On the same day the American army attacked the Mexicans who held a strongly fortified position at Churubusco, some four miles nearer Mexico, and routed the main army there.

They beat them again at Molino del Rey, carried the hill of Chapultepec by storm, and then entered the city without meeting with further resistance; though the Mexicans, after they had formally yielded possession of the city, disgraced themselves by assassinating stray Americans, stabbing them in the streets, and lazoing them from the tops of the low mud houses in the suburbs.
An acquaintance of ours in Mexico met some American soldiers, with a corporal, in the street close to his house, and asked them in.
Presently the corporal sent one of the men off into the next street to execute some commission; but half an hour elapsed, and the man not returning, the corporal went out to see what was the matter.

He came back presently, and remarked that some of those cursed Mexicans had stabbed the man as he was turning the corner of the street, and left him lying there.

"So," said the corporal, "I may as well finish his brandy and water for him;" he did so accordingly, and the men went home to their quarters.
The American soldiers were, as one may imagine, a rough lot.

Only the smaller part of them were born Americans, the rest were emigrants from Europe; to judge by what we heard of them--both in the States and in Mexico--the very refuse of all the scoundrels in the Republic; but they were well officered, and rigid discipline was maintained.