In preparation for the counterattack, Castro’s division–temporarily commanded by Maycotte–crossed the Rio de la Laja after dark and at about 11 arrived at the La Favorita factory, at the northeast corner of the Constitutionalists’ defensive perimeter. Meanwhile, intense fighting, especially along the western front, continued during the night. Two freight cars of ammunition had arrived on April 12, but so many rounds had been expended that Obregon was worried that his soldiers might run out before he could launch the counterattack. He telegraphed Carranza, urging immediate resupply. At midnight he again wired. Carranza replied that a train would start out within two hours. Then a fortuitous torrential rain began, damping the intensity of combat.

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Finally recognizing a stalemate on the western front, Villa ordered a dawn attack against the Constitutionalists’ weaker southeast front. By 6 a.m. on April 15, Villa’s right wing had regained the northwest bank of the Rio de la Laja, abandoned during the rainy night when the rain-swollen stream’s water level rose. The dismounted cavalry defending the southeastern corner of Obregon’s de-fenses began to fall back. Villa perceived the opening he had been waiting for, but again he had no reserve with which to exploit it. Instead he ordered intensified attacks against the opposite, or northwest, corner of the Constitutionalists’ defenses. There, the Sonorans and soldiers of the 2nd and 3rd Brigades were soon hard pressed. They fell back and re-formed behind the nearby railroad embankment.

Although Villa must have been satisfied by his troops’ progress, he later said that he was concerned at not knowing the disposition of Obregon’s cavalry. Was it all fighting as infantry along the long defensive perimeter? That question was soon answered. ‘I made out those very columns of cavalry my eyes had been searching for–already enveloping my extreme left!’ he recalled. Villa immediately ordered the left-flank brigades to fight to the death, while he organized a counterattack: ‘I gathered about me a few of my officers, plus my escort and some other people, and with me at the head we rode out at full speed….’

Villa’s precipitous counterattack took Maycotte’s charging troopers by surprise. As they hesitated, Obregon, at the head of the 2nd Brigade, ordered his infantry to advance. Villa recalled:

The bulk of the infantry of their right flank, plus the center, came in to support the cavalry. And…that infantry and that cavalry, with a total of no less than ten thousand men, overwhelmed us with their weight, and I had no…reserve….That whole flank fell apart, and part of my center…fell back, and my artillery supports retreated, and my guns were enveloped such that not I nor anyone could do anything to save them.

Obregon’s cavalry brigades manning the southeastern front, including los Rayados, swept down on the startled Villistas who had crossed the stream. ‘My men on the right flank could not resist, though they tried,’ Villa admitted, ‘but only after many fell dead or wounded were they forced out of their positions on the river bank and…retreated to the far side.’ Cut off, they retreated southward. The Constitutionalist cavalry brigades, meanwhile, rode hard for the Division del Norte’s rear.

As thousands of Villistas realized the cavalry envelopments were cutting them off, a panicked rout developed that Villa’s personal intervention failed to quell. ‘Not his reputation for invincibility, his soldiers’ blind faith in him, nor even the threat of the famous and terrible dorados to machine-gun those whose faced about could halt their flight,’ Carranza’s chief of staff later wrote. ‘At the cry of `salvese el que pueda’ [`every man for himself'], the veterans of the old Division del Norte fled the battlefield.’ One Villista artillery officer who had escaped the envelopment and scrambled to the top of a hill later wrote: ‘I shall never forget what I saw from there…whole battalions which seemed poised to attack Celaya again, but in reality they were prisoners. On top of the hill, artillery pieces had ben abandoned, and in front of them a torrent of people passed without stopping, without thinking of anything. What they wanted was to flee, to flee as far as possible.’

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