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

NIGHT OF THE TWENTY-THIRD. 201.
already interwoven many tender love scenes in the siege.
But the only account of female heroism exhibited there,
which possesses any claim to authenticity, may be fouLd inl
the subjoined passage from the Mexican history to which we
have previously had occasion to refer.~In the afternoon of the 23d, General Quitman's brigade
was relieved by that of General Hamer. Night once more
compelled the contending forces to seek a respite from their
sanguinary labors, and General Taylor now prepared to concert measures with Worth for a combined attack on the Plaza
the next morning. The opposing troops lay so near to each
other during the night,
"That the fixed sentinels almost received
The secret whispers of each other's watch."
Scattered through the streets and on the house-tops were the
cold and bloody corpses of those killed during the day,
while the gardens of the suburbs were " reeking with the
smell of death." The mangled remains of those slain on
the 21st, unburied and moldering where they had fallen,
tainted the night air and threatened a pestilence. A few of
our men, too, who had been wounded on the first day of the
battle, were, as we subsequently discovered, still lying there,
* "' At this time, sublime as the heroines of Sparta and of Rome, and beautiful
as the tutelar deities of Grecian sculpture, the Senorita Dona Maria Josefa Zozaya,
in the house of Senor Garza Flores, presented herself among the soldiers who
fought on the azotea, to give them food and ammunition, and to teach them how
to despise danger.
" The beauty and rank of this young lady comu2nicated new attractions, and it
was requisite to conquer to admire her, or to perish before her eyes to be made
worthy of' smiles. She was a lovely personation of the country itself. She was
the beau ideal of heroism in all her movements, and with all her tender fascinaa
tions."