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

by James Donovan

  At three p.m., Houston ordered his troops paraded for attack in a line a thousand yards long. The men were overjoyed—they were finally going to fight. Houston did not know it, but some of his top officers had made a pledge the night before: they would fight the next day, with or without him. As the men lined up in formation in front of the trees, any thoughts of mutiny disappeared.

  Within half an hour they had fanned out into four divisions facing the open prairie, with the Twin Sisters placed in the center. Houston, on a fine-looking light gray stallion named Saracen, rode down the length of the line. As he passed by, one company commander reminded his men that Travis, Bowie, Crockett, and their companions had fought bravely against an enemy force twenty times their number (the number of Mexican troops at the Alamo having been exaggerated in reports). Juan Seguín, who had left those worthies during the siege of the Alamo, stood not far away. He would lead a company of two dozen Tejano infantrymen against their killers.

  About an hour later, Houston, in a low but clear voice, gave the order—“Trail arms! Forward!”—and his 930 men began marching quietly through the tall grass with their rifles held low by their sides. The regiment on the left used a line of oaks lining the field to screen their advance. Captains reminded their companies to hold their fire until within fifty yards of the enemy.

  Unknown to the Texians, Cós’s four hundred soldados—he had been forced to leave a hundred men behind to deal with baggage carts bogged down in the mud—had force-marched almost twenty-four hours straight and had not eaten or slept the entire time. They were exhausted and hungry, and, worse, most of them were recent recruits with little experience. Once they had settled in and stacked their arms, Cós asked that his battalion be allowed to eat and rest. Santa Anna was not happy with the quality of the troops, but he granted the request, and as Cós’s men and most of the others prepared and ate their midday meals and then relaxed and indulged in their traditional midafternoon siesta, His Excellency followed suit. He lay down to rest in the shade of a tree—he had slept little the night before, and had spent much of the morning on horseback, examining the enemy lines through a spyglass—and was soon asleep. He and his army were stunningly unprepared.

  A slight depression running through the field that led up to a low ridge in the middle of the prairie helped shield the Texians from sight as they advanced in two parallel lines under the warm sun. Neill’s eighteen-man artillery company used leather straps to pull the two cannon up the slope. Only one company, consisting of Kentucky riflemen, wore anything resembling a proper uniform. The rest of the rebels were dressed in dirty, ragged citizens’ clothes, from buckskins to frock coats, mostly dark or gray or brown, more mud-colored than anything else; some in boots, some in shoes, some in moccasins, almost all unshaven, sporting long hair and matted beards, looking more like a band of savages than a proper army. They were two hundred yards from the Mexican lines when the Twin Sisters roared to life and Houston galloped down the line, yelling, “No reinforcements! No reinforcements!”—Deaf Smith had just returned to tell him that the bridge at Vince’s Bayou was down. As the men broke into a run, a motley band of four fifers and two drummers began playing a popular and somewhat salacious ballad entitled “Will You Come to the Bower?” and then jumped into “Yankee Doodle,” and the attack was on.

  Many of the men yelled, “Remember the Alamo!” and “Remember La Bahía!” Others roared, “Remember Fannin!” or “Remember Goliad!” A Mexican bugler finally sounded the alarm, and soldados began to jump up and grab their rifles and muskets, but it was too late. The rebels poured over and through the makeshift breastworks and into the Mexican lines. Texian officers ordered their men to “Halt! Fire! And then charge!” but after one shot, few bothered to reload, instead turning their rifles into war clubs and unsheathing Bowie knives. Many of the soldados yelled, “Me no Alamo! Me no Goliad!” before they were slaughtered. Some stood and fought, but most turned and ran, panic-stricken. Cós and Almonte, on the right side of the Mexican lines, tried without success to keep their men from breaking—but the Texian assault could not be withstood.

  One officer refused to retreat and stood his ground, directing the fire of the Mexican nine-pounder. As rebel fire dropped his gunners and the rest of his men ran for their lives, General Manuel Fernández Castrillón stood on an ammunition box and tried to rally his troops. Moments later he was alone, and he folded his arms and faced forward. A slug ripped into him, then another, then another, and he fell to the ground, lifeless.

  The battle itself lasted no more than eighteen minutes, but carnage on a grand scale followed for another hour as the Texians’ tenuous discipline gave way to blind bloodlust. Retreating Mexicans reached Peggy Lake and splashed in, attempting to reach the far side, several hundred yards away. Rebels ran up and lined the edges of the water and shot them until the lake ran red; others followed the Mexicans in and took revenge with knives and hatchets. Some two hundred soldados died there.

  Houston, on his third horse of the day and suffering from a left ankle shattered by a Mexican musket ball, tried to stop the bloodletting, as did other officers. It was no use. All across the field, their men were uncontrollable in their vengefulness. Santa Anna’s troops had shown no quarter to the rebels at the Alamo and Goliad. They would receive the same treatment now. “We followed the enemy,” remembered one captain, “shooting and killing them, for more than a mile.”

  By day’s end, Texian casualties included seven deaths and more than thirty wounded—four of these so badly that they would die later. At least six hundred Mexicans lay dead on the field, and hundreds had been captured. Only a handful escaped. But the man the rebels wanted most—dead or alive—was nowhere to be found.

  WHEN THE SOUND OF GUNFIRE and the roar of cannon awakened Santa Anna from a deep sleep, he leaped to his feet. He made a halfhearted attempt to organize the troops around him, but when a servant offered him a horse, he mounted and fled the battlefield eastward, accompanied by his secretary, Ramón Caro. Sanctuary, and perhaps even victory, was forty-odd miles away, where Filisola and the bulk of his army awaited. Finding the bridge at Vince’s Bayou down, and terrified of deep water, His Excellency retreated to a nearby thicket and became separated from Caro. He hid in some brush all night. At daybreak, he exchanged his gaudy clothes for some old slave duds he found in an abandoned shack. Around three p.m., a Texian search party found him hiding in tall grass; ignorant of his identity, they took him to camp. Only when Mexican prisoners began repeating his name as he passed by did his captors realize who he was. They escorted him to Houston, who was lying on a blanket under a tree with his injured leg propped up. Santa Anna grabbed Houston’s hand and introduced himself. Then the self-styled Napoleon of the West, the man who bragged that he asked for no quarter and gave none, pleaded that he “be treated as a general should when a prisoner of war.”

  Hundreds of furious Texians gathered around the two generals, shouting, “Shoot him!” and “Hang him!” But Houston knew what he had: the biggest bargaining chip in Texas, if he could be kept alive. Thousands of Mexican troops were known to be on the Brazos River, or even closer, and an attack in the next few days might be too much even for his ferocious fighters. He ignored his troops’ demands for Santa Anna’s head, and told him what he needed to do if he wished to live. After two hours of intense negotiation, Houston had Ramón Caro—who had also been found—draft letters from the dictator to General Filisola at Fort Bend, ordering him to withdraw his divisions back to Béxar and Victoria. Three days later, a second message would be sent directing the Army of Operations to continue retreating to the Rio Grande.

  When Santa Anna’s orders reached Filisola’s headquarters, several of Santa Anna’s high commanders objected. As a prisoner under duress, he had no authority to issue such orders, they claimed, and Filisola was under no obligation to obey them. Some of them claimed that the war could still be won—they outnumbered Houston’s army three or four to one, and in two marches they could reach Lynchburg and b
ring him to battle. But Filisola was adamant. The army was in no shape to continue a campaign in a hostile country. His men’s clothes were reduced to rags, most were barefoot, and their health was poor—many were suffering from dysentery and incapable of battle; provisions, supplies, and ammunition were running out, and their supply lines had dried up; the constant rains had rendered movement in any direction almost impossible. Just as important, all these factors—and the news of His Excellency’s defeat and capture—had completely demoralized the troops. Filisola pointed out that the only way to protect their commanding general and the six hundred Mexican prisoners was to withdraw.

  So the four-thousand-man Army of Operations began a slow retreat to Mexico by way of Matamoros, over almost impassable roads and nearly uncrossable rivers and streams. The stoic soldados and their loyal soldaderas slogged slowly through what Filisola called El Mar de Lodo—the Sea of Mud. One twenty-mile stretch of prairie muck took eleven days to traverse. Over hundreds of miles they abandoned supplies, artillery, wagons, ammunition, supplies, oxen, horses, mules, and booty, and by the time they crossed the Rio Grande and eventually reached their homes in Mexico months later, few of them ever wanted to see Texas again. Indeed, only some of the officers, enraged at the shame brought upon them by the ignominious retreat, wished such a thing.

  IN OPELOUSAS, Louisiana, the news of James Bowie’s death reached his mother, Elve Bowie, weeks later, when someone knocked on her door and told the seventy-year-old widow the news. A Bowie family historian related that she received the information calmly, only remarking that she would “wager no wounds were found in his back,” then stoically returned to her housework. Bowie’s brother Rezin—the one to whom he was closest—immediately left for Texas, where he was appointed a colonel in the Texas army.

  WHEN WORD OF THE ALAMO’S FALL and the death of David Crockett reached Tennessee around the same time, Crockett’s youngest son, Robert, also went to Texas to fight for the country his father had given his life for. He attained the rank of first lieutenant in the cavalry. David’s oldest son, John Wesley, took up another of his father’s causes. A year later, in 1837, he ran for Congress in his father’s old district and was elected when the one-legged Adam Huntsman, who had defeated his father in 1835, decided not to seek reelection. Crockett served two consecutive terms, and in February 1841, he was the driving force behind the passage of his father’s land bill, in slightly modified form, which made land cheaply available to the poor in west Tennessee.

  JOSÉ ENRIQUE DE LA PEÑA had openly criticized Filisola’s decision to return to Mexico, and the endless slog through the Sea of Mud persuaded him to publish an account of his experiences with the Army of Operations to illustrate the “ignorance, stupidity, and cruelty” that led to defeat and disgrace. (The fact that during the retreat he received an emphatic rejection from his beloved but unfaithful Lucesita may have colored his opinions.) He had kept a diary during much of the campaign, and upon his return began work on his book, based largely on his journal but also incorporating newspaper stories as well as reports, accounts, and observations by other officers and even published letters from Travis, Houston, and others, which he translated and included in his book. Early in 1838, while military commander of Mazatlán, he had pronounced his support for his good friend Urrea’s armed opposition to the centralist government. Upon the failure of that bloody insurrection in July, he was discharged from the army and spent two years in jail, some of it in ill health. He continued to work on his manuscript while incarcerated, sometimes dictating to another prisoner when he was too weak to hold pen to paper. He became a free man in the spring of 1840 and took an apartment in Mexico City, where he spent the next several months without a job, seeking reinstatement in the army and attempting to recover his back pay.

  De la Peña’s situation had not improved by October 10. Late in the evening, he became involved in a street altercation, based on a political disagreement, with Lieutenant Colonel José Mariano Cosio, a fellow officer in the Zapadores battalion with whom he had served in Texas—and who had also participated in the attack on the Alamo. In the ensuing struggle, Cosio stabbed de la Peña in the stomach with a sword and killed him. De la Peña was thirty-three years old. His memoir would finally see publication in 1955, more than a century after he wrote it.

  Captain José Juan Sánchez would find a brighter future. Despite his objections, and despite a formal request to remain in the Texas campaign, he was sent to Matamoros in April, before the Battle of San Jacinto on the twenty-first, and commissioned to protect the frontier presidios against Indian attacks. He, too, hoped to return to Texas as part of a conquering army set on avenging his nation’s honor. Instead, he spent a decade at a job he disliked, though in December 1836 he finally received his long-awaited promotion to lieutenant colonel. In 1844 he was made colonel, and in 1846, he would be chosen by his old officer-school classmate Santa Anna to serve on his staff during the Mexican-American War. He was brevetted a general by war’s end, and shortly thereafter was appointed commandant general of the state of Coahuila. He was serving in that capacity when he died on June 2, 1849, at the age of fifty-six.

  NO SOONER HAD THE Army of Operations returned to Mexico than accusations and recriminations over the decision to retreat began flying hard and fast. Several of Santa Anna’s top commanders published books, pamphlets, and articles defending their positions and criticizing their fellow officers. The absent Santa Anna took the worst of it, though public outcry and constant attacks by fellow officers caused Filisola to stand trial for his actions later that year; he was officially exonerated. Though Santa Anna would sign the Treaties of Velasco in May, ending hostilities, Mexico refused to officially recognize Texas independence or accept the loss of her troublesome territory.

  Santa Anna would remain in Texas for several months as assurance of the Mexican army’s good intentions. In the fall he was transported to Washington, D.C., where he had a conference with President Jackson. After returning to Veracruz in November on a battleship furnished for him, he remained in seclusion, disgraced, at his Manga de Clavo hacienda. That only lasted a year. In November 1837, a desperate Mexican government gave him command of the army, and he led troops against an invading French force at Veracruz. When he lost a leg after being severely wounded by cannon fire, he insisted that it be buried with full military honors. He survived and would serve as president or dictator of Mexico several more times over the next twenty-eight years—in 1853, his final term, he was elected dictator for life, and he demanded that people address him as Most Serene Highness. He was removed from power a year later and spent most of his remaining life in exile. In 1874, he took advantage of a general amnesty and returned to Mexico City. He died there, penniless, in June 1876.

  THE TWO YOUNG NATIONS CONTINUED to tussle sporadically until the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, three years after the republic of Texas was admitted as the twenty-eighth member of the United States. For all practical purposes, however, Texas had won its independence on that open field along the San Jacinto River.

  But it is doubtful that the Battle of San Jacinto would have happened were it not for the stand made at an old mission compound on the outskirts of San Antonio de Béxar. The siege of the Alamo occupied Santa Anna for two weeks, and for several more days after his March 6 victory. Beyond the battle itself, which killed or injured some of his best troops, the weeks spent in Béxar retarded the Mexican army’s progress immeasurably. By the time Ramírez y Sesma’s division reached the Colorado River on March 21, heavy spring rains had swelled that river and other waterways to near flood levels and rendered them dangerous and difficult to cross, thus significantly slowing the Mexican advance—which was also checked by Houston’s troops stationed at different points on the opposite side of the Colorado. That army of Texians essentially did not exist as an organized military force until a week after the Alamo’s fall, and almost certainly would not have been able to stop the Mexican army had it reached a more easily crossed Colorado (and m
any other more easily crossed rivers and streams) early in March, before the rains began.

  Just as important, not until the destruction of the Alamo garrison (and the massacre at Goliad, three weeks later) did most Texian colonists begin to appreciate the seriousness of the situation—that their very lives, and the lives of their loved ones, were at stake—and feel compelled and angry enough to take up arms and join Sam Houston’s volunteers to repel an invading army intent on driving them from their homes. (Until then, three-fourths of the Texian forces were recent U.S. volunteers, and only a quarter of them were established settlers; at San Jacinto, those numbers were reversed.) The Alamo and Goliad provided a much-needed rallying cry for the Texian cause. The vengeful fury of San Jacinto would not have existed without them.

  Finally, the Alamo garrison bought valuable time for the fledgling Texian government. While the Alamo siege continued, and for ten days afterward, elected delegates at the convention in Washington, representing virtually every municipality in Texas, issued a declaration of independence, crafted and approved a well-constructed constitution, and elected an interim government, measures that significantly legitimized their revolution and greatly assisted them in garnering international political recognition and every kind of assistance and support. Without the stand made by two hundred men at the Alamo, none of that might have happened. More than any other event of the Texas revolution, their sacrifice truly forged a nation that would one day join a country greater than itself.

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