Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth (36 page)

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In the hours before dawn on March 6, 1836, Santa Anna’s men had little time for thinking about the future welfare of their lovers, wives, and children who remained with the army. Instead, shivering in the cold and contemplating their own fates, they had enough to worry about what would happen to them in the next hour or so. Since they had been ordered to rely upon “principally the bayonet,” these soldados, especially the veterans, knew what lay in store. Tormented by their thoughts, Santa Anna’s men more heavily weighed the legendary marksmanship of the Anglo-Celts, whose reputation in handling the Long Rifle had preceded them.

In the crack Zapadores Battalion, for instance, an uneasy Lieutenant Colonel de la Pena decided not to wear a white hat which might identify him as an officer, making him a target in the upcoming attack. An increasingly nervous de la Pena advised his friend, Lieutenant María Heredia, to do the same, because he believed “he and I would die” in the attack if such precautions were not taken. But the young lieutenant merely “laughed good-naturedly” and ignored the advice. In a fine dress uniform with shiny eagle buttons, the young lieutenant continued to wear his white hat: a decision he would soon come to regret.
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Eager to reaffirm his reputation as the “Napoleon of the West,” and like the manic French emperor whose instincts had served him well until the brutal guerrilla war in Spain and the disastrous Russian invasion, Santa Anna’s impatience and aggressive instincts had in fact gotten the better of him. Savvy veterans in the ranks, including leading officers, believed that an assault was unnecessary. For example, de la Pena lamented how “In fact, it was only necessary to wait the artillery’s arrival at Béxar for these [Alamo men] to surrender.”
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Sensing that his own “Sun of Austerliz” was about to rise, Santa Anna now prepared to give the long-awaited order to attack at around 5:30 a.m., thereby avenging General Cós’ December loss of San Antonio and redeeming the republic’s honor in its first major blow to regain Texas.
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At the Mexicans’ north battery, which stood “within musket range” of the Alamo’s north wall, Santa Anna ordered a five-foot-long Congreve rocket to be fired into the black sky for all to see, except, of course, the sleeping Alamo garrison. The red and yellow rocket soared high into the black sky as a quiet signal to begin the assault. The black powder had been removed from the rocket so that the exploding charge would not alert the garrison.
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All the while, Alamo garrison members like Captain Carey and his “Invincibles” continued to sleep deeply on this cold night, unaware that all hell was about to break loose. In a lengthy letter written to his brother and sister, and as if possessing a portent of his own death, Carey had promised “that if I live, as soon as the war is over I will endeavor to see you all” once again.
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Perhaps no one in Santa Anna’s army was now more motivated to redeem his reputation and honor today than young General Cós. And as Santa Anna’s brother-in-law who was defeated in this same place only a few months before, he had much to prove both to himself and others. In his own February 1, 1836, words, he was “ready to vindicate myself [and restore] my vacillating reputation” for having lost San Antonio and the Alamo in the first place. To wash away that humiliation, Cós had been ordered to target the west wall as his column’s objective. As a bachelor and unlike so many others in his assault column, General Cós had no concern about leaving a wife as a widow or children as orphans if killed this early morning. Amid the prone formation of Cós’ troops, consisting of the three companies of the San Luís Potosí Activo Battalion and the 280-man Aldama Permanente Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Gregorio Uruñuela, one soldado wrote of the dramatic moment when around 5:30 a.m. a rocket shot up through the air and suddenly “Cós yelled—on your feet! And placing himself at the head of the forces, we ran to the assault[;] the distance [to the Alamo] was short.”
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In all four assault columns, scores of promising young officers in resplendent uniforms and from leading Creole families repeated the order to attack. In the early morning darkness, the Mexican ranks surged forward over the grassy prairie, covered in a low-lying mist, with discipline and determination. Composed of around 300 troops of the Matamoros Permanente and Jiménez Battalions, under Colonel Mariano Salas, Romero’s column closed in on the east wall, while Dúque’s column, consisting of around 400 soldados of the three “rifle” companies of the San Luís Potosí Battalion and all of the “Active” and the Toluca Battalions, advanced toward the north wall. Meanwhile, Morales’ column, the little more than 100 cazadores of the Jimenez, Matamoros, and San Luís Potosí Activo Battalions, headed toward the low, wooden palisade along the south wall and their ultimate objective, the main gate. Every side of the Alamo was being attacked at once.

As they hurled themselves toward the undisturbed Alamo that lay silhouetted against the distant black skyline, the onrushing soldados felt confidence in the righteousness of their cause and numerical superiority. Providing solace and a certain peace of mind at this moment, the omnipresent spiritual presence of Lady of Guadalupe inspired the Mexican troops onward, providing inspiration to both officers of Castillian descent and pure-blood Indians to drive the interlopers from Mexico’s sacred soil.

In the predawn darkness, the handful of Travis’ soldiers posted outside the Alamo as pickets and sentries to give first warning of an attack never knew what hit them. Like a “blue norther,” the sudden descent of the foremost Mexican light troops, or skirmishers, came swiftly out of the darkness. Death would come as quickly as unexpectedly for the pickets. Alamo garrison members were about to learn the hard way how Santa Anna’s surprise attack that annihilated the Zacatacas militia had been launched in the night to catch opposing pickets asleep.Wrapped in thin blankets for warmth against the cold ground and winds sweeping over the prairie from west to east, the pickets remained perfectly still in the narrow confines of their trenches. Discipline at the Alamo had always been loose and these men simply lacked the training, experience, and discipline to obey orders to stay vigilant. Consequently, they continued to doze in a sleep from which they never awoke.

Death came quickly. With skirmishers descending upon them like ghosts in the night, they were easily overwhelmed and quickly dispatched by the first wave of fast-moving Mexicans skirmishers, who knew how to silently eliminate advanced sentries, especially when asleep, before they gave warning. No one knows if these pickets attempted to sound an alarm before they met their Maker in the blackness that surrounded them. In part employing racial stereotypes that so often demeaned the Mexican character, one popular author speculated how a swift end came for those men stationed outside the Alamo’s walls: “One by one, it is known as certainly as if it was recorded, they were dealt with by Mexican scouts crawling up on them in the dark. A knife in the right spot and a hand on the throat to deny the sleeper even the bark of death, and it was all over. None of them lived to give a peep of warning.”
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This popular version of the first Alamo deaths was almost certainly not the case, however. After so carefully orchestrating the attack to exploit the element of surprise, Santa Anna would not have risked that coveted tactical advantage by overwhelming the pickets with only a few scouts, needlessly running the risk that someone might fire a weapon to alert the sleeping Alamo garrison.

But these pickets and sentries, their number unknown, were most likely either bayoneted by enlisted men or sabered by officers from a heavy line of skirmishers, who were especially proficient at bayonet work. Clearly, these most advanced Mexican soldiers maintained excellent discipline in not only holding their fire but also in so quickly dispatching these advanced pickets, as directed by their officers. No one knows the names of those first few men who died outside of the Alamo, but they were probably all asleep and huddled together for body warmth when their lives had ended so suddenly.

In a letter written not long after the Alamo’s fall, E.M. Pease described the ominous tactical development resulting from the complete failure of the Alamo’s advance warning: “It was supposed that our sentinels worn out with fatigue had fallen asleep & were killed at their posts. [Before the sounding of] the first alarm within the fort, they were on and within the Walls in large numbers . . . “
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Indeed, the lack of discipline of the Alamo’s defenders outside the walls now came to haunt the garrison, which remained unaware of developments outside the walls at the most inopportune time. More conscientious officers, who possessed ample experience with night duty, were now fast asleep in the cozy warmth behind the closed doors of the various rooms of the compound—especially the Long Barracks for the enlisted men, a separate building for officers, and an artillery barracks—along the eastern perimeter. Clearly, from Travis, who was fast asleep in his own quarters, to the pickets outside the Alamo, no one had expected Santa Anna to attack at night.
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So far, Santa Anna’s plan to catch the garrison by surprise was working to perfection. According to the traditional version of the Alamo’s story, everything up to this point was going exactly as designed until some over-enthusiastic Mexican soldiers began shouting, or so claimed Santa Anna, who was a master at shifting blame. But the notoriously self-serving general had only employed this long-accepted explanation as a convenient excuse for what was considered an unnecessary assault when under increasing criticism from his countrymen for his San Jacinto defeat. Writing a largely fictional battle-report, Santa Anna explained how the Mexican troops “moved forward in the best order and with the greatest silence, but the imprudent huzzas of one of them awakened the sleeping vilgilance [sic] of the defenders of the fort [resulting in a] loss that was also later judged to be avoidable and charged, after the disaster of San Jacinto, to my incompetence and precipitation.”
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However, if some ill-timed outbursts of shouts among the Mexican troops occurred, it was not widespread—and hence not sufficient to alert the sleeping garrison—and only occurred later after the first soldados reached the walls. Experienced Mexican officers made sure that silence was maintained while their troops rushed forward. With an antiSanta Anna agenda, the ever-biased de la Pena described that a combination of wild shouting, the blaring of music from regimental bands, and the sounding of trumpets, and even premature volleys—allegedly fired at targets unseen—erupted simultaneously to alert the garrison, but this simply could not have been the case: Santa Anna would not have issued such orders to defeat his own plan for achieving complete surprise and to ensure that his troops would reach the walls before resistance was organized. De la Pena only used these examples to attempt to demonstrate Santa Anna’s incompetence.

In truth, virtually all garrison members were still asleep when the first Mexicans reached the walls. This development meant that the foremost attackers, who were leading the way for Colonel Dúque’s column pushing toward the north wall from the northwest, the skirmishers of the activo Toluca Battalion, initially met with no return fire during most of their dash to the wall. Moving rapidly forward in two lengthy lines, these skirmishers easily gained the north wall’s base before any fire opened upon them. One dependable company commander of the light infantry skirmishers was young Captain José M. Herrera. He led his cazadores (the Spanish word for chassuers) to the north wall, reaching a position under the silent guns of the north battery draped in darkness and silence.

Behind these swiftly advancing twin lines of skirmishers that had gained the wall’s base, the remainder of Dúque’s troops continued to push forward. Through the darkness, these attackers headed toward the north wall’s center, moving forward in column as fast as they could. The north wall, with its crumbling stone and abode bolstered by a timber and earth outwork, was the weakest link in the defensive perimeter, after the palisade. Consisting mostly of the activo Toluca Battalion, of around 365 men at top strength, Dúque’s column was not yet encountering any fire from the north wall during its sprint forward. The unmanned cannons at the wall remained perfectly silent. Pushing forward from the east, Romero’s column likewise met no initial fire in surging toward the Alamo from the rear, or east, revealing the extent of the total surprise. To the onrushing Mexican troops, the absence of defenders’ fire seemed like a miracle, a special gift from a soldado-loving God and a special protective favor from the Lady of Guadalupe.
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After moving quickly over the open ground, unencumbered by knapsacks or accouterments, the skirmishers of the activo Toluca Battalion sighed breaths of relief after gaining the north wall in the pitch-blackness. Clearly, they had been fortunate in achieving a remarkable tactical success in gaining the north wall’s base so quickly, reaping the benefits of Santa Anna’s tactical plan. Catching their breath, these skirmishers now waited at the base of the wall for the arrival of Dúque’s attack column that would shortly emerge out of the darkness. Meanwhile, selected soldiers of Dúque’s column carried ten ladders forward for the scaling of the wall.

Joining its skirmishers, Dúque’s column also reached the wall without taking fire. Here, they hurriedly began to set up their wooden ladders to scale the earth and timber outer work. Not only the dash across the open prairie but the placement of ladders against the north wall was a race against time, and Santa Anna’s men won it. As planned, the Alamo’s most vulnerable wall was now on the verge of being breached without the attackers having yet encountered any resistance.

With the advanced pickets wiped out so noiselessly, only one member of the entire garrison was now capable of performing the Alamo’s most important mission at this critical moment. Thirty-five-year-old Captain John Joseph Baugh, the commander of the remaining handful of New Orleans Greys, had stayed in San Antonio after the departure of Captain William Gordon Cooke, the Fredericksburg druggist. Having arrived in Texas with the Greys as a lieutenant, he now served not only as the Alamo’s dependable adjutant, but also second in command—both jobs in which he excelled. Although, like his commander, an aspiring gentleman planter of lofty ambitions, the capable Virginian did not get along with Travis. Like other volunteers, especially those feisty, independent-minded types from the crack New Orleans Greys, Captain Baugh had early clashed with Travis largely because the Alamo’s commander was a regular officer. The young Virginian Baugh was now the sole representative of the late morning watch, after the relief of the late night and early morning watch. This earlier shift of bone-weary men had gone off duty sometime just before 3:00 a.m. when Travis, after he made his usual rounds, retired for the night, exhausted from supervising more shoring-up of the battered north wall.