The vast majority of Mexican attackers fell to friendly fire in the dark and confusion, and not fire from the Alamo’s defenders. Indeed, in total less than half a dozen artillery pieces—perhaps only two from the church guns, one protecting the lunette at the main gate, and two at the north wall—were likely the only cannon fired in defense of the sprawling perimeter that surrounded the nearly three acres of the Alamo’s vast interior space—a most feeble result from the garrison’s greatest advantage and strength, its artillery arsenal. Indeed, Sergeant Nunez, of Dúque’s column, was surprised how, “the cannonading from the Alamo was heard no more” and hardly before it had begun.
Along the southern perimeter, the cannon at the palisade and in the lunette only unleashed perhaps as few as two shots because it was yet dark and no targets existed to fire at, after Colonel Morales column veered away to the west to escape the wrath of the lunette’s artillery pieces. This left the entire southern perimeter free of attackers in its immediate front. At the stone house located just outside the southwest corner of the Alamo, Morales’ relative handful of men continued to remain behind cover to maintain a steady fire for some time, ensuring that the defenders’ attention on the south remained on them, while Santa Anna’s knock-out blow was delivered along the north wall. 52
One of the strangest developments during the assault, unforeseen by either side, was that the Alamo’s presumably strongest asset—its artillery—had an unintended detrimental effect on the defensive effort by causing two unplanned maneuvers: first, by driving Romero’s column to the northeast corner of the weak north wall, which was the decisive point; and second, by forcing Colonel Morales’ column to a new position, the stone house, from which it eventually assaulted and overran the Alamo’s southwest corner. 53
By focusing the defenders’ attention on the south wall entrance, thanks to Morales’ attack, prospects for the attackers’ success were now only heightened at the north wall. Perhaps from the moment that he was awakened, therefore, Travis, like those soldiers who failed, either deliberately or because they weren’t ready, to rush to the walls, realized that all was lost. In fact, Travis had accepted the Alamo’s fall for some time, and now it was happening ever so swiftly right before his eyes.
Even in the darkness, he might have seen how relatively few of his men had followed him in making the long, lonely sprint to the north wall. After having been caught by surprise, most of the Alamo garrison was yet consumed by a swirl of confusion, if not panic, after having awakened to a nightmare. Simply no time existed for officers to either rally the garrison or get them into their assigned defensive position to offer a solid resistance along the northern perimeter. More soldados gained the north wall’s top with relative ease and without encountering serious resistance, rendering moot the limited artillery fire and Colonel Travis’ best efforts. What relatively few riflemen reached the north wall could not sustain effective fire, and they were vulnerable targets to the massed throng below them, in having to expose themselves when firing over the wall. 54 The confusion among the newly awakened garrison members could not have been greater by this time. De la Pena recalled how all was pandemonium, “with desperate, terrible cries of alarm in a language we did not understand.” 55
With north wall resistance relatively light, meanwhile, Cuba-born General Juan Valentín Almador, a sprightly age 55, led his cheering soldados of the Toluca Battalion of Dúque’s column over the top of the north wall, where the three light cannon of Fortin Terán were manned by only a few gunners. Most significant, he and his triumphant men then opened a “postern gate” to allow a flood of attackers to pour into the darkened plaza. Because of the weak defense and the relatively short duration of the fighting inside the compound this morning—perhaps as little as twenty minutes—this gate was opened much sooner than has been described or acknowledged by historians, who have embraced the traditional concepts of the mythical Alamo without question. The early opening of the gate allowed for a much quicker entry into the plaza for hundreds of Santa Anna’s men, negating the disadvantage of the relatively few number of ladders. Therefore, more soldados gained entry into the Alamo through this gate rather than scaling the wall. Prior intelligence of the Alamo’s interior would have bestowed knowledge of this gate and its exact location—almost certainly another reason why the north wall was the principal objective this morning.
Other key officers who played leading roles in overrunning the north wall were General Pedro Ampudia, Colonel Esteban Mora, and Lieutenant Colonel Marcial Aguirre. Surging forward with Almador’s troops in overrunning the battery and the north wall, Colonel Romulo Diaz de la Vega led his Zapadores into the plaza. In part because fratricide had been so high and due to their discipline, these reserves of Sappers and Grenadiers, or granaderos, also led the way over the north wall and through the gate. Quite literally, the floodgates to the Alamo were opened for more than 1,000 troops of three columns. Now, according to Joe, the Mexicans came over the north wall and through the gate in a perfect herd “like sheep.” 56
For all practical purposes, the struggle for possession of the Alamo was over hardly before it had begun, primarily because the surprise had been so complete. For instance, the undeniable reality of this no-win situation was revealed by the words of Enrique Esparza, whose father, Gregorio, was one of the few Tejano defenders from San Antonio. The thorough surprise of the Alamo garrison was evident when Enrique’s mother, who was awakened by shouting outside—she evidently had been sleeping in a building close to the north wall or near a window, and had to yell to her sleeping husband in the artillery barracks—that the Mexicans were already pouring over the walls: “Gregorio, the soldiers have jumped the wall. The fight’s begun.” 57
A short time later, Enrique Esparza related the confused horror that faced the newly awoken garrison: “We could hear the Mexican officers shouting to the men to jump over [the north wall and] It was so dark that we couldn’t see anything.” 58 Thereafter, as Enrique continued, the bitter “end came suddenly and almost unexpectedly and with a rush. It came at night and when all was dark [and] Our men [had no chance because] Their ammunition was very low. That of many was entirely spent. Santa Anna must have known this, for his men had been able . . . to make several breeches in the walls [while] Many slept. Few there were who were awake. Even those on guard besides the breeches in the walls dozed.” 59
No disciplined volleys were forthcoming from the Alamo defenders, because they had been unable to wake up, organize in time, and reach assigned defensive positions to mass their already limited firepower. There was no real organized or united resistance of any duration along the north wall during the initial phase of the steamrolling Mexican attack. This development can explain why the reserves of the Sapper Battalion lost the lowest number of both officers and men—only 1 officer killed and 3 wounded—of any attacking unit despite leading the breakthrough over the wall. Since the Sappers helped to lead the way over the top and even into the plaza, fratricide might well have claimed these officers. This very likely was also the fate of many of Dúque’s officers, such as Captain Don José María Macotela, who fell mortally wounded not long after he took over for Colonel Dúque who also was felled. Both Macotela and Dúque were wounded “in the vicinity of the enemy parapets” along the north wall, while Mexicans below them were firing upward and around them blindly in the night, resulting in what de la Pena lamented as the “destruction among ourselves” in the blackness. 60
A man of considerable pride, vanity, and a strong sense of honor, Colonel Travis evidently already felt the shame of having failed as the Alamo’s commander in terms of rallying the defenders and galvanizing a solid defense, which was now clearly doomed. In fact, he had been long consumed by a “certain fatalism,” while possessing a strange sense of being about to be ”sacrificed,” as if having a portent of his own death. 61
Not only was the Alamo already all but overrun, but relatively little resistance had been offered to the Mexican tide. For a man like the Byronic-m
inded Travis, who considered himself an honorable Southern soldier-gentleman, this prospect of an inglorious defeat was the ultimate humiliation, and quite unlike what he had ever read in Walter Scott’s romantic novels. What was now happening at the Alamo had nothing to do with romance or the heroic. Santa Anna had brought a merciless reality to the young Alamo commander in the pitch-blackness. Now there were no knights on horseback, chivalric gestures between gentlemanly opponents, beautiful ladies in waiting, and heroism for the ages.
Instead, in the blinding darkness and gut-wrenching panic, there were now only hundreds of vengeful Mexicans swarming forward to exterminate every American and Texan soldier they could find. Like his dazed men who were overwhelmed as much as he was, Travis had realized for some time that his fondest images of a by-gone age had been mere illusionary fantasies. Instead, as revealed in his March 3, letter, Travis had all but accepted that he and his men were about to be “sacrificed to the vengeance of a Gothic enemy” bent on the garrison’s total annihilation.
Travis sensed that his good name and reputation—things that he cherished above all else—would now be stained forever, because he had failed to save his men or the Alamo, forever to be blamed for the failures of prior leadership. In the future, the Travis name would be linked to defeat, humiliation, and disaster. Most galling for him personally was that all of his frantic pleas for assistance had been ignored. Both the government and people of Texas, for which he was about to sacrifice himself, had let him down, abandoning him and his handful of soldiers to their tragic fates. Colonel Travis had earlier despaired of this thorough abandonment, understanding how he and his command were about to be killed for no strategic gain or reason. Therefore, at this time, he was angry, frustrated, and disillusioned by a garrison of mostly volunteers who had long wanted to surrender, the apathy of Fannin and Houston who had not come to their aid, the equally uncaring Tejanos of San Antonio, and the selfish people of Texas who failed to assist him in his darkest hour.
He also had to grapple with his own failure to come to terms—in fact, insulting Santa Anna—when there was still the possibility of an honorable capitulation. Travis was very likely haunted by his own leadership failings that doomed himself and the garrison. And he doubtless also felt abandoned by those men who failed to rush to the north wall with him. He had long been concerned that the disgruntled garrison would surrender instead of fighting to the end like heroes of yore, and now that bitter suspicion appeared evident.
In his mind’s eye, Travis had most likely envisioned the climactic battle for the Alamo taking place in broad daylight, the Mexican army ponderously assembling in all its colorful splendor under the calm gazes of a garrison armed and ready at their posts along the walls. Then the fort’s artillery would blast huge gaps in the approaching enemy’s ranks while the garrison’s Long Rifles would deal steady execution. He had probably never imagined a sneak attack in the dark that would breach the walls before the garrison hardly had a chance to fight. And now he found himself practically alone, with no one to command, and no one to witness his heroism save hundreds of swarming Mexican soldados bent on his destruction.
Therefore, by this time, with the searing notes of the Deguello floating across the plain, and with the red no-quarter flag waving high on this night in hell, Travis evidently felt that he had only one recourse— suicide. As he stated in his March 3 letter, he was only too aware how Santa Anna’s attackers were “fighting under a blood-red flag, threatening to murder all prisoners,” eliminating any possibility of his survival.
In keeping with Travis’ Byronic temperament, he almost naturally would have considered suicide, with Mexicans closing in and perhaps even surrounding him by this time, especially if he had fallen wounded and become helpless. It would have been a rational act under the circumstances. The last thing that Travis now desired was to experience the ultimate disgrace and humiliation, if he was taken alive by the Mexicans, who were now all around him. Capture, torture, and death were now all but inevitable for Travis, and he knew it, if taken alive. And like no other garrison member, Travis was a marked man to Santa Anna. Because of his early defiance to Mexican authority and with his reputation as one of the most militant “War Hawks” in Texas since the early 1830s—a fact known even in Mexico City—Travis was one of the most wanted men north of the Rio Grande. As revealed in his letter, a revengeful Santa Anna was yet enraged over Travis “insulting” replies to him and refusal to come to terms.
At the age of only 26 and despite his short military career, Travis was perhaps the most infamous man at the Alamo, and as a strange fate would have it, also its commander. Since the siege’s beginning, in what became a duel of wills between two opposing leaders, Santa Anna was especially eager to do away with the troublesome young man from Alabama as much for personal as for political and military reasons. He had become “furious” with Travis’s failure to surrender. Therefore, a stern example had to be made and an unforgettable message sent to other Texas revolutionaries in the form of Travis’s death. As part of his overall plan to subjugate Texas, Santa Anna planned to execute all rebel leaders, and Travis would provide the initial example. An ugly death for young Travis would remind every rebel in Texas of the high price paid for those who stood in Santa Anna’s way. Therefore, Travis quite correctly expected that “at the very least, he and Bowie would be executed if they surrendered” or were captured by this merciless “Gothic” foe from the heart of Mexico. And by now, it had become painfully clear to one and all that the Alamo was in the process of being completely overwhelmed before an adequate defense could even be attempted. 62
Knowing that his fate was sealed as much by his own actions and decisions as anything else, Travis had already made his peace with God well before the Alamo’s fall. He had already completed his will the previous year. And at the Alamo, as if obeying a dark portent and seemingly knowing his final fate was near, Travis had also taken off his beautiful black cat’s eye ring, placed it on a string, and tied it in a loop to place around the neck of 15-month-old Angelina Arabella, the daughter of Pennsylvania-born Captain Dickinson and Susanna WilkinsonDickinson, both of whom had migrated to Texas in 1831. Travis seemed to know that he was about to meet his Maker. 63
What could no longer be denied at the north wall was that nothing could now stop the raging tide of Mexican soldiers, nor now save the garrison or the Alamo. Consequently Travis very likely became convinced that only one option was left for him by this time, especially if surrounded and trapped on the gun platform of Fort Terán with most defenders either dead, wounded, or having abandoned the exposed position. With suicide, he would at least achieve a partial personal victory— like the defiant Jewish rebels at ancient Masada—in denying the victorious enemy his capture, with its consequent humiliation, torture, and inevitable execution. When about to be overwhelmed, and knowing that the Alamo was already doomed, Colonel Travis, ever-impulsive and melodramatic to the end, instead very likely committed suicide by pulling a flintlock pistol out of his belt and shooting himself in the head, “to escape the cruelties of the enemy,” as shortly reported in the Commercial Bulletin.
This suicide scenario was affirmed by numerous contemporary accounts that Travis killed himself either with a shot to the head or by stabbing himself. However, according to the best evidence, Travis most likely shot himself in the manner of most firearm suicides of the 19th century, with a pistol shot to the forehead. Indeed, Francisco Antonio Ruiz, the alcade of San Antonio, would later personally view Travis’ body, and wrote how he had been “shot only in the forehead.” An account in the March 28, 1836 New Orleans Post and Union—one of the earliest primary documents to describe Travis’ suicide—by Andrew Briscoe, a 24-year-old Mississippian and member of the War Party who owned a store in Anáhuac, Texas, held that “Travis, to prevent his falling into the hands of the enemy, shot himself.” 64
The most likely scenario that prompted Travis’ suicide was that he fell wounded, lay virtually helpless in or around Fortin de Ter
án, and knew capture was inevitable with soldados now all around him. Additionally, if wounded, Travis might well have believed the common rumor that the copper balls used by Mexican troops were poisonous, leading to a slow, agonizing death. In this scenario, Travis would have unknowingly followed the example of a respected German captain of Napoleon’s Grande Armée, when a small rearguard force was making a stand against the pursuing Russian tide in a redoubt outside Vilna during the retreat from Moscow. When a Russian cannonball cut off both his legs, this capable young officer then calmly took out a pistol in front of his men and “blew his brains out.” Other Napoleonic-era commanders likewise committed suicide by flintlock pistol shots in the head to avoid capture and to deny the enemy the triumph of killing them. 65
What has been overlooked is the fact that Travis’ suicide—if it indeed occurred—was completely understandable under the circumstances and fully accepted at the time. E.N. Grey wrote from Gonzáles on March 11, 1836 how “Travis killed himself.” 66 Even General Houston more than once emphasized that Travis committed suicide. He had first learned as much from two Tejano rancheros—Anselmo Bergara and Andrés Barcenas—from present-day Floresville, Texas, who reached Gonzáles from San Antonio not long after the Alamo’s fall. They had gathered as much intelligence in San Antonio as they possibly could from Mexican soldiers and civilians. At Goliad on March 11, as learned by Grey, Houston and others, what these two Tejanos presented was a “surprisingly accurate report” to Houston, in the words of historian Richard G. Santos. However, modern historians have casually dismissed this initial report of Travis’ suicide, and all of those that followed, regardless of the source.
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