99
PAPERS OF MIRABEAU BuoNAPAiTE LAMAR
and partisans according to their ability, since the cause was the same for all. In a short time the three States purged themselves by the expulsion of almost the whole Army which scattered among them and there did not remain more than one garrison, which was isolated in :Matamoras because the federalists cut off from it all kinds of com- munications. General D. Vicente Filisola was the one who qommanded it, and more than once it saw itself on the point of being destroyed (thanks to the lack of foresight on the part of its enemies, the federalists who were inexpert in the art of war) since it [the force of the federalists] had always exposed itself in guerrilla warfare or ambuscades and with- out other troops at the first stage [of the struggle] than that of cav- alry and infantry improvised by the same, So things went on for some time until they began to take the enemy prisoners from whom they took very little artillery which was used by their troops of the same branch of the service, and infantry who served voluntarily the same as they had done. There were several engagements and in spite of the disadvantage with which the federalists fought-against military dis- cipline, a good supply of stores etc.- in two years of continual, vicissi- tudes of fortune they [the Centralists] could only count on the ephem- eral triumph secured in the village of Morelos and this because of their having wisely avoided the strategy for which in order to fight in the field, the number of soldiers was necessary in proportion ten to one. General Arista was the one chosen for this manouever, and the one who succeeded in it taking prisoner, D. Antonio Zapata shooting him at once. By the fortunes of war the federalists saw themselves more than once obliged to retire to Texas, where they invited volunteers to return with them and these chose for their chiefs Roos, Jordan, Praiz (Price) Parma (Palmer) and others, they aided them until the end; this took place at the t.own of Mier, after two years elapsed, by a treaty cele- brated between Don Antonio Canales and General Ysidro Reyes the first for the federalists, and the second for the Government. In it 1 they pledged themsel.-es the greatest hopes that they might continue in a lasting peace and that there would not take place again the unpleasant things which had occasioned the revolution; but a fatality decreed that the geniuses could not write the sentiments of the people, and they remained divided until today, it seems.
INFORMATION DERIVED FROl\1 ANSON G. NEAL, now 1st. Lieut of Grumbles company-
Lared9 30 May 1847- A man by the name Miles, (an. officer in the Texan .Regular Regiment, appointed and subsequently dismissed by President Lamar)- Jake Hendick, a big dutchman from Pennsylvania, a man called Capt. Carnes-Kirbey, Cameron and others, were congregated between the Little Colorado and the Nueces, at the head of a parcel of law)ess frontier men known at that time by the name of Cow-Boys, their busi- ness being the stealing of Cattle in this quarter and driving them eastward for sale.-:Many were the strifes between them and the Mexi-
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