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

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Also like Napoleon, Santa Anna was a gambler, both in his personal life and on the battlefield, proving himself as impulsive and bold as his predecessor—which usually paid dividends in the bedroom as well as in war. Just as Napoleon fell prey to the charms of his beautiful Polish mistress, Marie Walewska, Santa Anna had a weakness for beautiful women, marrying a fourteen-year-old beauty at the age of thirty-one. On the battlefield, the penchant for risk-taking that led to disaster at San Jacinto nevertheless paid him early dividends, leading to promotions and acclaim as a daring young cavalry commander, when he often staked everything on one throw of the dice. 21

  Santa Anna understood the urgent necessity of crushing a revolt as soon as possible, before it gained momentum and wider support, and his love affair with the tactical offense and the element of surprise reaped success at the Alamo. By late 1835, after the Texans captured San Antonio, time was of the essence. Delay meant that the Texans would grow stronger from the steady flow of money, supplies, manpower, and munitions from the United States. And his personal and political enemies in Mexico, the ever-opportunistic liberals, would likewise become emboldened if he did not unleash a vigorous response. In addition to Napoleon’s own formula for success across Europe, past Anglo-Celtic filibuster incursions into Texas also told Santa Anna that it was urgent to smash the revolutionaries as soon as possible.

  Historians have long treated the Alamo as something almost wholly unique, as if it were a landmark event of epic proportions isolated in time and space. But the story of the Alamo was just a single chapter, and a small one at that, in the much longer saga of aggressive Anglo-Celtic filibuster activities and open revolution in Texas sparked by Americans and widely supported by U.S. interests during the first third of the 19th century. The only thing new about it was that the Texas Revolution was directed against Mexico, whereas earlier struggles for independence were waged against Spain. Both Mexico and Texas possessed a lengthy history of slaughter; the Mexican Army had perfected the massacre of American troops begun by the Spanish, turning it into an art form by 1836. One of the greatest benefactors of the cruel lessons about how to effectively crush revolutionary movements—Anglo-Celtic or Tejano—in Texas was Santa Anna himself.

  Santa Anna’s estate, located amid the high, cool breezes at nearly 5,000 feet above sea level, was a peaceful haven far away from the horrors of war. It was nestled in the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains northwest of the port of Vera Cruz, where his father, Don Antonio, had established a family with Doña Manuela Pérez de Lebrón, and made a modest living far from the center of power in Mexico City. Santa Anna took considerable pride in his Manga de Clavo hacienda, which he preferred to the national palace in Mexico City. Purchasing the estate in 1825, he had grown his holdings to seventy square miles by 1842. Vast orchards of fruit trees bearing oranges, bananas, and mangoes lined the hillsides, along with coffee trees that thrived in high, cool elevations. The estate also boasted “an abundance of beef cattle and horses.”

  Like Napoleon, who had risen despite the fact that he was a Corsican outsider, the ambitious Santa Anna remained an outsider in Mexico City, in part because he was from Vera Cruz. He felt that he had much to prove, both to himself and to others. He had been born into a world where Spaniards of pure blood, born in Spain—the privileged peninsulars—were Mexico’s aristocracy and the top political and military leaders. Hailing from a family of modest means from the Creole gentry class, Santa Anna had occupied a lower rung on the social ladder. With a provincial middle class background, he had relatively little education, unlike the aristocratic peninsulars; a military career therefore offered him the best possibility to move up the social ladder.

  Much like the Anglo-Celts in Texas, Santa Anna felt little empathy for the lower-class Mexican people, who were mixtures of Spanish, Indian, and black. Most of all, he identified with Major General José Joaquin Arredondo, a ruthless Spanish officer of considerable military ability. His early experiences with native peoples were marked by violence, contempt, and ruthlessness, not unlike the experiences of many settlers in Texas from the United States. As a young cadet, he fought the Chichimeca Indians, suffering an ugly wound in his left arm in 1811 near San Lusi Potosi. A 19-year-old of promise, he earned the rank of second lieutenant and the praise of his commander, Arredondo.

  But by far, Santa Anna learned his most important and bloodiest lessons at the nightmarish battle of Medina, during the Anglo-Celtic and Tejano revolution sparked by Father Miguel y Costilla Hidalgo and his revolutionary “Army of America,” when Texas attempted to break away from Spain’s New World Empire. Dominated by large numbers of United States volunteers, and financed by bankers and investments in New Orleans, the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition of 1812–13 entered Texas and declared independence. In response, a powerful Spanish army under General Arredondo, Santa Anna’s mentor and idol after Napoleon, was dispatched north into Texas. Battle-hardened Spanish soldiers were determined to purge Texas of revolutionaries, just as their forefathers had swept the Moors out of Spain.

  Just south of San Antonio, the battle of Medina was fought on August 18, 1813, barely three years after Santa Anna had been commissioned as a “gentleman cadet” of the Permanent Infantry Regiment of Vera Cruz in the Spanish Army. But the lessons Santa Anna learned as a teenager were antithetical to the gentlemanly conduct and conventional rules of early nineteenth century warfare, especially the European model during the Age of Napoleon. Mexico’s proud cavalrymen exceeded all others in slaughtering Anglo-Celts, Mexicans, Europeans, and Tejanos—anyone who opposed Spain—with business-like efficiency. At the time he first distinguished himself on the battlefield, the young Santa Anna gained a deeply ingrained contempt for American fighting men, whom the hard-riding dragoons and lancers so easily dispatched in the sweltering, mesquite-covered lowlands of the Medina River. What happened to so many ill-fated Anglo-Celts at Medina—“the bloodiest battle ever fought in Texas”—was something he would never forget, and served as a lesson to be put to good use at the Alamo. 22

  The crushing defeat of the rebels at the battle of Medina was hardly unprecedented: the history of American filibusters in Texas was as lengthy as it was bloody. The first such expedition to cross the Sabine was led by Irishman Philip Nolan, who entered Texas with an armed party of filibusters in October 1800. Nolan’s expedition included slaves, in a portent of the future source of troubles between Anglo-Celtic colonists and Mexico City. Spanish officials were convinced that Nolan planned to start a “revolution” in Texas against the Spanish, and Spanish troops crushed the filibusters, killing Nolan in a clash in east Texas.

  Then, in late spring 1819, Dr. James Long (a veteran of the battle of New Orleans) and his Anglo-Celtic filibuster expedition, organized and recruited in Natchez, Mississippi, marched boldly into Spanish Texas; more boldly yet, Long issued a Declaration of Independence for the Republic of Texas at Nacogdoches. This quixotic expedition ended in disaster, overwhelmed by Spanish Royalist forces. Later, Long was shot and killed while a prisoner.

  A third confrontation and another American defeat occurred in December 1826, less than a decade before the start of the Texas Revolution, when independence-minded settlers of the Benjamin Edwards Colony near Nacogdoches created the east Texas republic of Fredonia. Setting a pattern that would be repeated, Edwards’ colonists settled on land owned by Tejanos. When the Mexican government aided the Tejanos and revoked Edwards’ contract, Edwards and a handful of Anglo-Celtic colonists established a new republic. Within a month, Mexican troops crushed the movement. 23

  Mexico was born of the violent revolution against Spain, and Santa Anna knew the nature of revolts far more intimately than did Texans. Most of all, he knew that the potent swelling of revolution had to be stopped as soon as possible. If it were not, the new Mexican republic, ripped apart by escalating political divisions, economic problems, and civil war, would die an early death. Meanwhile, Mexico’s conservatives looked with apprehension at the United States and its seemingly dangerous e
xperiments in democracy. To the ruling elite in Mexico City, the image of the Anglo-Celtic revolutionaries from the United States, who had earlier defeated the armies of a powerful European monarchy on the other side of the Atlantic, was a consummate fear. 24

  Throughout the 19th century, no city in the United States was more consistently a thorn in Mexico’s side than New Orleans, the economically thriving city from which all Anglo-Celtic filibustering incursions, including the Texas Revolution and the recent invasion attempt at Tampico in 1835, had been organized. 25 Economic ties between the powerful merchant class of New Orleans and Texas settlers were tight: thousands of cotton bales produced by Texas slaves filled the New Orleans cotton market, reaping the highest prices because of their high quality. Ample capital, transport connections, and a common culture all tied the future prosperity of Texas more closely to New Orleans than to Matamoros, and the even more distant Mexico City. 26

  Mexico City officials suspected a deep-seated Anglo-Celtic conspiracy on both sides of the Sabine, designed to steal Texas away for the financial benefit of the United States, and especially for New Orleans. New Orleans provided ample manpower, including organized military companies raised expressly for service in Texas. Symbolically, one of the first and most prominent United States volunteer companies to serve in Texas was the New Orleans Greys, which evolved into “the premier Texas military unit” of the Texas Revolution. These young soldiers, neatly clothed in the grey uniforms that gave the company its name, became the first United States volunteer unit to join the Texas Army in mid-October 1835.

  The Crescent City volunteers added a measure of professionalism to the rustic Texas rookies in rebellion, infusing new vigor and providing much-needed stability to Stephen Austin’s ragtag revolutionary army of 1835. Playing a leading role in San Antonio’s capture, they were “in the forefront of the fighting” from beginning to end. 27 Disgusted with Texas politics and the endless bickering among military and government leaders, many disillusioned New Orleans Greys eventually returned to the United States after the 1835 campaign, refusing to fight any longer to “enrich a few land speculators,” including principal Texas revolutionary leaders like Houston and Bowie. 28

  THE RAPE OF ZACATECAS

  Before Texas once again erupted in revolt, the most recent example of revolution in Mexico had occurred in Zacatecas. Like Texas and Zacatecas, secession movements had long flared up in the rebellious north, far away from the grip of Mexico City. After Santa Anna took power as a liberal, newly elected president in 1833, he ordered the drastic reduction of the state militias, although they were guaranteed by the Constitution of 1824. The militia act had emboldened state autonomy, running contrary to the centralized interests of Mexico City. He also desired to strengthen the regular army. This astute plan for eliminating potential future threats caused liberal states like Zacatecas to rise up in revolt, after the sentiments that had led them to vote Santa Anna into office had been betrayed.

  Backed by the church, business interests, and large landowners, Santa Anna planned to quell the rising of revolution in both Coahuila and Zacatecas before dealing with the rebellious Anglo-Celts in Texas. Zacatecas posed the most serious threat. Here the Mexican people had taken up arms to repel the centralist “assault on our liberty,” refusing to disband their sizeable militia. In this, it was backed by its independent-minded legislature, on the premise that Santa Anna was overthrowing the 1824 Constitution. Zacatecas boasted the largest militia force in all Mexico. As in the later Texas Revolution, this confrontation between Mexican citizens of differing political philosophies was a classic civil war, with the forces of centralized power taking action to crush state autonomy and secession-minded liberal republicans.

  To defend the republican government of Zacatecas, Governor Francisco Garcia organized a militia of 4,000 men, which rivaled the size of Mexico’s national army. Without formal training, however, these young militiamen never had a chance. With republican banners flying in the bright spring sunshine, Garcia made his stand against Santa Anna’s approaching army at the little village of Guadalupe, near the town of Zacatacas.

  More politician than military commander, Garcia was no match for the energetic, forty-one-year-old Santa Anna, who had conceived a tactical plan for total victory over the neophyte militiamen. In the early morning darkness of May 11, 1834, Santa Anna maneuvered and then attacked swiftly, using tactics that later became his trademark, to catch his opponents by surprise. The Zacatecas militia, though bolstered by a dozen artillery pieces, was easily crushed by Santa Anna’s tactical skill, which took “a page out of Napoleon’s book . . . surprising the city’s defenders with a surreptitious attack from the rear.” 29

  The fiercely xenophobic Santa Anna was well aware that liberal Anglos had played a key role in the Zacatecas revolution. One noted example was German-born Edward Harcourt, who commanded the Zacatecas artillery and tried to take charge of the hapless militia upon its collapse. Believing, as did leaders in Mexico City, that the revolt was largely Anglo-inspired, an enraged Santa Anna ordered the execution of every foreign fighter, especially any Americans, found among the militia’s ranks or in Zacatecas. Then, to set a bloody example for other revolt-minded liberals throughout Mexico, including any potential revolutionaries in Texas, he unleashed his troops in an orgy of rape, pillage, plunder, and murder. As one foreign official wrote, surviving Americans became special targets, with men executed on sight and women stripped and “run through the streets.” 30

  Less than two years later, having earned renown as the “Hero of the Fatherland,” Santa Anna determined to wipe out the Anglo-Celtic presence in Texas, just as he had in Zacatecas, when the “once fair city was [left] a burning, screaming shambles.” 31 The slaughter of the Alamo garrison would send a bloody message throughout Texas and the United States. Confident after his victory at Zacatecas, Santa Anna dissolved the Mexican Congress, and dismantled the liberal Constitution of 1824. With the death of republicanism, he became Mexico’s dictator. And in seizing absolute power, it was again as if Santa Anna were following Napoleon’s script.

  For Santa Anna, it was all the more crucial to crush revolutionary resistance as soon as possible because Texas was on the United States border. He therefore dispatched his brother-in-law, General Perfecto de Cós, to maintain order and quell unrest among the unruly Texians, sending five hundred Mexican troops into the last bastion of liberalism and final “Federalist stronghold” in Mexico. 32 But the people of Texas rose up as one and descended on Cós, who was far from Mexico City and reinforcements: ironically, this would be the future predicament of the Alamo garrison only a few months later. General Cós surrendered San Antonio to besieging Texas forces on December 11, 1835, leaving Santa Anna determined to avenge both the stain to his family name and Mexico’s national honor—a potent motivational mixture. Thus he began to prepare a mighty expedition to punish and reclaim Texas.

  Launching a large-scale expedition overland to reclaim a wayward Texas was a daunting task for Mexico, especially in regard to logistics and securing sufficient manpower for the ambitious push north of the Rio Grande. As a poor agrarian nation long wracked by internal strife, and severely handicapped by a lack of industry and manufacturing, Mexico had a pathetically small treasury. Budgets were all the more strained because of the great expense of suppressing revolts over a vast arid, mountainous, and tropical land that stretched from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico had only a small army, which combined with the size and difficulty of the terrain made it extremely difficult to wage an aggressive war, especially a lengthy one, located far from the army’s base of operations.

  In addition to securing established, or regular, units—the disciplined, well-trainedpermanentes—for the 1836 campaign, Santa Anna also relied upon impressments, largely drawing from the Indian and Mestizo population to gain recruits for a new force, the Army of Operations. Thinned ranks were “filled by recruits snatched away from the crafts and from agriculture, by heads of families, who usual
ly do not make good soldiers,” lamented de la Pena. He also complained that the army consisted of too many young and overaged soldiers. In derogatory fashion, the Texians derided these fighting men of Mexico as “colored hirelings,” fusing issues of race with revolution.

  Arriving in early December some 600 miles below San Antonio, Santa Anna began the formidable task of assembling an army at San Luís Potosí, designated as his headquarters, with his customary energy. It was here that the Army of Operations was born. Ironically, while Santa Anna sought to redeem his brother-in-law’s tainted military reputation for the defeat at San Antonio, yet another brother-in-law, Colonel Ricardo Dromundo, who was the army’s commissary general and married to Santa Anna’s sister Francisca, either squandered or stole the already limited funds allocated by the government to properly clothe and uniform the approximately two thousand new recruits. A third brother-in-law, Gabriel Nuñez, who would be captured at San Jacinto, stayed out of trouble, much to Santa Anna’s relief. 33

  In the process of forming an army from units yet arriving, Santa Anna relocated at Saltillo, founded in 1577 and the oldest colonial city in northern Mexico, in early January. Located just over 360 miles southwest of San Antonio amid the arid mountains of northeast Mexico, Saltillo served as the launching point for the march into Texas. The capital of the state of Coahuila, Saltillo was an important staging point both logistically and politically. Both regular units (permanentes) and the active militias (activos) from across Mexico now marched toward northern Mexico to join Santa Anna. These included General Sesma, who received his orders in Zacatecas, where he had been placed in command to organize the newly designated “Vanguard Division of Operations.” Sesma originally had moved north to reinforce Cós in Texas, but San Antonio’s fall aborted the movement.