Major Lally's March

Colonel Louis Wilson of North Carolina was preparing to lead a relief column of 1000 soldiers to General Scott, but he contracted yellow fever.  With Wilson incapacitated, the next ranking officer, Major Folliot Thornton Lally, took command.  The command was a hodgepodge of regiments: 2 companies of the 4th Infantry, 2 companies of the 5th Infantry, 1 company of the 11th Infantry, 3 companies of the 12th Infantry, 2 companies of the U. S. Voltigeurs, 1 company of the 2nd Artillery, 1 company of the Georgia Volunteers, and a company of Louisianna Mounted Volunteers.  Lally himself was from the 9th Infantry, which had departed with General Pierce more than three weeks earlier.

Paso de Ovejas

The column set out on August 6th.  The pace was slow and guerrillas were always nearby.  Stragglers were frequently captured or killed.  Many soldiers abandoned their knapsacks on the side of the road.  On the 10th, the column neared Paso de Ovejas when gunfire erupted.  Luckily, the enemy was out of range for small arms.  However, the front of the column was soon charged by light cavalry.  Cannons quickly broke their charge and sent them in flight.  Before Lally's forces could engage the men off the roadside, they had fled.  One American was killed.

National Bridge

On the 12th of August, the column arrived at the National Bridge, an impressive structure that spanned the Rio La Antigua.  When General Scott's Army came to the bridge in April, it was abandoned.  When General Pierce came to the bridge in July, a minor skirmish ensued before the guerrillas retreated.  For Major Lally, National Bridge proved to be a fight.  The guerrillas were dug in and ready to repel the Americans.  Thinking to dislodge them with cannon, the artillery was rolled forward.  However, the soldiers were caught in a hail of fire and had to abandon the guns.  Suddenly, the Americans were exposed and at threat of being overrun.  Fortunately, the guerrillas did not take the opportunity to rush the Americans.  A Prussian Baron who happened to be traveling with the army urgently advised an attack, offering to lead it.  Fording the river rather than crossing the bridge, the Americans dislodged the guerrillas and took possession of the fortifications.  The 6-hour battle cost eleven dead and forty wounded, some mortally.

Cerro Gordo

On the 15th, the column arrived at Cerro Gordo, where General Scott had shattered Santa Anna's army in the middle of April.  When General Pierce marched through a month earlier, he experienced only harassment on the fringes of his army.  By contrast, Lally found himself once again in a battle.  The guerrillas had occupied the fortifications on the hills and contested his column's advance.  As luck would have it, a veteran of the April battle was part of the column and offered useful intel.  Lally's force assaulted the three hill forts, capturing 2 cannons, and 9,000 rounds of musket ammunition.  The battle cost another 3 lives and 10 wounded.

Xalapa

On the 19th, Lally approached Xalapa.  Once again, the guerrillas had taken up a position to oppose his advance.  For once, the guerrillas had not taken an advantageous position.  The Americans quickly flanked the enemy and sent them running in the 20-minute skirmish.  Despite the brevity, two more soldiers were killed and half a dozen wounded.  Lally waited until the following day to occupy Xalapa.  His thousand man column was reduced to 700 effective soldiers, the rest were sick, wounded, or dead.  To make things worse, the Louisiana troops deserted almost in mass and returned to Vera Cruz.  Lally opted to secure his forces in Xalapa.

A month later, Captain Sam Walker rode into Xalapa and declared that Colonel Childs was under siege in Puebla.  The sieging force was said to be 4,000 strong.  Despite the numbers, Lally prepared to march.  To his great good fortune, General Lane arrived the following day.  Lally attached his forces to Lane's and the army marched to relieve the Siege of Puebla and give Santa Anna his final defeat of the war.

Lally's column served as reserves at the Battle of Huamantla - October 9th - and later accompanied General Lane's forces for the Action at Atlixco on October 19th.  In December, his column went to Mexico City and the hodgepodge of companies joined their regiments, successfully delivering the reinforcements he had brought.

The War with Mexico, Volume II

In the second volume of The War with Mexico, Justin H Smith opens with a discussion of Mexican politics.  The country had been ill-managed since its founding and had succeeded in chasing its entrepreneurial, wealth-generating class back to Spain.  The country had been stripped of most wealth, with the exception of the Catholic Church.  Unable to secure loans thanks to its long history of financial mismanagement, the government looked to plunder the church.

Meanwhile, Winfield Scott landed his army virtually unopposed on the beaches south of Veracruz.  Over the next 7 months, Scott's relatively small army trekked across Mexico in a path not unlike Hernan Cortes.  Veracruz was pounded into submission with artillery by early March.  Santa Anna was once again sent retreating to Mexico City after the Battle of Cerro Gordo in April.  Though some of his generals argued for an immediate assault into the capitol, Scott wanted more troops, supplies, and money.  The campaign stalled until August when he resumed his march to Mexico City and captured it.

The differing viewpoints of the Americans and the Mexicans is one of the more interesting parts of the book.  Where the Americans would willingly halt after a victory to discuss peace, the Mexicans - especially Santa Anna - viewed this as just an opportunity to rebuild his shattered army and somehow appropriate more money to take another crack at defeating the Americans.  Nicholas Trist, the plenipotentiary minister for the United States, had many conferences during the lulls in fighting and nothing ever emerged.  It was not until the Americans captured and occupied Mexico City and Santa Anna was forced to flee the country that real peace talks could take place.

Where the first chapter discussed politics in Mexico City, the final chapters look at the politics of Washington, from financing the war to lobbying for or against it, to international relations regarding it.  The overwhelming victory by American forces was in spite of, rather than thanks to, the machinations of DC.  Polk had wanted an inexpensive war but the costs grew rapidly and the Congress was not eager to provide funding, thus explaining Scott's halting advance.  Arguments about how much of Mexico to annex ran the gamut from virtually nothing to all of Mexico.  Polk himself was leaning toward a much larger chunk than was ultimately secured if only to justify the expense.  However, Trist's unauthorized treaty - though not to Polk's liking - was an opportunity to end the war as soon as possible.  As for international relations, Mexico had not won itself the allies it had expected because it had so often reneged on loans and harassed foreign merchants.  The US earned grudging respect for winning what many - even Lord Wellington! - thought was an unwinnable campaign.

Of particular note, Smith paints a picture that is mostly approving of the US arguments for the war.  The US invasion of the 1840s for unpaid debts was not unique. France invaded during the Pastry War of 1838 and again during the Franco-Mexican War (1861-1867), which initially saw Great Britain and Spain as French allies.  Smith argues that Mexico brought most of its troubles upon itself.

The final chapters are dreary reading.  Where the marches of Taylor and Scott offered a strong narrative that drew the reader along, the jump among various politicians and their disparate goals was often hard to follow and not very interesting.  However, the footnoting is spectacular and so expansive as to make one wonder how one man could have gone through so much material for this work.  Of course, he won the Pulitzer Prize for The War with Mexico.

Recommended.

Climax at Buena Vista

In this 1966 book, David Lavender tracks the paths taken by Zachary Taylor and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to the epic battle at Buena Vista.  He details how Taylor established Camp Jessup on the Texas border as far back as 1821 and how Santa Anna himself had crossed La Angostura (the Mexican name for the narrows where the battle was fought) as far back as 1813.  In the wake of the annexation of Texas, Mexico and the United States had a diplomatic break and no effort by the US to cajole Mexico into negotiations worked.  So it was that Zachary Taylor was dispatched to the Rio Grande.  Both sides grew weary of the stalemate.  President Paredes ordered his army to attack the Americans.  Before President Polk even knew a battle had happened, he was composing his war message for Congress.  The war had begun.

While Taylor fought his way toward Buena Vista via the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterrey, Santa Anna had to smuggle himself back into Mexico.  He had been exiled in 1844 but the war offered opportunities.  He convinced Polk to let him through the blockade and he would negotiate.  Ha!  Once back, he assembled the largest army he could and marched north to crush the Americans.  Of course, it is entirely possible that Santa Anna was sincere when he made promises to negotiate but the political situation in Mexico would not allow it.  He was a man to capitalize on the currents rather than fight them.

Taylor heard rumors of a grand army but repeatedly dismissed them.  It would be impossible to march an army through the desert from San Luis Potosi.  The Mexicans had captured dispatches exposing the planned landing at Veracruz and it was more logical for Santa Anna to oppose General Winfield Scott's landing.  Even as more credible news arrived of a grand army approaching, Taylor dismissed it as overblown.  Boy, was he in for a surprise.  By the time he was convinced, it was almost too late when 15,000 troops appeared in the distance; Taylor had fewer than 5,000 troops.  Taylor abandoned his forward camp and raced back beyond the narrow pass at Buena Vista to secure his supplies and rear.  He left General John Ellis Wool to layout the planned battleground.

As Santa Anna assembled his troops, he requested Taylor's surrender.  Taylor declined.  Most of Taylor's regular troops had been taken for the landing at Veracruz.  He was left with mostly volunteer regiments; Taylor had long distrusted volunteer soldiers, but now his career - his life! - depended on them.  Luckily for Taylor, the Mexican troops were exhausted.  They had marched through the desert and were sent to battle with hardly a rest and hungry.  Santa Anna urged them on by saying the Americans had food aplenty if only we break through their lines.  And break the lines did!  The America left retreated before a strong Mexican press.  Jefferson Davis and his Mississippi Rifles, among others, plugged the hole and sent the Mexican Lancers back to their side of the line.

The battle began on February 22 and was resumed on February 23.  It was a very near thing.  In fact, Taylor fully expected to resume the battle the following day, but Santa Anna withdrew.  His troops were starving and exhausted.  Where the Americans had almost 300 killed and 400 wounded, the Mexicans had 600 killed, over 1,000 wounded, and nearly 2,000 missing (probably deserted).

Lavender does an outstanding job of leading both principal generals to the field of battle and detailing their epic clash.  A Mexican victory would have changed the war.  No other Mexican general could have assembled so great an army.  Polk had allowed the most potent threat against his war aims into the country!  Santa Anna came so close to victory.

Taylor was not a great tactician but he was a boon to troop morale.  His homespun demeanor and absolute fearlessness as bullets and cannon balls whizzed about him transferred to his troops.  He was unflappable.  After his first couple of battles, he was willing to hand off further fighting to General Winfield Scott.  However, then there was talk of him as a presidential candidate.  At first, he brushed it aside as nothing but as time went on, he warmed to the idea.  After he had captured Monterrey, he was sold on the idea.  This also made him see political machinations in everything thereafter.  President Polk was trying to ruin him, General Scott was out to sabotage him, Secretary of War Marcy was bypassing him.  He needed one more battle to cement his candidacy, but not as big as the one he got.

The book is absolutely terrific.  It is well-researched and makes for a gripping narrative of Taylor's part in the war.  Highly recommended.

The Gates of the Alamo

San Antonio, April 1911: Terrell Mott, a 91 year-old who fought at the Alamo, rides along in the Battle of Flowers parade that his granddaughter organized.  While riding in the back of a Buick, he notes how the city has changed.  Then, he spots a dark man in a jaguar suit who seems to be taking a particular interest in him.  Has death come for him?

La Bahia Road, Spring 1835: Edmund McGown rides toward the coast from San Antonio.  A botanist in the employ of the Mexican government, his payments have stopped.  He attributes this to the frequently changing governments and worries that he will not be able to renew his contract.  On his way, he becomes deathly ill and encounters Comanche.  While crossing the lowlands of Texas, Edmund is always watching for new plant species to catalog: this is the great work for which he will be remembered.

Refugio, 1835: Mary Mott runs an inn with her son, Terrell, and Fresada, a Karankawa Indian.  During a trip to the coast to gather oysters, she is very nearly killed by raiding Karankawa Indians.  In the brief fight, she shot the chief but had her face bashed in by one of the warriors.  Only the intervention of Fresada saved her life.  She is only partly recovered when Jim Bowie visits.  There is also an aloof man named McGown on his way to Mexico.  McGown had missed his original ship to Veracruz and thus stayed at the inn for an extended period.  Most conversations concern the riled state between Texas and Mexico.  Will there be war?  McGown is doubtful.

Zacatecas, May 1835: Telesforo Villasenor is an ambitious lieutenant of the Zapadores with a talent for mapmaking.  During the Battle of Zacatecas, he is wounded in the arm but nevertheless finds his way to Santa Anna to give him a box of chocolates he pillaged.  Santa Anna is touched by this gesture and soon has Telesforo on his staff as a mapmaker.

San Luis Potosi, 1835: Blas Montoya, first sergeant in the Mexican Army, meets with some new recruits.  He likes what he sees.  Afterwards, he is called upon by Captain Loera.  Loera notes that Blas does not have a woman and arranges for him to take charge of Isabella, the woman of a deceased soldier.  Blas reluctantly agrees.  Isabella proves to be a Mayan from Yucatan who speaks virtually no Spanish.  She is viewed as a witch by many, but she has a talent for healing.  When word of rebellion comes, Blas leads his company north to Texas on a brutal winter march.

Terrell, Edmund, Mary, Blas, and Telesforo converge at the Alamo and offer a view of the siege and final battle from various perspectives.  All the principals - Crockett, Bowie, Travis, Santa Anna, Houston - are met by one or more of the characters.  Even after the battle, survivors provide a view of the slaughter at Goliad and the Texas victory at San Jacinto.

The book paints the setting brilliantly, giving one a strong feel for the time and place.  The characters are fully realized, feeling every bit as real as Davy Crockett or Santa Anna.  Better still, the historic events are faithfully related.  Some places where it appeared he was taking liberties proved to be little known incidents that are not typically shown in movies.  Outstanding book and highly recommended.

Texas Rising (2015)

The Alamo has fallen.  By the order of Santa Anna (Olivier Martinez), the handful of survivors are lined up and shot, Jupitor West among them.  Emily West (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) determines to avenge her brother.  Among the dead at the Alamo, a nameless man (Ray Liotta) crawls from the ruins and kills a soldier as he escapes into the wilderness.  Meanwhile, Sam Houston (Bill Paxton) is in Gonzales with the Texas Army, which is much too small to face the Mexican army.  Though his officers and men are desperate to fight, Houston orders a retreat.  Elsewhere, Erastus "Deaf" Smith (Jeffery Dean Morgan) and his band of Texas Rangers scout the countryside to keep track of both Comanche and the Mexican Army.  At the Louisiana border, Bigfoot Wallace and Jack Hays are bound for Goliad with plans of joining the revolution.

The 5-part series follows these various characters from the Alamo through Sam Houston's election as the first president of Texas.  Liberties are taken with the timeline.  Liberties are also taken with the history.  Extreme liberties are taken with the geography.  There are no cliffs and mountains from the Alamo to San Jacinto but they are plentiful in this production.  Durango, Mexico was the wrong choice for filming.  The geography was so very wrong that I couldn't overlook it.  Just before the Battle of San Jacinto, the Texas Rangers destroy Vince's Bridge.  This did happen.  However, the bridge crosses a dry gulch here rather than a bayou.  Traversing the dry gulch is merely an inconvenience.  Also, the bridge was burned, not detonated with barrels of black powder.

The casting was mediocre.  I like Bill Paxton.  As it happens, he grew up in Texas, which is ideal for this movie.  Sam Houston was 43 during the Battle of San Jacinto while Paxton was 59.  Far worse was casting the 60 year-old Christopher McDonald as the Henry Karnes, who was only 23 at the time.  Rob Morrow (53) plays Colonel Fannin (32).  Jeff Fahey (63) plays Thomas Rusk (32).

The look of the show is washed out.  Everyone is covered in layers of dust - probably because they filmed in a desert - and there are no vibrant colors.  Who would fight for this desolate landscape?

The show fully embraces the legend of Emily West, the Yellow Rose of Texas.  The story goes that Santa Anna was distracted by a mulatto woman at the start of the Battle of San Jacinto, which led to Houston's total victory.  High Yellow was a term used to describe light-skinned blacks.  Not only does Emily seduce Santa Anna, she also seduces Houston.

There is very little effort to make this a balanced presentation.  Texans good (mostly), Mexicans and Comanche bad.  There was one point where Colonel Fannin demands to be treated as a prisoner-of-war and the Mexican officer says that he is an illegal immigrant, or something to that effect.  Nice.  Also true.  Then the officer shoots him.  That the Mexicans took no prisoners is a black mark against them.  Later, Emily asked Santa Anna if the Texians seeking independence from Mexico wasn't just like how Mexico had won independence from Spain only 15 years earlier.

Santa Anna isn't quite so clownish as he was portrayed in The Alamo, but he still comes off poorly.  His blindness to Emily's motives is a real mark against him, especially since this is a fictional side story.  It must be remembered that Santa Anna returned from exile several times and he did this based on his charisma.  Here, he often comes across as a bully.  Maybe he was with his close advisors, but he usually presented himself as a selfless patriot in public.

Lorca (Ray Liotta) is an entirely fictional character who exists as the ghost of the Alamo.  As a fictional survivor, he is out for revenge, killing every Mexican he meets: man, woman, or child.  He's the insane soldier, the extreme case of PTSD.  Like Emily, he could have been left out of the story.

Andrew Jackson (Kris Kristofferson) has an interest in the Texas Revolution and even makes plans should Santa Anna cross the US border in to Louisiana.  The most interesting part with Jackson was at the end of the series when Santa Anna meets him at the White House.  Santa Anna claims to be the Napoleon of the West.  Jackson replied by stating that Wellington defeated Napoleon, and Jackson himself defeated Wellington's troops in New Orleans.  Ha!  That's actually true.

Overall, the show is disappointing.  There is too much fiction mixed into the history to make it worthwhile.  The geography is so wrong as to ruin the series even without the fictionalized history.  The characters mostly don't develop, having weak arcs or no arcs at all.  The series ended with a promise for The Comanche Wars.  Apparently, it was not sufficiently successful to see that sequel made.

Skip.

The Alamo (2004)

It is 1835 in Washington DC and Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) is trying to sell land in Texas.  He runs into Congressman David Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton), who doesn't seem interested.  Though Crockett enjoys fame - The Kentuckian (based on him) is the most popular play around, his electoral prospects don't look good.  Some months later in Texas, the Mexican Army has been chased across the Rio Grande and the bigwigs of the Texas Revolution have met to determine what to do next.  Houston is opposed to an attack on Matamoros.  Those present strip him of his army command for his reticence to fight.  Jim Bowie (Jason Patric) supports Houston but isn't keen on Houston's order to abandon the Alamo.  Bowie's home is in San Antonio.

In San Antonio, William Travis (Patrick Wilson) is given command of the Alamo while Colonel Neill is away.  Neill expects to return long before there is any action.  Travis and Bowie do not see eye to eye.  Their constant bickering is quelled by the arrival of Davy Crockett and his Tennessee Boys.  Crockett had not been re-elected to Congress and opted to come to Texas.  He was surprised to hear the fighting wasn't over.

In late February, Santa Anna arrived with an army.  He spent the next two weeks toying with the fortress, hoping to lure Sam Houston to a battle.  Though Houston has called for troops, he doesn't have enough to relieve the siege.  On March 6, 1836, the Mexican assault begins.

After the Alamo fell, the Texians demanded that Sam Houston fight.  Instead, Houston retreated east in search of the right battlefield.  Santa Anna split his army to keep pace.  Finally, Houston found his battleground and turned to attack.  The ensuing Battle of San Jacinto took 18 minutes and ended with a route of the Mexican Army and the capture of Santa Anna.

The movie makes a serious effort to credit as many participants as possible.  Though the big three are well-known, there are many other Alamo defenders and survivors who are not often mentioned.  Susanna Dickinson, wife of one of the defenders, survived the siege and provided an internal account of events.  Juan Seguin (Jordi Molla) was sent with dispatches after the siege began and later took part in the Battle of San Jacinto.  James Bonham, William Ward, Almeron Dickinson, Micajah Autry, and several others are given their due.

Billy Bob Thornton is a very different Davy Crockett than previous interpretations.  Fess Parker, John Wayne, and Brian Keith played up the buckskins with the coonskin cap.  Thornton dresses in the style of the period and also is the first to play the fiddle.  This Davy Crockett is not so eager to fight to the death.  He comes across as a conflicted but noble man who has to live up to the heroic image of himself.  The major change that caused a lot of fuss when this was released was that Crockett survives the battle only to then be executed.  A Mexican soldier reported that this was how Crockett died.  However, this contradicts some of the survivors' accounts.  Overall, Thornton is the best Davy Crockett so far.

Jason Patric plays Bowie as a tragic figure.  Obviously, he's dying from consumption, but here we see some of his history beyond a retelling of the Sandbar Fight.  There are flashbacks to his early times in San Antonio, before his wife and children died from cholera.  He is not particularly friendly and initially takes a dark pleasure in slapping down Travis.  Patric's Bowie exudes a natural magnetism where it is easy to accept that, despite his weakened state, his words carried a lot of weight with the Alamo defenders.  One of the best things that Jim Bowie did for his reputation was die at the Alamo; he had not lived an admirable life.

Emilio Echevarria was 20 years too old to play Santa Anna.  He didn't have the charisma for the role.  Yes, Santa Anna had an immense ego but he was also charming.  With this Santa Anna, it isn't clear why anyone is loyal to him.  However, his comment where he views soldiers as expendable is true to character.  Santa Anna was never concerned with casualties, only victory.  Raul Julia was a much better Santa Anna (1987).

Dennis Quaid bookends the movie as Sam Houston.  His Houston is 'prickly' and stubborn.  Houston will have his way or not at all.  That the movie included the Battle of San Jacinto was different from the usual Alamo movies.  However, it does make for an uneven narrative.  The movie is more than The Alamo, it is selected battles from the Texas Revolution.

History buff that I am, I liked this film quite a lot.  It covers a lot of ground and the research staff was better than most.  This is an excellent telling of those historic events.  Recommended.

The War with Mexico, Volume I

In 1919, Justin Smith published his Pulitzer Prize winning The War with Mexico.  Volume I covers the various causes of the war and then the various battles up to Buena Vista (February 22-23, 1847). A thoroughly researched book, Smith offers some well-supported arguments.  He opens by detailing event in Mexico from the war with Spain and the various efforts at self-government in the wake of independence. Of particular note, Mexico exiled many Gachupines, people from Spain.  This does not seem unusual in the wake of a war of independence from Spain but the Gachupines were the entreprenuer and educated class.  Ejecting them left the economy crippled.  Soon, other foreigners (e.g., British, French, American, etc.) moved in to mine the resources of Mexico.  The Mexican government sailed from one disaster to the next, often suffering the latest revolution that brought a new 'president' to power.  The judiciary ruled in favor of whomever offered the greater bribes.  This situation did not sit well with foreign powers who saw citizen's stripped of their property or imprisoned on trumped up charges.  In 1838, France invaded to settle financial disputes; this was the Pastry War where Santa Anna lost his leg in battle.  Like the other countries, the United States had suffered similar troubles with Mexico, but there was the counterbalancing issue of Texas.

One of the most interesting things that Smith details is the Texas border.  In the Adams-Onis Treaty (1819), Spain surrendered Florida and claims to Oregon in order to secure its claim to Texas.  In the wake of the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the US held that the Rio Grande was the border while Spain argued that the Calcasieu River was the border.  Thanks to the treaty, the border became the Sabine.  Therefore, the treaty recognized the Province of Tejas as extending from the Sabine to the Rio Grande.  When Texas became independent, this definition was the default.  However, Mexico argued both that the Nueces was the border of Tejas and that Tejas was still a province of Mexico.  Nine years of independence tended to nix the later argument and US prior claims to Tejas disputed the former.  As Mexico clearly could not govern the region, the US wanted to settle outstanding claims.  The US would pay any claims that American citizens had against Mexico and also pay for the land.  Mexico declined.

Polk had set out to determine both the northern border with Canada and the southern border with Mexico in his term.  With England, he entered into brinksmanship to get the border set at the 49th parallel.  A deal was struck.  He used virtually the same tactic with Mexico and there was war.  Where England looked at the issue on the basis of economic interest, Mexico had viewed it with national pride.  Had Mexico worked with the same thought process as England, there would have been no war.  Though Santa Anna had boasted that he would march on Washington if there was war, this was nonsense.  He had been unable to subdue Texas.  However, Mexico was compared to Spain during the Napoleonic Era.  The US would be unable to win in much the same way that France found Spain to be a quagmire.  Mexico could afford continual defeats and still not lose the war.  Eventually, a new president would be elected in the United States, anti-war sentiment would grow, and the border would be settled where Mexico wanted it.

The book concludes with the battle which Santa Anna pinned his hopes upon: Buena Vista.  He had assembled an army vastly larger than Taylor's.  He very nearly succeeded.  The battle was a draw.  Luckily for Taylor, a draw credits the defender.  Santa Anna made haste to face Winfield Scott's invasion, telling a tale of victory as he rode far ahead of his retreating army.  He had American banners and canon as symbols of his success.

Outstanding book with footnotes galore.  Highly recommended.