The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 68, July 1964 - April, 1965 Page: 527
574 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The 22nd Texas Cavalry, 34th 'Texas Cavalry, and 31st Texas
Cavalry, all dismounted after November, 1862, formed the core
of what became Polignac's Brigade. As a brigade these regiments
were initially commanded by Colonel Douglas H. Cooper and
took part in the battles of Shirley's Ford and Newtonia, Missouri,
and Prairie Grove, Arkansas, in the autumn of 1862. Suffering
from extensive illnesses and weariness caused by exhausting
marches and countermarches, the brigade was reinforced in
January, 1863, by the 15th Texas Infantry and placed under the
command of Colonel Joseph W. Speight.
In the spring of 1863, the brigade moved into Louisiana to
reinforce Confederate commander Richard Taylor and in Septem-
ber helped defeat Federal forces in a battle at Stirling's Planta-
tion on Bayou Fordoche. During that summer and fall, the
regiments making up Speight's Brigade were brought together
with the 17th Texas Consolidated Dismounted Cavalry and the
11th Texas Battalion as a part of a consolidated brigade com-
manded by Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac,
veteran of European wars and son of a French prime minister.
Many of the raw Texans first opposed serving under the dapper
Frenchman (whom they dubbed "Polecat") and threatened to
desert, but subsequent successes at Harrisonburg and Sabine Cross
Roads (Mansfield) convinced them that Polignac was a soldier
worthy of their loyalty and support.
When Polignac was promoted to division commander in April,
1864, the brigade passed under the command of a succession of
officers, best known of whom were Wilburn H. King and James
E. Harrison. The brigade moved into northern Louisiana and
Arkansas in late 1864 but saw little fighting and in 1865 moved
back into Texas. There, in the dying days of the Confederacy,
the brigade was disbanded.
This, the first study of "Polignac's" Brigade, is based upon
exhaustive use of official records, manuscript collections, and
published primary sources. Photographs of brigade commanders,
maps of the Trans-Mississippi area in which the brigade cam-
paigned, and a thorough index accompany the text. There are
one or two minor criticisms possible: the treatment of the battle
of Sabine Cross Roads is, for example, a bit too brief and unfor-527
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 68, July 1964 - April, 1965, periodical, 1965; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101198/m1/614/?rotate=270: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.