Chapter 10
The Siege of the Alamo
SANTA ANNA WAS IMPASSIONED AS HE PREPARED TO ATTACK, but at the Alamo all was serene, unnaturally so. The men even had time to elect two delegates to the next Consultation on March 1 when the issue of independence (or not) would be decided – even though the pivotal vote was about to be cast by Santa Anna.
A few days after Neill took his leave, a full four days after it was learned that Santa Anna was near, Travis first sent a messenger for help to Gov. Smith calling for reinforcements and echoing that he was determined to hold this post “so dearly won” – “as long as there is a man left . . . .”
Gov. Smith responded with unlikely promises of aid.
Now the messengers rode as fast as letters could be written: to Fannin for immediate help, to Houston for 500 men – Regulars, if possible.
By February 20, there were reports that the Mexicans had crossed the Rio Grande and were within striking range. Yet, two days later, on February 22, the Texans decided to throw another fandango. Many Alamo defenders left their posts at the fortress (only 10 guarded the Alamo), while several lookouts in town abandoned their duties for the night. Just about everyone attended a raucous party with dancing and drinking . . . and the fiddlin’ of Davy Crockett, to celebrate the birthday of George Washington: Founding Father, General and first President of the United States. Not attending was Dr. Amos Pollard, who, with many Texans on sick leave (plus his 50 wounded and ill Mexicans to care for), was too busy.
But that same night many Tejanos (Texas-born Mexicans) began to evacuate San Antonio; a tense Travis noted their departure and placed a sentinel in the belfry at the San Fernando church in town.
SANTA ANNA’S MIGHTY ARMY, that same night, unexpected and unheralded, came within eight miles of San Antonio and the Alamo, with only the Medina River to cross. That very night the battle . . . almost began. Santa Anna called for a surprise attack by Sesma’s cavalry – a one-strike conquest of the San Antonio defenders, filled with drink and unaware that the long anticipated war was at their doorstep.
But if Mother Nature conspired to provide mesquite grass for Santa Anna’s hungry horses and oxen, that night she evened the score by providing a sudden drenching rain that caused the river separating the two armies to temporarily rise, preventing the surprise cavalry attack.
The next morning, as the wet Texans arose from their late night revelry, the church bell sounded menacingly: a sentry had spotted what seemed-to-be Mexicans in uniform. Two scouts soon verified the sentinel’s view. Spying the Mexican cavalry, they sped back to alert Travis, who ordered everyone to immediately evacuate San Antonio and race to the Alamo. Forty Tejanos joined the Texans.
As the Texans took up positions at the Alamo, Santa Anna crossed the now-receded river and took San Antonio without firing a shot. So unprepared were the Texans that “one or more Americans residents engaged in trade fled . . . leaving their stores open.” The sick and wounded soldiers of Cós’ army were left in town for their own people now to care for them.
So it was that almost three months after the Texans seized the Alamo, a month after Bowie decided not to destroy the Alamo, two weeks after Travis and Crockett arrived to defend the Alamo – the thirteen day Siege of the Alamo was about to begin.
ROSE SPIED TRAVIS inside the fort on the West Wall, watching the Mexicans marching around in what an hour earlier had been the Texans’ town of San Antonio. Rose climbed to another spot on the same wall to stand alongside Bowie, who now realized that he had failed in his mission. There would be no “run and gun ’em,” no attacks on the enemies supply lines, no killing of the oxen . . . and no destruction of the Alamo weapons. Neither man spoke.
Through a spy glass, Rose could see the cavalry uniforms of the dragoons – the enemy dressed in Napoléonic garb, some of it, Rose learned, discards from the battle of Waterloo: long lances, black leather hats and polished helmets, and dark blue uniforms with gold epaulets. Rose snorted at the poor imitation of the uniform he himself wore as a member of Napoléon’s army. But there was no humor at the sight of Santa Anna’s troops which outnumbered them seven to one, with probably more troops coming since little artillery was in sight.
Jameson had every Alamo cannon loaded, ready to fire, but the enemy was not advancing, only searching the town for Texans and executing various drills, presumably to impress the watchers.
Then suddenly from San Antonio a blood-red flag was hoisted atop the same San Fernando belfry where the sentinel had spotted the Mexicans. A gasp went up from the Alamo defenders who all knew what it meant: No quarter! No surrender! No mercy!
This was an act of dishonor. The Texans had earlier seized this very fort and freed every captive, as they had done at Anahuac and Nacogdoches. Santa Anna was violating the unwritten pact between warring armies to spare those who surrendered.
Travis hastened to answer. “Fire the cannon!” he ordered and a large cannon ball flew through the air towards the enemy . . . though landing far from them.
But almost as the ball was aloft, a bugle from the Mexican side sounded for a parley, and a white flag was hoisted at the same time.
Bowie was furious at Travis for seizing command and firing the cannon, but he was angrier at himself. He finally felt the sensation of fear – if not for Jim Bowie, at least for those in his charge. He was responsible for what would now surely be a massacre. Could he find the courage to save lives by attempting to surrender with dignity to the enemy? Bowie pondered the conflicting messages: A red flag of death, then a white flag of negotiation; No quarter! Then an entreaty to parley. After questioning Rose as to whether he had seen the white flag (he had), whether others had heard the bugle (they had), Bowie decided to try to negotiate the type of surrender the Texans had given Cós. The Travis-Bowie truce was over, as far as Bowie was concerned. On his own, he responded to the Mexicans by sending out Major Jameson as an emissary “under guarantee of a white flag which I believe will be respected by you and your forces.”
Bowie’s message was written on a child’s note paper. He wrote in Spanish to Santa Anna as “Commander of the Army of Texas [Mexican]” from “FORTRESS OF THE ALAMO.” He inquired if “your army had sounded a parley, which, was not heard before the firing of the [cannon] shot.”
The response to Bowie was to deny initiating the parley and to offer the Texans only a humiliating and treacherous surrender:
. . . the Mexican army cannot come to terms under any conditions with rebellious foreigners to whom there is no recourse left, if they wish to save their lives, than to place themselves immediately at the disposal of the Supreme Government from whom alone they may expect clemency after some considerations.
Travis, who moments earlier had fired the cannon on his own, was outraged that Bowie acted on his own, and immediately sent out his own emissary, Albert Martin of Rhode Island. Martin was described disdainfully by the Mexicans as “late a clerk,” perhaps referring to the general store he had operated in Gonzales before he helped fire the “Come and Take It” cannon.
Travis’ message was abrupt and insolent: “If you wish to meet with Lieutenant Colonel Travis, he would receive you with great pleasure.” After Martin received the same rebuff as was given to Bowie, he advised the Mexicans that if Travis rejected their terms, he would signal by firing the cannon again.
Travis’ goal was different than Bowie’s. He needed to be personally rejected by the Mexicans, to use his “humiliation” to spur on the men. Upon receipt of the Mexican ultimatum, Travis delivered one of his rip-snorting speeches, asking his men if they were prepared to surrender their manhood and their country to the enemy. NO! they roared. He further “harangued his men and administered to them an oath that they would resist to the last.” Then he answered the demand to surrender by ordering: “Fire the 18 pounder!” to such cheers as almost drowned out the defiant cannon blast . . . though it again missed the enemy.
ROSE COULD BARELY COMPREHEND what was happening:
Surely Santa Anna had not travelled almost 1,000 miles from Mexico City, arriving at San Antonio with thousands of troops to negotiate with the outnumbered Texans – yet he called for a peace parley . . . and then denied it. Did even the Dictator, he wondered, have to deal with dissension in his ranks? Or, did some of Santa Anna’s officers believe that, of course, an opportunity to surrender would be offered . . . and then learned otherwise? But it mattered not now.
Bowie, who had been ordered to destroy the Alamo but chose to defend it, now awaited the very disaster Houston had predicted – and had sent him to prevent. At the last minute, Bowie had tried to save his men with a parley but that had failed; there was only one chance left: a breakout, an attempt to ride out before the Mexicans could surround the Alamo – except no one had procured horses during the month-long hiatus. Some could ride out on the few horses available (and abandon their fellows) and be chased by dragoons; the others could run on foot, only to die at the end of a lance. In reality, there were few options . . . except to do it Travis’ way.
Travis was satisfied with the situation; a heroic battle for Texas would now ensue.
ON FIRST SIGHT OF THE MEXICANS, Travis had dispatched 16-year old John Smith of Virginia to Gonzales to inform the colonists that the “enemy in large force are in sight. We want men and provisions. . . . We . . . are determined to defend the Alamo to the last. Give us assistance.” The Alamo army was now maybe* 140 troops, another 40 on sick leave, plus over 30 Tejanos.
Now, after the cannon shot, Travis sent a second messenger, this time to Colonel Fannin at Goliad, asking for aid, in a letter signed by both Bowie and Travis.
Then, posting sentries on every wall, Travis suggested the men try to sleep . . . while they can.
Bowie also told Rose to sleep; he’d think of something come morning. He needed rest. He had been feeling poorly for a few days and felt worse tonight – though Rose thought the state of the war might be the reason.
THE NEXT MORNING, THE SECOND DAY OF THE SIEGE, the first Alamo casualty was struck down – not by enemy fire but by disease. Suddenly unable to walk, barely able to stand, Jim Bowie was attended by the fort doctor who found him gravely ill, the cause “of a peculiar nature, not to be cured by an ordinary course of treatment” – probably typhoid fever.
His loved ones having died swiftly of cholera, Bowie understood the medical realities of his time and acted immediately. Magnanimously, he sent for Travis and publicly relinquished the command for which he had fought so vigorously. The leader of the volunteers gave Travis of the Regular Army total authority – so convinced was he that his life was over. Bowie asked only to be “carried to a small room on the south side,” at the entrance to the fort, where he could lie on a cot, out of the way, to be carried out whenever he could help rally the men. In his room, two loaded pistols were placed at his side, his famous knife in a sheath hung from a bed post within his immediate reach.
Travis appreciated Bowie’s decisive move. A real patriot, that one, he reflected.
Bowie’s men spoke words of encouragement and visited him whenever they could. To each other they considered him a dead man, the only question was whether death by disease would precede the bayonet.
Rose was inconsolable, already mourning his great friend who he thought of as his late friend. He also mourned for himself and his comrades: Lt. Colonel “Victory or Death!” was now solely in charge!
But there was a war to fight and each man had his job. “Crockett accepted the most dangerous and exposed part of the wall to defend – the palisade wall on the southeast side of the former church” – the dangerously low wall. Understanding Rose’s loss, Crockett invited the Frenchman to fight alongside him and his Tennessee Volunteers, and at a spot near Bowie’s room; Rose gratefully accepted. The other men assumed their previously assigned positions, some at the cannons, most on the walls with their rifles.
The Texans watched the enemy grow before their eyes: more men, more cannons, better positions. The first night the Mexicans had placed two “light field pieces and howitzers” (all they had at this time because Santa Anna had ridden ahead of his major artillery), and began the bombardment of the Alamo. By afternoon the Mexican artillery was “silenced by the fire of the 18-pounder of the fort.”
On this second day, Travis saw that “a new battery was commenced on the bank of the river, about 350 yards from the Alamo.” None knew that Santa Anna himself, “reconnoitered on horseback, passing within musket shot of the fort.”
That evening, after the first full day of the Siege, the firing ceased and Travis climbed down from the wall, walked into the Plaza and asked all those not on lookout to join him – even Bowie, who was carried out on his cot by Rose and three others. Travis told them he had composed a letter and invited their approval of its contents. Standing alongside the two cannons in the Plaza, in the middle of a raised area surrounded by pickets and stone (where Bowie had stood with Rose, deciding to save the Alamo), Travis demanded attention:
“Boys,” he said, “I am addressing the letter”
To The People of Texas and all Americans in the World
(Yes, Yes, to all the world, tell them all, his troops murmured) Travis looked solemn as he read that part of the letter describing their circumstances:
I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna – I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for 24 hours . . .
Travis looked up and smiled to his assemblage and read proudly
. . . and have not lost a man.
(Cheers erupted, rifles were raised to the sky. You tell ’em Bill.)
Travis again called for silence and continued.
The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are 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 from the walls.
Amid roars of approval, Travis boomed over the roars, speaking each word slowly and deliberately:
I shall never surrender or retreat!
Now pandemonium broke out. Their cause was clear, their commitment bonded, help will come from all over the world.
Travis resumed:
Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism and every thing dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch.
(They will! They will! shouted the Texans)
The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days.
With silence, Travis concluded:
If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country.
With ripples and waves of emotions in reaction to his every word, Travis told his men that he ended his letter
VICTORY OR DEATH
And, Travis added over the cheers, that he underlined the three final words, three times!
The men rushed to Travis to shake his hand and to pound him on the back.
“Is this what you want me to say,” asked Travis rhetorically.
“YES!!!” bellowed the men, committing themselves to VICTORY OR DEATH. None gave any thought to the significance of their cheers and affirmance: they were accustomed to debating and voting on every military decision; yet, without thought or discussion, they had given a vote of confidence to probable death. If even a limited escape was possible, it had to be now. In a day or two Santa Anna would have enough forces to effectively encircle the Alamo. The “voice vote” was to stay . . . and fight . . . and die, but only a few thought on it.
Even as the men were cheering, “another body of Mexican troops, a regiment of cavalry and three battalions of infantry arrived . . . and a regular siege commenced.”
As if to prove that a breakout by a few was possible, in darkness, through the lines of the enemy now numbering many thousand, slipped Albert Martin, Travis’ emissary during the “parlay.” He successfully delivered Travis’ letter, which would be described as “the most patriotic document in American history.”
ON DAY THREE AT 10 AM, “some two or three hundred Mexicans crossed the river below [Travis wrote to General Houston] and came up under cover of nearby houses until they arrived within virtual point blank shot
when we opened a heavy discharge of grape and canister on them, together with a well directed fire from small arms which forced them to halt and take shelter in the houses about 90 or 100 yards from our batteries. The action continued to rage about two hours, when the enemy retreated in confusion, dragging many of their dead and wounded.
During the action the enemy kept up a constant bombardment and discharge of balls, grape and canister. We know from actual observation that many of the enemy were wounded – while we, on our part, have not lost a man.”
Especially commended was the “Hon. David Crockett [who] was seen at all points, animating the men to do their duty.” But there was still a desperate need for reinforcements:
If they overpower us, we fall a sacrifice at the shrine of our country, and we hope posterity and our country will do our memory justice.
“Give me help, oh my country! Victory or Death!”
That evening a squad of Texans slipped out of the Alamo and set fire to the houses the Mexicans had used that day for cover. Later that night, a Council of War selected Captain Juan Seguín, 30, to carry the latest communique to Sam Houston.
JUAN SEGUÍN WAS THE ELDEST SON of the former Alcalde of San Antonio, who Cós removed from office because of his sympathies to the Texans. The father, a member of the Federalist Congress of Mexico, had been one of the authors of the beloved Constitution of 1824.
After the Battle of Gonzales, Juan Seguín raised a company of Tejanos for the Texan assault on the Alamo. He was a scout for Bowie during the Battle of Concepción and participated in the first battle for the Alamo. For his bravery, he was commissioned a Captain in Travis’ Legion of Cavalry.
Seguín was chosen for this mission so that he “might make his own influence and information available” in getting help; also, because he “was of Spanish race and language and well acquainted with the surrounding country . . . more likely . . . to succeed in passing the enemy’s lines.”
Before Seguín left he visited Bowie to bid farewell, but the frontiersman had a high fever and was so disoriented that he barely recognized his friend.
Leaving the Alamo with an aide, Seguín passed through a guard of dragoons, “responding in Spanish to the hail of their sentinel that they were countrymen . . . [then] dashed past the guard at full speed [avoiding] the hurried fire of the troopers [which] was ineffective.”
A COLD SNAP ON DAY FOUR added to the discomfort of both armies. “This morning [a Texan’s diary entry recorded] it was excessively cold for this southern region; yesterday it was summer heat.” By dawn a “cold and penetrating norther began to blow” and “the temperature fell to 39 degrees.”
At dawn, still more Mexican infantry arrived, but “the dragoons [were] barely able to dismount . . . so numbed by the cold that they could barely speak.”
While a handful of Texans “sallied out for wood and water . . . opposed by [Mexican] marksmen,” others were “digging trenches, throwing up earthworks. Crockett and men [were] busy with rifles, rarely missing [their] mark.”
But mostly they waited, waited for Col. Fannin at Goliad only 80 miles away. Only Fannin, who commanded over 400 men, the largest Texas force under arms, was close enough to bring sufficient aid to the Alamo and its defenders.
COLONEL JAMES WALKER FANNIN was the sole officer in the Texas Revolution who had trained at West Point Military Academy. Arriving in Texas in 1834, he fought in the Battle of Gonzales and soon thereafter was a scout with Bowie and fought alongside him at Concepción.
The West Pointer was ordered to “Fortify and defend Goliad,” but Fannin, in unremitting battle with himself, had little energy for the enemy:
I do not desire any command [he wrote to the Governor], and particularly that of chief. I feel, I know, if you and the Council do not, that I am incompetent . . . . I do earnestly ask of you . . . to relieve me and make a selection of one possessing all the requisites of a commander . . . . I would be truly happy to be in the bosom of my family, and rid of the burdens imposed on me.
On the eve of Santa Anna crossing the Rio Grande, he asked to be “release[d] . . . from the army, at least as an officer.”
No incompetent ever so clearly grasped his own incompetence but he was not relieved. Instead more and more duties were heaped upon his head. As Santa Anna prepared to seize San Antonio, Fannin, unable to even decide on the name of his fort, held a “lottery, placing Milam, Defiance and Independence in the wheel.” By lot, the garrison at Goliad was christened “Fort Defiance.” That same day, Travis sent his childhood friend, James Bonham, 29, a South Carolina aristocrat and lawyer, on his first foray to Goliad to ask for help. Fannin was non-committal and Bonham returned without a pledge.
The day the Siege began, after Travis had fired the 18 pounder, Bonham again rode out to deliver a second appeal, the one signed by both Travis and Bowie:
We have one hundred and forty six men who are determined never to retreat. We have but little provisions, but enough to serve us till you and your men arrive. We deem it unnecessary to repeat to a brave officer, who knows his duty, that we call on him for assistance.
Bonham again returned to the Alamo, crossing treacherous enemy lines, this time with assurances that the “appeal of Colonels Travis and Bowie [Fannin said] cannot however pass unnoticed.” Fannin would rescue the Alamo with “about 300 strong and four pieces of artillery.”
Two days later, Fannin’s mighty force left Ft. Defiance and proceeded all of two miles before they gave up.
In attempting to cross the San Antonio river, three of our wagons broke down [wrote a Captain in Fannin’s command] and it was with utmost labor and personal hazard, that our four cannons were conveyed across.
After crossing the river they camped for the night. At a Council of War, the same Captain noted that oxen had strayed off during the night, that there was inadequate food for the trip and inadequate means to move the artillery.
If we proceeded we must incur the risk of starvation, and leave our luggage and artillery behind. The country between us and Bexar is entirely unsettled and there would be but little hope of obtaining provisions and we would be [only] able to carry 12 rounds of cartridges each.
Fannin added that “by leaving Fort Defiance without a proper garrison, it might fall into the hands of the enemy.”
How maddening, if Travis had known the reasons for the fateful decision: the Alamo had cannons and cartridges – what it needed was men. And starvation on a 80 mile trip?
The Goliad Commander who said he could not command was proved accurate. Timidly, he stepped aside and allowed others to vote for inaction . . . and they did, unanimously. They returned to the now-ironically named Ft. Defiance. There would be no help for the Alamo. Fannin did not then, and never would, ride to the defense of the Alamo. But Travis did not then know.
ON THE FIFTH DAY, Santa Anna set a trap, placing seven batteries facing all directions but the east – the road to Gonzales. As that was the only direction in which the garrison would be likely to attempt a retreat, Santa Anna wished to leave a temptation to such flitting, while he prepared to intercept it by forming his cavalry camp . . . east of the Alamo.
There was little fighting this day: the Mexicans organizing their continuously arriving troops; the Texans trying to save ammunition – except for one of them. Days earlier Crockett had made a wondrous shot, slaying a Mexican manning a cannon . . . at a range of 200 yards. This day he spotted Santa Anna on horseback, reviewing his forces; Crockett’s fire sent El Presidente scrambling back to safety.
By nightfall, Travis decided that his earlier message to Fannin deemed “unnecessary to repeat to a brave officer” was worth repeating. Fannin had still not appeared; he sent Bonham out again, this time on Bowie’s unneeded horse, for the third and last time, to ride through enemy lines to plead for help from Fannin.
This was the fifth consecutive day and night that “the enemy bombarded the fort almost incessantly, and several times advanced to the wall, and the men within were so constantly engaged that they ate and slept only at short intervals, while one body of the enemy was retiring to be relieved by another.”
SPIRITS WERE LOW ON DAY SIX – the combination of no news from Fannin, the mood fitting a dreary drizzle. Preventing the enemy from cutting off the water supply for the Alamo was the day’s excitement. The bombardment continued. Crockett had chosen not to lead – but, because of his unrelenting good humor, there was high morale among the men . . . with little to justify it. On this day, there was Davy Crockett playing his fiddle in a duet with the bagpipes of Second Sergeant John McGregor, a native of Scotland and recent resident of Nacogdoches. The musical duel, which took place during lulls in the firing, cheered up the men. McGregor “always won the most noise.”
ON DAY SEVEN, STILL NO FANNIN – OR BONHAM – as the Mexicans moved their positions closer. The cannon fire was ceaseless. Santa Anna, reconnoitering and reorganizing troops, this day smuggled a message into the Alamo, offering amnesty to any Tejano who came out.
That evening, several Tejanos visited Bowie, a man they admired and respected. While many Americans looked down on Mexicans and Tejanos as brown versions of black slaves, Bowie (and Travis) treated them with courtesy and dignity. And Bowie had married one of them.
Having already conferred with Travis, Bowie told them: “All of you who desire to leave here may go in safety.” After all, Bowie thought, lying on his cot during one of his good days, they were not soldiers.
“THE WIND SPRUNG UP [IN THE FIRST MOMENTS OF DAY EIGHT] and blew a gale, accompanied by lightning, thunder, rain and hail” – Mother Nature put in another appearance to applaud the deeds of 32 heroes from Gonzales. Responding to Travis’ first call, they had travelled 70 miles and through an encircled Alamo. At 3 am they emerged ready to fight. It was at Gonzales a mere six months earlier that the fight for Independence had begun; now Gonzales would be represented at the finale. As they slipped through enemy lines, the Gonzales volunteers likely guessed they would not leave alive. Yet they came. One of the group was the indefatigable Albert Martin, who had parlayed for Travis and then delivered his patriotic message “To . . . all Americans in the World.” He, alone of the Gonzales volunteers, was returning to the Alamo. The garrison’s strength was now at about 185, plus remaining Tejanos and those unable to fight.
The Alamo defenders were hysterical with joy to see the Gonzales men. “A miracle,” one cried. “Fannin is coming too!” another joined in, beginning a rumor that encircled the fortress as thoroughly as had Santa Anna’s men. Rose too was elated and rushed to wake Bowie to tell him. By now slipping in and out of delirium, Bowie was just barely able to smile his satisfaction at the news. Rose speculated to his friend that Travis will surely do something dramatic to celebrate.
And Travis did.
By afternoon, using his precious ammunition, he “fired two 12 pound shots at the [San Antonio] house of [Santa Anna], one of which struck the house, and the other passed it.” The Texans cheered.
BY DAY NINE, Mexican cannon balls were now merely an impediment to those on the Alamo walls, competing to be the first to see Fannin riding to the rescue at the head of his troops – and to learn the results of the latest convention.
The men at the Alamo knew that a successor to the last Consultation was taking place at that very moment at Washington-on-the-Bravos, northeast of them, to debate secession from Mexico. Travis’ views on independence were well known to the Convention delegates:
Let the Convention go and make a declaration of independence, and we will then understand what we are fighting for.
On this day, as cannon balls fell on the Alamo like rain, the Convention declared Independence from Mexico:
[O]ur political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended . . . the people of Texas do now constitute a FREE, SOVEREIGN, and INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC . . . .
Sam Houston was chosen Commander-in-Chief of all Texas forces, “both regulars, volunteers and militia.”
But no word of Independence ever arrived at the Alamo, nor did Fannin, nor did the new Commander-in-Chief – only cannon balls.
BY 11 A.M. OF THE TENTH DAY Travis knew they were doomed.
Earlier that day Rose brought Isaac Milsaps, one of the recent Gonzales arrivals, to visit Bowie in his sick room. A native of Mississippi, Milsaps had left seven children, cared for by his blind wife, in order to come to the Alamo. He groused to Bowie of “daily improvement in the enemy position: the Mexicans managed to erect a battery north of the Alamo within musket shot; [that he had] watched the Mexicans drilling just out of range . . . marching up and down with such order . . . [in their] bright red and blue uniforms.” On a more positive note, Milsaps added that “all this very morning” Travis had told him that “Fannin was going to be here early with many men and there would be a good fight.”
But at 11 am, a tall, young man with dark curly hair was spotted on horseback heading for the Alamo. Twice before James Butler Bonham had been sent out with messages, nay pleas, to Fannin to come to their rescue. And twice Bonham had returned, the last time crossing enemy lines at his peril. This third time, a friend had begged Bonham not to return to the Alamo to die; “No,” said Bonham, “I will report the result of my mission to Travis or die in the attempt.”
So, again, Bonham was racing through the now-almost sealed enemy lines, this time in broad daylight, horse at a gallop, head down, dodging musket fire, facing possible death to tell Travis that death was now a certainty.
A collective sigh escaped from the very walls of the Alamo, as the troops watched Bonham returning a third time . . . alone!
Travis greeted his courier when he leaped off his horse. Bonham reported privately to Travis that neither Fannin nor anyone else was coming to their aid, certainly not in time. The childhood friends exchanged a sorrowful glance as Bonham shook his head from side to side. Travis placed his arm on Bonham’s shoulder as they walked away in silence.
Now Travis would send out his final messenger. The same young John Smith, who had delivered Travis’ very first message after the Siege began – and returned, was the last messenger to leave the Alamo. After Travis gave him his final communique, he told Smith that he would fire the 18 pounder three times a day – as long as the Alamo stood. When it went silent, the Alamo defenders would all be dead.
That night Travis visited Bowie in his small room on the south side. Rose was there, placing cold compresses on his friend’s feverish brow.
After inquiring of Bowie’s health, a topic Bowie waived off, Travis voiced optimism: If reinforcements and ammunition are promptly sent, “this neighborhood will be the great and decisive battleground.” He went on: “With 500 men more, I will drive [the enemy] beyond the Rio Grande and I will visit vengeance on the enemy of Texas.” With customary bravado, he insisted that “the power of Santa Anna is to be met here or in the colonies; we had better meet them here.”
Both listeners looked away as Travis spoke. It was too painful to see and hear such transparent self-deception. Travis sensed their awareness of his bluster, sighed a great sigh and admitted that although there have been rumors that Fannin is on the way, “I fear,” he paused, cognizant of Bonham’s news, “it is not true.”
And now Travis prepared for death. First he voiced rage at those who did not come: “I am determined to perish in the defense of this place, and my bones shall reproach my country for her neglect.” Then, after expressing confidence that his men’s “determined valor and desperate courage . . . will not fail them in the last struggle,” he railed, prophetically, at Santa Anna:
. . . although [we] may be sacrificed to the vengeance of a Gothic enemy, the victory will cost the enemy so dear, that it will be worse for him than a defeat.
With wide mood swings Travis changed the topic to his seven-year-old son, soon to be fatherless.
If the country should be saved, I may make for him a splendid fortune; but if the country shall be lost and I should perish, he will have nothing but the proud recollection that he is the son of a man who died for his country.
The two commanders had at times been harsh adversaries but not in these last moments as very private feelings had been expressed by Travis. In their final secluded interlude they bid an emotional farewell.
ON DAY ELEVEN, the Mexicans “commenced firing very early into the North and West walls which the [Texans] did not return.” Travis especially worried about the North Wall which was crumbling.
Up to now the Mexican assault had been a total failure. Shamed, as Santa Anna was, that the Texans had held out for 11 days against his superior forces, disgraced would have been more appropriate had he realized that not one single Texan had been slain, while many Mexicans had perished in the failed assaults. The reason for this failure was Davy Crockett and his Tennessee Company of Mounted Volunteers, who, raised with rifles as children, could hit targets (as Crockett had) 200 yards or more. The enemy, the unhappy Mexican conscripts, fired muskets limited to 70 yards (“and not that accurately at that”). They could never get close enough to fire without being shot down by Crockett and his men – except for the few who had made it close enough to die at the walls of the Alamo. Many a Mexican officer (privately) cursed Santa Anna for riding ahead of the artillery, which necessitated unprotected infantry attacks.
On this day, some grass-starved oxen arrived with still more artillery – though not yet the big guns, which were the heaviest and would arrive last. Nevertheless, Santa Anna would wait no longer! With entrenchments on all sides, Santa Anna called a meeting of his officers to plan the storming of the Alamo. His brother-in-law, General Cós, along with others, favored waiting until all the artillery arrived, arguing that losses would be great if Mexican troops were forced to climb ladders to penetrate the Alamo. In but a few days, he pleaded, when the 12-pounders appeared, the walls would crumble from the assault of the heavy artillery – the cannons now available, he insisted, were not powerful enough. Others proposed simply waiting to starve the defenders out. Santa Anna, however, who believed that victory without significant bloodshed (on both sides) was victory without honor, refused to wait. He gave the order: the final assault to restore their honor . . . would begin in two days . . . on the 13th day of the Siege . . . on Sunday, March 6, 1836!
THE DAY BEFORE THE PLANNED ASSAULT, about two hours before sunset . . . the bombardment suddenly ceased – the first total silence in five days. The enemy withdrew an unusual distance as the Texans puzzled over the sight of several columns of troops filing out of town.
There were no troops in San Antonio de Bexar because Santa Anna had deliberately withdrawn them. On this twelfth day of the siege, there were to be last minute preparations (including building 28 ladders), prayers and sleep before the great battle.
“The [Mexican] assault forces were sequestered to sleep, or at least to rest” to prepare for the big day. Santa Anna silenced the big guns, also, to seduce the Texans “to sleep the sleep of exhaustion – and wake and find Mexicans scaling the walls.”
Santa Anna met with his officers who, “at a signal to be given from the bugler,” would lead thousands of troops early the next morning “to strike a decisive blow upon the enemy occupying the Fortress of the Alamo.” In detail he personally planned the deployment of his troops: columns with ladders, crowbars, and axes to scale the walls and seize the Alamo.
Santa Anna proclaimed that he expected
every man will do his duty, and exert himself to give a day of glory to the country, and of gratification to the Supreme Government, who will know how to reward the distinguished deeds of the brave soldiers .
When reminded that neither physicians nor medical supplies had yet arrived, the General replied, “All the better!” The troops would know that it was “not as bad to die as come out wounded.”
WHILE SANTA ANNA met with those who would lead thousands, Travis assembled together the barely 250 (including the wounded and ill) of his command. Drawing a line in the sand with his sword, he asked all who would “die with me for Texas” to step across the line.
As Travis told his troops how “our memory will be gratefully cherished by posterity till all history shall be erased and all noble deeds shall be forgotten” – the well-read Bonham recalled Shakespeare’s King Henry V, on the eve of his decisive battle, exhorting his men:
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Rose vaguely remembered Napoléon’s words at Austerlitz:
Soldiers, it will suffice that you will say “I was at the battle of Austerlitz for them to reply: There goes a brave man.”
In the midst of frenzied activity and preparation, Travis looked over at Rose, still on the other side of the line, and shook his head in wonderment. No Ivanhoe or Sir Wallace there, he thought, and remembered his own words: “cowardice is the only fate to be feared.”
ONLY ROSE – A FRENCHMAN AND A TEXAN, who had crossed many an invisible line for Napoléon, had still not crossed the Travis Line. On the other side of the Line was Bill Carey, with whom Rose had fought the initial battle to seize the Alamo. There was Green Jameson, who fortified the Alamo to withstand these 12 days of siege. He saw Micajah Autry, one of Crockett’s men, who had told Rose of his 115-mile walk “through torrents of rain, mud and water” to begin his pilgrimage to the Alamo. And so many others.
As Rose grasped the handle of his Bowie knife, he thought of his years in Texas: Le Champ d’Asile, where he first arrived; the Fredonian Rebellion fiasco, the glorious Battle of Nacogdoches with Bowie, the successful siege of the Alamo against General Cós, the twelve days of this great siege . . . and the job, home and belongings he had sacrificed for these endeavors. He thought back on the battles alongside Napoléon in Germany, Spain and Austria . . . and the retreat from Moscow.
He looked at Isaac Milsaps, Albert Martin and the other Gonzales volunteers who had risked their lives answering the call for help – they were incredibly brave and came with only a faint hope of surviving; he looked next at the amazing James Bonham, who, this last time, had crossed the enemy’s line with the certainty of death – to be there to cross Travis’ Line.
Rose stood until every man but he had crossed the Line. Then he sank upon the ground, covered his face, and yielded to his own reflections. For a time he was unconscious of what was transpiring around him.
The Frenchman felt the pull towards Bowie, propped up on his cot, staring at him. Rose felt the yearning, the pressure to join Bowie and his other friends – to not be alone on his side of the gulf. He wished he could feel what the others felt – he wished the jubilation of his comrades’ glorious moment could overpower his logical side. He wanted to let himself die with his Alamo brothers.
But he could not.
Rose lifted himself to his full height and stared at his fellow Texans, his best friends, virtually his only friends, all here in the Alamo Plaza, all on the other side of the Line – all staring at him.
Louis “Moses” Rose now looked again in the direction of the cot of Colonel James Bowie, where lie his gallant friend. After a few seconds Bowie looked up at Rose and repeated: “You seem not to be willing to die with us, Rose!”
Rose was finally ready to answer.
“No,” a pained Rose spoke in little more than a whisper, “I am not prepared to die and shall not do so if I can avoid it.”
His Napoléon side was master of his decision. The Emperor fought against great odds but retreated when outnumbered or outgunned. He surrendered when there could be no victory, only death. And then he rose and fought again and again and again, as long as it was possible.
Rose would do as the French did: Escape to fight again. He would leave the Alamo.
A bright idea came to his relief: He spoke the Mexican dialect fluently, and, being swarthy, could he once get safely out of the fort, he might pass for a Mexican and effect an escape. He would wear the dress of the average Mexican: pajama-type work clothes made of whole sailcloth. Thus encouraged, he suddenly roused as if from sleep. He looked over the area of the fort; every sick man’s berth was at its wonted place; every effective soldier was at his post as if waiting orders; he felt as if he was dreaming.
Rose looked up at the top of the wall. I have often done worse than to climb that wall, thought he. Suiting the action to the thought, he sprang up and seized his bundle of clothes that all kept at their battle station. Then he ascended the wall. Standing on its top, he looked down for a last view of his soon-to-die friends.
From that distance he thought he heard a few of the Texans yell “Coward!” This hurt him greatly. Worse, the word itself reminded him of Bowie’s assertion that “cowards die a thousand deaths.” The Frenchman had seen enough men die to know they died only once, no matter how ghastly. So what did it mean? Was Bowie talking about a curse on cowards? But what matter, he thought. I am no coward!
His mind drifted back to the moment. He gazed again at the Alamo defenders. They were all now in motion, but what they were doing he heeded not.
He once more stared at Travis, at this last moment forgiving his recklessness. The old Frenchman stood erect and saluted his commander who was only 27 – Rose’s age when he retreated with Napoléon from Moscow in 1812.
Overpowered by his feelings, he turned away and saw them no more.
Looking down below the wall, he was amazed at the scene of death that met his gaze. From the wall to a considerable distance beyond, the ground was literally covered with slaughtered Mexicans and pools of blood. Here were the remains of those who died attempting to reach the Wall, slain mainly by Crockett and his men.
He viewed this horrid scene but a moment. He threw down his bundle and leaped after it.
Louis “Moses” Rose, at 51, Napoléon’s age at death, would survive the Siege of the Alamo and live to tell the tale.