Pastry War

The Pastry War started when a French pastry cook named Remontel claimed that his shop was looted and ruined by Mexican officers. The cook appealed to the French king Louis-Philippe and demanded 600,000 pesos in damages. As the president of Mexico, Anastasio Bustamante failed to pay, France sent fleets to initiate a blockade of all Mexican ports from Yucatan to the Rio Grande, which bordered the Republic of Texas (now part of the US as the State of Texas) to bombard the Mexican fortress of San Juan de Ulúa, and to seize the port of Veracruz. Virtually the entire Mexican Navy was captured at Veracruz by December 1838. Mexico declared war on France.

Mexicans later smuggled imports into Corpus Christi, Texas and later to Mexico. In fear of another French blockade of Texas, a battalion of the Republic of Texas patrol the city to prevent Mexican smugglers. ne smuggling party abandoned their cargo of about a hundred barrels of flour on the beach at the mouth of the bay, thus giving Flour Bluff its name. The United States, ever watchful of its relations with Mexico, sent the schooner Woodbury to help the French in their blockade.

Meanwhile, acting without explicit government authority, Santa Anna came out of retirement from his hacienda near Xalapa and surveyed Veracruz. He asked the government to use his services, and he was immediately ordered to fight the French by any means necessary. He led Mexican forces against the French and in a skirmish with the rear guard of the French, Santa Anna was wounded in the leg by French grapeshot. His leg was amputated, and buried with full military honors.[2] Exploiting his wounds with eloquent propaganda, Santa Anna catapulted back to power.

With the diplomatic intervention of Great Britain, eventually President Bustamante agreed to pay the 600,000 pesos and the French forces withdrew on 9 March 1839.