On Comic Opera Revolutions: Maneuver Theory and the Art of war in Mexican California, 1821-45‪.‬

"Like the tribes of the Stone Age ever preparing for war but rarely fighting, the Californios cultivated a state of perpetual excitement which culminated in anti-climactic decrees or minor skirmishes; three casualties in one of these fights would represent a major tragedy. Some of the rebels themselves complained of speeches that rang too gloriously, of politicos who were too soft-hearted, of 'great struggles' that were more like comic-opera episodes." (1) So Leonard Pitt observed on the nature of military conflict in Mexican California, a style of war characterized, in the words of James J. Rawls and Walton Bean, by "bombastic 'pronouncements,' chesslike marches and counter-marches, and noisy but bloodless artillery duels, just out of range, in which both sides retrieved each other's cannonballs and fired them back." (2) Generally referred to as Alta California's "comic operas" or "comic opera revolutions," historians have viewed warfare by and among Californios as a less than serious affair. Never a topic of extensive study, explanations for the low casualties that typified these military maneuvers elicit only passing comment by scholars. Such observations tend to emphasize the notion that Californio society was in some way unique, ranging from comparisons to the nonlethal fighting cultures of California Indians, to Bancroft's reflection that mortal combat was somehow against the nature of specific Mexican communities, or even, as Rawls and Bean surmised, the result of intermarriage among Californio families and the fear among combatants that they might find themselves "killing a brother-in-law." (3)