Hardin calls Urrea the best general on either side in the Second Texas War of Independence, how Urrea handled the "Battle" of Agua Dulce Creek illustrates that perfectly.
But to digress a little, it is interesting to think on how good Urrea's intelligence was at this point compared to Grant's, notwithstanding the fact that Grant's small force was likely 2/3 Tejano.
Three days after fully half of Grant's force had been killed or captured in Grant's home base at San Patricio, Grant and Benavides seem blissfully unaware of that fact that a) a Mexican force of more than 200 soldiers had left Matamoras at all and b) had wiped out Johnson's half of their group. By way of contrast, within a few days Urrea knew exactly where Grant was.
Upon receipt of what we would call "actionable intel", on the night of March 1st Urrea hustled 70 infantry and 80 lancers on an all-night march to beat Grant and Benavides to a ford on Agua Dulce Creek, 26 miles south of San Patricio. Not only did they beat Grant to the ford but these 150 presumably weary men pulled off what amounts to the perfect ambush of 53 mounted men, most of these same mounted men being experienced vaqueros presumably accustomed to operating in a hostile environment ie. not easily ambushed.
The Mexican forces were using Brit milsurp equipment left over from the Napoleonic Wars. While the Texians had a well-earned reputation for accurate rifle fire, not much talked about is the Baker rifle in the hands of the Mexicans. The Baker was a sort of thematic predecessor to the US Mississippi rifle of the 1840's in that it was a military-looking weapon that was also a perfectly good rifle. First issued in 1809, earlier versions were the same caliber as the Brown Bess (.75), later versions had a smaller but still large .65 cal bore. Prominent Texian leader Ben Milam for one had been shot in the head and killed by a Mexican sniper armed with a Baker during the Battle of Bexar back in December.
Urrea reported killing 43 of Grant and Benavides' men, most of whom were hit in the opening volley, the lancers then spreading out to engage the few survivors. Given the effectiveness of that first fire, it does seem probable that at least some of Urrea's force were carrying Bakers.
Further evidence of how well the trap was sprung, Placido Benavides, James Grant and one Reuben Brown, riding a half mile ahead of the main force, had been allowed to pass through the trap. Brown had his horse shot out from underneath him but, with the aid of Grant, got on the horse of another Texian who had just been shot off his own, Grant shooting a charging Mexican officer in the process.
A six-mile horse race ensues, which is a long way to flog a horse. Grant, a Scot and a former East India Company guy, was apparently also a warrior. They were surrounded and brought to bay, Brown received a lance in the arm, Grant then shot and killed that lancer, again saving Brown's life, before being run through by multiple lances himself.
Placido Benavides, mounted on the best horse of anyone at the scene, escaped to warn the Texians at Goliad.
Brown picked up a lance intending to go down fighting, but was lassoed and beaten to unconsciousness.
When the trap was sprung, six Texians had jumped off of their horses and ran for cover in a collection of houses (?? again, way out there in the boonies?) near the ford. Apparently no one had much enthusiasm for ferreting out individual Texians on foot armed with rifles because five of these men escaped, only to fall three weeks later at Goliad.
Six other Texians, including Brown, were captured and brought back to San Patricio for questioning, and later imprisoned back at Matamoras.
Brown, twenty-six at the time, went on to become one of the survivors of all this. He had arrived four months earlier with a group of men from his native Georgia to fight for Texas, had missed the Battle of Bexar but was present at the Alamo when Grant and Johnson were recruiting for their expedition.
While imprisoned at Matamoras, somehow he got word of his plight to his family back in Georgia, his family then hiring "a local Irishman" (perhaps the same guy who had sent word on Brown's behalf) to spring him from prison in 1837.
Brown must have come from a family of considerable means; after travelling back east, he returned to Texas the following year bringing no less than twenty-four slaves and established a plantation on the lower Brazos River. In his mid-fifties when the War Between the States broke out, he was one of the handful of original Texians that also served in that war, raising a Confederate cavalry battalion that saw service in Texas and Louisiana.
He survived that war also, by another twenty-nine years, finally passing at his home on the Texas Coast in 1894, aged eighty-five.
Birdwatcher
