Significant Commentary Concerning Colonel Juan Sequin - Spaniard, Mexican, and Texian Extraordinaire

A Long and Complicated Life:   A vignette concerning Juan Nepomuceno Sequin

_______________________________

 Juan Nepumoceno Sequin
Hero of Texas,
 defender of the Alamo
Commander of the Cavalry at San
Jacinto at the defeat of Antonio
 Lopez de Santa Anna, President
 and Generalissimo of
 Mexican National Forces

__________________

      Responding to Jack Ayoub's excellent contribution of 9 June 2020, regarding Juan Sequin and the events pertaining to his light cavalry, there were in fact Mexican/Spanish Texians who were in the Alamo at the very end, and who died there on the fateful day.  There were perhaps as many as 22 of them.   Their commander, Juan Sequin, was following orders, when William Barrett Travis, commander at the Alamo, sent Sequin to search for reinforcements, or in other words, "…where the Hell is Fannin!!!  Bring him and his men, and anyone else you can!!" (I can almost hear him say).  On or before 28 February 1836  Sequin rode forth into the morning darkness, and found nothing but really bad news for the next 10 days.

   All Fannin's men, along with him, had been unlawfully (according to the rules of war at the time) slaughtered as filibusterers and rustlers, by order of Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who was commanding officer, essentially of everything.   General Urrea, back at Goliad, was furious with Santa Anna for having countermanded Urrea's urgency to grant POW status to the Texians under Fannin's command.

     We know the outcomes of all these places, up to and including San Jacinto.  Urrea, however, had friends and cohorts during later moments long after San Jacinto. Talk became intrigue which then became lore, but it was accepted by Mexican military people during those times.   The "body count" of Alamo defenders wandered between 168 and 224.   Numbers would vary, depending upon this saloon in Monterrey or that other one in Mexico City.  The monster Lopez de Santa Anna ordered all Texian defenders to be immolated.     There was only one exception, Jim Bowie's number one buddy and caretaker was Gregario Esparza (Bowie was very infirmed, confined to bed).  That caretaker's body was turned over to a Mexican Army officer who was the half-brother of  Esparza.

     An explanation I have heard at times, and from other sources such as Mexican friends and scholars, is that Juan Seguin's patrulleros who stayed back at the Alamo, while Seguin rode out (at great jeopardy) alone save for three other cavalrymen. As those four rode out to search for the non-existent reinforcements, the others of Sequin's cavalry were slaughtered along with the rest of the Alamo Defenders.  They were burned with the rest, although some of their paperwork, orders documents, and such, were"souvenired" by Mexican soldiers, especially officers.   It is known that Juan Seguin avoided speaking about those light-cavalrymen he left behind at the Alamo...all of whom were either good friends or relatives of some kind or another.

That disposition continued until his death on this Earth in 1890 at the age of 84.

   Seguin rode into the retreat line, all the while gathering up his new replacements of "mounted infantry" during the trek to the east.  He was on the way, as we know,  to a place called San Jacinto, and he preferred to talk about "tomorrow",  and his hatred of Lopez de Santa Anna.  He said little or nothing about what had occurred back in San Antonio and the Alamo. His performance at San Jacinto, along with his cavalrymen, brought (Col.) Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar, commander of cavalry, to be muchly pleased with Sequin's successes against Lopez de Santa Anna's best cavalry and artillery.   It is said that Seguin's men did not lose a mount or a wounded horseman.   Phenomenal…

    Lamar, who had come through Mexico and into Texas, came with a distaste for the Spanish-Mexicans in general.   After hanging around with Sequin however, he had become quite affected by Sequin and his men.   Supposedly Houston had put Lamar in charge of the limited but effective cavalry.  Houston, along with General Somerville, urged Lamar to put Sequin in charge of the ground attack by that cavalry.

     Lamar was confident of the "chosen man" in those closing hours before the surprise attack on Santa Ana's forces.  One might imagine his disposition towards the Latin-folk was significantly changed further after watching the performance of his XO, Col. Seguin and his men.  They were heroes all.

    We close by saying that my belief is that the "overcount" of roster of all "Killed in Action" among  the Alamo's contingent was actually accurate.    Why?  One reason might well have been that the last group of Seguin's men had not been in the Alamo long enough to "roster-up" and to be assigned duties.  They died on their third day there.
     Another oddity about the Alamo before, during, and after is that Houston ordered Sequin back to San Antonio…quite close to the Sequin properties and home in Floresville just southeast of San Antonio…and gave him the duty and authority to re-establish Law and proper order to that community.   Upon arrival, Sequin ordered the last  contingent of Mexican troops back to Mexico.

     His next inquiry concerned the location of the Travis, Crockett, and Bowie revealed that it was assumed that they had also been immolated.

__________________________________________________

     Colonel Juan Nepomuceno Seguin

and  his eloquent Alamo Defenders' Burial Oration
Columbia (Later named the City of Houston)
Telegraph and Texas Register April 4, 1837

Companions in Arms!!

      These remains which we have the honour of carrying on our shoulders are those of the valiant heroes who died in the Alamo. Yes, my friends, they preferred to die a thousand times rather than submit themselves to the tyrant's yoke. What a brilliant example! Deserving of being noted in the pages of history. The spirit of liberty appears to be looking out from its elevated throne with its pleasing mien and point to us saying: "There are your brothers, Travis, Bowie, Crockett, and others whose valor places them in the rank of my heroes." 

     Yes, soldiers and fellow citizens, these are the worthy beings who, by the twists of fate, during the present campaign delivered their bodies to the ferocity of their enemies; who, barbarously treated as beasts, were bound by their feet and dragged to this spot, where they were reduced to ashes. The venerable remains of our worthy companions are with us as witnesses, I invite you to declare to the entire world, "Texas shall be free and independent or we shall perish in glorious combat."

Colonel Juan N. Sequin, Commandant

 San Antonio, Bexar, Texas

Army of the Republic of Texas

____________________________________

Thanks for your attention!!  More later.

Please remember…Texas is a composite of a score or more of races and ethnicities, white and indigenous, and African, and various places in the Orient, etc.   I am a Confederate…of that majority of Confederates who despise the Ku Klux Klan.

My ancestry includes two great-uncles (brothers of my Grandfather, Norman N. Newton) who were killed during the middle of that horrid War Between the States…who were Yankees…96th Battalion, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

Five of my Confederate 1st and 2nd degree of relations died in Battle or due to wounds suffered in the face of the enemy.  I apologise neither to nor for neither side…but if asked...am a Confederate of the past…and I am a Texian of the now, and for that which is to be.   God Bless General Lee, and God Bless President Davis…and may God Bless America.  

More Later,
El Gringo Viejo

______________________________________________

The Seas Are Stormy

A note filtered in from the confines of Travis County, Texas which holds itself up as one of those "reasonable" places in Texas where the majority of the people think chickens are diamonds and boys and girls can marry their favourite Cedar tree and live happily ever after because everything is "FREEEEeeeeeeee!!!!".   My Consuegro (remember the word, for it means that two men are criss / cross politically related because He is the father-in-law of my daughter, and I am the father-in-law of his son.)  invests some of his pleasantly-pointed and brief message  posted below:

"We will be 105 degrees or more today. We'll see now  how many protesters and marchers we get this afternoon. I vote that the city DOES NOT supply "free water". Sell water for $2.00 and tell the protesters the funds will go to help fund our police department. 

Defunding the police. I've heard proposals to take away guns, tear gas, shields, helmets ect. Mandatory 6 month 'sensitivity' training and yearly testing.

Oh well, lock and load."

Owl

______________________

The future of America

    Pictured to the left is one of those endearing things that make a Daddy so very proud of his progeny.  Our understanding is this picture actually is a "record photo" and it pertains to her having been detained by the New York Police for some real or imagined violation of good public order.

     This is the face of America's "young intellectuals, and apparently much of the Western World, during these times.   Those who know little, and understand less have arrived at the conclusion that their knowledge and deductive ability has obviously risen above the intellectual ability of the masses.   They know this to be true because their college professors, many of whom are third and fourth generation professors, are more than certain that they are guiding lights of knowledge and truth.

   It is that legal and religion of the left's canon that guides "intellectual  truth", for them.  They have descended from and  derived from great-granddaddy professor, granddaddy professor, daddy professor, and mommy-converting-to-daddy professor and have internalised their entire bucket of leftist / marxist bilge.   They have spilled out the contents of that bucket over the "best and brightest" of America's young and budding intellectual powerhouses.

_____________________

 

The bears hang around during the day, and the
 coyotes come at night.  Pumas come whenever
 they wish.
   We were assured that human activity would
 destroy all the major mammals in the western
 Sierra Madres before 1975, due to American
 pollution and Mexican complicity.
The Mama Bear is relaxing while watching
over her cubs.   It's her third litter in five
years.
_______________________________

  These are the people who told us that the Polar Bear would be extinct before 1975.   There are now five times the number that were known to have existed back then.    People are having trouble with bears of all kinds turning up in places of all types.   In Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico we have the case where this metroplex of 10 or 12 municipalities ( the largest being Monterrey, obviously) bears are so numerous that the State government and the localities have had to establish a "Bear Round-up Service".   Reasonable estimates concerning these bears is that there are something in the area of 6,000 in the mountains to the west of Monterrey's metro area and it seems to extend down to the Linares - Iturbide area in the Sierra Madre Oriental's very rugged topography, 80 miles to the south.

________________________

Never have so many milled around so much for so little
 justifiable purpose.  Banal, pointless demands, and
 tonnes of chants were in abundance, although
 none of it made any sense.

_____________________________________________

     The "We Are the World" people have to explain to us about AlGore's love mansion that he bought for his new squeeze after he ran off his long-suffering  wife.   You see, it is below the sea - level that he predicted would occur if George Bush failed to stop the inevitable 20 yard rise when all the ice in the Antarctic is melted by Texas oil and gas production.  AlGore assured the world that would be a matter of three to five years before that particular coastal area of California would be underwater by several yards.

   Now they, the "protestors" and the Antifa and Black Lives Matter thugs, presume to tell us what the new Code of Process and Ethics shall be.  Now they propose that police organisations and operations must be "defunded" and shut down.  The notion that a constabulary and records of process for legal reasons is not needed is ludicrous.  Violence would soar, death and destruction would be incomprehensibly devastating and there could be no judicial punishment.   It would, without any doubt, bring anarchy.

    For the agitators and "protestors", they know the objective is for volatility, destruction, violence, and mayhem.   They fool no one about their objectives.  For them, the more "students" and "marchers" and "oppressed" there are who are wounded, bleeding, and/or seriously afflicted or killed, the better it serves their purpose.   The "mainstream press" will make certain to construe all blame as belonging to the shop-owners and constabulary.

     The main purpose of the disorder, as usual, is to cause a form of anarchy.  Preferably, they want to work by night, when those on the offence have the advantage.  The "protestors" also have the advantage that they actually have no rules of engagement.  To them fall all the rights of anarchy…burning, looting, maiming, killing…without any reason or justification.   Now we have CHAZ, the "free zone" in downtown Seattle that has allowed the scum of the Earth to take possession of what was Police Precinct 13…it is an area of six blocks that has been taken over by something between 1,500 to 4,000 miscreants.
     
     All the disorder is necessary so as to keep the streets blocked, clogged, and menacing.  All ignorant, violent imbeciles who need Antifa and Black Lives Matter and George Soros's degenerate, subversive marxists must be kept at the ready.  At times they might be fully in view, and at other times they evaporate into houses, or alleyways, or predesignated "hidey-holes".   The boulevards and byways must be ready to be filled with zomboids chanting menacing threats, throwing rocks, bricks, and other things.  At times there are more fire engines than people.

     At other times there are more animals dressed up as human beings than there  are fire engines.   Sometimes the nights bring a thousand molotov cocktails, and 2,000 boogie boards that serve to knock out police units windshields, car lamps, and safety lights in the rear.  There is the edge of violence in CHAZ, day and night, weekday or weekend now.  Violence, property destruction, and degradation have become the dress code of the city,

     de Blazio, however made me rethink things.  His daughter who is pictured above is very proud of her violation of established law.  She is very proud of being able to ridicule her own father in public.  She is the future of ruin…of abandoned buildings and homes and productive life alternatives.  She is a slug who is motivated only to tear down, remain ignorant…proudly ignorant…and to remain totally self-absorbed while she pushes for the implementation of projects and schemes that have failed every time they were tried.

We hope calamity falls upon her quickly so as to not allow her suffering to be lengthy.

EL GRINGO VIEJO

____________________________