Lone Star Nation (55 page)

“It was two o'clock
P
.
M
. when we descried Houston's pickets at the edge of a large wood, in which he concealed his main force,” Delgado wrote. “Our skirmishers commenced firing; they were answered by the enemy, who fell back in the woods.” Thus began the battle Santa Anna had been trying to provoke and Houston, till lately, to avoid. Santa Anna was more eager than ever and wanted to attack in force at once. But Houston kept to the woods, leaving Santa Anna to puzzle how to draw him out. Meanwhile the Mexican commander ordered Delgado to open cannon fire in the direction of the Texans, whose Twin Sisters responded with grapeshot that severely wounded Captain Urizza, the officer from the battle of the Alamo. For his part, Delgado wounded James Neill, the Texan artillery chief who had commanded the Alamo before Travis.

Houston was content, for the moment, to have engaged and bloodied the enemy, but his men demanded more. Sidney Sherman loudly declared that a cavalry charge would scatter the Mexicans and carry the day. Houston thought Sherman a fool; the Texans didn't have proper cavalry, only riflemen with horses, which principally provided larger targets for Mexican cannons and muskets. But Sherman paid no more attention to Houston than Baker and Martin had, and he quickly gathered sixty eager horsemen, including War Secretary Rusk. Again feigning control, Houston belatedly blessed the foray but ordered Sherman merely to reconnoiter and under no circumstances to engage the enemy in force.

Sherman ignored the order and on first contact with Mexican troops launched a charge. Santa Anna, who recognized courage when he saw it, was impressed. “About one hundred mounted men”—Santa Anna's war stories, like many of the genre, inflated enemy strength—“sallied forth from the woods and daringly threw themselves upon my escort placed on our left. For a moment they succeeded in throwing it into confusion and seriously wounding one of the dragoons.” But the Texans' moment passed. Forced to dismount to reload, they were vulnerable to a charge by the real cavalry of the Mexicans. Soon they were surrounded and fighting for their lives. Sherman signaled frantically to Houston for reinforcements.

This was precisely what Houston had wanted to avoid. He had known that his men could fight from the trees, but he doubted they could stand up to the Mexican dragoons in the open field. Sherman's sally had proved him right, and he had no intention of sending the rest of the army out to meet a similar fate.

But the army, as before, had a mind of its own. Jesse Billingsley, a two-year Texan from Tennessee who commanded a company of volunteers mustered into the regular army, refused to let Sherman and his followers be massacred by the Mexicans. “Seeing him under a heavy fire and receiving no orders from General Houston to go to his support,” Billingsley remembered, “I determined to go voluntarily, and accordingly led out the first company of the first regiment.” The remainder of the regiment followed, and all began marching toward the field where Sherman and the others were battling desperately.

Houston was outraged at the insubordination but unable to prevent it. “He ordered us to countermarch,” Billingsley recalled. “This order the men treated with derision, requesting him to countermarch himself, if he desired it.” The arrival of the regiment distracted the Mexicans long enough to let Sherman and the others retire to the trees with the rest of the Texans.

Miraculously, only two men were wounded in this escapade, besides several horses killed. Thomas Rusk had a narrow escape, made possible by the timely intervention of a late recruit, Mirabeau Lamar, who rode down a Mexican dragoon about to dispatch the secretary of war. Lamar also rescued a teenage Irish volunteer dazed in falling from his mount. So daring were Lamar's horseback exploits that some of the Mexican cavalrymen spontaneously burst into applause.

If Houston expected Sherman to be chagrined at having hazarded several dozen men to no good purpose, he was mistaken. Sherman showed not the least repentance but rather berated Houston for not throwing the entire army into the battle and having it out with the Mexicans then and there. Houston tongue-lashed Sherman for stupidity and insubordination, but the rebuke had little effect beyond embittering Sherman against Houston permanently.

As night fell, Houston worried about the day ahead. Santa Anna was precisely where Houston wanted him, and the Texan troops were itching to take on the Mexicans. But almost none of the Texans had seen genuine battle, and their lack of discipline—meaning not just their willingness to withstand fire but their ability to follow orders under pressure and act in unison—was frightening. They could probably skirmish with the best of irregulars, but could they stand up to regular soldiers in a pitched fight? General Gaines's men presumably could, which had been one of their attractions all along. Houston wondered, even now, whether he should have continued to retreat. But the decision had been made, and soon he would discover whether it was the wrong one. He wasn't sure his men could win the war in a day; there were thousands of Mexican troops besides Santa Anna's in the field. But because these were the only troops Texas had, a day might suffice to lose the war.

Exhausted from worry and exertion, Houston was still sleeping the next morning when General Cos unexpectedly arrived at Santa Anna's camp with a contingent that doubled the Mexican force. Many of Houston's officers and men took this as additional evidence of their commander's incapacity to lead. If the battle had been the day before, they could have fought Santa Anna and Cos separately; now they would have to fight the two Mexican generals together.

Houston had been reluctant to attack before Cos's arrival, and he was more reluctant after. He liked his position and preferred to let Santa Anna assume the danger of the initiative. As John Swisher recalled, the Texans' position had much to recommend it.

It would be difficult to select anywhere better ground for an impregnable camp than that now occupied by our army. It was about two or three feet above the water's edge and ran back from fifty to one hundred yards on a level, covered with trees, but with little or no undergrowth, to a second bank about ten feet high. This last bank was not so steep that the troops could not easily walk to the top, deliver their fire, fall back, load, advance and fire again.

The Mexican position was far less attractive. “We had the enemy on our right, within a wood, at long musket range,” Pedro Delgado explained. “Our front, although level, was exposed to the fire of the enemy, who could keep it up with impunity from his sheltered position. Retreat was easy for him on his rear and right, while our own troops had no space for maneuvering. We had in our rear a small grove, reaching to the bay shore, which extended to our right as far as New Washington. What ground had we to retreat upon in case of a reverse? From sad experience, I answered: None!”

Delgado related his fears to General Castrillón, who shared them. “What can I do, my friend?” Castrillón said. “I know it well, but I cannot help it. You know that nothing avails here against the caprice, arbitrary will and ignorance of that man.” The reference, of course, was to Santa Anna, for whose ears Castrillón intended his criticism. “This was said in an impassioned voice,” Delgado remarked, “and in close proximity to His Excellency's tent.”

Yet His Excellency saw merit in the Mexican position. “I shut the enemy up in the low marshy angle of the country where its retreat was cut off by Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto,” Santa Anna said. “Their left was opposed by our right, protected by the woods on the banks of the bayou; their right covered by our six-pounder and my cavalry; and I myself occupied the highest part of the terrain.”

Whoever had the better of the terrain, Santa Anna now had the edge in numbers. But the troops that came with Cos weren't ready for battle. They had been on the road all night and required food and rest. Santa Anna assumed that if the rebels were going to attack, they would have done so at dawn; since they hadn't, he didn't think they would before the next day. He ordered the new arrivals to stack their arms and take a nap in the grove by the bayou. As he himself had gone without sleep while supervising the erection of breastworks, he too lay down to rest.

Santa Anna's assumption might have been right as it related to Houston. The Texan general remained cautious and wouldn't lightly abandon his strong defensive position for the hazards of an assault across open ground. But Santa Anna's assumption didn't apply to Houston's men, who again forced their commander's hand. Accounts differ regarding the degree of unrest in the Texan camp. Nicholas Labadie portrayed Houston as continuing to dither till John Wharton (the brother of Stephen Austin's fellow envoy to the United States) brought the issue to a head. “Col. Wharton visited every mess in camp,” Labadie said, “and slapping his hands together, he spoke loud and quick: ‘Boys, there is no other word today but fight, fight! Now is the time!' Every man was eager for it, but all feared another disappointment, as the commander still showed no disposition whatever to lead the men out.” Wharton persisted, and the men began to respond, till finally Houston declared, “Fight, and be damned!”

Houston remembered things otherwise. He said that at a noontime war council the demands to attack were confined to two junior officers. Their four seniors—not including Houston but including Rusk—cautioned against ordering the untested Texan troops across an open field against the Mexican defenses. Better to let the enemy do the attacking. “Our situation is strong; in it we can whip all Mexico,” Houston paraphrased the majority.

If the two versions reveal a difference, it was chiefly about timing. Houston knew he couldn't delay long, given the belligerence of his troops and the inevitable approach of the rest of the Mexican army (which he tried to slow by ordering the destruction of the bridge over which Cos had come). The Texan commander might wait a day, maybe two, but he couldn't wait longer than that without losing all hope of victory.

In fact he didn't wait even a day. Driven for years by his ambition, goaded for weeks by his men, presented just now by Santa Anna with an unprecedented opportunity, Houston on the afternoon of April 21 took the fateful step. At three-thirty he ordered the Texans to form up. “Our troops paraded with alacrity and spirit, and were anxious for the contest,” he recalled, in what was a substantial understatement. Though less than a mile from the Mexican camp, the Texans moved forward undetected, concealed by a small hill, by tall grass, by the Mexicans' fatigue, and by Santa Anna's conclusion that the rebels wouldn't attack that day.

As he sent the men into battle, Houston still worried that their ranks would splinter under fire. He was right to worry. “Our regiments were volunteers, and knew nothing whatever about drilling,” Frank Sparks admitted. If they could keep one thought in mind, to hold their fire as long as possible, Houston would be lucky. “We were ordered not to fire until we could see the whites of the enemies' eyes,” Sparks said.

The advance proceeded quietly until the Texans were within a quarter mile of the Mexican camp. Two columns of infantry, totaling some six hundred men, pushed ahead of the artillery, which consisted chiefly of the Twin Sisters. The Texan cavalry—a few dozen mounted riflemen under the newly promoted Mirabeau Lamar—circled to the Mexican left. Houston, astride a white stallion acquired for the occasion, rode amid and around the troops. At his order the cannons opened fire with grape and canister, the cavalry galloped forward, and the infantry charged, screaming, “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!”

The surprise attack stunned Santa Anna and the Mexicans. “I was in a deep sleep when I was awakened by the firing and noise,” Santa Anna said. “I immediately perceived we were attacked, and had fallen into frightful disorder.” The disorder deepened as the Texans surged forward. “The utmost confusion prevailed,” Pedro Delgado remembered. “General Castrillón shouted on one side; on another, Colonel Almonte was giving orders; some cried out to commence firing; others, to lie down to avoid grape shots. . . . I saw our men flying in small groups, terrified, and sheltering themselves behind large trees. I endeavored to force some of them to fight, but all efforts were in vain—the evil was beyond remedy: they were a bewildered and panic-stricken herd.”