Camerone Day

[johnduffer]

No account I've read, including Rickards', identifies exactly which purported guerilla band participated or how many men they had.

You may want to reread - From Rickards: “ … a group of two hundred and fifty men brought from Cotaxaba and Cueva-Pentada by Hilario Osario to join Milan’s forces. 5 - 5 Lande/Maine, ‘Cameron’, 451-52
“Here were many of them, each able to call upon his own adherents and followers: Pascual Rincon of Timexcal, who was probably already at Milan’s camp, Matias Gonzalez of Cueva Pintada, Honorato Dominguez of San Diego, Marcelino Rosado of Pase Del Macho, Zeferino Daquin of Cocuapa, Tomas Algazanas of Coxtaxla, Inagacio Gonzalez of San Jaronimo and Juan Arevalo of Coscomatepec, among others.” 27 – 27Penette/Castaingt

Even your account states that all the Mexican infantry came from the national guard battalions. The French report more Mexicans than the Mexicans do but there's nothing to back it up.

See above

The few repatriated enlisted men were hardly in a position to accurately count the number of soldiers on the other side shooting at them -- it doesn't surprise me that they thought they were outnumbered 30 to one rather than 14 to one. “It's a mistake any of us might make.”

Except they were veteran soldiers on the scene and we’re not.

Milan's after action report includes the statement that "From noon the battle lasted till near dusk, sustained by our opponents with a valor founded on the belief that we were guerrillas and would not spare their lives." This indicates that the only guerillas present were those in the imagination of the Legionnaires

No, it indicates Milan thought the French thought there were be no quarter because of the treatment of prisoners by local guerillas.

The count of 20 unwounded men comes, as I said, from one of the surviving Legionnaires.

Here’s Berg’s list of the “unwounded”:

Palman, Sergeant – bruised. Shaffner – wounded by debris in the face. Berg, Corporal – bruised head. Magin, Corporal – slight hand wound. Maine, Corporal – Segers, Fusilier – Billod, idem – Gautner, idem – Schrublich bruised side, Verjus – Seffrin, a slight bayonet wound in the chest. Holler – Vandenbruck – Schiffer – Jeannin – Merlet, hit in the head by a stone – Brunswick – Conrad, Mr. Danjou’s orderly, from the 5th of the 1st – Gorzki, a wound from a blow from a gun butt in the face – Zey - Kunassek

The French accounts of mass graves came later and are clearly apocryphal -- Jeanningros said he didn't have time to collect or bury his own casualties. I seem to recall that his account says nothing about graves or counting corpses.


From Rickards: “ Outside the back wall the Legionnaires found the trench where fifty Mexican bodies had been placed, and another nearby, in which were the naked bodies of the dead of the 3rd of the 1st. 13 - 13 Jeanningros to Forey, 4 May 1863

I think the use of statistical analyses of civil war casualties has a great deal of relevance here since the fighting was done with the same sort of weapons.

What about range, duration, experience, etc?

Rorke's Drift is relevant because it shows that even with significantly better weapons (like the breech-loading Martini Henry) against significantly more poorly armed opponents (Zulus with assegais) trained European soldiers proved unable to attain anything like the success the French claimed for the legionnaires.

Next let’s compare D-Day to the OK Corral, it should be relevant

Sergeant may have found the losses inflicted believable, but he obviously didn't crunch the numbers

My “Internet guy” reference was found offensive but this is it in a nutshell. Ignoring the author’s combat experience he still wrote a book with dozens of sources and spent a year or two or three of life doing so. I’m loathe to toss out his writing based on your opinion just because you say so.

I’ve about reached the limit of effort I want to spend on rebuttals. Once again - anyone interested should read what’s available and not rely on the interpretation of others (myself included). You never know when someone might have a predetermined agenda and be willing to skew a few facts.

[Pvt Schnapps]

John, there's no "agenda" here. I believed the same story for 50 years until I realized that it just didn't add up. What I'm reporting is something the Mexicans have known for a century and a half. Questioning my motives doesn't change the history.

The count of different guerilla bands you give has one force of 250 that Milan doesn't mention as present, and wouldn't suffice to bridge the gap between the 31 losses reported and the 300 claimed even if they had been there and had all thrown their lives away. The additional individuals are reported as existing, but not the presence of their bands on the field. Rickards at one point mentions a "guerilla" named Juan Canesco who was probably "with the national guardsmen" there, indicating some double counting or a tendency to label Mexican soldiers as guerillas even when they belonged to established formations of infantry.

On one hand we have the absence of roving bands of guerillas from Milan's AAR and the improbability of guerillas assaulting a fortified position in the face of heavy losses rather than doing what guerillas do. On the other we have reports of guerillas from people who were in no position to determine that they were on the field. Not a tough call unless you're wedded to the French official account.

Similarly, professional soldiers or not, I don't see legionnaires or anyone else under fire from 14 times their number as able to give an accurate count of their assailants. Most reenactors haven't a clue as to how many men are in the formations opposed to them fifty feet away at Cedar Creek and they aren't under the disability of having real bullets coming their way.

Milan's account of the Legionnaires fear of surrendering to guerillas would have been written differently if he actually had guerillas in his force -- something along the lines of "valor sustained by the fear that the guerillas among us would not spare their lives." His wording clearly indicates that he had no guerillas with him.

Berg's list of the unwounded does include minor injuries, but he would hardly call them "unwounded" if he considered the injuries disabling. The fact is that the legionnaires did not fight until they were all disabled, but until their third and last officer went down.

Rickards' footnote 13 in chapter 12 referring to Jeanningros' letter of May 4 supports Jeanningros' account of finding the French bodies, but does not refer to the fifty Mexicans mentioned earlier in the sentence. This isn't his only example of sloppiness. The way Rickards has it we're asked to believe that the French had no time to scrape dirt over their 16 dead comrades, but plenty of leisure in which to count dead Mexicans in a nearby ditch, which Milan supposedly had no time to bury, despite having been left in possession of the field with all the means of transporting his wounded, the captives, and the captured ordnance.

To give a further idea of the thoroughness of Rickards' research, this little bit of illogic is followed by the statement that the French picked up a Spencer carbine from the battlefield -- a neat trick in April of 1863, given that none were built until July.[http://www.civilwarguns.com/spencer1.html]

I think the basis for considering the French claims exaggerated has been pretty well laid out. Any one of us could give the claim of 300 Mexican casualties from 60 legionnaires with 3,000 bullets some credence if it had even a remote precedent or parallel among troops armed with similar weapons. If they'd been ten per cent or twenty per cent, or even a hundred per cent better than Confederate or Union infantry we might believe it. But ten or twenty times more accurate? Up to four times more accurate than infantry with breech-loaders against spearmen? It takes no agenda or fact skewing to feel skeptical about that.

Your last two paragraphs no doubt reflect the feelings you have about this debate, but require no further comment from me.

[Rob Weaver]

So, what's the most accessible modern treatment of the battle?

[johnduffer]

Rob

Sergeant is probably the best but it's rare and in French. Ryan is the easiest read but is expensive. So by default Rickards THE HAND OF CAPTAIN DANJOU is the most bang for the buck and easy to get.

[LibertyHallVols]

How come this got deleted off the AC forum. This is good stuff!

Not deleted, in fact. It is up and viewable. The same questions raised there as were raised here and with the same result... just a different path to getting there.

[Pvt Schnapps]

So, what's the most accessible modern treatment of the battle?

http://www.paginasprodigy.com/bservi...n_veracruz.pdf

The English language books (e.g., Sergeant and Rickards) contain the errors and internal contradictions noted above. None of them question the French claim of Mexican casualties.

[johnduffer]

I think you mean Ryan and Rickards since Sergeant is in French but they all disagree with you and therefore are rife with errors.

[Pvt Schnapps]

I think you mean Ryan and Rickards since Sergeant is in French but they all disagree with you and therefore are rife with errors.

They don't disagree with me, John. They disagree with Milan, and the math agrees with Milan.

[johnduffer]

"the math agrees with Milan"

Then obviously everything else must be wrong. I mean, after all, period hunters often took 800+ shots to bring down a deer and the tyical weekend shootings in Nashville always involve a couple thousand rounds fired. Milan admits to 3 Captains, 3 Lieutenants and a Lt Colonel so somebody knew how to aim but I get it - everybody but Milan is lying. They have to be, I mean look at the Boar War. It's all a French conspiracy and someone like Magana Garfais that reports the death of 'Captain Juan Canesco of the Perote guerillas' was paid off by the French because we all know there were no guerillas there. You're completely right, I now see I'm not allowed to have a different opinion and I, Jordan. Ryan, Poarch, Rickards, Sergeant, Hendryx, Corporal Maine and the entire present day French Foreign Legion are wrong and apologize for our knowing deception. We yield the field.

[Pvt Schnapps]

"the math agrees with Milan"

Then obviously everything else must be wrong. I mean, after all, period hunters often took 800+ shots to bring down a deer and the tyical weekend shootings in Nashville always involve a couple thousand rounds fired. Milan admits to 3 Captains, 3 Lieutenants and a Lt Colonel so somebody knew how to aim but I get it - everybody but Milan is lying. They have to be, I mean look at the Boar War. It's all a French conspiracy and someone like Magana Garfais that reports the death of 'Captain Juan Canesco of the Perote guerillas' was paid off by the French because we all know there were no guerillas there. You're completely right, I now see I'm not allowed to have a different opinion and I, Jordan. Ryan, Poarch, Rickards, Sergeant, Hendryx, Corporal Maine and the entire present day French Foreign Legion are wrong and apologize for our knowing deception. We yield the field.

Juan Canesco, according to your source Rickards, was serving with the National Guard troops, as I pointed out in post 22 above. If you don't want to read the other side's argument, or look at the numbers, or look at the inconsistencies in the secondary source accounts of Camerone, then I agree that it's probably best that you take a break from here and do your eye rolling on the OTB.