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Post by alamonorth on Jun 23, 2011 21:33:46 GMT -5
There is a book by Elizabeth Salas called Soldaderas in the Mexican Military: Myth and history published in the early 90's. I don't have a copy so I cannot make an informed comment.
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Post by cantador4u on Jun 24, 2011 0:20:13 GMT -5
Though it had long been common for wives to follow their husbands when on campaign, The Soldaderas of the early 20th century Mexican revolution get the most publicity, I think because they actually fought, not just take care of their husbands.
- Paul Meske
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simon
Full Member
Posts: 16
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Post by simon on Jun 24, 2011 0:59:58 GMT -5
Do we know ANYTHING about these women? What did they do if their man was killed? What happened to them? I don't know about the Mexican army but in the British army (during the Crimean War) regulations said that six women per company would accompany their men. Obviously this (the Crimea) was a foreign campaign (an 'away' match) so with the Mexican army campaigning in Mexico, there would possibly have been more women with the soldiers. On thing I read (in diary of the Crimea) many years ago, was that a woman, whose husband had died, re-married that same day (once again - had the campaign been closer to home, she could have returned to her family) but being as it was not she needed the 'protection' of another man. Cheers Simon
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jun 24, 2011 7:58:51 GMT -5
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Post by Kevin Young on Jun 24, 2011 8:12:14 GMT -5
There is a book by Elizabeth Salas called Soldaderas in the Mexican Military: Myth and history published in the early 90's. I don't have a copy so I cannot make an informed comment. I have Elizabeth's book, and have heard her talk at a Mexican War Conference. There is not much in the book on the nuts and bolts of the soldaderas in Mexican service: while she does give examples of women serving and fighting in the Wars for Independence, she tends to regulate the soldaderas as members of the chusmas who follow the army. The Texas Revolution section is about three pages...she quotes Santos for the comment that the chusma that acompanied Santa Anna consisted of "numerous children, women, curanderos and speculating merchants." She gives a figure of 1500 women and children following the army with an apparent source as being DShields and de la Pena (including the story of how Sgt. Jacinto Hernandez of the artillery killed his wife. She concludes the section with a discussion on Pachita Alvaz. The US Army of the 1830 period (actually from 1802-1880's)allowed for laundresses and actually provided rations for them. The laundresses at Fort Texas (Brown) were under fire during the 1846 siege and perhaps the most famous was the 7th Infantry's Sarah Bowman, known as the Heroine of Fort Brown and The Great Western.
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Post by stuart on Jun 28, 2011 0:38:06 GMT -5
What complicates this question is Kevin's point about the rations. I can only speak for the British Army but would emphasise that the official allowance of six wives per company (it may not be co-incidental that there were also six NCOs per company) was not strictly speaking a limit in so far as those six and only those six were carried on the strength for the purposes of rations, billets and transport. Any additional women and children were on their own.
This meant that when a battalion was shipped overseas (Britain being an island) only those six would be found room in the trooper. Any wives not on the strength would have to be left behind. However once in theatre there was nothing to prevent locally acquired wives swelling the numbers.
Quick re-marriages were obviously a good idea although I'm not aware of any time limit being imposed from above. An "official" widow would need to remarry fairly soon in order to justify her retention on the ration strength but if she didn't she would be shipped home with a bit of money to get her (and the kids) there. In that case, but not otherwise, one of the unofficial wives could then be taken on strength in her place.
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Post by stuart on Jul 9, 2011 4:19:37 GMT -5
Returning to the cremation business...
Clearly, from a Mexican point of view, cremation was no big deal and indeed seemingly a perfectly respectable way of dealing with large numbers of dead soldiers. I'm therefore very much in agreement with Herb that the most likely outcome is that Santa Anna's dead were burned along with the Texian dead. There's been a lot of discussion over the years, here and elsewhere, trying to reconcile the 250-odd bodies with the 187 defenders. As I've pointed out before Sam Houston clearly identified the latter as white Americans, but even if we add the 20 "citizens" of Bexar that still falls well short and notwithstanding the late TRL's efforts to introduce a second reinforcement that gap has never been closed. Herb's suggestion that the difference is accounted for by including Santa Anna's KIAs makes an awful lot of sense - though they presumably had a pyre (the "missing" third one?) all to themselves - especially if the local men were reclaimed by their families.
I don't, however, believe that the Mexican dead were simply tossed in the river, given that cremation was evidently an acceptable and indeed respectable military alternative to burial. Water was and still is an important resource and leaving decency and that dam aside aside carelessly filling a vital watercourse with dead bodies is quite literally a rotten idea (sorry)
Instead I suspect this was a political fabrication. There was no mass grave to be pointed out to the curious, so what happened to the Mexican dead? Those funeral pyres represented the brave but desecrated Texian dead, and therefore the only other place the Mexicans could have gone was into the river... after all we can't have any doubts about who those particular ashes belonged to.
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Post by Bill Yowell on Jul 9, 2011 9:19:50 GMT -5
If there were only 60 or so dead Mexican Soldados, and considering the total number of men in Santa Annas' forces who were there(some of which were not even envolved in the final siege), why weren't they buried? They certainly had the man power and they hung around long enough to task care of the task. Maybe to Santa Anna they really were just "so many chickens".
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jul 9, 2011 10:32:09 GMT -5
IIRC, officers were buried and there was nothing unusual about burning the rest of the dead. If we do the math, as Stuart suggests, it all adds up. I don't recall anyone who was there remarking at all on the burning of corpses, other than the smell it may have created.
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Post by Hiram on Jul 9, 2011 13:43:06 GMT -5
As Kevin said, sometimes a funeral pyre is just that, a funeral pyre. The Army of Operations conducted a coup de main upon the Alamo compound in order to eliminate the garrison and to re-establish a base of operations in Bexar. The Alamo is turned back into a permanent garrison as troops are being funneled through Bexar. On 8 March, Gaona arrives with the balance of the 1st Brigade, on the 9th Filisola arrived, on the 10th, Andrade's brigade arrived, on the 11th, Tolsa arrives with the 2nd Infantry Brigade.
The battlefield of the Alamo must be cleared of bodies, and the burning of those bodies outside the compound would be both expedient and prudent, and at the same time, reducing the risk of disease.
Concerning the final resting place of Mexican dead, the only contemporary account that I recall was written by De La Pena, “The greater part of our dead were buried by their comrades….” Did Filisola make mention of it in his Memoirs? I don’t remember. If you look at Giraud’s plat of the cemetery that Santa Rosa Hospital is built upon, Campo Santo is a section of the Catholic cemetery, the potter’s field for the town of Bexar. It would be the most likely spot for a large mass grave (if in fact there was ample space.)
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Jul 20, 2011 9:06:57 GMT -5
I have to say I always thought the notion of throwing the victors' bodies into the river was a bit odd. I mean, bodies snag on brush and things -- good grief, it would have been pretty nasty. It makes sense that, given the bulk of the force in town, the Mexican dead would have been either buried or, possibly, committed to one of the pyres.
Paul
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Post by sloanrodgers on Mar 18, 2012 20:21:11 GMT -5
Clearly, from a Mexican point of view, cremation was no big deal and indeed seemingly a perfectly respectable way of dealing with large numbers of dead soldiers. Old Creed Taylor claimed in a newspaper article before his death that it was a horrid scene. Taylor said his ranger company was the first to arrive at the Alamo after the battle. They rode down a cart trail northeast of the fort and came to a mesquite flat, where they found the funeral pyre of the Texans. He stated that the bodies were stacked in a long row atop wood logs and some were only partially consumed by the fire. Of course Creed testimony can't always be trusted completely.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Mar 19, 2012 16:18:51 GMT -5
Taylor also remembered that someone had drawn crude charcoal portraits of Crockett and Bowie on the facade of a building next to the Alamo. I never heard this tidbit before, but I suppose it's common knowledge.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Mar 19, 2012 18:05:58 GMT -5
I think that was actually Madame Candelaria doing charcoal sketches to sell to tourist
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Post by cantador4u on Mar 19, 2012 21:10:31 GMT -5
Are there ANY after battle reports ANYWHERE by the Mexican army that discusses disposal of their dead soldiers? Is there any reference to this in their military literature and manuals?
- Paul Meske
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