Two forgotten weeks in 1836 and one of the most consequential events of the entire Texas Revolution have been missing from the historical record--the tale of the Mexican army's misfortunes in the aptly named "Sea of Mud," where more than 2,500 Mexican soldiers and 1,500 female camp followers foundered in the muddy fields of what is now Wharton County, Texas.

In 1996 a pediatrician and "avocational archeologist" living in Wharton, Texas, decided to try to find evidence in Wharton County of the Mexican army of 1836. Following some preliminary research at the Wharton County Junior College...

Gen. Vicente Filisola was second in command of the Mexican army in Texas during the Revolution. After the defeat of Gen. Jose Lopez de Santa Anna by Sam Houston's Texans at San Jacinto, Filisola became commander-in-chief of the four thousand Mexican soldiers that remained in Texas. The Mexican army eventually retreated to Matamoros, Mexico, and Filisola became the scapegoat for all that went wrong in the campaign in Texas. His chief accuser in this disastrous action was Gen. Jose Cosme Urrea, commander of one of the Mexican divisions in the campaign.
After reading this fascinating...