The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation (35 page)

More than a thousand Mexicans now crowded the fort. The gunfire finally died down, with only scattered musket shots, as they roamed the courtyard and the buildings, moving among the bodies to gather their wounded and begin reforming in ranks. Those rebels still alive were finished off with a musket shot or a bayonet thrust, and their corpses were stripped of clothing, shoes, and valuables.

Barely an hour had passed since the first bugle call. As the dense smoke began to lift, and the early morning light illuminated a grisly scene strewn with severed limbs, corpses—some naked, others with the burning remnants of clothes still clinging to them—and blood everywhere, a triumphant Santa Anna made his way to the front of his troops.

As His Excellency surveyed the carnage, General Castrillón approached him, followed by five rebel prisoners under guard. Castrillón explained that they had been found hiding. “He was reprimanded severely for not having killed them on the spot,” wrote Ramón Caro, Santa Anna’s secretary, who stood nearby. Caro watched as Santa Anna barked a command, then “turned his back on Castrillón while the soldiers stepped out of their ranks and set upon the prisoners until they were all killed.” Several other officers, de la Peña among them, averted their eyes, disgusted by the barbarity of the act.

“The general then addressed his crippled battalions, lauding their courage and thanking them in the name of their country,” remembered de la Peña. The response of the exhausted
soldados,
with almost a hundred of their comrades dead and at least three hundred more wounded, was less than enthusiastic. The expected “Vivas” were offered halfheartedly, and an icy silence followed. A disgusted de la Peña stepped up and called for cheers hailing the republic, then more for the valiant
cazadores
of Aldama, who had paid a heavy toll in the attack on the west wall.

Santa Anna sent for the acting
alcalde
of Béxar, Francisco Antonio Ruíz—who had spent the siege under house arrest, suspected of rebel sentiments—and several other prominent citizens. When they arrived, he directed Ruíz to round up some of the townsmen to bring carts and carry the dead
soldados
to the Campo Santo, the cemetery on the west side of town. Then he told Ruíz to show him the bodies of Travis, Crockett, and Bowie—Joe had identified the first two, but His Excellency desired stronger assurance.

As the corpses were separated and carried outside, another
norteamericano,
a small man named Warnell, was found hiding among the dead bodies and brought before Santa Anna. A Mexican staff officer, Captain Marcos Barragan—who had also found Travis’s servant Joe and protected him—interceded. Warnell begged that his life be spared. Santa Anna ordered the American shot, and he was quickly executed.

After the last surviving enemy was dispatched, and all the Mexican dead and wounded had been carried out, Santa Anna ordered wood brought to burn the bodies of the rebels away from the fort. At three p.m. they began laying the wood in two large piles near the Alameda. The Texian corpses were deposited in alternating layers—a layer of wood, topped by a layer of bodies, then another layer of wood, and another of bodies—until the grisly chore was complete.

Before the
bexareños
carted all the dead away, a Béxar
presidial
made a special request of General Cós. Francisco Esparza had not participated in the battle, but had remained at his home. Now he and his two brothers asked if they could search for their brother Gregorio and give him a Christian burial. Their request was granted. They found him in a room in the church, a musket ball in his breast and a stab wound in his side, and carried him to the Campo Santo, making him the only rebel to be buried and not burned.

An officer brought a few women he had gathered in town to tend to the dead and dying. They did what they could, bandaging up the wounds of some of the Mexican soldiers and comforting those who had not long to live. The floor of the church “was literally crimson with blood,” recalled one
bexareña,
who remembered seeing Crockett “as he lay dead by the side of a dying man, whose bloody and powder-stained face I was washing.” Another young Tejana went in and located her dead sweetheart. She wiped the grime from his face, crossed his hands on his chest, and placed a small cross on it. When told to leave, she dipped her handkerchief in his blood, placed it in her bosom, and left.

Santa Anna returned to his quarters in town, summoned Caro to bring pen and paper, and immediately dictated his official battle report. It was addressed to secretary of war José María Tornel. “Victory belongs to the army,” he began, “which, at this moment, 8 o’clock A.M., achieved a complete and glorious triumph that will render its memory imperishable.” After briefly describing the battle, he summed up the results, albeit with one major embellishment: he tripled the death toll of the enemy to make the victory all the more dramatic, and help to justify his decision to assault the Alamo:

More than 600 corpses of foreigners were buried in the ditches and entrenchments, and a great many who had escaped the bayonets of the infantry, fell in the vicinity under the sabres of the cavalry…. We lost about 70 men killed and 300 wounded, among whom are 25 officers. The cause for which they fell renders their loss less painful, as it is the duty of the Mexican soldiers to die for the defense of the rights of the nation….

The bearer takes with him one of the flags of the enemy’s battalions, captured today. The inspection of it will show plainly the true intention of the treacherous colonists, and of their abettors, who came from the ports of the United States of the North.

The blue banner of the New Orleans Greys was used to prove that American pirates were aiding the Texians, but the rebels’ constitutionalist flag—the Mexican tricolor, with its two stars representing Coahuila and Texas—was destroyed. Such a symbol offered no benefit to Santa Anna, who had dismantled the 1824 constitution and still faced opposition in several Mexican states. He wanted no reminder that the vanquished had considered themselves faithful citizens of their adopted country.

About five p.m. the two funeral pyres, one on each side of the Alameda, were lighted. The bodies, American, Texian, and Tejano, burned for hours, and the large pillars of smoke could be seen for many miles around. Several
bexareños
stood and watched. A few Mexican officers did also, transfixed by the somber scene.

Among them was Captain Sánchez. He, for one, found that pride in this victory was tempered by sadness. The cost had been bitter. He lamented the loss of so many good soldiers—and the gutting of some of the army’s best battalions. In the face of a furious and desperate rebel defense, the long-suffering
soldados
of the Army of Operations had fought valiantly. They had paid a stiff price. In addition to the seventy-five killed outright, many of the wounded would soon be dead for lack of proper medical attention. (Only one ineffectual army surgeon—who had remained with the badly wounded from the battle for Béxar in December—was on hand.) As Sánchez and the other staff officers crossed the river to return to town, they passed hundreds of injured men. “Soldiers mutilated and torn stumbled into camp to be bound up,” remembered one
béxareño
who was pressed into service. “Dozens and scores were dragged in with gaping wounds through which their lifeblood trickled.”

Later that night, while His Excellency made plans to move west and strike at the heart of the
norteamericano
colonies, Sánchez ruminated on the day and opened his journal. “With another victory like this one,” he wrote, “we may all end up in hell.”

SEVENTEEN

The Bleeding Country

Gonzales is reduced to ashes!

S
AM
H
OUSTON

S
oon after she was taken to the Músquiz house, Susanna Dickinson asked if she could visit the Alamo. Francisca Músquiz told her it would not be permitted, as the dead bodies—those of her husband, Almeron, and many of their friends—were being burned. As confirmation, she pointed out the column of smoke rising from the Alameda, which occasionally wafted eastward, the stench of charred flesh permeating every part of the city.

On Monday, the day after the battle, Susanna and the other women and children were escorted across Main Plaza to El Presidente’s quarters. Francisca Músquiz had provided food for them and some measure of comfort. Now the final disposition of these prisoners would be decided.

Santa Anna interviewed them all, one family at a time. He gave each widow two silver pesos and a blanket after they swore allegiance to him. Eliel Melton’s widow, Juana, was terrified that she would be punished for her recent marriage to one of the
norteamericanos,
and begged Anna Esparza not to mention it; Mrs. Esparza promised not to. The only two who escaped the humiliating interview with the general were the two daughters of Santa Anna’s old friend Angel Navarro.

Colonel Almonte translated when it was Susanna’s turn. Santa Anna seemed taken with the pretty Angelina. He said something in Spanish, and Almonte told Susanna that the general wanted to take her and her child to Mexico with him. Aghast, Susanna protested. Then the general expressed a wish to adopt her little girl—he would see that she was well educated, like his own children. Susanna had no husband, he pointed out, and no money, and would be incapable of caring for her child as Angelina deserved, but as his daughter, “she would have every advantage that money could procure.”

Never, said Susanna—she would “rather see the child starve than given into the hands of the author of such horror,” she announced, and listened while Almonte pleaded her case. Then she was escorted back to the Músquiz house before a decision was made. She had been numb with shock to this point, but when she realized the grimness of her situation, and possible plight, she broke down. For several days her grief and fear were beyond control.

Almonte finally persuaded Santa Anna to allow her to leave with her child. A few days later, she and Angelina were placed on a pony, given a mule with blankets and food, and started on the road to Gonzales. Almonte’s diminutive servant, Benjamin Harris, rode with her, “to assist her safe”—though Ben may have decided to cast his lot, at least for the present, with the Texians rather than risk being run through with a sword, as Santa Anna had threatened the night before the assault; one never knew when His Excellency might change his mind. His extensive experience as steward would guarantee him a job in New Orleans, or elsewhere.

The two rode past the Alamo, passing between the tall cottonwoods lining the Alameda. On each side Susanna could see a large pyre of bones, ashes, charred flesh, and wood—one sixty feet long, the other eighty. Her husband’s remains were in one of them.

Just beyond the Salado River, four miles east of town, someone raised his head from the tall grass beside the road and spoke, giving her a fright. It was Travis’s slave Joe, also released by the Mexicans.

Joe had been quizzed thoroughly by Santa Anna and Almonte—about Texas, the state of its army, and the number of Americans in it, among other things. Joe told him there were many American volunteers, and that more reinforcements from the United States were expected. The general told Joe that he had enough men to march to Washington if he chose—not the small village on the Brazos but the U.S. capital itself. Joe was made witness to a review of the Mexican troops, and was told there were eight thousand
soldados
on hand. That was about twice as many as there had been when the rest of Santa Anna’s army straggled into town in the days following the battle.

Joe and Ben took turns riding as they followed the Gonzales road over the prairies and through woods. Fortunately the cold weather had abated, and though the nights were cool, the days were sunny and warm. At Cibolo Creek, they caught up with a large Mexican force led by General Ramírez y Sesma, which had marched from Béxar that morning. The general gave Ben a proclamation from His Excellency to deliver to the American colonists. It was in English, written by Almonte, and addressed “to the inhabitants of Texas.” The missive justified the severe actions of the Mexican army, guaranteed just punishment for the traitorous pirates, and assured citizens that the rights of the innocent would be respected. “The supreme government has taken you under its protection, and will seek for your good,” he wrote. “The good have nothing to fear.”

The next day, Susanna and her companions pushed on ahead of the column. About midday on March 13, just east of where the road crossed Sandies Creek near the Castleman place, they spied three horsemen in the distance. Joe took to the tall grass and urged Mrs. Dickinson to do the same. He was sure they were Comanches. Susanna refused—she would as soon perish one way as another, she told him.

The three mounted men were not Comanches. They were scouts Deaf Smith, Henry Karnes, and Robert Handy, sent by General Houston to reconnoiter. After hearing her story, Karnes, who was on the fastest horse, galloped back to Gonzales to deliver the news and Santa Anna’s proclamation. Smith and Handy escorted the party eastward at a slower pace.

W
EARING A RED
C
HEROKEE BLANKET
coat over his buckskins and a feather in his hat, Sam Houston had left Washington on the afternoon of March 6, two days after the convention confirmed him as commander in chief of the army—regulars, volunteers, and militia. That morning, while the delegates were eating their breakfast, an express rider arrived with a letter from Travis dated March 3. While word spread and citizens gathered at the doors to listen, the missive was read before the assembly. When Travis’s report of the size of the Mexican force surrounding him and his passionate plea for reinforcements was finished, some of the representatives and citizens doubted the veracity of the dispatch. Only when a delegate familiar with Travis and his handwriting pronounced it genuine did the gathering accept it wholeheartedly.