by H. W. Brands
Travis wrote two more letters that day. To the convention he urged a declaration that would confer real meaning on the fight against Santa Anna and on the sacrifices it entailed. “Let the Convention go on and make a declaration of independence, and we will then understand, and the world will understand, what we are fighting for. If independence is not declared, I shall lay down my arms, and so will the men under my command. But under the flag of independence, we are ready to peril our lives a hundred times a day, and to drive away the monster who is fighting us under a blood-red flag, threatening to murder all prisoners and make Texas a waste desert.”
To a trusted friend he sent a personal message: “Take care of my little boy. If the country should be saved, I may make him a splendid fortune; but if the country should be lost and I should perish, he will have nothing but the proud recollection that he is the son of a man who died for his country.”
Although the siege was going well for Santa Anna, it wasn’t everything the Mexican commander had hoped. His original plan entailed attacking directly from the march, to crush the rebels before they had a chance to retreat to the Alamo. “With the speed in which this meritorious division executed its marches in eighty leagues of road,” he wrote to the Mexican minister of war, “it was believed that the rebel settlers would not have known of our proximity until we should have been within rifle-shot of them.” But heavy rains had raised the Medina River, slowing the army’s crossing and allowing word of the Mexican approach to reach the rebels, who withdrew into the Alamo.
Yet he couldn’t complain. “The national troops, with the utmost order, took possession of this city, which the traitors shall never again occupy.” And over the next several days the Mexican lines advanced toward the Alamo, pinning the rebels down. “They are not even allowed to raise their heads over the walls.” The defiance of the rebels wouldn’t last. “Up to now they still act stubborn, counting on the strong position which they hold, and hoping for much aid from their colonies and from the United States of the North, but they shall soon find out their mistake.” The assault on the Alamo—“which will take place when at least the first brigade arrives”—would be the initial step toward eradicating the rebellion. “After taking Fort Alamo, I shall continue my operations against Goliad and the other fortified places, so that before the rains set in, the campaign shall be absolutely terminated up to the Sabine River.”
The following days brought word that the rebel-eradication campaign was proceeding nicely. Despite Houston’s opposition, Johnson and Grant had pressed ahead with the Matamoros expedition. They mustered men and scoured the country around San Patricio for horses to carry them south. But their actions, besides advertising their presence and aims, alienated many of the local Tejanos, who informed the Mexican army of the rebels’ whereabouts. General José Urrea, in charge of the security of Matamoros, put the intelligence to good use. At ten o’clock on the night of February 25, Urrea’s informants reported that the rebels had occupied San Patricio. The weather was miserable, with rain falling and snow threatening. A less resolute commander might have waited for it to clear, but Urrea seized the opportunity for surprise. Setting out at once, he pushed his men through the night and the following day. The weather got worse. “The night was very raw and excessively cold,” Urrea recorded in his journal. “The rain continued, and the dragoons, who were barely able to dismount, were so numbed by the cold that they could hardly speak.” Six infantrymen of the Yucatán battalion died from exposure.
The Mexican forces reached San Patricio before dawn on February 27. Urrea quietly ordered forty dragoons to dismount. “Dividing them into three groups under good officers, I gave instructions for them to charge the position of the enemy, protected by the rest of our mounted troops.” The surprise was devastating. “The enemy was attacked at half past three in the morning in the midst of the rain, and although forty men within the fort defended themselves resolutely, the door was forced at dawn, sixteen being killed and twenty-four being taken prisoners.”
Johnson managed to flee north toward Refugio, but Grant, still raiding along the Rio Grande, was unaware of what had happened. Urrea exploited his ignorance. “I decided to wait for the enemy ten leagues from San Patricio, at the port of Los Cuates de Agua Dulce, where he would have to pass. I divided my force into six groups and hid them in the woods.” The rebels approached early on March 2, and again the surprise was overwhelming. “Between ten and eleven in the morning, Dr. Grant arrived. He was attacked and vanquished by the parties under my command and that of Colonel Francisco Garay. Dr. Grant and forty of the riflemen were left dead on the field, and we took six prisoners besides their arms, munitions, and horses.”
Santa Anna heard of Urrea’s victory a short while later. He congratulated the general on his victory but judged he had to steel Urrea’s spine on an issue the triumph raised. Urrea asked what he should do with the prisoners his men had captured; these included the two dozen Americans and five Tejanos. Santa Anna responded that the law of Mexico was clear: “Foreigners invading the republic, and taken with arms in their hands, shall be judged and treated as pirates.” The president-general added, “An example is necessary, in order that those adventurers may be duly warned and the nation be delivered from the ills she is daily doomed to suffer.” Regarding the Tejanos: “As, in my opinion, every Mexican guilty of the crime of joining these adventurers loses the rights of a citizen by his unnatural conduct, the five Mexican prisoners whom you have taken ought also to suffer as traitors.” In other words, the prisoners were to be executed, every one.
The prisoner question came up the next day in a different context. Urrea’s success at San Patricio spurred Santa Anna to move against the Alamo. “Twelve days had passed since Ramírez y Sesma’s division had drawn up before the Alamo, and three since our own arrival at Béjar,” José de la Peña wrote. “Our commander became more furious when he saw that the enemy resisted the idea of surrender. He believed, as others did, that the fame and honor of the army were compromised the longer the enemy lived. General Urrea had anticipated him and had dealt the first blow, but we had not advanced in the least. . . . It was therefore necessary to attack him in order to make him feel the vigor of our souls and the strength of our arms.”
Santa Anna called a council of war on the evening of March 4. Some of the officers apparently believed that the rebel garrison could be reduced with minor loss of Mexican life, if Santa Anna were willing to wait for more artillery to arrive. “They could not have resisted for many hours the destruction and imposing fire from twenty cannon,” de la Peña wrote. But the commander refused to continue the siege. The rebels, he declared, must be destroyed at once. No one at the council openly opposed this decision, evidently considering opposition futile. The discussion then turned to tactics: what columns would approach from which directions, how many units should attack at once and how many he held in reserve. The question of prisoners arose. “The example of Arredondo was cited,” de la Peña recorded. “During the Spanish rule he had hanged eight hundred or more colonists after having triumphed in a military action, and this conduct was taken as a model.” A few of the officers present voiced concern at such a harsh policy. “But their arguments were fruitless.”
The order to ready the final assault was circulated on the afternoon of March 5. “The time has come to strike a decisive blow upon the enemy occupying the fortress of the Alamo,” Santa Anna declared. “Tomorrow at 4 o’clock a.m., the columns of attack shall be stationed at musket-shot distance from the first entrenchments, ready for the charge, which shall commence at a signal to be given with the bugle from the northern battery.” The general specified the preparations: “The first column will carry ten ladders, two crowbars, and two axes; the second, ten ladders, the third, six ladders; and the fourth, two ladders. . . . The companies of grenadiers will be supplied with six packages of cartridges to every man, and the center companies with two packages and two spare flints.” No concession would be made to the foul weather. “The
men will wear neither overcoats nor blankets, nor anything that may impede the rapidity of their motions.” They would retire early the night before the attack. “The troops composing the columns of attack will turn in to sleep at dark, to be in readiness to move at 12 o’clock at night.”
Santa Anna entreated his men to consider the opportunity fortune had placed in their way. “His Excellency expects that every man will do his duty, and exert himself to give a day of glory to the country, and of gratification to the Supreme Government, who will know how to reward the distinguished deeds of the brave soldiers of the Army of Operations.”
Inside the Alamo, Travis weighed his options. By now Bowie was confined to bed, too weak to get up, too delirious to argue with Travis even if he had been so inclined. Crockett was helpful, encouraging the men and lifting spirits wherever he went; but he didn’t trespass on Travis’s authority. The twenty-six year-old colonel made decisions on his own.
Not that the men didn’t voice their opinions. More than a few were less adamant than Travis about fighting to the death. According to witnesses who reached Mexican lines before and after the battle, a groundswell for surrender emerged in the ranks during the last days of the siege. De la Peña cited “a lady from Bejar” who fled the Alamo on March 5, “a Negro who was the only male who escaped” (this was Travis’s personal slave, Joe), and “several women who were found inside” after the battle, as authority for his statement that “Travis’s resistance was on the verge of being overcome.” De la Peña elaborated: “For several days his followers had been urging him to surrender, giving the lack of food and the scarcity of munitions as reasons; but he had quieted their restlessness with the hope of quick relief, something not difficult for them to believe since they had seen some reinforcements arrive. Nevertheless, they pressed him so hard that on the 5th he promised them that if no help arrived on that day they would surrender the next day or would try to escape under the cover of darkness.”
This hearsay may or may not have accurately reflected what Travis told the garrison. It would be unnatural to think that none of the defenders—most of whom were recent arrivals to Texas—were having second thoughts about their predicament. That Travis actually contemplated surrender seems unlikely given all that he had written during the past two weeks. But he may have told the men he was contemplating surrender, in order to keep them at their posts another day. According to one version of the story, the “lady from Béjar” carried an offer from Travis to surrender on condition that the defenders’ lives would be spared. According to this version, Santa Anna rejected the offer, as he had rejected Bowie’s offer to parley earlier. Travis must have known that Santa Anna would reject the offer, but in making it—if he did—he gave his men a warrant of his willingness to consider their views.
Quite conceivably, Travis was considering a fighting retreat. After all, by now the chances of surviving a Mexican attack appeared negligible; the Alamo simply could not be held. The men could either die where they were or die trying to get out—and in the latter case some might survive. There would be no dishonor in trying to save his force now that it had become clear—as a result of the refusal of the provisional government, of the rest of the army, and of the citizens of Texas to relieve the garrison—that the Alamo could not be saved. In any event, Travis knew that once the shooting started, he would have little control over what the men did. Would they fight harder in the Alamo, with no hope of surviving, or on the road to Gonzales, with some hope? It wasn’t an easy question.
According to de la Peña, conventional wisdom in the Mexican camp held that Travis was contemplating surrender or escape. This was what the “lady from Béjar” said (whether or not she brought a surrender offer), and it was simply common sense. Who wouldn’t want to abandon a patently lost cause?
Ironically, the prospect of surrender was what prompted Santa Anna to attack. “He wanted to cause a sensation, and would have regretted taking the Alamo without clamor and without bloodshed,” de la Peña said.
So the attack went forward. The Mexican troops retired early on the night of March 5; if Travis and the men inside the Alamo noticed the unusual calm across the river, they gave no sign. By midnight both camps were quiet.
But soon the Mexican camp stirred, as silently as fifteen hundred men could. They spoke in whispers; every effort was made to keep metal from clanging on metal. By one o’clock four columns were moving toward the river, which the men crossed, two by two, on plank bridges built during the twelve days of the siege. “The moon was up,” de la Peña recalled, “but the density of the clouds that covered it allowed only an opaque light in our direction, seeming thus to contribute to our designs. This half-light, the silence we kept, hardly interrupted by soft murmurs, the coolness of the morning air, the great quietude that seemed to prolong the hours, and the dangers we would soon have to face: all of this rendered our situation grave. We were still breathing and able to communicate; within a few moments many of us would be unable to answer questions addressed to us, having already returned to the nothingness whence we had come.” The fear of death sobered them all; even more sobering was the prospect of agony short of death. Yet another sentiment, a common determination, spurred them forward. “An insult to our arms had to be avenged, as well as the blood of our friends spilled three months before within these same walls we were about to attack.”
Within those walls, the defenders of the Alamo slept. Travis had retired about midnight, according to the recollection of his slave Joe. He had made a final round of the fort and posted sentries outside the walls to warn of enemy approach. His brain doubtless swirled with questions—Would relief come tomorrow? Would an attack? Would the men stand or run? How would he meet death?—until exhaustion overcame him.
He was still asleep when the attack began. The four Mexican columns crept toward the walls of the Alamo. The first, under General Cos, who had disregarded his parole and returned to Texas, filed toward the west wall, the one closest to the town. The second column was assigned the shorter north wall, which held the strongest battery. The third circled around to the east, to the rear of the fort. The fourth was to assault the main gate, on the south side of the fort. A fifth, including de la Peña’s sappers, was held in reserve, to be thrown into battle at the critical moment wherever their weight would be decisive.
The approach went smoothly. The rebel pickets must have fallen asleep, for none called out or fired a shot before being surrounded and silently killed. The attackers were in place before dawn, awaiting the bugle that would announce the attack. Nervous anticipation kept most of the men alert; a few, including de la Peña, dozed.
The signal—“that terrible bugle call of death,” de la Peña said—came with the first light of dawn. Their secret revealed, the attackers rushed forward, crying, “Viva Santa Anna! Viva Mexico!”
In that moment the fortress came to life. The sentries on the walls shouted and fired; the noise awoke Travis, who leaped from his cot, seized a rifle in each hand, and raced for the north battery, yelling as he crossed the yard for all to man their posts.
Travis’s strategy, such as it was against such numbers, depended on keeping the Mexicans from reaching the walls in force. The Texan rifles could do lethal damage against individual enemy soldiers, but they were slow to reload, and even though each defender had three or four weapons, these simply couldn’t kill Mexicans fast enough. For such wholesale slaughter Travis relied on the cannons. Loaded with shrapnel—lacking grapeshot, Travis substituted nails, links of chain, pieces of horseshoes, and anything else that might survive the blast of powder—the cannons could mow down Mexicans by the score. Loaded with balls—many recovered from the incoming Mexican fire during the previous twelve days—they cut narrower but still fearsome swaths.
The Mexican tactics played into the Texan hands. Always thinking himself another Napoleon, Santa Anna employed the European method of massed attack, which allowed a few seasoned officers and veteran enlisted men, positioned at the edges of the adv
ancing columns, to keep the hundreds of terrified conscripts from fleeing at the first enemy fire. This mode of warfare had the additional advantage of conveying implacability: try as the defenders might to resist the advancing columns, the columns kept coming. Yet the massed method was horribly wasteful of life (which was why the ranks had to be continually replenished with those terrified conscripts), especially when the columns faced entrenched artillery, as Santa Anna’s did now.
During the opening phase of the battle, the defenders held their own. Their cannons wreaked frightful havoc among the Mexicans. “A single cannon volley did away with half the company of chasseurs from Toluca,” de la Peña said; and other rounds did like damage. Limbs and bones flew everywhere; muskets and bayonets blown from the infantrymen’s hands became missiles of death. Those who escaped the cannon fire tripped over their comrades’ fallen bodies and slipped in the blood and gore. All wanted to run, to escape the carnage, but those who tried to do so found themselves facing Santa Anna’s lancers, whose gleaning weapons reiterated that safety lay ahead in victory, not behind in defeat.