The Northern Division that rolled south from Chihuahua in March 1914 was not the improvised guerrilla force that had taken Torreon the previous fall. This time, Villa commanded over 8,000 men organized into named brigades, backed by 29 cannons and 1,700 grenades loaded onto purpose-built trains. He had 40 white-painted hospital wagons staffed by American physicians hired at high salaries. He had a personal cavalry escort called the Dorados, equipped with new uniforms, Mauser rifles, and Colt pistols. He even had a two-engine airplane with contracted foreign pilots. And he had Felipe Angeles, a brilliant artillery officer and old Maderista, who had joined the division just days before departure. Torreon would be taken again -- but this time, the cost would be measured in weeks of brutal urban combat.
On March 16, 1914, the division departed for Torreon in a procession that stretched for miles along the rail line. A reconnaissance train led the way, followed by a repair train carrying rails and equipment to fix sabotaged track. Then came horse carriers, food wagons, the hospital cars, cannon carriers, and finally passenger cars packed with infantry and officers, with soldiers crowding the roofs. Villa cut telegraph lines behind him to prevent news of his departure from reaching Ciudad Juarez or the United States, and the federal garrison at Torreon -- expecting the revolutionaries to remain in Chihuahua for another week or two -- was caught off guard. The army paused at Santa Rosalia de Camargo on March 17 for a leader's wedding, then pushed through Jimenez, Escalon, the destroyed station at Yermo, and on to Conejos by March 19. Because the route crossed waterless desert, Villa ordered twelve tanker cars from Chihuahua. The logistics were a far cry from his eight-man crossing a year earlier.
Torreon's defender, General Jose Refugio Velasco, had learned from the previous fall and distributed his 7,000 men, 19 cannons, and 35 machine guns across multiple positions, including outposts along the rail lines to Bermejillo, Mapimi, Tlahualilo, and Sacramento. Villa dismantled these outposts methodically before converging on the Torreon-Gomez Palacio metropolitan area. The critical obstacle was the Cerro de la Pila in western Gomez Palacio -- a fortified hill protected by 500 men in trenches, machine gun nests, and stone walls. Eight night assaults were thrown against it and repelled, costing 125 casualties. Villa's single aircraft proved useful only for reconnaissance; its bombs failed to detonate when dropped from altitude. On March 25, Angeles placed the big cannon Nino close enough for three direct hits on the hill, and 2,000 men charged the slopes that night. By midnight they held two of five forts. At dawn the defenders counterattacked and retook them. The grinding pattern repeated until March 26, when the federals abruptly abandoned Gomez Palacio and consolidated in Torreon across the Nazas River.
On March 28, the Torreon garrison fired artillery at the surrounding mountains for eight hours, achieving nothing. That night Villa sent fresh troops from Durango forward: Carrillo's brigade toward the Calabazas peak, Ceniceros toward Huarache Canyon, Calixto Contreras toward La Polvareda peak. All three positions fell during the night. But Carrillo's men, ignoring orders, abandoned their peak at dawn to eat and rest. A federal counterattack with Argumedo's cavalry retook two of the three positions. A field court-martial sentenced Carrillo, and his men were given a choice: retake their positions or face a firing squad. Meanwhile, other revolutionary columns had infiltrated the city itself, advancing house by house through the neighborhoods around the Alameda. The fighting was intimate and terrible -- walls breached with dynamite, rooftop sniper duels, artillery at point-blank range through city streets.
After twelve days of fighting, Torreon fell on April 2, 1914. The human cost was staggering on both sides. Federal forces, already demoralized by the loss of their outer positions, could not withstand the combined pressure of Villa's pincer -- forces converging from the mountains while infantry fought through the urban core. Velasco's army broke. The battle transformed the Northern Division from a powerful regional force into the most feared army in Mexico. The weapons, ammunition, and rolling stock captured at Torreon fueled Villa's subsequent campaigns southward, toward the decisive confrontation with Huerta's regime. But the battle also revealed the revolution's capacity for brutality. Prisoners faced summary execution or forced conscription. Civilians suffered through weeks of bombardment and street fighting. The twin cities of Torreon and Gomez Palacio, already scarred from the first battle, emerged from the second devastated. For Villa, Torreon was the making of a legend. For the people who lived there, it was twelve days they would spend a generation recovering from.
Located at 25.53N, 103.43W at Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico. The battle covered the twin cities of Torreon and Gomez Palacio on opposite banks of the Nazas River in the La Laguna basin. Francisco Sarabia International Airport (MMTC/TRC) serves the modern city. From altitude, the metropolitan area is a prominent urban cluster in flat, arid terrain. The Cerro de la Pila, key to the battle, is a low hill in western Gomez Palacio. The surrounding desert and mountain approaches through which Villa's forces advanced are clearly visible.