Texas

by James A. Michener

  Underlying these complaints, some of them trivial, was a deeper concern which intensified them all. Garza was a Mexican patriot who loved his beautiful, chaotic country and cherished the Spanish heritage from which his revered mother had sprung. He often thought of Mexico and Trinidad de Saldaña as one entity, an object of enormous dignity and worthy of devotion. To see this glorious world of Spain and Mexico smothered by Kentucky and Tennessee barbarism was so repugnant that he must defend the old values.

  And now his conclusion: The only power that can save Tejas from being overwhelmed by the norteamericanos is Santa Anna. Forget that he destroyed the Constitution of 1824. Maybe his way of governing is best. One thing I’m sure of. He’ll discipline those damned Texicans. So if he needs me, I’ll have to fight on his side.

  The moral and political struggle between an old Mexico and a new Tejas under a new form of government had been resolved. Benito Garza committed himself to fighting for the old, and so long as he lived he would never reconsider.

  On 4 January, while Santa Anna was leading his men toward Saltillo, Benito made his final appearance in the market town of Victoria, where he talked quietly with the mexicanos he felt he could trust. Angel Guerra said frankly: ‘When he tore up the Constitution of 1824 and made it impossible for us to govern ourselves … that day I said “To hell with Santa Anna.” I’m fighting with the Texicans.’ A surprising number of sensible mexicanos said the same; Santa Anna’s dictatorial policies had alienated them.

  But certain thoughtful men, and among them leaders of the community like Elizondo Aldama, said: ‘If the Texicans assume power, there can never be a decent role for us mexicanos. We’ll always be third class, objects of contempt.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Garza asked guardedly.

  ‘I’m certainly not going out to fight in Santa Anna’s army, the way he treats his men, but I shall stay here within my walls and pray for his victory.’ Many confided the same.

  But a reassuring group took Benito aside: ‘We know you’re going to join Santa Anna. He’ll teach those yanqui invaders. Tell him that when he finishes with Béjar and marches over here, he’ll find hundreds of us eager to help.’ Garza judged that the majority of the Victoria mexicanos felt that way.

  He also found two young men who were burning to join the oncoming army, and to them he said solemnly: ‘I’m riding to Béjar tomorrow at sunrise. Join me two miles west of the Macnab place, where the road forks.’

  It was now midafternoon and Garza rode casually about Victoria, bidding farewell to a town he had grown to love. He was a striking figure, somewhat large for a mexicano, with light-brown skin, neatly trimmed mustache, dark hair across his forehead, an easy seat in his expensive saddle, and that twisted, ingratiating smile which he had inherited from his mother, the well-regarded Trinidad de Saldaña who had once ruled vast holdings along the Rio Grande. At certain turns of the rough streets he felt a pang of regret that he should be proposing to enter a war which might have disastrous consequences for Victoria and those citizens who were electing to side with the Texicans, but he knew it to be inevitable: Texicans and mexicanos cannot live side by side. As soon as he thought this he realized its impropriety: We live side by side right now, nowhere closer than in the Campbell dog-run. But we can’t rule side by side. We cannot be treated justly by men who hold us in contempt. Santa Anna is right. Clean house. Shoot the tough old-timers … start new.

  He shook his head in perplexity, for he had to appreciate the fallacy of what he had just thought. It was not the longtime Texicans who were the firebrands leading the rebellion; most of Austin’s famous Old Three Hundred, the earliest anglo settlers, were content to remain mexicano citizens. It was men who had been in Tejas less than two years, less than a year, less, by God, than six weeks, who screamed for war. And now, Garza thought grimly, they’re going to get it. He was prepared to annihilate all of them.

  But when he reached the Campbell home and saw for the last time his three trusted friends, he had to leave the kitchen where his sisters María and Josefina were preparing supper, lest his confusion betray the harsh action he was about to take. In the darkening twilight he walked disconsolately along the banks of the Guadalupe, and under the oak tree from which Campbell had been hanged he thought of how much he loved these daring men, how he had trusted and worked with them, helping them build their homes and teaching their boy in the ways of his new land. He wondered if he should warn them of the danger that was about to engulf them, and he decided that to do so might endanger his own plans, but as they sat at supper he did suddenly blurt out: ‘I think we are all in great danger. I think Santa Anna will sweep through Béjar and be here in Victoria within the month. Be careful, I beg you.’

  Macnab said later: ‘I guessed that night he was going to fight with Santa Anna.’ When another Texican asked: ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ Finlay said: ‘I was worried about my decision, not his.’

  At dawn on 5 January, while the two mexicanos waited for Benito at the fork of the road, young Otto, who had suspected what was up, lingered far behind in the darkness to watch the three conspirators ride off. Desperately he wanted to bid his friend Godspeed but was afraid to do so. Unknown to Garza, Otto waved farewell to his Mexican friend as the sun rose over Victoria.

  The three mexicanos rode speedily to Béjar, a hundred-odd miles to the northwest, where they found great confusion. Sketchy word had reached town that General Santa Anna was marching toward Tejas with an army of thousands, and Texican military men, or what passed for such, had already begun to survey the only defensible structure in Béjar, the Alamo, as the ruins of the old mission on the east side of the river were called. Since this was obviously to be the keystone of the Texican defense, Garza inspected it as carefully as he could without arousing the suspicions of the rough-clad men who patrolled it.

  He saw that it was a spacious place running north and south, with sturdy adobe walls enclosing a central area large enough to house hundreds of cattle and thousands of men. Ancient buildings lined the inside of some of the walls; clearly, the place could be taken by determined assault, but if Tennessee and Kentucky men manned the walls with their powerful rifles, the cost could be sizable.

  Still, Garza thought, I’d rather be outside with two thousand trying to get in than inside with a hundred and fifty trying to keep them out. He had made a cautious census of the Texicans but had arrived at a figure slightly too high; the Alamo contained only one hundred and forty-two fighting men.

  At the southeast corner of the compound stood the mission church, a crumbling two-story building without a roof. Its walls were of stone and rather formidable. Anyone inside would be momentarily safe, but it could not be termed a fort and would probably play only a minor role in the siege. The ruined church was, in its way, impressive, a falling relic of those better days when Spanish friars had brought Christ and sanity to Tejas; it had been secularized in 1793, forty-three years earlier, and had from time to time been savagely abused by various army units stationed within.

  One last thing Garza noticed as he completed his survey. Outside every wall of the old mission there was ample open ground, which would influence the flow of battle in two ways: the besieging army could maneuver and choose its spot for major attack; but the same open ground would enable the defenders to take unimpeded aim at any troops trying to assault the walls. Calculating the comparative advantages, Garza concluded: A determined assault will finish off the Alamo within three or four days.

  Leaving the makeshift fortress on 13 January, he crossed the river, entered the town itself and checked the streets to see if any Texicans were stationed there. The Veramendi residence did contain one important Texican, Mordecai Marr, now seventy-two, but since his wife, Amalia, had converted him into a virtual mexicano, he posed no danger. At the former Saldaña house on the plaza, there were no signs of anglos. And the unfinished San Fernando Church looked down impassively on the quiet scene and tolled its bells at regular intervals.

  At
dusk on the same day Garza said farewell to Béjar. He rode past Rancho El Codo, once owned by the Saldañas, later by the Veramendis, now by the Marrs, and pressed on to San Juan Bautista, now called Presidio del Río Grande, from there to Monclova, and on toward Saltillo.

  He did not reach this delightful little city because on the morning of 27 January 1836 he reined in his horse and stood in his stirrups to view a sight which thrilled him—marching north, raising clouds of dust, came the outriders of Santa Anna’s army: Dear God, they’ve come to rescue us from those damned norteamericanos.

  Spurring his horse, he galloped forward to meet the oncoming saviors, and when he drew within hailing distance he shouted: ‘I must see General Santa Anna … at once.’

  ‘Who are you?’ a subaltern asked.

  ‘A loyal mexicano, with information of great importance.’

  He displayed such authority that he was led directly to the general, and saw for the first time El Salvador de México, the great Santa Anna. An imposing man of forty-one, tall, trim, dark-complexioned and with very black hair that sometimes drooped over his forehead, Santa Anna dressed himself, even on a march such as this, in uniforms of the most extravagant nature, with a flood of medals cascading down his chest. As a reward for his rape of Zacatecas, Major General Santa Anna had promoted himself to the rank of general-in-chief and taken the exalted title Benemérito en Grado Heroico, and there was gutter rumor that when he succeeded in subduing the Texicans, he was to name himself Benemérito Universal y Perpetuo.

  This was the able, vainglorious, vengeful commander before whom Benito Garza bowed on the road north of Saltillo: ‘Excellency, all Tejas is overjoyed to see you coming to our salvation.’

  ‘I thank you. What is your name?’

  ‘Benito Garza, of Victoria.’

  ‘And how are things there?’

  ‘The norteamericanos hold us in contempt. The mexicanos pray for your victory.’

  ‘Their prayers will be answered,’ he said, and from the resolute manner in which he spoke, Garza was convinced that they would be.

  Who was this charismatic leader in whom all Mexicans seemed to place such hope? Born in 1794 in the Vera Cruz district, he had at age eighteen proved himself to be a man of extreme personal bravery, exhibited in many battles, but also one capable of adapting to almost any situation, as proved by the fact that he would ascend to the presidency of Mexico on eleven different occasions. Four times, at the height of one crisis or another, Mexico would send him into what was intended to be lifelong exile, and three times he would storm back to resume his leadership. The fourth time he tried, he failed.

  There is no one in United States history remotely comparable, nor, for that matter, in any other country. He liked to call himself the Napoleon of the West, but Napoleon returned to power only once, and then for a scant hundred days; Santa Anna returned ten times.

  It seemed that whenever he resumed power his actions carried special significance for Texicans, and two incidents in his remarkable career were especially relevant. In the hot summer of 1813, when he was nineteen, he had the bad luck to participate in the battle at the Medina River, which took place near San Antonio de Béjar, along the boundary between the Mexican territories of Coahuila and Tejas. Mexican dissidents aided by American adventurers had launched a minor revolution, which Spain’s colonial government decided to crush with a harshness that would forever halt subversion north of the Rio Grande.

  In the battle, Santa Anna helped spring a trap on the unsuspecting Americans, enabling his general to win a resounding victory, but it was what happened next that made the battle significant, for General Arredondo gave one simple order: ‘Exterminate them!’ A slaughter followed, with young Santa Anna participating in the execution at point-blank range of more than a hundred prisoners and the running down of many others.

  He also helped cram more than two hundred captives into an improvised jail in San Antonio; by morning eighteen had suffocated. Most of the survivors were dragged into the town plaza and shot. But Arredondo’s contemptuous treatment of the civilians surprised even Santa Anna. Any who were even suspected of supporting the insurgents were also summarily shot, and when the executions were completed he authorized his troops to loot and rape in the streets. To reinforce his disdain of the populace, the general ordered the leading matrons of the city to report to a detention area, where for eighteen days they were forced to do the laundry of the victorious invaders and cook their food.

  This crushing victory, and Santa Anna’s resulting promotion, must, however, be judged an unfortunate affair for him. The ease with which the triumph came and the harshness which followed encouraged him to believe that the way to handle insurgents was to beat them convincingly in battle, then execute the men and humiliate the women. Now, twenty-three years later, faced with another insurgency in Tejas, he was not only prepared to duplicate those punishments but also eager to do so, for he could be extremely cruel and unforgiving when he judged it necessary to be so.

  Perhaps Mexico required a ruthless leader like Santa Anna, for these were turbulent years. During one period when the United States had only one President—Andrew Jackson, who helped bind his nation together—unlucky Mexico staggered through sixteen different incumbencies, the hideous penalty paid by many former Spanish colonies that seized their freedom without obtaining with it any coherent theory of responsible government.

  But whenever Santa Anna resumed his leadership things seemed to be better … for a while; then he would do some outrageous thing and the government would collapse again. During one return to power, having taken back the presidency on a pompously announced program of reform, he assured the electorate that he was a liberal who would reform the church, discipline the army, and grant each of the constituent states a substantial degree of self-government. As we have seen, Texicans rejoiced in this promise of a constructive freedom under which they could populate and improve their frontier regions.

  But in 1834 he had startled everyone, and perhaps even himself, by announcing: ‘I now realize that I am really a conservative, and as such, I offer the nation a clear three-point program which will save it from its current turbulence. We must replace federalism with a supreme central government, with the individual states having few powers and no legislatures. The traditional role of the church in national affairs must be restored. And the ancient privileges by which priests and army officers were excused from the rules of common law must be restored.’ Reviving the battle cry of ‘Religión y Fueros’ (Religion and the Rights of Priests and Army Officers), he scuttled the liberal Constitution of 1824 and converted Mexico into a conservative dictatorship—and many citizens applauded: ‘At last we have a strong man in control. He should be made our leader for life.’

  Now came the move which struck terror into the hearts of Texicans who had hoped for better, more orderly days. The rich silver state of Zacatecas, refusing to surrender its hard-won rights to Santa Anna’s central dictatorship, launched a kind of rebellion in defense of its privileges, and this was exactly the kind of challenge Santa Anna loved, for it enabled him to don his general’s bemedaled uniform, mount his white horse, and ride into battle.

  Leading a large army up to the walls of Zacatecas, he then ripped a page from Napoleon’s book, swung around the town, and attacked from the rear. At the same time he ordered several of his best officers to have his ranks in apparent defection, sneak into the city, and proclaim themselves defenders of the Constitution of 1824 and mortal enemies of Santa Anna. As trained soldiers, they expected to be given command of Zacatecan troops, whom they would direct into certain slaughter when the fighting began.

  On 11 May 1835, with this combination of valor and deceit, Santa Anna won a devastating victory, but it was what happened next that boded ill for Tejas, for he turned his men loose in one of the ghastly rampages of Mexican history. During the terror some two thousand five hundred women and children and men who had not participated in the battle were slain. Foreign families became spec
ial targets, with English and American husbands bayoneted and their wives stripped naked and coursed through the streets. Rape and pillage continued for two days, until the once-fair city was a burning, screaming ruin.

  Zacatecas had been ravaged because it refused to change its loyalty as quickly as Santa Anna had changed his, and word went out: ‘If Tejas continues to oppose the central government and tries to cling to its old constitution, it can expect like punishment.’ And in the dying days of 1835, backed by an immense army, aided by good generals and strong artillery, Generalísimo Santa Anna marched north, determined to humiliate once more the recalcitrant Texicans. All who opposed him would be slain.

  On 13 February 1836 this remorseless general, accompanied by a cadre of senior officers, rode ahead to the Rio Grande and were snug inside San Juan Bautista while the main body of the troops, accompanied by Benito Garza, lagged far behind, marching on foot across that exposed and dangerous wasteland between Monclova and the river. Santa Anna, always looking ahead to the next battle and disregarding the comfort of his troops, had no cause to worry about his straggling men because the day had started with the temperature near sixty and the sun so hot that many soldiers removed their jackets and marched in shirt only, and sometimes not even that.

  But this was the region just south of that in which Cabeza de Vaca had experienced the dreaded blue norther, and such a storm now hit men who had never experienced the phenomenon. At its first warning blast they hastily redonned their shirts and jackets.

  Rapidly the temperature dropped to fifty, then forty, then to an appalling thirty. Men began to slow their pace, hugging themselves to keep warm, and mules started to wander in confusion. By midafternoon a wild snowstorm was sweeping across the unfettered flatlands of Tejas and northern Coahuila, and at dusk men and animals began to freeze.

  All night the dreadful storm continued, throwing twelve to fourteen inches of snow upon men who had never felt its icy fingers before. They began to stumble, and many collapsed; then the snow covered them and they became inert white mounds along the route, as if in their final moments they had pulled fleecy blankets over their dying bodies.