Brigadier General Kearny and his force of…

Brigadier General Kearny and his force of about one hundred men, who had performed a grueling march across New Mexico and the Sonoran Desert, had crossed the Colorado River in late November, 1846.

Stockton had sent a thirty-five-man patrol from San Diego to meet them.

On December 7, one hundred lancers under General Andrés Pico (brother of the governor), tipped off and lying in wait, fight Kearny's army of about one hundred and fifty at the Battle of San Pasqual, where twenty-two of Kearny's men (one of whom later dies of wounds), including three officers, are killed in thirty minutes of fighting.