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Show WORTHY A PLACE IN HISTORY Cadets of Chapultepec Made for Themselves Them-selves a Record Which Will Long Endure. The defense of Chapultepec, during the war between the United States and Mexico in 1847, was almost as gallant as was the attack. In this attack forty-eight Mexican cadets, among others, lost their lives. The story is a stirring one. For many years the celebrated Castle of Chapultepec, where Montezuma Monte-zuma held his barbaric court in the surrounding groves of cypress, where, during nearly three centuries, lived the successive viceroys of Spain, and where Maximilian made his imperial home, has been the West Point of Mexico. When General Scott had taken the place by storm and General Bravo hp,d surrendered, a Mexican cadet, only fifteen years old, seeing the flag of his country in peril, most of bis comrades being already slain, climbed the flagstaff, flag-staff, tore the banner from its place, wound it around his body and slid down, intending to plunge over the precipice, in order to save the colors from falling into the hands of the enemy. The act of heroism being frustrated, the brave boy. with the banner still wrapped about him, fought until he was cut in pieces. Forty-eight of these schoolboys, ranging from fourteen to twenty years, lie buried in one grave at the foot of the hill. Year after year .the cadets of Chapultepec strew flowers upon the grave. Lewiston Journal. |