It must be explained that there were two big political parties, the clericals, and the liberals--both pledged to steal everything in sight. Diaz was scarcely healed of his wound, when a clerical excursion came down to steal the city. He thrashed them sick, he chased them until they dropped, and thrashed them again until they scattered in helpless panic. The liberal president rewarded Colonel Diaz with a post of such eminent danger, that he had to fight for his life through two whole years before he could get a vacation. Then Oaxaca, to procure him a holiday, sent up the young soldier as member of parliament to the capital. Of course the clerical army objected strongly to the debates of a liberal congress sitting in parliament at the capital. They came and spoiled the session by laying siege to the City of Mexico. Then the member for Oaxaca was deputed to arrange with these clericals. He left his seat in the house, gathered his forces, and chased that clerical army for two months. At last, dead weary, the clericals had camped for supper, when Diaz romped in and thrashed them. He got that supper. So disgusted were the clerical leaders that they now invited Napoleon III to send an army of invasion. Undismayed, the unfortunate liberals fought a joint army of French and clericals, checked them under the snows of Mount Orizaba, and so routed them before the walls of Puebla that it was nine months before they felt well enough to renew the attack. The day of that victory is celebrated by the Mexicans as their great national festival. In time, the French, forty thousand strong, not to mention their clerical allies, returned to the assault of Puebla, and in front of the city found Diaz commanding an outpost. The place was only a large rest-house for pack-trains, and when the outer gate was carried, the French charged in with a rush. One man remained to defend the courtyard, Colonel Diaz, with a field-piece, firing shrapnel, mowing away the French in swathes until his people rallied from their panic, charged across the square, and recovered the lost gates. The city held out for sixty days, but succumbed to famine, and the French could not persuade such a man as Diaz to give them any parole. They locked him up in a tower, and his dungeon had but a little iron-barred window far up in the walls. Diaz got through those bars, escaped, rallied a handful of Mexicans, armed them by capturing a French convoy camp, raised the southern states of Mexico, and for two years held his own against the armies of France. President Juarez had been driven away into the northern desert, a fugitive, the Emperor Maximilian reigned in the capital, and Marshal Bazaine commanded the French forces that tried to conquer Diaz in the south. The Mexican hero had three thousand men and a chain of forts. Behind that chain of forts he was busy reorganizing the government of the southern states, and among other details, founding a school for girls in his native city.