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Legend has it that the 1824 Mexican Federalist flag flew over the Alamo during that seige. Sources have it that this was unlikely. Although the Texians were divided over whether they were fighting to defend the Mexican Federal 1824 Constitution or were fighting for Texan independence, by the time of the Alamo the sentiment of most was for independence.

Indeed in January of 1836, just two months before the Alamo, most of the pro-Federalist Texans had presumably left, some 200 of them leaving San Antonio and advancing down into Mexico taking their flags with them. What else they took were the supplies stockpiled in that mission, such that it was bare when Santa Anna moved north the next month. Probably Santa Anna would have come north anyway, but the presence of Texans taking sides in intercine conflicts in Mexico likely did nothing to retard that process.

Tejano Federalists under Juan Seguin covered the subsequent retreat of Houston's army before Santa Anna's forces and also fought at San Jacinto, and Seguin himself went on to hold several offices under the Texas Republic.

But the Federalist movement didn't just go away after Texas Independence. Turns out that in 1839, the year before the events in this narrative, the Texas government had dispatched (or maybe dispatched, the early Texas government was a somewhat chaotic entity) more than 100 men from the Frontier Regiment to fight alongside Federalist Forces in Northern Mexico, on at least some occasions these men fighting South of the Rio Grande under a Texas flag.

That being the precursor to the fact that, at the time of the Great Comanche raid in 1840, the erstwhile commander of the Frontier Regiment was 100 miles east of his nominal command, raising a party of adventurers to fight alongside the Mexican Federalists while the leaders of that movement were themselves given sanctuary in Texas.

How this relates to the Great Comanche Raid is this: With the consent and cooperation of the Texas Government, the Mexican Federalist faction maintained an arms depot at Linnville.

Moore in "Savage Frontier" states that Mexican agents allied to the Centralist Faction accompanied the Comanches on the raid. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the Plum Creek fight wherein the Comanches returning from the raid were intercepted, the spoils left scattered on the field were divided among the victors. Moore writes...

James N. Smith received a beaded shot bag with Roman cross designs on it. Inside the bag, Smith found a letter written by a Mexican to one of the Indian chiefs. The Mexican stated that he would "meet the chief at Corpus Christi or Linvil."

Neither Moore, Gwynne ("Empire of the Summer Moon") nor Fehrenbach ("Comanches") mention the capture of armaments during the looting and burning of the trade warehouses at Lynnville. However the presence of firearms there was apparently known to at least one Texan fighting at Plum Creek, of that fight he wrote...

Lying flat on the side of their horse with nothing to be seen but a foot and a hand, they would shoot their arrows under the horse's neck, run to one end of the space, straighten up, wheel their horses, and reverse themselves, always keeping to the opposite side from us.

The line of warriors just behind those chiefs kept up a continuous firing with their escopetos [Spanish smoothbore carbines], doing no damage. But they had some fine rifles taken at Linnville, and these done all the damage.

All of this could still be mere supposition I suppose, but a line of supposition backed by the Texas State Historical Association...

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hvl58



So the largest force of Comanches ever to strike the Texas Republic comes down and slips by several settlements, striking Victoria direct on August 6th and 7th, and then lingers in the area, perhaps anticipating a supporting Centralist presence, before moving on to sack Linnville on the early morning of the 8th.

All of this is doubtless old news to TRUE historians, but still, in the context of Texas history this is huge.

Taken in context, the Great Comanche Raid was a result of a short-lived alliance between the Comanches and the Centralist faction in Mexico, working against the Federalist-Texan alliance.

And the Comanches once again emerge as something other than your stereotypical Plains Indians.

Birdwatcher