However, the example of the Alamo provides, by far, the greatest distortion and exaggeration of both Mexican numbers and casualties. First published not long after the Second World War, The Alamo, written by John Myers, represented a classic example of depicting the mythical Alamo. After elaborating on the traditional interpretation of the defender’s heroic self-sacrifice to ensure that Texas would live forever, Myers maintained that “there were about sixteen hundred [Mexican] dead, and there must have been a good few wounded, many of them seriously.” 24 The figure was based on evidence from more than a century earlier, as it is the total given by Travis’ slave Joe, who could neither read nor write, and as published in the April 12, 1836 issue of the Memphis Enquirer. Joe boasted how “SIXTEEN HUNDRED of the Mexicans [were] killed” at the Alamo. 25
Thereafter, this ludicrous figure of 1,600 Mexican killed has been accepted as fact to this day. This distortion began before the battle of San Jacinto, not afterward, as commonly believed by historians. For instance, author Thomas Ricks Lindley speculated that the number of Mexican dead was deliberately exaggerated by Mexican prisoners captured at San Jacinto to patronize the victors and save themselves. Lindley emphasized: “Because the Texians were consumed with the belief that they were far superior soldiers to the soldiers of Mexico, they seem to have accepted the unbelievable figures.” 26
However, modern historians have only perpetuated the fairy tale of astoundingly high Mexican casualties. In 1968, an almost pleading T.R. Fehrenbach retold the traditional Alamo story in Lone Star: A History of Texas and Texans, saying how the battle lasted more than four and a half hours and grossly overstated Mexican losses. He described how during “The five-hour engagement . . . The Battalion of Toluca, the assault shock force of 800 men, had lost 670 killed. The other battalions had lost in each case approximately 25 percent. In all, there were nearly 1,600 Mexican dead. These figures are reliable.” 27
And even the notoriously precise and conservative Walter Lord more than doubled the actual number of Mexican casualties in A Time to Stand, writing that the “best estimate seems about 600 killed and wounded.” 28
But the inflation of Mexican casualties was hardly a feature of 20th century Alamo historiography. The root of such outlandish distortions developed almost immediately after the battle, in part to bestow upon the Alamo defenders—especially Crockett and Bowie—heroic, glorious deaths against all odds. In Smith’s 1836 Col. Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas, he emphasized not only multiple assaults but also frightful Mexican losses: “The loss of the Mexicans in storming the place was not less than 800 killed and mortally wounded, making their losses since the first assault more than fifteen hundred.” 29
Much of the myth of high Mexican casualties developed in part from the traditional interpretation that the defender’s firepower was maximized because each garrison member had many loaded muskets by his side. As Historian William C. Davis explained in his fine book, Three Roads to the Alamo: “ . . . every man on the parapets had several loaded rifles, muskets, or pistols at his side, for that was one commodity of which Travis suffered no shortage [because of the] number of captured long arms taken in the surrender of Béxar in December came into his hands [and] As a result, there were 816 rifles, shotguns, pistols and English brown Bess muskets on hand and with his garrison now numbering more than two hundred men, that meant that four apiece.” 30
But such a defensive plan to unleash massive volumes of firepower would have been impossible. First, ammunition was of poor quality and in short supply. Indeed, a rare Mexican account from an unidentified officer of the Activo San Luís Potosí Battalion revealed the truth. He scribbled in his journal how the garrison not only “lack[ed] sufficient cannon balls,” but also Mexican troops were only greeted with little more than “pistol fire from the parapets” when they first neared the Alamo’s walls on February 25, before even more ammunition was expended during the next nearly ten days of siege. 31
Generations of authors had merely emphasized this traditional story of piles of weapons beside each defender to explain the allegedly high Mexican losses. In truth, and even before the struggle began, two distinct developments had already negated this alleged overabundance of weaponry: the damp and cold winter weather and the complete surprise of Santa Anna’s attack, which made such a scheme unworkable.
By the time of Santa Anna’s attack, many, if not most, defenders’ weapons had been rendered all but useless by the cold, wet weather of late winter. A wide discrepancy between the amount of powder in the church’s two powder rooms—extracted from an estimated 36,000 to 20,000 cartridges, containing inferior Mexican powder, left by Cós— and the actual amount of available good powder explains the mystery of Travis’ seemingly contradictory statements about the lack of ammunition and the large amount of powder found after the Alamo’s fall. On the early morning of March 6, in part due to the phenomena of “rising damp” that compromised powder reserves inside the church, the fragile black powder in muskets, rifles, shotguns, and the flintlock flash pans would have become damp, and thereby ineffective under such conditions. What historians have overlooked is the simple fact that for these weapons to have been operable to meet Santa Anna’s attack, they would of had to have been fired first, or “cleared.”
Defying logic, the enduring image of Texas defenders firing one loaded musket after another, inflicting terrible damage, became one of the long-accepted, time-honored tenants of the mythical last stand. Another myth was that more than twenty Alamo cannon, loaded with homemade canister, inflicted serious damage, cutting down hundreds of attackers, which was simply not true. The vast majority of the Alamo’s artillery was negated by the surprise assault, with most gunners unable to get into position and load their guns in time. Instead of homemade canister, artillery fire from the Alamo did not include canister but cannonballs. For instance, one cannonball took off the arm of an unfortunate Lieutenant Colonel José María Mendoza.
One of the most overlooked aspects of the Alamo’s story, the real truth of exactly how and who really inflicted the most damage upon Mexican troops on the morning of March 6, came not from the defenders, but ironically from the attackers themselves. In fact, according to a number of reliable Mexican accounts, the majority of Santa Anna’s casualties resulted from a widespread fratricide, or friendly fire, in the darkness. Foremost of these accounts was that of General Filisola, who described how “most of our dead and wounded” were caused by fratricide. In perhaps the Alamo’s most haunting irony, Mexican bullets from the English Brown Bess actually caused greater damage than all of the Texas Long Rifles, Bowie knives, shotguns, pistols, sabers, and cannon combined. Such a paradoxical development was all but inevitable in the collision of multiple assault columns, the attack in the darkness, and the fact that the Army of Operations was fighting its first battle.
In his classic work, Sacrificed at the Alamo, Richard Bruce Winders, the Alamo’s official historian, wrote of the widespread fratricide when “in the compound [the attackers] soon found themselves in grave danger from their own comrades. Fellow soldiers firing out of the darkness began to kill and wound those who had rushed ahead [and Mexican] officers later attributed the majority of their casualties to friendly fire rather than from the defenders.” 32
In his book Duel of Eagles, Jeff Long went further, coming even closer to the truth. He reasoned that “fully three-quarters of the Mexican casualties . . . were caused by Mexican bullets” and not defender fire. Even this high estimate can be explained by General Filisola, who wrote how during the attack on the north wall: “Our own men . . . had to suffer all that [fratricide fire] from our men themselves from the opposite sides. Since they attacked in a closed column, all the shots, the direction of which was turned somewhat downward, aimed the bullets towards the backs of those ahead of them. Thus it was that most of our dead and wounded that we suffered were caused by his misfortune.” 33
Conscripted into Santa Anna’s Army in 1835, Sergeant Felix Nunez, of Dúque’
s assault column, described the frightful rate of fratricide, which existed from the beginning to the end of the attack, including inside the compound: “The soldiers in the moments of victory became entirely uncontrollable, and, owing to the darkness of the building [church] and the smoke of battle, fell to killing one another, not being able to distinguish friend from foe.” 34
As much as the clash of multiple assault columns converging on the north wall at different angles, this high rate of fratricide resulted from the confused assault in the darkness and fragmentation of commands, which began outside and then continued unabated inside the Alamo. Enrique Esparza, for instance, described the utter confusion among the Mexican ranks inside the Alamo amid the blackness, when Santa Anna’s infantrymen “kept firing on the men who had defended the Alamo. For fully a quarter of an hour they kept firing upon them after all of the defenders had been slain.” 35
Not only had three separate assault columns collided, and even fired into each other on hit flanks, but also rearward troops fired to take “a fearful toll of those in front.” In fact, the high rate of fratricide revealed that Mexican troops were more deadly to themselves than from the fire of all the defenders’ Long Rifles and cannon combined. With a gift for understatement, Sergeant Manuel Loranca described: “In the act of assault a confusion occurred, in which the Mexican troops opened fire on each other.” 36
Widespread fratricide was so extensive that it had even determined the struggle’s outcome. Historian Alan C. Huffines emphasized how such intense friendly hit Colonel Cós’ column, that his men were forced to surge closer toward the west wall for protection before veering northward, to eventually unite with Dúque’s and later Romero’s columns at the north wall. In striking the lightly manned northwest corner, Cós’ redirected attack “almost certainly made the difference in the overall assault on the Alamo.” 37
Overall, this massive “crush” from three assault columns at the north wall was considerable, because hundreds of attackers possessed relatively few scaling ladders. Both General Cós’ and Colonel Dúque’s attack columns possessed only ten ladders each, while Colonel Romero’s column had only six, and Colonel Morales’ column brought along only two ladders. Clearly, all four Mexican columns had attacked with far too few ladders, and even these were of a “poor” quality. Besides the accidental merger of three assault columns, this lack of foresight also ensured a pile up of a great mass of soldados at the north wall’s base: an ideal scenario for fratricide, with attackers from behind firing blindly ahead and into the mass in the confused darkness. 38
Fratricide occurred almost as much inside the Alamo as outside. De la Pena described how even after the Mexicans swarmed inside the Alamo compound, “Behind these [foremost attackers] came others, who [now] fired their shots against friends and enemies alike, and in this way our losses were most grievous [indeed] one was as likely to die by a friendly hand as by an enemy’s [and this] confusion . . . was increasing the number of our victims [and in total] around fifty thousand cartridges had been used up.” 39
However, generations of American and Texas historians have underestimated this high level of fratricide at the Alamo, assuming that the Mexican losses came from the combat prowess of fully alerted defenders in the fabled last stand. But in truth, garrison members were either asleep or in the process of being aroused when the Mexican struck and gained the north wall. And the exodus from the Alamo also meant that far fewer defenders were firing back in attempting to repel the attack.
Perhaps as much as tactical mishaps, the highest level of fratricide occurred because the average Mexican soldier was a poor marksman. Poverty ensured the lack of firearms and the absence of a firearm cultural and hunting tradition among most of Mexico’s civilian populace. Marksmanship training in the Mexican army was rare, especially for the new recruits and conscripts that made up such a large percentage of Santa Anna’s forces. Therefore, Mexican soldiers generally fired their muskets, which packed a tremendous kick, from the hip rather than the shoulder, ensuring not only inaccuracy but also a high rate of fratricide, especially in a night attack during their first engagement. Recent archeological findings of soldado remains from a south Texas battlefield during the Mexican-American War—by that time not much had changed in this regard—revealed bruising on the hips of Mexican troops, who fired the Brown Bess musket without aiming: an indication that this common, popular perception in 1836 Texas was not an unjustified stereotype. 40
Indicating the lofty rate of fratricide, casualties were highest in Dúque’s column, which received the brunt of friendly fire losses. Huffines emphasized how: “Of all the Mexican units taking part in the assault on the Alamo, the activo Toluca Battalion chalked up the highest casualty rate of all” in the attack of the Alamo. 41 According to General Filisola, the activo Toluca Battalion of Colonel Dúque’s column lost a total of 20 killed, and another 79 who fell wounded. 42
Rather than the fire from defender firearms and artillery, most of Dúque’s column were shot down by their own comrades, because it had been their unit that led the assault, paying a high price for charging ahead of everyone else in the darkness. The former Toluca Battalion commander, Colonel Dúque, was very likely the victim of fratricide instead of artillery fire as alleged by de la Pena, when cut down in the “vicinity of the enemy parapets,” which indicated that he was too close to be hit by cannon fire. In the darkness, the Mexican troops, including Santa Anna’s 400-man reserve, failed to realize that Cós’ and Romero’s troops were before them. Therefore, in the confusion of combat, they fired toward the wall in the night, striking the backs of the foremost attackers. Perhaps like Houston, who very likely was hit by friendly fire in leading his attackers across the grassy meadow at San Jacinto, Colonel Dúque went down from a large-caliber musket ball from a Brown Bess and not a canister ball from an Alamo cannon. Walter Lord was indeed correct in his analysis of how the three attack “columns— merging from different directions—continued to fire blindly ahead, more often hitting friend than foe. And the men in the rear, unable to see, took a fearful toll of those in front.” 43
Correctly reasoning how Santa Anna’s reserves committed more slaughter among the soldados than Texan bullets or cannonballs, Long wrote how the Zapadores and five reserve companies of light troops, to the sound of bugles blaring in the night, “ran toward the Alamo, the four hundred reserves blindly fired off their weapons [and] bullets raked the shoulders and heads of [Dúque’s] troops in front of them, mowing down more Mexican soldiers,” who never knew what hit them. 44
Additionally, Mexican Army reports have revealed that the second largest number of casualties suffered on March 6 was in the San Luís Potosí Battalion. In this fine unit, two officers—First Lieutenant Irineo Guerrero and Second Lieutenant Antonio Carricante—and seven enlisted men were killed. Among the slain enlisted men were Sergeant Anastacio Velaquer, Grenadier Victoriano Perez, and two cazadores, Privates German Sánchez and Victoriano Tenerio. Charging forward behind the activo Toluca Battalion in Dúque’s attack column, the San Luís Potosí Battalion suffered a total of 37 wounded and nine killed. 45
Especially for the activo Toluca Battalion, which was initially massed against the north wall, these high losses came primarily from friendly fire from rearward soldiers, especially Amat’s 400 reserves, who could not see anyone before them in the dark. Fatally stricken officers, like Captain José M. Macotela, might well have been hit from the rear. Indeed, most of the San Luís Potosí and the Toluca Battalion’s losses came from the fire of hundreds of Santa Anna’s reserves. 46
But in truth, the relatively low number of Mexican casualties revealed a most feeble defense of the Alamo. As printed in the pages of the newspaper El Mosquito Mexicano, a Mexican Army surgeon, Jose Faustino Moro, wrote a letter to the publication that revealed the relatively few losses. He described how “an assault was given and there was more than two hundred wounded men as a result of that battle” on March 6, 1836. 47
Additionally, an unsigned p
amphlet written by a Mexican soldier who fought at the Alamo was reprinted in Mexico City’s leading newspaper, El Mosquito Mexicanoon April 5, 1836. In this rare, anonymous account, the author emphasized how Mexican losses were surprisingly low, especially given the garrison’s relative strength in holding a fortified position defended by so much artillery. Most significant, he also wrote that Santa Anna’s Army had in fact suffered a loss of only two hundred men and officers wounded in the assault. 48
Santa Anna estimated that the Alamo’s capture resulted in “costing us seventy dead and about three hundred wounded,” but this was a hasty conclusion. 49The general had merely estimated both the number of killed and wounded soldados in the first official report of the battle that was written at 8 a.m. on March 6. Therefore, a later, more careful tally of the wounded Mexican troops was not made by the time Santa Anna estimated that he had suffered about 300 wounded, which was too high of a figure. 50
Santa Anna also overestimated the number of fatalities in his hasty morning report. In reality, and after a more precise count after more time passed, General Filisola counted a total of only 60 Mexican fatalities suffered at the Alamo. 51
The overall lack of resistance from the fort can be seen in the case of the elite Sapper Battalion. Historian John B. Lundstrom noted, with a sense of ironic contradiction, a major mystery of the Alamo, writing with some dismay how “the Zapadores only took 27 casualties, in spite of the fact that the unit was the first over the wall and led the assault down the east walls and barracks.” This surprising development can be best explained by the fact that these rearmost attackers upon the north wall suffered less from fratricide than those command in front. 52
Overall, the fact that around 2,000 attackers suffered only 60 fatalities—many of which were caused by fratricide—indicated what weak resistance was offered that early morning, adding additional evidence that a large percentage of the Alamo garrison chose flight instead of fighting to the bitter end. While Santa Anna reported 70 killed and around 300 wounded, General Andrade, of the cavalry, listed a total of only 311 killed and wounded during the assault. In the first and earliest detailed summary of Mexican casualties, Andrade counted 60 dead and 251 wounded.
Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth Page 43