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I thought it would be interesting to follow up what happened AFTER the Alamo....

From Hardin Texian Iliad: A military history of the Texas Revolution (1995)

...Santa Anna was, for the moment, content to dally in Bexar. Although many of his subordinates urged him to follow up the victory with a swift drive against the American settlements. His excellency refused to budge. He seemed to believe that once the settlers heard of the Alamo slaughter, they would trample over each other fleeing the country. He was not entirely mistaken.

This trampling to escape is known in popular Texas history as the "Runaway Scrape". To understand WHY this panicked reaction occurred it helps to be familiar with the First Texas War of Independence. On that occasion in August of 1813, nearly a thousand prisoners, two thirds most likely Americans, were slaughtered by Spanish/Mexican troops under General Juaquin Arredondo after the Battle of the Medina River. This execution was followed up by the execution of more than 300 family members of the rebels in San Antonio and by the systematic rape of likely more than 200 women and girls of the town.

A detachment of Arredondo's force then moved up the Camino Real to Nacodoches, putting all to the torch and executing more than 100 men and youths in Nacodoches itself. It worked, on that occasion approximately 15,000 Americans are believed to have fled Texas.

In Arredondo's force was a young Officer, nineteen year-old Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, learning how it was done.

Near the end of March, Santa Anna and his staff departed Bexar, the town for which his army had paid so dearly.

So Santa Anna lingered in Bexar for at least two weeks after the Fall.

Seems like part of this must have been a desire to rest and re-equip his men. I haven't seen it mentioned before but marching his 3,000 men, cannons and a baggage train between 600 and 700 miles through mostly uninhabited country must have been no mean feat. A study of his logistics would be interesting reading. Seems like just keeping those men fed and in shoes during that nine-week journey would be a serious challenge.

OTOH, Urrea's force, coming up more directly South to invest Goliad, must have travelled nearly as far, and they remained active throughout the whole campaign.

One factor influencing the decisions of the 42 year-old Santa Anna was probably young Melchora Iniega Barrera. Melchora was the 17 year-old daughter of a widowed mother, well-to-do by local standards, and her remarkable beauty was alluded to prior to Santa Anna's arrival by one of the Texians in town.

http://alamostudies.proboards.com/thread/60

To gain access to her, Santa Anna had one of his officers dress up as a priest, "married" Melchora and shortly thereafter moved into her house. Presumably he bedded her for the better part of a month before his departure.

When he left he sent her (some accounts say he sent her mom too) to his estates in Mexico, where she bore his child (IIRC some accounts estimate that Santa Anna would father 41 children in his lifetime, eleven of whom he acknowledged and three of whom were legitimate.

Birdwatcher

Steve Hardin is a hell of a guy! We had a little thing at Round Top several years ago. Had a heck of a time in the tavern that evening. Steve was there. My bud and I showed up as Creek Scouts. That was the morning the space shuttle decided to come apart over east Texas and Louisiana.

Ya I seen Mr Hardin speak at a symposium in San Antonio a couple of years back, I was favorably impressed. He did mention all the ire his thoroughly objective and in some ways irreverent work had drawn down upon his head from certain elements here in Texas.

Back to Hardin...

Things are changing in Texas, probably not for the better. Among visitors to the Alamo, even from Texas, its almost always a few of the older guys who are well informed about ANY take on Texas history and have strong opinions on it, anyone else in the crowd and you could claim that Sam Houston was a rank coward who slept with sheep and they wouldn't care or take it personal.

Not so with the older guys of whom I speak. Probably ain't anyone in the story of Texas who draws more wildly divergent strong opinions than Sam Houston: Put him on a pedestal or despise the man, ain't too many in between.

I will say that a probable majority of those who actually had contact with him during the events of 1835/36 spoke ill of him the rest of their lives, and it seems that most of those present at the victory at San Jacinto were OK with leaving a critically wounded Houston on the field, sitting against a tree, and were emphatic in stating that Houston was not responsible for that victory.

Indisputably though, Sam Houston DID play a major part in shaping the events that led up to that victory, whether the eventual outcome was a mere fluke or a result of uncommon foresight on Houston's part is open to interpretation.

As to WHY Houston was so disliked, this from Hardin on the conniving and manipulative character of the man. Here's Houston, at 43 just a year older than Santa Anna, on his way to Gonzales, March 6 through the 11th of '36, to take command of Texian forces in the field. The Alamo had just fallen.

Although Houston had pledged to exert all "mortal power" to save the Alamo garrison, he did not strain his horse on the ride from Washington-on-the-Brazos to Gonzales. It took Houston five days to complete a journey that should have required, at most, two. The Alamo, of course, had already fallen but Houston could not have been aware of that intelligence.

At a time when Texians were wrought with anxiety over the fate of Travis and his men, their commander in chief dawdled. Why did Houston take so long? Texian settler W.W. Thompson, who spoke with him at Burnham's Crossing on the Colorado River, provided a possible answer.

...Houston lingered at Burnham's "all night & all that day and all night again." When Thompson sought the general's opinion concerning the siege of the Alamo, Houston "swore that he believed it to be a damned lies, & that all those reports from Travis and Fannin were lies, for there were no Mexican forces there and that he believed it was only electioneering schemes on Travis & Fannin to sustain their own popularity."

In life I have observed that what we assume are the motives of others sheds a lot of light on our own personality.

Houston's subsequent acclaim came from those who had taken no personal part in the events of '35/'36. Houston was President Andrew Jackson's man in Texas, and when the wounded and critically ill Houston arrived in New Orleans on the deck of a steamer after San Jacinto, he was acclaimed the hero of Texas independence by both the popular press and by the Jackson Administration.

Recall that few of the 30,000 Americans already living in Texas by then had taken any part in the fighting (other than fleeing during the Runaway Scrape) and that a flood of immigration into Texas commenced soon after. Houston's subsequent political support came from among these people.

Birdwatcher

"Santa Anna had one of his officers dress up as a priest" . A hundred years later H.L. Hunt used that trick to "marry" several of his wives.

I've read a little about the deadly Blue Norther storm that hit the Mexicans enroute to the San Antonio. It severely frostbit a bunch of them, especially since many of the soldiers were barefooted. Quite possibly they needed time to heal before leaving San Antonio.

Very interesting. I'm going to look for that book. I grew up in Texas and lived there most of my life, and have read several books about early Texas history and never had heard of the First Texas War of Independence of 1813. I didn't think there were that many anglos living in Texas then.

Thanks Mike!

AKA the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition.....

1811, the winds of revolt against Spain are sweeping through Mexico. 1812-13 two Tejanos travel to Washington to ask for help. 1813 one thousand American volunteers arrive in Texas, join with 500 local Tejanos, found the Green Flag Republic (Magee was Irish).

Things go well at first, 400 Royalists killed in a battle on Alazan Creek about one and a half miles West of the Alamo, another 300 on the Salado about five miles southeast. Dissent arises, no one is clearly in charge, some Americans go home, some Tejanos cut the throat of the captive former Spanish Governor of Texas, further alienating many of the Americans still there.

Then Arredondo approaches from the south, a bloodbath ensues....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Medina

The Spanish army continued to press, killing many of the fleeing soldiers. Most of the remainder were captured and then in a portent of the future Texas War of Independence were summarily executed.

Fewer than 100 out of 1,400 soldiers on the Republican side survived, while the Royalists lost only 55 men. The remains of the Republican troops were left to rot and not buried until 1822 when José Félix Trespalacios, the first governor of Coahuila y Tejas under the newly established United Mexican States, ordered a detachment of soldiers to gather their bones and bury them honorably under an oak tree that grew on the battlefield.

Locating exactly where south of town this catastrophically bloody event occurred is one of the Holy Grails of local Historians.

It is not mentioned at all in the popular version of Texas History, it doesn't fit the desired narrative. Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar for one, Houston's great political rival in the Republic of Texas, did refer to it in his writings as a major cause of the Runaway Scrape.

The account provided by Texas A&M is THE best source I have found on this whole deal....

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/Spain2.htm

Santa Anna was there for all that, then 23 years later he comes back and wipes everybody out who has taken cover behind substandard fortifications at the Alamo, and then he has another 340 Americans captured in battle executed at Goliad.

Mass flight ensues.

Understandable that he would think defeating the remaining Texians after that would be a slam-dunk.

Before even leaving Mexico he had informed the British Ambassador that he was prepared to march all the way to Washington DC if he had to. Dunno if he was serious, but it does indicate a mindset.

Birdwatcher

Birdie, I was wanting to pick your brain over some of the myths and controversies in Alamo history.
As I said in the chronology, I don't believe in the Louis Rose story, and I highly doubt the "Line In The Sand", although I would allow that Travis probably leveled with his men when he realized help wasn't coming.
I was wondering how you and your fellow Alamo historians felt about this, and th story of Crockett's capture and execution.
I while back I read "Alamo Traces" by Thomas Lindley (IIRC). Lindley is very critical of both Zuber ( Rose), and the De La Pena diaries (Crockett). Any thoughts or comments?
7mm

I'll confess, its hard to keep straight in memory on who said what, there's gotta be at least four different books out there debating all of this.

It is entirely possible that the French veteran Louis Rose was at the Alamo, and that he slipped out prior to the fall. The highly improbable account of Rose's tortuous journey to the settlements is probably a result of embellishment by Zuber(??) forty years after the fact.



I find the line in the sand entirely believable, although not necessarily a way of resolving who was determined to die in place. IIRC Ben Milam had used an exactly similar tactic the previous December when calling for volunteers to attack General Cos in San Antonio, the subsequent intense five-day street fight through the city resulting in Cos being bottled up inside the Alamo and his subsequent negotiated withdrawal. Stepping over a line was a clear and unambiguous act, and a vote difficult to deny or retract later.

Around 200 men trapped inside the Alamo, from widely different backgrounds and with different motives, there must have been a whole lot of dissent as the prospects of rescue grew dim. I find the accounts of the Mexican officers De la Pena and Filosoa entirely believable; that Travis was seeking SOME way out on behalf of them all, either a negotiated surrender under terms or a breakout.

Recall the wall was actually breached by that point and food supplies were dwindling, to say nothing about what conditions inside that three-acre compound containing 200 people or more for going on two weeks must have gotten like.

I find it entirely believable that Santa Ann, as De la Pena states, intentionally launched his assault when he did out of concern the Alamo defenders really would surrender, so as to have his victory.

In the same way he suddenly jumps into motion again at the end of March, in response to his rival and future enemy Urrea accumulating a string of victories in the Goliad campaign.



I can state with absolute certainty that I dunno. I do tend to agree with this guy, that is Crockett if was among those handful offered clemency by Carrilon at the end who were then shortly thereafter executed on the word of Santa Anna, Santa Anna himself would have bragged on it.

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/adp/archives/delapena/lind_crisp/lind.html


Other than that, Joe, Travis's slave, whose accounts shortly from shortly after the battle witnesses say SOUNDED credible, places Crockett's corpse among the dead in battle.

JMHO,
Birdwatcher

Sam Houston on Texas....

"All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men."

Things are so chaotic leading up to the Alamo its hard to know where to begin.

1834, Presidente Santa Anna and his cronies dismiss the Mexican Constitution of 1824, instead appointing representatives on behalf of the Mexican States. Unrest breaks out all over Mexico, actual revolts in Oaxaca, Zazatecas and Tejas. If you were for the Central Government and Santa Ann you were a Centralista. If you are for the Constitution of 1824 you were a Federalista, and the Federalist flag was a Mexican flag with "1824" printed on it.

1835, Santa Anna sends his own brother-in-law, one General Martin Perfecto de Cos, to distant San Antonio with a force to affirm Centralist control of Texas.

1835 too, Americans in Texas, more than 35,000 by that date, elect 98 representatives to the Consultation of 1835 to be held in San Felipe (now just a wide spot on the highway on the Brazos River west of Houston just east of present-day Sealy TX).

Events get in the way, in October 1835 100 lancers are sent from San Antonio to recover a cannon belonging to the Mexican government from the hands of the people of Gonzales, who are almost to a man Federalists, or actual revolutionaries. Some blood is shed, this action giving rise to the now-iconic "COME AND TAKE IT" flag, the lancers are driven off, now its a shooting war.

The Texian Army, a volunteer outfit, spontaneously forms in Gonzales and elects as its leaders two capable men; Ed Burleson and John Henry Moore, the character of these two men is best summed up by the fact that, while avoiding politics, they both would later take a prominent role in the defense of the Texas Republic as Ranger Captains. The Texian Army goes on to occupy La Bahia Mission at Goliad, and elects the idealistic and dedicated Stephen F. Austin as its Commander in Chief.

They then march on San Antonio to begin the Siege of Bexar, prominent in this force are Jim Bowie, James Fannin and William Barret Travis, this is four months before the Siege of the Alamo.

At this point the war is about restoring the Constitution of 1824. The Texian Army is marching against Cos under the 1824 flag. Americans start pouring in to join the fight, promised grants of land in return by the Consultation. OF COURSE people are talking independence. Enter Sam Houston. Back in San Felipe, Houston is prominent among those not wanting a Declaration of Independence just yet, fearing such would alienate all those prominent Texians who had already accepted Mexican Citizenship. The Consultation then KICKS OUT those members outspoken for Independence.

Houston travels to Bexar to visit the troops besieging Cos in San Antonio to try and get the elected delegates, including Travis, Fannin and Bowie, to return with him to San Felipe and the Consultation, only Bowie does. Bowie had led the initial skirmish against Cos at Mission Concepcion, just south of San Antonio, but misses the five-day, hard-fought Battle of Bexar wherein Cos is bottled up inside the Alamo.

Dang, I was trying to keep this simple.....

.....December 1835, Cos is kicked out of San Antonio with his flags, men, their muskets, and a single cannon, leaving the Alamo well-equipped with military stores. Now there are no Mexican troops left in Texas, many of the assembled Texians in San Antonio go home. Three hundred Texians remain, headquartered at the Alamo.

The Former Mexican Governor of Coahuila y Tejas goes before the Consultation at San Felipe and suggests a Federalist strike against Matamoras just across the Rio Grande. Most of the Consultation agree, it is intended that the forces still present at the Alamo will make this attack.

Sam Houston is appointed head of the Texian Army.

Among those men in San Antonio is one Dr. James Grant, 42 years old, a Scottish Physician, formerly of the British East India Company who, until the rise of Santa Anna, owned considerable property in Coahuila, Mexico. Also present is Frank Johnson, 37 years old, originally from Virginia, he had partnered with Grant in their Coahuila endeavors.

Grant and Johnson recruit volunteers from the 300 men at the Alamo. In January of 1836, six weeks before the siege of the Alamo, a force of two hundred men set out from San Antonio to attack Matamoras under the 1824 Mexican flag. These men strip the Alamo of most of its military supplies, leaving a ragged (literally) force of around 100 men at the Alamo under James Neil. One gets the impression that many of those left behind at the Alamo stayed simply because they were too ragged and ill-equipped to join in.

Meanwhile, back at San Felipe, further dissent rises in the Consultation. The appointed Consultation Govenor Henry Smith denounces Grant's Matamoras expedition as madness. Smith is then impeached by the Consultation and replaced by James W. Robinson.

(Ya know, many prominent Texians, from Travis on down, had checkered pasts but Robinson, a lawyer from Illinois via Arkansas, had previously abandoned his wife and five kids. Now THAT'S cold.)

Confusion reigns, such that a frustrated James Neil in command at the Alamo, not knowing who to write to to request help, writes to both Smith and Robinson. Smith, shortly before his impeachment, sends Travis to assume command at the Alamo.

In January of 1836, the month before the start of the siege at the Alamo, the largest force of Texians in Texas is those 200 men with Grant and Johnson, heading south, preparing to attack Matamoras. A total of four separate commanders, Houston, Fannin, Grant and Johnson, are all named in quick succession by the Consultation as commanders of that force.

Houston, who supports the Matamoras Expedition so long as he gets to head it, joins the force at Goliad on January 11th. Johnson, Grant and their men do not recognize his authority.

Houston then spreads dissent, correctly observing that a force of only 200 might have little chance against the 12,000 residents of Matamoras. Most of the men desert the column, leaving Grant and Johnson with only 70 men.

Houston, who had intended to appoint Bowie as a leader of the Matamoras Expedition, instead sends him to San Antonio with orders to abandon the Alamo and to salvage such cannon as he can. Bowie, accompanied in San Antonio by a small force owing their allegiance mostly to himself, is convinced by Neil to help defend the Alamo instead.

Houston at this point in time travels to East Texas to make a non-aggression pact with the Texas Cherokees, I suspect he also touched base with US General Edmund P. Gaines, just across the border in Louisiana, who had been sent with an army by Andy Jackson to "maintain stability" (perhaps as many as 200 of Gaines' force would end up fighting alongside the Texians at San Jacinto, still in uniform and carrying their issue 1816 Springfields).

Shortly thereafter, by the end of January, in San Felipe the Consultation collapsed under the weight of its own internal divisions, the delegates abandon the proceedings. Texas would be without any sort of organized government until the Convention of 1836 was convened on March 1st at Washington on the Brazos.

During this month of February, Santa Anna invests San Antonio and the Alamo defenders from the west while Urrea, with another 3,000 men, crosses the Rio Grande from the south, heading for Goliad.

Birdwatcher

Thanks Mike. As a 6th generation Texan, I always enjoy learning more about the Alamo, and related history.

What's the scoop on tearing down all those old buildings across the street from the Alamo and enlarging the hallowed ground? It would really be cool to see what archeologists would find under all that concrete.

" It would really be cool to see what archeologists would find under all that concrete"

For starters Neal. Probably 250 years of accumulated garbage. Which can be cool.
As stated earlier young son was project manager on the excavation over along the water ditch for the Alamo that ran thru Hemisfair plaza. It was used as a garbage pit for years by City. The most common item found was street pavers used as backfill.

The Master Plan for the plaza is supposed to be announced this summer, as it is right now, the State controls the Alamo and those buildings, the city still runs the plaza between the two on the original Alamo footprint. Red McCombs and others were recruited some months ago to raise funds.

Absent that master plan, not much besides rumors and hearsay is available to us outside the loop.

1) There was talk of turning the 1920's-era post office, still Federal property, that sits over where the north wall was into a museum, it appears this idea has been tabled and will not happen .

2) The buildings you refer that cover the west wall all date from the 1880's, and have some intrinsic value of their own. Plus Ripley's and the other businesses there have long-term leases that would have to be bought out. The business owners have said buying them out would not be cheap.

For a while the city was making noises about condemning these buildings due to failing foundations but that was months ago, not much heard since.

The latest talk is that the available space in these buildings would be used to house an interim Alamo museum.

3) The good news is that probably at least 80% of the original Alamo footprint is not covered by buildings. Right now state control (Land Office) ends at the curb in front of the Alamo, the state also owning those buildings you refer to across the street.

The talk is that the state would gain control of the whole plaza, including the street out front. The plaza and the church would then become a single entity. The present raised garden beds and the associated trees and grass on the plaza would be removed to restore the original flat, open footprint. The entrance way and parts of the south wall, including the rooms where Bowie died, would be reconstructed. The 1930's Alamo Cenotaph on the plaza would be relocated.

The folks who might know on-site are obviously not at liberty to openly discuss these things until official pronunciations are made.

The annual battle reenactment, if it continues at all, would probably be relocated to an adjacent park a few blocks away. I will say that, though it is enormous fun for those of us in it and a huge draw for spectators, it is at best a sort of crude pantomime of the original and arguably should not take place on the ground where 400 people died violently and another 400 were mortally wounded in the space of ninety minutes on the morning of March 6th, 1836.

What I do hope continues is the solemn Dawn Volley, fired in the semidarkness in front of the church on March 6th, about the time the mission was overrun. Fired by both Soldado and Texian reenactors using period-correct weapons and attended by a quiet and respectful crowd of the sort that is willing to get up way-early to attend.

Getting to participate in that volley was what got me started in reenacting in the first place.

Birdwatcher

When looking at the events occurring down around Fannin and Goliad that would lead up to the Goliad Massacre, it is surprising how large a role the local Tejano vaqueros played in the fighting and skirmishing on both sides.

In fact, from a pop Texas history standpoint, its surprising that there were that many Texas vaqueros out there at all. Away from the piney woods and the rapidly growing Anglo settlements in East Texas, Texas was still a vast and sparsely populated place. Its no accident that Santa Anna's force would have to cover 600 miles or more of mostly wilderness just to get to San Antonio. In the teeth of repeated raids from the still-powerful Indian tribes in the region one finds this stubborn and widespread vaquero culture; tough and highly mobile men who's equestrian skills and intimate knowledge of the country were valuable to both sides.

Given the catastrophes visited upon them after the 1813 Texas revolution, it would be understandable if all these people, like most of the inhabitants of San Antonio de Bexar, had just stayed out of it, but they didn't. Likewise the heavy-handed anti-Mexican sentiments of the majority of the the arriving American volunteers, in addition to the tendency of the Texian forces, of necessity, to merely approrpriate what they needed in terms of foodstuffs and supplies, should have been sufficuent to alienate most Texanos.

Most all Tejanos that took part were republican in sentiment, like General Urrea himself. But like Urrea most, even if they came down on the Texian side, wanted Texas to remain part of Mexico, albeit under a restored Constitution of 1824.

Prominent on the Texian was one Placido Benavides, still in his twenties and the scion of a prominent Tejano family from Victoria, AKA "the Texas Paul Revere" due to the active role he would play in alerting the settlements to the approach of Urrea's force.

After most Texians had deserted the Matamoras Expedition under Johnson and Grant (the same guys who had stripped the Alamo of most of its supplies) leaving them with a force of only 70 men, Placido Benavides may have supplied as many as fifty local vaqueros to that force, such that most of the casualties subsequently suffered on the Texian side in the Matamoras campaign were likely vaqueros.

Prominent on the Mexican side was one Carlos de la Garza, likewise in his late twenties. Garza and his force of forty vaqueros would prove to be of great assistance to Urrea in the upcoming campaign.

And here's a puzzling thing: Its not really surprising that the Benavides family in and around Victoria would end up being dispossessed, after the victory at San Jacinto the Victoria area quickly gained the reputation of being a lawless and rowdy enclave, filling rapidly with the less reputable American immigrants. Placido Benavides himself had evacuated his family to Louisiana at the approach of the Mexican army, and died there in 1837, of causes unknown to history.

Carlos de la Garza however, after San Jacinto, returned to his rancho on the San Antonio River near Refugio. Despite his known active service on the Mexican side, somehow he kept his property, even becoming well thought of with a reputation as an Indian fighter, and in the subsequent Mexican invasion of 1842 his ranch became a place of refuge for both English- and Spanish-speaking alike.

Birdwatcher

I suppose all us Texans should be grateful that it was the likes of a Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna running the Centralist invasion of '36 and not a General Jose de Urrea.

At that time Matamoras, near the mouth of the Rio Grande on the Mexican side, was the largest city in the region, at 12,000 souls at least three times the size of San Antonio, then the largest city in Texas proper.

In January of '36, Grant and Johnson were busy recruiting volunteers in San Antonio and stripping the Alamo and later Goliad of most of the available stores in preparation for a Federalist strike against Matamoras. Travelling ahead of his forces Urrea, anticipating exactly such a strike, arrived in Matamoras to confer with Federalist elements in that city.

Of Federalist sympathies himself, Urrea was first a soldier in service to Mexico, and Santa Anna was at that time his president (although a short two years later he himself would actually be fighting against Santa Anna). When meeting the Matamoras area Federalists, Urrea correctly predicted that the present Federalist revolt in Texas, under American leadership as it already was, would soon morph into a full-blown separatist war of independence and that in an independent Texas, Mexicans would become a despised minority in what had been their own land. By this means Urrea deterred any local uprising in sympathy with the Texians.

North of Matamoras and the river lay 150 miles of not much at all, open desolate country between the Rio Grande (AKA the Rio Bravo in Mexico) and the Nueces River, a lawless area that would become known as the Nueces Strip.

The closest Texian community, barely worthy of that name, was a collection of wattle and daub houses situated on the lower Nueces River just north of present-day Corpus Christi.This was San Patricio, "Saint Patrick", a mixed community of Irish and Tejano Catholics founded ten years earlier. Even the Irish in San Patricio lived inside wattle and daub walls under thatched roofs, the area lacking in building materials beyond brush, grass and mud.

San Patricio itself had been settled adjacent to an old Spanish-era fort guarding a ford of the Nueces, Fort Lipantitlan, this fort and its two cannon having been taken by a small Texian force out of Goliad the previous November.

Forty miles north and east again, across more mostly empty country, lay the more substantial community of Refugio on the Mission River, by that time a predominantly Irish Catholic settlement surrounding the old Nuestra Senora del Refugio (Our Lady of Refuge) Mission. Twenty miles north of Refugio on the San Antonio River was the fortified La Bahia Mission at Goliad.

In early February, James Fannin had arrived in Refugio with a small force intending to join the Matamoras Expedition, but opted instead to occupy the fortified La Bahia Mission at Goliad.

By the end of February Grant and Johnson had moved the scant Federalist force remaining to them to San Patricio where they were gathering horses needed to cross the Nueces Strip to strike at Matamoras.

Urrea struck first.

Birdwatcher

One thing that must have frustrated those Tejanos allied to the Texians was a tendency among the Texians to disregard information provided to them by Tejanos simply because they were Tejanos. This happened before the Alamo and it would happen again at Goliad.

You're a Texian, stationed with a small force at the edge of what amounts to an unknown ocean of grass, knowing there's enemies out there somewhere headed your way, yet you disregard the information provided by the very people who routinely traversed those plains. Only way to figure it is that most Texians had just recently arrived, either from East Texas or the United States proper, and did not know enough to distinguish one Tejano from another.

Throughout the campaign, the Spanish-speakers did not make that error, no better illustration of this than the efficient way Urrea overwhelmed the small force of Texians and Tejanos at San Patricio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_San_Patricio

Understandably, the Tejanos were of divided loyalties in this fight, and of all the White people in Texas, as a group the Irish Catholics were the ones most likely to come down on the side of their fellow Catholics, especially given the fact that these Irish had lived around their Tejano neighbors a whole lot longer than they had been around Americans. Although this was not yet officially a war of independence, there were more than a few folks in San Patricio whose sympathies lay with Mexico.

Urrea crossed the Rio Grande at Matamoras some time between the 13th and 17th of February, at the same time that Santa Anna was crossing at the ford at Piedras Negras, 300 miles upstream. By that time Grant and Johnsons' small force at San Patricio apparently consisted mostly of Federalist-allied Tejanos, if any of these people were aware of Urrea's exact location, Grant and Johnson were not made aware of it.

The night of February 27th was one of frigid temperatures and driving rain, so much so that the Texians posted no sentries. Of the two leaders only Johnson was present in San Patrico, Grant and a party of vaqueros were off out on the plains somewhere to the southwest. Johnson and thirty men were quartered in three houses in San Patricio with another twelve men assigned to watch the horse herd at a rancho four miles downriver.

Moving at night under such difficult conditions must have been apalling (six of Urrea's men got separated and died of exposure), and certainly required the active participation of local guides or else one would become hopelessly lost in the pitch-black conditions.

Urrea's force of 200 men arrived out of the freezing rain and wind in the small hours of the morning, surprise was complete. Forewarned, the loyalists in town had kept lanterns lit in their windows to declare what side they were on, the fact that this could happen without Johnson's men becoming aware of what was afoot indicating that Johnson's force had likely more than worn out their welcome by this point.

Johnson himself was one of six men that managed to escape, at this point he separated himself from the war and would live for another thirty-eight years, after many travels finally passing in Central Mexico at eighty-five years of age. Grant would not get that chance.

Birdwatcher

Your point about being grateful Urrea wasn't in charge of all forces is spot on. Patton-esque maneuvering.

Thanks for posting this stuff Birdy.

One guy of interest here is James Grant, what on earth is a Scottish physician and former British East India Company guy doing in the middle of all of this?

Turns out one of his descendants wrote a book claiming that all along Grant was working for the British.....

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Russell-Spencer-Series-Southwest/dp/1585445657

Entirely believable given the influence the Brits, as the unchallenged major world power at the time, wielded inside Mexico.

Worth a look, especially at $5 used, if nothing else for the detailed descriptions of the actions of Grant and Johnson in the Matamoras campaign and the fights at San Patricio and Agua Dulce.

Birdwatcher