The ferals always have been a paranoid bunch

April 21, 2005, 3:48PM

SAN JACINTO DAY
Mexican army's poorer weapons may have cost it Texas

By ALLAN TURNER
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

The heroism of Gen. Sam Houston's soldiers at San Jacinto is the stuff of legend. And heroism certainly abounded when the Texas Army, after miles of wearying retreat, rallied 169 years ago today to decimate the overwhelmingly superior army of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the so-called Napoleon of the West.

Historians traditionally attribute Houston's victory, which secured Texas' independence after an 18-minute battle, to timing, geography and luck. Trapped between attacking Texans and a treacherous marsh, Mexican troops ? rudely awakened from their afternoon siesta by a withering rebel fusillade ? had nowhere to go but their deaths.

Now, though, an East Texas high school history teacher, president of a group dedicated to putting copies of important state and national documents in the hands of state schoolchildren, is emphasizing an aspect of the battle that sometimes gets overlooked: technology.

Santa Anna's rout, says James Mitchell of Jasper, was, as much as anything, attributable to simply being outgunned.

Hundreds in Santa Anna's army carried surplus British East India pattern, smoothbore Brown Bess muskets. Although they fired a hefty three-quarter-inch ball, the guns were no match against the more accurate Kentucky rifles carried by many of Houston's troops.

This is why the government does not want you to have full-auto...

--WP