| Huerta's Federal Army |
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Information AboutHuerta's Federal Army |
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Huerta took power after having Francisco Madero , the president, assasinated along with his vice-president. He inherited the weaknesses of the Porfirista and Madero Federal armies. In February 1912, the Federal army consisted of 32,594 regulars and 15,550 irregulars. This was far below what the army executive said it was, which was 80,000 men. By september of the same year the official strength of the army was 85,000 men. In addition there were 16,000 Rurales , 4,000 Urban Police and 16,200 Militia, rural guards and other pro-government men under arms. In April 1914 Huerta claimed his army had reached the size of 250,000 men, with 31 regiments of Rurales and 31,000 Militia. In July, it is more realistic to say he had only the command of 71,000 men, whereas US observers said it was more like 40,000 men. However extensive the expansion of the army was, it led to a deterioration in the standard of the average recruit, or more accuartly, conscript. Huerta made an attempt to incrase the size of the army by orderign a mass levy, or forced conscription from the streets by his press-gangs. Men were pulled out of cinemas or as they left church! Very few of the men under his command would have been volunteers and many deserted the army. But Huerta did try to improve matters by increasing pay in May 1913 by 50%. At the same time 382 Military cadets were given commissions and attempts were made to increase the number in training. Federal army Generals were often quite corrupt and guilty of undermining their mens morale by poor leadership etc. This corruption took the form of sometimes generals selling ammunition, food and uniforms to the enemy! The corruption even went all the way to the top, Huerta's two sons, Victoriano Jr. and Jorge both were placed in important spots, the procurement of arms, supplies, uniforms and ammunition etc. Despite this Huerta did try to create an army capable of keeping him in power. He tried to expand the army by creating new units, of which wouldn't be tainted by the defeatism of the former Porfirista army. To "stiffen" the resolve of the Mexican population, he tried to militarize society in the Prussian style. This included all government employees to wear military style uniforms, a decree even extended to schoolboys, and to perform military drill on Sundays. Huerta and his General were not completely old fashioned and immune to modern tactics, he sent 31 cadets to Europe to study military aviation, so that a larger air arm in Mexico could be formed. The most successful aspect of Huerta's reign was that he got many former rebels to fight for him, thse included . Orozco offered Huerta the services of his 3,000-4,000 men, who were to prove fine men to fight the Constitutionalist armies with. When not helping the defence of Federal Garrisons and towns, Orozco's men acted as guerrillas, which they were the most successful as. The Federal Army was disbanded on August 13 , 1914 , at the time the full strength of the Federal army was 10 Generals of Division, 61 Generals of Brigade, 1,006 Jefes, 2,446 Officers, 24,800 other ranks and 7,058 horses. In addition there were 21 regiments of Rurales with 500 effectives in each, gibving a total of 10,500 men. The Federal army was replaced by the Constitutional Army of Venustiano Carranza , although they too were known as Federals after Huertas defeat. |
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