Lone Star Nation (36 page)
Ehrenberg resisted the impulse, but only till the next morning, when he enlisted in the first of two companies of volunteers that came to be called the New Orleans Greys. (The color referred to their uniforms, which distinguished them from the Tampico Blues, another antiâSanta Anna company mustered at New Orleans, bound for the east coast of Mexico.) Besides their uniforms, the Greys were outfitted with rifles, pistols, Bowie knives, and several pieces of artillery. One company of the Greys would approach Texas by river and land, via Natchitoches. The other would travel by sea, through the Gulf.
Ehrenberg, who was one of six Germans among the Greys, was assigned to the company that traveled upriver to Natchitoches. At each stop of the steamboat, Louisianians turned out to cheer the brave soldiers. The Alexandria militia mustered to salute the Greys; the citizens of Natchitoches sent hams, pies, and other treats to their camp and invited the men into their homes for a real meal. Ehrenberg and his comrades savored the hospitality and passed the transit time marveling at the moss-draped oaks and shooting at the sluggish alligators (which seemed more annoyed than injured by the bullets). But they itched to shoot Mexicans and wanted to get to Texas. “News had come that the colonists intended to make an early attack on San Antonio. This report troubled us, for we feared that the great distance which still separated us from our friends would prevent us from reaching San Antonio in time to assist them.”
As they approached the international border, the Greys moved carefully. The Mexican government had protested the use of American soil for staging attacks on Texas, and the Jackson administration publicly adopted a policy of strict compliance with American neutrality laws. American officers at frontier posts had orders to forbid the passage of the Greys into Texas. These orders, however, didn't compel the American soldiers to patrol the woods in search of the volunteers. “We therefore advanced very cautiously, and spent the night at the home of a gentleman named Thomas, a few miles from the border and entirely beyond the reach of any observation post at the fort,” Ehrenberg explained. “On the next day we left the plantation and came without hindrance to the Sabine.”
They were greeted in Texas even more warmly than in Louisiana. Settlers lined the bank of the river where they crossed. “A pretty Texas girl held out to us a beautiful banner of blue silk, bearing the following inscription: âTo the first company of volunteers sent by New Orleans to Texas.' ” At San Augustine, members of the local militia who had stayed home to protect the community from Indians turned out to cheer the newcomers. Their drummer evidently knew but a single tune, a funeral dirge. “The mournful thoughts which this kind of music suggested were not at all in unison with the mood of the enthusiastic Greys. Our drummer, therefore, began to roll out the lively march of âBeer in the Mug.' ” The Greys got the better of this percussive battle, and the somber mood lifted. Two small cannons in the town square fired salvos to honor the guests; barbecued steaks eased their hunger.
At Nacogdoches the Greys obtained mounts, horses acquired from friendly Cherokees by Adolphus Sterne. This saved the soldiers' legs and mitigated their impatience, as they made better time toward the front. They crossed the Brazos at Washington, which, though raw, appeared to Ehrenberg to have a future. “There were several coffee houses, an inn, and a few shops where every kind of article was on sale, from brass tacks to groceries and ready-made garments.” From Washington the road led toward Bastrop, as the Colorado River community of Mina had been renamed, for the man who had rescued Moses Austin and aided his son. They reached Bastrop at midnight, but despite the late hour the inhabitants threw them a party. Large bonfires illuminated each intersection of the town's few streets, and everyone made merry till morn.
West of Bastrop the Greys entered Comanche country. The newcomers had heard of the fearsome horsemen of the plains, and all scanned the horizon for the first sign of the Indians. But though the Comanches made no appearance, the Greys felt their presence. A Comanche band, either on a hunt or simply managing the rangeâto keep trees from encroaching on the buffalo grassâhad set a prairie fire, which now threatened to engulf the Greys. “In apprehensive wonder,” Ehrenberg wrote, “we saw that boundless sea of fire sweep over the prairie. The flames leapt closer and closer; dark clouds rose up and rolled slowly over the burning grass.” The fire died out before singeing the travelers, but it left them in a fix, as their horses, already haggard from the four-hundred-mile march from Nacogdoches, now had nothing to eat. “Leaves, shrubs, grassâeverything had gone; nothing remained but an appalling blackness.”
Yet the rebel reinforcements made it to San Antonio almost intact. An English member of the Greys got lost and then encountered a Mexican patrol, which shot his horse dead and wounded him. Another man, the drummer who knew the drinking songs, likewise became separated from the main body of Greys. Surrounded by a party of Mexicans, this Louisiana Creole feared for his life. But thinking quickly, he declared that he bore a flag of truce. His captors were skeptical, yet when he said that four thousand American volunteers were right behind him, the Mexicans decided they'd let their superiors sort out the truth in his story, and they took him back to Béxar.
The Greys reached the rebel camp at a critical time for the Texas revolution. With many of the colonists among the insurgents returning to their homes, the new arrivals kept the rebel column from disintegrating entirely. And having traveled so far to engage the Mexicans in battle, they had no desire to return home with their carbines unfired and their Bowie knives unbloodied. Consequently, when in early December Edward Burleson decided to follow Houston's advice and withdraw the rebel force to the east side of the Guadalupe, they joined the few resident stalwarts in objecting.
The man who spoke loudest against retreat was Ben Milam, an old settler of cussedly democratic instincts and a habit of resisting authority. “Colonel Milam is a native of Kentucky,” explained a Texan who was a member of a patrol that had encountered Milam most unexpectedly some weeks earlier. “At the commencement of the Mexican war of independence he engaged in the cause, and assisted in establishing the independence of the country. When Iturbide assumed the purple, Milam's republican principles placed him in fettersâdragged him to the city of Mexico, and confined him in prison until the usurper was dethroned. When Santa Anna assumed the dictatorship, the republican Milam was again thrust into the prison at Monte Rey.” But Milam's patriotism appealed to his jailers, who discreetly allowed him to escape and provided a horse. “The noble horse did his duty, and bore the colonel clear of all pursuit to the place where our party surprised him. At first he supposed himself in the power of his enemy. But the English language soon convinced him that he was in the midst of his countrymen.” Between his imprisonment and his stealthy escape, Milam hadn't heard that the Texans were in arms against Santa Anna. “When he learned the object of our party, his heart was full. He could not speakâfor joy.” Milam took part in the capture of Goliad, and his joy increased. “I assisted Mexico to gain her independence,” he said in the hour of victory. “I have endured heat and cold, hunger and thirst; I have borne losses and suffered persecutions; I have been a tenant of every prison between this and Mexico. But the events of this night have compensated me for all my losses and all my sufferings.”
And now Milam wasn't inclined to surrender what had cost him so much. When Burleson spoke of dropping the siege of San Antonio, Milam declared he'd attack the place on his own. Frank Johnson, another old settler, seconded the sentiment. Volunteer Creed Taylor described the crucial moment in the rebel camp:
Ben Milam and Frank Johnson were heard in animated conversation, and presently they were observed walking rapidly in the direction of the commander's quarters. Minutes now passed as hours. Suddenly the flap of General Burleson's tent was thrown back and a man stepped boldly out and forward. He drew a line on the ground with the stock of his rifle. Then waving his old slouch hat above his head, he cried in stentorian voice, “Boys! Who will go with Ben Milam into Bexar?”
The quick, commingled responses, “I will,” were almost deafening.
“Well, if you are going with me, get on this side,” shouted Milam. And with a rush, animated cheers, and loud hurrahs, the men formed in a line to the number of about three hundredâevery one eager to follow the old hero in any venture and at all hazards.
In fact, not quite everyone joined the hazardous venture, which still seemed to some as reckless as it had before Ben Milam spoke up. But Burleson, canceling plans for the retreat, shamed most of those who wanted to go home into staying in the camp as a reserve force. “Remain like men,” Creed Taylor recalled him saying, “and, win or lose, you will share the glory with your brave comrades. Abandon us, and you will merit the contempt of posterity!”
The attack began before dawn on December 5. Milam led one column of volunteers; Frank Johnson led the other. An artillery company under James C. Neill diverted Mexican attention with several salvos against the Alamo, across the meandering San Antonio River, about a third of a mile from the town proper. “The hollow roar of our cannon was followed by the brisk rattling of drums and the shrill blasts of bugles,” wrote Herman Ehrenberg, whose New Orleans Greys enthusiastically joined the assault. “Summons, cries, the sudden trampling of feet, the metallic click of weapons mingled in the distance with the noisy blare of the alarm and the heavy rumblings of the artillery. Our friends had done the trick. Their cannonading had put the Mexicans on the alert, and many of them would probably rush to the defense of the fortress. The success of this first part of our scheme encouraged us, for we thought that in the midst of the din and confusion we should have a better chance of slipping into the city unnoticed.”
A Béxar native, Jesús Cuellar (called “Comanche,” for having been an Indian captive in his youth), who had taken a dislike to Cos and recently come over to the rebels, led the attackers into the town. “Not a word passed his lips, and his eyes were constantly turned toward the Alamo, as if the dense shadows about the fortress held the secret fate of our adventure,” Ehrenberg wrote. Suddenly several rockets shot up from the fortress. Cuellar, relieved, explained that this was the distress signal, calling the defenders of the town to the defense of the Alamo. “It meant, he said, that the road was free and that we were safe.”
Ehrenberg, Cuellar, and the others ran through the dark for the nearest buildings of the town. They saw several Mexican soldiers standing guard around a fire. Cuellar told his fellows not to shoot, lest the noise betray the attack. The key to success was to penetrate as far as possible before the defenders discovered the nature and angle of the assault. “The farther into the city we ran, the more stone houses we should be able to occupy.”
They reached the edge of town without opposition and worked toward the central square. Ehrenberg's company of Greys took a route that ran near the river. “Sometimes our way led across small Mexican gardens, which afforded us a good deal of shelter; sometimes over bare, exposed patches of ground close to the edge of the stream.”
They were almost to the square when the defenders spotted them and opened up with grapeshot. The rounds were especially lethal in the narrow streets, which funneled the shrapnel toward the attackers, forcing them to dive into doorways and behind whatever projected from the walls or ground.
“It was quite early yet,” recorded Ehrenberg, who took shelter in a stone building that had served as a guardhouse. “Most of the objects around us were still wrapped in the receding shadows of departing night, but in spite of this semi-darkness, we easily detected the enemy's position. The lurid glow of the explosions lit up the central quadrangle of the city, from which the Mexican artillery poured forth continuous volleys of shot. A dozen or more six-pounders seemed to have chosen our small fortress as a special objective, and one of them, which stood within eighty feet of us, gave us a good deal of anxiety. . . . Cannon-balls and bullets whizzed and crashed above our heads, leaving us frightened and bewildered.”
What had started as a coordinated assault degenerated into a confusion of individual combats, with the rebels by twos and threes fighting their way from house to house, and from room to room within the houses. At times it was hard to tell enemies from friends. “On our right and somewhat farther back than we were, little clouds of smoke were rising at intervals from several stone buildings,” Ehrenberg said. “Judging from the intermittent shooting that these were held by a small number of our adversaries, we promptly made up our minds to seize the houses and use them as part of our quarters. Just as our plans were completed, several discharges from these same houses informed us that they were in the hands of our friends, who likewise had mistaken us for enemies. While they were firing upon us, one of their bullets had hit a tall Mississippian named Moore, but fortunately it had glanced off a two-dollar piece which he had in his coat pocket. The second bullet struck another very tall fellow, also from Mississippi, tore off a part of his forehead, and dashed its fragments on the flagstone and on those of us who stood around him.” Before the friendly shooters could be apprised of their mistake, they claimed another casualty, a German who was badly wounded in the shoulder.