Birds lighting onto the wires between the poles - What Trump should expect

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     "Do these pants make my butt look too big?" asked the Governorette Blanco. She really shone with concern for others, just before making her first outside appearance, five days after the New Orlenians brought a fairly minor hurricane hit in Mississippi into play, via their own avarice, corruption, and stupidity.

    The Obsolete Press also shone with splendour when they covered-up Blanco's stuporous response as well as the fact that Mayor Nagin did not have to worry about his family, since they lived in a rich district in Dallas, Texas. Nagin later was convicted of various crimes regarding corruption and fraud. So much for "a Chocolate New Orleans" (his words, not mine).

    I hasten to add that because I am a Confederate, not a racist, race-hustler like Nagin, Jesse Jackson, and Sharpton. Black lives did not matter to Nagin...or any other of the race hustlers....then....and still. So long as they can live in the hoity-toity, gated and walled, all-white, leftist, "neighbourhood", and not in the 'hood" with the common person of Black African ancestry and have their whores paid for with their "foundation" money or free "government" money, they're down with it.

     In Greensberg, Kansas, July 26, 2007 - FEMA Regional Administrator Dick Hainje hands an update on the progress in rebuilding Greensberg to Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Kansas Adjutant General and Director of Emergency Management, Major General Tod Bunting. The Kansas town is in the process of rebuilding after an F5 tornado in May. FEMA/Leif Skooforg.

     During a massive flooding event, Sibelius, at Rahm Emmanuel's urging (or insistence), that Sibelius should declare that she could not do anything about the impending flooding on the Missouri River ".....because George Bush took my National Guard and they had all the heavy equipment needed to bolster up the flood levees."

     But, of course, whenever a Democrat says anything, either multiply it all by (-1) or some negative number that is larger.   Her snarky, sneering remark about Bush (for whom I have lost all respect and/or loyalty) was typical of the Clinton / Obama posturing.  The problem?   The officer and gentleman shewn in the photo at the upper left, Major General Tod Bunting, the commander of the Kansas National Guard, and the overseer of public works, both scheduled and emergency, was forced by the Sword of Damocles, to correct the  issue, so to speak.

     In his statement some few hours after Sibelius flopped out that Jupiter-sized lie about Bush stealing her NG Heavy Equipment, the good Two-Star General, somewhat apologetically, had to correct the "record".  He advised a press conference that not only did they have the equipment to do the necessary repairs and restoration, well before the arrival of the flood-crest, but that his men also had already brought the work to completion.  He advised that all that remained was an inspection and a possible re-ordering of engineering, should defects or deficiencies be encountered.   That inspection is a necessity at all NG and USA engineering projects.  They are not like the Army Corps of Engineers.

     Her Honesty, Governorette Draculina Sibelius muttered something about...(and this is not a sarcastic joke), " ....Rahm Emmanuell told me to say that....".   Rahm is quite a guy.   Just think of all the good he has done in Chicago, Illinois.

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     Now enters Regis Donaldus.  He assumes that those beyond the moat will understand his intent.
         
       He has been briefed 493 times about how to say, "The folks on the ground have done wonders.  Personnel and materiel are arriving by the minute at this time to do further rescue and evacuation here in Southeastern Texas.  The Texas - Cajun Navy has done wonders, as have the first responders who have had to deal with water moccasins, rattlesnakes, and cottonmouths.   The citizens who have helped citizens deserve much credit for keeping the casualty count low, although we all lament the losses of property, life, and limb.   Simply seeing the dogs and cats searching for their people is enough to darken the heart and soul.   Do not come to this area.  Send 20 dollars to the Salvation Army or any group whose record is known by you to be reputable.   And I as your President, urge all Texans to  follow the instructions of your local leaders, but especially of your Governor.  Your Governor, Mr. Abbot, has been exemplary in his management of this disaster. There will be no questions and there will be no answers.  Let's go to work."   (Would that he would follow my prescription, without wandering off to attack Rosie O'Donnell.)

     But!!  This is assured.  Before he finishes his words, Trump will be sneered at and discounted because he (1) waited too long, (2) did not wait long enough (3) is irrelevant, and (4) he is a nazi.

     The OROGs know that this writer is no fan of Donald Trump, but unlike Obama and Clinton and Carter, and Truman, and Roosevelt, and Wilson....Donald Trump has some, very few, redeeming qualities.  As an immigrant-descendant (Trump and his children are not "American Bluebloods"), Trump pretty much falls into the "huddled masses" trap.
     But, somewhere,      and somehow,  and like the Democrats, he has something of contempt for the colonial people....people who by the Grace of the Lord God Jehovah came to the New World during its colonial episode.  My wife (1570) and I (1643) are of these people.
     We readily accept especially Mexican and all foreign people who come into this country as legal immigrants and/or who have come to establish an American military record, by conscription or by volunteering to catch Nazi or Communist bullets.   Also, those who bring blue / white collar skills and / or investment with clean pesos or dollars in any legal venture certainly are welcomed. 

    The colonial people have been relegated by all thinkers and the media, left and right, as floor mats.  We are descended from the groups who have lived through the building of America....and more importantly.....of Texas.  And because of that it is time now to discard us.   We face contempt.  Can you imagine the value of a Confederate Negro now?   He/she would be ridiculed, not off the playing field, but finally out of the stadium and parking lot, banished never to return. 

    Thanks for your time and interest.   There will be much more to come, especially about our neighbour's apparently very successful lime planting.  We are not surprised, but it is good to know that his calculations, as a businessman, were correct.  We are encouraged.  Perhaps he will allow us to "glean" the orchard.
El Gringo Viejo

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Burn the Statues, Blow Up the Cliff Buddhas!! Let the insanity reign!!!! The Rise of the American Taliban

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     The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he already knows, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.

TOLSTOY

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     We regret having to waste the OROGs (Order of Readers of the Old Gringo) time by having to "relive the litany" of facts.   Even Harriet Beecher Stowe, the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" included in her peculiar novel the fact that two of the three "massahs" were good guys.   They were fair-minded, confused by the "peculiar institution" they had been born into and had inherited.

     Lost in the confusion of this ridiculous destroying, removing, and defacing of monuments and obelisks is the fact that, while the South had its disgusting "peculiar institution", many Southerners could not comprehend the horrid working conditions of the textile and metal refining factories in the "north".

     We must remember that the Northern Capitalists, during those same days, thought nothing of scooping up Irish immigrant children, who had intelligence and nimbleness of fingers, and throwing them before the mechanical looms.   They would toil 12 hours per day...if they had the age of six years or more...and then receive their one dollar...per week. Because of the nature of the machinery, the Irish children tended to lose one or two fingers per year.   Once they had fewer than six fingers, it was out into the blackwater sewers of the immigrant slums of New York.  There the children were recruited as pick-pockets and thieves by organised crime elements.   This was the condition of things at the outbreak of the War Between the States.

Allow us to remind the populace:

     (1)    The United States of America did not have even one foreign or domestic ally.  The Confederacy had two allies, both domestic and sovereign and independent.   The Choctaw Nation and the Cherokee Nation formally declared War against Union force and authority.   Stand Watie, the head Chief of the Cherokee Nation raised a significant number of part-Cherokee and full- Cherokee warriors into a light cavalry division that served in the western theatre with considerable success.

     The fact that the driving out of the Cherokee onto the Trail of Tears was part of a Southern, racist, hill-billy, yahoo, white-trash re-action to having a bunch of "injuns" hanging around where only the White-folks ought'n to be must necessarily fall on deaf ears.  One of the reasons (albeit sometime before the statement) David Crockett left the floor of the United States House of Representative, stating, "I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done; but if not, they might go to hell, and I would go to Texas.", was the dislocation of the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw groups by collusion between Andrew Jackson and the New York banking cabal.  Some in Tennessee fell for the issue, but most resented the expulsion because among the Whites, almost all had Indians of the above groupings married into their genealogies.   As, therefore,  does your humble servant.
     Crockett had made a name for himself as an Indian Fighter, but over the years, and as the warring began to become less and less, he as many, and equally the Indian groups came to an amicable inter-relationship, generally speaking.  Andrew Jackson's collusion with bankers and other investors from New York and Massachusetts, designed to drive the Cherokee and related tribes away from their ceded lands was roundly opposed by many of the people of Tennessee.  It should be pointed out that many approved, for strictly selfish reasons, the dislocation of those well-settled and prosperous neighbours in exchange for a chance to become lackeys for the "investing class".   

     (2) No Jew served in the Cabinet or the Senate of the Union Government of Abraham Lincoln.  The Southern entity had Judah Benjamin.  This was not some fluke, but the nature of the peculiar area known as southern Louisiana.  One of the great generals of the War, Pierre Gustave Toussant Beauregard was of the Spanish / French Roman Catholic aristocracy, but he would not have made much rank in the North.  A Jew such as Benjamin could not be elected to the United States Senate by any "enlightened" Northern States in those times.

 (top) JUDAH BENJAMIN.
Attorney General, Secretary of War, and
Secretary of State of the Confederate
States of America

THEN,(below) GEN. SANTOS BENAVIDES
 long serving Colonel, and finally General
 of Texas forces on the integral section of 
the Rio Grande, keeping peace in the
area, winning every skirmish and battle
against his Union opponents, and
 guaranteeing correct delivery of many
 thousands of bales of Cotton to the port of
 Bagdad, Tamaulipas, Mexico

     No Jew served in the United States Senate from the North, before, during or after (for a long while) the War.  Louisiana had two before the War.  The second, Judah Benjamin, was probably one of the 100 top most intelligent men in the history of America, although, lamentably, he died in France after serving as a Barrister in England, some time after the War Between the States.
     Then as now, the Jew of origin or arrival in the South seemed to be seduced by that peculiar hospitality of the soil and waters of the South.  The South is a mystical  place.  There is evil, such as one might find in the Catskills and up to the County of Duchess along the Hudson...where Headless Horsemen ride...to behead the unsuspecting.   And, as in the North, we have our ghosts and hoop-snakes.....but we also have a mystique that truly is seductive.

     The South also had the only General Officer of Mexican / Spanish ancestry.  He was a brilliant private business person, public servant, and later an almost ghost like, light cavalry commander of the 33rd Regiment of Texas Cavalry, serving primarily along the "Cotton Route" led several regiments of mainly Mexican / Spanish troopers along with some Angloids in keeping the Cotton Trail open so as go gain a continuing flow of income to the Confederacy, even unto the end of the War, which ended, in Texas, over a month after Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

     This is the nature of Southern bigotry and mistreatment of people who were enslaved.  We close this particular exercise with two points:

     (1)    Robert Edward Lee never owned a slave.  His wife Martha Mary (Mim) Custis Lee  held title to many Negroes who were slaves that had been inherited through her grandmother and her children, her grandmother being a  woman by the name of Martha Custis Washington.....wife of the first President of the United States.
     Martha and George were around twenty-seven years of age when they married.  Martha had been widowed a couple of years before marrying George.   She had had four children by her first marriage, and she bore none to the first President.  They did take in very young grandchildren, among them the girl who would marry the man who was considered by General Winfield (Fuss and Feathers) Scott to be '' America's finest soldier". 
     Mrs. Washington held much acreage and many slaves in trust for those children they had taken in, and she had a "dowerage" of a certain percentage of her children's estates that legally became hers.  She was easily the richest woman in Virginia.   The last wills and testaments of Martha and George were relatively beneficent towards the Slaves who were under their direct ownership, while those of the surviving Custis grandchildren who had not been raised in the Washington household (Arlington) were considerably more "businesslike".
     To the point, however, Robert Edward Lee never participated in the ownership of those "women's things" like presiding over essentially willed property in the form of human beings.

(2)    Unlike the factories in the North, the plantations of Jefferson and Joseph Davis had slaves, not children with nimble fingers.  The two plantations were back-to-back, and had a compound wherein was to be found a school, a clinic / hospital for birthing, surgical interventions, and other medical purposes.  There  was a church which had alternating services from Methodist and Baptist preachers and authority.  There was also an administrative building where dances and celebrations could take place, as well as jury trials operated by the Slaves themselves.   It should be pointed out that, at times, administrative level personnel would have to "amend" a sentence, such a the time the judge and jury agreed that one particular chicken thief had to receive 500 lashes.
     What might be of interest further is that Benjamin Montgomery, the Manager of Jefferson Davis's plantation was also a Black man, and a slave, and yet held sway over the entire oversight of the operation.  He also oversaw, in large part the adjacent operation of Jefferson's brother Joseph.  Although a slave, he had the authority to sign for deliveries, write bank drafts, assign all work duties, issue visitation permits for Slaves needing to go somewhere with written permission, essentially entire authority.  He executed those services during the war, and afterwards during Mr. Davis's detention.  He remained faithful to his duties and conducted them well.


     These stories could go on and on.   We place them here to show that the times related to the antebellum period and the War were much more culturally and sociologically complicated that what people have been taught, especially during the past 30 years or so.   That 96% of all the people involved militarily during the Southern War effort owned no slaves is another basic matter that is overlooked.

    As a statement of disclosure, I had two great-uncles who died in service to the 96th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Army of the Potomac, and five Confederates who died in service to their units of the surnames of Neal, Limbaugh, and Grant who were blood relatives of direct or collateral connection.

More later,
El Gringo Viejo

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Back from down South - Not doing so well

Manage

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A PRAYER TO THE RULER OF THE COSMOS and all things

     

     Almighty Father, Keeper of all Souls, Minder of all Trusts, Watch over us, Thine unworthy servants  as we grieve our near and distant cousins....keep those who remain ever content in your faith....all of us who share the blood of the Holy Iberian Peninsula, the United States of America, and then the  Republic of Venezuela, the Republic of Texas, and all nations and peoples in distress brought upon them by the forces of Satan.
     We include in our prayer especially those who are belaboured and burdened.  Let them be now  comforted by the knowledge that You, Your Son, and powers of the Holy Ghost will conquer this injustice and insult which has been visited upon our people. We trust that our travails will be lifted from us and that there will be a  reunion of hope and goodwill.  We hope that our relief can  be perpetual, and feel secure that our candles are not lit in lightheartedness or obligation but in the sincere belief that our present misery will be vanquished.   We leave these matters to Your good hands and in the hope of the World to come, Amen.

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Old Anglicans will understand this construct of a lamentation rendered from Earth to the  Firmament of Heaven.

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Brief Observations:

     WE have struggled over the past three or four days with the matters besetting this and other nations.  It would seem that all is unravelling, although I sincerely know such is not the case.  We have seen worse, and this onslaught by those attempting to destroy the fabric of the Nation is ultimately fail.

      The purposeful distortions of the events and causative factors of the events at Charlottesville, Virginia, once underway, were predictable.  The entire event was controlled, from beginning to end, by the Obsolete Press, the insidious Soros cultural destruction empire, and the hordes of mindless "young people and students" who have decided to back anarchy mixed with pro-communist sloganeering .   This time, even FOX News decided to weigh in in favour of the "protestors" who are "against things that are bad".

     The tactic of setting up faux-Klan and Arian Nations types supposedly to "protect" racist monuments associated with the Confederacy is a racket that the anarchists and leftists have used since the 1920s in the United States.   The deployment of the "racists" and those true racists who might be attracted to the faux "leaders" provides the target for the "protestors" to vent, confront, chant, and charge....usually devolving into an episode of private and public property destruction and a few or many people being injured or even killed.

      Soros people see such things as a small price to pay in order to conduct the United States finally into its "proper place" as a secular, atheistic, "socially democratic", Orwellian "Republic".

     We were especially disappointed, but not surprised, to note that George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush decided to jump on early, and perhaps even often, in favour of the "protesting" Soros-led disciples.  It was obvious to those of us who have studied these artificial and carefully choreographed and scripted "confrontations" that the whole matter was one of Kabuki Theatre.  The Charlottesville city administration had obviously decided to keep the police and other forces of order out of the fray until it was time to count the dead and wounded and level of destruction.

     This pretty much underscores, in my opinion, that there is neither rudder nor wheel nor helm on the ship of State.   With a buffoon for a president, a Republican control-group that is Democrat Lite, and a Democrat presence that is completely devoid of any sense of morality or propriety....we have pretty well driven the wrong way as far as anyone can against the one-way traffic going against us.   Social democracy and deficit spending is now accepted, custom de riqueur, and inevitable.    Perhaps Nancy Pelosi can come out and say, " Things will be much better once we all jump off the cliff."

    Actually, it might sound a little better than having to listen to the Fox News folks saying things like, "We just all have to get together and work together to get the things done that America needs."   Profound....truly profound.....(?)

El Gringo Viejo
More to-morrow.....but primarily stuff that is going on down at our little mud hut.

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Re-Posting to underscore that We are not un-studied Klanners or in any wise "Deplorable".

Sunday, 28 April 2013

SAN JACINTO - 21 April 1836

This is a reprint from a previous post.  We had a new set of commentaries about San Jacinto that suffered from an electrical problem during editing.   We are attempting to either resuscitate or re-write the lost submission.

San Jacinto Day - 21 April 1836. Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad. May they all Rest in Peace.

General Vicente Filisola

The gentleman pictured above was many things.   He was a Spaniard with an Italian name.  He was a veteran of the Napoleanic Wars, and a distinguished Spanish soldier.   He came to New Spain late in the colonial period and served during the transition from Spanish to Mexican control of that area which now would include all of Mexico, Central America, western Canada, and most of what would become the western half of the United States of America.    For a brief period during the rule of Emperor Agustin de Iturbide I of the Mexican Empire 1821 - 1823, General Vicente Filisola served his Emperor as Governor of Central America.

      The good General served only briefly, however, due to the overthrow of the Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Mexico in 1824.   He did provide for an orderly transition from Mexican control to local governance and order, and withdrew his Imperial Army back into Mexico and joined the re-organised Army as a brigadier.

      It is said that Filisola was probably the one who inspired Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to think of himself as...."The Napoleon of the West"....because of Lopez de Santa Anna's fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte and the legends associated with that Corsican.   Filisola was one of the few people in anyones army who had officer level dealings on a Napoleonic field of battle.

    Vicente Filisola is important to Texans because he was one of those Generals immediately

under the command of the all important, self-consumed, pompous Generalissimo Presidente

Lopez de Santa Anna.    Along with Filisola, and Perfecto de Cos, the Presidente's

brother-in-law, and old Castrillon, and Ramirez y Sesma....all Spaniards  by birth

and world view, there was also Brigadier Jose' Urrea, the Indian Fighter, a Davy

Crockett figure, at once both rough-cut, and aristocratic, and oddly one of only two

Mexican general officers fighting in the Texas War of Independence who were born

Mexicans.

    The commander in chief Lopez de Santa Anna, and the lowest ranking general

officer were Mexicans.   Lopez de Santa Anna had moved three large elements from

all parts of the country from January up to mid-February to do battle against a crafty

bunch of scrappers in a place called "nowhere" by some and Texas by others.   Urrea

moved a third of the Army along the Texas Coast, aiming to unify with the main body

of the Army around a place called San Jacinto.   Urrea also moved quickly, like an early

form of blitzkrieg, although he had five major battles against Texian units numbering

from 100 to 500 combatants in each case, and several significant skirmishes which

tested his 2,400 effectives severely.   He is best remembered, however, as the Mexican

general who left orders to deal fairly and well with the Texian Colonel Fannin and the

440 Texian prisoners, only to have his orders countermanded by the Generalissimo

Presidente.   So while Urrea had moved up to Victoria del Rio Guadalupe a few miles

from Goliad, his subordinate received orders underlining the existing orders from the

High Command that all found holding arms against the government would be executed

for treason.

     Here, El Gringo Viejo enters a well-documented but rather neglected fact about the

the issues of personality, strategy, tactics, honour, and the business of war that the

Mexicans were undergoing even as they were winning, fairly easily against the

insurrectionists.  To wit:

Gen. Jose' Urrea

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Words of the hapless Colonel Nicolas de la Portilla        "I was unable, therefore, to carry out the good intentions dictated by my feelings, overcome by the difficult circumstances that surrounded me. I authorized the execution, of thirty adventurers taken prisoners, and setting free those who were colonists or Mexicans      "These orders always seemed to me harsh, but they were the inevitable result of the barbarous and inhuman  decree which declared outlaws those whom it wished to convert into citizens of the republic,  I wished to elude these orders as far as possible without compromising my personal responsibility.       "They doubtlessly surrendered confident that Mexican generosity would not make their surrender useless, for under any other circumstances they would have sold their lives dearly, fighting to the last. I had due regard for the motives that induced them to surrender, and for this reason I used my influence with the general-in-chief to save  them, if possible, from being butchered." Diary of the Military Operations of the Division which under the Command of General José Urrea Campaigned in Texas February to March 1836 Translation from Carlos Casteñeda's The Mexican Side  of the Texan Revolution (Some headings added by  current editor, WLM) For Biographies, Search Handbook of Texas Online (Extract from the Diary of Col. Nicolás de la Portilla)   In a Letter Portilla to Urrea....."I feel much distressed  at what has occurred here; a scene enacted in cold blood  having passed before my eyes which has filled me with  horror. All I can say is, that my duty as a soldier, and  what I owe to my country, must be my guaranty...." March 26. At seven in the evening I received orders from General Santa Anna by special messenger, instructing me to execute at once all prisoners taken by force of arms agreeable to the general orders on the subject. (I have the original order in my possession.) I kept the matter secret and no one knew of it except Col. Garay, to whom I communicated the order. At eight o'clock, on the same night, I received a communication from Gen. Urea by special messenger in which among other things he says, "Treat the prisoners well, especially Fannin. Keep them busy rebuilding the town and erecting a fort. Feed them with the cattle you will receive from Refugio." What a cruel contrast in these opposite instructions! I spent a restless night. sdct   March 27.   At daybreak, I decided to carry out the orders of the general-in-chief because I considered them superior. I assembled the whole garrison and ordered the prisoners, who were still sleeping, to be awaked. There were 445. (The eighty that had just been taken at Cópano and had, consequently, not borne arms against the government, were set aside.) The prisoners were divided into three groups and each was placed in charge of an adequate guard, the first under Agustin Alcerrica, the second under Capt. Luis Balderas, and the third under Capt. Antonio Ramírez. I gave instructions to these officers to carry out the orders of the supreme government and the general-in-chief. This was immediately done. There was a great contrast in the feelings of the officers and the men. Silence prevailed. Sad at heart, I wrote to Gen. Urrea expressing my regret at having been concerned in so painful an affair. I also sent an official account of what I had done, to the general-in-chief. [Portilla to Urrea, Goliad, March 26 1836 and Portilla to Urrea, Goliad, March 27, 1836] ______________________        El Gringo Viejo and many old timey Texans know these stories, but they are not well-known any longer.   Newly arriving people with Mexican backgrounds assume they know all and newly arriving people from the United States and elsewhere have seen Davy Crockett on Disney or some variation, and are certain in their knowledge of the issues involved with the period from 1829 through 1846 and the Texas situation.        This is not said with any particular arrogance.   It is known that what El Gringo Viejo knows from his own research is now useless information. Nothing matters in the course of human conduct that cannot be compressed into a six-word phrase to put on a bumper sticker.   What is past is no longer prologue, but rather simply useless white-noise on the left side of the time line.       But as an enemy the man pictured below is known among the old, last remaining Texans who know what Texas really was, as an honorable enemy....a good and patriotic man involved in a grisly profession.     Something like Rommel, perhaps. Manuel Fernández Castrillón (1761–1836) Fought Texians both at the Battle of the Alamo and at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Castrillon was Santa Anna's ally through much of their working relationship, but Castrillón often took exception to Santa Anna's decisions during the Texas Revolution. He opposed the hurried assault on the Alamo. Yet when he received his orders to lead the battle's first column of troops, he did so with expert efficiency.

A humane and honorable soldier, Castrillón also pleaded clemency on behalf of the seven Texian fighters who survived the Alamo siege. Castrillón's arguments for mercy were ignored, and the men were executed. Castrillón again stated his protest when Santa Anna ordered the execution of the Goliad prisoners.

Castrillón's compassion was a sign of kindness, not weakness. When the Texians roused Mexican forces from their afternoon siesta on 21 April 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto, he was one of the few Mexican officers to stand his ground. 

His bravery was recorded in the memoirs of Texian second lieutentant Walter Paye Lane: 

"As we charged into them the General commanding the Tampico Battalion (their best troops) tried to rally his men, but could not. He drew himself up, faced us, and said in Spanish: 'I have been in forty battles and never showed my back; I am too old to do it now.' 

He continues: "Gen. Rusk hallooed to his men: 'don't shoot him,' and knocked up some to their guns; but others ran around and riddled him with balls. I was sorry for him. He was an old Castilian gentleman, Gen. Castrillo."

Honored on both sides of the Texas Revolution—except by Santa Anna, who blamed the loss at San Jacinto in part on Castrillón—he was even buried in the family graveyard of Lorenzo de Zavala, the vice-president of Texas.

     So, all these major footnotes are added into the blog in order to celebrate the victory tomorrow, the 21st day of April, 1836 of the Battle of San Jacinto.   Normally creditted to the efforts of Gen. Sam Houston, who truly was a bigger than life figure, the truth is that Houston was painfully wounded at the beginning of the battle, by a musket ball to the right foot.   It was Gen. (then Lt. Col.) Somervell, commander-in-charge, and the surprize rush of the limited cavalry of the Texian force of a bit fewer than 700 men.....attacking on a Sunday morning.   The head of cavalry squadron in the thickest of the fight  was Capt. Juan Seguin, an arch-enemy of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.   Major Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar was the overall commander of the mounted part of the Texian force, and he would later become a President of Texas for a term.
     The resolve of the Texian force to gain Independence, avenge the atrocities of Goliad and the Alamo allowed the inferior force to pin into a peninsula surrounded by a snake infested bayou, and then essentially destroy the effective force of an Army of 2,500 with superior munitions, armament, artillery, cavalry, stores, and so forth.
 

     Going back to Gen. Vicente Filisola, it was he who took control of the Mexican Army as it withdrew from San Jacinto.   Lopez de Santa Anna remained under arrest and would later be tranferred to Washington D.C. as an oddity and war-trophy of sorts.   He had been the best general in the field, but also the one most prone to err through arrogance and hubris.   Some say his membership in the Scottish Rite Masonic order saved him from a rough and ready gallows at San Jacinto, since Houston and Somervell were both brother Masons.

     Filisola was met with his columns by Urrea, who forced control from Filisola, and took command of the withdrawal.   The two men would argue and write accusations against one another, and each would write interesting, if self-serving accounts of their experiences during the War.   It is the opinion of El Gringo Viejo that Urrea was the better soldier and was truthful concerning his wishes for the good treatment of the Goliad prisoners of war.

      Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna blamed both of them for everything;  Urrea for arriving too late to San Jacinto, Filisola for not mucking through the mud with cannons and stores any faster (he actually moved 2,000 men, animals, and stores faster than Santa Anna had moved his Army away from San Antonio in pursuit of Houston's Army.)   Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was a lot like Obama in his ability to blame everything on everybody but himself.

Committed to the dull truth, which always seems to wind up being far more interesting than the false legends or any fiction.....El Gringo Viejo resigns the evening and promises to return to more tales that interest him, and he hopes, the OROGs everywhere.

El Gringo Viejo

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