccessible, save on the eastern side, where it gently descended
toward the Bishop's Castle, and thence down to the street by
which the Saltillo road enters the city. It was deemed by
the enemy impregnable. I well remember the astonishment
with which the Mexican officers, who were prisoners in our
camp at San Domingo, received the intelligence that General
Worth had carried the Independencia.
Lieutenant Colonel Childs was assigned to lead the storming party, which consisted of three companies of the artillery
battalion, three companies 8th Infantry, and two hundred
dismounted Texan Rangers. The command moved from its
bivouac in the valley at 3 A. M., and was conducted to its
point of ascent by Captain Sanders and Lieutenant Meade,
of the Engineers. At the base of the hill, the force was
divided into two parties, and silently commenced to climb
the dark slopes. It required all the strength of the men to
overcome the difficulties which nature had, at places, thrown
in their way. Perpendicular ledges of rock and projecting
crags were to be scaled, and thickets of stunted chaparral to
be crept under. But "excelsior" was the motto of those
invincible men who slowly and cautiously pressed up toward
the lofty apex, then clothed with a thick mantle of mist. It
was Night's last, still, and dark hour, always the most favorable for such enterprises.
The garrison of the work, having witnessed the mettle of
our troops on the previous day, and warned by the loss of
the Federacion and Soldada, were on the qui vive; yet such