Facing an empire-building French invasion, roughly 2,000 poorly-armed Mexican troops and irregular cavalry repelled 6,000 French soldiers at the fortified hills of Puebla. Though France later took the city and installed Maximilian I as emperor, the upset victory became a lasting symbol of resistance and national pride, celebrated more enthusiastically in Mexican communities in the United States than in most of Mexico itself.
When French Emperor Napoleon III sent an expeditionary force to collect on Mexico's defaulted debts and install a puppet monarchy, his generals expected an easy march to Mexico City. Instead, at the town of Puebla on May 5, 1862, General Ignacio Zaragoza organized a scrappy defense using two hilltop forts, cavalry led by a young Porfirio Díaz, and, according to local legend, a herd of stampeding cattle that scattered French ranks charging up a muddy slope.
The French, considered one of the finest armies in the world, lost close to 500 men and retreated in disarray, a humiliation rarely inflicted on European powers by Latin American forces at the time. It was not a war-winning victory; France reinforced and captured Puebla the following year, eventually placing Archduke Maximilian of Austria on a manufactured Mexican throne until his execution in 1867.
Yet the battle's symbolic weight outlasted its tactical significance. Mexican immigrant communities in California adopted the date during the U.S. Civil War era, partly out of solidarity against European intervention in the Americas, and Cinco de Mayo eventually grew into a larger celebration of Mexican heritage in the United States than in most of Mexico, where it remains a regional holiday centered on Puebla itself.
Key people: Ignacio Zaragoza, Porfirio Díaz, Napoleon III