Spanish-Language Imprint
Tratado de campamentos y marchas, seguido de una instrucción para el servicio campal de las tropas destacadas en las fronteras amagadas por los salvajes
Notes: An introductory text on building military encampments and large-scale maneuvers by the Mexican general who led the siege of Veracruz during the French occupation of his country.
Following the successful ouster of the French, Benavides was given a long sabbatical to recover from his injuries. He traveled to Europe and observed military operations there and then spent time in New York, where he wrote several military manuals, including this one.
Benavides claims in the preface that one unique feature of this book is the section on tribal warfare ("incursiones de los salvajes"), whose "special character requires the application of completely different principles to those known in regular warfare" (...cuyo carácter especial requiere la aplicación de principios del todo diferentes á los conocidos en la guerra ordinaria).
A very scarce Spanish-language imprint, with two US holdings in OCLC. See Smith, General Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Border Crisis of 1877, Southwestern Quarterly, 2009, for more on the author and his military career.
[vi], 142 pages plus errata leaf. 3 plates. 12mo. 5 by 7-1/4 inches. Including, with continuous pagination, "Apendice. Memoria militar por el principe Frederico Carlos, de Prusia," a translation into Spanish by Benevides of Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia's "Eine militärische Denkschrift" (Frankfurt am Main, 1860).
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). Rebound in early 20th-century Mexican binding of purple decorated paper and a leather spine stamped in gilt. Interior pages foxed. Generally very good.
Publication: Nueva York: Imprenta del Novo Mundo y la América Ilustrada, [1874].
Item No: #362445
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