Part IV: Revolution and Epilogue

Back in Washington-on-the-Brazos, the mood was grim. The inspired letters of Travis, forwarded on from Gonzales, had not yet achieved heroic status. This wasn't history yet. It was the present, and everyone gathered in that cold, drafty, half-finished wooden building knew someone inside the Alamo.

The battles of the last few months had pushed these men towards a decision that only a few months ago they had thought impossible. Even as the Alamo was besieged under a flag of reconciliation and hope for reform in Mexico, the delegates knew that was a false hope. They had seen the failure of revolt in other Mexican states. The appearance of Santa Anna's massive army only confirmed their worst fears.

On March 2, 1836, the delegates assembled in a solemn mirror of 1776, put pen to paper and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, formally breaking ties with Mexico. This transformed the revolution and instantly would bring increased support from America, where few were willing to send costly munitions to mere rebels with no interest in separating from Mexico.

But there was still scant hope of success. Before most of those arms would arrive, Santa Anna's force would have pushed through the colonies and conquered, or been beaten. They would have to hold off the "Napoleon of the West" with a rag-tag army of farmers and hunters. Their rifles, to be sure, were the best in the world. But all of their big cannons were at the Alamo, and the little Gonzales cannon which had started it all, had been unceremoniously tossed into a river when its cart broke down.

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence, like those at the Alamo, were from all over. Yet in a strange irony, those at the Alamo were more likely to be new arrivals, while those in Gonzales and Washington represented the settlers had longer and stronger ties. Among them were those who had arrived years ago, as well as two of the state's most prominent Tejanos: Juan Antonio Navarro and Lorenzo de Zavala.

Zavala (see Part II), had now passed through a series of historical moments and offices almost unique in History: Member of the Spanish Cortez, or parliament; Mexican Revolutionary; Co-author of the Mexican Constitution of 1824; Texian Revolutionary; Signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Within the year, Zavala would top it off by being elected as the first Vice President of the Republic of Texas.

Much like Zavala, Sam Houston had lived through nine lives of politics. As he signed the declaration on his own birthday, little did he know that he would top of his career as Governor of Tennessee, frontier fighter and Commanding General of the Texas Army with two terms as President of the Republic of Texas, several as a United States Senator, and one term as Governor of the State of Texas.

Houston, of course, was a man of many talents. Though he had his detractors who cursed his caution as cowardice, he understood better than all of them just what the consequences of signing that document were. He knew that the early, easy victories over conscript, dispirited and ill-equipped Mexican garrison troops would not be the same thing as fighting a hardened professional force led by the man who had won victory after victory against the fabled Spanish Army. Houston's discerning logic was matched by his intuition and frontier wisdom.

It is hard today to realize what life was like back then. There were no instant communications as we know them. Yet there were some things that they could do in that age which would be impossible today. On March 6, four days after the signing, and fully a week before news would arrive about the fate of the fortress, Sam Houston, the old Creek Indian fighter and adopted Cherokee, jumped down from his horse and put his ear to the ground.

"The Alamo has fallen," he said. Those with him asked how he could tell. He stood up and dusted himself off. "The cannons have stopped firing," he said, and climbed back onto his horse. The spot he had been standing at was 200 miles distant from the battle.

Runaway scrape

When news of the defeat arrived, panic ensued. Coming like a double blow from a hammer, word also arrived of the massacre of Fannin's forces at Goliad. Fannin had finally started out from Goliad to relieve the Alamo, but shortly after doing so, he got word the fortress had fallen, and turned back. His forces were then caught in the open and trapped by a second powerful army commanded by the best field commander either side had: General Jose Urrea.

Trapped in an open field, Fannin formed a Napoleonic square and his troops fought off attack after attack by the Mexicans in what would become known as the Battle of Colleto. Finally, low on water, Fannin surrendered. General Urrea gave him honorable terms, but Santa Anna, hearing of the battle, contradicted his subordinate and sent orders - in triplicate - demanding that the Goliad soldiers be executed. Urrea, with heavy heart, obeyed the orders of his general and president. On Palm Sunday, the Texians were marched out into a field - they thought to a new prison camp. The Mexicans halted them, turned, and opened fire. 350 men were massacred in cold blood.

With word of the double catastrophes, the settlers of Texas frantically loaded up their belongings onto carts and headed East. Houston, abandoning Gonzales, followed with them, pausing to train where he could, but moving his army inexorably on.

He was roundly criticized for not standing and fighting, but he had few options. As Santa Anna pushed forward through small towns like Bastrop in Central Texas close on Houston's heels, Urrea moved up the coast. If Houston stood and faced Santa Anna, Urrea could slip behind him and cut off the colonists or capture the government, now meeting in the tiny town of Velasco on the Texas Coast (Today's Surfside Beach). Further complicating matters, Santa Anna split off a wing of his Army and sent it North, threatening Houston with a pincer move. Even if he chose to attack that wing, the best he could get would be equal odds.

There was risk too in retreating, for at some point, Santa Anna's army would meet up with Urrea's and their combined force of several thousand would easily outclass Houston's pitiful band of fewer than 800. But a final factor weighed in Houston's mind. Every day he traveled North and East, his supply lines shortened. Every day Santa Anna followed, his lengthened. While his soldiers were still relatively fresh, Santa Anna's army had been on the move or in battle for over four months.

When late March rains swelled the rivers and Santa Anna was at last stopped, Houston paused his army at a nearby farm and began to train. He also got a new present: two impressive new cannons donated months ago by the citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio. Christened the "twin sisters," they would become critical in the coming battle.

Finally, Sam Houston reached a crossroads. One road pointed North - and to humiliating retreat out of Texas. Another led East - to battle. His soldiers by now were near mutinous, itching to fight. Without a word, but with a simple point of his finger, Houston gave the direction. The soldiers let out an excited cry, and the army turned East.

On April 18, Santa Anna's exhausted army arrived on a marshy coastal plain known as San Jacinto. They knew Houston was in the area, but they outnumbered him nearly 2-1.

Santa Anna's massive army of 6,000 was now a shell of its former self, however. They had suffered large casualties at the Alamo, anywhere between 800-1,500. Additional troops had been left in San Antonio to guard the town and care for the wounded. Groups of soldiers had split off to sweep through the Texian settlements and burn what they could find. Like his hero Napoleon, Santa Anna's army was slowly, almost imperceptibly bleeding off men. He was now down to barely 1,000 men.

And not only were there numbers to consider, but quality. Some of his best officers had died at the Alamo. Others had grown dispirited and angry at his brutal conduct. Many more were simply exhausted.

Finally, on April 20, 1836, the two armies were encamped on the same plain, both weary from their marathon journeys. A cavalry skirmish ensued. During the fighting, one Texian was unhorsed and surrounded by the Mexicans. Dashing through the enemy position, a Texian horseman plucked the man from the ground, and escaped to the Texian lines. It was an amazing feat which the Mexican horsemen proudly saluted. The Texian who had done it had been a private in the army before it. By the end of the day, he was a colonel. In two years, Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar would be the Second President of Texas.

That night, approximately 600 additional Mexican troops arrived and joined the Army. Rising in the morning, Santa Anna was supremely confident. The Texians showed no interest in attacking. In a few more days, more stragglers of his vast army would arrive and its numbers would grow insurmountable. He could have waited longer for Urrea's army to join him, but by now Santa Anna was growing wary of his dashing underling stealing his glory. The victory had to be his.

Seeing no movement in the Texian lines, Santa Anna took his afternoon siesta. His exhausted soldiers, having finished constructing a berm of brush piles and baggage as a makeshift defense sat down to rest. Had the Mexicans not been so confident, the piles would have been built thicker and higher. But they were a mere formality. None of the Mexicans expected the Texians to attack.

But Sam Houston saw it another way. He had missed an opportunity to attack Santa Anna the day before, when the armies were closer to evenly matched. But it made no difference. The haggard Mexicans who stumbled in the night before didn't impress. In fact, this disheveled bunch of late arrivals were the soldiers of Martin Perfecto de la Cos. They had been defeated at Bexar in December, marched to the Rio Grande border in January, marched back in February, fought at the Alamo, and had marched through hundreds of miles of wilderness through most of March and April. These soldiers were definitely not ready to fight.

Santa Anna's artillery was also way behind, and the Mexican army had only one artillery piece to the Texians' two. Houston also had good ground. If he attacked and failed, he could withdraw. But the Mexicans had camped with their backs to a bayou, hemming them in on three sides. For them, there was only one exit: a single, narrow bridge crossing the river. Houston turned to his best scout, Erastus "Deaf" Smith, who had lived in Texas a decade, and knew every part of the colony. Deaf - who was only hard of hearing, not actually deaf - was asked if he could destroy the bridge. He smiled and said he would.

It was late in the day, nearing sundown, when Houston's army moved forward. Battles in that day and age were often all-day affairs, and attacks were usually launched at dawn. Houston chose the later hour to give his soldiers time to rest and prepare, and to put the Mexicans off their guard. He also was likely hedging his bets. If things went badly, the sun might set in mid battle, giving his troops cover to extricate themselves.

As the Texian army advanced in the center, Lamar led the cavalry in an attack on the right flank of Santa Anna's army - against Cos and his long-suffering troops. With Lamar on horseback - and amongst the infantry with Houston, were Juan Seguin's Tejanos, who had stuck pieces of cardboard into their hats to identify themselves as "good Mexicans" and avoid the friendly fire of their revenge-minded Anglo allies.

For revenge was the foremost thought on the minds of the Texians as the marched, double-timed, and then ran towards the Mexican lines. As they broke over a low rise, they shouted, "Remember the Alamo!" "Remember Goliad."

The Mexicans were caught entirely unprepared. Their weapons had been stacked, and many weren't even loaded - a time-consuming process in those days. Had they merely presented a strong front rank of bayonets, they could have bought time for the reserves behind them to load and prepare. But the front rank, rising from their slumber and seeing fiery-eyed Texians storming down upon them, simply broke and ran. As the other soldiers woke to see their countrymen fleeing through their tents and baggage, they too began to run.

But the Texians were still a long way away, and some Mexicans stood to fight. As the Texians' "Twin Sisters" boomed, launching hot lead at the disorganized army, a handful of Mexicans gathered around their cannon - the "Golden Standard." With them was General Castrillon - the chivalrous humanitarian who had tried so hard to convince Santa Anna to offer surrender at the Alamo and then to delay his attack to reduce the casualties among the Mexican soldiers.

The two sides exchanged volleys, and the superior range of the Texian rifles crushed the thin wall of Mexican defenders. While almost all of the Mexican shots fell short, the Texians hit with a murderous efficiency. Outside of the confined spaces of the Alamo, they had regained their natural advantage that had won them the early victories. As his position was overrun, Castrillon was the only man who did not run, beg or plead. With supreme dignity, he stood with head upraised, jaw outstretched, facing his fate like a gentleman. Although one Texian tried to spare this noble officer, the same murderous fever that had gripped the Mexicans 36 days before at the Alamo had now possessed the Texians. Castrillon was struck down and killed.

The Texians pursued the Mexicans through their camp and the battle soon became a slaughter. With nowhere to retreat, the Mexicans were pushed into the bayou. Many conscripted Indians didn't know how to swim. Others were shot dead on the banks. Months of anger, frustration, need for revenge and fear - just plain fear - drove the Texians to shoot anything that moved.

But unlike the Mexicans at the Alamo, who were under orders to kill every single opponent, the Texians were not, and gradually the leaders and individual soldiers began to bring the situation under control. Pleading Mexicans were disarmed and hauled out of the putrid, muddy water. When it was all said and done, 600 Mexicans were dead, and 750 were captured. The entire battle had only lasted 18 minutes.

The next day, the Texian cavalry was rounding up stragglers and bringing them into a makeshift prison camp. When a frightened man wearing the uniform of a Mexican private was brought within the camp, a soldier recognized him and called out, "El Presidente!"

The Texians, who didn't need to wait for the translation from their Tejano friends, hauled the man before Sam Houston. There, beneath a tree, Houston sat, nursing a wound. During the battle, three horses were shot out from under him. Nonetheless, the Texian Army had suffered amazingly few casualties. For 1,300 Mexicans killed and captured, the Texians had suffered only 9 killed and 26 wounded. Houston, leading from the front, had been one of the latter.

As Santa Anna was brought before the conqueror, Houston looked at his men. Many were prepared to hang the man who had slaughtered their brothers at the Alamo and Goliad. But Houston knew that Urrea's army was still around - strong, battle-hardened, and undefeated. Even if he could beat them, Mexico might never recognize Texas independence. Santa Anna dead was just another dead Mexican. Santa Anna alive was still the President of Mexico and Commander in Chief. Only he could call off Urrea. Only he could sign a treaty. Sparing his life, Houston showed the compassion that Santa Anna could not. Dejectedly, Santa Anna would sign the Treaty of Velasco and guarantee Texas Independence forever.

A few weeks later, a small group gathered around a pile of ashes in San Antonio. Before them was the funeral pyre of the heroes of the Alamo. Only two were missing: Gregorio Esparza, whose brother, a Mexican soldier, had been given the body for burial, and Juan Segiun. Seguin, who was among the most fiercely patriotic Tejanos, had been amongst the Alamo defenders. As the moment of the final battle drew near, Travis penned his final letter from the fortress. In the dark of night, he knew his courier would be challenged by the Mexican pickets. Only a Spanish-speaker, who knew the land like the back of his hand, could possibly make it through. Seguin was chosen, and bidding a heart-felt goodbye to his friends, rode out of the walls of the Alamo.

And now, here he was again. Presiding over the gathering of mourners, Seguin spoke a eulogy in both English and Spanish. Finishing his touching speech, Juan Seguin bade his friends farewell for a second time. As the sarcophagus was taken to the San Fernando church - where it remains to this day - the final remains of the mortal men of the Alamo were laid to rest. As men, their days were gone forever. As heroes, of course, they would live on, and never be forgotten.



God bless Texas!

Texas Independence - Part III

The clash at Gonzales had been an almost comical, near bloodless beginning to what would become a brutal and bloody struggle. The Mexican troops quickly retired to San Antonio, and a host of Texians pulled their flintlocks down from their mantels and rushed to Gonzales.

By default, Stephen F. Austin was chosen as the leader of the rebel forces. But Austin was definitely not a military man. Frail, but courageous, he nonetheless didn't have the temperament for war. He would soon hang up his military title and take on a more crucial role - seeking support for the rebels in the United States.

By 1834, Mexico was in turmoil, and four states or parts of states were in rebellion. Texas, however, stood the best chance because it had a citizen population with a strong connection to hunting and the use of firearms, and because it had a potential foreign benefactor. The United States from Day 1 was neutral in the revolt, but in that day and age, it was no more illegal for U.S. Citizens to openly support foreign rebels in Texas than it would be for Ernest Hemmingway and other Americans who journeyed to Spain exactly 100 years later to fight in a civil war there.

Americans had been drifting into Texas illegally as well as legally, but now, the prospect of independence brought in scores of adventurers. Not able to conceive that American expatriates would not want to rejoin America, many of the new arrivals were stunned to find that the Texans were not fighting for independence. Instead, they had lifted up as their flag an altered version of the Mexican tricolor, with the date "1824" - the year the constitution had been signed - emblazoned on it. Some versions of the flag may have had two stars rather than the lone star - one for Texas, and one for Coahilla, for whom they were nominally fighting as well. A few hotheads aside, there was little stomach for independence.

But freedom was another matter, and the struggle that they now found themselves in became a classic struggle against tyranny. More like the nobles of 1215, rather than the patriots of 1776, they fought to guarantee their rights within the existing system. So, as the army in Gonzales grew, they decided in late 1835 to go on the offensive.

There were several small outposts of Mexican soldiers in Texas, but the only one of consequence was the garrison in San Antonio. It was commanded at the time by Martin Perfecto de Cos, a relatively poor commander who had risen primarily by riding the coattails of Santa Anna, who happened to be his brother-in-law. Cos was paralyzed by temerity, but his doubts may have been justified: The Mexican troops who kept garrison in the old Mission San Antonio de Valero - the Alamo - were poorly provisioned and poorly trained. Their gunpowder was so old and spoiled that it would explode more with a whiff than a boom, with disastrous consequences, as we will see.

The Texians had few advantages of their own. Although proficient with their weapons, they were highly undisciplined and their rifles were designed for hunting, not war. Lacking lugs for bayonets, they were better at long distance shooting and sniping - but useless in close, confused hand-to-hand fighting. This too, would also be disastrous.

But where they lacked in polish and experience, they clearly excelled in morale and willpower. Bold and brash, the fighters of Gonzales. With the army now swelling to 800 men, they marched on San Antonio and prepared to face the Army of Cos. They were buoyed in part by the arrival of Juan Seguin, a dashing prominent young Tejano, who assured Austin that the citizens of San Antonio de Bexar were with the revolutionaries.

The Texians arrived on the outskirts of the city and pitched camp. Finally, Cos - facing shame for having failed to revenge Goliad - got up his nerve and moved out to meet the Texians. Under cover of fog, his troops crept up to the rebel encampment. A skirmish ensued, and as the fog lifted, an all-out battle erupted. Suddenly, the disastrous conditions of the Mexican soldiers turned it into a disaster. Although easily outnumbering the Texians, their poor gunpowder disappointed, and many of their shots fell short. In some cases, the bullets struck the Texians, but had such low velocity that they bounced off the skin, only causing bruises.

The Mexicans suffered 76 casualties, and the Texians lost only one man. Turning to flee back into San Antonio, the Mexicans barely avoided a route. The Battle of Conception had proven an overwhelming Texian victory.

But Austin had missed it, and arriving late, he held the troops back who wanted to rush in and finish the job. A 34-day siege ensued. On Nov. 26, hearing a rumor that an approaching wagon train was carrying silver bullion, a group of Texian cavalry, led by Jim Bowie and James Fannin attacked it and captured the cargo - which turned out to be nothing but grass to feed Cos' horses.

Two more weeks passed, and finally the Texians couldn't hold back any longer. Standing up before the army, a rough-and-tumble old fighter, Ben Milam, called out to the troops. "Who will follow old Ben Milam into San Antonio." And for the first - but definitely not the last - time, the Texian army forgot discipline and headed off to battle. Austin approved the orders to save face, but it was clear by now he was no military man and whatever respect he had as a colonizer and administrator did not extend to the battlefield.

The Texians entered the town and a fierce, four-day battle ensued. Although the fighting was nearly constant and literally house-to-house, the Texians again defeated the Mexicans with an overwhelming victory. The Mexicans lost scores of soldiers, the Texans lost only four. One of them was the bold and daring Milam, who became the first of many Texians who would gain immortality in death during the short war.

Cos surrendered his army of 1,000 to the smaller Texian force and handed over the largest city in Texas to the rebels. Paroled and promising never again to fight in Texas, Cos and his soldiers marched south to Mexico. Several of the Mexican soldiers stayed, having joined the revolutionaries.

The Texans were now masters of San Antonio, but for what end? Some thought the revolution over. Others wanted to carry it into Mexico. New soldiers were arriving in Texas daily, but found no fighting to be had. Some went home. Some stayed within the now depressing walls of the Alamo. Most Texians, however, knew that the Mexicans would be back, and the most important task was to turn a rabble that had won several battles on pluck and daring into an army that could defend a country based on discipline and training.

Austin was gone, having turned over leadership of the army to the new provisional state government of Texas. He headed for the U.S. to raise funds for the Army, and the political leaders gave command to an ex governor of Tennessee, Sam Houston. Houston had abandoned his wife and his governorship in a stormy night several years before. Striking out into the wilderness, he moved in with the Cherokee Indians, who had adopted him years before. Nearly naked half the time and living up to his nickname, "Big Drunk," Houston seemed to be a washed out embarrassment, not a future leader of a revolution and a new nation.

But after settling in Texas, Houston became a leading citizen and soon plunged himself into revolutionary politics. The provisional government appointed him commander in chief of the Army to replace Austin, mostly based on his close connections to his old Army commander - and political mentor - Andrew Jackson, who just happened to be President of the United States.

This appointment - politically savvy as it was - didn't sit well with many other revolutionaries, including James Fannin, who had attended West Point, fought in the Siege of Bexar, and now occupied the important fortress of Golaid, near the Texas Coast. His appointment also rubbed other veterans raw when he ordered the abandonment of San Antonio and the destruction of the Alamo.

If Austin had failed to win the loyalty of the army, Houston's chances were scarcely better, and in the end, his orders were ignored. Jim Bowie, who had married into the most important family in San Antonio - the Veramendis (descendants of the original Canary Island settlers) - and William Barret Travis, a brash, 25-year-old lawyer who had illusions of grandeur, thought such a move was cowardly.

In the end, they chose to stay and defend the Alamo, and Houston belatedly gave orders that legitimized the action. But Houston knew it was folly, and began to build up an army of his own from the citizens of the colonies and the new arrivals from the United States.

The problems with the Alamo, as far as Houston saw them, were many:

1. It was too far removed from the colonies, and would depend on lengthy supply lines, which were slow and easy to disrupt.

2. The Tejano citizens of San Antonio generally supported the revolution, but they certainly couldn't stick their necks out too far. While the Anglo settlers saw the coming fight as victory or expulsion, the Tejanos had no place else to go, and when the Mexican Army returned, Houston feared they would passively accept the old status quo rather than a repeat of the punishment they had received in 1813 when their first attempt at liberty had been brutally crushed.

3. The Alamo fortress was a wreck. Many of the walls were collapsed, and even if they had been repaired, it was much too large for a small defending force. Designed for a garrison of 400 or more, it was now defended by a paltry 150 Texians and Tejanos. There simply weren't enough people to cover the gaps in the walls.

4. Even if they could resist, Houston feared that the soldiers in the Alamo would simply be bottled in and bypassed. With the troops caught in San Antonio and unable to maneuver, the Mexicans would be free to sweep into the colonies.

But there was something mystical about the Alamo, and it became a fatal temptress to all the men who stood on its weathered adobe walls. More than one man had been sent with orders to abandon and destroy it, and one by one, they were seduced by its strange power. This was the Romantic era. The era of Beethoven and of the poets Coleridge and Keats, and Shelley. The era of Lord Byron, who wrote breathtaking poetry about passion, patriotism, freedom and honor - and sacrificed his life to those virtues twelve years before, fighting and dying in the Greek Revolution.

In that age, a man was not a man if he did not face danger, if he did not stand up for honor, if he would not risk all to defend his country, his wife, and his family. The Alamo, weathered and beaten-down as it must have seen, was to the eyes of these men of unbridled spirit the very symbol of the honor and glory they worshipped above all.

The earliest known photo of the Alamo chapel, taken a decade after the battle, before it was reconstructed

And so they clung to it, rebuilding its walls and re-aligning the captured Mexican cannon. The Mexican Army had been expelled, and they felt that soon the people of Texas would join them here, and prepare for the showdown that was to come. This was January, 1836. A new year. They had just expelled Cos' army, and it would be two months before Cos would arrive in Mexico City. It would certainly not be until the fall - perhaps summer - when the Mexicans would return. By then, the trickle of volunteers and supplies arriving in Texas would be a flood. And they could not lose.

Their spirits rose even more on February 8, when the already-legendary Davy Crockett and 30 volunteers from Tennessee (including my great, great ancestor) arrived and joined the defenders inside the Alamo. Crockett was a frontier fighter turned congressman whose antics had spawned a series of braggadocio-filled pamphlets extolling his exploits. The Chuck Norris of his day, he was attributed with near supernatural powers, abilities and strength. If any man could "lick the whole Mexican Army" it certainly was him. The Texans, who had beaten the Mexicans many times already with only a handful of losses of their own, were supremely confident.

But they sorely underestimated Santa Anna. He had not waited until his brother-in-law was defeated. Over a month before - November 28 - Santa Anna had left Mexico City with an army of 6,000 - a larger force than any that had ever fought in North America before. Taking the same paths that he had trod as a young Lieutenant in the Spanish Army in 1813, he once again came north to teach a lesson to the interloping Anglos and the treasonous Tejanos who had embraced them. Joining up with Cos' retreating forces - who were ordered to fall in line despite their pledge to never fight in Texas again - Santa Anna pressed onward, inexorably, to the fateful meeting that would bring his brilliantly-outfitted soldiers and their gleaming bayonets to face the grizzled frontiersmen of Texas and their deadly long rifles.

The winter of 1836 was the coldest in centuries, and a sudden blizzard of snow struck the lower Rio Grande Valley. Armies in that age didn't fight in winter, but that didn't stop Santa Anna. Marching on brutally through the snow, he did not stop, even as the conscripted Indians who made up the bulk of his infantry began to drop. They were covered by the snow where they lay. For the self-styled Napoleon of the West, it was a Russian-like odyssey into a dark and desolate land.

On February 23, 1836, the Texians were relaxing and unconcerned when the bells of the San Fernando church in San Antonio began to peal out a frantic warning. Hardly had they mounted the walls when the shiny helmets of Mexican dragoons appeared on the hills in the distance. Within minutes, the entire city descended into chaos. Defenders with wives in the city rushed to bring them inside the walls. Cattle were quickly secured and driven in. Dispatch riders were sent to Gonzales with the terrible news.

By nightfall, over 1,000 Mexican soldiers had arrived, and more arrived within the next day. Thus began a 13-day siege of the ancient mission. On the first day, the Mexicans began lobbing cannon shot over the walls, but the Texians dug in, firmed up their defenses, and prepared to fight. The command of the fortress had never been clear. The original commander, James Neill, who had done wonders in rebuilding the walls and positioning the cannons, left to deal with an illness in the family and never returned. From then on, command was disputed, with Jim Bowie in charge of the volunteers and Travis in charge of the regular forces sent from Gonzales. The two clashed nearly at once. Finally, with Bowie falling ill and confined to his bed, Travis assumed full command.

During a lull in the bombardment, he called his men into the courtyard to tell them the situation. The outlook, he said, was bleak. Although he had pleaded for reinforcements from the first day on, there was no indication that they would arrive. The nearest forces were those of Fannin in Goliad, but Fannin wasn't moving. Houston had not yet responded to the pleas. The Alamo, he said, would fall if not relieved. But even now there were still gaps in the Mexican lines and hope remained that the men could abandon the mission and escape to join Houston.

What he did then has become the stuff of myth, legend and heroism. According to a story which was only recounted years later, Travis drew his sword from its scabbard and drew a line in the sand, and asked that those who would stay and fight. Whether the line in the sand is myth or truth ultimately is moot, for every man standing before him chose to stay and fight.

Returning to his room in the second floor of a long low building that had once housed Spanish missionaries, Travis penned the latest of several letters to Houston. The words he wrote may seem inconceivable to cynical, modern ears, but in the age of Romanticism, glory and gallantry, they were sincere, from the heart, and inspired. The words that he wrote would ultimately transcend everything that William Barret Travis had ever done in his life. He had failed as a husband. He had failed as a father. At 25, he had been given an immense responsibility and he thought he had failed here too. As his ill-prepared rabble in a crumbling fortress faced the largest army the continent had ever seen, he certainly must have blamed himself for the disaster he knew would come.

But in those few lines, William Barret Travis lit the fuse of the cannon of the Texian heart. He saved a country and inspired a nation. In the battle that would come, he would be almost the first to fall, scarcely firing a single shot. But with his pen, he did what 1,000 reinforcements at the Alamo could never have done. Taking it up and dipping it in his inkwell, he touched it to the paper and began:

To the People of Texas &all Americans in the world--

Fellow citizens & compatriots--I am besieged, by a thousand or more
of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual Bombardment &
cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. 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, & our flag still waves
proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat.

Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything
dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch.

The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to
three or four thousand in four or five days.

If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as
possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor
& that of his country.

Victory or Death!

William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. comdt

The seige lasted 12 more days. Travis sent several couriers out, seeking news of reinforcements. But they were not coming. Houston knew he would never make it on time, and his reservations about abandoning the colonies were still valid. Fannin in Goliad finally started out, but it would be too late. The Alamo was now completely surrounded. But just before the path was blocked, a lone courier surveyed the scene. James Bonham surveyed the fortress and the increasing strength of the Mexican pickets. Bonham was not inside the Alamo, but outside, beyond the Mexican lines. He had left the Alamo days before carrying a message to Houston. Now he was returning with sad news. Houston would not come. No one would come. Every single man in the Alamo would die.

As Bonham stood on the hillside, he knew he could turn back. The Mexicans had not seen him and he was in the clear. With a kick of his spurs and a sideways tug on the reins, he could turn his horse around and ride back to Houston. In Houston's Army, he would have a chance for glory and for life.

But the power of the Alamo, which had seduced 188 men to cling to its walls seduced one more. Given the opportunity to steer Northward to freedom or ride South to the aid of his friends, Bonham guided his horse forward. Passing through the Mexican lines at a gallop, he entered the Alamo, from which he would never return.

The men who stood within the walls came from a dozen countries. There were some of the early settlers who had given up their citizenship in the United States for a new start in a foreign land. There were men who had only been in Texas a few weeks and had no connection to the land. And there were some whose roots went deep in the soil of Texas. Although most Tejanos had been used by the Army as scouts and remained with Houston in Gonzales, a dozen stood on the walls of the Alamo. Among them was a former Mexican soldier who had thrown his lot in with the cause of liberty.

The Alamo was not foreign to Gregorio Esparza. As he stood on those walls watching his former army close in and wave the blood-red flag and sound the call of Deguello - no surrender, no quarter - Gregorio Esparza was fighting for his home. For Gregorio Esparza had been born here. In this place. In these walls. Gregorio Esparza had been born inside the Alamo.

On the other side of the wall, the Mexican soldiers stood patiently, their hearts beating with fear and anticipation. Among the endless lines of footsoldiers in their white tunics was another Tejano for whom the walls of the Alamo were intimitely familiar. His name was Francisco Esparza. He was Gregorio's brother.

In the dark and chilly morning hours of March 6, 1836, the Mexican soldiers stood at attention. Finally, the order was given and they advanced. It didn't have to end this way. Santa Anna had been told that his powerful seige cannons were only two days out. With them, he could pound the fortress into rubble without risking a single one of his soldiers. But in that era of glory and honor, nothing short of a blood sacrifice would suffice. The soldiers, Santa Anna told General Castrillon - who had pleaded for the men's sake to delay the attack, "were nothing but so many chickens."

The first shots rang out and the Texans surged to the walls. Raising their rifles, they once again turned to their incredibly-accurate marksmanship, exacting a terrifying toll from the onrushing Mexicans. Wave upon wave were decimated by the cannons that Col. Neill had so-well placed. The cream of Mexican youth - ordinary men and boys who could be raising families and growing crops - were cut down as if by a great scythe. Yet still they came. Sheer numbers would prevail on this day. As Texians raised their heads to fire over the walls, Mexican soldiers firing with the best powder (not the poor stock they had been stuck with in Bexar), began to pick them off.
One of the first killed was Travis, his hot-headed enthusiasm perhaps getting the best of him. Soon, more followed. Holes began opening in the lines. Realizing that the walls were lost, the Texians retreated to a secondary defense within the fort. But in their haste, they had forgotten to spike their own cannon. Mexican soldiers wrestled them around and turned them inward on the defenders. They fired and blew huge holes in the line of ragged Texians.

Still they fought on, shooting down Mexican soldiers as they advanced. But as the pace of battle increased, it was barely possible to load and fire their muzzle-loading rifles. Now the Mexican bayonettes came into their own. When the hard-pressed soldiers on both sides could no longer shoot, they turned their rifles and muskets into blunt, Medival instruments of war. The Texians, with no bayonettes, were reduced to fighting with clubs. The Mexicans, who had the foot-long blades affixed to their weapons, were fighting with spears.

The Texians were soon pushed back into corners, rooms within the long barracks, and into the chapel. There they were cut down, at last, to the final man. As the slaughter went on, the Mexicans became crazed with an inhuman berzerker-like furor, slaughtering everything in their path. When a cat leaped out of a hiding place, a Mexican soldier shouted, "It's not a cat, it's a Texan!" and instantly, the animal was pierced with half a dozen bayonettes.
By dawn, it was over. Hundreds of Mexicans had been sacrificed to the hubris of Santa Anna. The Texians had fought to the death, even Jim Bowie, who had struggled from his sickbed, but was overcome. Travis was dead. Crockett was dead. The Mexicans spared only the half dozen scared and frightened women within the fortress - the wives and lovers of the recently-dispatched defenders. Only one male was spared - Travis' slave Joe, who may have fought early in the battle, but had retreated to the chapel to protect the women and was captured with them. If he had been armed before, he was not when he was found, and as a slave, was spared.

As he surveyed the terrible carnage, the stoic Santa Anna said "It was a small affair." If his heart was moved by the suffering and anguish of his own soldiers, he never showed it. But it should have. For as he returned to his tent and the acrid smoke of war passed over his battlefield, the cream of the Mexican army had been devastated. Among the first who had charged the walls were the bravest and the best. These had fallen before the Texian rifles. These soldiers would never fight again. Their loss would soon be felt on another battlefield hundreds of miles away, in the swampy lands of Southeast Texas.

As the Texians were placed on a stack of logs and their bodies readied for an unceremonial cremation, the Mexicans made one single concession to honor, courage and decency. One - and only one - of the nearly 200 Alamo defenders was given the right of a Christian burial. His name was Gregorio Esparza. Weeping and in anguish, his brother Francisco carried him from the field. On that horrendous day, March 6, 1836, there were thousands of tears shed and thousands of hearts torn with anguish. But none was more poignant, more sickening and wrenching than the tears of the Mexican soldier who buried the brother he had fought against within the walls of the fortress where they had both been born.


Coming soon: Revolution and Epilogue

Texas Independence - Part II

Enter the Austins

As we have seen, Spain was an exhausted power by 1820. Mexico had been in revolt for nearly 10 years. In South America, Simon Bolivar was marching to victory after victory against the royalist forces. The monarchy in Spain had lost all its ancient legitimacy and vitality in 1808 when Napoleon Bonaparte conquered the country and installed his drunken brother Joseph to the throne. But even the restoration of the Spanish monarchy failed to stem the tide. The empire, it seemed, was dying.

Texas was one of the most remote and hopeless parts of that empire. Outside of San Antonio, the government had almost no control, and the few existing towns basically ran themselves. Indian raids were rampant, and particularly in the case of the Comanches, brutal. The "King's Highway" which supposedly linked Texas to Louisiana, was little more than an imaginative line on the map.

The old missions which had served the Indians and formed the backbone of Spanish Texas, were in ruins. More than half of the walls of San Antonio de Valero - known to the locals as the Alamo - were collapsed. Livestock and rattlesnakes roamed free inside the roofless chapel which would one day be a worldwide icon of liberty.

Just at the perfect moment, an itinerant American/Spaniard named Moses Austin arrived on the scene. He had left the U.S. years before to move to Louisiana territory, which at the time was Spanish. Adopting Spanish citizenship and the Spanish language, Austin became a savvy trader linking America and New Spain.

Proud of his Spanish citizenship, Moses Austin had no intention of ever returning to America. He became fluent in Spanish and converted to Catholicism. But his dream of a new life in a new country came to an abrupt end in 1803.

Spain had won Louisiana from France after the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War, as it was known in America). But after Spain's conquest by Napoleon and the establishment of Joseph Bonaparte on the throne, Spain's new king gave the potentially wealthy land in America back to France. Napoleon, fighting wars in Europe that required money and focus, turned around and sold Louisiana to the U.S. There was no way he could keep it, and a failed expedition to Haiti convinced him that the new world was a malaria-infested Hellhole. And most importantly, Napoleon knew if he didn't cash out on his somewhat illegitimate claim on the territory, a revived Spanish monarchy might take it back from him.

Moses Austin, now once again a citizen of the United States, soon became a leader in the growing city of St. Louis, Missouri. As an American by birth, he was the perfect bridge between the French/Spanish citizens of Missouri and the flood of new American immigrants who poured in. But he was hit hard by the panic of 1819 and lost virtually everything. To top it off, a feud with his brother Stephen (for whom his son was named) wiped out any claim he had to the family land in Virginia. At 58, Moses Austin had gone from middle class to riches to rags.


But Austin was a visionary, and saw opportunity in Texas. Calling on old connections among the Spanish, he headed to San Antonio to sell the Spaniards on his new scheme to import American immigrants - who would become patriotic Spanish citizens just as he had - to save the dying colony of Texas from ruin.

At first the Spanish governor was inclined to throw him out of town for traveling to Spain without his petition - despite Austin's proof of former Spanish citizenship. But a chance encounter with an old friend bought him time, and soon the governor came around to Austin - and to his idea.

Just at the moment of his triumph when the Spanish governor in Mexico City had accepted his terms, Austin's endeavors got the worst of him, and after a short stint of sickness, he died with his dream seemingly unfulfilled. But there was still hope: His final words in a letter to his son, Stephen F. Austin, called on his son to follow in his footsteps.

A dutiful son, Stephen F. Austin was driven more by loyalty to his father than by his own ambition. He himself had settled in Arkansas and just barely lost a surprisingly strong race for U.S. Congress. Nonetheless, the ambitious son shelved his own dreams to fulfill the dying wish of a father. In 1821, he arrived in Texas to take up the cause. By the time he had arrived, however, Spain had ended its decade-long battle against the inevitable and accepted Mexican Independence. And with Mexico went Texas.

Stephen F. Austin had a whole new audience to convince.

Mexico inherits Spanish weakness

The facts, however, were unchanged. Texas was slipping, and the decade of war had only made things worse. Mexico, newly independent and friendly to the U.S., accepted Austin's terms, and within the year, Austin was back in the U.S., signing up 300 colonists to settle in the territory.

Austin and his settlers arrived three years later and founded a colony. It was soon joined by others, as new "empresarios" sought to piggyback on Austin's suddenly lucrative business. The population in Texas soon began to grow dramatically. The Anglo settlers, with better agricultural techniques, strong social bonds and modern rifles, were able to tame the lands that the Spaniards never could. More colonies were approved, and many new settlers arrived (including my own great, great, great grandparents, who crossed into Texas in the mid 1820s.)

But even as Texas became a growing success, the winds in Mexico were changing. Ever since the revolution, there had been a power struggle between Federalists - those who wanted less government, devolved to the states - and Centralists who wanted a single government run by a strong ruler. There were many players, but for our narrative we will focus on two who would be central to the struggle in Texas.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

Santa Anna was from humble beginnings, but rose quickly in the Spanish Army. In fact, he had been a Lieutenant in the army of Arredondo at the Battle of Medina (see Part I). In that engagement he had proven his bravery and skill, but also learned Arredondo's brutal tactics - tactics he himself would one day embrace in his own time as a general.

Santa Anna had originally fought for Spain against the revolutionaries, but showing the beginnings of a trait which would eventually become a cruel joke on the Mexican people - he switched sides now and became an ardent Federalist and champion of Democracy. He soon rose fast, and eventually became president of Mexico. Here, however, he would once again shift sides - this time to become a Centralist, embracing the idea of single, strong centralized power.

Lorenzo de Zavala

Lorenzo Justiniano de Zavala, a native of the Yucutan peninsula, had proud Spanish patrician upbringing, unlike Santa Anna. In an irony not unique in history, Santa Anna, the child of poverty, rose to embrace power and wealth while Zavala, the child of privilege, embraced democracy and the common man.

Zavala by the 1820s already had an impressive resume. He had served in the Spanish Cortez, or
Parliament, but when revolution broke out in Mexico, he crossed the ocean to return to Mexico and embrace the cause. Zavala, an admirer of the American Founding Fathers, plunged himself into Mexican politics as a die-hard Federalist. Unlike Santa Anna, he would never change.

Zavala was crucial in the early days of the new republic and served on the committee that wrote the Mexican constitution, which bore striking resemblance to the American one. The one-time Spanish legislator now served in the Mexican congress from his new home in Texas. Unlike the majority of Mexican Texans, he didn't settle in the old Spanish towns, but took up residence in the new, predominately Anglo settlements of East Texas. There he would develop new friends and his passion for American-style democracy would only grow stronger.

For a time, it seemed that things would work out well. Texas was indeed being civilized, and despite the fact that the colonists were causing a dramatic demographic shift, they showed no signs of wanting to break away. In fact, some of the new colonists - such as those who had come from Ireland to form San Patricio County (named after St. Patrick) - would be immensely loyal to Mexico, and when the revolution came, they would fight on the side of the Mexicans against their fellow colonists, even as Tejanos would cross the line to fight against their ethnic kinsmen.

By 1832, the wheels of fate that would draw them to that confrontation would begin to turn. Santa Anna had ascended to the presidency, ending the previous government which had stalled any reforms in Texas. At first, the settlers embraced him. He talked like a good Federalist. But soon, Santa Anna would start clamping down, and not just on Texas. No fewer than four Mexican states would soon rise in rebellion, including de Zavala's own home state of Yucatan.

Paranoia, Rabble-Rousers and the coming of the Revolution.

Stephen F. Austin, a lifelong bachelor who had by now devoted himself entirely to Texas, fought tirelessly to avoid an open break. But suspicions in Mexico were growing and hotheads in Texas were stirring the pot. Most Texans, like Austin, only wanted to live quiet lives in peace. But a few, like newly-arrived hotspur William Barret Travis, talked of independence. And not all of the old Hispanic citizens of the growing colony were opposed. Travis' best friend in his new homeland was none other than Zavala, who still hoped for more freedoms from Mexico, but who was beginning to doubt that they would ever come.

At the same time, a report from a traveling Mexican officer raised great concern among those in Mexico about the growing Anglo population. Journeying throughout the colony, the officer was shocked to find that Anglos now outnumbered native Tejanos by more than 20-1.

As part of Santa Anna's consolidation of power, a series of restrictions had been placed on all of the Mexican states, but none fared worse than Texas. Combining the government with that of Cohuilla to the South, Mexico hoped to save expenses. It made government, justice and nearly every aspect of commerce impossible in Texas. Citizens had to wait for years just to get married, and then only if they happened to corner one of the few roaming priests who made their way to the distant land. Finally, shocked by the inspector's report from Texas, xenophobic legislators in Mexico tore up the Texans' petitions and passed a law banning all new immigration to Texas from outside of Mexico.

Hoping to avoid a break and ease tensions, Austin - the one man most committed to keeping Texas as part of Mexico (more so even than Zavala and many Tejanos) - traveled to Mexico City to try to find a compromise. But rather than find an open government willing to hear the Texans' petitions, he found himself thrown unceremoniously into a dungeon.

The news hit Texas like a thunderbolt, and even the moderates and Tejanos were angered. Even so, cool heads prevailed and no action took place, hoping that the crisis would pass and Austin would be freed.

Finally, in 1834, after months in a Mexican dungeon, Austin returned to Texas a changed man. While rapprochement with the Mexican people was possible, it had become clear that Santa Anna was a dictator who would never recognize the rights of his people. With Austin now on the side of resistance, the mood in Texas swung decisively against Santa Anna. The constitution - which Zavala himself had helped write - must be restored. Or Texas would fight.

As talk of revolution began to spread throughout Mexico, Texans began to gird for battle.

Gonzales: Come and Take It

Matters finally came to a head in the small town of Gonzales. The increasingly paranoid Mexican garrison in San Antonio de Bexar sent a small detachment of cavalry to recover a small cannon which had been given to the settlers to defend against the enemy. As artillery, it was pathetic - no longer than an average man's forearm. It had only been given to the settlers to fight the Indians because they tended to run away from loud booms.


But as a symbol, it was powerful. The Gonzales cannon represented the social contract itself. Of government working for the people, not government oppressing the people. Refusing to accept being forcibly disarmed, a group of 32 Texans gathered beneath a flag featuring a picture of the cannon, a star, and the words, "Come and Take it." The words evoked the well-known legend of Thermopylae, where the Spartan King Leonidas had given the same response to a demand by the Persian king to hand over his sword (see "300").

The battle that ensued was short and small, but incredibly important. Only one Mexican soldier was killed in the exchange of gunfire before the Mexicans retreated back to San Antonio. But the die had been cast: there would be blood.

Texas Independence - Part I

When you're in a war, time flows differently. When it comes to your job, it shoots forward, turning you from a novice to a veteran in a mere matter of weeks. When your thoughts wander back home, it slows to a crawl and you realize just how long it's been since you were back there, and all the people you miss.

Most actual dates and their significance melts away, but the important holidays, like Christmas and Thanksgiving, gain even more meaning. Dates with patriotic meaning are even more perceptively felt. I arrived here in Iraq on Sep. 11. If all goes according to plan, I might be going home on the 4th of July.

O.K. Call me strange, but I'm an 8th Generation Texan, and for me, July 4 is the second most important Independence Day on the calendar. An equally - perhaps more important - date is March 2 - Texas Independence day.

In honor of the actions it commemorates, I continue a tradition I have performed for over 10 years now: the annual Texas Independence Day message. It's a long post, so I'm going to break it up over the next couple of days. So Happy Birthday, Texas!


The Beginning of a New Nation

On March 2, 1836, 52 men crowded into a bitter cold, half-finished wooden house in the tiny town of Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas. There was no glass in the windows and strips of cloth stretched across them did little to block the wind, much less the cold. The men had come to Washington to debate their futures and break from their past. Before the day was over, they would debate the crucial question of independence from Mexico, and sign a document, which like the declaration of Independence 60 years before, would bind up their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in the defense of freedom.

It had been a long, hard road to reach this point. For some, independence had been a dream for years. For many, it had only recently become thinkable. For most, however, it was a necessary but tragic step they had hoped to avoid. To fully appreciate what it was that had brought those 52 men to assemble in 1836, you have to go way back to the obscure origins of Texas and trace the history of how this wilderness was tamed by a series of rugged individualists who seemed to transcend ethnicity and pull their hardened character directly from the soil that surrounded them.

Early Texas history.

The early explorers of Texas were a hardy lot: There was Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who survived shipwreck on a hostile coast amid a very hostile Indian population, who trekked across thousands of miles of uncharted wilderness to return to safety in Mexico. Then there was Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, a Frenchman who planted an ill-fated colony on the Texas coast only to be betrayed and murdered by his own men. Finally, there was Francisco Coronado who came looking for gold, silver and fortune, but found only hostile Indians, hailstorms and rattlesnakes.

Their passing left little more than vanished footprints, but set the stage for a plethora of bold and audacious men to follow. Without knowing the name that this land would one day bear, they nonetheless won immortality as the first Texans.

Spain laid claim to the land, but then what did that mean anyway? Spain pretty much claimed all of North and South America, and except for a bit of jungle called Brazil that the Catholic Church allotted to Portugal, Spain pretty much got papal sanction for unlimited empire. Their claim was neither more honest, nor more deceitful than any others in Europe. In the process of empire, they both crushed brilliant, heroic civilizations and extinguished brutal barbarian tyrannies which enslaved millions of Indians to cruel human sacrifice.

The early history of Spanish colonization in Texas, however, was of sparse success. Attracting civilized immigrants was next to impossible. Unlike Mexico, which had an urban civilization to build on, Texas was a wilderness, and the reports of Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado didn't give prospective settlers much inspiration. The native Indians varied from the docile northeastern Caddo (whose word Tejas or "friend," gave the state its name) to the violent Karankawas on the coast, to the determined Huaco (or Waco) Indians of Central Texas, to the Coahilitecans of South Texas.

Far more concerning to the Spanish, however, were the new tribes moving into the region. In a war that had very little to do with Europeans, the Comanches and Apaches of the central North American plains fought a brutal contest for dominance. The Comanches got the worst of it and were pushed south into Texas. Some Apaches followed them as well, and the bitter rivalry and hostile nature of both tribes became an endless source of pain for the successors of the Conquistadores, who made their home in the brilliant new palaces of Mexico City.

Nonetheless, where the Spanish did try to settle, they did so among the docile tribes of the Northeast and South, seeking to convert them to Christianity and turn the Indians into a new population which would redeem the land from its primitive state. When no takers from Spain came (it was never as over-populated as England), settlers were brought in from the Canary Islands and dropped among the Indians.

But even the immigrants were never immigrants of choice, and they never had the freedom to own land, move, or even defend themselves outside of Spanish rules. When the early residents of Nacogdoches, Texas were forcibly evicted from that town and forcibly resettled further to the North, they complained bitterly, and some quietly slipped back to Nacogdoches. New settlers were not free to start up certain businesses, nor were they able to trade with the French in Louisiana - only 30 miles away from the nearest Texas outposts. Instead, they were only allowed to trade with Mexico City - over 1,000 miles away.Ultimately, the lack of freedom granted to settlers and the limitations forced on them by hostile Indians, made Spanish settlement in Texas a bust. But the climactic moment in the collapse of Spanish Texas came as a result of revolution - and war.

The Mexican Revolution and the Gutierrez Magee Expedition.

On Sep. 16, 1810 - one of those glorious days of freedom all lovers of Democracy should celebrate - deep in Mexico, Father Hidalgo issued his "grito" or "call to freedom" and unleashed the Mexican Revolution. Far to the north in Texas, the call was heard and the Citizens of Bexar (today's San Antonio) were eager to join in.

But these isolated frontiersmen, who by now called themselves "Tejanos" had no military force, and civilians were denied the right in many cases to own weapons. While revolution spread quickly across Mexico proper, Texas remained in the grip of Spanish authorities. The Mexican revolutionaries hatched a plot to seek aid from their neighbors to the north, and a revolutionary leader named Gutierrez travelled to America to raise an army.

For the United States, which had just gained Louisiana a few years before and sought to clear up its titles to the west and open new trading routes to the South, Mexican independence was also a long-standing dream. Add to that fact the fear of a potential alliance between Spain and England - with whom the U.S. would very shortly be at war with once again.

Under Gutierrez and an American West Point graduate, Augustus Magee, a group of American volunteers assembled in New Orleans and crossed over into Texas. Joining together with locals, they first drove the Spanish out of Nacogdoches, then La Bahia, then moved to Bexar, where they easily defeated the few remaining Spanish troops.

The American goal was never to steal Texas, although there were certainly some who hoped to buy it. Nonetheless, at least part of Texas was thought to lie within the territory gained from France as part of the Louisiana purchase, a border which had never been surveyed and lay in dangerous obscurity. America hoped to settle the claim with a friendly cash-strapped Mexico, rather than a brusque, tyrannical Spain.

At the time, the U.S. Secretary of State was James Monroe, whose fierce opposition to European meddling in the Western Hemisphere would eventually become known as the Monroe Doctrine. Monroe and President James Madison wanted nothing less than to see Spain evicted from the continent and democracy spread. Although official support of the Mexican rebels was out of the question, a shadowy State Department official joined the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition as an advisor.

After expelling the Spanish, the Tejanos declared Texas to be independent - pending success of the revolution elsewhere in Mexico. Texas, they announced, would join Mexico when the war was won. But the war was far from won in Mexico or in Texas. As time went by, the Gutierrez-Magee's impressive forces, bored by lack of action, dwindled. Controversy arose after the citizens of Bexar executed the Spanish governor by decapitation. Furthermore, many Americans, finding their own country now at war with England in the War of 1812, went home.

Thus, the rebellion was in a state of disarray in August, 1813 when the Spanish came back in force. A punitive Spanish force led by Joaquin de Arredondo surprised the revolutionaries just south of Bexar, in the Battle of Medina (August 18, 1813) - the bloodiest battle ever fought in Texas. It was a rout. The mixed army of 1,400 Tejanos, Americans and Indians was wiped out - fewer than 100 escaped alive.

The Battle of Medina - August 18, 1813

The result for Texas was even more calamitous. The Spanish opened up a brutal campaign of reprisal against the colony in anger for the murder of its governor. Bexar was pillaged. Towns to the North were burned. Overnight, the scarce progress that the frontier colony had made in 220 years of development, was reversed. Spain soon realized the error of their ways. Their punitive raid on Texas had broken the defense of the colony, and the Indians swarmed over the borders. Without civilized men tied to the land, the region would soon be lost.

Texas was probably lost from that day on, but Spain would grasp at one last option to hold onto what it could not control by itself. To do this, it took a risky gamble that was doomed to fail, but changed the nature of Texas forever.

But that story is best left for another day...