On Cinco de Mayo 1862 at Puebla, in southeastern Mexico, a conquest army of 6,000 seasoned French soldiers funded by Emperor Napoleon III of France, and marching at behest of Archduke Maximilian of Austria, met 4,000 Mexican defenders who were mostly last minute recruits from the barrios of Puebla. The invaders were headed for Mexico City 60 miles away to install Maximilian Emperor of Mexico. They expected little resistance. French General Charles Ferdinande de Lorencez had declared, upon landing of his troops at the port of Veracruz, that because Mexicans were merely “bloodthirsty half-castes who united the vices of the white man with the savageness of the Indian... We are so superior to the Mexicans in race, in organization, in discipline, (and) in morality...that, at the head of 6,000 soldiers, I am already master of Mexico.”
-more-