Ciudad Serdán is the municipal seat of Chalchicomula de Sesma Municipality in the Mexican state of Puebla. Its geographical coordinates are 18° 59′ North, and 97° 27′ West. Its average altitude is 2,520 m above sea level. Source: Statistics from INEGI 1,500 were killed in a tragic accident at San Andres Chalchicomula on March 6, 1862. It was customary for Mexican soldiers to be accompanied by their wives and the women who did all their cooking and cleaning. On March 6, local vendors were in the camp to sell tortillas, beans and other vegetables while the women were lighting their cooking fires. The wind blew some sparks into a barn where twenty-three tons of gunpowder were stored, and seconds later there were corpses and severed heads and limbs falling everywhere. More than a thousand soldiers were killed, along with almost five hundred women and several dozen vendors. It took several days just to count the casualties. More than two hundred others had lost limbs or eyesight, or had been wounded in other ways. French Admiral Jurien, some forty miles away at Tehuacan, had sent French doctors as a goodwill gesture. The admiral's viewpoint differed sharply from that of Pierre Saligny, the former French minister to Mexico. Jurien was trying to show that the French were not there to persecute the Mexican people but to help them, but Saligny had eagerly sought the French invasion to establish a monarchy in what he called "this wretched country." Mexican General Lopez Uraga, who had already been accepting gifts and wine from the French, sent "thank you" messages, and friendly, two-way communication was established. Saligny, seeing that General Uraga was responding positively, played along with dinner invitations. In Mexico City, War Minister General Ignacio Zaragoza and President Benito Juarez agreed that General Uraga should be replaced immediately. Zaragoza stepped down from his War Minister post to replace Uraga as commander in the field. With Zaragoza on the way, things were about to change. Uraga would no longer be dining with the enemy. Zaragoza's now famous victory over the French in Puebla on Cinco de Mayo was still several weeks away. Source: "Cinco de Mayo: What is Everybody Celebrating?" by Donald W. Miles. iUniverse, 2006, p. 14.
