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dc.contributor.advisorMcWhiney, Grady
dc.contributor.authorHardin, Stephen L.en_US
dc.date.accessioned2019-10-11T15:10:56Z
dc.date.available2019-10-11T15:10:56Z
dc.date.created1989en_US
dc.date.issued1989en_US
dc.identifieraleph-441624en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://repository.tcu.edu/handle/116099117/33603
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation is a military history of the Texas Revolution of 1835-1836. It traces the battles, leaders, weapons, tactics, and the organizations of both the Mexican and Texian forces. The study concludes that officers and men marched to Texas battlefields with preconceived notions of combat. The rebellious American colonists were, for the most part, inheritors of the militia traditions of the North American woodlands, wary of regular army discipline and jealous of the right to elect their own commanders. The Mexicans were more formal in their approach to military affairs and were strongly influenced by the rigid nineteenth-century European linear formations. Military dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Mexican commander-in-chief, attempted to emulate the Emperor Napoleon to the point of parody. Both sides discovered that conditions in Texas rendered prior tactics ineffectual. Geography and distance were to play important roles. The dissertation introduces the woodland-prairie hypothesis, which asserts that Texas forces tended to perform better in those areas where they were able to secure natural cover. Protected behind obstacles, Anglo frontiersmen, armed with their accurate Kentucky long rifles, could normally hold their own against superior numbers of Mexicans armed with the smoothbore, and hence inaccurate, Brown Bess muskets. The Mexicans, on the other hand, were far more effective on the vast, open coastal prairies of southern Texas, an area that had become the center of Tejano ranching culture. There the Mexicans were able to employ their superior equestrian skills to maximum advantage, while Texas infantrymen were deprived of natural cover. It was not mere happenstance that the military disasters of the Alamo and Goliad should occur on the Hispanic plains, while the victory of San Jacinto took place on terrain which Americans had made their own. Texas conditions forced the participants to reevaluate and adapt their traditional tactical modes. The dissertation, drawing upon a number of primary documents, traces that process.
dc.format.extentix, 332 leavesen_US
dc.format.mediumFormat: Printen_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.relation.ispartofTexas Christian University dissertationen_US
dc.relation.ispartofAS38.H354en_US
dc.subject.lcshTexas--History--Revolution, 1835-1836en_US
dc.titleTexian Iliad: a narrative military history of the Texas Revolution, 1835-1836en_US
dc.typeTexten_US
etd.degree.departmentDepartment of History
etd.degree.levelDoctoral
local.collegeAddRan College of Liberal Arts
local.departmentHistory
local.academicunitDepartment of History
dc.type.genreDissertation
local.subjectareaHistory
dc.identifier.callnumberMain Stacks: AS38 .H354 (Regular Loan)
dc.identifier.callnumberSpecial Collections: AS38 .H354 (Non-Circulating)
etd.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy
etd.degree.grantorTexas Christian University


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