There were only a few hundred of them, largely deserters from the US Regular Army, lured into joining the Mexican Army by promises of post-war land grants. And owning one's own land was the primary hope of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century immigrants to America. Army wages would have hardly been enough for a soldier of that period to buy whiskey and prostitutes. So the Mexicans' offer would have seemed attractive enough. Unfortunately for the San Patricios, most of them were killed or captured by General Winfield Scott's army, during the Siege of Mexico City, in 1848. Those captured were promptly hanged, for being deserters.