Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  For the Irish in Texas, the confrontation between Texas and Mexico was eerily comparable to other conflicts in the tortured course of Ireland’s history. The natural beauty of Ireland and Texas both, green as the emerald sea, picturesque, and well watered, masked the horror of the endless saga of human tragedy. That both Ireland and Texas were lands worth fighting and dying for ironically provided the motivation of countless young men from the United States, Ireland, and Mexico by early 1836. 171

  Further confounding the simplistic stereotype of the defenders as western frontiersmen, other exiles from foreign-dominated homelands also fought at the Alamo. Like the Irish, the Scots possessed a distinguished revolutionary heritage of fighting British rule, and four of them died at the Alamo: Robert W. Ballentine, John McGregor, Isaac Robinson, and David L. Wilson. Scotland-born Ballentine viewed the struggle through the lens of Scottish history, comparing the plight of the Texians under Mexico City “to that of our forefathers, who labored under tyrannical oppression” emanating from London. 172 He and the other Scots might have seen some irony in the fact that one of the Alamo’s artillery pieces, the little carronade naval gun, was manufactured in the 1770s in Carron, Scotland.

  The most colorful Scotsman among the Alamo garrison was redhaired Sergeant John McGregor. He brought his Scottish bagpipes to the Alamo, lifting the garrison’s spirits throughout the siege, after leaving a 4,000-head cattle ranch near Nacogdoches. Like so many Irish and Scots in America since the colonial period, the McGregor family possessed deep revolutionary Jacobite roots. Exiled from their native homeland, the McGregors preferred to leave Scotland rather than change their Celtic name as their English rulers dictated. The British had been longtime masters of Scotland by 1836, having decimated the Highland clans, which were always the most rebellious, at Culloden in 1746. 173

  James Bowie proudly claimed Scottish Jacobite roots. One ancestor forced to flee Scotland for his revolutionary activities in 1715–16, migrated to Maryland. Another Bowie Jacobite “rebel” was John Bowie, who somehow survived the slaughter of Scots at Culloden and was “sold [as an indentured servant] in Maryland in 1747.” 174

  Other Celtic warriors, both Irish and Scots, served under the Scotland-born Texas revolutionary leader, Dr. James Grant, who led the Matamoros Expedition on its ill-fated attempt to conquer the Mexican city near the Rio Grande’s mouth. The colorful, erudite Grant possessed abundant military experience as a proud officer in one of the famed Highlander regiments so respected in the British Army, but he sabotaged any chance for San Antonio and the Alamo to be successfully defended because he convinced the majority of the garrison to join him on his quixotic expedition. 175

  While many Texas soldiers and United States volunteers drew inspiration from the analogy between the Texas Revolution and the struggle of their American Revolutionary forefathers, the Irish and the Scots possessed a longer memory of far more revolts against a centralized government, and a pantheon of heroes and martyrs that spanned generations. Nearly all the migrants who came to Texas were hence bound together by both the lust for land and a lengthy revolutionary tradition against centralized authority.

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  Napoleonic Influences

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  Few figures in history have been more vilified by Americans than Santa Anna. Yet he perhaps is even more hated by Mexicans, who have historically blamed him for the loss of Texas, and castigated him as the exclusive cause of “all of Mexico’s misfortunes.” This attitude remains largely prevalent today, as the 2002 biography by Robert L. Scheina, titled Santa Anna, A Curse upon Mexico, suggests. Nevertheless, Santa Anna was a bold, dynamic, and imaginative military leader, whose qualities came to the fore at the Alamo, although the fortunes of war finally turned against him at San Jacinto. 1

  While Santa Anna has long been the military leader Mexicans and Americans all “love to hate,” some modern historians on both sides of the border have begun to challenge the stereotype. One Mexican historian, for instance, has emphasized that “there is no proof that Santa Anna gave orders that the defenders were to be slaughtered without mercy”; instead, he writes, “Mexican politicians who were enemies of Santa Anna” as well as “American patriots” initially promulgated this view. After San Jacinto, hating Santa Anna became a national pastime not just in the United States but in Mexico, where he was viewed as a traitor and became a scapegoat for the country’s many woes. This negative reputation is a primary factor in the Alamo myth that transformed the defenders, after the fact, into a band of heroes pitted against the epitome of evil. 2

  Santa Anna was also endlessly mocked because of his self-styled title as the “Napoleon of the West,” and the “Napoleon of the South.” Nevertheless, he performed brilliantly in catching his opponents by surprise, swiftly eliminating opposition as he did at the Alamo, and win

  61 ning repeated victories during the late winter of the 1836 campaign. But like an over-confident, impatient Napoleon, who had been led deep into Russia only to meet disaster in 1812, Santa Anna was made vulnerable precisely because the Alamo’s defense had been so feeble, and his initial victory in the campaign was so relatively easy. 3

  Contrary to the Texan stereotype, Santa Anna was not motivated by simple bloodlust, but by a sincere desire to “save” the Republic of Mexico, which of course meant the re-conquest of Texas. And like Napoleon, who refused to stay safely in Paris and personally fought on both ends of Europe, from Spain to Russia, Santa Anna volunteered to lead his army into Texas, temporarily handing over presidential duties. In his own words, he “preferred the hazards of war to the seductive” life amid the comforts and luxuries of Mexico City. Most of all, he was a masterful politician who made his career by adroitly exploiting opportunities. Even the destruction of the Alamo garrison was more important as a political than a military act. His victory sent a powerful, muchneeded message to Mexico City, ensuring continued support, and simultaneously was meant to cow the rebels on the Texas frontier, be they Tejanos or Anglo-Celts.

  Santa Anna believed that his mission was to save not only Texas, but also the territorial integrity of the Republic of Mexico. Waging war to keep Mexico intact, he explained his primary objective in simple terms: “Our country found itself invaded not by an established nation . . . nor by Mexicans. The invaders were all men who wished to take possession of that vast territory extending from Béxar to the Sabine belonging to Mexico. All existing laws . . . marked them as pirates and outlaws.” 4

  A handsome Creole from a middle class family, and one of seven children, Santa Anna was a member of the privileged Criollo class of Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico. Of pure Spanish descent, or “white” in terms of social status and appearance, the ambitious Santa Anna rose to power amid the turmoil of the ideological struggle among Mexico’s ruling elites. Mexico’s conservatives—pro-church centralists and promonarchical—were aligned against the enlightened, anti-church Mexican liberals, who desired a republic based on the United States model. This internal conflict made the young republic vulnerable to outside interference and aggression. After winning independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico (unlike the United States) never completely severed the umbilical cord of the monarchical system, and therefore never thoroughly adapted to become a true constitutional republic.

  This deep schism, where issues of religion caused fissures among the ruling class, ensured the existence of two “warring camps” in Mexico. As always, Mexico’s military strongmen dominated the ranks of the nation’s leadership, because in that yet immature country politics and religion had long been one and the same. Santa Anna rose to become Mexico’s supreme leader after overturning the conservative federal government in 1832. The following year, even though he had fought against the revolutionary priests Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morales, who had led the masses in revolt against Spanish rule, Santa Anna was elected president. He enjoyed the powerful backing of the Catholic Church and the Mexican people, especially in Vera Cruz, where he was viewed as a hero f
or repelling the 1829 Spanish invasion. Perhaps one Mexican officer said it best, when he described Santa Anna as “the pampered son of fortune.” In this, too, Santa Anna was much like Napoleon until his fatal invasions of Spain and Russia. 5

  More adept at rhetoric than he was at forging war plans, the Mexican Secretary of War, José María Tornel y Mendívil, referred to Napoleon to explain the situation in Texas, condemning America’s obsession to acquire “the greater part of the territory that formerly belonged to Spain.” Mendovil continued: “It has been neither an Alexander nor a Napoleon, desirous of conquest in order to extend his dominions or add to his glory, who has inspired the proud Anglo-Saxon race in its desire, its frenzy to usurp and gain control of that which rightfully belongs to its neighbors; rather it has been the nation itself which, possessed of that roving spirit that moved the barbarous hordes of a former age in a far remote north, has swept away whatever has stood in the way of its aggrandizement.” 6

  The Mexican Secretary of War also compared the feisty Anglo-Celts of Texas to the Goths who descended on Rome from the depths of the dense evergreen forests north of the Danube River. Mexicans held these transplanted Americans in utter contempt, viewing them as little different from the barbarians who sacked imperial Rome. In this view, too, the Anglo-Celts were primitive forest dwellers from the north who sought to vanquish a culturally superior Mediterranean people to the south. 7

  By referring to Napoleon, Mexico’s politically astute but largely incompetent Secretary of War was in part pandering to Santa Anna’s obsession. Historians have only made occasional references to Napoleon and his impact on the Texas Revolutionary generation, yet no other military figure more significantly molded the military mentality of both Americans and Mexicans during this time. Four Alamo defenders, including thirty-two-year-old Napoleon B. Mitchell, born in 1804, carried Napoleon’s name with them to their graves. This was the same number as those named for the Marquis de Lafayette, and twice the number named for James Madison and Christopher Columbus. Only the six defenders named after Thomas Jefferson surpassed the number named in Napoleon’s honor.

  The story of the Alamo, in fact, begins with Napoleon and his dramatic impact on world history. Quite possibly there would have been no Texas Revolution or struggle for the Alamo without him. To extend his continental blockade to the Iberian Peninsula and to fulfill his own limitless ambitions, Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, took possession of Madrid, and deposed the King of Spain. Beginning with the revolt led by Father Miguel Hidalgo in 1810, the collapse of the Spanish government opened the door for the Mexican people to rise up and break away from Spanish rule in 1821. Thus it happened that an independent Mexico, established on the premise that all men were created equal, became subject to turmoil between liberals and conservatives, including the horrors of civil war. The Texas Revolution was only one part of this larger struggle. 8

  The Mexican civil war north of the Rio Grande ended in disaster at San Jacinto. On April 21, 1836, General Sam Houston awoke late; the weather was already as hot as a summer’s day on the humid gulf coastal plain. Although Santa Anna, fresh from his Alamo victory, had pursued the remaining Texan forces toward the Louisiana border for weeks, Houston proclaimed that morning: “The sun of Austerlitz has risen again.” 9 Houston was of course referring to Napoleon’s greatest victory—the bloody December 2, 1804 battle at Austerlitz against combined Russian and Austrian forces that allowed him and his Grande Armée to reach their zenith. Santa Anna could very likely have embraced identical thoughts on the morning of March 6, 1836. 10

  Perhaps the destinies of Santa Anna and Houston were linked from the beginning. Some Americans were convinced that “Houston was to have gone into Texas, and kindled the fire of rebellion, whilst Santa Anna fired his friends in Mexico with the same spirit.” In a battle won more by accident than design, Houston, not Santa Anna, gained immorality on April 21, 1836, linking his name forever to Napoleon when he won his own Austerlitz along Buffalo Bayou and the muddy San Jacinto River. 11 Although Santa Anna had conducted a brilliant campaign, won a string of victories, and even threatened the United States border in one of the most audacious military campaigns in Mexican history, he has gone down in history not for his successes, but for his defeat at San Jacinto and the loss of Texas. 12

  Rather than the glorious Austerlitz he so confidently anticipated, the Texas campaign of 1836 resulted in Santa Anna’s Waterloo. He nevertheless performed in a manner reminiscent of Napoleon. Exhibiting the “boundless energy for which he became famous,” he conducted an aggressive campaign marked by boldness, tactical innovativeness and flexibility, and distinguished by a swift, unexpected approach that caught opponents completely by surprise. 13 From the beginning of the campaign, Santa Anna emphasized classic Napoleonic axioms in his orders to General Sesma, who was to lead the army’s advance into Texas on December 7, 1835. If Santa Anna’s suggested maneuvers, instead of frontal assault, could not force the Texans from an advantageous defensive position on good terrain, then the forces were to “use the artillery, before anything else.” Most importantly, he advocated delivering a crushing blow at exactly the right moment: “Upon noticing the slightest disorder or indecision with the enemy ranks, a bayonet charge will be rapidly unleashed,” he ordered. 14

  In the end, Santa Anna became a victim of his own success, much like Napoleon, who gambled against fate once too often when he marched deep into Russia in the belief that he possessed a special destiny impervious to defeat. Both the Russian and San Jacinto campaigns were classic examples of an overly ambitious drive to glory that led ultimately to destruction far from home. 15 Santa Anna long basked in his fame as the “Napoleon of the West,” after employing aggressive tactics to repulse the forces of Spain, emerging “as the vindicator of the republic and the savior of the revolution.” However, his sobriquet was appropriate only up to his rendezvous with disaster when he was caught with only a small portion of his army on the San Jacinto River. 16

  At no phase of the 1836 Texas campaign did Santa Anna act more like Napoleon than at the Alamo, were he showed a penchant to do the unexpected, both tactically and strategically. He had learned his lessons well in studying Napoleon’s campaigns across Europe—these emphasized adhering to the tactical offensive and striking an unprepared enemy when he was least expecting an attack. Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz was set up by a swift, unexpected march from the English Channel, which thrust deep into the enemy’s heartland to catch his allied Russian and Austrian opponents completely by surprise. In much the same way, nothing more distinguished Santa Anna than his decision to conduct a lengthy but rapid march into Texas when his opponents least expected it.

  Everyone, especially the Texans, thought a winter campaign to be impossible. Following the conventional wisdom of the day, the Alamo leaders believed that an invading Mexican army marching north, pulling wagons and artillery caissons, would be unable to travel the long distance from northern Mexico deep into Texas in the wintertime before the deluge of spring rain. Therefore, Texas (or so the leaders of the Alamo believed) would be safe from invasion until April or even May, when spring grasses dotted the land. As it turned out, this was a fatal miscalculation. 17

  Defying conventional military wisdom, Santa Anna refused to wait for the brown prairie grasses to turn lush and green from rainfall and warmer temperatures. He had learned the Corsican’s axioms well, understanding that swift advances, a skill in which Napoleon’s armies excelled, had been key to their amazing successes across Europe. His army moved faster and more lightly than its opponents, and struck more quickly and unexpectedly. So, too, Santa Anna defied the conventional—relying on his keen understanding of both the geography and the vegetation of the land through which he would march, he launched a winter campaign, striking hard when least expected. 18

  No single influence was greater—not even the 1492 Reconquesta by the Christians of Spain in expelling the Islamic Moors from the Iberian Peninsula—on Santa Anna than the career of Bonaparte.
He had devoured one Napoleon biography after another ever since becoming a cadet; as if to conceal his middle-class upbringing in Vera Cruz, he even attempted to look, dress, pose, and act like his cherished idol. In his early forties by 1836, Santa Anna even combed his hair forward in the style of his idol and rode white horses, just like the French emperor. To inspire the ranks so far from home, he also employed one of Napoleon’s favorite means of lifting morale among common French soldiers: badges of honor. For the Texas campaign, Santa Anna created the Legion of Honor, which Napoleon had originally created in 1802 to honor heroic French soldiers. His goal in so doing was “to foster ambitions.”

  The legacy of Napoleon hovered over Santa Anna’s Army of Operations from the beginning to the end of the 1836 Texas campaign. The General had spent much time, effort, and money in collecting all things related to Napoleon, and in time, a sprawling collection of Napoleonana “fill[ed] Santa Anna’s estate.” The walls of his magnificent hacienda, located just outside Vera Cruz on the road to Xalapa, Manga de Clavo, were decorated with scenes of Napoleonic history and portraits. Pretty women dressed in the latest Paris fashions especially caught the eye of this ardent ladies’ man, who was smitten with French culture as well.

  Not surprisingly, in the Texas campaign the Mexican troops were clothed in colorful Napoleonic uniforms, carried similar weapons, and were trained in Napoleonic tactics, perpetuating Santa Anna’s fantasies. 19 According to General Vincente Filisola, who rode with him to the Alamo, the single-minded Santa Anna would “listen to nothing which was not in accord with ideas” espoused by Napoleon. 20