Chapter 12
The Runaway Scrape and Victory at San Jacinto
TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY VOLUNTEERS who had responded to Travis’ call for help were assembled in Gonzales, as was Col. James Neill preparing to return to his command. On March 7, not knowing that the Alamo had fallen the day before, Neill, with 50 men, rode to San Antonio but was turned back by Mexican cavalry. And there was no cannon signal of survival from the fortress – he feared they had all perished.
Neill returned to Gonzales on March 10 to find Gen. Sam Houston there. Following the Convention’s proclamation of Independence from Mexico, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief, now in control of all troops, was also there to aid the defenders of the Alamo. Neill reported to Houston what he knew and soon his “speculation” was confirmed by two Tejanos who rode in with the tragic news that the Alamo had fallen and all were dead. Houston sent out chief scout, “Deaf” Smith, to investigate.
Waiting for his report but fearing the worst, Houston ordered Fannin to evacuate the fort at Goliad immediately: take what artillery he could move, dump the rest in the river, and burn Fort Defiance – the exact orders he once gave Bowie for the Alamo. “Prompt movements,” he urged, “are highly important.”
Then Houston gathered the men together at DeWitt’s Tavern and told them of the “complications of troubles that threaten our Republic.” He called upon “every Texan to be loyal and true in this hour of need and peril.”
Smith returned and reported having met Susannah Dickinson, one of two dozen women, children and slaves that Santa Anna spared to terrify the colonists by bearing witness to his cruelty. Mrs. Dickinson, the wife of a slain Alamo Captain, travelling with her infant daughter and Travis’ slave Joe, confirmed to the scout what the Tejanos had related. Back in Gonzales, Smith provided the details within earshot of most residents. An observer recalled:
Many of the citizens of Gonzales perished in this wholesale slaughter . . . I remember most distinctly the shrieks of despair with which the soldiers wives received the news of the death of their husbands, the piercing wails of woe . . . .
Houston ordered an immediate retreat. The town was evacuated just before midnight on March 13, and the city was burned to the ground leaving nothing for the enemy. They headed for the Colorado River.
When word of the retreat reached colonists throughout Texas, the “Runaway Scrape” began and escalated until thousands of settlers were racing to the East. “A constant stream of panicked women and children and some men with wagons, carts and pack mules, [were] rushing across [land and water] night and day . . . [amid ’rumors of Mexicans murdering women and children’, and ’rap[ing] the fair daughters of chaste white women’] to escape the anticipated storm of war.” Most were heading to the Sabine River to cross over the international line, to Louisiana, and the protection of the United States of America.
“Clogging the primitive Texas roads, journeys slowed and made miserable by torrential rains,” the route became a quagmire. “Filling the rivers from bank to bank, the refugees repeatedly found themselves struggling for miles over bad roads only to be met at the river banks with uncrossable fords and crowded ferries.”
As the colonists passed from town to town, they saw “houses standing open, the beds unmade, the breakfast things still on the tables, pans of milk molding in the dairies. There were cribs full of corn, smoke houses full of bacon, yards full of chickens that ran after [the colonists] for food . . . all abandoned . . . . Forlorn dogs roamed along the deserted homes, their doleful howls adding to the general sense of desolation.”
If the travel wasn’t onerous enough, disease, intensified by cold, rain and hunger, caused the deaths of many persons who were buried where they fell.
The “rise of grass” and the beginning of the Mexican advance had been predicted for the middle of March. By that time, the Alamo had fallen, Gonzales burned, the “Runaway Scrape” underway, and Sam Houston’s army in full retreat.
ROSE PASSED THROUGH THE FLAMES OF GONZALES and crossed the Rio Guadalupe by rolling a seasoned log into the water and paddling across with his hands.
After ascending a high bluff – the east bank of the Guadalupe – he found himself at a deserted house, at which he found plenty of provisions and cooking vessels. There, one week after departing the Alamo, he took his first real nourishment.
Travel had caused the thorns to work so deep in Rose’s flesh that he could no longer bear the pain of pulling them out, and he had become lame. He rested two or three days, hoping that his lameness would subside, but it rather grew worse. Thenceforth he travelled only on roads, no matter what the risk, subsisting on provisions he found in deserted houses – the left-behinds from the families of the Runaway Scrape, those retreating between the Guadalupe and Colorado rivers. Every family in his path had left home.
Finally reaching the Colorado, he crossed as before: paddling over a log using his hands. Between the Colorado and the next river, the Brazos, he found only one family at home but from want of knowledge or skill, they did nothing to relieve his sore legs. He could go no further and stopped there for a bit.
FANNIN AND HIS MEN WERE BEING MASSACRED while the lame Rose rested again. The disgraced Colonel James Walker Fannin – the only man who might have saved the Alamo – true to form, hesitated and did not destroy his fort as ordered. Instead he held meetings with his officers to plan a retreat and only then marched . . . belatedly. On March 19, he halted the march a few miles from the fort in an open field to graze the oxen – instead of seeking the cover of nearby defensible woods, which had forage for the animals.
These delays allowed the Mexicans to catch up with Fannin and his men, attacking with overwhelming numbers. “Trapped on an open prairie without food or water, the Texans surrendered with the assurance that they would be treated as prisoners of war.” “Gentlemen, in ten days,” one of the Mexican officers told them, “liberty and home.” But Santa Anna had decreed that all prisoners were to be executed as “pirates.”
Eight days later, on March 27, Palm Sunday, 350 of Fannin’s men were marched out in three groups, onto three different roads, believing they were headed for home. One of the few escapees remembered walking past a Mexican woman who called them pobrecitos (poor fellows). Then most were shot to death. Fifty more were executed elsewhere.
Fannin, held captive separately, was placed in a chair and blindfolded. He asked to be shot in the breast, not the head, and that his body be offered a Christian burial. He was shot in the head and dumped in a pile of bodies that was set aflame.
As the bullet penetrated his skull, he may have remembered one of his last messages to his superiors:
I am a better judge of my military abilities than others, and if I am qualified to command an army, I have not found it out.
UNAWARE OF THIS LATEST TRAGEDY, Rose continued his eastward trek toilsomely, tediously and painfully. As Rose walked, the thorns worked deeper into his flesh, hit bone he thought, maybe ripped his tendons. By now every motion, every flex of his muscles brought pain that reduced him to tears. He tried to pull out the thorns but the tips, with barbs like a fishing hook, ripped his skin. Adding to his misery, his legs were swelling, abscesses were forming, and puss was pouring out. At least he could deal with the abscesses, so he heated his Bowie knife over a small fire and cut open the worst ones and drained the puss, removing some thorns at the same time.
Then, infection from the cactus thorns racked his body with fever and chills. He began freezing . . . and hallucinating.
For Rose, it was 1812 again and he was retreating from Moscow. His garb was furs and rags, with two vests under a thick and large Russian coat he had seized from one he had killed the day before in battle – he was so enwrapped that only the slits for his eyes had an opening out of which he could breathe. And even from that opening, ice formed from his breath. Only by marching did he avoid freezing to death.
Rose and all of Napoléon’s soldiers were starving. If Rose was lucky there might soon be some horsemeat or hempseed or rye and raw grains . . . uncooked, no fire, no water (no time even to melt snow), and no utensils. If I find my buddy, he thought, I’ll share my peas if he adds salt and fat. For three days not a half pound of bread, no meat, no vegetables – nothing today in the belly but a gulp of vodka and a piece of dark bread. A week ago, he remembered, thirty of us killed ourselves a dog, cooked us a dish with the dog’s fat as shortening and ate the meat with much hunger.
Wet and chilled by drenching storms, he had not a single dry thread for days.
All Moscow is on fire and there is no food anywhere.
Only cannon fire from morning to evening.
Few of us will be lucky enough to leave Russia alive, he thought.
The hallucinations passed one night and Rose awoke, lying in a field, feverish, drenched with sweat, hungry and thirsty. Once on his feet he spotted San Felipe de Austin and the Brazos River ahead. He had walked over 50 miles but he remembered none of it. He had been a continent and two decades away.
He was halfway home to Nacogdoches, retracing the path which had taken him to the Alamo. If he could only last another 90 miles where he had a friend.
THE REVOLUTION HAD BEEN WON. But, as Rose continued his trek, he did not know of the final military encounter of the Texas Revolution.
The prelude to the Battle of San Jacinto was a retreat by panicky settlers and the Texas Army, heading eastward. After crossing the Guadalupe, Houston’s troops were pursued by General Sesma, who almost caught them at the Colorado River – but once again sudden rains swelled the river, preventing the Mexicans from crossing.
Houston led his troops to San Felipe, arriving on March 28; the Mexicans arrived 10 days later. There Santa Anna divided his army into two forces: one to chase Houston’s men, the other to capture the Texas government, thought to be in Harrisburg, west of Anahuac. (The Mexican barely missed capturing the officials; instead they angrily watched their quarry row to a schooner which took them to safety at Galveston.)
The Mexicans were told that Houston was marching to Nacogdoches to meet up with U.S. troops, who were already massed to give aid. In response they moved northward to head off Houston’s retreat. By April 21, 1836, joined by Cós and his troops (who had promised under honor never to fight in Texas again), the Mexicans held an advantage of 1,200 battle-ready troops to Houston’s Army of 900, many recent, untested volunteers from the United States.
THE FATE OF TEXAS NOW RESTED IN THE HANDS OF ONE MAN: the unpredictable – some said unstable – Samuel Houston.
Born near Lexington, Virginia in 1793, Houston was reared in Tennessee by his widowed mother. As an adolescent youth of 16, he ran away from home and lived three years with the Cherokee, who adopted him and gave him an Indian name, translated as “The Raven.” Later, Houston joined the United States Army to fight in the War of 1812, where his fearlessness earned him three near-fatal wounds and the favor of Gen. Andrew Jackson. For his valor he was promoted from Private to Lieutenant.
In 1818, after becoming a lawyer, Houston was elected attorney general for Nashville, and, as Jackson’s protégé, won two terms in the U.S. Congress ending in 1827 (when Crockett – another Tennessee Congressman – began his first term). Three months later, elected Governor of Tennessee, he was considered heir apparent to his mentor, now-President Andrew Jackson.
On New Years Day of 1829, Gov. Sam Houston married Eliza Allen. For reasons never explained, the marriage was dissolved after eleven weeks. Houston resigned his governorship, vowing never to reveal the cause of the separation and he never did. “Whatever the price of silence,” he said, “I am prepared to pay it.” And he did.
For the next three years he returned to the Cherokee in self-imposed exile, took a Cherokee wife, adopted Cherokee citizenship, and became a trader and advisor to the tribe. As their special envoy, he visited Washington, D.C. and thrashed a U.S. Congressman over insults to the Indians. Houston was arrested, tried by the House of Representatives but, with support from Pres. Jackson, only given an official reprimand. He then travelled to Texas in a futile attempt to secure a land grant for his tribe. He stayed on and joined the fight for independence.
SAM HOUSTON WAS A STUDENT OF HISTORY and knew the reasons for Napoléon’s fate at Moscow. He emulated the Czar’s strategy: he burned the land to deny food and supplies to the enemy and retreated, forcing the enemy into the interior of Texas, extending their supply lines beyond their capacity. He stated: “We cannot fight the enemy ten to one, in their own country.” He was heading for East Texas.
Houston kept ahead of the enemy, never stopping. At one point he had over a thousand men, most poorly armed, poorly trained and with no artillery. The Runaway Scrape cost him many of these soldiers who left to be with their fleeing families – especially following word that Fannin and his men had been massacred after they surrendered – others left as deserters . . . and some left when Houston began serious training: constant drills, inspections, maneuvers, and re-arrangement of units. Now he had 900 men, reasonably instructed.
Discipline was severe. A soldier was shot for falling asleep on guard duty, four men were hung for raping women and robbing settlers.
As Santa Anna reached San Felipe and Houston kept retreating, there was great anger at the Commander-in-Chief from the new Texas government (There should be “at least one struggle for our boasted independence,” complained an official) and near revolt from his troops who wanted to fight. Houston posted warnings that he would execute any man attempting a mutiny.
Everyone knew that Houston was heading for the U.S. border, which he never denied. “I consulted none, held no councils of war. If I err, the blame is mine.”
Rare good news came in the form of a gift from the people of Cincinnati: two iron six-pounders, eventually named the “Twin Sisters.” This was the Texans’ only artillery.
After crossing the Brazos, Houston was finally ready to announce his plans. As Travis had drawn a literal “line in the sand,” so did Houston approach an actual “fork in the road.” The left prong led to the east, to Nacogdoches and beyond it the safety of Louisiana and the United States* (and the end of the fight for Texas sovereignty); the right prong led to the south, towards Harrisburg and Santa Anna. As his troops stared at him, wondering, Houston pointed his sword south! * *The colonist families were told to head east to the United States. He would march to meet Santa Anna, who was now the pursued.
Houston stopped on the plains of San Jacinto, near the western lip of Galveston Bay. Santa Anna had made camp a mile away on the high ground. After Cós’ troops crossed a bridge to join Santa Anna, Houston ordered Smith to destroy that bridge: there would now be no retreat by either side. Each army slept that night within ear shot of the other; the next day they stared at each other’s lines.
The temperament of the two armies could not have been more different: the Texans were fighting to save their families, their homes, the land they had tilled . . . and their revolution; the Mexicans were in a foreign place, far from home, many of them reluctant recruits to this war.
On April 20 there was a brief skirmish of little consequence.
The next day, at 4 pm, after a month of retreating, Houston assembled his army and strategically placed the Twin Sisters (filled with broken bits of horseshoes). Houston raised his sword and ordered the attack and the firing of his two cannons. With Texans shouting Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! and chants of Bowie! Crockett! Travis! Houston’s men, spurred on by vengeance and fighting for their freedom, charged, using rifles and rifle butts, pistols and finally their Bowie knives.
Santa Anna’s men were in siesta. The dictator had assumed the rag-tag army of Texas would never attack his great force head on; almost with contempt his troops had stacked their arms. Taken by surprise – as inexplicable as the Texans celebrating George Washington’s birthday with the enemy a few miles away – the Mexicans broke before the Texans’ fury.
The battle lasted only eighteen minutes. When it was over, 600 Mexicans were killed, over 700 were wounded and taken prisoner. Only nine Texans died. Houston had two horses shot out from under him and his ankle shattered by a rifle ball.
The next day, a Mexican in peasant dress, hiding in high grass, was captured. Though disguised as a common soldier, as he was marched to a place of detention, his troops cried out: El Presidente! El Presidente! Santa Anna was in the custody of the new Republic of Texas.
The Mexican dictator, brought before his wounded counterpart, who was lying on a blanket under an oak tree, bowed and flattered Houston that he had “conquered the Napoleon of the West.” He asked for generosity; Houston bitterly responded: “You should have thought of that at the Alamo and Goliad.”
Santa Anna proposed an armistice. He agreed to remove all Mexican soldiers from Texas soil and recognize the independence of Texas from Mexico. Houston accepted. The details were written down and signed; “Deaf” Smith delivered copies of the Treaty to Mexican Commanders throughout Texas.
The war was over.
Although the colonists were skeptical at first, gradually the refugees “reversed their steps and turned back toward home, many toward homes that no longer existed.”
UNAWARE OF THE VICTORY, sometime in April, Rose reached Lake Creek, near Stephen Austin’s colony – 70 miles northwest of San Jacinto – the home of Abraham Zuber, a carpenter, merchant and pioneer farmer he had known from Nacogdoches.
Zuber, of German ancestry, was a transplanted Georgian who had married South Carolinian Mary Ann, and relocated in Texas. The couple had joined in the Runaway Scrape, heading for the international border, when suddenly it was all over at San Jacinto, and they were now home in time to greet an unexpected visitor.
The Zubers had been told of a story in the Telegraph and Texas Register that offered a partial list of those who had fallen at the Alamo, and in it was listed “Rose, of Nacogdoches.” They had no doubt that Louis Rose had died with his companions. Weeks later there was a knock at Zuber’s door. “My God, Rose!” exclaimed Zuber who recognized him instantly. “Is this you or is it your ghost?” A disheveled Rose, who had not changed his apparel since leaving the Alamo replied: “This is Rose, and not his ghost.”
Zuber and his wife helped Rose limp into their sitting room. The thorns had worked very deep into his flesh, and rendered him so lame that he walked in much pain, and his steps were short and slow. He was also feverish and sick.
The couple prepared to administer aid to their friend but he insisted on first hearing all the latest news. So the Zubers told Rose what they had heard about the fall of the Alamo, the massacre of Fannin and his men, the Runaway Scrape (some of which Rose had seen), and the victory at San Jacinto. They told him proudly that their son had been at San Jacinto, and earlier had been riding to the Alamo when it fell.
In his mind, Rose pictured young Zuber riding at full gallop towards the Alamo, while he was limping away from it. The image troubled him.
“Enough talk,” Mrs. Zuber insisted, “let us now help you.”
By the use of forceps, the Zubers extracted an incredible number of cactus thorns, some of them an inch and a half in length, each of which drew out a lump of flesh and was followed by a stream of blood. Salve made by Mrs. Zuber was applied to his sores.
Rose needed clean attire to wear. Mr. Zuber supplied him with a suit, while his wife had his clothes washed. In doing so, Mrs. Zuber caused her washing servant to open Rose’s bag of clothes and found some of the garments glued together with the blood in which they had fallen when thrown from the West Wall at the Alamo.
The Frenchman had not volunteered any explanation as to how he had survived the Alamo; the Zubers, following Southern tradition, would not pry. But they all stared at the bloody clothing.
Rose had initially planned to pass on his story. And why shouldn’t he? Travis had not only offered his men the choice of escaping but Rose had followed the tradition of the armies of his native France: Escape to fight again! But young Zuber’s ride to the Alamo had stilled his tongue.
Rose pondered what to say. He was the only person alive who bore witness to Travis’ immortal words and final deeds. The Travis Line could only be known if Rose told of it, Travis’ fight-to-the-death speech could survive only if Rose passed it on for the world to hear – only through the Frenchman could Texans learn how Travis had urged his men to give their life to buy time to “so weaken our enemies that our countrymen can meet them on fair terms . . . and thus establish their own independence . . . .” Travis had been right and Rose was the only courier who could tell the tale.
He decided to relate what transpired in the Alamo before he left it, of his escape, and of what befell him afterwards. It demanded to be recounted. And he did. The Zubers sat transfixed as they became the first people in the world to hear the epic tale.
They never voiced any doubts about their friend’s integrity, and their pioneer faces were incapable of guile. They accepted Rose . . . even after his story. He was much relieved.
Rose was still ill and with a long ride ahead of him. He decided, encouraged by his friends’ reaction, that he should leave an account of his last hours at the Alamo (and afterwards) in case he did not make it to Nacogdoches. But both Rose and the Zubers were illiterate, as were many Texans of this era.
So he pressed them to memorize his story. Rose rehearsed it several times a day until the Zubers could have repeated it as well as he.
They could tell of Travis’ line-in-the-sand speech, Bowie on his cot asking to be carried across that Line, Davy Crockett never missing with his long rifle, James Bonham three times crossing enemy lines to die at the Alamo. Day after day, they would recite:
We are hopelessly outnumbered and surrounded by thousands of Mexican troops, and thus we must die! . . . When at last they shall storm our fortress let us kill them as they scale our walls! as long as one of us shall remain alive! . . . Our memory will be gratefully cherished by posterity till all history shall be erased and all noble deeds shall be forgotten . . . I leave every man to his own choice. Surrender, attempt an escape or die here with me. [A part Rose always emphasized] . . . Travis drew his sword from its sheath and held it in the air. I now want every man who is determined to stay here and die with me to come across this line. Who will be the first? March! . . . .
One day Rose was satisfied. “You know it now,” he told his friends. (The Zubers later passed on these words to their highly literate son, W.P. Zuber, who recorded his parent’s recollection of Rose’s story for posterity.)
After three weeks of good care and peaceful recuperation, during which time his sores improved rapidly, Rose told them, gratefully, that he hoped “soon to be well.” Rose then left on a horse provided by the couple, to return to Nacogdoches, his pre-Revolution home since 1826.
The Zubers never heard from Rose again; they hoped he would be well received by his townspeople . . . but feared he would not be.