Antonio López de Santa Anna liked to be called the "Napoleon of the West," and he dressed the part. President and general-in-chief of Mexico, he answered the Texian revolt in person, marching an army of several thousand north across the winter deserts of Coahuila to retake San Antonio de Béxar in February 1836. He directed the thirteen-day siege of the Alamo himself and sent his columns over the walls before dawn on 6 March. The imperial self-image held for exactly six more weeks: on 21 April, Sam Houston's Texians overran his camp at San Jacinto in about eighteen minutes, and the Napoleon of the West was taken the next day in a borrowed private's coat.

W. Britain's figure is Santa Anna in full dress — the costume of a man who meant to be seen: a dark blue coatee smothered in gold bullion at the collar and cuffs, scarlet facings, heavy gold epaulettes, a crimson general's sash and a pale-blue sash across the chest, an elaborately embroidered sabretache at the hip, white breeches, and tall black boots. His headgear is a gold-laced cocked hat crowned with a tall white-and-red plume — a bicorne in the Napoleonic manner, not the shako the catalogue copy names. A curved sabre hangs at his side as he draws on his white gloves. Place him behind Marching to Battle (Set A) and Santa Anna's Laddermen to build the assault-column diorama he commanded, with William B. Travis waiting on the wall opposite.

Model: 10056 / W. Britain / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set