So far I have already described the doings of the "reaccionarios." The newspapers gave wonderful accounts of attacks and repulses, and reckoned the killed on both sides at 2,500.

There were 10,000 regular troops, and 10,000 irregulars (very irregular troops indeed); and these were commanded by a complete regiment of officers, and _forty_ generals.

This is reckoning both sides; but as, on pretty good authority (Tejada's statistical table), the troops in the Republic are only reckoned at 12,000, no doubt the above numbers are much exaggerated.

As for the 2,500 killed, the fact is that the siege was a mere farce; and, judging by what we heard at the time in Mexico, and soon afterwards in Puebla itself, 25 was a much more correct estimate: and some facetious people reduced it, by one more division, to two and a half.

The President had managed, by desperate efforts, to borrow some money in Mexico, on the credit of the State, at sixty per cent.; and it seems certain that it was this money, judiciously administered to some of Haro's generals, that brought about the flight of the anti-president, and the capitulation of Puebla.