The Battle of Puebla is an annual celebration of the battle (5 May 1862) and is commonly referred to globally as Cinco de Maya.<\/p>\n
While not an official national holiday in Mexico, schools are closed nationwide, and some commercial office workers have the day off, but most businesses are open.<\/p>\n
There are many myths about the Battle of Puebla, the most prominent one being that “the battle was to defeat French invaders.” The French Invasion had occurred on April 16, 1838, and lasted until March 1839, and many people mistakenly associated the two events. In truth, in May of 1862, the French were on their way from Veracruz to Mexico City to collect the debt owed to them by Mexico for loans. President Benito Ju\u00e1rez had asked England, Spain, and France to postpone payments for two years to allow Mexico to restore its treasury, which had been depleted by the US war against Mexico and the Reform War. While England and Spain, who owed much more than France, returned to their home countries after a meeting in Veracruz, France decided to go to Mexico City to present its demands.<\/p>\n
When the French delegation arrived in Puebla de los \u00c1ngeles, near Puebla, they were met by the Mexican Army led by\u00a0General Ignacio Zaragoza. A battle ensued, and the much smaller French delegation lost. The losses were 87 Mexicans killed vs 131 French killed.<\/p>\n
Apparently, it did not take much to provoke the French into declaring war on Mexico. The first French invasion of Mexico, known as the Pastry War, also known as the Guerra de los Pasteles or the First Franco-Mexican War, took place between November 1838 and March 1839. It was driven by claims from French citizens\u2014including a pastry chef\u2014seeking compensation for property damage during civil unrest in Mexico, coupled with broader French financial interests and a desire for better trade terms.<\/p>\n
French nationals, led by a pastry chef whose bakery products in Tacubaya were ruined, demanded compensation from the Mexican government. As was normal in France, things were further exaggerated. France demanded reparations of 600,000 pesos for the ruined pastries, which Mexico refused to pay. France responded with a naval blockade of Mexican ports, starting at Veracruz. The outcome was that the conflict ended in March 1839 with a British-brokered peace-talk where Mexico agreed to pay the 600,000 pesos, but not more and certainly no improvement in trade terms.<\/p>\n
Approximately 224 Mexicans were reported killed or wounded during the conflict, particularly at the fort of San Juan de Ul\u00faa. The French losses were lower, with reports of roughly 121 killed or wounded, while other sources mention that 32 French soldiers died.<\/p>\n
The war was a short-lived conflict centered on the French blockade of Veracruz. One notable injury during the fighting included Mexican General Antonio L\u00f3pez de Santa Anna, who was wounded by cannon fire and subsequently had his leg amputated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Battle of Puebla is an annual celebration of the battle (5 May 1862) and is commonly referred to globally as Cinco de Maya. While not an official national holiday in Mexico, schools are closed nationwide, and some commercial office workers have the day off, but most businesses are open. There are many myths about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[266,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-holidays","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/universaldomainexchange.com\/vcom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/universaldomainexchange.com\/vcom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/universaldomainexchange.com\/vcom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/universaldomainexchange.com\/vcom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/universaldomainexchange.com\/vcom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/universaldomainexchange.com\/vcom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/universaldomainexchange.com\/vcom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/universaldomainexchange.com\/vcom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/universaldomainexchange.com\/vcom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/universaldomainexchange.com\/vcom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}