Special Edition: The Road to Cinco de Mayo (April 18, 1862)
On April 18, 1862, French General Charles Ferdinand Latrille, Comte de Lorencez, left Cordoba, Mexico, with approximately 6,000 troops on the road to Mexico City, about 180 miles to the northwest. The supremely confident French general, who came from a noble family and studied at the prestigious military academy of Saint Cyr, had another 30,000 troops en-route from France, but saw no need to wait for the reinforcements. He explained his rationale in a note to the Minister of War in Paris, “We have over the Mexicans such a superiority of race, organization, discipline, morality, and elevated spirits that I beg you to inform the emperor that, from this moment on and at the head of six thousand soldiers, I am the master of Mexico.”
The road to Cinco de Mayo began at the Convention of London in October 1861, when France, England, and Spain agreed to to a Tripartite Alliance involving a joint military expedition to Mexico to force the repayment of loans and debts incurred in the years after their disastrous war with the United States in 1846. The European forces arrived in Veracruz in February 1862, and an ultimatum was issued to the Mexican government demanding 12 million francs. In addition, the Convention of La Soledad was signed confirming that the Allied expeditionary force had no interest in interfering with the ruling powers in Mexico.
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