The Battle of Chapultepec was fought on 12 and 13 September 18471, near the end of the Mexican-American War. Chapultepec Castle stood on a hill on the western approach to Mexico City and housed the Mexican military academy. General Winfield Scott's army bombarded it all day on 12 September, and on the morning of 13 September stormed the hill with scaling ladders. The garrison of fewer than a thousand men under General Nicolás Bravo, including cadets of the academy, was overwhelmed within a couple of hours. American troops then fought their way to the city gates, and Mexico City was occupied the next day. Mexico honours six of the dead defenders as the Niños Héroes.
In September 1847 an American army stood at the gates of Mexico City. Between it and the capital rose a rocky hill crowned by a castle, once a viceroy's residence and now Mexico's military academy. Its defenders included teenage cadets, and Mexicans still remember them as the Niños Héroes, the boy heroes.
The road to Mexico City
The war between the United States and Mexico began in 1846, after the American annexation of Texas and a dispute over its border. In March 1847 General Winfield Scott landed at Veracruz and marched inland2, winning at Cerro Gordo and, in August, at Contreras and Churubusco on the edge of the Valley of Mexico. After a failed armistice, his troops took the Molino del Rey, at the foot of Chapultepec, on 8 September at heavy cost.
The castle on the hill
Chapultepec Castle stood on a hill about 60 metres high, surrounded by a wall, guarding the western causeways into the city. Built as a residence, it had become the home of the Colegio Militar, Mexico's military academy. General Antonio López de Santa Anna, unsure where the Americans would strike, kept much of his army to the south, leaving General Nicolás Bravo with fewer than a thousand men, among them the San Blas Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Felipe Santiago Xicoténcatl and a few dozen cadets who had refused to leave their school1.
The storming
American guns pounded the castle throughout 12 September. On the morning of 13 September the infantry attacked from the west and south, with storming parties that included U.S. Marines. The assault stalled while the men waited for scaling ladders, and General Pillow was wounded3, but the columns reached the walls, climbed them and broke in. The San Blas Battalion fought at the foot of the hill until most of its men, Xicoténcatl among them, had fallen. By about 9:30 am Bravo had been captured1 and the American flag flew over the castle. Nearby, some thirty captured members of the Saint Patrick's Battalion1, deserters from the U.S. Army who had fought for Mexico, were hanged as the flag went up.
The Niños Héroes, history and legend
Six of the defenders who died are honoured in Mexico as the Niños Héroes: Lieutenant Juan de la Barrera and the cadets Agustín Melgar, Juan Escutia, Vicente Suárez, Francisco Márquez and Fernando Montes de Oca, aged roughly 13 to 20. According to tradition, the last of them, Juan Escutia, wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and leapt from the castle rather than let it be captured. Historians debate many details: there is little contemporary evidence for the flag story, Escutia may not have been a cadet at all, and the heroic narrative was promoted by later governments. Their courage is nonetheless commemorated each year on 13 September and by a great monument in Chapultepec Park.
Into the city, and the cost of the war
The same afternoon American troops fought their way to the Belén and San Cosme gates; at San Cosme a young lieutenant named Ulysses S. Grant hauled a mountain howitzer into a church belfry4. Santa Anna withdrew in the night, and on 14 September Scott's army occupied Mexico City1. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 forced Mexico to cede roughly half of its territory, counting Texas5. The Marines' Hymn still opens with "the halls of Montezuma", while in Mexico the war is remembered as a foreign invasion; Grant himself later called it one of the most unjust wars ever waged by a stronger nation4 against a weaker one.