Lieutenant-colonel Don Juan Najira, (pronounced Nah-hee-ra,) led the Guanjuato regiment in its attack on General Worth’s division, on the morning of the 21st September. He was as brave as the Chevalier Bayard, the knight “sans peur, et sans reproche.” Ripley, in his “War with Mexico,” says of him, that—“In spite of wounds he refused to surrender, and struggled on, until, at length, he fell from his horse, and rolled, dead, down the side of the mountain.”
“The traitorous Texan,” an epithet which is purely Mexican, as the ballad is supposed to be the product of a Mexican bard. The retreat of the Texan regiment, however, is a historical fact; but the Mexican lancers paid dearly for their short-lived triumph: not a man of them (I quote Ripley) survived.
