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

by James Donovan

  Green Jameson took the letter, mounted a horse, and rode through the front gate and past several jacales bordering the west side of Plaza de Valero. He held up his own white cloth as he approached the footbridge, 220 yards from the Alamo. He dismounted and walked over the bridge and handed the communiqué to the officer there, who was none other than Colonel Juan Almonte, well known throughout the colonies after his extensive fact-finding mission in 1834, which had alerted the Mexicans to the colonists’ rebellious potential. A decent and cultured man, Almonte had been educated in a Catholic school in New Orleans and spoke English fluently. Squarely built, about 5 feet 6 inches tall, with a round, copper-colored face that betrayed his mestizo blood, he was a good-natured sort. Green could hardly have found more sympathetic hands into which to deliver Bowie’s message. Almonte glanced at it, then gave it to the soldier to deliver to Santa Anna.

  The letter enraged His Excellency. Perhaps further angered by the insolent claim of “God and Texas,” he ordered an aide, Colonel José Batres, to write an uncompromising reply.

  At the footbridge, Almonte and Jameson talked while they waited for the response. Jameson revealed to the colonel the bad state of affairs in the fort, and his personal hope that some honorable conditions could be negotiated. When the reply arrived, Jameson carried it back to the mission.

  “The Mexican army,” read the response, “cannot come to terms with rebellious foreigners to whom there is no other recourse left, if they wish to save their lives, than to place themselves immediately at the disposal of the Supreme Government from whom alone they may expect clemency after some considerations are taken up.”

  An unconditional surrender at discretion—this meant no guarantees of safety, and possibly mass executions, as had happened twenty-three years ago, when Arredondo had quashed the Republican Army of the North and hanged as many as five hundred rebels and citizens alike. The terms were clearly unacceptable, and Travis, infuriated at Bowie’s unilateral decision to request a parley, now sent his own emissary, Albert Martin, down to the bridge. Almonte was still there. This message was oral: if Almonte wished to speak with Travis, he would be received with pleasure. But Almonte could only reiterate His Excellency’s terms, and did so.

  As his comrades watched from the mission’s ramparts, Martin rode back to the fort with the response. When Travis heard the message, he gathered the men together. In a stirring speech, he swore that he would resist to the end. If he had any doubts about the mood of the garrison, they were dispelled now: he received a roar of confirmation in reply.

  The formalities having been dispensed with, both sides began settling in for the evening. Santa Anna sent a contingent of zapadores—the army’s sappers, or engineers, who were also crack troops—upstream to cut off the acequia that served as the mission’s water supply. Other units moved to designated areas and began to set up camp on the plains around the town. Mora’s force, having found no rebels at Mission Concepción, marched upriver to rejoin their comrades.

  Inside the fort, the men continued storing supplies and provisions, the newcomers finding a place to sleep in the barracks or elsewhere. In the church, a dozen or so noncombatants were quartered, most of them defenders’ families. The women set about making the place as comfortable as they could, arranging hay for bedding and unpacking the food they had brought. Some of the children walked around the mission’s large plaza, watching the soldiers at their duties—and a cat that had decided to join the rebels.

  Near twilight, the Esparza family approached the Alamo from the south, where they had forded the river out of sight of the Mexican army. They walked up to the main gate to find the semicircular lunette empty and the door and gate closed up tight. Anna Esparza pounded on the door and demanded entry. No one answered.

  Someone on the ramparts to the east called to them. Gregorio Esparza shepherded his wife and children past the abatis of felled trees and around to the rear of the church. There, on the east wall of the sacristy, a small window seven feet above the ground was opened. One by one, eleven-year-old Enrique and his brothers and sister, then their mother, were passed up to helping hands and pulled into the church. Finally Gregorio scrambled up, after he handed in the few possessions they had brought, and the window was closed tight.

  As the sun disappeared below the Alazán Hills west of the city, Mexican soldiers prepared to bivouac at their assigned posts. Some of the men found cots in the presidio on Military Plaza. Officers moved into abandoned houses around the squares, and, in some cases, booted families from their homes. Several of His Excellency’s staff decided to make the Church of San Fernando their quarters, and arranged with the custodian’s wife for their meals. Colonel Almonte took over the house just west of Main Plaza owned by Major George Anthony Nixon, the commissioner for a land grant company representing several empresarios. Nixon had decided he preferred his other residence, in Nacogdoches, for now. For the remainder of the occupation, Almonte would share the house with two other staff officers, Captain Fernando Urriza and the amiable Lieutenant Colonel Marcial Aguirre, a cavalry captain recently given a brevet promotion. With Almonte was Benjamin “Ben” Harris, the Negro freedman cook he had brought back to Mexico from the United States.

  The rest of the soldiers drew less luxurious accommodations. The infantry was assigned campsites south of La Villita, along the river. As they and their soldaderas set up makeshift shelters and households, the aroma of beef and corn cakes cooking over open fires wafted through the evening, and the sounds of fifteen hundred soldados settling in for the night enveloped the Alamo mission. As twilight turned to darkness, the rebels peering over the Alamo walls could see dozens of campfires on almost every side, several hundred yards away. The siege had begun.

  TWELVE

  “I Am Besieged”

  They say they will defend it or die on the ground. Provisions, ammunition and Men, or suffer your men to be murder in the fort. If you do not turn out Texas is gone.

  LANCELOT SMITHER

  Siege warfare had changed little since the introduction of artillery bombardment centuries before. An attacking force would begin investment of the defensive position—surrounding the target and blocking the escape of troops and the ingress of reinforcements, provisions, and supplies—and then employ any combination of well-proven methods to reduce the fortifications and destroy the defenders.

  Siege machinery was one option; that meant cannon, primarily, since the invention of gunpowder had allowed artillery to replace more primitive weapons, such as catapults and trebuchets. Mining, or sapping, was another option; this meant that the attackers would dig tunnels right up to the walls and place explosive charges under them. The besieging force could then use the trenches to move men and machines gradually closer to the besieged position. The attackers might also use the technique of deception—seldom quite as simple as the Trojan Horse, but following the same age-old principle: fool the enemy and then infiltrate its defenses. All these devices and more might be put into play, sometimes followed by the slower but no less deadly weapons of starvation, thirst, and disease. (Catapulting corpses of plague victims over the walls, as the Mongols had done, or introducing disease-infected fleas to a fort, thus infesting it with some virulent epidemic, was only for the most impatient; nature could usually do the job unaided.) No single development, however, had changed siege warfare more than the introduction and use during the last half century of large cannon. With heavy siege guns, an army could remain at a safe distance from its target and in a short time batter down almost any fortress wall.

  But the weakest branch of the Mexican army was its artillery. Santa Anna had no heavy siege guns. Most of the cannon were leftovers from the royal Spanish army, which during its time in the New World had found few occasions to confront and attack thick-walled fortresses, and thus had little need for very large pieces. The largest tubes carried into Texas were two twelve-pounders, and they were with Gaona’s First Infantry Brigade, about a two-week march from Béxar. Those guns were not massiv
e, but they could do some serious damage to the Alamo’s walls if positioned near enough. Until they arrived, two howitzers and six smaller cannon—two eight-pounders, two six-pounders, and two four-pounders—were the only ones available, and they would have to be placed extremely close to the Alamo’s walls to be effective.

  To that end, over the next few days Santa Anna ordered artillery batteries set up west of the Alamo, near the town’s Main Plaza; closer to the river, near Potrero Street, southwest of the fort; and on the Alameda, the road southeast of the fort that led to the old powder house on the hill and then east to Gonzales. The closest emplacement was about four hundred yards away, but the guns were quickly put to work, and on the second day of the siege they succeeded in disabling two pieces, including the big eighteen-pounder, which had been moved to a battery overlooking the southwest corner.

  In the meantime, His Excellency would rest his men, reconnoiter, and do what he could to replenish spirits and supplies. In the abandoned mercantile establishment of Nat Lewis and the military storehouse of John W. Smith, his soldiers found a large supply of shoes. Santa Anna looked on as these were distributed to the preferred companies of cazadores and granaderos, whose footwear had been reduced to shreds after the arduous journey through northern Mexico. He sent patrols out with locals to ranches in the area to procure beeves for his hungry soldados.

  Most of the occupying army’s officers still camped within the town wherever they could find shelter. Many of the houses were abandoned; when they found occupants in others, they booted them out. One family moved into the cellar of a neighboring house, where they would at least be safe from stray gunfire. The great majority of bexareños had left town for the safety of the ranches up and down the San Antonio River; others had headed for the Anglo settlements to the east. The few hundred who had elected to stay were told they would be unharmed if they remained indoors. Some of them were conscripted to help care for the injured, cook, and carry equipment around the camps. The rest, especially the women, tried to keep out of sight. The ravenous soldiers commandeered what few supplies still remained in Béxar: beeves, corn, hay, lumber to construct redoubts, and every scrap of anything edible they could find, taking what they wanted without bothering to pay.

  The presidiales of the Alamo and Béxar companies who had elected to remain in town instead of riding south with Cós in December were now ordered to hold themselves in readiness to join the army for active service. Francisco Esparza—who had stayed at home with his family in his house on North Flores Street—was one of them. Neither he nor his two brothers had joined their sibling Gregorio in the Texian volunteer army, and with the arrival of the Mexican army, Francisco’s loyalties might soon be tested: Gregorio and his family were now in the fort with the Americans.

  Santa Anna’s informants told him the rebels had food for four weeks at most, but His Excellency had no intention of waiting that long. He was conducting this war on a timetable, and it did not allow several weeks for the destruction of one ramshackle fort and fewer than two hundred rebel defenders. Somewhere to the east, he knew from his spies, Sam Houston was gathering a force to march to Béxar. The Alamo and its rebels must be crushed quickly.

  DAWN ON THE TWENTY-FOURTH BROUGHT to the Alamo garrison the full realization of their predicament. They were besieged by several Mexican battalions of infantry and cavalry—more than fifteen hundred men, it appeared, with little doubt that several thousand more were on the way. Fortunately, the Alamo was not completely surrounded, and the enemy lines were porous. Messages to and from the town could still get through, with minimal subterfuge required. (In the first few days, Juan Seguín had his meals prepared by a widow named Pacheco, whose young sons delivered them from Béxar to the fort.) And the pickets toward the east were still few enough that a fast and skillful rider could gallop past them.

  But any chance of escape on a large scale was complicated by the presence of two dozen or so wounded and sick and almost as many women and children, whose survival would depend on reinforcements, and soon. Their provisions of cattle and corn, as Santa Anna already knew, could only last a month at most. And while there were plenty of muskets and cartridges on hand, round shot and good powder for the cannon were in short supply.

  Still, the defenders believed that, with luck, they would only have to stick it out for a few more days. James Fannin and his four hundred men were just ninety-five miles away—three hard days’ march on foot, or maybe four. And somewhere to the east, Sam Houston was surely gathering another army of Texians to come to their aid. Perhaps they were on the move now.

  The Mexicans had begun work on another artillery placement on the other side of the river, in the rear of the Veramendi house, less than four hundred yards away. They finished in the afternoon, and started an intermittent but steady bombardment. The Alamo’s inhabitants quickly became accustomed to taking cover in the buildings or against the walls at the sound of a cannon or mortar blast. To protect the powder magazines stored in the two small rooms on either side of the church entrance, where the walls were four feet thick, the front windows were covered with masonry. The western walls were in good condition—they had not received the battering that the north wall, still in bad shape, had during the siege the previous fall. Green Jameson, a bit more urgently than before, continued to direct his work crews in its ongoing repairs and fortification.

  Travis had spent a good part of the day on the parapets. In the evening, as music from the Mexican battalion bands filled the air, he sat down in his room, dipped his quill in ink, and considered what to write. There was not much news since the day before. Bowie had taken a turn for the worse, and they had moved him away from most of the men lest whatever he had spread to them. He now lay on a cot in a room near the main gate, with Juana Alsbury caring for him. At night she and her sister, Gertrudis, shared a room in a house along the western wall.

  Despite the lack of change, the garrison’s predicament seemed even more urgent. A message to inspire reinforcements to organize and march in all haste was in order—perhaps publisher Gail Borden might print it in his four-page weekly Telegraph and Texas Register. With public consumption in mind, Travis began:

  To the People of Texas & all Americans in the world—

  Fellow citizens and compatriots—

  I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man—The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison all will be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls—I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.

  William Barret Travis

  Lt. Col. Comdt.

  P.S. The Lord is on our side—when the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn—we have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels & got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves—

  Travis

  He underlined “Victory or Death” three times, then signed the letter. Later that night, Captain Albert Martin burst out of the main gate and galloped through the Mexican lines toward his hometown of Gonzales with the missive.

  THE EXPRESS RIDER BEARING Travis’s first message, hastily written on the afternoon of the twenty-third, reached Travis’s good friend Robert M. Williamson between Bastrop and Gonzales. Three-Legged Willie had been placed in charge of the three ranging companies activated to protect the colonists against Indians while the army was fighting the Mexicans. Ten days earlier, he had been directed by the General Council to move his men to the frontier
to guard the settlements against attacks. He was on the upper Colorado River with a company of rangers when the message from Travis arrived. Williamson continued on to Gonzales and forwarded expresses to the Texian government to the east and his ranger forces to the north, near Bastrop. Indians, especially Comanches, were still a danger to the frontier communities, but for now the colonists would have to fend for themselves: every man was needed to march to the aid of the Alamo garrison, and Williamson and his ranger company rode to Gonzales.

  When the express rider reached San Felipe on the evening of Friday, February 26, the news he brought created a consternation—even more so because five weeks earlier, when Deaf Smith had arrived in town direct from Béxar, he had told Governor Henry Smith that the Mexican army would not arrive in Texas until March, and been so quoted in the February 27 issue of Borden’s Telegraph and Texas Register. Now the governor quickly directed Borden to print Travis’s letter as a handbill, in an edition of two hundred, to be circulated throughout Texas. Residents began preparations to leave town with as many of their possessions as they could carry on carts, livestock, or their shoulders. “The people now begin to think the wolf has actually come at last,” wrote an observer in town.

  By this time acting governor James Robinson and what remained of the General Council—his advisory committee of two or three citizens—had moved to the rough hamlet of Washington in anticipation of the March 1 convention. Governor Smith, with few resources besides the $5,000 loan delivered to him in January, decided to remain in San Felipe a few more days. The two parties still refused to recognize each other. Delegates from every settlement in Texas were just beginning to arrive in Washington, where they found lodgings hard to come by and comfortable quarters nonexistent; there was only one actual hotel, so many of them boarded at John Lott’s one-room house. The two Tejanos representing Béxar, as well as Jesse Badgett, from the Alamo—Samuel Maverick would not arrive until March 3—decided to pay a carpenter to put down wooden planks on the dirt floor of his small workshop, and they rented it from him for a month.