Editing Pancho Villa (section)

===Victory at Zacatecas, 1914===
{{main|Battle of Zacatecas (1914)}}
[[File:TakingofZacatecas.JPG|thumb|upright=1.1|Villa taking Zacatecas.]]

After Villa captured the strategic prize of Torreón, Carranza ordered Villa to break off action south of Torreón and instead to divert to attack [[Saltillo]].<ref name=":2" /> He threatened to cut off Villa's coal supply, immobilizing his supply trains, if he did not comply.<ref name=":2" /> This was seen widely as an attempt by Carranza to divert Villa from a direct assault on Mexico City in order to allow Carranza's forces under Obregón, driving in from the west via [[Guadalajara, Jalisco|Guadalajara]], to take the capital first.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|last=Katz|first=Friedrich|title=The Life and Times of Pancho Villa|publisher=Stanford University Press|year=1998}}</ref> This was an expensive and disruptive diversion for the ''División del Norte''. Villa's enlisted men were not unpaid volunteers but paid soldiers, earning the then enormous sum of one peso per day. Each day of delay cost thousands of pesos.

Disgusted but having no practical alternative, Villa complied with Carranza's order and captured the less important city of Saltillo,<ref name=":3" /> and proceeded to give control of the land to Carranza in the hope of ending the hostility between the two.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|last=Katz|first=Friedrich|title=The Life and Times of Pancho Villa|publisher=Stanford University Press|year=1998|pages=343–348}}</ref> Carranza refused to reach any compromise with Villa, and ordered that 5000 members of the ''División del Norte'' be sent to Zacatecas to assist in its capture. A Constitutionalist general had recently staged an attack that had failed due to the superior artillery of the federal forces. Villa believed that sending troops to assist would only lead to the same result unless he was to lead the attack himself.<ref name=":4" /> Carranza declined to rescind the order as he did not want Villa to receive the credit as the victor of Zacatecas.<ref name=":4" /> Upon receiving Carranza's refusal Villa resigned from his post, which further led to the majority of revolutionary generals rallying behind Villa.<ref name=":4" /> Felipe Ángeles and the rest of Villa's staff officers argued for Villa to withdraw his resignation, and proceed to attack Zacatecas, a strategic railroad station heavily defended by Federal troops and considered nearly impregnable.<ref name=":3" /> Zacatecas was the source of much of Mexico's silver, and thus a supply of funds for whoever held it.<ref name=":3" /> Villa accepted his staff's advice and cancelled his resignation, and the ''División del Norte'' defied Carranza and attacked Zacatecas.<ref name=":3" /> Fighting up steep slopes, the ''División del Norte'' defeated a force of 12,000 Federals in the ''Toma de Zacatecas'' (Taking of Zacatecas), the single bloodiest battle of the Revolution, with Federal casualties numbering approximately 7,000 dead and 5,000 wounded,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Katz|first=Friedrich|title=The Life and Times of Pancho Villa|publisher=Stanford University Press|year=1998|pages=353}}</ref> and unknown numbers of civilian casualties.

Villa's victory at Zacatecas in June 1914 broke the back of the Huerta regime.<ref name="Katz" /> Huerta left the country on 14 July 1914. The Federal Army collapsed, ceasing to exist as an institution. As Villa moved towards the capital his progress was halted due to a lack of coal to fuel the railroad engines, and critically, an embargo placed by the U.S. government on importation to Mexico.<ref name=":5">{{Cite book|last=Katz|first=Friedrich|title=The Life and Times of Pancho Villa|publisher=Stanford University PRess|year=1998|pages=354–396}}</ref> Before this Villa had strong relationships with the Wilson administration, due in part to Carranza's distinctly anti-American rhetoric with which Villa publicly disagreed. Although nothing had changed for Villa historian Friedrich Katz writes that the exact motives of the U.S. government are hotly contested, it is likely that it was attempting to establish some type of control over Mexico by not allowing any one faction to become powerful enough to not need U.S. assistance.<ref name=":5" />