As fiercely raged the battle at the other wing where Duncan and M’Intosh had driven in the enemy’s right toward the Casa Mata.  M’Intosh started to storm that fort, and, in the teeth of a tremendous hail of musketry, advanced to the ditch, only twenty-five yards from the work.  There a ball knocked him down; it was his luck to be shot or bayoneted in every battle.  Martin Scott took the command, but as he ordered the men forward he rolled lifeless into the ditch.  Major Waite, the next in rank, had hardly seen him fall before he too was disabled.  By whole companies the men were mowed down by the Mexican shot; but they stood their ground.  At length some one gave the word to fall back, and the remnants of the brigade obeyed.  Many wounded were left on the ground; among others Lieutenant Burnell, shot in the leg, whom the Mexicans murdered when his comrades abandoned him.  After the battle his body was found, and beside it his dog, moaning piteously and licking his dead master’s face.

At the head of four thousand cavalry, Alvarez now menaced our left.  Duncan watched them come, driving a cloud of dust before them, till they were within close range; then opening with his wonderful rapidity, he shattered whole platoons at a discharge.  Worth sent him word to be sure to keep the lancers in check.  “Tell General Worth,” was his reply, “to make himself perfectly easy; I can whip twenty thousand of them.”  So far as Alvarez was concerned, he kept his word.

On the American right the fight had reached a crisis.  Mixed confusedly together, men of all arms furiously attacked the Molino, firing into every aperture, climbing to the roof, and striving to batter in the doors and gates with their muskets.  The garrison never slackened their terrible fire for an instant.  At length Major Buchanan, of the Fourth, succeeded in bursting open the southern gate; and almost at the same moment Anderson and Ayres, of the artillery, forced their way into the buildings at the northwestern angle.  Ayres leaped down alone into a crowd of Mexicans—­he had done the same at Monterey—­and fell covered with wounds.  Our men rushed in on both sides, stabbing, firing, and felling the Mexicans with their muskets.  From room to room and house to house a hand-to-hand encounter was kept up.  Here a stalwart Mexican hurled down man after man as they advanced; there Buchanan and the Fourth levelled all before them.  But the Mexicans never withstood the cold steel.  One by one the defenders escaped by the rear toward Chapultepec, and those who remained hung out a white flag.  Under Duncan’s fire the Casa Mata had been evacuated, and the enemy was everywhere in full retreat.  Twice he rallied and charged the Molino; but each time the artillery drove him back toward Chapultepec, and parties of the light infantry pursued him down the road.  Before ten in the morning the whole field was won; and, having blown up the Casa Mata, Worth, by Scott’s order, fell back to Tacubaya.