Around 8 a.m. Villa noticed Constitutionalist fire from north of the railway slackening and Constitutionalist soldiers in the area retreating. Lacking a reserve to throw at the weak point, he ordered a general assault to be launched at 9. During that attack, Agustin Estrada led his brigade against the right flank, only to discover that intervening fields had been somehow flooded the previous night. Wallowing in mud and water, the Villista horsemen made easy targets. Estrada was killed, and his attack collapsed in disorder.

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Obregon, meanwhile, learned that four or five of his hard-pressed battalions were running out of ammunition. Knowing that any retreat under fire can spread panic, he ordered the 15th Infantry Battalion and 1st Cavalry Regiment, both on his refused right flank, to wheel to their left, across the ground where Estrata’s attack had collapsed. Then he dispatched staff officers to hurry forward ammunition from the reserve dump and also to bring him a bugler.

A puzzled officer brought Obregon the first bugler he could find, ten-year-old Jess Martinez of the 9th Infantry Battalion of Sonora. Obregon ordered the boy to sound retreat, hoping the attacking troops would mistake the call as coming from their own headquarters. The ploy worked. ‘Confused, the Villistas…halted their advance and assumed defensive positions,’ Obregon recalled. While young Jess continued to sound the bugle call, Obregon ran through nearby positions, repositioning soldiers to cover gaps. At last the ammunition arrived; waiting riflemen refilled their cartridge belts and ran back to their positions.

Villa’s general assault stalled. ‘The fields where the enemy was making his charges were literally sown with corpses,’ Obregon wrote, ‘and…the dead horses already were an obstacle to continuing their charges.’ Still, isolated charges continued, but they were weak and lacked tactical cohesion. By 11 a.m., some Villista infantrymen began to run out of ammunition. Sensing that the moment to counterattack was at hand, Obregon told Castro to ready the cavalry division. At noon Maycotte’s brigade of one thousand charged south from Celaya, then swept west, behind Villa’s right wing. Jess Novoa’s brigade followed, sweeping wider to penetrate the Division del Norte’s rear. Panic spread, and Villa’s right flank folded in on the center brigades, which began to abandon their positions.

As Villa watched, trying to discern what was happening, he was stunned to spot a Constitutionalist column, the recently returned two-thousand-man southern screening force, enveloping his left flank. Obregon had managed a double envelopment–Villa’s favorite maneuver. The Villista left wing fell back, then orderly retreat turned to rout. At 2:30 p.m. Obregon reported the progress of the fight to Carranza, sarcastically concluding, ‘Fortunately, Villa is directing the battle personally.’

Villa later claimed that during the rout he heard ‘the voice of duty demanding not that I restore my lines with fire and blood… but [that I] save my troops….’ Rallying his Dorados (Golden Ones), a hand-picked, four-hundred-man escort, Villa organized a fighting retreat and managed to rescue his artillery and get the wounded aboard his Servicio Sanitario trains. Constitutionalist cavalry pursued the demoralized Villistas for nine miles in swirling, small-unit fights before finally breaking off the chase at dark. Obregon estimated Villa’s losses at eighteen hundred men killed, about five hundred taken prisoner, and more than three thousand wounded. Pancho Villa’s Division del Norte had suffered its first defeat.

Obregon wanted to pursue and destroy Villa, but his own force was too battered; 557 men of all ranks, including two infantry battalion commanders, were dead, and 365 were wounded. A huge amount of ammunition had been expended, and every man and beast was exhausted. Then, on April 10, an astonishing letter arrived from Villa, making pursuit unnecessary.

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