Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1914-03-27
TORREON CAPTURED
VILLAS REBELS KILL 1900 HUER-
TIA SOLDIERS IN TERRIFIC
BATTLE.
CITY is NOW IN FLAMES
Victors Apply Torch to Captured
Town to Wipe Out choIera-De-
feated Troops Throw Away
Arms to Avoid Being Shot.

III FeIJSa, durango, Marcn 20
Torreon fell at five o'clock on Tues
day. General Villa won complete
and sweeping victory. The former
bandit and refugee is now the abso-
Lutte master of northern Mexico.
There are only meager federal forces
to resist his occupation of Monterey
and Saltillo and Tampico on the east
and Mazatlan on the west.
With the Huer1a army under Velas-
CO scattered and broken beyond repair
at Torreon, the road to Mexico City
lies open to Villa Villa is being
cheered by his men and his generals
as the great military genius in Mex
leo.
General Velasco knew he was de-
feated when his forces were smashed
and driven out of Gomez Palacio He
had, realized that there was the place
whose natural advantages gave him
his best chance of stopping the adj
vance of Villa with his 10000 men
against Velasco's 5000. The artillery
equipment of the opposing forces were
about equal. Fleeing from Gomez Pa
lacio in utter route, Velasco's men got
no respite. The rebels pursued relent-
lessly. The federals' only hope was to
hold the Nazas river against Villa
with their batteries there. But their
own guns were turned against them
from the north, covering the advance
of the forces of Villa and Benavides
from the northeast and when the
Nazas batteries were silenced Torreon
was doomed.
With 1900 federals estimated to
have been slain in the terrific fighting
at Gomez Palacio, which ended in the
rout of General Velasco's forces, Villa
mercilessly pursued the beaten
forces and then, with Torreon sur
rounded, Villa and General Benevides,
with his famous Zaragosa brigade, led
an onslaught from the east and north
east.
The fierce hand-to-hand fighting in
the streets, the flaming of buildings
put to the torch and the devastation
generally that fell on Gomez Palacio
also were visited on Torreon.
In the fierce fighting of the last 4S
hours hundreds of federal troops broke
from their ranks and deserted to
Villas army. They were held in the
trenches under the onrush of the con-
stitutionalists only by the actions OF
their officers, who shot into the backs
Of men who tried to flee. The loss Of
life on the federal side is believed to
have been the heaviest of the present
revolution, for Velasco's army fought
in massed formations against a ter
rible artillery bombardment.
Corpses of cholera victims were
strewn. in all the federal trenches.
Fearful of an outbreak of the deadly
disease in his own ranks, the con-
uueror issued orders for the burning
of all barracks and hundreds of other
buildings that might be suspected of
having harbored the cholera stricken,
so that Torreon is in confiagration.
Whetted by the crushing blow adj
ministered to Velasco's army at Gomez
Palacio, nothing could stay the adj
vance of Villas men. The way led for
four miles through apparently i'm
passable territory. The gun carriages
went into the mud to their hubs;
barbed wire barricades were every few
hundred feet of the way, quagmires
and canals had to be crossed and all
the time pounding fire was in their
faces from the batteries on the Nazas
river.
Benevides added terror by setting
fire to all buildings along his approach
to the plaza and issuing orders to his
men to shoot down all found with
arms. Velasco's men heard the shouted
orders and began f1nging away their
weapons and scurrying up the streets.
The federals utterly abandoned their
wounded in the fields of Gomez Pala-
clio and Torreon.