On May 23, 1847, with the sun halfway overhead, U.S. Navy captain Raphael Semmes and his nineteen-year shipmate Francis Seymour, who were accompanying General Winfield Scott during the campaign to seize Mexico City, reached the town of Las Vigas – ten miles from Perote. Located high atop the Sierra Madre Oriental abutting the cold windswept volcano sharing the same name, Perote is the gateway to Mexico’s high altiplano, and home of the Fortress of San Carlos. The eighteenth-century fortress-prison, which held Texans during their war of independence, had an older history under New Spain’s Viceroy as a second-line of defense for the port city of Veracruz and fortress of San Juan de Ulúa, and was completed after several years of construction beginning in 1770.[1]

At 8,000 feet, the homes Las Vigas, made of stone and pine oak from the surrounding area, lay mostly empty, and Scott’s group dismounted for a night of rest and recuperation. Cold water ran in the nearby streams, and the Cofre de Perote, which for many months was the object of Semmes’ curiosity aboard the deck of his ship Somers near Veracruz, which tragically sank in a violent storm, killing many members of his crew, appeared to him like an “old friend.” Indeed, the geography between the second and third link in the chain connecting the coast and capital held a story that informed the Americans of what had once been in Mexico, and where it was going. The following dawn, the group rose and rode the remaining ten miles to Perote through the high country and hillsides occasionally planted with parched corn. Just before noon, they arrived at their destination. Semmes described the impressive structure:

This immense fortress is a quadrangle, with four bastions, and covers two acres of ground. Its parapets are eight feet in thickness, and rise to the height of sixty feet from the bottom of the moat, which is counterscarped with stone, and is from fifty to seventy-five feet wide, and fifteen feet deep. The citadel, which is at the same time the quarters of the officers, occupies the center of the fortress, and forms a hollow square. In this, and in the casemates, four thousand troops may be comfortably lodged, although fifteen hundred would be a sufficient garrison. The whole fortress is of the most massive and substantial masonry.[2]

A Grave Offense

After dismounting, a funeral procession of a fellow American passed them as they came to the main gate. “We met a funeral at the main portcullis – some soldier having fallen a victim to war, or the climate – and halted until it filed past; the sentinel ‘presenting arms’ to the body of his deceased comrade, and the notes of the muffled drum, and the moaning fife, falling but too painfully on the ear.” Semmes pondered why the Mexicans left only one officer in charge of the fortress to formally cede it to the U.S. Army when General William J. Worth arrived there earlier that month. It is a massive structure, and had it been properly armed, garrisoned, and defended, the Americans would not have breached its walls and bastions without significant cost.[3]

Semmes made no mention of it, but just before entering the main gate he passed two stone statues of soldiers edging the road, as if guarding the fortress, staring into the cloudless blue eternity. According to legend, in 1793 Francisco Ferrer and Jaime Castells, two sentries at the Fortress of San Fernando, located in the northern Catalonian town of Figueres, near the border with France, were found one morning lying dead outside its walls, both pierced with each other’s bayonet. An inquiry concluded the young men were in love with a woman named Olalla de Olot, and killed each other in their competitive rage the previous night while guarding the fortress. Since they could not be punished with the capital crime of jeopardizing the lives of their comrades, the king ordered their likenesses etched into stone and exiled for eternal duty, where the two enraptured Catalans stood in stoic vigilance as Semmes and Seymour obliviously passed them.[4]

From ancient to modern times, sleeping while on duty remains a grave offense, and is subject to severe punishment under the U.S. Army’s Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) – established in 1775 by the Second Continental Congress during the American Revolution. Other more common charges against soldiers (mostly privates) during U.S. Mexican-War were insubordination, drunkenness, mutinous conduct (including fighting), highly unsoldierlike conduct, neglect of duty, and conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline. Punishments for most of the charges resulted in reduced rank (for sergeants or corporals), having one’s stripes or chevrons cut in front of his battalion, public reprimand by a superior officer, forfeit of pay, and branding. One of the more unusual punishments carried out was to “ride the wooden horse” (cavaletto squarciapalle). It was a torture device of some antiquity in Europe where the prisoner would straddle a V-shaped sawhorse with weights dangling from their legs, and could easily cripple an unfit prisoner. Private Robert Thompson was forced to do so “from reveille to retreat” for thirty days after being found guilty of conduct prejudicial to good order. However, the more serious charge was sleeping on post since doing so put the lives of the company and army at risk. In the case of private John Quinn, the punishment was forfeit of pay and “to wear an iron yoke weighing ten pounds, with three prongs, for three years.” Sergeant James Bannan and Corporal Edward Hill of the 5^th Infantry were convicted of “drunkenness on guard” in Mexico City after the Americans seized that city. Because tensions at the time were elevated and insurrection or surprise attacks were considered imminently possible, both were found guilty and ordered to be shot the day after their court martial. Luckily for them, General Worth and “all of the officers of the 5^th Infantry signed a request for pardon” and the sentence was leniently suspended by Scott. Nevertheless, the episode worked as a deterrent to others who engaged in drinking, or sleeping while on duty.[5]

As for Ferrer and Castells, also known as The Stone Exiles (Los Desterrados de Piedra) – they remain to this day at Perote, standing together in stoic vigilance in the cold wind, paying for their crimes of passion as monuments personifying the unforgivable act of sentries the world over.  

[1] Benjamin J. Swenson, Winfield Scott and the March to Mexico City: Analyzing the Surprising Victory of 1847 (McFarland & Co, Publishers, 2026), 60; Benjamin J. Swenson, Wars of the Mexican Gulf: The Breakaway Republics of Texas and Yucatan, US-Mexican War, and Limits of Empire, 1835–1850 (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2024), 71–2.  

[2] Raphael Semmes, Service Afloat and Ashore during the Mexican War (Cincinnati: WM. H. Moore & Co., 1851), 219–22.

[3] Semmes, Service Afloat and Ashore, 221–2.

[4] Swenson, Winfield Scott and the March to Mexico City, 60.

[5] American Star, Mexico City, Sept. 20, 23, 1847; American Star – No. 2, Puebla, July 1, 1847; U.S. Articles of War (Art. 46), Annals of Congress, 9^th Congress, 1^st Session, Appendix: “Public Acts of Congress”, Washington DC, Library of Congress (LOC), 1245; Benjamin J. Swenson, The Dawn of Guerrilla Warfare: Why the Tactics of Insurgents against Napoleon failed in the US Mexican War (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2023), 90–1.