Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth (33 page)

Meanwhile, the young men from Missouri, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania probably wished that they were far from the Alamo deathtrap and safe in their homes far away from San Antonio. While the Mexican soldados froze in the late winter night, garrison members slept in utter exhaustion. No longer deluded by unrealistic visions of reaping glory against Santa Anna’s troops, these naive amateurs of war slept. It was almost as if the Alamo had become a warm, soothing place—or so it seemed—for garrison members, with sleeping quarters providing them shelter from both Santa Anna’s wrath and the bitter cold. All of their previous dreams and ambitions of getting rich from suddenly gaining thousands of acres of Texas land and becoming wealthy gentlemen planters, owning gangs of slaves, and pursuing lucrative careers were no longer important to the men at the Alamo.

Thanks to the Army of Operation’s arrival, their lives had been suddenly pushed to the edge of oblivion, mocking youthful ambitions of profiting by the quickest means. Indeed, this shortcut to acquiring land had meant that far greater risks had to be taken, and with stakes much higher than they had originally imagined. Like a wild gambler, so the Alamo’s soldiers had gambled everything on one throw of the dice, just as Santa Anna had gambled on cornering them in the old Spanish mission and catching them by surprise

With sleep the top priority, both vigilance and defensive preparations were at an all-time low among the garrison this early morning. Therefore the muskets, Long Rifles, and other weapons and accouterments were either stacked in corners or by their owner’s side. Except for several pickets stationed outside the walls in the trenches, seemingly everyone in the Alamo was asleep by the early hours of March 6. For the garrison members it would be their very last, as they were now on the verge of meeting their Maker. Travis made his final rounds of the silent, seemingly empty Spanish mission-turned-fort. He must have been relieved that the incessant artillery bombardment had halted the previous afternoon. But neither Travis nor his men—alike novices to the ways of conventional warfare—suspected that Santa Anna’s clever stratagem of an orchestrated silence was actually the lull before the storm.

Hour after hour in the cold darkness, not a single garrison member detected any unusual activity or indications of an impending Mexican assault. The handful of ragtag pickets stationed outside the Alamo was also oblivious to what was happening around them. Now situated in the low-lying, cold trenches amid the slight valley of the San Antonio River, they lacked a good vantage point to not only see anything before them, but also to hear what was happening on the surrounding prairie. But just as important as the lack of vigilance among the defenders was the fact that the Mexican troops continued to display an iron discipline, keeping perfectly quiet hour after hour out in the open.

Meanwhile, seasoned Mexican officers moved silently down the lengthy assault formations poised in the silent prairie, preparing their men for the attack one last time. The upcoming attack before dawn posed a stiff challenge for these soldados. Nothing proved more difficult than unleashing a tactical offensive at nighttime with little—if any—visibility, as on this cloudy, winter night.

To maximize chances for success, Santa Anna had already made a number of well-calculated decisions: excluding recruits and selecting only his best troops from the Matamoros, San Luis Potosi, Jiménez, Toluca, Zapadores, and Aldama Battalions, and including a tactical reserve of crack troopsfor the attack. Each of these battle-ready battalions possessed six fusilier companies that served as the army’s “solid backbone,” and a company of cazadores, or light infantry, who were the army’s best riflemen. All of these seasoned soldados now wore shoes or sandals so that they would utter no sound during the final sprint across the prairie. After all, advancing soldiers stepping on cactus, rocks, or on each other’s feet would raise yelps of pain that might alert the garrison. Ladders had been distributed among the assault units of each column, instead of making the mistake of assigning a single unit with that important responsibility, which had played a role in sabotaging the British assault on Jackson’s line at the battle of New Orleans.

Commanded by officers—both junior and senior—from upperclass Creole families, the best trained and drilled troops about to be unleashed were the permanentes, or the regulars, around which this largely conscript army had been created. However even the raw recruit, or the lowly peasant, was a tough, hardy fighting man, only too familiar with sacrifice, hardship, and suffering. And as in the past, these soldados were guaranteed to fight even harder than usual because they now faced invaders of a different race, culture, and religion on their own soil.

As the young men from Mexico continued to shiver from the biting cold of the open prairie, final orders from the officers to prepare for Santa Anna’s signal to begin the attack made some soldados more apprehensive, yet all the while they continued to remain perfectly silently in neat formations from 3:00 a.m. to almost 5:00 a.m. Sneezes and coughs were muffled as much as possible by shirt and uniform coat sleeves in the biting cold of early morning.

Despite that the men were cold and with blistered feet from the rapid march north, with some soldados in various stages of sickness, Mexico’s highly motivated fighting men maintained their composure. Knowing the importance of his troops reaching the Alamo’s walls as quickly as possible, Santa Anna had ordered them not to wear either “overcoats or blankets, nor anything that may impede the rapidity of their motions.” This was an adroit decision, which the British, despite being seasoned veterans of the Peninsular War, had failed to make at the battle of New Orleans, slowing their assault across the cold, January plain of Chalmette.

Troops of five companies of crack Mexican Grenadiers were yet dressed in summer uniforms of white cotton. Santa Anna had placed these men in reserve. Not a single Mexican had been detected by lookouts atop the roofs of the buildings, especially the Long Barracks. But more significant to facilitate Santa Anna’s tactical plan were the winter winds, which blew away from the Alamo, masking the slightest sounds emitting from deployed soldiers ready to sprint forward upon cue. Seemingly, even nature herself had conspired against the Alamo garrison at this time.
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Equally prepared for the upcoming fight were General Sesma’s cavalrymen and lancers, the finest soldiers of Santa Anna’s Army. As quietly as possible, these troopers had saddled-up their horses around 3:00 a.m. With the veil of darkness concealing their movements and the wind blanketing their sounds, hundreds of Mexican cavalrymen rode slowly into the night to take up their new assigned positions. The horsemen began to fall into formation under and around the cottonwoods trees of the “Alameda.” As directed by Santa Anna, General Sesma established his cavalry headquarters in the saddle. Here, southeast of the Alamo on elevated ground near Gonzales Road, he was in a good position to maneuver his cavalrymen once the sun rose.

Commanding the 280-man Permanente Regiment of the Dolores Cavalry, General Don Ventura Mora carefully aligned a section of Sesma’s cavalry in the thick cover that bordered the river. Meanwhile, at the Alameda proper, Sesma deployed most of his horse soldiers in a lengthy line in the blackness. It was now the horse soldiers’ mission, especially those of the elite lancers of the Dolores Cavalry regiment, “to prevent the possibility of an escape” from the Alamo.

Clearly, as Santa Anna envisioned, the most likely target of any escapees would be the Gonzales Road that led east to safety. Here, in Sergeant Manuel Lorcana’s words, “a squadron of Lancers [of the Vera Cruz regiment], flanked by a ditch [the irrigation ditch that ran south, passing behind the church and leading to the Gonzales Road just below the west end of the Alameda], to cut off the retreat at the time of the assault.” Sesma and his troopers knew that Santa Anna wanted no survivors. By making such well-placed cavalry deployments, Santa Anna revealed that he knew his opponents quite well, fully anticipating escape attempts from the indefensible Spanish mission, which was bound to be overwhelmed swiftly if everything went according to plan.
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And if any troops of Santa Anna’s Army could fulfill the generalissimo’s desire for no survivors, it was Sesma’s veteran cavalrymen. These crack horsemen were well trained, highly disciplined, and natural killers, mirroring the qualities of their hard-bitten commander. Sesma and his cavalry division, especially the Vera Cruz Lancers, had been Santa Anna’s iron fist in the Zacatecas victory, when they had eased around the militiamen’s right flank and attacked an unwary opponent from the rear. This tactical envelopment led to the easy rout of hundreds of Zacatecas militiamen and their systematic slaughter. Above all, these Vera Cruz horsemen who took position near the Gonzales Road were proud of their favorite tool of destruction, the lance.
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Indeed, Santa Anna’s cavalrymen, now mounted on relatively fresh horses requisitioned on the push north, could ride down a rabbit, deer, or man with relative ease, especially on the open prairie. Not even the finest Anglo-Celtic horseman in Texas could compare to an experienced Mexican or Tejano on horseback. Therefore, the worst nightmare for an Alamo garrison member would be to get caught out on the open prairie by Mexican horse soldiers—especially the elite lancers with their murderous weapons of death.

During the early morning hours of March 6, among the most vigilant Mexican soldiers were those who now stood beside a Congreve rocket battery that had been erected on the night of March 4, within musket range of the Alamo’s north wall. But in keeping with Santa Anna’s orders, alert Mexican artillerymen of the north battery would receive no orders this early morning to open fire from their commanderin-chief. To maximize surprise and to catch the slumbering garrison completely by surprise, Santa Anna wanted no artillery bombardment, as was customary, before a general attack.

But unlike the idle Mexican cannoneers who remained motionless in the darkness, the anxious rocket battery men awaited Santa Anna’s word to fire a rocket to signal the attack. After all, Santa Anna wanted no bugle calls to echo through the night that would alert the Alamo garrison to the assault. The rocket, about to be fired in Texas for the first time in history, was now a Mexican secret weapon, even though they had been in use for sometime. (Not only were rockets used in the Napoleonic Wars, but also during the War of 1812 where they were immortalized in the words of America’s national anthem: “By the rockets’ red glare.”)

All the while, Santa Anna, who received an adrenaline rush from battle, could hardly wait to unleash his multipronged assault calculated to strike each side of the Alamo compound at once. He wrote: “I took pride in being the first to strike in defense of independence, honor, and rights of my nation.”
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While an enthusiastic Santa Anna embraced the battle cry of “On to the Alamo,” the more practical common soldiers, mostly peasants in the ranks, like Felix Nunez, interpreted it in an entirely different light: “On to the Alamo was on to death.” Thanks to officer’s vigilance not to be observed, the moonlight shined off no earrings, rings or “other types of feminine ornaments that lowered the military profession” among the common soldiers in the silent, motionless ranks.
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One pureblood Aztec, who might have desired to wear such “ornaments,” in the Army of Operations was Felix Rodriguez. Ironically, he would die in San Antonio not during the Texas Campaign, but in the early 20th century.
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At this time, the emotional and psychological symbolism and mystique of the legendary ancient Aztec warrior was yet alive and well in Santa Anna’s ranks, serving as a powerful motivator. This was the legacy of the proud Anáhuacense soldier. Long before the Spanish Conquistadors arrived, Mexico was the “country of Anáhuac.” One Mexican leader promised his troops vengeance upon the “horde of adventurers” who awaited a dismal fate at the hands of “the thousands of soldiers [of Mexico who] will make them bit[e] the dust. The foolish ones which in their delirium have provoke[d] the courage and mettle of the ANÁHUACENSE soldier.” Therefore, future Mexican conquests in Texas, including at the Alamo, would be widely viewed as the “Eagle of Anáhuac hav[ing] extended its wings.” Reaping a victory at the Alamo promised these fighting men the widespread reputation as the “Saviors of the Fatherland.”
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Ironically, racial pride in the Indian past existed on both sides of the Alamo’s walls. Father and son Gregorio and Enrique Esparza, of San Antonio, were equally proud of their own Indian heritage. Enrique explained how: “Many of my people are of mixed blood. I am of Indian and Spanish blood [and] We are proud of that ancestry.”
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In time and after wiping out the Alamo garrison, Santa Anna himself would be viewed across Mexico as the invincible “father of Anáhuac,” a title which appeared in the April 30, 1836 issue of Mexico City’s
La Lima de Vulcano.
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But not all Indians of Santa Anna’s Army occupied the lowest ranks. Santa Anna’s trusty aide-de-camp, Colonel Juan Almonte, was half Tlaxcala Indian. In a strange paradox, Santa Anna’s Army of Operations consisted of a multiethnic and multicultural fighting force much like the Alamo garrison.
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Most important for the upcoming clash of arms, Santa Anna’s four assault columns contained a good many reliable veterans, in both his Creole-dominated officer corps and in the enlisted ranks of peasant soldiery. These ranks had been culled in this increasingly brutal civil war, waged since 1832, leaving a hardened cadre of both officers and enlisted men of permanente and activo units alike. More so than the militia commands, the regular army units retained a large measure of pride, while embracing a stronger sense of national identity and nationalism. Some of Santa Anna’s top lieutenants had even helped to defeat Napoleon’s forces in Spain, waging both conventional and guerrilla war. Part of a fraternity, Santa Anna had served with many of these privileged Creoles of the upper class, such as Colonel José Juan Sánchez Navarro, as junior officers in the Royal Spanish Army and as a military school classmate before fighting together against the Spanish to help win Mexico’s independence.