The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation

by James Donovan

  Now both armies were well entrenched, sometimes just yards from each other behind three-foot-thick walls. What followed was a house-to-house and often hand-to-hand struggle that would ultimately last for five grueling days, each one cloudy and frigid. Mexican Brown Bess muskets using weak gunpowder charges were no match for the Texians’ accurate Kentucky long rifles and double-barreled shotguns. But the Mexican forces had the advantage of position. Each house, each garden, and sometimes each room became a fiercely contested battleground, a fort to be taken with great effort and at great peril. Since the strategically placed cannon made the main streets virtual shooting galleries, some Texians took it into their heads to move forward by climbing to the rooftops of the one-story houses, taking cover behind the low parapets around each roof. But the blue-coated soldados had beaten them to it, and a dozen or so sharpshooters armed with Baker rifles in the bell tower of the church looming over the plaza found rebel targets and forced them off. To complicate matters, the gusty wind blew the powder out of the Texian rifle pans. A few of the assault parties were forced to hack holes in the ceilings and drop down ten or twelve feet into the houses, some of which contained soldados. The Texians battered the outside wall of one building until it fell onto the occupants inside. The rubble nearly buried some women and their families, although, bizarrely, one small bexareño emerged into a yard and told the rebels that there would be a fandango held there that night.

  From his camp almost half a mile north of Béxar, Burleson kept his cavalry patrolling the outskirts of the town to prevent enemy forces from leaving or entering. Most of the horsemen were Juan Seguín’s rancheros, who also foraged local ranches for beeves and grain, though about forty of them had given up their mounts to join Milam’s assault force. The mounted patrols prevented Cós from sending in some of his presidial units as reinforcements.

  The fighting eased up after sundown. A supply party appeared with water, milk, munitions, and barbecued beef. Burleson made his way into town and conferred with the assault leaders, who had finally established communication with each other by digging a trench between the two positions. The resistance had been stronger than they had expected—stories of untrained, convict-heavy Mexican army battalions, and the Texians’ successful skirmishes of the previous two months, had led to overconfidence—and they had suffered eleven casualties, one dead and ten wounded, who were taken back to camp to the makeshift hospital of Drs. Samuel Stivers and Amos Pollard, a staunch abolitionist from Massachusetts. But they refused to give up the territory they had fought so hard to win, and decided to continue the assault. Burleson also brought the news that some of the men who had left the previous day had returned. Milam and his fighters spent the evening cleaning their arms and filling sandbags for protection, then they wrapped themselves in their blankets and slept a few hours.

  The next day was colder than the first. General Cós ordered his artillery, both around the plazas and in the Alamo, to open an effective crossfire at dawn. The rebels dug more trenches to facilitate the safer movement of men and artillery. Both sides fought with tenacity and courage. Much of the combat this day was also hand-to-hand, especially after firing from a Texian artillery piece sent the church-tower snipers scattering. Muskets and rifles gave way to pistols, Bowie knives, and bayonets. Progress was slow and tedious, often accompanied by the screaming of women and children. With crowbars, axes, and crude wooden battering rams ten feet long, the rebels would bash holes in the thick walls that made one house look like a “pigeon nursery from whence flame and lead poured out as fast as the men could load and fire,” one Texian recalled. Sometimes the Mexicans would do the same while the attackers reloaded. When the opening was large enough, Milam’s men made their way through and into the house, which might be occupied by soldados. Some fought back. Others surrendered and were released on a pledge not to return to Béxar, though not all honored the parole. Occasionally, while occupying either side of a house wall, the two sides would argue the causes and prospects of the battle and the civil war.

  By sunset the Texians had moved forward another half block or so. The men were chilly, exhausted, and filthy, and the mortar dust settling on them conferred a ghostly appearance. But they hunkered down that night in the stone buildings, some of them building small fires to ward off the chill.

  When the sun rose on the third day of the assault, it revealed a new threat on the Texians’ left flank: to the west, across the river near the old mission, the Mexicans had erected a redoubt that was now full of infantry. Behind them, four cannon just outside the fort’s entrance supported them. But the volunteers’ accurate rifle fire quickly put the soldados and the artillerymen to flight. Before the day was over the Mexicans would draw the cannon within the walls by means of lassos.

  Inside the town another problem presented itself. The defenders had fortified a house directly in the path of Johnson’s division, and the heavy small arms and artillery fire from it made progress impossible. Only when a six-pounder was wheeled up from the Texian lines outside town and a barrage of cannonballs unloaded did the Mexicans abandon the stronghold. When a Texian officer ordered the cannon into the open street facing the enemy breastworks, two of the gun’s crew were shot dead and three others wounded. The second lieutenant manning the gun, a Virginian named William Carey, continued to load and fire it with two other men. He barely escaped death when a musket ball passed through his hat and creased his skull. Carey was made first lieutenant soon after, when the man he replaced was cashiered for cowardice.

  That afternoon, Milam led a final push toward Main Plaza, then made his way through the rubble to confer with Johnson at the large Veramendi house, called by some of the men the Bowie house since it had been owned by the latter’s former father-in-law. Milam suggested a daring plan to capture General Cós, who was issuing commands from a house south of the plazas. Dressed in a white blanket coat, Milam stepped into the courtyard about one p.m. with a small field glass to get a better look at the Mexican command post, and to determine the best route there. A second later he fell to the ground, a bullet through his right temple, and died instantly. A Texian pointed toward the river less than a hundred yards away, where a puff of smoke had appeared in a cypress along the opposite bank. Several men took aim and fired, and a body dropped to the riverbank and rolled into the river. After the battle the Texians would learn the name of the sniper: Felix de la Garza, reputedly one of the best shots in the Mexican army.

  The stunned Texians buried their captain in one of the trenches they had dug in the yard, along the east wall, and spent the rest of the day wondering who would replace Milam’s strong leadership and calm under fire. His loss “put a considerable damper on the army,” remembered one attacker. Rumors of a large Mexican reinforcement nearing town were rampant. That evening the Texian officers selected Frank Johnson to oversee the assault. He knew Milam’s plan well and had no desire to change it. About ten o’clock that night, in a chilling drizzle, four companies of volunteers attacked and seized a stone house just north of the church.

  The fourth day was more of the same—bracing cold, stiff resistance, and every foot advanced bought in blood and sweat. In the afternoon a furious artillery barrage pinned down a company of rebels behind some flimsy jacales and an adobe wall. When a well-aimed load of grapeshot tore down even that poor protection, one infuriated Texian, a tall, redheaded scout named Henry Karnes, who had ventured into Texas as a trapper and decided to stay, yelled for cover and dashed across a street through heavy fire to a stone house bristling with Mexican muskets at every window and on the rooftop. The twenty-three-year-old Tennessean carried a crowbar in one hand and his rifle in the other. He hit the door and began to pry it open while his comrades loosed a steady fire on the soldiers on the roof. By the time he broke the door open and burst into the house, most of the men were right behind him. The bulk of the soldados, taken aback by such madness, skedaddled. The rest were taken prisoner.

  Both sides were exhausted after four grueling days of al
most constant struggle. One of the two Texian columns had been reduced by half, to forty-nine men, and they were almost out of ammunition, with little gunpowder left. A frigid rain the next morning resulted in less gunfire on both sides due to damp powder, and eased the stench of dead animals rotting in the streets. But the rebels pushed on, past blackened tree stumps and smoldering ash heaps and piles of rubble, until they were just yards from Main Plaza, Cós’s final line of defense in the town and the most fortified.

  At midmorning a roar of voices, the ringing of the church bells, and martial music from the Mexican band in the Alamo signaled what the Texians had been dreading: the arrival of four hundred reinforcements from Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí, escorted by Colonel Domingo de Ugartechea and a 250-strong contingent of experienced troops drawn from every branch of the military—cavalry, infantry, and artillery. They marched through the streets of Béxar, across the wooden footbridge spanning the river, and into the Alamo, accompanied by sixty soldaderas—soldiers’ women—and their children, as was the custom in the Mexican army.

  Though they were many in number, the new arrivals were far from fresh: in the last twenty-four hours, none of them had eaten more than a piece of hardtack due to the constant rain. Many had lost their shoes and sandals in the mud. They had force-marched from Saltillo (which, a short time earlier, had been renamed Leona Vicario after a heroine of the revolution, though both names were still used), almost four hundred miles away, through burned prairies and cold rains, fifty-five days straight, and had gone the sixty miles to Béxar without a break. They were bone-tired.

  With them rode Captain José Juan Sánchez, proud scion of a family that had distinguished itself militarily from the thirteenth century onward in Spain and the New World. A quarter century earlier, Sánchez had been a classmate of Santa Anna’s in officers’ training, and then an early champion of Mexican independence, earning the rank of captain in his teens. Now he was the adjutant inspector of the northern Mexican states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, ordered to Béxar to observe and serve where needed. His salary was not enough to support his wife, Ana, and their six children, and he wanted a better-paying job. He reported to Cós later that morning, then began his inspection duties.

  A newly confident Cós raised a black flag over the fort, the sign that no quarter would be given to the enemy. But most of the new soldiers were raw recruits, including numerous convicts in leg chains. These untrained and exhausted felons, many of whom could not even load their rifles, were in no shape to join the fray, and instead of bolstering the command, they made the situation worse, particularly since food supplies were already alarmingly low and they had brought little with them. Without their help, Ugartechea’s reinforcement was effectively a wash: the escorting troops only replaced two hundred of the best-mounted presidiales who had deserted the night before and galloped off toward the Rio Grande.

  Meanwhile, the rebels continued their assault on Main Plaza, and Cós transferred his command post across the river and into the Alamo. That afternoon, he devised a desperate strike against the enemy camp a half mile above the fort. Two columns, one of cavalry and one of infantry, approached the Texian position from opposite sides in a classic pincer movement. But the gun crews of James Neill were ready and waiting. When the Mexicans came within range, the Texians let loose a storm of canister shot. The attackers turned and retreated into the Alamo.

  Inside the town, the fighting continued past midnight, when the last fortified house defending Main Plaza was taken by a force of rebels, most of them Greys. Under a nearly full moon, about thirty Texians crawled low along house walls to avoid musket fire from the windows inches above them—so close that their whiskers and hair were burned by the blaze of the guns overhead—then rushed the square. They immediately encountered two six-pounders aimed directly at them. The Texians tried to spike the cannon, but as they did so the plaza filled with troops. A Mexican officer gave the order to fix bayonets and led a group of soldados in a charge into the rebels. The rebels took refuge in a stone structure called the Priest’s House, at the northeast corner of the square, after forcing out its defenders and sending twenty women and children into safer rooms. The Mexicans rallied around three cannon—two of them six-pounders just fifteen paces from the house—and pounded the building incessantly. As they did so, Captain Sánchez directed a howitzer bombardment from the atrium of the church.

  By now, the rest of the Texian forces had lost contact with the Greys in the Priest’s House, and reported that they had all probably been killed. The news reached Burleson in the Texian camp right after he was informed of Ugartechea’s reinforcements. He summoned Johnson and suggested a withdrawal from town. They had only one powder keg left, and many of the men carried just a few rounds in their pouches. Under the circumstances, retreat appeared to be the wisest option.

  But simple escape would not be so easy. The men inside the Priest’s House were enduring a furious bombardment. They threw any furniture they could find against the doors and windows, but cannonballs continued to blast through. The Greys’ leader turned to his men and gave them a choice: retreat, surrender, or die. The Greys were exhausted and short on powder, but to a man they told him, “Die or do.” They would remain where they were and sell their lives as dearly as possible.

  About one in the morning, Cós decided to consolidate his forces. He ordered the remaining infantry troops in Béxar to start moving across the river. What was left of the elite Morelos Battalion acted as a rear guard near Main Plaza as the sick and the wounded and all remaining arms and munitions were transported to the Alamo. Cós continued to discuss his options with his officers, who had rejected his suggestion that they counterattack.

  As the night wore on, conditions worsened for the Mexicans. Provisions were almost gone, even basics such as water and firewood, and there were now more than 1,100 men to feed. Hundreds of horses were starving; some were eating the cloaks of the troops and even gnawing on wooden cannon parts. The garrison’s morale had plummeted after the two hundred presidiales had deserted, and now panic set in. The unshackled convicts insulted and even attacked their officers, and frightened women and children spread confusion as they ran about the fort. Word spread that the defense had become a total rout, and cries of “We are lost” were heard everywhere.

  As the crowd lurched into chaos, Cós tried to calm the troops, but his voice was drowned in the tumult. In the darkness he was trampled and injured, and though he finally restored a semblance of order, he had to retire to a bed. They could hold out for a few days, he knew, but unless they broke out, the final result seemed inevitable.

  At six a.m. the general summoned Captain Sánchez, who had grabbed his musket and joined the fighting near Main Plaza with the Morelos Battalion. Cós sent him back across the river to approach the enemy and obtain the best terms of capitulation possible. As the captain made his way to the plaza, he met the Morelos commander, Colonel Nicolás Condelle, who with seventy of his men was still guarding the retreat under the battalion banner. Earlier, in the heat of battle, the colonel had told Sánchez that they would die there if necessary. Now, when Sánchez told him of his mission, Condelle objected: “The Morelos Battalion has never surrendered,” he said. Some of his subalterns agreed, and even threatened Sánchez with their muskets—one fired and missed. The captain shouted that he had his orders. Condelle gave in, and permitted him to proceed. Sánchez raised a truce flag at the main square about seven a.m., and was soon surrounded by jabbering colonists.

  When the grime-covered rebels in the Priest’s House cautiously emerged in the early morning light after the gunfire had stopped, they saw the truce flag, and a white banner flying above the mission across the river. Somehow every Texian in the house had survived, though one Grey had been badly wounded. They escorted Sánchez to Colonel Johnson, who sent for Burleson.

  The negotiations lasted until two the next morning, when they finally hammered out a generous eighteen-point agreement—though its magnanimity was viewed by so
me of the rebels as a “child’s bargain.” The officers would receive paroles to return to the interior of Mexico, and the army would leave within six days. They gave their word that they would not oppose the reestablishment of the constitution of 1824 or reenter Texas under arms. The Texians allowed them to keep their personal guns and ten bullets a man, and even supplied a small cannon for protection against Indians; the rest of the artillery pieces, about twenty, would stay. Meanwhile, the Mexican troops would remain in the Alamo, and the rebels in town across the river. But by the afternoon of the next day, soldiers of both armies were mingling, some playing cards together, particularly the men of the local Alamo and Béxar garrisons. That evening, the rebels celebrated their victory with a fandango. The Mexican tricolor again flew over the Church of San Fernando.

  On December 14, Cós marched south toward Laredo with a thousand men, including Captain Sánchez and the weary conscripts who had just completed the same arduous 150-mile route six days before. Cós had suffered 150 casualties, most of them men in the Morelos Battalion, against five Texian deaths. More than thirty seriously wounded soldados remained behind at Military Plaza, with one doctor to minister to them. With the column rode Lieutenant Francisco de Castañeda and four members of the Alamo company—his men and those of the Béxar garrison were given the option of staying in town with their families, and these four were the only ones who had not taken advantage of the offer. Most of the presidiales were unmounted. Behind them the Mexican army left a small arsenal—about twenty cannon, eleven thousand musket cartridges, more than three hundred functional muskets, much powder and cannon shot—and, of more immediate value, almost two hundred blankets that would be fully appreciated by the chilled Texians. Many of the volunteers moved into the Alamo, where they sought out the best-sheltered corners for protection against the cold; a group of nine Greys claimed the church as their quarters. Thieves had stripped the roofless structure of all ornaments, but outside, the four sandstone saints in alcoves on either side of the door remained. Women from the town still crossed the river to kneel before them and pray.