30,000 French soldiers in Mexico

Dundee's naysaying subordinate officer warns him that there are 30,000 French soldiers in Mexico. Gasp! Shudder! 30,000 French soldiers in Mexico!

In my humble opinion Dundee is correct to ignore that warning, at least in the form that it is given in.

In 1864 Mexico had its current size of 758,400 square miles.

In 1864 the United States of American had an area of 3,119,884.69 square miles.

So if the French soldiers were evenly spread over Mexico each French soldier would have to patrol 25.28 square miles - an area of 5.027 miles by 5.027 miles - all by himself. But instead the French soldiers were grouped into units of tens, or hundreds, or thousands, of men, separated from other units by distances of tens or hundreds of miles.

On January 1, 1865, the Union army had 959,460 men, with 620,924 present for duty, enough for each union soldier present for duty to patrol 5.02 square miles, or about 2.24 by 2.24 miles, all by himself. But of course the Union soldiers were grouped into units, and those units tended to be near the units of Rebel soldiers.

Note that Sierra Charriba was able to slip between Union army units and raid in the American Southwest despite their efforts to catch him.

Thus the threat of 30,000 French soldiers in Mexico should not have scared Major Dundee much.