George Washington's Ghost

From what he could gather from the High Command in the Delta, everybody assumed that the Mexicans would move north and west from San Antonio, and in that event Trinity Crossing was the place to make a stand. He thought that was unlikely, not least because he doubted the Mexicans had the fighting manpower, or the logistics train to sustain two separate lines of advance.

And besides, the Mexicans were not the incompetent idiots those fools in the East painted them!

His old sparring partner General Felipe de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, the Chief of Staff of the Mexican Armed Forces, was not going to send his troops this far north. That would be too much of a gamble and Santa Anna was just not that kind of general.

It had astonished Washington that hardly anybody in New England remembered Santa Anna from the last war, or had troubled watch his inexorable rise to power in México with anything other than idle, passing interest. But then people on the East Coast had been sleep walking most of the last decade when it came to Nuevo Granada and the rapid modernisation of its political and military infrastructure.

Personally, Washington had guessed the Mexicans would wait a while longer; return to the negotiating table with its new army, its modern air force and a navy that was beginning to warrant the name, a democracy demanding its place in the world and a settlement of its centuries’ old territorial claims to land taken from it by force majeure by the British. But in a few years New England would have an air force of jets, the Empire could out-build any two or three other navies on the planet and sooner or later, the oil of Texas and offshore in the Gulf of Spain would persuade the government in London to properly fortify the border, and then, because the men in charge in México City were – contrary to the badinage filling the East Coast press -profoundly rational, they would know that their ever-shortening window of opportunity had closed.

So, Santa Anna had – probably with immense reluctance – concluded that a new war, right now, was the only way to guarantee a front row seat at the peace table, next year or the year after. The trouble was that the people in Philadelphia and London did not get it. They still believed they were dealing with a tin pot, banana republic run by a gang of fanatics. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the aftermath of a relatively bloodless revolution in the wake of the defeat in the last Border War, México had democratised, more or less in the same Parliamentary fashion as the Home Islands. Neither President Hernando de Soto nor Santa Anna were dictators or military strong men, and the current war was not some impulsive aberration, it was an expression of Mexican nationhood, the one thing that united most of the great, sprawling nation…

This war had been coming for years

This war had been wholly avoidable.

De Soto and Santa Anna were men London could have done business with had it not been for those idiots in the First Thirteen…

George Washington had to bite down on his anger.

He needed to think clearly.

Best case, worst case scenarios.

If the enemy came this far north and

got across the river – both unlikely, in his humble opinion – then there was precious little to stop them marching a few miles to the north and following the railway all the way east to Caddoport on the Red River.

But George Washington did not think Santa Anna was that greedy. In his old foe’s place, he would be still be coming to terms with the outrageous success and lightning speed of advance of his forces. Those Mexicans fighting in the suburbs of San Antonio must have outrun their supply train, be living of the land and any loot they chanced upon. They would be exhausted, formations would have lost combat coherence, and sixty or seventy percent of their vehicles would have broken down by now. Their pack animals would be literally dying on the hoof. The safe, rational thing to do was to consolidate San Antonio as a logistical and transportation hub, fortify the town and then, when the troops were well rested, press on to the east, threatening the Red River line while amphibious operations were prepared to blockade the Delta. Another man might have allowed himself to get carried away with his good luck; but not Santa Anna…

No, the safe thing to do would be to consolidate San Antonio as a logistical and transportation hub, fortify the town and then, when his troops were well rested, press on to the east, threatening the Mississippi line and the Delta.

In the meantime, it did no harm to operate on the presumption that Trinity Crossing might one day soon be New England’s last redoubt in northern Texas, or perhaps, one day, become the logical staging point for a counter-offensive to retake San Antonio. If nothing else, it sharpened his men’s minds, kept them honest in the conduct of their duties.