Cinco de Mayo

May 5, 1862:

Cinco de Mayo: troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza halt a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla in Mexico.

The Battle of Puebla took place on 5 May 1862 near the city of Puebla during the French intervention in Mexico. The battle ended in a victory for the Mexican Army over the occupying French forces. The victory is celebrated annually in Mexico and some parts of the United States during the festivities of Cinco de Mayo, the 5th of May.

The 1857–62 Mexican civil war known as The Reform War had disorganised the country's finances and the new President, Benito Juárez, was forced to suspend payments of foreign debts in 1861. In late 1861 Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, under the Treaty of London (1861) sent a joint expeditionary force to Mexico, alongside Spanish and British forces, to protect their interests and collect the debts owed by the previous Mexican government. The allied troops occupied the port city of Veracruz on 8 December 1861 and advanced to Orizaba. Napoleon III wanted to seize the opportunity presented by the U.S. involvement in the Civil War to set up a puppet Mexican regime. Napoleon's intrigues led to the withdrawal of the Spanish and British troops in April 1862 at the same time that French reinforcements arrived.

I knew that the French established a short-lived puppet government in Mexico during the Civil War, and I knew that Cinco de Mayo was the celebration of a military victory, but I didn't realize they were connected.  Hey, drinking holidays can be history lessons.