Authors: James Donovan
Tags: #History / Military - General, #History / United States - 19th Century
T
HE EXPRESS RIDER BEARING
Travis’s first message, hastily written on the afternoon of the twenty-third, reached Travis’s good friend Robert M. Williamson between Bastrop and Gonzales. Three-Legged Willie had been placed in charge of the three ranging companies activated to protect the colonists against Indians while the army was fighting the Mexicans. Ten days earlier, he had been directed by the General Council to move his men to the frontier to guard the settlements against attacks. He was on the upper Colorado River with a company of rangers when the message from Travis arrived. Williamson continued on to Gonzales and forwarded expresses to the Texian government to the east and his ranger forces to the north, near Bastrop. Indians, especially Comanches, were still a danger to the frontier communities, but for now the colonists would have to fend for themselves: every man was needed to march to the aid of the Alamo garrison, and Williamson and his ranger company rode to Gonzales.
When the express rider reached San Felipe on the evening of Friday, February 26, the news he brought created a consternation—even more so because five weeks earlier, when Deaf Smith had arrived in town direct from Béxar, he had told Governor Henry Smith that the Mexican army would not arrive in Texas until March, and been so quoted in the February 27 issue of Borden’s
Telegraph and Texas Register
. Now the governor quickly directed Borden to print Travis’s letter as a handbill, in an edition of two hundred, to be circulated throughout Texas. Residents began preparations to leave town with as many of their possessions as they could carry on carts, livestock, or their shoulders. “The people now begin to think the wolf has actually come at last,” wrote an observer in town.
By this time acting governor James Robinson and what remained of the General Council—his advisory committee of two or three citizens—had moved to the rough hamlet of Washington in anticipation of the March 1 convention. Governor Smith, with few resources besides the $5,000 loan delivered to him in January, decided to remain in San Felipe a few more days. The two parties still refused to recognize each other. Delegates from every settlement in Texas were just beginning to arrive in Washington, where they found lodgings hard to come by and comfortable quarters nonexistent; there was only one actual hotel, so many of them boarded at John Lott’s one-room house. The two Tejanos representing Béxar, as well as Jesse Badgett, from the Alamo—Samuel Maverick would not arrive until March 3—decided to pay a carpenter to put down wooden planks on the dirt floor of his small workshop, and they rented it from him for a month.
When the news of the Alamo garrison’s besiegement reached Washington a few hours after it arrived in San Felipe, Robinson sent a frantic message to Sam Houston, still parleying with the Cherokees and several associated bands of Indians. “Come quickly and organize our countrymen for battle,” the acting governor begged. “Call the militia out en masse…. Say it is done by the order of the Governor & Council & by your own order, and by the unanimous call of Texas.” He sent it by express and addressed it “to Gen. Sam Houston Wherever he may be.” That rider galloped out of town posthaste, but others directed to bear the news to the north and east did not—the government had no money to pay for them. Only when several citizens pitched in were riders found, paid, and dispatched.
The next morning, Saturday, the citizens of San Felipe met to appoint a committee of twelve to prepare an address and draft resolutions. The meeting adjourned for a while, then reconvened later to adopt the measures. One of the resolutions called for the formation of another committee. Another recommended establishing provision depots on the road to Gonzales. There were eight resolutions in all. None called for an immediate march to Béxar, where 150 men were surrounded by ten times their number, though some of the ladies of the town began to gather clothing just in case.
The fledgling country’s severe lack of funds was a chief reason Stephen Austin had been sent, with two other commissioners, to the United States: to drum up support and money. Americans avidly followed the progress of the revolution, and overwhelmingly supported the Texas cause. Most of their information came from newspaper stories, but many learned of the struggle firsthand from Austin and his fellow commissioners, who traveled from New Orleans to Mobile, Nashville, and Louisville on their way to Washington, D.C., speaking of the Texians’ grievances to crowds of hundreds or thousands at every stop. They succeeded in acquiring several private loans from individuals and banks, but Austin knew their chances of gaining financial aid and diplomatic recognition from the United States would be slim: the Texians’ provisional government had not even issued a declaration of independence, much less established a legitimate, functioning government. Without those essentials, Andrew Jackson and his administration would insist on maintaining neutrality—the last thing they wanted was a war with Mexico. Until then, the unofficial state of Texas would have to go it alone, without official U.S. assistance.
E
ARLY ON
F
EBRUARY
25, the morning after Travis wrote his defiant letter, while work was begun on a trench on the east side of the river in the near-empty field east of town known as El Potrero (“the pasture”), Santa Anna ordered the artillery to resume bombarding the Alamo. The rebel cannon returned fire. Overnight, two more Mexican batteries had been erected to the west, and their field of fire controlled the fort’s entrance and the road junctions just outside it. His Excellency decided to make use of that advantage—and test the mettle of his troops and of the colonists.
At 9:30 a.m., as the new batteries bombarded the Alamo and Santa Anna watched from nearby, General Castrillón and Colonel Miñón led the Matamoros Battalion and several companies of
cazadores,
the elite light infantry—about three hundred men in total—up through La Villita to within a hundred yards of the rebels. They took possession of several small adobe huts and
jacales
bordering Plaza de Valero and opened a heavy fusillade on the fort’s south wall.
A wide ditch almost five feet deep angled out from the main gate’s lunette. A company of rebels in the trench looked over its edge and let loose a hail of well-aimed rifle and musket fire that dropped several attackers. On the walls behind them, more men supplied supporting fire. From the batteries along the south side of the fort and at the lunette, the artillerymen of Captains Almeron Dickinson, Samuel Blair, and William Carey directed a heavy discharge of grapeshot and canister that burst apart and scattered in a wide, deadly arc as they flew from the cannon, much like a massive shotgun.
Soldados
in the open scrambled for cover behind the scattered structures on the south edge of the plaza. The Mexican batteries responded with balls, grapeshot, and canister of their own, and at least one more organized assault was attempted, again repelled by the rebels. The battle raged for two hours until a full retreat was ordered. The attackers fell back out of rifle range, dragging their dead and wounded with them.
Santa Anna’s force took the worst of it, with two men killed and six wounded. But he had gained the information he needed. The rebels might be an unruly bunch, but they were good shots, as their reputations suggested; they were well entrenched in a superior position; and they could put up a fight. They clearly would not be overwhelmed by a few weary battalions.
Nine days earlier, while at the Rio Grande, His Excellency had written his secretary of war, José María Tornel, to tell him that Béxar would be taken within fifteen days. The town was in Mexican hands once more—that much was true. But that ownership was in name only as long as the rebels held the Alamo. They constituted not only an impediment but a personal embarrassment. The longer the enemies lived, the more the fame and honor of the Mexican army, and Santa Anna himself, were compromised. And his army’s provisions were running out, no new supplies had arrived, and the town had been stripped bare. For more than one reason, he could not afford to remain in Béxar another two weeks.
Santa Anna decided that he could no longer wait for Gaona to arrive with the heavier cannon, which were only twelve-pounders in any case. He dispatched a messenger back down El Camino Real to find the First Infantry Brigade, carrying orders to immediately send Gaona’s three best battalions—the Aldama Permanente, the Toluca Activo, and the crack Zapadores—ahead to Béxar under the command of the senior colonel, Francisco Duque. The weaponry would wait.
After this heavy skirmish His Excellency wrote Tornel again: “Up until now they have shown themselves contemptuous, confident of the strong position that they maintain, and basing their hopes upon the great resources of their colonies and of the United States of the North. However, they shall soon be finally disillusioned.”
In the meantime, he seized upon an unexpected pleasure. During the morning’s fighting, in one of the houses, Castrillón had found the widow of a Mexican soldier and her attractive daughter. The defiant woman told the general that they had no other place to go, and that they were not afraid. Later, when Castrillón told El Presidente of his encounter, Santa Anna expressed a desire to see the girl. Castrillón declined to act as procurer for his commander, but Miñón, untroubled by such scruples, agreed to do it. When he delivered Santa Anna’s message, the woman refused to allow Santa Anna any contact with her daughter unless sanctified by marriage. Miñón reported this to his commander in chief, then told him of a man under his command, a well-educated rascal capable of all sorts of tricks—including the impersonation of a priest. Santa Anna gave the order to proceed. The
soldado
borrowed vestments from a priest in town, along with everything else necessary to perform a wedding according to the rites of the Catholic Church. The “nuptials” took place in Santa Anna’s quarters on Main Plaza. Afterward, the already married president retired in the company of his young “bride.”
A norther blew in about nine p.m. and increased the misery of the troops erecting two more batteries several hundred yards southeast of the Alamo. The Matamoros Battalion set up camp close by, and the Dolores Cavalry Regiment was posted near the hills further east. That night a fresh group of skirmishers was sent against that side of the fort, but grapeshot and small arms fire sent the
soldados
back to their entrenchments. By eleven thirty p.m. most of the Mexican army had retired for the evening.
L
ATER THAT NIGHT
, Travis sat in his quarters along the west wall with pen in hand, the beginnings of a letter to Sam Houston in front of him. Throughout the compound rebels wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled around fires or found a place out of the elements to grab what sleep they could. Even worse off were the sentries on the walls and the pickets outside in the ditches, who had to somehow stay awake and alert. There were now more troops surrounding the Alamo than there were the previous day. Trenches were under construction on the Alameda, to the southeast, and a large force of infantry had moved into them.
Earlier that evening, at a council of war held by the garrison’s officers, it was decided that another messenger would be sent to Fannin at Goliad. No one volunteered, so a vote was taken. Juan Seguín was elected to undertake the dangerous mission. Travis objected—no one in the garrison knew the Spanish language or Mexican customs better, and he might be needed if they were to treat with the Mexican commander again. But his arguments were overruled, and at eight o’clock, after bidding good-bye to his friends and comrades, Seguín sneaked out the main gate and crawled on all fours to the
acequia
east of the fort, then up the waterway and into Béxar. It had been arranged for one of his Tejano horsemen, Antonio Cruz y Arocha, to meet him with a horse. With any luck Seguín would make his way through the Mexican lines and out of town.
The day had been long and exhausting, but Travis’s men had acquitted themselves well—“Indeed, the whole of the men who were brought into action conducted themselves with such heroism that it would be injustice to discriminate,” he wrote to Houston. But he decided to single out a few, with one receiving the highest praise: “The Hon. David Crockett was seen at all points, animating the men to do their duty.” He mentioned several other defenders, including his aide, Charles Despallier, and rifleman Robert Brown: the two had sallied out the main gate and burned the straw-thatched
jacales
and houses around the Plaza de Valero, reducing the cover for any assaults from that direction. Not a single man had been lost; the only injuries were a few scratches from flying pieces of rock. But they were still outnumbered ten to one, if only the able-bodied were counted, and the enemy entrenchments were encroaching. It was bitter cold, and they were running out of firewood. The situation called for another stirring appeal. He ended with this:
I have every reason to apprehend an attack from his whole force very soon; but I shall hold out to the last extremity, hoping to secure reinforcements in a day or two. Do hasten on aid to me as rapidly as possible, as from the superior number of the enemy, it will be impossible for us to keep them out much longer. If they overpower us, we fall a sacrifice at the shrine of our country, and we hope posterity and our country will do our memory justice. Give me help, oh my country!
Once more he ended his letter with: “Victory or Death!” The race for reinforcements was on.
“This Time You May See Some Blood”
We have provisions for twenty days for the men we have; our supply of ammunition is limited…. If these things are promptly sent and large reinforcements are hastened to this frontier, this neighborhood will be the great and decisive battle ground.
W
ILLIAM
B
ARRET
T
RAVIS