Tom M. Henderson PC Attorney at Law

; For years Mexican authorities used the reconquering of Texas as an excuse for implementing new taxes and making the army the budgetary priority of the impoverished nation. Only sporadic skirmishes resulted. Larger expeditions were postponed as military funding was consistently diverted to other rebellions out of fear that those regions would ally with Texas and further fragment the country.[Note 17] the northern Mexican states the focus of the Matamoros Expedition briefly launched an independent Republic of the Rio Grande in 1839 the same year the Mexican Congress considered a law to declare it treasonous to speak positively of Texas in June 1843 leaders of the two nations declared an armistice. In late December at Santa Anna's behest the Mexican Congress passed the Tornel Decree declaring that any foreigners fighting against Mexican troops "will be deemed pirates and dealt with as such being citizens of no nation presently at war with the Republic and fighting under no recognized flag." in the early nineteenth century captured pirates were executed immediately the resolution thus gave the Mexican army permission to take no prisoners in the war against the Texians. This information was not widely distributed and it is unlikely that most of the American recruits serving in the Texian army were aware that there would be no prisoners-of-war.

; . German Irish and English Americans are the three largest European ancestry groups in Texas German Americans make up 11.3 percent of the population and number over 2.7 million members Irish Americans make up 8.2 percent of the population and number over 1.9 million members There are roughly 600,000 French Americans and 472,000 Italian Americans residing in Texas; these two ethnic groups make up 2.5 percent and 2.0 percent of the population respectively in the 1980 United States Census the largest ancestry group reported in Texas was English with 3,083,323 Texans citing they were of English or mostly English ancestry making them 27 percent of the state at the time. Their ancestry primarily goes back to the original thirteen colonies (the census of 1790 gives 48% of the population of English ancestry; together 12% Scots and Scots-Irish; 4.5% Irish South 90% were Protestant and 3% Welsh = 67.5% British; 13% were German Swiss Dutch and French Huguenots; 19% African-American Colin Bonwick the American Revolution 1991 p 254) and thus many of them today identify as "American" in ancestry though they are of predominantly British stock. There are nearly 200,000 Czech-Americans living in Texas the largest number of any state.