Battle of Buena Vista

Background

War between the United States and Mexico had begun in the spring of 1846 over the disputed Texas border. Zachary Taylor's Army of Occupation won at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma and Monterrey and, by early 1847, held Saltillo. President Polk, distrusting Taylor as a likely Whig rival, then stripped him of most of his regulars and many volunteers for Winfield Scott's planned landing at Veracruz, and Scott told Taylor to stay on the defensive at Monterrey.

Antonio López de Santa Anna, back in power and rebuilding the Mexican army at San Luis Potosí, learned of the transfer from captured American dispatches. He decided to strike north first: destroy Taylor's weakened force at Saltillo, then turn south-east to meet Scott on the coast. Some 21,500 men left San Luis Potosí from 27 January, while Urrea's cavalry and irregulars rode round to cut Taylor's road to the Rio Grande.

The march was terrible. Santa Anna had earlier ordered wells destroyed to slow Taylor; now his own men crossed the same dry country in winter without coats or shoes, on short rations, with too few wagons. Stragglers were to be shot as deserters. Even so the army reached Encarnación undetected on 18 February, about 240 miles in three weeks.

Taylor had advanced against orders to Agua Nueva, some seventeen miles south of Saltillo. When Texas Rangers and dragoons found the Mexican camp on 20 February, he fell back to a position John Wool had already chosen: the narrows of La Angostura, just south of the hacienda of Buena Vista, where the Saltillo road ran through a valley cut by deep ravines.

The armies

Taylor's army of about 4,750 was overwhelmingly volunteer. Only Jefferson Davis's 1st Mississippi Rifles had seen combat; the rest were the 2nd and 3rd Indiana under Joseph Lane, the 1st and 2nd Illinois, the 2nd Kentucky, Humphrey Marshall's Kentucky and Archibald Yell's Arkansas mounted regiments, and a Texas company. The regulars, about 450 men, were two squadrons of dragoons under Steen and May and three light batteries: Washington's, Sherman's and Bragg's, fast-moving "flying artillery" that would decide the battle. Apart from Lane's brigade, every regiment reported straight to Wool, whom Taylor made tactical commander.

Santa Anna brought about 15,000 men, organised, unlike Taylor's, into divisions: Pacheco's vanguard of Guanajuato militia, Ampudia's light infantry brigade, Lombardini's largely veteran centre division, Ortega's rear guard, and four cavalry brigades under Miñón, Juvera, Torrejón and Andrade. He had about forty guns, heavier but less mobile than the American pieces, plus the Hussar regiment of his guard and a legion of foreigners, many of them deserters from the US Army, later the San Patricio Battalion. Many of his soldiers were half-trained recruits, exhausted and hungry after the march, but CMH judges them highly motivated. The Mexican infantry still carried flintlock muskets.

The battle

22 February. Mexican cavalry made contact about 09:00. At 11:00 Santa Anna sent a summons claiming some 20,000 men and calling on Taylor to surrender; it was refused. Wool's line ran across the valley: Washington's battery, behind a barricade of rock-filled wagons, blocked the road at the narrows, covered by the 1st Illinois, with the 2nd Kentucky on the hills to the west. East of the road, fifty-foot bluffs rose to the plateau, a mile and a half wide and slashed by ravines that ran down from the Sierra Madre.

The Mexican divisions were in position by 15:00, too late, Santa Anna judged, for a general attack. He sent Ampudia's light infantry to climb the mountainside on the American left, and Wool answered with Marshall's Kentucky cavalry, dismounted Arkansas riflemen and part of the 3rd Indiana. The two sides traded fire across a ravine until dark. The night was cold and drizzling, without fires; many Mexican soldiers ate their last rations. Taylor rode back to check on the Saltillo garrison.

23 February, morning. Fighting began at dawn as a reinforced Ampudia pushed Marshall back along the mountain. About 08:00 columns under Blanco came up the road and were broken by Washington's guns and the 1st Illinois. Meanwhile Lombardini, Pacheco, Ortega and Juvera's cavalry, some 7,000 men, climbed a broad hidden ravine onto the plateau against the 2nd Indiana and O'Brien's three guns. Ordered forward under fire, Colonel Bowles misread the order and called a retreat; after some ninety casualties in minutes the regiment broke. O'Brien, left unsupported, lost a gun. The 2nd Illinois fell back in order under cover of Sherman's and Bragg's batteries, but within forty-five minutes the American left had collapsed and Marshall's horsemen had fled towards Buena Vista.

Late morning. Taylor arrived with the Mississippi Rifles shortly before 10:00 while Wool patched together a line across the plateau. Juvera's lancers rode round the flank for the supply depot at the hacienda; Yell was killed there, but Steen's dragoons cut the column in two, the stone buildings held, and Reynolds's section of guns and May's dragoons drove the cavalry off. Shortly after noon Torrejón's cavalry, screening Ortega's division, came at the Mississippians and the 3rd Indiana, who formed an inverted "V" open towards the enemy rather than squares. Davis held fire to about seventy yards, the volley stopped the charge, and the Mississippians counter-charged. About 2,000 Mexicans were left trapped in a ravine until a white flag halted the firing and let most slip away.

Afternoon. Miñón reached Saltillo but found it too well guarded to attack. Santa Anna formed a last column under Pérez from the remnants of four divisions. At about 17:00 it came out of a ravine, recoiled from O'Brien's and Thomas's guns, and caught the 1st and 2nd Illinois and 2nd Kentucky as they pursued. Colonel Hardin and Lieutenant Colonel Henry Clay Jr were mortally wounded, and O'Brien lost his last two guns. Bragg's and Sherman's batteries galloped up, unlimbered about fifty yards from the Mexican line without infantry support and fired double canister; the column stalled in the broken ground, unable to deploy. Washington's shells turned back a final lancer charge, and a rain squall ended the fighting about 18:00.

That night Santa Anna, his men starving, withdrew towards Agua Nueva, leaving campfires burning. The Americans, who doubted they could hold another assault, found the field empty at dawn on the 24th.

Aftermath

Taylor lost between about 660 and 750 men, some 14 per cent of his force, including 28 officers killed. Mexican losses were about 1,600 killed and wounded and another 1,900 missing, many of them deserters, and the retreat to San Luis Potosí cost far more: CMH puts the campaign's losses from battle, hunger, disease and desertion at 10,500. Taylor did not pursue. Santa Anna carried away three captured guns and several flags as trophies, which were long displayed in Mexico, announced a victory, and turned south to face Scott's invasion.

In Mexico the battle is La Angostura. Santa Anna's supporters presented the withdrawal as a success; Ramón Alcaraz, writing after the war, called it "three partial triumphs, but not a complete victory". Mexican historians have since argued that he threw away a battle he had nearly won, and some charged incompetence or worse. CMH calls the retreat a major blunder while acknowledging his army's hunger, exhaustion and losses.

In the United States the news set off celebrations that overshadowed Veracruz, and the citizen-soldier legend grew, though CMH credits the regular artillery and Wool's choice of ground. Taylor, quarrelling with Polk and Scott, fought no more major battles, and rode Buena Vista to the White House in 1848. The popular "A little more grape, Captain Bragg" is almost certainly a later invention.

Wargaming it

Buena Vista is a superb grand-tactical defence for a single evening or a two-session refight. At brigade and regiment scale, with each American regiment and battery a unit, it fits a two-by-one-metre table covering the narrows, the plateau and the hacienda. The terrain is the game: impassable ravines that channel attacks into columns, bluffs climbable only at ravine heads, a road bottleneck that a single battery can hold, and a mountainside flank that rewards light infantry.

The Mexican player has three-to-one numbers but brittle, tired troops, heavy guns that cannot follow the attack, and a clock: the army is close to starving. Rules should penalise deploying from column into line in broken ground, and give hunger or exhaustion a bite after the first day. The American player has fragile volunteers who may rout, as the 2nd Indiana did, and a handful of superb horse batteries that must be galloped from crisis to crisis without infantry support. Command friction matters: Wool controls everything personally, while Taylor arrives late on the second morning.

Good "what ifs": Miñón striking Saltillo or the American rear in earnest; Ampudia's and Lombardini's attacks made at the same time rather than in sequence; Bowles holding his ground; and, above all, Santa Anna renewing the attack on the 24th against an exhausted, depleted line. A smaller scenario can isolate the morning collapse on the plateau and the Mississippi "V".

Maps and pictures