Evidently, however, this meant a severe struggle. Going three quarters of a mile west from the main plaza of Monterey by the Saltillo route, passing a cemetery, and keeping on about a mile and a quarter farther, one found on a low eminence at the right a dilapidated but massive stone building known as the Bishop's Palace, close below which stood now a half-moon battery facing and commanding the town. Beyond this redoubt, called La Libertad, the eminence became an ascending ridge, and some three hundred yards from the Palace the ridge ended sharply as the summit of an extremely steep height known by the Americans as Independence Hill (_Loma de Independencia_), where a small sand-bag redoubt had been constructed. Immediately west of this hill, what was known as the Topo road left the Saltillo highway and struck off toward one's right, and near the farther edge of this road a spur of the mountain began to ascend. On the other side of the highway flowed the Santa Catarina, passing by the city and joining the San Juan some distance below. Farther to the left and parallel to the river rose a high, bristling hill named Federation Ridge. At the western end--the summit--of this ridge, which extended some distance beyond La Libertad, stood a redoubt occupied by some eighty men; and about six hundred yards to the east, in a depression of the ridge, was a substantial masonry fort called El Soldado, armed with two 9-pounders, which were dragged, before the fighting began, to the redoubt on the summit.[12.2] Meantime the Mexicans also were observing. It was generally believed that Taylor had thirty guns, which meant a hard fight; but the soldiers were excited and ready for battle. "The enthusiasm is great, the determination greater, the desire to sacrifice ourselves for the sacred rights of the nation unbounded," wrote the comandante general of Nuevo León. But Ampudia--"the Culinary Knight," as Worth called him, who had fried Sentmanat's head--already trembled. We have food for barely twenty days, he reported to the government; the troops at San Luis Potosí are few in number and little inclined to advance; through spies the enemy are aware of these facts; they will gain the pass between here and Saltillo, and from that position "it will be almost impossible to dislodge them."[12.3]