The Alamo Part 1 The Mission San Antonio de Valero The Alamo Part 2 The Mexican Army The Alamo Part 3 The Texan Defenders On the afternoon of 23 February 1836 General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna rode into San Antonio at the head of the advance elements of his army. His force consisted of some 1,770 Infantrymen, 185 Engineers, 100 Artillerymen and 290 Cavalrymen, a total of 2,292 men in number. The siege of the Alamo was about to begin. In regards to Santa Anna’s beliefs and motivations, there can be little doubt that he was convinced that his campaign to drive the “Texian interlopers and rebels” out of Texas was based, in part at least, on the best interest of his people. The mass surge of foreigners onto Mexican soil was in direct violation of previous agreements and this cannot be disputed. He sincerely believed that it was his responsibility to restore “Mexico to the Mexicans” and this he was committed to do in no small measure. Unfortunately, and as history would clearly indicate, Santa Anna’s purity of purpose and any justifications for his actions would be over shadowed by his cruelty and his inhuman treatment of prisoners of war. No matter how noble Santa Anna’s motives may have been, any creditability to his arguments nor any righteousness of his cause was quickly forgotten when he permitted his troop to rape and pillage the town of Zacatecas for two days, killing 2,500 people in retaliation for their support of the revolution”. Skepticism, mistrust and rage would increase even further when he had seven unarmed prisoners at the Alamo murdered and when he personally ordered the massacre of 442 more unarmed prisoners at Goliad on 27 March. The execution of 30 unarmed prisoners of Captain King’s Georgia Volunteer Battalion at Refugio on 14 March would only increase the resolve of his enemies to resist him and would ultimately lead to the massacre of over 600 of his own men by the Texians following the Battle of San Jacinto on 12 April 1836. The old saying that “the end justifies the means” is not always viewed kindly in history books, especially if the end is not in one’s own favor. By his actions General Santa Anna created a vengeful force that his army, as time would prove, would have to reckon with. To the 189 men that manned the Alamo walls, General Santa Anna was a tyrant and ruthless dictator. They too were convinced of the justification of their mission. Originally they had all come to Texas (except for 6 Tejanos) for the promise of free land, freedom from governmental restrictions and wealth. They were prepared to fight for this new land and the wealth it offered. As Santa Anna slowly surrounded the old mission, in the course of 12 days, all that now gazed out into the pre-dawn darkness, or restlessly slumbered in the chilly night air, knew that their dream of a new found life would be short lived indeed. By the evening of 5 March all of the defenders had to have known that escape was now impossible and that surrender was not an option. Why had only one attempted an escape? What kept the others at the Alamo when escape was possible? Perhaps it was Colonel William Travis’ famous message that was sent out of the Alamo some 12 days of the fatal final assault. It read “To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World--Fellow Citizens and Compatriots………………… I am besieged with a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for 24 hours and have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded surrender at their discretion, otherwise, the garrison is to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly over the wall. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism, of everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a solder who never forgets what is due his honor and that of his country…….VICTORY OR DEATH !” Final Assault The final assault came just before dawn on the cold morning of 6 March 1836. Colonel Francisco Duque’s Column of some 452 men attempted to breach the North Wall, however, his command was ripped apart by deadly canister fire from the artillery pieces placed therein. The attack faltered but Colonel Travis was killed within minutes of the opening attack from a lead ball that smashed into his head and entered his brain. The defiant Alamo commander slumped against the wall, one of the first in the garrison to die that fateful day. Meanwhile, General Perfecto Cos and his Column of 512 men attempted to breach the northwest corner of the Alamo while Colonel Juan Morales and his Column of 127 men attempted to breakthrough the southeast palisade held by Davy Crockett’s Tennessee Mounted Volunteers. Disorder followed at these points as it had at the North Wall. There was no protection from the deadly cannon and musket fire for the advancing Mexican troops who were packed in so tightly together that they could not avoid the deadly hail of lead that decimated their ranks. There were too many bodies and to little space, as the troops either fell victim to the defender’s marksmanship or where trampled to death by their own panic stricken comrades. Chaos prevailed at all of the attack points. As Colonel Romero and his Column of 408 men fought to gain entrance at the eastern defenses near the Convento, General Co’s swung his command to the west side of the mission to avoid the deadly cannon fire. Colonel Juan Morales, having sustained heavy loses at the palisades, took his command toward the southwestern wall and the 18 pound cannon. These opening actions, which took less than 30 minutes, had cost the Mexican Army hundreds of men killed and wounded. General Santa Anna, seeing his initial attacks bog down, and fearing a loss of momentum, ordered Colonel Augustin Amat and his elite Zapadores Battalion (185 men) to support the struggling masses that pressed against the defenders along the North Wall. The gallantry of the Alamo defenders alone could not withstand the sheer weight of numbers or the fear of the attacking enemy of perishing where they stood if they did not continue to press the attack. The swarm of attacking Mexicans bore no resemblance of an organized attack and unit integrity was abandoned in the heat of battle. They simply, and fanatically, pressed forward until they successfully over powered the defenders, breeched the North Wall and poured helter-skelter into the Alamo’s main plaza. From that moment on the outcome of the siege of the Alamo was no longer in doubt. At about the same time, as Colonel Amat’s men were flooding into the Alamo plaza from the north, Colonel Morale’s men breeched the southwest corner of the mission and started streaming into the plaza from the south. The defenders within the Alamo, finding themselves caught in a vicious cross fire, abandoned their cannons and took refuge in the long barracks located just north of the Chapel. Crockett’s men, realizing they could no longer hold their position, abandoned the palisade defense and started a fighting withdrawal toward the Chapel. By now, as the eastern horizon slowly took on the light blue shades of dawn and Mexican troops swarmed into the plaza, the siege had become a series of vicious hand-to-hand contest between isolated groups of desperate men. The Mexican soldiers, realizing that the defenders had not spiked their cannons, turned the abandoned guns around and started methodically blasting the doorways of the long low barracks. Crockett’s men, with the Convento at their backs and Mexican “soldados” bearing in on them from two sides, took refuge in the large Chapel as they prepared to make a final stand. Jim Bowie, laying semi-conscious in his sick bed, was found by Mexican soldiers and viciously dispatched by their bayonets. The Mexican soldiers now turned their attention to the Chapel where the remaining members of Crockett’s command took up positions behind the sandbags blocking the main entrance. Wheeling around the captured 18 pound cannon, the Mexican soldiers blasted away at the sand bag defenses and then rushed head long into the Chapel, overtaking the last half dozen survivors. Within just a little over an hour (estimate) the siege of the Alamo was over and all of the male defenders were dead except for the half dozen prisoners that had surrendered in the Chapel and Colonel Travis’ Black servant Joe. When all resistance had ceased General Santa Anna entered the mission and surveyed the carnage. It was a grizzly scene. The bloody bodies of both the Mexican soldiers and the Alamo defenders, still embraced in deadly hand-to-hand combat, littered the main plaza. In some places the torn bodies lay atop each other three and four high. Considering the short duration final assault, just a little over an hour, the losses were appalling. Angered by the delay to his campaign, and in no small measure, by the defiant arrogance displayed by the “foreign interlopers” during the entire 13-day siege, General Antonio Lopez de Santa ordered the last six unarmed survivors slaughtered where they stood. The bodies of the fallen defenders were then stripped and their valuables divided up among the Mexican soldiers. The naked bodies were then thrown onto carts and taken to Alameda, a grove of cottonwood trees that marked the entrance to the town of San Antonio. Here, two large pyres were built and the bodies, stacked with the kindling wood, were put to the torch wherein they burned for two full days. The Mexican officers, and many of the enlisted soldiers were buried in the town cemetery; however, when space was no longer available the remaining bodies of the Mexican soldiers were unceremoniously thrown into the San Antonio River. And so, as the rising sun heralded a new day in Texas, the Siege of the Alamo was concluded. Conclusion As one seriously studies the siege of the Alamo, as well as all of the other aspects of Santa Anna’s Texas Campaign, there comes a startling revelation. The siege of the Alamo never had to have happen in the first place. Without much effort, Santa Anna could have dispatched a portion of his force to surround the Alamo and to starve the defenders into submission. While this was being done he could have proceeded on to Victoria and easily scattered General Sam Houston’s meager forces with little effort. As for any threat from Colonel Fannin’s 400-man army, General Jose Urrea had some 1,500 men that could have easily destroyed that entity the moment it poked it’s head out of the solid wooden doors of the Goliad fortress. Had all things been done it would have been the death null of the “Texas Revolution of 1836”. So why did General Santa Anna waste 13 days and sustain over 600 casualties to destroy the defiant “rebels” at the Alamo? In March of 1836, the real enemy of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the self-proclaimed Napoleon of the West, was not the crumbling old mission being defended by 183 rag-tag Texians and 6 Tejanos. Nor was it the indecisive and self-serving Colonel James Fannin, who remained safely secluded behind stone walls of the Presidio at Goliad. And it certainly was not General Sam Houston’s army, which at that time was no army at all. The deadliest enemy that faced Santa Anna was hidden deep within man himself. It was his own ego and his hatred for all those that sought to challenge his authority as the supreme ruler of Mexico. And to this enemy he would eventually fall victim on 21 April 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto. All things being said, did those gallant defenders of the Alamo sacrifice their lives uselessly? Not in the least. If the Alamo siege was a blunder, which it certainly was, General Santa Anna himself perpetuated it. Had he had taken prisoners at the Alamo and not massacred those captured after the Battle of Coleto Creek, he would have deprived the victims of both battles of their moral power. He would have definitely prevented Travis, Bowie, Crockett and their followers from transcending mere history and becoming martyrs for the Cause of Texas Liberty. Had he not executed the prisoners, stripped them naked and tossed them into the funeral fires like common trash he would not have provided the revolutionary movement with a host of potent rally symbols nor would he have filled the Texans with a righteous anger and vengeful heart. However, he chose to follow a different course of action which was motivated by a belief in his own invincibility and by his intense loathing of the “infidels” that had the mitigated gall to claimed Mexico’s northern territory as their own domain. But history is a cruel critic of men’s actions, and unfortunately for General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, it would judge him solely on his actions rather then his intensions. But he alone would not be the only one criticized. Both General Sam Houston and Colonel James Fannin would be accused of complacency, at the least, for not coming to the aid of the beleaguered Alamo garrison. The fact that in doing so would have made little difference in the outcome and may well have ended in a worse disaster changes nothing. Even the undeniable fact that the Texians had willfully, and for their own personal gain, exceeded the agreed upon limitations of the 1824 Constitution, would have no effect on how history honors them. Even the diary of Lieutenant Jose Enrique de la Pena, an officer in the Mexican Army, would be challenged. In his writings he would claim that Colonel Travis committed suicide rather then face defeat and that Davy Crockett would surrender rather than die viciously clubbing his Mexican antagonist with his beloved “Betsy”. Whether he is correct in this regard or not matters little, for history is not about to tarnish the images of its heroes by even considering such claims as being in the realm of possibility. And of the 2,292 some-odd Mexicans that participated in the Alamo siege, what can be said of them? Following Santa Anna’s defeat at San Jacinto, over 600 would be mercilessly slaughtered in retaliation for the executions committed at Goliad and the Alamo. Of the suffering, starvation and death they endured during their 350-mile march, in the bitter cold and driving snow from Saltillo to San Antonio, little is ever mentioned. In the face of murderous cannon fire their actions were considered the result of some inherent fear of their superiors and a fanatical devotion to Santa Anna rather then the valor, bravery and tenacity that it was. This view point remains unchanged today. The “soldados” were never given the credit they deserved and are still portrayed as mindless, uneducated and ill-trained peasants rather than the professional veteran soldiers that many of them were. Though led by highly trained and dedicated officers, they are still remembered as a horde of fanatical, cruel butchers, without pity, who “tossed bodies on the ends of their bayonets until blood covered their clothes and dyed them red”. And what of the old Mission San Antonio de Valero; the Alamo? Most of it is now gone. Nothing remains but part of the long barracks and the Chapel, incased in a large city of steel and glass, and surrounded towering shade trees, ponds and neatly cut lawns. It now stands cold and silent, no longer itself but rather a monument, a shrine, to itself. And upon a bronze plaque near the front door of the Chapel one can reverently read the words: Be silent, friend Here heroes died To pave the way For other men Credits Santa Anna’s Texas Campaign by Stephen L. Harfin 3 Days of Glory by Lon Tinkle Three Roads to the Alamo by William C. Davis The Alamo…An Illustrated History by Edwin Hoyt Fall of the Alamo by Robert Onderdonk More Alamo: The Alamo Part 1 The Mission San Antonio de Valero The Alamo Part 2 The Mexican Army The Alamo Part 3 The Texan Defenders The Alamo Part 4 Days of Glory The Alamo: A Rebuttal Of Sorts Back to Dispatch December 2003 Table of Contents Back to Dispatch List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by HMGS Mid-South This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com