This book covers the army that fought the Texans at the Alamo and San Jacinto, and was poised to fight the US in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. It was far from negligible and on the eve of the latter war a correspondent from the London Times judged it superior to the US Army. That it did not prove to be so was perhaps in large due to the failngs of its major commander during this period, the notorious General (later President) Santa Anna, "the Napoleon of the West".