The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation

by James Donovan

  Bowie had been instructed to destroy the fortifications in town. Houston wanted to abandon the post completely. But as Bowie and Neill examined the improvements and repairs to the Alamo, which Jameson was supervising, and heard the would-be engineer’s ambitious plans to further fortify it, a peculiar thing happened. The old mission, and the twenty or so cannon there, began to work their spell.

  It was an age of artillery. Napoleon, the most brilliant military genius of the time, had been an artilleryman—“Great battles are won with artillery,” he had asserted. More than two decades earlier, the Corsican had won a series of great battles with his trailblazing use of large, mobile batteries, and his triumphs had been extensively reported and analyzed; everyone in the Western world with an interest in the military was familiar with his innovative strategy. As Neill and Bowie watched Jameson position the tubes in the Alamo, the conclusion seemed inevitable: to yield such an impressive collection of cannon seemed a shame. To forget the fundamental wisdom of artillery defense, to underestimate the stubborn punch provided by fortified artillery, would be foolhardy. Had not the Ottomans in the walled port city of Acre, in the Holy Land, withstood Napoleon’s army for two months in 1799 with only mud-and-stone walls and plenty of large cannon until reinforcements had arrived?

  Another factor was the citizenry of Béxar. Most of them, particularly the more influential among them, had cooperated with the Texians. Some of the Tejano merchants had generously given their entire stocks of goods, groceries, and beeves for the use of the garrison, and Neill estimated that 80 percent of those remaining would join the rebel cause if reinforcements arrived soon. Besides, Bowie felt sympathy for the people of the town that had once been his own. Santa Anna was likely to treat the bexareños as Arredondo had in 1813, and as he had treated the Zacatecans in June: with murder, rape, and pillage of rebels and innocents alike. On February 2, Bowie wrote Smith: “The citizens of Bexar have behaved well… [and] deserve our protection and the public safety demands our lives rather than to evacuate the post to the enemy.” Bowie was clear about the stakes as he saw them:

  The salvation of Texas depends in great measure in keeping Bejar out of the hands of the enemy. It serves as the frontier picquet guard and if it were in the possession of Santa Anna there is no strong hold from which to repell him in his march towards the Sabine…. Colonel Neill and myself have come to the solemn resolution that we will rather die in these ditches than give up this post to the enemy.

  Bowie was not requesting permission. He and Neill, and whichever men elected to follow their lead, would remain in Béxar. “Our force is very small… the returns this day to the Comdt. is only one hundred and twenty officers & men,” Bowie finished. “It would be a waste of men to put our brave little band against thousands,” he wrote. Indeed, it would be suicide. But, Bowie explained, they would hold the line at Béxar if need be. If they did not fight Santa Anna here, the Mexican army would drive into the colonies—including Bastrop, just a few days’ march up El Camino Real, where Neill lived with his family. His grown sons, Samuel and George, could fend for themselves—the previous summer, they had participated with their father and ninety other Texians in a grueling six-week Indian expedition, and had just signed up with Robert Williamson’s newly formed ranging company. But that left his wife, Harriett, and their teenage daughter alone at home. For Neill and Bowie alike, the defense of Béxar was personal as well as patriotic.

  DESPITE THE ADDITION OF THE volunteers under Bowie and Patton, the post was woefully undermanned, and the situation soon became worse as more than a dozen men prepared to leave over the following week or two upon receiving their discharges; to their minds, a couple of months was more than enough time to serve without pay, provisions, or proper clothing. Others took a few days’ leave to explore the area for the land bounties they would receive, further thinning the garrison’s ranks. Some would return. Some would not.

  For months rumors had been circulating of hundreds or even thousands of Americans marching to Texas to fight for their cousins’ cause, and when they arrived, the men could leave—at least those with homes. When the call for volunteers had been made in December to keep possession of Béxar, it was assumed that they would stay only until enough regulars arrived to man the post; many of the men had only expected to remain a month. The recent news of a Mexican army marching into Texas made the need for regular troops even more imperative. Yet significant reinforcements remained but a deflated hope.

  Not that those who stayed were taken lightly by their leaders. “All I can say of the soldiers here is complimentary to both their courage and their patience,” Bowie wrote. Only a few had ever served as regulars, but most had faced Mexican troops. Many of them had fought at Concepción, endured the fifty-five days of the siege on Béxar, and participated in skirmishes almost daily. If supplied, they would “fight better than fresh men,” observed Jameson in a letter to Houston.

  Beyond their lack of training and their mixed experience was a quality that Bowie could not have missed—one that certainly played a significant part in his decision, supported by Neill, to pit this “brave little band” against Santa Anna’s army. These men, volunteers and regulars alike, shared a flinty attitude that heartened their officer corps. These men had not run off with Grant and Johnson on their will-o’-the-wisp expedition, nor had they left, as some had, after the long weeks of neglect at the hands of their government. They had stayed. And they would keep on staying.

  The voice of one defender spoke the mood of all: “If we succeed, the Country is ours. It is immense in extent, and fertile in its soil and will amply reward all our toil. If we fail, death in the cause of liberty and humanity is not cause for shuddering. Our rifles are by our side, and choice guns they are, we know what awaits us, and are prepared to meet it.” Regulars would surely arrive, and shortly. But if they were on their own, so be it.

  EIGHT

  The Napoleon of the West

  If I were God, I would wish to be more.

  GENERAL SANTA ANNA

  Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, known to most simply as Santa Anna, would be elected president of Mexico a total of eleven times over a period of twenty-two years. His chief appetites were cockfighting, gambling, women, the trappings of luxury, and the acclaim of the Mexican people. To that end, he liked nothing in the world better than riding through the streets of Mexico City to a hero’s welcome after rescuing his beloved young nation yet again. And now he wanted nothing more than to crush the Anglo colonists in the remote northern province of Texas who had rebelled against their new country—no, he did want more than that: only the execution of every last one of the traitors would satisfy him.

  Santa Anna was born February 21, 1794, in the mountain city of Jalapa, in the coastal province of Veracruz, one of seven children. His parents were criollos—people of Spanish descent born in Mexico—and solidly middle-class. The elder Santa Anna earned a good living as a mortgage broker, and occasionally served in minor government positions, which provided enough income to send his son Antonio to school. The boy displayed a lively intelligence, but he cared little for schoolwork, and never learned to speak or read any language but his own. He was branded a troublemaker, and when he was in his teens his parents opted to apprentice him to a merchant firm in the nearby port city of Veracruz. Antonio quickly realized he did not want to be a shopkeeper. Instead, in 1810, at the age of sixteen, he joined the colonial Spanish army as an underage infantry cadet. Nine weeks later, the Mexican War of Independence began.

  After transferring to the cavalry, where he chased rebels and Indians, he made lieutenant at the age of eighteen. Young Santa Anna had found his calling. A year later, in 1813, he marched hundreds of miles with General Joaquín de Arredondo and an eighteen-hundred-man royalist force across the arid desolation of northern Mexico. Their destination: that charming town of San Antonio de Béxar, scene of an uprising against colonial rule led by a mixed group of Mexican revolutionaries an
d Anglo filibusters who had defeated a Spanish army and boldly proclaimed themselves the Republican Army of the North. Arredondo, the commandant of Mexico’s Eastern Interior Provinces, had become brutally efficient over the last few years at suppressing revolts.

  Young Santa Anna—at 5 feet 10 inches, tall for a Mexican of the time—was handsome, save for his slightly bulbous nose, and had a saturnine expression that women found appealing. He fell in love with Texas and wrote of “the beauty of its country,” one that “surpasses all distinction.” On a sweltering August day, the royalist troops faced a force of fourteen hundred insurgents in the four-hour Battle of the Medina, twenty miles south of town, and emerged victorious, killing six hundred rebels and suffering only fifty-five dead and 178 wounded. One hundred prisoners, including many Americans, were put to death, and on the way to Béxar two hundred more were captured, most of whom were shot. Others were hunted down as far east as the Trinity River, almost 250 miles away. In all, an estimated thirteen hundred republican rebels lost their lives.

  Arredondo conducted executions for several days. The heads of those he had killed were placed in iron cages and left on display in Military Plaza for most of the year. The victors occupied the town for two months, executing sympathizers, humiliating women, and enjoying the pleasures and plunder due a conquering army. Arredondo cited Lieutenant Santa Anna for bravery.

  The junior officer would never forget his first major battle, a complete triumph, which further solidified his emotional attachment to Texas—along with a robust contempt for the Anglo barbarians from the north. Under Arredondo, he also learned the best way to crush a rebellion: destroy every enemy, whether through battle or execution.

  Over the next several years Santa Anna spent much of his time pursuing outlaws, Indians, and insurgents. He received several citations and eventual promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the beginning stages of the War of Independence, Santa Anna fought against the rebels. But a few months before independence from Spain was achieved in September 1821, he declared his loyalty to Agustín de Iturbide, the royalist officer turned rebel and the future emperor of Mexico, and in return was made a full colonel. After victories at Córdoba and his hometown of Jalapa, he led the rebel troops who drove the Spanish out of the city of Veracruz. Iturbide rewarded him with the rank of brigadier general and the post of commandant of the province of Veracruz, where he used his position to acquire extensive landholdings, including a large estate just outside Jalapa.

  Santa Anna was a born opportunist, and over the next few years his allegiance changed with Mexico’s constantly shifting winds of fortune. In 1822, he aligned himself with a group of military leaders working to oust Iturbide, eliminate the monarchy, and transform Mexico into a republic. The plan succeeded—Iturbide abdicated, was exiled to Italy, then attempted to slip back into the country, only to be caught and executed by a firing squad—and the result was the liberal constitution of 1824, which emphasized civil rights and a federalist system of government. Santa Anna soon retired and spent the next few years at his hacienda, Manga de Clavo. In 1825 he married a lovely eighteen-year-old with a large dowry. He would father several children by her, and more by other women. (He was notoriously unfaithful: four women would claim to have borne him a total of seven illegitimate offspring.)

  In 1828, out of retirement and serving as governor of Veracruz, he, along with other generals, staged a coup that ousted the sitting president, Manuel Gómez Pedraza, and established the liberal-minded Vicente Guerrero in office. Santa Anna resumed his duties as governor. Then, in the summer of 1829, twenty-seven hundred Spanish troops landed on the eastern coast of Mexico near Tampico, three hundred miles up the coast from Veracruz. Here was a situation begging for boldness, and Santa Anna obliged. Without authorization, he mobilized a militia of two thousand men and set sail for Tampico, where he defeated the Spaniards after a few weeks of sporadic fighting. He led his troops to Mexico City, where he received unanimous adulation as the Hero of Tampico. Later that year, the vice president, Anastasio Bustamante, led a conservative coup that unseated and executed Guerrero. The unpopular Bustamante was ousted in 1832, and in April 1833, Santa Anna was elected president of Mexico on a platform of peace, prosperity, and “an end to hatreds.” He was hailed as a federalist hero throughout the country—even the colonists in the far-off province of Texas passed resolutions expressing their approval of “the firm and manly resistance made by the highly talented and distinguished chieftain” and pledged their “lives and fortunes on the support of the distinguished leader who is now so gallantly fighting in defense of civil liberty.” Failing to attend his own inauguration, he retired to his hacienda in Jalapa and left the tedium of administration to his vice president, Valentín Gómez Farías.

  But Farías’s democratic federalist reforms, particularly laws curtailing the power of the Church and the army, turned those institutions, and the conservative upper class, against him. Santa Anna, sensing a change in the political weather, gained the backing of those groups and switched sides. In April 1834 he returned to Mexico City and deposed Farías, then dissolved the Congress and began canceling Farías’s reforms in favor of a strong centralist government. In Santa Anna’s opinion, the struggling young country was not ready for democracy: “A hundred years from now my people will not be fit for liberty,” he said. “Despotism is the proper government for them.” With no legislative branch to regulate him, he exercised the powers of a dictator. When a new Congress reconvened in January 1835, almost all its delegates were military or clerical, ready to do his bidding.

  As Santa Anna concentrated authority in Mexico City and abrogated civil and states’ rights, a wave of outrage and discontent spread across much of Mexico. Open rebellion occurred in two places: Zacatecas and Texas. Leaving a puppet ad interim president to administrate in his place, His Excellency crushed the uprising in Zacatecas, three hundred miles northwest of Mexico City. Rumors began to spread that his next mission would be to punish the Anglos in Texas. On the last day of August 1835, the government sent a circular to officials throughout the republic.

  The colonists established in Texas have recently given the most unequivocal evidence of the extremity to which perfidy, ingratitude, and the restless spirit that animates them can go, since—forgetting what they owe to the supreme government of the nation which so generously admitted them to its bosom, gave them fertile lands to cultivate, and allowed them all the means to live in comfort and abundance—they have risen against that same government, taking up arms against it under the pretense of sustaining a system which an immense majority of Mexicans have asked to have changed, thus concealing their criminal purpose of dismembering the territory of the Republic.

  The statement went on to say that “the most active measures” would be taken to rectify this “crime against the whole nation. The troops destined to sustain the honor of the country and the government will perform their duty and will cover themselves with glory.”

  His Excellency’s dislike of Americans was made even more apparent a few months later. In Mexico City, before an audience of several foreign ambassadors, he talked at length of the United States’ involvement in Texas. The shocked U.S. consul, who was also present, wrote to President Andrew Jackson soon after:

  He spoke of our desire to possess that Country, declared his full knowledge that we had instigated and were supporting the Revolt, and that he would in due Season Chastise us for it. Yes Sir, he said chastise us: he continued, I understand that Gen. Jackson sets up a claim to pass the Sabine, and that in running the division line, hopes to acquire the Country as far as the Naches. “Sir,” said he, (turning to a Gentleman present) “I mean to run that line at the Mouth of my Cannon, and after the line is Established, if the Nation will only give me the Means, only afford me the necessary Supply of Money I will march to the Capital, I will lay Washington City in Ashes, as it has already been done.”

  The meaning and intent were clear. Exactly how His Excellency would accomplish his mis
sion—with a depleted army and an empty treasury—was not.

  SANTA ANNA HAD NEVER BEEN a brilliant strategist, but he led from the front, much like his idol, Napoleon—indeed, he surrounded himself with books, images, and statues of the French leader. The confidence and loyalty this inspired in his men usually overrode his lack of wisdom, for his admiration of the French military genius did not extend to serious study of his strategy: he aped the Corsican’s style but not his substance. Yet he was also a superb and energetic organizer, and although he was under no obligation to assume command of this army, he chose to lead the campaign personally—for his country, for the glory it entailed, and likely because he did not trust anyone else to do it right. Santa Anna had never relished the humdrum duties and routine of the administrative path. These he left to others, while he sought the spectacular. He “preferred the hazards of war to the seductive and sought-after life of the Palace,” he would write later. His audacity was the quality his countrymen found most alluring, and the main reason why he would be reelected several times.

  Years of civil war, rebel uprisings, and political turmoil had left the nation almost penniless, and the military had suffered more than most institutions. Legislation during Farías’s short-lived federalist regime had downsized the army by demobilizing many veteran units. The standing army was dismayingly small. On paper the military counted 38,715 men, 18,219 of them members of the regular army, but the government would only allow 3,500 of those to be assembled for the Texas campaign—the rest might be needed to quell federalist revolutionary activity in central Mexico. That would not be enough.