by H. W. Brands
At once Santa Anna was taken to Houston, who lay beneath an oak tree resting his ruined ankle. Between Houston’s pain and Santa Anna’s chagrin and fear—news of his capture had raced through the Texan camp and drawn the angry and curious to witness the encounter between the opposing commanders, with most of the Texans clamoring for vengeance—the interview was strained. If Houston was tempted to yield to the popular judgment, he resisted the temptation. His was not a vindictive personality; besides, he reckoned that Santa Anna would be more useful alive than dead. And anyway, as one who had spent the last two months trying to impress his army with the need for discipline and observance of military forms, he insisted on hewing to protocol in dealing with his defeated enemy.
Nicholas Labadie, present at the interview on account of being a doctor and able to speak Spanish, recalled Houston asking, “General Santa Anna, in what condition do you surrender yourself?”
Santa Anna responded, “A prisoner of war.”
Houston said, “Tell General Santa Anna that so long as he shall remain in the boundaries I shall allot him, I will be responsible for his life.”
Santa Anna’s spirits revived at learning he’d live another day. And with his reviving spirits he regained some of his characteristic audacity. “Tell General Houston that I am tired of blood and war, and have seen enough of this country to know that the two people can not live under the same laws,” he said. “And I am willing to treat with him as to the boundaries of the two countries.”
Houston must have smiled inwardly at this boldness. Until the day before, Santa Anna had held that the Texans were nothing but pirates, to be lawfully exterminated by any means possible. Now he declared himself weary of war and convinced that the Texans must have their own country. How much of Santa Anna’s history Houston knew is open to question; the Texan general might or might not have been aware of Santa Anna’s battlefield conversion to Mexican nationalism in 1821 or his sudden embrace of republicanism two years later. But Houston certainly entertained doubts about the sincerity of Santa Anna’s belief that Texas must be independent.
So he put Santa Anna off. He explained that he was a military commander and nothing more; it was for the civilian government to negotiate treaties.
What Houston didn’t say but certainly realized was that Santa Anna couldn’t speak for the Mexican government. Or more precisely, he might speak for the Mexican government but the government wouldn’t have to listen. Captured commanders, by virtue of their capture, lose their commands. Whether the same principle applied to captured dictators, Houston couldn’t say. But he required little imagination to suppose that the Mexican government would disavow any agreement made by Santa Anna under duress, or that the middle of the rebel camp, with the Texan rank and file screaming for his head, counted as duress.
Even so, Santa Anna could provide something more valuable than paper assent to Texas independence. The bulk of the Army of Operations remained in the field. General Filisola’s command was the closest and might arrive at San Jacinto in a day or two. General Gaona was approaching from the northwest. Farthest but largest was General Urrea’s force. Houston appreciated that catching Santa Anna’s army asleep had been a stroke of luck, one he couldn’t count on repeating. But with the hostage’s help, he might not have to. Santa Anna was probably egocentric enough to believe that no other Mexican general could win where he had lost. Or perhaps he was insecure enough not to want the experiment made. In any case he understood, without Houston’s saying it, that his life would be forfeit in the event of an attack.
Santa Anna’s thoughts seem to have anticipated Houston’s. When Thomas Rusk, also present, pointed out that Filisola was drawing near and the Texans would soon have to fight him, Santa Anna responded, “No, I will order him to return.”
Rusk had a better idea. “Order him to deliver up himself and his army as prisoners of war.”
“Ho!” said Santa Anna (again according to Labadie’s recollection and translation). “He will not do it. He will not do it. You have whipped me. I am your prisoner. But Filisola is not whipped. He will not surrender as a prisoner of war. You must whip him first. But if I give him orders to leave the limits of Texas, he will do it.”
Houston judged that Santa Anna was right. Surrender was too much to ask of Filisola and the others, but withdrawal wasn’t. Houston listened carefully as Santa Anna dictated a dispatch. “Since I had an unfortunate encounter with the small division operating in my vicinity, as a result I am a prisoner of war of the enemy,” Santa Anna explained to Filisola. “In view of this, I command Your Excellency to order General Gaona to countermarch to Béxar to await my orders, which Your Excellency will also do with the troops under your command. Likewise direct General Urrea to withdraw his division to Guadalupe Victoria.” In a separate letter to Filisola that complemented this order, Santa Anna asserted that much depended on the general’s swift compliance. “I recommend to you that as soon as possible you carry out my order concerning the withdrawal of the troops since this is conducive to the safety of the prisoners, and in particular that of your most affectionate friend and companion who sends you his deepest regards, Antonio López de Santa Anna.”
Santa Anna’s order placed Filisola in a quandary. By no stretch of military custom was he bound to obey an order dictated from captivity. But Filisola had to assume that Santa Anna would eventually be released; if the Texans had intended to kill him, they probably would have done so by now. To disobey would put Filisola on the wrong side of a man not known for forgiveness. At the same time, though the news of the San Jacinto debacle hadn’t reached the Mexican capital yet, when it did it doubtless would inspire Santa Anna’s enemies there, who would ask searching questions of a general who abandoned the Texas campaign simply because his superior lost one battle.
The prospect of retreat appealed to some in the Mexican army but angered others. “A few hours before, we thought only of flying to avenge our companions and our general-in-chief,” José Urrea wrote. “And now the first rumors of turning our back upon them in their misfortune began to be heard. Such a sudden change could not but arouse extreme feelings of despair and dismay, of shame and indignation.” The idea of retreat struck Urrea as bizarre. “My division at that time was in the finest condition. Each soldier could hold up his head proudly, for up to then they had met only victory in every encounter with the enemy. . . . Everyone, even to the last soldier, was convinced of our superiority and of the worthlessness of the enemy.” To be sure, Houston had beaten Santa Anna. But in doing so he had given away his location. “Everything seemed to point, therefore, to a concentration of our forces in order to march upon him and repair the defeat suffered by our vanguard.”
José de la Peña agreed, as did a majority of the junior officers. De la Peña and the others hoped Urrea would act on his anger. “Most of the army would have followed him gladly to rectify the disaster at San Jacinto, had he wanted to place himself at their head,” de la Peña wrote. “Several of us officers, indignant to learn that our disgrace was to be consummated, invited him to do so.” De la Peña recalled the dictum of Napoleon (the real one) that retreat almost always cost more than advance, that steadfastness was the surest route to victory. De la Peña was certain that victory still awaited Mexican arms. “Doubtless we would have achieved it, had there only been a commander who would have led us into it and who could have appraised the advantages to be gained by not showing the enemy our backs. We would have conquered had there been among those in charge a single one desiring glory, who could have foreseen the renown that would have been his if he had taken that resolution, for which no great heroism was necessary. General Urrea seemed destined to play this brilliant role, and everyone pointed to him as the best suited to carry it out.”
But Urrea let the laurels pass. When Filisola made clear that he would comply with Santa Anna’s order, and the other generals fell in line, Urrea swallowed his indignation and did so, too.
Politics played the largest part in Filisola�
��s decision, but logistics entered as well. Lacking Santa Anna’s political and emotional investment in the Texas campaign, Filisola felt more acutely the problems of supply that confronted the Army of Operations. His lines of communication and transport were stretched long and thin, and, especially with the boost in rebel confidence from the victory at San Jacinto, they were alarmingly vulnerable to enemy attack. Moreover, though Houston’s scorched-earth strategy hadn’t prevented Santa Anna from pressing forward with his regiment of hundreds, it severely hampered Filisola’s army of thousands. He wondered if he could even make it back to Mexico, let alone sustain himself in Texas. Finally, Filisola couldn’t ignore the prisoners of war, including Santa Anna, who remained at the mercy of the rebels. To resume the attack risked six hundred lives.
Afterward, when the Mexican government called him to account for his conduct in Texas, Filisola defended his decision to retreat. “Should it become necessary that I forfeit my life,” he said, “I shall deem myself more than fully repaid by having been instrumental in saving the lives of 600 unfortunate prisoners and perhaps that of 2,500 other companions-in-arms who would very likely have perished, if not at the hands of the enemy, as a result of the rigors of the climate, the season, and hunger.”
Filisola’s retreat hardly settled the issue of Texas independence. The rebels had won the latest battle, but the war continued. Until Mexico conceded defeat, the Texans must prepare for further invasions.
Yet Filisola’s retreat bought the rebels breathing space, which was more than Houston had enjoyed for months, and he made the most of it. The Mexican ball that blasted his ankle left shards of bone embedded in the flesh; these invited infection, which spread up his leg and threatened gangrene or septicemia. No surgeon in Texas possessed the skill and equipment to perform the operation that would save Houston’s life. Labadie and the other medics told Houston he’d better get to New Orleans. In mid-May he sailed from Galveston.
Santa Anna hoped to leave for Mexico shortly thereafter. The Mexican general’s charm never served him so well as in the weeks following his defeat. It kept him alive in Houston’s camp, and it caused the Texas government to promise his release. President Burnet and Santa Anna signed a treaty by which the latter, “in his official character as chief of the Mexican nation,” acknowledged “the full, entire, and perfect Independence of the Republic of Texas.” The Mexican army would retire across the Rio Grande, and Santa Anna, on his “inviolable parole of honour,” would not resume hostilities against Texas. In exchange, Burnet and the Texas government guaranteed Santa Anna’s life and agreed to transport him to Veracruz, “in order that he may more promptly and effectually obtain ratification of this compact.” Commissioners from Texas to Mexico would negotiate final terms of peace and a treaty of amity and commerce.
Burnet had little besides Santa Anna’s word that he would do what he promised once he reached Mexico. And in fact Santa Anna had no intention of making more than a pro forma effort, if that, on behalf of his agreement with the Texans. “I did promise to try to get a hearing for the Texas commissioners,” he said later. “But this in itself did not bind the government to receive them, nor if they were received did it have to accede to all their pretensions. . . . I offered nothing in the name of the nation. In my own name I pledged myself to acts that our government could nullify.”
Yet Santa Anna had a knack for making the unlikely plausible. He avowed that he’d learned his lesson in Texas and wished, for himself and his country, to move on. Anyway, he argued, he was the only one who could make peace stick in Mexico. No one else had the stature to acknowledge defeat. Whether or not it was in his own interest to return to Mexico, it was in the interest of Texas for him to do so.
Unfortunately for Santa Anna, his persuasiveness didn’t reach beyond his voice and personal presence. Burnet prepared a boat to take him south, but even as he did so, volunteers from the United States continued to arrive in Texas. Two hundred reached Velasco on the very day that Santa Anna was embarking. Frustrated to learn that the fighting was over—which, among other consequences, jeopardized the land bounty they had been promised—the volunteers vented their anger by crying for the blood of the beast of the Alamo and Goliad. Burnet, who hoped to continue in Texas politics, acceded to the popular will so far as to order the prisoner ashore.
Santa Anna was stunned. He had already composed a farewell letter to the Texans. “My Friends,” he said, “I have been a witness to your courage in the field of battle, and know you to be generous. Rely with confidence on my sincerity, and you shall never have cause to regret the kindness shown me. In returning to my native land, I beg you will receive the thanks of your grateful friend.” Now it appeared his “friends” were going to kill him. From the baying on the beach, he was sure his time had come. “I immediately wrote to Mr. Burnet an official communication which I concluded by saying that I was determined not to leave the ship alive,” he recalled. Better to die by his own hand, he reasoned, or by a swift bullet aboard than to be torn asunder by the mob. Only on receiving assurance that his person would be respected and his confinement continue no more than a few days did he allow himself to be taken off.
He survived the landing, but his imprisonment stretched from days to several weeks. Nor was he safe behind bars. “Every private felt called to assassinate me,” he remembered. “On the 27th of June a pistol was fired at me through a window near my bed and almost caused the death of Colonels Almonte and Nuñez. Finally, on the 30th of June, orders were issued for our removal from Columbia”—to which the prisoners had been taken lest they be seized by lynchers on the coast—“to Goliad where we were to be executed in the place that Fannin and his men had been shot.”
Houston had saved Santa Anna after the battle of San Jacinto; now it was Stephen Austin’s turn. On July 1 Austin arrived back from the United States. Following its promising start in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, Austin’s diplomatic mission had stalled on the Atlantic seaboard. The Texans’ long delay in declaring independence deterred Congress and the Jackson administration from supplying official support, and the grim news from the Alamo and Goliad frightened bankers and others who might have tendered financial backing. The bad tidings also discouraged Austin personally. “Desolation it seems is sweeping over Texas,” he wrote. “My heart and soul are sick.” Yet having come so far—in time, distance, and effort—he refused to surrender hope. “My spirit is unbroken. . . . Texas will rise again.” When Austin learned that Texas had indeed risen at San Jacinto, sooner than expected, he hailed the victory as a sign from heaven and immediately turned west. “Much more now depends on a correct course and union at home, than on any thing else,” he wrote Mary Holley. “Nothing shall induce me to leave home again until all is settled there.”
The first thing to settle was the war. Austin had dealt with the Mexican government during the entirety of its existence, and he knew how hard it was to get a decision out of Mexico City. Guessing that recognizing Texan independence would be more difficult than anything Mexico had ever done, Austin reasoned that something novel was necessary to spur Mexican decision making. He arranged for Santa Anna to approach Andrew Jackson. The American administration still hadn’t recognized Texas and so wouldn’t treat officially with its representatives, but it might treat with Santa Anna on Texas’s behalf. Santa Anna, by making himself thus useful, could escape his appointment with the firing squad. Santa Anna explained how he learned of the scheme: “Stephen F. Austin, whom I had befriended in Mexico, moved by my unfortunate condition, told me that if I would write a letter to General Jackson flattering the hopes of the Texans, even if I only used courteous phrases, the very name of that official, from whom Texans expected so much and whom they heard with the greatest respect, would restrain popular fury and facilitate my salvation.”
Austin helped Santa Anna draft a letter to Jackson. Santa Anna wrote that his expedition to Texas had been “in fulfillment of the duties which a public man owes to his native country and to honor.” Th
e American president could certainly understand this. The fortunes of war, however, had prevented Santa Anna’s doing justice to country and honor, instead delivering him as prisoner to Jackson’s protégé, “Don Samuel Houston.” Santa Anna gratefully acknowledged the respect Houston had accorded him, and he recounted how he and Houston had agreed on the withdrawal of Mexican forces. He explained that he had been on the verge of departing for Veracruz to pursue a definitive settlement when “some indiscreet persons raised a tumult, which obliged the authorities forcibly to land me and again to place me in close confinement.” This setback had revived the war spirit in Mexico, with the result that General Urrea—as Santa Anna and the Texans had lately learned—was returning north with a fresh army.
All this prefaced the main point of the letter: “The duration of the war and its disasters are therefore necessarily inevitable unless a powerful hand interpose to cause the voice of reason to be opportunely listened to. It appears to me, then, that it is you who can render so great a service to humanity by using your high influence to have the aforesaid agreements carried into effect.” Santa Anna asked Jackson to join him in negotiating a settlement of the Texas war. “Let us establish mutual relations, to the end that your nation and the Mexican may strengthen their friendly ties and both engage amicably in giving existence and stability to a people that wish to figure in the political world.” With Santa Anna’s help, President Jackson and America could rely on Mexico. “The Mexicans are magnanimous when treated with consideration. I will make known to them, with purity of intentions, the reasons of conveniency and humanity which require a frank and noble conduct, and I do not doubt they will adopt it when conviction has worked upon their minds.”
