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gorget
Jun 7, 2010 20:30:01 GMT -5
Post by tmdreb on Jun 7, 2010 20:30:01 GMT -5
I believe the collection at San Jacinto represents items purchased from a variety of places and represents an cross section of Mexican items from the 1830-1867 period. I am pretty sure the gorget is not and actual San Jacinto item. Most of the references to the gorgets are from the 1839-1849 period, and I would strongly agree with everyone else that these are dress parade/uniform items. That's not far off at all. During the brief few weeks I worked in their collections as an intern, I became a little familiar with what they had and how they came by it. Everything that I looked at had been donated, but there was often very little information on the item's background, or documentation to support what the item was represented to be. Almost anything of the era that looks somewhat fancy seems to have shown up with Santa Anna's name attached to it. Many items even still retain their obviously false descriptions simply to appease donors. The best example is the Sidney Sherman frock that he obviously did not wear in 1836 at the battle. I'd take what I saw there with a grain of salt and certainly never use the fact that an item is in a museum as a guarantee of its authenticity! p.s. Mark, if you wanted to start another thread about the diversity of arms and other aspects of the Mexican Army, I for one would gladly participate.
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gorget
Jun 8, 2010 6:55:06 GMT -5
Post by garyzaboly on Jun 8, 2010 6:55:06 GMT -5
So, what to conclude? I would say that the tradition of the gorget as simply a parade item in the Mexican army was obviously not a rule without any exceptions. Gary, Certainly there are exceptions to every rule, and I would not be shocked to discover that a very few officers in the Texas campaign wore the occasional gorget. But I think we are speaking here about the tendency, or the general state of dress in the field, not the rare exception. As pointed out previously, there are no known excavated gorgets that I am aware of in Texas. This is the first bit of contributory evidence that they were not commonly worn on campaign. In addition, we should consider Potter's eye-witness observation that in the field, Mexican officers wore the short, dark blue "frogged and braided" jackets and wide brimmed hats, certainly an undress state of attire with which a fancy gorget would appear most incongruous. Mark Mark, I've long since taken much of Potter's notes to heart---and some of that will be reflected in my upcoming book---and re-thought a lot of the old conventional wisdom. Like all things Alamo, much of what was deemed true 50, 40, 30, even 10 years ago is now obsolete. The dress of the Mexican army continues to present many problems that force us to rexamine former conclusions. One decade white fatigue clothing is used in Texas, the next decade it's prohibited except in the hottest climes. High-ranking officers had the choice of wearing their best uniforms on campaign, or civilian-type clothing if they preferred. Hat types were no less discretional in the field. In the 1830s the wearing of earrings was tolerated; in the 1840s they were pronounced feminine and were disallowed. The wearing of other articles of dress and accouterments, even medals, experienced changing rules and fashions. We just don't know how often gorgets were worn by Mexican officers beyond the parade ground and other dress occasions. I concur that the "tendency" was not to wear them in the field in 1836. My only caution is to never say "never," and that the little evidence we do have certainly tells us that they existed in some numbers (in fact the modern Mexican Army still wears gorgets on dress occasions), and that in some battles in Mexico they WERE worn. The latter remains unavoidably significant in my eyes. If worn in battle in 1847, would some officers have also worn them in 1836, e. g., while marching into Bexar on February 23 or March 3, or while conducting artillery fire against the Alamo, or while supervising the construction of engineering works around the fort, etc.? We simply do not know. To me it's not an open and shut case. So, in answer to the original question posed in this thread, my opinion remains objective because all the facts aren't in. I assume that---as they were worn elsewhere at the time---Mexican gorgets WERE brought into Texas, and were on occasion worn. Just when, and by whom, and how often, are questions that remain moot, even if archaeology has not yet---as far as we know---unearthed any artifact. So much about Santa Anna's army remains poorly documented and researched, even unknown, and this is just one such example.
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gorget
Jun 8, 2010 7:46:25 GMT -5
Post by marklemon on Jun 8, 2010 7:46:25 GMT -5
I concur that the "tendency" was not to wear them in the field in 1836. It's always nice when we agree....
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gorget
Jun 8, 2010 13:19:22 GMT -5
Post by garyzaboly on Jun 8, 2010 13:19:22 GMT -5
Adding another piece of near-contemporary evidence to raise the bar a tad:
In James Walker's panoramic canvas of the assault on Chapultepec, in particular the sweep through the causeways below the castle, he shows wounded Mexican troops in lower right being captured by U.S. soldiers. The Mexicans wear red pants and blue coats (I'm not certain what unit they're meant to represent).
Anyway, main point here: one of them is an officer, complete with gold-fringed epaulets. He wears a GORGET, too.
Again, Walker was an eyewitness to this battle, and evidently made field sketches and notes in anticipation of someday doing a series of oils, which task he (thankfully) accomplished. His works are heroic, yes, but fairly accurate. Nothing very idealized here.
(This painting can be seen on pp. 132-133 of the abovementioned TEXAS AND THE WAR WITH MEXICO. A good repro is also in the June 1966 issue of AMERICAN HERITAGE (pp. 26-27).
J. C. Hefter also depicts a gorget on a color bearer of the San Blas Battalion, in action in 1847, in Sanchez Lamego's EL BATTALLON DE SAN BLAS 1825-1855 (PL IV).
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gorget
Jun 8, 2010 13:54:06 GMT -5
Post by marklemon on Jun 8, 2010 13:54:06 GMT -5
The tenor of the initial inquiry of this thread seems to indicate that the poster was asking about the Texan revolution in general, especially with the 1834-1837 time frame, and going ahead and asking about Texian troops as well.
With this in mind, I would, like Stuart, make a distinction between the Mex War period, and the Tex Rev period, as the former engagements were fought on home turf, with shorter supply lines, and the latter battles after very distant marches on campaign. I am perfectly prepared, as I previously noted, to accept that perhaps a very few gorgets were worn in Texas by the occasional, more regulations-loving officer (there are always those types about!)
What I am stating is only that on such distant, dusty campaigns, such things would have been seen a a frivolous, or overly-resplendent triviality by the majority of the officers. Thus Potter's seemingly spot-on observation that they wore much simpler campaign dress.
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gorget
Jun 8, 2010 14:56:20 GMT -5
Post by garyzaboly on Jun 8, 2010 14:56:20 GMT -5
I am perfectly prepared, as I previously noted, to accept that perhaps a very few gorgets were worn in Texas by the occasional, more regulations-loving officer (there are always those types about!)quote] I'm glad we agree, too! To reiterate, the dress regulations in the Mexican Army were often very liberal. At Buena Vista, which was far north of Mexico City, and about the worse terrain the Mexican and American armies of the period 1835-48 ever fought in, Santa Anna and his staff officers went the whole hog in terms of regulation panoply; the American accounts agree on this. Even the line troops and cavalry glistened in the sunlight. Since the dress of the Mexican army in Texas in '35-'36 has been very poorly documented, my tack is to keep an open mind about the question of the wearing of gorgets in that earlier conflict.
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gorget
Jun 8, 2010 17:33:25 GMT -5
Post by marklemon on Jun 8, 2010 17:33:25 GMT -5
Yeah, my mind is open as well to this possibility. But until diggers at the various sites in Texas (both battlefields and camps) come up with one, my money will remain on the depiction of them as the extreme anomaly, and not the rule. There are literally hundreds or more flaming bombs, horns, eagle and serpents, buttons, etc found in Texas sites, but no gorgets that I know of. As in all armies, there are officers that favor the reg's, and those with a somewhat more liberal interpretation of them, especially on campaign. So depicting an occasional gorget on an occasional officer is within the realm of possibility. Just not on too many, in my humble opinion.
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gorget
Jun 9, 2010 1:03:17 GMT -5
Post by stuart on Jun 9, 2010 1:03:17 GMT -5
Just as they were about to begin one battle of the Napoleonic Wars, Marbot or Parquin (I forget which) recorded his astonishment meeting his commanding officer dressed in every bit of finery the regulations allowed from an extravagantly long plume in his shako to conch shells on his horse's harness, and on complimenting this gorgeous display was airily answered that "one must always look ones best in the presence of the enemy" - whether Marbot/Parquin was shuffling around in a greatcoat and greasy forage cap at the time isn't mentioned Point being of course that there's a precedent for everything. Its possible that an officer led his men towards the walls of the Alamo wearing a gorget, but like Marbot/Parquin, his fellow officers will have been pretty astonished
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gorget
Jun 9, 2010 7:11:09 GMT -5
Post by garyzaboly on Jun 9, 2010 7:11:09 GMT -5
The time and place, and whimsy of the commander-in-chief, generally dictated what officers could (or should) wear. During Abercromby's 1758 campaign, e.g., British officers were told to leave their sashes behind and just wear gorgets "on duty."
There's also the case of Mexican troops approaching Matamoras in 1843---again very far from Mexico City--- donning dress uniforms and gorgets before entering the town (Haynes, SOLDIERS OF MISFORTUNE, THE SOMERVELL AND MIER EXPEDITIONS, 98).
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gorget
Jun 9, 2010 8:52:04 GMT -5
Post by greatbigmike on Jun 9, 2010 8:52:04 GMT -5
At the Heroic Military College (Heroico Colegio Militar) in Mexico City, there is the Museum of the Mexican Army . The school has been around since 1823. Does anyone have any connections there?
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