When France controlled the Mississippi, Spain had been agitated over the border between Spanish Tejas and French Louisiana, and after Mexico won her independence she, too, kept careful watch along that border. But neither Spain nor Mexico cared much what the border between Tejas and its neighboring districts to the south was; it was assumed that this inconsequential delineation ran along the Medina and Nueces rivers. So when Tejas broke away in 1836, officials in Mexico honestly believed that these rivers still marked the boundary between new Texas and old Coahuila and Tamaulipas, and that the infamous Nueces Strip was Mexican. But the nation of Texas, and now the United States, had always argued that the boundary lay south at the Rio Grande, but neither had much reliable documentation to prove this. Now, in 1845, the Nueces Strip was as much an area of contention as it had always been.
The site of the troop concentration had not been chosen at random. The village of Corpus Christi with its two hundred citizens lay where the Nueces River entered the Gulf of Mexico, and this put it at the northeastern edge of the Nueces Strip. From here the army would stand in readiness for a leap into Mexico proper whenever events warranted. The soldiers at Corpus came from all parts of the Union and represented the emerging mix of national origins—24 percent Scots-Irish, 10 percent German, 6 percent English, 3 percent Scots direct, 4 percent other foreign-born, and 53 percent native-born—nicely balanced between infantry, cavalry and artillery, with emphasis on the latter.
When President Polk learned that John Slidell’s offer to buy most of northern Mexico had been rejected, he judged that relations between the two countries had deterioriated so noticeably that he had better move General Taylor and his army closer to Mexico, so in late March 1846, Taylor leapfrogged clear across the Nueces Strip and assumed a position near the mouth of the Rio Grande. He did this knowing that such an invasion of territory claimed by Mexico must provoke reaction, and he was prepared for war, as was President Polk in Washington. If the truth were known, both the general and the President hoped for war.
Old Rough-and-Ready Taylor may have been as slow-witted as his junior officers sometimes thought, and the depths of his ignorance and fumbling were widely known, but when an enemy took a defined position on terrain that had been scouted, Taylor, sixty-two years old and wheezing, knew what to do. The first order he had issued upon leaving Corpus Christi endeared him to his subordinates: ‘When we have marched three miles into the desert, I want every camp follower who has attached herself or himself to my army kicked the hell out. If they won’t go back to Corpus on their own, put them in irons and march them off with bayonets at their backsides.’ And in one grand sweep the hundreds of prostitutes, pimps, gamblers, whiskey peddlers, thieves and petty traders were booted out. Among these disreputables was a large, pompous gentleman who had been making a small fortune by selling a fantastic variety of things to Taylor’s army: whiskey, tobacco, socks, hard candy, cigars, big hats to replace the inadequate type provided by the commissary and, some said, the favors of Mexican girls who seemed always to be available wherever he located. As soon as the order went out to rid the army of such trash, a rigidly proper West Pointer from South Carolina, Lieutenant Colonel Persifer Cobb, took it upon himself to arrest this man, whose operations he had monitored and whose behavior he deplored. But once he had the unsavory fellow corralled, Cobb found himself involved in a political scandal.
‘I am a state senator of Texas,’ the prisoner bellowed, ‘and a general in the militia!’ When Cobb questioned other prisoners, they confirmed the claims: ‘He’s Senator Yancey Quimper, Hero of San Jacinto, and you’re in trouble, Colonel, because he has connections.’
‘Damn Texas,’ Cobb muttered under his breath. ‘Where else would you find a general running a whorehouse?’ But when Quimper kept demanding that he be taken to General Taylor, and threatening to have Cobb cashiered from the army ‘because of my powerful associations in Washington,’ Cobb had to protect himself, and shortly Yancey Quimper was standing before General Taylor.
‘Are you indeed a senator?’ Taylor asked, and when Quimper replied: ‘In charge of military affairs,’ Taylor asked: ‘And what in hell were you doing among the rabble of my army,’ and the senator explained: ‘Looking after my land interests here.’
This lie was so offensive to Cobb that without having been invited to speak, he blurted out: ‘He was running a cheap store, a liquor bar, and worse,’ at which Quimper drew himself to attention: ‘I was a general in the Texas army, and I demand an apology.’
For one sickening moment Persifer Cobb feared that General Quimper intended joining the Texan volunteers, and his face drained of blood, but General Taylor, a rough old customer who could at times be magnificent, said: ‘Get the hell out of here. I suspect you’re a fraud.’ And Senator-General Yancey Quimper retreated, muttering threats he knew he could not fulfill.
South of the Rio Grande there was a Mexican who had spent a dozen years also longing for such a war, but who now, when it was about to erupt, had ambivalent feelings arising from an event he could never have anticipated. Benito Garza, aged forty, had fallen in love.
When it became apparent that Mexico, in protection of its honor, must oppose any yanqui intrusion into the Nueces Strip, irrevocably the territory of Mexico, Garza had ridden north to assist General Mariano Arista in his defense of Mexican integrity. He was now serving Arista as a superior scout well informed about the area under contention, and in this capacity he was willing to lay down his life.
However, when he moved with Arista to Matamoros, where the Rio Grande enters the Gulf, he found attached to the command a purveyor of salted beef, one José López, who had an attractive daughter bearing a name highly favored by Spanish mothers of a religious bent: María de la Luz, Blessed Mary of the Holy Lights, which children traditionally abbreviated to Lucha. Lucha López was nineteen when Garza met her, a tall, slim young woman of curious beauty and dominant will. Her beauty was unusual in that her features were by no means perfect or strikingly regular; rather, they were strong, powerfully molded, with high cheekbones indicating a pronounced Indian origin. Her hair, which she wore in a long braid, was jet-black, which accentuated her black and piercing eyes.
When Garza first saw her delivering a basket lunch to her father, who had been negotiating with General Arista over the price of beef, he noticed that her dark eyes carried a clear sense of sadness, and he asked her father: ‘Why is your daughter so mournful?’ and he replied: ‘The man she was to marry was killed on the other side of the river, where he kept his cattle.’
‘Who killed him?’ Benito asked, and the meat-dealer said: ‘Tejas Rangers.’ He pronounced the hated word in the manner common along the river, Rinches.
‘When he was on his own soil!’
‘Next they’ll be shooting us in Matamoros.’
In his long years in the saddle Benito had seen many attractive girls and had idly courted some of them, but his manner of life had prevented him from seriously contemplating marriage. At first when he met this impressive young woman he shied away, because he knew that wars and incursions and revolutions would deter him from being a good husband or even a reasonable one.
But Lucha López was not an easy woman to dismiss, and during a six-week interval before open warfare began, he courted her, at first tentatively, then with growing ardor. Once as he left her reluctantly, he thought: She weaves a web about me, as a spider traps a fly. And I like being trapped.
Their cautious relationship did not follow customary patterns, for on those occasions when they managed to escape her dueña they often discussed military matters. ‘Is it true,’ she asked one afternoon, ‘that General Taylor has ten thousand troops?’
‘I’ve been north twice to see, and I doubt he has ten thousand. But many … many.’
‘Then war is inevitable?’
‘Surely.’
‘Will it involve Matamoros?’
‘I don’t see how you can escape.’
‘Can we win?’
Si
nce Benito had been pondering this difficult question for some months, he should have been able to respond quickly, but he did not. Very carefully he said: ‘If we had not driven Santa Anna into exile, if he were here instead of languishing in Cuba, we’d have a splendid chance of recapturing Tejas.’
‘Is Santa Anna so good a general?’
‘He’s wonderful at collecting a rabble of men and forging them into a grand army. If only we had him now …’
‘Father thinks highly of General Arista.’
‘And so do I. He’ll give a good account of himself …’ His voice trailed off.
‘But he’s no Santa Anna?’
‘In all the world there’s only one Santa Anna. And he wastes away in Cuba.’
‘You will fight the norteamericanos?’
‘Until I die.’
She kissed him fervently: ‘Benito, I feel the same way. “The Colossus of the North” someone called them the other day. They press down upon us. We can never live with them … never.’
‘How did your man die?’
‘They came upon him, gathering his cattle. He had taken them across the river in April, as always, and they hanged him in July. No questions, no charges. He was mexicano, and that was enough to hang him.’
The hatred in her voice echoed Garza’s own, and in this mutual rage against an oppressor their love deepened. But still Benito shied away from any commitment, when to his astonishment Lucha said: ‘In this great battle … it will last our lifetimes, Benito, I want to share it with you. Marriage, home, a garden in peace, we’ll not know them. They’re concerns for people like my mother …’
He placed his fingers across her lips: ‘It would have to be marriage, Lucha. I’ve seen how the norteamericanos ridicule us because of some of our women … the soldaderas they don’t marry. With a respectable woman like you, it must be marriage.’
‘I am not a respectable woman,’ Lucha said harshly. ‘I’m a woman of the new Mexico, the Mexico that’s going to be free.’
‘And I’m a man of the new Mexico too, the Mexico that’s going to demand respect among nations. We marry, or we part now.’
Lucha’s parents, prominent citizens of Matamoros with their own good home and land in the country on which López had raised most of the cattle whose meat he sold, strongly opposed the match, for as López pointed out: ‘He’s forty years old. He could be your father,’ and as Señora López warned: ‘He’s a bandit, a good one, I’ll admit, and on our side, but a roving bandit nevertheless. What kind of home life could you expect?’
‘What kind of home life will you expect, if the Rinches keep coming over the Rio Grande?’ she asked.
When her parents realized that she was stubbornly prepared to accompany Garza, married or not, they were appalled, and now they became strong advocates of immediate marriage, though not necessarily with Garza: ‘A girl as pretty as you, you could have any man you wanted. How about that major on General Arista’s staff? He keeps making eyes at you.’
‘Aren’t a major and a bandit pretty much alike?’
‘That I wouldn’t know,’ Señora López granted, ‘but this I do know. A soldadera who follows the troops is no better than a puta.’
The impasse among the four troubled Mexicans was resolved in a bizarre way. Within the body of patriotic Mexicans prepared to make extreme sacrifices for their country was a renegade priest, born in Spain, who was known only as Padre Jesús. For some years, in moral desperation and with incredible courage, he had fought for Mexican freedom, a gaunt, determined man, a natural-born ascetic, who wore clerical garb and who opposed corruption and injustice wherever he found them, in the church, in politics, in the army or in the general society.
Padre Jesús no longer bothered to report his comings and goings to his conservative religious superiors, and now, with a threat of war menacing the northern boundaries of his adopted nation, he had come without authorization to the Rio Grande to do what he could to help, and the troops had a deep affection for his efforts.
When Padre Jesús heard of the conflicts within the López family he proposed a simple solution: ‘Señor López, you have a daughter who is a gem of purest category. You are correct in wanting to see her safely married to a safe man. But she is like me, a child of the revolution that must sweep Mexico. It is proper for her to marry Benito Garza, for he is the new Mexican, the honorable man. They will never have a home like yours, a garden and six children. But they will live in the heart of the real Mexico, as I do. Let them marry.’
When the elder Lópezes refused to accept this advice, Benito and Lucha faced a dilemma, for ancient Spanish custom, now hardened into a law which Mexico honored, held a female to be her father’s ward until the age of twenty-five, and without his consent she could not marry; if she did, the marriage could be annulled or she could be disowned. And when Lucha pleaded for her parents to relent, they cited this law and their opposition stiffened.
But if Padre Jesús was correct in proclaiming Benito a new Mexican, he could have continued that ‘I, Jesús, am the new Catholic priest,’ for when he learned that Lucha’s parents were obdurate, he broke the deadlock simply: ‘Come with me to the rallying field,’ and here, where irregulars like himself had gathered, a confused rabble of adventurers and patriots prepared to support the formal army when hostilities began, he married this ill-matched pair: the groom, more than twice the age of the bride and a son of revolution and disarray; the bride, a daughter of middle-class respectability who should have married a rich landowner.
Just as the impromptu ceremony concluded, a messenger splashed across the Rio Grande: ‘Norteamericano soldiers! Not ten miles from the river!’ At this exciting news the new husband kissed his wife, then rode hard to General Arista’s headquarters, where a team of skilled frontier fighters was assembling. ‘Let me ride with them as scout,’ Garza pleaded, and the request was granted, for among the troops, regular or irregular, no one was better at operating in the chaparral of the Nueces Strip.
‘We must be very quiet, very wily,’ he warned the regular cavalry as they crossed the river. ‘If, as they say, the norteamericanos have Rinches as their scouts … they will be watchful.’
The oncoming Americans, more than sixty in noisy number, did not have Rangers as scouts, but they were led by two able captains, one a West Point graduate. However, the captains were not cautious men, for their big horses raised clouds of dust and their men engaged in careless chatter, which betrayed their advance.
Garza, slipping silently ahead of the Mexican force, watched the approach of the norteamericanos in disbelief: Where do they think they’re going? Why don’t they have any scouts out ahead? And after a long inspection: Good God! They don’t have any Rinches, none at all!
Unable to believe that the enemy were behaving so unprofessionally, he trailed them for more than half an hour, expecting that at any moment some knowing scout, perhaps even Otto Macnab, would come upon him suddenly from the rear, but in time he satisfied himself that his first impressions were correct: No scouts. No Rinches.
As silently as a rattlesnake slipping through the grass, Garza made his dusty way back to the Mexican cavalry and helped its commander set a trap for the unsuspecting norteamericanos, who were now less than two miles from the river. Placing riders at various points, the Mexican leader kept his formidable lancers, those daring fighters with steel-tipped poles as sharp as needles, in reserve, and in this disposition his men awaited the bumbling arrival of the enemy.
Garza, well forward of the secluded Mexicans, was accompanied by ten of the best and most daring irregulars, who moved their horses about so that the norteamericanos must detect them, and when this happened, there was a flurry of shots and much galloping, but Benito and his men knew how to avoid that first fierce charge. With great skill they rode this way and that, confusing the norteamericanos and leading them into the well-laid trap.
The battle was harsh and brief. Just as the American cavalry was about to overtake Garza, who fled in apparent
terror, he flashed a signal, whereupon General Arista’s best lancers swung into action, and before the hard-riding dragoons from Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri knew what was happening, they were surrounded and captured, all sixty-three of them.
By lucky accident, sixteen of the intruders were killed or badly wounded; by design, one of the wounded was set free to inform General Taylor of the humiliating loss. He was outraged that troops of his could be so inefficient in the field, but pleased that at last the Mexicans had come across the Rio Grande and actually killed American troops. To President Polk he was able to send the message that those who sought war with Mexico had awaited: ‘Today Mexican troops have invaded American soil and killed American troops. Hostilities may now be considered as commenced.’ The war with Mexico had begun.
Taylor’s army had three weaknesses, and he was now painfully aware of them: his horses, though big and sturdy, were not accustomed to operations in an extreme southern climate like the Strip’s; he had few scouts experienced in such terrain; but most important of all, his enlisted men were an untested collection whose officers could only speculate on ‘how they will perform in battle.’ Therefore, when the state of Texas offered to provide a group of Rangers well versed in chaparral fighting, he faced a dilemma: as a strict disciplinarian, he did not relish accepting a group of unruly Texans into his orderly ranks, but as a general responsible for the safety of a large army in a strange land, he knew he must have sharp eyes out front, and these he lacked. With great reluctance and after a painful delay, he grudgingly announced: ‘We must have reliable scouts. We’ll take the Texans.’
However, West Point men like Lieutenant Colonel Cobb warned of the dangers: ‘The Texans may be fine horsemen, but the word you just used doesn’t apply to them.’
‘What word?’ Taylor growled.
‘Reliable.’
‘They won their independence, didn’t they?’