Lex Communis

Lex Communis: "The most important battle in American history.

CINCO De MAYO!!!

On May 5, 1862, at the Battle of Puebla, a rag-tag, outnumbered, ill-equipped band of Mexican irregulars defeated the cream of the French army, which under Napoleon III was considered to be the best in the world.



In 1862, things were not going well for President Lincoln. The bloodiest day of fighting at Shiloh inApril 1862, had discredited Ulysses Grant; the Pennisular Campaign was stalemated. The immediate future held Lee assuming command of the Army of Northern Virginia and Second Bull Run.



1862 could have seen French and British interest in intervention in the Civil War. The British would have benefitted from the elimination of the American blockade and the return of the cotton trade. The French.. well, the French are the French, and they would have seen the security of their Mexican holdings benefited from a weaker Northern neighbor.



In 1862, the French and the British could have intervened by recognizing the sovereignity of the Confederate States of America and by putting diplomatic pressure on the United States of America to negotiate a peace. That was certainly the strategy that the CSA was counting on. The shape of such an alternative future is at once oddly familiarand alien. Harry Turtledove - the Dean of Alternative History Science Fiction - has played with that scenario in a series of books that eventually pit a USA/German alliance against a CSA/British/French entente in a different version of World War I.



But it never happened, and the reason it didn't happen was because 4,000 Mexican irregulars defeated the cream of the best army of Europe, which dampened the interest of Europe in becoming involved in other North American interventions.



Viva Cinco de Mayo!

Peter Sean Bradley 11:36 AM"