Post by Gerry on Mar 25, 2016 11:32:39 GMT -5
He then served as a war correspondent for three or four wars around the world.
Thanks for the info. Started looking and found this write up on the The French Intervention in Mexico (1862-67)
The French had sided with the Confederacy in Mexico during the Civil War. The following gives a good explanation of the desertion that took place in the French Foreign Legion. The article also shows the role played by General Grant and Sheridan. O'Kelly was obviously part of the fall of the French.
Worse still for the French and Maximilian, the Confederacy was collapsing. As early as July of 1863, before the French had been in Mexico City a month, the Union victory at Gettysburg had put the South permanently on the defensive. In that same month Ulysses S. Grant had captured Vicksburg, the last Southern outpost on the Mississippi. This cut the Confederacy in two. Maximilian's relations with the Confederacy had always been mixed, as the Mexicans were well aware that the Southern states had always been the most vocal advocates of American expansion into Mexico. Also, if Maximilian or the French recognized the Confederacy openly, it would drive the Union to side openly with Juárez. On April 8, 1865 Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and one by one the other Southern armies began to give up. By the end of May the rebel cause in Texas was finished. Edmund Kirby Smith, the last rebel commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi West, surrendered to the Union at Galveston on June.
Immediately the fall of the Confederacy changed the strategic situation in Mexico. If the Rebels had been benevolent neutrals, the Union was decidedly unfriendly to the Mexican Empire. As the last rebels surrendered, Grant rushed three Union corps, some fifty thousand men, under a tough cavalry commander, Gen. Philip Sheridan, to Texas. This Army of Observation was more than enough to trounce any French army Bazaine was likely to bring within striking distance of the Rio Grande. Sheridan was also quick to 'condemn' US arms and supplies, and left them out in the desert for the Juaristas to 'find'. Juárez soon had 40,000 American rifles to re-equip his army. Perhaps as many as 3,000 discharged Union army veterans, including many African Americans, found their way into Juárez's growing host. However, Juárez was careful to resist a number of schemes that involved bringing an American led force into Mexico. Mexicans, whatever their political stripe, were always wary of American intentions in this period.
Overall, Bazaine went over to a defensive posture in the autumn of 1865. Although the US was quickly demobilizing its army in the wake of the Civil War, he could not discount the possibility of an open American invasion. He also pulled the French troops back from the Rio Grande so as not to give Sheridan an excuse for an incursion. Here we see another problem the French faced. Whenever the French army approached the US border, desertion rates skyrocketed. One French Foreign Legion battalion moving along the Rio Grande lost 93 men to desertion in a single day. From the spring of 1866 on desertions would outnumber combat casualties for the French army in Mexico, even when situated away from the border.