twenty-nine
torreón
The Battle
Adán Uro, quartermaster for the Division of the North, once said, “the Porfiristas talked to you about Paris, London, Moscow, but they didn’t know anything about Zacatecas or Torreón.” That was true enough, but now the Porfiristas were called Huertistas, and they had a new face, that of Gen. Refugio Velasco who not only knew Torreón well, but he also knew what Villa had done to generals Bravo and Munguía during the previous year.
Attacking from the north, Villa had to first confront Gómez Palacio’s defenses, namely, the artillery positioned in its hills and its fortified buildings. He formulated a very simple plan, which was then reviewed by Ángeles and submitted to a council of his generals. As the skies darkened on the evening of March 22, the Villistas proceeded cautiously along a five-kilometer front with the rail line serving as its axis. Four kilometers from the city, the cavalry was ordered to dismount and tie up their horses and then advance in a firing line under the protection of the artillery.
All of a sudden, Federale cannons opened fire from covered positions that the Villistas had not identified. In response, Villa’s vanguard, led by Col. André U. Vargas, with Pablo Seáñez out front, launched a suicidal cavalry charge shouting, “The enemy’s over there!,” having disobeyed orders to tie up their horses. Villa explained, “They broke free in their impatience to start the attack.” Close behind, the novice battalions joined the charge. The most eager of them reached the outermost houses of Gómez Palacio. The Federale artillery reacted slowly, but the “machine guns in the Casa Redonda and the cemetery did a lot of damage.” The Villistas got to within ten meters of the Federales’ machine gun embrasures. The Villista artillery, which had not located the Federale cannons, was still not in position, and Ángeles did not dare open fire because the two sides were too intermingled.
Maclovio Herrera advanced under a bombardment by the enemy artillery set on the La Pila Hill, causing many casualties. Miraculously, he survived when a shell killed his horse. Villa called for Gen. José Rodríguez and gave him a tremendous tongue lashing. Rodríguez then met with his colonels, among them André U. Vargas (who was very angry because the dynamite bombs were not exploding), threatening to shoot him if he continued disobeying orders.
The rebels had taken Gómez Palacio’s outskirts, but at a tremendous cost. The death toll stood at between thirty-five and 125 (according to who was doing the counting), and there were more than 200 wounded. It was clear to Villa that Gen. Velasco’s defenses were a serious matter. That night, John Reed attempted to make his way to the front lines; the password was Zaragoza-Guerrero and the Villistas wore their “hats pushed back on their heads.”
At six o’clock in the morning on March 23, Ángeles placed the artillery in San Ignacio, a small hill to the west of Gómez Palacio. Little by little, the Villistas managed to identify the Federale defenses: the Casa Redonda and the Brittingham corral, which was located to the left of La Esperanza soap factory’s chimney, painted light pink, to the right of the road running up La Pila Hill and crowned by a water tank.
As a consequence of the previous night’s confrontations, Maclovio’s troops were pissed off and, starting at sunrise, began to exchange fire with the enemy in their area. Villa, having probed Gómez Palacio’s defenses, believed he would have to outflank them and sent Maclovio to take Lerdo, a few kilometers to the east of Gómez Palacio. At that time, Villa was with his Dorados near Ángeles’s battery, which still had not begun firing on the Federale artillery.
Maclovio ordered them to tie up their horses at the base of the San Ignacio Hill and to begin an advance in a firing line. As soon as he began to deploy his brigade towards Lerdo, Gen. Reina’s federal dragoon cavalry emerged from an opening in the Huarache Canyon crashing into the side of his formation. They charged with sabers drawn trying to cut a path to Maclovio to surround him, taking advantage of the fact that his men were on foot. Upon seeing that the Federales were flanking Maclovio and putting his artillery in danger, Villa (“trying to fix my mistake”) and his guard charged at the Federale cavalry to hold off Reina. He recalled: “Suddenly, we saw our right flank threatened by a charge advancing at full speed. At that moment, the only forces at my disposal were the boys from my guard whom I ordered to throw themselves into the encounter with Peña [Reina], whose forces flashed lightning from the gleam of their swords [. . .]. That plain was quickly turned into an immense whirlwind of dust where the only thing you could hear was the thunder of my boys’ .44s and the squeals of riderless horses on all sides.” Aguilar Mora would later add: “His ability to use speed as his cavalry’s decisive weapon was not only a military instrument, but also a means of prolonging his own life.” Pancho Villa, at full gallop, told the Dorados to hold off until the last moment before shooting because they were confronting soldiers with swords. If the Federales were handy with their blades, the Dorados were better with their .44s and automatic .38s. Shouts of ¡Viva Villa! rang out spontaneously amidst this frenetic charge, which was soon joined by Maclovio Herrera’s troops who took off after the Dorados when they saw them fly by on their horses. Gen. Federico Reina’s Federale cavalry was annihilated there and then, along with the general himself, a fifty-five-year-old veteran soldier who fought in a French kepi military cap. He was carried away from the field mortally wounded.
It is said that the Dorados sang during this charge; however, we can’t be certain. After all, how were they singing if many of them held the reins in their teeth (as opposed to the ones who tied the reins around their left wrist) in order to shoot with both hands? What is certain is that during the charge a naked woman appeared shouting rude comments. Ugly and, no doubt, crazy as she was, the Villistas, almost without slowing their mounts, threw 20-cent silver coins—which weighed eight tenths of a gram, with Phrygian caps shining on one side and the eagle and cactus on the reverse side—as well as cents, and blew kisses from their mouths stuffed with reins.
Despite many sources that placed Villa at the head of the cavalry charge, several years later, he would tell a different story: “I was standing on the roof of a wagon witnessing the engagement with Jesús, fortunately, the Federale cavalry retired.” Whether or not he was at the head of the charge, or whether he hid this out of modesty, the fact is that’s how it was told. A Baptist missionary who returned to the United States after the Battle of Torreón painted Villa in the press as “a general who can always be seen riding with his troops in the middle of a charge.” Reed labored to establish his image as a fighting general: “Whenever the battle is at its bloodiest, when the avalanche of dark-skinned men storms ahead fearlessly, with rifles and bombs in hand, the streets swept with bullets in a city taken by assault, Villa can be found among his men like a simple soldier.”
Sometime later, Ángeles, who had witnessed the events, stated that the Dorados were the finest cavalry force that had ever been, comparable only to Col. Peña’s Federale troops, whom they had forced to flee to Gen. Pablo González in Monterrey.
Victorious, Maclovio took up positions in the suburbs of Lerdo where they waited in orchards and houses for Benjamín Argumedo’s Colorados. Villa sent Toribio Ortega’s brigade to support Maclovio. They could not expect any help from the population because the Federales had decreed that if a single shot came from any house, it would be demolished with everything, including its inhabitants, inside.
The Villistas completed their encirclement. Villa decided to postpone the attack until it was pitch black. Meanwhile, fighting continued around Gómez Palacio’s defenses, which had resisted several onslaughts from the revolutionaries. La Pila Hill, bolstered by the machine guns placed on the roof of the La Esperanza soap factory, appeared impenetrable and the Federales who had fled from Sacramento reinforced the defenses.
As night fell, Maclovio seized Lerdo. Villa, through the voice of Martín Luis Guzmán, described Maclovio’s “irrepressible momentum.” But Gómez Palacio’s defenses would be another matter. John Reed described how he saw Villa pass by “with a cigar in one hand [and was surprised because Villa never smoked, not realizing it was to light a fuse] and a bomb in the other.” He was on his way to the assault on La Pila Hill,
They were opening fire upon the small line of climbing men with artillery! But still they continued to climb up the black hill. The ring of flame was broken now in many places, but it never faltered. That’s how it was until it seemed to merge with the venomous spitting blaze at the summit. Then all at once it seemed to wither completely, and all that was left were little single fireflies that kept dropping down the slope. When I thought that all was lost and marveled at the useless heroism of these peons who walked up a hill in the face of artillery, behold! The ring of flames was creeping slowly upward again. . .
Villa intervened at the head of a group of former pick miners from Ojuela who were trying to dislodge the defenders with dynamite bombs. The newly-formed brigade with Santiago Ramírez in charge was active in this fight, laying down rifle fire on Villa and his bombers’ flank. The Zapatista Magaña was astonished by what he saw: “The whole time the assault continued, it wasn’t dark for even an instant.” That night, they attacked the hill seven times and suffered the loss of 125 that were killed. But La Pila did not fall.
At eight o’clock in the morning on March 24, Eugenio Aguirre Benavides arrived at the camp located in El Vergel with the 4,000 men who had taken part in the fighting in Sacramento along with three trains filled with provisions captured from the Federales. The Federale cavalry made another attempt to break through and Villa once again mounted his horse, there were threats everywhere.
However, it would be a quiet day. “I don’t want tired troops,” said Villa. While they continued trying to position their artillery, Villa met with his generals and talked sense into them: the enemy is strong, their fortifications are powerful. They agreed to bring in the brigades from Durango and completely encircle Torreón. The Durango brigades led by Calixto, Ceniceros, and Arrieta—who partially disobeyed orders by sending only a small contingent—were called upon to approach the combat zone. José Isabel Robles made his way towards Torreón from Durango.
This same day, John Reed falsely reported that Torreón had fallen based on what he had seen of the attack the night before. “Torreón is occupied after a terrible battle.” He dated the report from El Vergel. Villa, according to Martín Luis Guzmán announced: “That whole afternoon, and the morning of the next day, we considered our situation as did the enemy, while both sides observed the utmost calm. They didn’t respond to our volleys, nor did we respond to theirs.” The wounded Villistas were moved by train to hospitals in Jiménez, Santa Rosalía, and Chihuahua. Villa walked among the camps. Desiderio Madrid remembered that he visited Porfirio Ornelas’s troops and Villa formed them up and shook hands with them one by one, asking their names and where they were from.
The Villistas’ plane was active during the fighting, if ineffective. Parsons and De Villa carried out patrol and bombing missions. However, their bombs did not work because they had to drop them from a very high altitude, tossing them with one hand while guiding the plane with the other. They also attempted to teach some of Villa’s officers to fly. Parsons explained: “They were deathly afraid of planes, and I don’t blame them, I wasn’t very fond of them either. I could put them in the cabin and give them classes to explain the instruments, but very few of them were eager to fly with me. Those who did were scared, petrified, nauseous, and yelled things like ‘Mother of God!’ and other things I don’t dare repeat. After landing, the occasional student would act very macho with their friends, but it was almost impossible to convince them to fly once again.”
Despite the first failures, Villa seemed intent on entering through the front door. In Torreón, he had come across well-designed defenses and had realized that the Federale artillery was superior in both its positioning and the quality of its shells. Ángeles reported the Division of the North’s artillery would have to get much closer to be effective, and this meant kicking the Federales off La Pila. So that’s where Maclovio Herrera, the Villa brigade, and the Zaragoza brigade would go.
Starting at 3 p.m. on March 25, a tremendous artillery duel commenced. Three blasts from El Niño targeted La Pila’s fort. The attack began at 8:45. José Rodríguez, Tomás Urbina, and Maclovio led their men in a nighttime attack on the “large and barren hill,” as Brondo put it. It was not very high, no more than fifty meters, with a water tank on top; however, it was almost one kilometer long and had steep pitches of up to thirty degrees with almost no vegetation. The Federales had converted it into a fortress with trenches, stone and mortar parapets, machine gun nests, and mountain cannons, all guarded by 500 troops. On the opposite side, there were 2,000 men in three columns.
Petra Herrera, dressed in men’s clothing and using the pseudonym Pedro Herrera, actively participated in many battles of the Mexican Revolution, eventually assending to rank of captain and leading 200 men during the Second battle of Torreón in May 1914.
Federal troops marching to battle in Torreón. Ca. 1914.
Villa reviewed the front lines with Luis Aguirre Benavides and his guard just as the battle began. The noise was intense with dynamite bombs adding to the racket produced by machine guns, rifles, and cannons. The Villista brigades advanced on foot. The problem was that before they could reach the base of the hill, they had to cross a plain of “some distance.” They proceeded in lines of 100 riflemen by brigade, followed by a second and third line, each separated by three hundre meters. Flashes of light showed that the advance was tentative, contained. They had to move a thousand meters forward without any cover. The Federales had situated five bunkers along the ridge of the hill. An attack on the left was held up. Villa reported that “It was the most bitter use of weapons my eyes had ever seen.” The general maneuver failed because the left wing fell back, and the right wing was exhausted. Reed wrote down one witness’s testimony: “It was terrible. We went up there on foot. They were in the water tank, they had cut shooting holes in it for their rifles [. . .]. And over in the corral, they had 3,000 Rurales and five machine guns to clear the path.” Maclovio cleaned up the enemy troops between Lerdo and Gómez Palacio. Around midnight, two of the five Federale positions on the hill fell into the hands of the Villistas. Camargo’s Faithful and the Zaragoza brigade waited at the ready and once the positions on the hill fell, they smashed through the rest of Gómez Palacio’s defenses. Villa said to Maclovio, “If the left doesn’t fail, Gómez is ours tomorrow.” He wasn’t alone in thinking this. That night Velasco, the Federale general-in-chief, ordered his Gómez Palacio artillery to concentrate in Torreón. Throughout the night, Villa met with Ángeles several times to consult. The first phase of the battle seemed to be decided in favor of the Division of the North.
The Villista center, which was advancing along the tracks and included the González Ortega and Guadalupe Victoria brigades, was carrying out a diversionary mission. The Ortega brigade drew the hardest assignment in attacking the Casa Blanca. Enemy volleys from “invisible” rifles cut down the cavalry. The Villistas managed to get to the building’s wall but couldn’t dislodge the Federales. “The losses were enormous.” They had to withdraw but kept up the fight all night without success. Ángeles requested support so the artillery was not left unguarded when the attackers pulled back. Ortega went to help with the depleted remnants of his brigade.
The Federales had also suffered heavy losses during the brutal day of fighting. Almazán reported that two of his best officers were wounded, including Gen. Ocaranza who suffered a facial wound and Gen. Ricardo Peña who received a mortal stomach injury. Villa put his hands to his head: “What made us fight this devil Peña!” They were the two best Federale generals. Moreover, Velasco’s second-in-command, Gen. Agustín Valdés, was ill.
Over the course of the night, the brigades called in from Durango began to arrive; first came Severino Ceniceros, then news that Calixto was approaching by way of Lerdo. It had been, according to Roque González and Pérez Rul y Ramos who wrote a history of the battle, the bloodiest day of the war.
At dawn on March 26, a two-hour Federale counterattack allowed them to recover the two bunkers they had lost on La Pila Hill. The Division of the North gave up what they had won. John Reed described a panicked retreat not recorded by any other Villista sources, “after riding twelve hours the day before, fighting all night, and all morning in the blazing sun, under the frightful strain of charging an entrenched force in the face of artillery and machine guns, without food, water or sleep, the army’s nerve had suddenly given way.” And this produced a stampede. “Suddenly three men on horseback swept across in front of them, waving their arms and yelling. ‘Go back!’ they cried. ‘They aren’t coming out! Go back for the love of God!’ Two I didn’t recognize. The other was Villa.” As the Villista artillery was advancing, the Federale cavalry charged at them. In the midst of the attack, the chief of the artillery carriages, a certain Aldama, tried to hook up the cannons, creating a great deal of confusion. Ángeles drew his pistol to prevent the men from scattering and then held off the cavalry until reinforcements arrived.
Villa ordered the Contreras brigade’s 2,000 men to advance to fill a hole in their lines, but they were slow. Amidst the confusion, Ángeles placed his artillery twelve hundred meters from the Federales’ positions. Next, José Isabel Robles, leading 1,500 ragged men with “old Springfield rifles,” appeared before Villa who described the battles’ ferocity to him. “We came to die, my general,” Robles replied, not lacking in theatrics, but neither abounding in confidence.
The rail repairmen had brought up El Niño and Rorro (which had been rebaptized Chavalillo by the crew) from the outskirts of Gómez Palacio. Once again, they started bombarding La Pila Hill, however, a Federale battery got them in its sights and began firing at the repairmen who were obliged to withdraw.
John Reed reported that Villa spent the night running from one line to the other, “but he bore no trace of fatigue.” Villa was “dressed in an old brown suit, without a collar, and an ancient felt hat.” At a certain point, Villa ordered a withdrawal to El Vergel to reorganize. La Pila had been lost, they had nearly lost their cannons, and there was no news from Arrieta.
Around four o’clock in the afternoon, the Federale cavalry came within eight hundred meters of the Villista lines. Villa ordered his troops to hold their fire. He rubbed his hands together, was he going to be able to confront the Federales on horseback without the protection of the Division’s cannons? It was a tremendously appealing opportunity. But nothing came of it and the enemy cavalry withdrew to the center of Gómez Palacio.
Once more, Villa’s generals met. He was optimistic, believing the enemy could not handle losing La Pila again, so he ordered a new advance in three columns. Maclovio led from the right flank to the hill, Urbina deployed from the center to the tracks, and José Isabel Robles made his debut on the right. While Villa was preparing the attack, he noted the silence from the enemy’s lines. When they advanced toward the Casa Redonda. Silence. The Federales had withdrawn to Torreón, they hadn’t even gathered their dead. At nine o’clock in the evening, Villa’s scouts entered Gómez Palacio. “The streets were covered with men and beasts, as were the paths, bunkers, and slopes of the hill.”
During the night in El Vergel, Villa related the fall of Gómez Palacio to Carranza. That left them with Torreón just a few thousand meters away, and with a river between them. Villa slept on the train.
What happened? How can we explain the Federales’ abandonment of Gómez Palacio? At nine in the morning, they had started evacuating their wounded along with their supplies, crossing the river without the Villistas realizing it. At four o’clock in the afternoon, there was a military parade in Torreón. Almazán did not explain why they abandoned Gómez Palacio after retaking La Pila. Valdés’s diary also fails to provide any rationale and merely speaks of reorganizing the Federale forces owing to a loss of commanders. Among the Federale casualties were Gen. Ocaranza and Víctor Huerta, Victoriano’s son. It was said that the withdrawal had been pre-planned and that the defense of Gómez Palacio was only intended to wear out the Villistas while the definitive battle would be in Torreón. That’s what was said, but the attacking army believed it had won half the battle, as did, to a certain degree, the besieged.
The Federales left destruction in their wake. Reed maintained that they had poisoned the irrigation canals with arsenic; fortunately, the current was strong enough to diffuse it, but not before several men and horses died. The troops’ blood was running hot because they heard that wounded Villistas who had been taken prisoners were burned alive when Velasco withdrew to Torreón.
If someone were to have followed the story of the battle in the newspapers, they would not have heard much about it. This very day in Mexico City, El Diario’s readers could learn about a woman who had suffered 2,025 attacks of epilepsy in five days and that the Division of the North, thanks to a push from Velasco and his Federales, had retreated towards Bermejillo. And on March 27, when Lerdo and Gómez Palacio were already in Villa’s hands, El Diario’s headline confirmed, “The revolutionaries have been pushed back from the outskirts of Torreón by Gen. Velasco’s forces.” On March 28, the Periódico Oficial de Coahuila reported on a battle in Santa Clara nearby Torreón in which Villa had been defeated and affirmed that his Division had fled “decimated and deeply dispirited towards Chihuahua.” The battle was “the end point of the rebellion.”
While such things were being read in the Mexico City press under Victoriano Huerta’s control, Ángeles reported the news of Gómez Palacio’s fall to Carranza, “I am delighted with the commanders of these troops and, most of all, with Gen. Villa, who is a good general and, most of all, a good, and very important, man with a big heart.” It was the first time they worked together in battle.
At the very moment that Gómez Palacio fell, an important series of telegraph messages began to flow from the camp at El Vergel to Ciudad Juárez and offices of the Division of the North’s Finance Agency. Villa sent at least a dozen telegrams on the night of March 26 and 27 destined for Lázaro de la Garza discussing cotton sales and the purchasing of arms. Villa was particularly concerned about the Durango brigades’ lack of clothing and uniforms and the shortages of provisions for the army, to which now would be added the needs of the occupied population.
On March 27, around seven in the morning, Pancho Villa ordered the trains to depart the camp in El Vergel with Ángeles and Urbina. There were three overturned locomotives in the Gómez Palacio train station, one was knocked over by a shell while the other two were toppled by the Federales to block the tracks. Villa distributed his troops throughout the city. Overnight looting was brought to a halt. Reed had joined in and robbed a mule. “When Villa and his general staff entered Gómez, everything returned to normal.”
Villa spent the day carrying wounded men to the trains. Reed described how food was distributed to the hungry population. This would be his last report as he subsequently parted with the Division of the North, leaving behind many of the best chronicles written in Mexico about the revolution. He was eager to share his message, which the Villista blockade on news had censured to prevent the real state of the campaign from being known in Mexico City. John dated his last report on March 27 from Gómez Palacio and then left the combat zone, riding on the roof of a hospital train. He passed through Ciudad Juárez where he filed his final dispatch on March 30. In his autobiography, Almost Thirty, he wrote a Mexican postscript: “I discovered that bullets are not very terrifying, that the fear of death is not such a great thing, and that the Mexicans are wonderfully congenial.” Juanito’s departure went unnoticed by Pancho Villa.
A soldier from the Zaragoza brigade handed over a map to Raúl Madero, asking, “Is it useful for something?” Madero took it to Ángeles, who studied the matter. It was a sketch of the defenses of Gómez Palacio and Torreón. If it was accurate, Torreón was still well defended. At dinner time, Villa decided to contact Gen. Velasco once more. Ángeles told Villa that Velasco had not comported himself so poorly with Madero and had recognized his authority until the last minute. With Villa’s approval, Felipe Ángeles wrote a note in which he requested the plaza be handed over to his “democratic army,” sending it via the English consul.
Velasco rejected the offer. The Federale officers discussed Villa’s terms, but they were optimistic, there was talk that reinforcements would arrive, that they were already in San Pedro de las Colonias, and that, with these additional forces, they would “chase Villa back to Chihuahua.” Velasco was very pessimistic in this regard, believing that the reinforcements were close, but that they would not get through.
A light barrage on the Gómez Palacio station pushed the Villista trains back. Villa telegraphed De la Garza, asking him to make emergency purchases using the Division of the North’s funds for the population at La Laguna. These were “very important” purchases (including coffee, sugar, rice, and butter) because there was “a lot of hunger” in the region. He asked him to buy the goods in the United States far away from the border to avoid inflation and abuses at the hands of the border merchants. Domitilo Mendoza recalled: “One time in Gómez Palacio, he ordered clothing, shoes, hats, and things to eat to be brought for a group of very poor people who had come to ask for help. He gave each one of them something and they left very happy with their blankets filled with corn and beans.”
Without either side wanting it, there was a pause in the hostilities. Both armies were exhausted from their first encounter. Villa, in Martín Luis Guzmán’s words, asserted that “The enemy’s troops have not recovered from their fatigue, and neither have ours.”
March 28 produced an ineffective Federale bombardment from the hills around Torreón which lasted eight hours. The Villistas didn’t bother to respond to not waste munitions. The generals met to review their plan of attack on Torreón. That afternoon, in the middle of a dust storm, the Villistas took cover in the face of a Federale volley, deciding once again not to respond. The Villista artillery began to ring at six o’clock in the evening, recalling the nightmare of hills replete with artillery and fortifications. The Chihuahua brigades had done the heavy lifting in the previous battle and Villa arranged for the Durango brigades to attack the three hills around Torreón: Carrillo’s brigade would attack Calabazas, Severino Ceniceros’s brigades would try to move into Huarache Canyon, and Calixto Contreras’s brigade would advance on La Polvareda Hill. In the first attack, after two hours of fighting and heavy casualties, they took the cannon and La Polvareda Hill at ten o’clock at night. And around three o’clock in the morning, Calabazas Hill fell into the Durangans’ hands on terrain lit up with rockets and sprayed with machine gun fire. Calixto Contreras suffered a wound to his face in one of the assaults.
Once the occupying forces, who were poorly disciplined, took their objective, they scattered to eat and rest without fortifying their positions. In Calabazas, Carrillo, a friend of the Arrieta brothers, disobeyed an order to fortify his position. At five in the morning, a counterattack in which Benjamín Argumedo’s Colorados participated snatched back two of the three positions won during the night. Argumedo was a real character, with large ears sticking out in every photograph. He always wore a scarf tied around his head and his jaw, closing his mouth as if he had a toothache. The explanation was that he had a horrible fear of flies getting into his mouth if he were killed.
Around seven in the morning, only Santa Rosa remained in the Division of the North’s hands. At that moment, a 2,000-strong cavalry force along with two trains attempted to break out of the city. The Villistas forced them to turn back.
The correspondent from the Houston Post described Villa on horseback, covered in dust and sweat with a red bandanna around his neck. He ran from line to line in all directions, swearing, cheering, cursing, and invoking all the saints. Pancho ordered that Carrillo be detained for disobeying orders. He gave his men the option of retaking the position they had lost or facing a firing squad. Carrillo’s officers accepted the former option. Their troops were added to Servín’s and warned that anyone who ran away would be shot. Col. Andrés Villarreal of the medical brigade was part of the court-martial that sentenced Carrillo to death at five o’clock in the afternoon.
Villa then ordered Maclovio’s Juárez brigade to launch a cavalry charge up the Santa Rosa Hill to the north of Torreón and to the west of Calabazas, where fighting was still underway.
However, Robles and Eugenio Aguirre Benavides had already entered the city, having gotten around its defenses, and were engaged in heavy house-to-house combat near the Alameda. The Federales, used to nighttime attacks by now, were not expecting a daytime assault. José Isabel Robles, wounded in the leg, refused to abandon his position, merely asking for a doctor to stop the bleeding. It was a Dantesque scene with buildings in flames all around.
After learning that Robles was wounded, Villa received a report from Col. Toribio de los Santos that he had had a confrontation along the line between Hipólito and San Pedro where he had left Aguirre Benavides to contain the enemy. He commented that he had clashed with the vanguard of the forces coming from Monterrey. Reports from captured Federales spoke of a large column traveling in three trains to reinforce the Torreón garrison. Villa gambled on the battle and decided to send Toribio Ortega and Hernández, without hardly any rest after ten days of fighting, to contain this force. He also ordered them to destroy the tracks. From the beginning of the battle in the cities around La Laguna, Villa had been insisting by telegraph that Gen. Pablo González—in command of the Carrancista forces to the northeast—cut off rail traffic (and the potential for Federale support for Torreón from Monterrey) by burning the bridges, an action which González had not taken. Villa was now cursing Pablo González to hell. The Mexico City press was reporting that Villa had withdrawn in the face of Gen. Moure’s advancing column from Monterrey. They also took the opportunity to publish false reports of Zapata’s death.
The Villistas’ progress stalled in the Alameda zone, but the Federales failed to dislodge them. Villa ordered José Isabel Robles to be brought back from the front lines after he refused to leave despite his leg hemorrhaging.
At noon, the battle intensified, signifying the urgency of taking the plaza before reinforcements arrived. Villa and Urbina led an attack on the city center. Riflemen from Indé recounted that this was the only time they had seen Pancho run. While he was distributing water to the front lines on a cart laden with cans, accompanied by Col. José Rodríguez, the Federales let loose a machine gun attack and Villa took off running. The men complained and Villa promised to lead them in the next offensive.
The Calabazas Hill fell once again at three in the afternoon. At four o’clock, they advanced on La Cruz Hill. The firing stopped at eight o’clock. Villa rested the army and he and Ángeles returned to the train to get some sleep at headquarters. It was deadly calm all along the lines until nine o’clock that night. A group of slightly crazy adventurers snuck into Torreón under the cover of darkness; when they reached the market, they stole some food and then returned to their lines.
At dawn on March 30 at five in the morning, without precise orders, volleys from the Federales started up and the Division of the North’s brigades began to move forward. Fighting broke out near the hospital, in Huarache Canyon, and along the La Polvareda bunker, which was taken.
The action paused around one in the afternoon when a note arrived for the US consul. Carothers, who had been in Villa’s camp during the battle, received a message from British vice consul H. Cunnard, who passed it onto Villa, reporting that Velasco was requesting a conference via their offices. When Roque González Garza and Capt. Enrique Santoscoy approached the Nazas, a Federale soldier appeared with a white flag and said that he would escort Santoscoy to see Gen. Velasco, but that he wanted to disarm and blindfold him. Santoscoy agreed to be blindfolded but refused to be disarmed. They led him through twists and turns, climbed a staircase, and then removed his blindfold. He recognized Gen. Velasco and recognized the room from the San Carlos hotel. They say that Santoscoy’s hands naturally shook a lot, but Velasco interpreted this as a sign of fear which led to Villa’s messenger, indignant, to explain that he was always like that and blamed it on his coffee drinking. Velasco proposed a forty-eight-hour truce to Villa to gather the dead and wounded in order to avoid an epidemic. Upon Santoscoy’s return, Villa and Ángeles studied the proposal and concluded that he had ulterior motives, that it was a trick to gain time for reinforcements to arrive from Monterrey and, thus, refused to accept the truce. Villa answered the note arguing that the armistice could only favor Velasco because he had already sent his wounded men by train to Jiménez, and Parral and sent his dead back to Chihuahua. Therefore, all that remained for Velasco was to surrender. This time the British diplomat was in charge of delivering the note. Some hours later, the fighting resumed.
That afternoon, 300 Federales surrendered on Calabazas Hill, asking to be taken to see Villa. Carrillo’s men fired on them and only fifty made it back alive to Gómez Palacio.
The night was relatively tranquil, and they received news that Chao was sending an infantry brigade of 1,000 from Chihuahua, explaining, “I don’t need such a large garrison, whereas you do need these infantry forces that I am sending you.”
March 31 was a quiet day, all being equal. Villa was sick and the troops rested, although there were artillery duels and intermittent shoot outs. At three in the afternoon, Argumedo’s cavalry pushed José Isabel Robles’s troops out of their positions, but these same men regained the ground in a counterattack. Meanwhile, a train filled with purchases made by the Division’s Finance Agency left Ciudad Juárez.
The following day, a large party of Federales attempted to break the siege around La Fortuna hills, but a barrage from the Division of the North forced them to retreat. What was happening? Did the Colorados want to give up the plaza? Finally, two pieces of excellent news arrived. First, Toribio de los Santos reported that the Federales coming from San Pedro had been halted, and that after a battle, they had returned from where they came from. This was a relief as it meant that Torreón’s defenders could not count on reinforcements, while Villa would receive the troops sent by Chao from Chihuahua under the command of Benito Artalejo and Martín López. Villa reviewed the new troops, many of whom greeted him by name and shook his hand being veterans of the Chihuahua campaign, including the Cazadores de la Sierra battalion and the Villa brigade, who had remained as reserves in the capital.
Fruitless attacks were waged throughout the afternoon: bombardments, and exchanges of artillery fire. Villa spoke with officers from the Carrillo brigade and told them that they had to retake the forts that were lost because of their commander. They formed up a battalion under the command of Martiniano Servín and, as a concession to his troops, Villa suspended Carrillo’s execution, sending him back to Chihuahua as a prisoner.
The Villistas attacked that day with their sleeves rolled up to more easily distinguish themselves. Práxedis Giner claimed that this constituted a “formidable attack on the center.” The right wing seized Huarache Canyon while the left wing reached the city center. The firing ceased at midnight. Benito Artalejo had been killed fighting hand-to-hand near the Coyote dam, so Luis Herrera took up command of the new brigade. Col. Manuel Banda, el Chino, had the habit of riding a motorcycle along the rearguard to stop those who ran away under fire or who tried to desert. “He made those who refused to join the fight, take part, or he broke them,” but reported no “smooth talkers” trying to flee the lines that day.
Another nighttime attack was launched, as was so common during these weeks, because it neutralized the Federale artillery. At two o’clock in the morning, Miguel González took Calabazas and Eladio Contreras took La Polvareda, and two barracks fell on the left flank. The circle was closing, but it was also the day in which the revolutionaries suffered the highest casualties. It was a bloodbath.
The US Army and Navy Journal was surprised when it analyzed Villa’s tactics: nighttime attacks with identification signs (hats pushed back or sleeves rolled up), the use of straps to launch dynamite bombs, and well-armed men with machine guns to support them. And they pointed out Villa’s habitual positioning during any attack, “Villa places himself very slightly to the rear in the center of the line of fire.” What interested them most was the seriousness with which the Division of the North organized its supplies, “even including a train for water.” But it was not only military analysts who found the Battle of Torreón enthralling. At the time in Ibar City, Florida, bets were placed on how long the Federales would resist Villa in Torreón, according to a report from the Huertista consulate in Tampa.
Meanwhile, Villa had gone nineteen hours without sleeping, according to his secretary Trillo. Madinabeytia would report much later that Villa was very concerned about the extremely elevated number of casualties the Division of the North had suffered and even considered withdrawing because of it. But withdraw to where? They controlled Gómez Palacio and Lerdo. Retiring to Chihuahua would have given the Federales the space they needed to unite their two divisions from Torreón and San Pedro. Perhaps he could change strategy instead of smashing his head against their defenses? But there was no doubt that the casualties were excessive. Capt. Andrés Nieto commented that “Upon seeing so many dead it seemed that we were going to lose the battle.”
What Villa did not know was that while he was doubting himself, the Federales—who were even more worn down than the Villistas and had no possibility of being reinforced—were just then studying how to retreat. Villa could not have known that of the two million cartridges with which the Federales started the battle, they were down to just 250,000. Gen. Velasco’s argument, although he exaggerated the situation, was that there was no more ammunition in their warehouse, even though there certainly were abundant artillery shells. He should have put more emphasis on the terrible bloodletting suffered by his officers and troops.
All the same, dawn on April 2 brought signs much to the contrary of what the Federale commander was considering. At five in the morning, the Federales retook Calabazas Hill in a counterattack. By midday, their bombardment expanded, almost killing Urbina when four shells landed on the house in which he was sleeping. The order came to maintain their positions and to rest the troops. On April 1 and 2, some 420 wounded soldiers were received in the hospital. Throughout the morning, the Federales kept up their attack on Santa Rosa, which was successfully defended by Col. Mateo Almanza and the Morelos brigade.
Yet, in an action inconsistent with the fighting in the morning—which had as its goal the creation of a protective zone—at four o’clock in the afternoon, under the cover of a severe dust storm that came from the north, Velasco and nearly 4,000 men headed out towards Viesca (along the Saltillo rail line), covered by Argumedo’s Colorado cavalry.
Two hours later, advance Villista scouts reported fires in part of Torreón controlled by the Federales and speculated that they were burning their reserve munitions in preparation for giving up the plaza.
Villa met with Ángeles, ordering his men not to attack and to open up an escape. Some military analysts talk about the inconsistency of Villa’s tactics in letting them go, after all his objective was to liquidate the Division of Nazas and not simply to take Torreón. However, Villa and his men were undoubtedly shocked by their own casualties and along with a victory, Pancho won a respite.
At ten o’clock at night, a neighbor confirmed the Federales’ flight. “The news ran through Gómez Palacio and the encampments but caused no joy as they fervently desired to annihilate the enemy.” By eleven, Carothers confirmed that the Federales had escaped. Orders were given to take the city the following day, but vanguard groups did so immediately. All throughout the night, the people looted Torreón. Machuca described how loosely-organized groups of soldiers broke the padlocks off certain stores in search of food. Behind them came the plebes who finished the job. The homes of the rich were looted as well, but very few, only those who had compromised themselves by actively collaborating with the government. The soldiers opened the doors to these select houses and let the population make off with whatever they found.
After the first outburst, Villa banned looting and even shot a looter outside a store to make an example of him. Maclovio detained looters in Velasco’s barracks.
According to Alberto Calzadíaz, there were 1,781 dead and 1,937 wounded. Villa reported 1,500 wounded in a message to Carranza. The totals are chilling, and it is rare enough that the two figures should be so close and must refer only to the seriously wounded and those who were hospitalized. The dead and wounded together accounted for almost one-third of the Division of the North. Calzadíaz’s figures for Federale casualties are exaggerated. He cited 8,000 casualties among dead, wounded, prisoners, and deserters, but the real figure must have been less than 6,000 men. When the Federales abandoned Torreón, they left behind 400 seriously-wounded men who had not received any medical attention. At the entrance of the house that contained many of the wounded, the Federales hung a sign stating they would return, commending the injured to Villa’s care and the foreign consuls. The wounded were not bothered by the victors, and they were even given medical treatment. Some officers among the prisoners were shot, but the regular troops were sent back to Chihuahua. Later on, Carothers declared in Ciudad Juárez that Villa had “conducted himself well,” respecting his word to not shoot prisoners and to attend to the wounded.
Whatever one thinks of the Villista colonels and generals, there is no doubt that they fought on the front lines. Dr. Encarnación Brondo noted in his diary the following officers who received medical attention in the forward triage units or onboard the hospital train over the course of the Battle of Torreón: Col. Máximo García, commander of the Madero brigade, suffered a serious abdominal wound that involved a kidney; Col. Trinidad Rodríguez from the Cuauhtémoc brigade took bullets in the thorax and then walked out under his own power after he was treated; Gen. José Isabel Robles, wounded in the thigh; Gen. Calixto Contreras, wounded in the neck; Col. Odilón Hernández, wounded in his side; Col. Triana, a young former priest with rosy cheeks who was Martín’s nephew, suffered a clean shot through the chest. And Benito Artalejo’s death, which must be added to these as well.
Dr. Brondo also related the dreadful story of Guadalupe Muñoz, who suffered an injury to his navel with the projectile remaining inside his abdomen and, against medical advice, continued talking, drinking water, and smoking. When he died, the doctor found a flour tortilla in his hand of which he had taken several bites.
The massacre was terrifying. Years later, Villa would state, “We had to bury Torreón’s dead during the night so as to not alarm the people.”
Pancho Villa entered Torreón on April 2, 1914, at nine in the morning and set up his headquarters in the Bank of Mexico and the Bank of London. He was greeted with applause in the streets and city-wide celebrations. One resident stated, “The well-to-do classes were nowhere to be seen.” Either they had gone into hiding or left with the enemy. The brigades paraded and set up barracks throughout the city. The day after Torreón was occupied, a proclamation was published in La Laguna regional cities prohibiting the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Violators were to be shot without warning.
At one in the afternoon, Villa consulted with Carranza—who had been in Ciudad Juárez since March 29—for an hour and a half by telegraph; the content of the conversation is not known, but Villa left the office in good spirits.
The Federales had abandoned a hundred thousand bales of cotton from the 1913 harvest, which had not been able to be delivered owing to the hostilities. Villa immediately confiscated them and sent them to the United States to be sold. A department of “confiscated cotton” attached to the Division’s Finance Agency was charged with collecting, transporting, and selling the cotton from the rebellion’s earliest days. Estrada cited cotton exports that passed through El Paso in 1914 valued at $2,152,373, but that was for all exports for the whole year. Villa’s total take must have been much lower. However, the money was spent as soon as it came in. On April 4, Lázaro de la Garza complained about the lack of funds as he went about purchasing boots, gaiters, and shells while negotiating with Chao to send cattle to the United States. The first train with cotton had arrived, the following day Villa sent sixty more wagons filled with cotton to the border. He purchased a car filled with butter and lard in El Paso at the Three States Grocery and he placed orders for 27,624 pairs of boots to shoe the La Lagunas brigades from Endicott, Johnson & Co., along with 2,500 hats from Leonnard of New York. As an extra source of revenue, Villa decided to open Torreón’s gambling houses and put Maclovio’s father, José de Luz Herrera, in charge of administering them.
With hardly a rest, and after having sent troops to Viesca in pursuit of Gen. Velasco, on April 3 Villa issued orders to arrest all Spaniards in the city, detaining them in the basement of the Banco de La Laguna.
Some of the Spanish hacienda owners and big merchants had armed themselves prior to the battle and had also armed their employees to support the Huertistas. Some civilians fired on the troops as they entered the city. Those who did were immediately detained and shot; such was the case with a certain Garmendia, the owner of a clothing store. When Villa found out about the matter, he was outraged because someone told him that the Spaniards paid their workers only eight cents, which made him yell, “Wretched gachupines, I should take them and burn them all.” Villa refused to pardon them in a subsequent meeting, despite Carothers’s intercessions. After establishing their appalling collaboration with the Huertistas and that it would be better to shoot them, Villa sentenced them to exile. Within forty-eight hours they would board a five-car train bound for the border. Villa lifted the sentences for those who had not collaborated with the Huertistas or who had sympathized with the revolution. Yet very few of them were saved. Among them was Joaquín Serrano, Manuel Banda’s father, who had supported the revolution. An anonymous corrido memorialized the expulsion of the Spaniards: “When they came to Mexico, Villa told them straight: If it’s true you came with nothing, you’ll have to leave with the same.” A special train carried 900 Spaniards to El Paso. US authorities, via Secretary of State Bryan, lodged protests by telegram which Villa did not dignify with a response, forwarding the complaints on to Lázaro de la Garza, who in turn sent them to Carranza. Two months later, Villa allowed Spaniards who had not supported the Huertista government to return, explaining that the expulsions had been carried out as a wartime measure and that there had, without doubt, been individuals who had been treated unjustly. Even so, he made it clear that those who had supported the traitors “should be prudently exempted from returning.”
The Division of the North’s trains that returned from the north arrived with flour, salt, and margarine with which they supplied bakeries, which then distributed free bread to the people along with beans and rice in two-kilogram rations per Villa’s orders. “Torreón was filled with rubble, garbage, and dead horses, houses pockmarked with machine gun bullets. Torreón was filthy and foul smelling, but despite it all, looking new and celebratory.” Villa refrained from spending time with young women and instead issued a public pronouncement: “There will be a fine of no less than $100 pesos for any person who does not clean their house, inside and out, as well as the street in front of the house no later than noon on April 5.” That same Sunday, April 5, Mexico City’s El Diario dedicated its headline to declaring, “Torreón is Definitively Out of Danger.”
There was one last problem to resolve. Villa wrote to Carranza complaining about the Arrieta brothers, who refused to collaborate in Torreón during the most anxious moments of the fighting. He complained extensively about Martín Triana, a relative of the Arrietas. “Men like Triana only serve to discredit our cause.” Villa had given orders to detain Martín Triana for having abandoned his people in combat, hiding himself in the rear, as well as for a robbery attempt. Carranza asked for explanations about the conflicts among the military commanders under his authority. Triana had gone to Chihuahua to seek out Carranza and the Arrietas, who kept up an endless conflict with Urbina and Contreras and who were always afraid that Villa would disarm their brigades. Villa decided to forgo the advice of a corrido that went, “Viva don Francisco Villa / who fought with valor / who freed the poor men / and shot the traitors,” deciding not to strain relations with Carranza. He considered the incidents forgotten for the time being.
The Mutual film crew followed Villa to Torreón without much success. Filming the Battle of Torreón turned out to be a disaster. Raoul Walsh recalled filming part of the battle, but the material was damaged and had to be reworked in the US. Once again, word spread that Villa had agreed to replace a nighttime attack with a daytime one after the camera crew had a sharp argument with him; the story went that he ended up giving in, but it was an absurd rumor.
In the end, Mutual made a film which has been lost today, aside from some fragments in the archive. The movie was divided into two parts: one with real or fabricated takes from the Battle of Torreón and a second with Walsh playing the part of the young Villa (Pancho Villa Early Life), depicting the rape of his sister by Federales and how he found his revenge in the revolution. The Battle of Torreón and The Life of Francisco Villa debuted in the Lyric theater in New York and later “in the completely full Shubert Hall.”
If the story of the bloodiest battle of this phase of the Mexican Revolution began with Adán Uro explaining how the Porfiristas didn’t know where Torreón was located, an appropriate ending might be novelist Francisco Urquizo’s dialogue with a resident of the city soon after the battle.
“How scared we’ve been because of the fighting. They kept telling us that Villa was coming. And you tell me, what happened to the Indians?”
“What Indians?”
“Well, the Indians they say that Villa brought with him to capture Torreón. They told us that Francisco Villa was accompanied by all the savage Indians, that he let them run wild and lay waste to whatever they found.”
“Ah, I see, something like the Cossacks on the Don.”
“Don who?”
“Other Indians from over there, from far away.”