"Mexican Cavalry Tactics by a Scottish Soldier"

Tactica de Caballeria Escrita para Su Uso, y Dedicada al Exercito Megicano.

iv,44,46pp., plus two engraved plates. 20th-century vellum boards, printed front cover. Vellum taut, somewhat bowing boards and stiffening hinges. Light tanning and foxing internally. About very good.

This scarce military manual was issued shortly after Mexico won its independence in 1821, but still faced efforts by Spain to recapture its lost territory. Indeed, in 1823 when the present work was published, Veracruz was being periodically bombarded from the fortress of San Juan de Ulua, still under the control of the Spanish, at the mouth of the city's harbor. The authorship of this British-printed cavalry manual for Mexican use is ascribed to the Scottish soldier of fortune Arthur Goodall Wavell, who had served as a general in the armies of independence in Chile and Mexico. Later, Wavell assisted Stephen F. Austin in Mexico in obtaining his Texas colonization rights, and failed in several attempts to organize a British Texas colonization company. "Years later, Wavell, 'Boldly affirm[ed] that but for my aid both pecuniary, & in his Papers, & urging men in Power to advance his claims... his Grant the Cradle of Texas would never have been obtained" -- Handbook of Texas (online).

The present work contains over two hundred precepts on cavalry tactics, and numerous illustrations, both in the text and on two plates, depicting and explaining cavalry maneuvers. Likely the one of the earliest cavalry manuals produced for an independent Mexican army.