With gloomy face and averted eye the gallant soldier received the thanks of his chief for the exploits of the morning.  His heart was with the brave men he had lost—­nearly eight hundred out of less than thirty-five hundred and among them fifty-eight officers, many of whom were his dearest friends.  All had fallen in advance of their men, with sword in hand and noble words on their lips.  ’Twas a poor price for these to have stormed Molino del Rey, and cut down nearly a fifth of Santa Anna’s fourteen thousand men.  Sadly the General returned to his quarters.

The end was now close at hand.  Reconnoissances were carefully made, and, the enemy’s strength being gathered on the southern front of the city, General Scott determined to assail Chapultepec on the west.  By the morning of the 12th the batteries were completed, and opened a brisk fire on the castle, without, however, doing any more serious damage than annoying the garrison and killing a few men.  The fire was kept up all day; and at night preparations were made for the assault, which was ordered to be made next morning.

At daybreak on the 13th the cannonade began again, as well from the batteries planted against Chapultepec as from Steptoe’s guns, which were served against the southern defences of the city in order to divert the attention of the enemy.  At 8 A.M. the firing from the former ceased, and the attack commenced.  Quitman advanced along the Tacubaya road, Pillow from the Molino del Rey, which he had occupied on the evening before.  Between the Molino and the castle lay first an open space, then a grove thickly planted with trees; in the latter, Mexican sharpshooters had been posted, protected by an intrenchment on the border of the grove.  Pillow sent Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston with a party of voltigeurs to turn this work by a flank movement; it was handsomely accomplished; and just as the voltigeurs broke through the redan, Pillow, with the main body, charged it in front and drove back the Mexicans.  The grove gained, Pillow pressed forward to the front of the rock; for the Mexican shot from the castle batteries, crashing through the trees, seemed even more terrible than it really was, and the troops were becoming restless.

The Mexicans had retreated to a redoubt half way up the hill; the voltigeurs sprang up from rock to rock, firing as they advanced, and followed by Hooker, Chase, and others, with parties of infantry.  In a very few minutes the redoubt was gained, the garrison driven up the hill, and the voltigeurs, Ninth, and Fifteenth were in hot pursuit after them.  The firing from the castle was very severe.  Colonel Ransom, of the Ninth, was killed, and Pillow himself was wounded.  Still the troops pressed on till the crest of the hill was gained.  There some moments were lost owing to the delay in the arrival of scaling-ladders, during which two of Quitman’s regiments and Clarke’s brigade reenforced the storming party.  When the ladders came, numbers of men rushed forward with them, leaped into the ditch, and planted them for the assault.