Spent last Saturday at the San Jacinto Festival, commemorating the final official battle of the Texas Revolution, when, on April 21, 1836, Sam Houston’s small army caught Santa Anna’s forces by surprise and defeated them, capturing Santa Anna himself and forcing him to agree to remove his troops from Texas.
It’s obviously an important day in Texas history; in some ways almost the beginning OF it. So every year there’s a festival and a re-enactment of the battle on, or very close to, the actual field where it was fought.
Editing the pix down into “interesting,” “good,” and “utter dreck” is going to take a bit, but there were moments….
A Mexican cannon (about a 6-pounder) fires, a mass of smoke and flame and noise, doing no damage but attracting the attention of the Texian gunners….
whose aim was somewhat better.
(Actually this is all carefully controlled pyrotechnics, (see the guy in the green shirt under the Mexican fortification?) but the reenactment gets you up close and personal and it can be a bit disorienting.)