by H. W. Brands
The Texans remembered things differently. Ehrenberg found himself in the middle of negotiations when it was discovered that none of the Mexican officers spoke much English and none of the Texans much Spanish. But Mexican captain Holzinger, like Ehrenberg, spoke German, and so the parley was conducted largely in German, with Holzinger interpreting to the Mexicans and Ehrenberg to the Texans. As Ehrenberg recalled, “After a long debate, Fannin finally agreed to the surrender of all our arms, but we were to retain our private property and were to be sent by ship from Copano or Matamoros to New Orleans, where we would be set free on condition that we gave our word of honor not to fight any longer against the present government of Mexico.” Ehrenberg added parenthetically: “This promise would not have been a serious obstacle to us, since in Mexico governments changed almost every year.”
Barnard, who apparently learned the terms of the surrender along with the rest of the Texans, remembered the events much as Ehrenberg did. “After some parley,” Barnard said, “a capitulation with General Urrea was agreed upon, the terms of which were that we should lay down our arms and surrender as prisoners of war; that we should be treated as such, according to the usages of civilized nations; that our wounded men should be taken back to Goliad and properly attended; and that all private property should be respected. These were the terms that Colonel Fannin distinctly told his men on his return had been agreed upon, and which was confirmed by Major Wallace and Captain Dusaugue.” Barnard corroborated, for the most part, Ehrenberg’s recollection regarding transport to New Orleans. “We were also told, although I cannot vouch for the authority, that as soon as possible we should be sent to New Orleans under parole not to serve any more against Mexico during the war with Texas. . . . It seemed to be confirmed by an observation of the Mexican Colonel Holzinger, who came to superintend the receiving of our arms. As we delivered them up, he exclaimed: ‘Well, gentlemen, in ten days, liberty and home.’ ”
Barnard remembered that Fannin, upon returning to the Texan lines, sat down to record the terms of the surrender. What Fannin wrote confirmed—confusingly—both versions of the story.
Art. 1st. The Mexican troops having placed their artillery at a distance of one hundred and seventy paces from us, and having opened fire, we raised a white flag. . . . We proposed to them to surrender at discretion, and they agreed.
Art. 2nd. That the wounded and the commandant Fannin shall be treated with all possible consideration upon the surrender of all their arms.
Art. 3rd. The whole detachment shall be treated as prisoners of war and placed at the disposition of the supreme government.
Camp on the Coleto between the Guadalupe and La Bahia. March 20, 1836.
B. C. Wallace, commandant. I. M. Chadwick, adjutant to the commandant.
Approved: J. W. Fannin, Jr., commanding.
To this statement was appended a note:
Because, when the white flag was raised by the enemy, I made it known to their officer that I could not grant any other terms than a surrender at discretion, without any other condition, and this was agreed to through the officers stated above; the other petitions which the subscribers of this surrender make will not be granted. I told them this, and it was agreed to. I must not, nor can I, grant anything else.
José Urrea
Fannin, apparently, tried to have things both ways—as did Urrea. On their own, the two could have agreed on a capitulation that would have guaranteed the rebels their lives and perhaps passage out of Texas. Urrea made his feelings on this subject apparent to the Texans, as he admitted afterward. “They doubtless surrendered confident that Mexican generosity would not make their surrender useless, for under any other circumstances they would have sold their lives dearly, fighting to the last.” But Urrea wouldn’t countenance anything on paper except an unconditional surrender. Fannin knew his men couldn’t continue the battle without inviting a massacre, and he didn’t want to be responsible for another Alamo. He wrote the terms he wanted into the surrender document, including the contradiction—in light of announced Mexican policy—between surrender at discretion and treatment as prisoners of war. And he almost certainly stressed the latter in explaining the capitulation to the men. He was in no position to prevent Urrea from adding his own interpretation at the end of the document, and he was in no mood to share that interpretation with his men, lest some of them reject the agreement and resume fighting on their own, jeopardizing the safety of everyone else. In other words, Fannin was throwing his men on the mercy of Urrea without telling them so.
Implicit in Fannin’s action was a belief, or a hope, that Urrea could persuade Santa Anna to soften his policy toward the rebels. Santa Anna wasn’t admitting at this point how many men he had lost at the Alamo, but Urrea must have known that the Mexican army couldn’t stand many more such victories. A policy of no quarter might terrorize the Texans into abandoning their revolution, as Santa Anna obviously intended, but it might instead have the opposite effect, turning every battle into an Alamo. The rebel army was small, yet the reservoir from which the Texans were drawing recruits—the United States—was vast. A war of attrition hardly favored Mexico. Besides, paroled prisoners returned to New Orleans could serve as harbingers of defeat, discouraging other volunteers from taking up the Texas cause.
Urrea knew better, however, than to argue policy with his commander. Instead he appealed to Santa Anna’s soldierly sense. In his report of the victory at Coleto Creek, Urrea praised the performance of his men, citing “the bravery and daring of the gallant officers and soldiers who, with so much honor and courage, added luster to the characteristic valor of the Mexican army.” He went on to explain that, as formidable as they were in battle, they were equally magnanimous in victory. “Immediately upon the surrender of the enemy, their fury was changed to the most admirable indulgence. This show of generosity after a hotly contested engagement is worthy of the highest commendation, and I can do no less than to commend it to Your Excellency.” Urrea told how his men had taken three hundred prisoners, who were currently “all in my power.” He wasn’t so bold as to say so directly, but his implication—that Santa Anna wouldn’t want to stain this great victory by ordering the execution of the prisoners—was clear.
Santa Anna grew livid on receiving this message, probably less from Urrea’s failure to follow orders than from his presumption in trying to push the commander into a corner. The whole point of the no-quarter policy was to kill the rebels on the battlefield, where such killings could be rationalized as occurring in the heat of the fight. By taking prisoners, Urrea had maneuvered Santa Anna into having to give a positive order for a mass execution, which Urrea apparently believed Santa Anna wouldn’t do.
Perhaps Santa Anna hesitated. Perhaps he weighed magnanimity for its political and diplomatic effects, if not for its own merits. But if he did so, he never let on. He claimed to be bound by Mexican law and by a higher duty. “Law commands, and the magistrate has no power to mitigate its rigor; for him it is to put it into execution,” he said afterward. “If, in the execution of law, no discretion is allowed a judge, how can a general in a campaign be expected to exercise greater freedom? The prisoners of Goliad were condemned by law, by a universal law, that of personal defense, enjoyed by all nations and individuals. . . . How could I divert the sword of justice from their heads without making it fall upon my own?” Santa Anna conceded that he thought the law just; but even if it wasn’t, he was not to blame for carrying it out. “Can there be greater blindness than to impute the crime to the dagger and not to the hand that wields it?”
His orders to the field were less philosophical. Following the surrender, the Texan prisoners were marched back to Goliad and imprisoned in their old fort. Colonel Nicolás de la Portilla had charge of them; Urrea, doubtless fearing that his ploy regarding the prisoners wouldn’t work, and not wishing to have their blood directly on his hands, proceeded to Victoria, which he occupied. Santa Anna wrote straight to Portilla, knowing that while a triumphant general might tr
y to disobey orders, a mere colonel wouldn’t dare.
I am informed that there have been sent to you by General Urrea two hundred and thirty four prisoners. . . . As the supreme government has ordered that all foreigners taken with arms in their hands, making war upon the nation, shall be treated as pirates, I have been surprised that the circular of the said government has not been fully complied with in this particular. I therefore order that you should give immediate effect to the said ordinance in respect to all those foreigners who have yielded to the force of arms, having had the audacity to come and insult the republic, to devastate with fire and sword, as has been the case in Goliad, causing vast detriment to our citizens, in a word, shedding the precious blood of Mexican citizens, whose only crime has been their fidelity to their country. I trust that, in reply to this, you will inform me that public vengeance has been satisfied by the punishment of such detestable delinquents.
Santa Anna’s order, which the commander in chief copied to Urrea as a reminder of who was in charge, caused Portilla real anguish. “At seven in the evening I received orders from General Santa Anna by special messenger, instructing me to execute at once all prisoners taken by force of arms agreeable to the general orders on the subject,” he wrote in his diary for March 26. “I kept the matter secret, and no one knew of it except Colonel Garay. . . . At eight o’clock on the same night, I received a communication from General Urrea by special messenger in which, among other things, he says, ‘Treat the prisoners well, especially Fannin. Keep them busy rebuilding the town and erecting a fort. Feed them with the cattle you will receive from Refugio.’ What a cruel contrast in these opposite instructions! I spent a restless night.”
The prisoners slept better than Portilla that night. Fannin’s decision to surrender had outraged many of his men, with the Greys nearly mutinying at the prospect of handing themselves over to the authors of the Alamo. “Their indignation soon broke out in violent protests,” Ehrenberg wrote. “After upbraiding Fannin for his weakness, they reminded him of the disastrous fate which had overtaken the other volunteers who had sought safety in a truce with the treacherous Mexicans.” But the opponents found themselves in a minority. “Their words roused no response among their comrades. Many of the volunteers in Fannin’s army were tired of soldiering. They resented the restraints of military life and were therefore not averse to a capitulation which held out to them the hope of an early return to the United States. . . . My companions and I saw very quickly that Fannin’s move in favor of peace met with the approval of the majority of his troops, so that further opposition would have been futile.” Yet they continued to display their dissatisfaction. One man named Johnson was especially upset. “Unable to control his anger, he gnashed his teeth, clenched his fists, and stamped furiously on the ground.” A short while later, the Texans’ powder wagon exploded in a brilliant burst of light and with a concussion that knocked down prisoners and guards on all sides. As luck would have it, the injuries were relatively slight, except to one man, Johnson, who died. Ehrenberg concluded that Johnson had touched off the powder deliberately, preferring instant death to the uncertainty of remaining a prisoner.
The march back to Goliad calmed the fears of some of the prisoners but not of all. Barnard heard Captain Dusaugue, the translator in the surrender negotiations, solemnly declare, “I am now prepared for any fate,” after an encounter with one of the Mexican officers. “The words and his manner struck us with surprise,” Barnard recalled, “and we asked if he had ascertained by anything the captain had said that treachery was meditated. He said no, but repeated his former remark.” About that time, the Texans and their guards were wading across the San Antonio River. Darkness had fallen, and fatigue and inattention were overtaking the guards. “The idea struck me that here was a chance for escape, by silently dropping into the water while the guard and the captain were on the other side and from the darkness could not see me,” Barnard said. “In two or three minutes I would have floated beyond their reach, and being a good swimmer could then easily escape.” But before Barnard could make up his mind to move, the guard approached and the moment passed.
Barnard and the other American physicians were separated from the rest of the prisoners and made to tend the Mexican wounded, after which they were allowed to treat the Texans. For them, with something useful to occupy their time, the imprisonment was not especially unpleasant. Other prisoners were added to the Coleto group, including William Ward and the remainder of the Georgians, captured after their flight from Refugio. Fannin and his adjutant, Chadwick, were taken to the coast at Copano, evidently to arrange transport to New Orleans. They returned on Saturday, March 26. “They were in good spirits and endeavored to cheer us up,” Barnard wrote. “They spoke of the kindness with which they had been treated by the Mexican Colonel Holzinger, who went with them, and their hopes of our speedy release. Fannin asked me to dress his wound, and then talked of his wife and children with much fondness until a late hour.” Fannin’s optimism was heartening. “I laid down to rest this evening,” Barnard wrote, “with more pleasure and happier anticipations than I before had allowed myself to indulge in.”
Captivity weighed more heavily on most of the other prisoners. Fatigue, crowding, and hunger were the principal complaints. “Several of my comrades were so exhausted that they slept standing, for the crowded state of the prison prevented us from lying down,” Ehrenberg recalled. “A few of our smaller companions who could sit down enjoyed greater repose than the others. But even then they could not remain in their sitting position very long, for the atmosphere grew so close that squatting on the floor was bearable for a short time only.”
During the first few days the men had almost nothing to eat. They grew restive in their hunger; some suggested that they would die better trying to escape than slowly starving. Ehrenberg thought he detected a design in the withholding of food. “The cannon in front of the door were loaded and the Mexicans who stood by held lighted wicks in their hands. It was evident that any rebellion on our part would end only in blood and death. I firmly believe that the enemy’s plan was to starve us into rebellion and then to massacre us when we tried to secure our rights by force. Such conduct would have given a very plausible excuse to Santa Anna and his colleagues for our deaths.”
If this indeed was the plan, not all the Mexican officers got the word. A herd of cattle was brought in, and the prisoners were allotted several ounces of beef per man. Some managed to cook their cuts over small fires fueled by wood stripped from the walls of the building that housed them; others ate their meat raw. The meal didn’t cure the hunger of the men, but it eased the desperation that might have provoked an uprising. On subsequent days the prisoners were allowed to purchase tortillas from the Mexican soldiers in exchange for personal effects and items of clothing. By the time they reached the prisoners, the tortillas were “about as tough as leather,” Ehrenberg said. “But we were all so hungry that we were glad to eat them.”
At one point Mexican colonel Holzinger pulled his fellow Germans among the prisoners aside, with an offer that they abandon the Americans and join the Mexican army. They rejected the offer, Ehrenberg most indignantly. “It was mere nonsense to talk of belonging to different nations when feeling and misfortune made us one,” Ehrenberg wrote. “Nothing stood between us now. We were no longer English, German, or American; we were Texans.”
As Texans they were summoned from their quarters on Sunday morning, March 27. “Grey clouds hung over the horizon, and the air was hot and sultry,” Ehrenberg recalled. The prisoners were told to make ready to march. Some asked where they were going but received no reply. The Mexicans wore parade uniforms, which seemed odd, and none carried knapsacks or other gear for a journey.
“Mexican soldiers met us on either side as we came out of the main entrance,” Ehrenberg wrote. “They were drawn up in two lines, one man behind the other, so that we were closely guarded on both sides when we marched forward.” The prisoners numbered about four hundred, the gua
rds almost twice that many. The Texans expected to take the road to the coast, but they were directed toward Victoria instead. “The motive of this unforeseen change of plans gave us food for meditation.” The mood grew more ominous with each step. “The Mexican soldiers, who were as a rule very talkative, were unbearably silent; our men were grave; the atmosphere hot and close.”
