Why did Mexico do so poorly in the Mexican American War. They lost half of their territory and had their capital captured by the U.S. What happened and how could Mexico do better.
Why did Mexico do so poorly in the Mexican American War. They lost half of their territory and had their capital captured by the U.S. What happened and how could Mexico do better.
Essentially the Mexican army suffered from mismanagement and poor discipline in the ranks which made running an effective army difficult.
While apparently on paper they held the advantage somewhat they lost out heavily on leadership and motivation. That and the terrain was working against them for the most part.
A vary apart lack of funds for basically anything in the country, the Mexican Military while not lacking in motivation as you have said were lacking quite heavily in Command.
In fact(to the best of my knowledge_ the only Mexican high commander that had any sort of some military competence during the war not great but some was Santa Anna.
No funds for rifles, powder, uniforms, rations basically anything that a Military needs, while a numerical advantage among the ranks added with the civilian population in the country was blunted by the US use of defense terrain and fortifications.
And the effective use of Generals in the field, General Scott who after studying French invasion of Spain and the Insurgent groups sprouting up all over the country in response to Heavy handed French treatment insured that Mexican civilians were treated good if not better by the US.
So to some it all up, the reasons why Mexico lost were, A heavy lack of funds, a very apparent lack of competent leadership in the Mexican High Command, and the competence of US Generals.
And then the obivous question would be
How to make Mexico competent doing the war? How far back should the PoD be for them to gather themselves and make for a unified creditable threat with a realistic shot at getting out of a war without any concessions?
A minor contributing factor was the very poor quality of Mexican gunpowder. It was made using calcium nitrate, rather than potassium nitrate. Not only was the powder weaker in strength, it tended to spoil very quickly because of the tendency of calcium nitrate to absorb water directly from the air.
Mike Garrity
A minor contributing factor was the very poor quality of Mexican gunpowder. It was made using calcium nitrate, rather than potassium nitrate. Not only was the powder weaker in strength, it tended to spoil very quickly because of the tendency of calcium nitrate to absorb water directly from the air.
Mike Garrity
Thanks for the promos Othyrsyde!
I'll try to post a more detailed post later cuz I'm at work, but most of the problems the Mexicans faced could easily be rectified with a PoD at independence, and as jycee has demonstrated Mexico can scrape by a lot better with a PoD before or at the start of the war.