May 5, 1862. Dawn over Puebla, Mexico.
The French army, considered the finest in the world, marched in perfect formation toward the city. Six thousand elite soldiers, Zouaves in their scarlet trousers, Foreign Legion veterans, and cavalry that gleamed like polished steel, led by General Charles de Lorencez. Napoleon III himself had sent them to crush Mexico, collect debts, and turn the country into a French satellite.
Across the muddy fields, on two small hills called Guadalupe and Loreto, waited just over four thousand men. Many were farmers only yesterday. Their uniforms were patched, their rifles outdated, some carried only machetes. Their commander, a 33-year-old Texan-born Mexican general named Ignacio Zaragoza, rode a tired horse along the line. He had no illusions. “We are few,” he told his men, “but we fight for our land. Today the chains of empire will break against Mexican hearts.”
At nine in the morning the French cannons opened fire. Shells screamed overhead and exploded against the forts. Lorencez, sipping coffee in the saddle, smiled. He expected the Mexicans to run by noon.
They didn’t.
Instead, when the glittering French columns advanced, a ragged cavalry unit of barely two hundred men, the Lancers of Veracruz, thundered out from behind the hills. Their leader, Colonel Porfirio Díaz (yes, the same man who would later rule Mexico for decades), put spurs to his horse and led the charge straight into the French center. Sabers flashed. Horses screamed. The French line staggered.
Again and again the French attacked. Three times they reached the edge of the Mexican trenches, and three times they were hurled back by bayonets, machetes, and sheer desperation. Rain began to fall in sheets, turning the battlefield into a swamp. French boots slipped in the mud; Mexican soldiers, barefoot or in sandals, knew the ground and held.
By late afternoon the impossible had happened. The French, bloodied and stunned, began to retreat. Lorencez lost nearly five hundred men and all of his arrogance. Zaragoza lost fewer than a hundred.
That night, in a small house in Puebla, Zaragoza sat down and wrote a telegram that would echo through history. Only twelve words:“The national arms have covered themselves in glory. The French have been defeated.”
He signed it simply: Zaragoza.
The victory didn’t win the war (the French would take Mexico City the following year), but it didn’t matter. On May 5, 1862, a small, outnumbered army reminded the world that empires can be defied.
And that is why, every fifth of May, people raise a glass (especially in Puebla, and especially north of the border) and remember the day a tired general on a tired horse looked at the might of Europe and said, “No further.”
Cinco de Mayo isn’t Mexican Independence Day.
It’s the day Mexico taught the world that sometimes the underdog wins, and courage is louder than cannons.