at the Alamo started on this day.

“I shall never surrender or retreat.”

“VICTORY or DEATH.”

184 years ago?

I'm bettin' Birdwatcher is there riding his bicycle around the place and shooting off a roman candle,....dressed like Davey Crockett and sipping box wine out of a basket mounted on the handlebars.

Iwo Jima flag raising was also today. Lots more casualties.....significance maybe undetermined.

Had a friend now deceased that made that party as a Marine in the first wave. He wasn't one of the 12 in his unit (forgot what it was, but large) that walked off the beach afterward. He claimed he stuck his finger out of his fox hole to check the wind and the Japs aimed a mortar at it......

No such luck, was wearing a scratchy wool French-type uniform, carrying a British musket and wearing a fancy leather bucket on my head, marching along, mostly looking at the back of the head of the guy in front, trying not to confuse Spanish fore “right face”, “left face”, “about face”, “present arms”, “order arms” etc etc....

I’ll go over to the Dark Side when they need warm bodies, like at the Dawn Volley in front of the Alamo in two weeks, but other than that I’ll take Texian every time, they were just a motley crew of guys hanging out, mostly doing whatever they felt like doing at any given time

stx;
Good evening to you sir, I hope all is well in your world tonight.

Thanks for the timely reminder, I appreciate it.

As a lifelong student of history, a visit to the Alamo was on my bucket list since I was a kid listening to the Davy Crockett record my parents gave me.

We ended up being there during the last week of February in 2018 and stayed in the Gibbs Hotel which is just across the street more or less.

While we enjoyed San Antonio's River Walk immensely and had an overall positive experience there, I've got to say that the Alamo was one of the more moving places for me personally that I've been in years. Please understand, I am not "that guy" who feels "things" usually and have been to a lot of battle and massacre sights in my life.

The Alamo was different in a most sobering and meaningful way - that's about the best I can articulate how I felt there Roger.

Anyway, someday I'll try to get down there once more perhaps. For sure it's a nice break from the February weather we usually have up here.

All the best to you and yours Roger.

Dwayne

Thanks for the reminder Roger!

Remember the Alamo!!!

Some minor inaccuracies there. Far and away the BEST single source on the battle is Steven Hardin’s “Texian Iliad”, far and away the best single book on the events of that Second Texas Revolution.

https://www.amazon.com/Texian-Iliad-Military-History-Revolution/dp/0292731027

Dr Hardin sure PO’d a lot of folks when he published that, but if you don’t mind accepting that even flawed human beings can perform prodigies, and that dumb luck can trump all else, this is the book.

I'll always miss Hipp's Bubble Room and their Hot Berger Steak. The Alamo is good to visit but we must get rid of The latest Bush infestation that has emerged to destroy it's legacy.

Dwayne, if you were there on a Saturday afternoon you might have seen me, expounding at length in front of a simple cotton tarp, camping gear arranged in front. For the practical reason that I don’t want to make repeat trips to my car, I pack as a guy would back then when traveling across Texas. A great many people, possibly most, actually walked to San Antonio, including those approximately 200 souls who took cover inside the old Alamo compound that fateful morning when that Mexican cavalry detail surprised everyone.

Actually we got lucky, Santa Ana himself was only 20 miles away at the time, and the Medina River at present day Castroville. Late in the day on February 22 Santa Anna had gotten word that the Americans in San Antonio we’re planning a big party that night, so he dispatched a large force of cavalry to go crash that party. They of course did not get here in time not arriving until the following morning.

Santa Anna himself does not arrive on the scene until Day three, any advantages to defending the Alamo were not immediately apparent. The Alamo Was at best a really bad fort that had no strategic value, there was no ready communication with Sam Houston and Sam Houston was not a popular guy anyway, nor was he in command of anybody when the siege began.

Houston himself, ever the opportunist, had recently jumped ship from the we are not about independence government that had sent Travis and Bowie l, to the crystallizing we are about independence movement at Washington on the Brazos.

If anyone could have possibly got those 200 or so defenders out of the predicament they found themselves and it was Jim Bowie, who had already fought and won against the very same guys he went out to talk to.

Nobody was psychic, at the time it was not obvious to the defenders what the outcome of events would be. Bowie went out under a white flag of parlay to find out what exactly was going on, Travis open fire with that enormous 18 pounder cannon over Bowie’s head over a flag of truce and sent an 18 pound cannon ball bouncing through the town and the Mexican army, the opening shot of the siege.

In subsequent communications to the Mexican army that same day Travis tries to backtrack that shot, perhaps in response to Bowie’s and prob’ly a lot of other guys’ outrage, stating he had not realized a truce was in effect when he did it.

Probably didn’t matter anyway, the red flag of no mercy had already gone up on the church steeple, and unlike General Jose Urrea, (who would go on to capture the entire Texian army at Goliad, very possibly winning the war for Mexico until Santa Anna would kick the war back to life again by shooting everybody), Santa Anna was out for blood.

Birdwatcher;
Good morning to you sir, thanks for the reply and further information.

While I'd have to look back to be sure, I want to say it was a Monday that we'd have been at the Alamo, though it may have been Tuesday, I can't be sure.

We did see some folks who were dressed in period attire talking to the people who came to view the building and grounds and I thought it added to the experience to see them there.

As a wee bit of a student of history myself, I'll second your recommendation for Steven Hardin't "Texian Iliad" as being about the best researched and logically laid out book on the Texas Revolution that I've personally read.

Thanks again sir and all the best to you as we head into spring - though as I recall from our visit your weather now was quite tolerable indeed!

Dwayne

I've been there numerous times since 1969. While I have always felt humbled and solemn there, I have noted with disgust the downward trend of outright crassness displayed by younger generations visiting there. My last visit there a few years ago, I had to go so far as to confront one braying ponytail "fellow" that he was standing in a place of heroes who died so he could be an absolute [bleep], and to please act respectfully or leave.

Some of the most respectful visitors are from overseas, especially the Brits, in fact IIRC far and away the largest number of Second Texas Rev reenactors are English, where the largest Alamo re-enactments are staged.

Damn! Late again! That happens when you stay up all night sipping Taos lightening with Señors St. Vrain and Bent!!! Mebbe next time. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Thank you for bringing this up.

Birdy,

Headed to Washington on the Brazos, Friday morning for the Independence day festivities. Dudley and I will be set up with a couple of other surveyors across the lane from Lott’s Tavern (go figure).

The FIRST Texas revolution nobody talks much about, 1812/13.

Tejas requests help from President Madison in winning independence from Spain, which is a puzzle since there were only about 5,000 Mexican Citizens at that time in all of Texas, musta been bigger plans afoot. Secretary of State James Monroe takes charge, 1,000 guys resign from the US Army and enter Texas, allied with 500 Tejanos.

Whupped the Spanish forces twice in quick succession, 400 Spanish (well, Mexican) dead on Alazan Creek just west of present downtown, 300 Spanish dead on Salado Creek, about five miles southeast of the Alamo, minimal losses to the Texians. August 1813, Spain responds with an army of 1,800 men under a Spanish General Arredondo, about 1,000 Americans and 500 Tejanos and Indians meet him 20 miles south of town on the Medina River.

Catastrophe, less than 100 Spanish dead, hardly anyone on our side escapes the battlefield alive. Hundreds dead, hundreds of prisoners, Tejanos and Americans both, tortured with fire and killed on the battlefield, their bodies left hanging from trees. Arredondo storms into San Antonio, jams men and boys so densely into houses some suffocate, hands over all the women and girls to the soldiers. One woman refuses so she is placed naked in a hanging cage in the town square. Arredondo executes ten men a day for a month, 300 prisoners, their heads placed on pikes around the town square.

All in all, Arredondo executed hundreds of American prisoners, prob'ly more than any single individual in our history. I figure only in Texas would all of this be excluded from popular history. They certainly did remember in 1836, which accounts for the frantic Runaway Scrape by the Texians in advance of Santa Anna's army, this also accounting for why the Tejanos, for the most part, were initially neutral.

A force goes to East Texas, Nacodoches, executes around 100 Tejano men and boys.

It worked, 15,000 Americans fled to Lousiana, Texas is set back 20 years, burned out.

There was an enthusiastic 19yo Lieutenant in Arredondo's force; Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna y Lebron. 23 year years later that same guy is gonna come back as President of Mexico and read from Arredondo's playbook.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/ne...-hundreds-died-but-we-don-t-13074084.php


Eight years after Arredondo's reign of terror, Mexico is Independent, the butcher Arredondo now military governor of Coahulia y Tejas. Arreondo more'n anybody else oughtta know you cant kill enough Americans to keep 'em out. So he is influential in the decision to give wealthy Americans most of Texas in exchange for becoming loyal Mexican Citizens, these American-Mexicans would then create a Mexican buffer state against America proper. The cotton economy was taking over the South, and East Texas had the potential to become a wealthy cotton-producing area, why not bring in Americans who had the knowledge to grow it?

And that cotton was at the root of what the Second Texas Revolution was all about.

Enjoy, next Friday tho I'll be on the plaza 5am for the dawn volley.... with a leather bucket on my head......

I've been fortunate to have visited many battlefields world-wide. For Americans there are three that really touch my soul:
Gettysburg
The Alamo
Pearl Harbor

Every American should visit all three, but there are more, so many more, most I have not visited...

The John Wayne version of the Alamo was a highly cherry-picked and in place fictional account, pieced together forty years after the actual battle. First off, few on our side survived to tell about it, and others who did were mostly ignored (Travis' slave Joe and a couple of Tejanos for example). The main sources for the familiar story in the 1870's were Susanna Dickinson and some guy named William Zuber.

Susanna's husband Captain Almeron Dickinson was in charge of the artillery during the siege. At best, Texas was an unsettled place in those years and Almeron had brought his young wife and child to the Alamo after a roving band of American criminals had, in his absence, thrown her out of their house in course of taking anything of value.

Susanna was inside the church during the fighting. The only woman we know of who died in the fighting was an fugitive slave woman named Sarah from New Orleans. Speculation is that Sarah was a possibly a mixed-blood prostitute. Such women were noted for their beauty and often sold to brothels. Whoever she was she had been stolen from captivity by a young Alamo defender, a White man, who died on the walls manning a cannon (I should know his name but I forget).

Life was hard for many years for Susanna Dickinson after the revolution, for periods of time she was residing in a brothel tho we cannot say she was ever a prostitute. The same cannot be said of the babe of the Alamo, Susanna's infant daughter Angelina. Angelina left her husband at 19 years of age to pursue a wild and rebellious existence, she eventually died a drug-addicted prostitute of a uterus infection at age 45 on Galveston Island. Twenty years later, Susanna found security and a measure of respectability in a marriage to an older German merchant.

It should be understood that the Republic of Texas was a nation of immigrants. Even in 1836 only about 2,000 of the 30,000 Anglo residents of Texas (ie. Texians) had taken any active part in the fighting, and the great majority of these only after the Fall of the Alamo and the later Massacre at Goliad when the Mexican forces were approaching where they lived. Forty years later, by the 1870's the population of Texas had swelled to 700,000, few of whom were even related to anyone who had taken an active. Still, by the 1870's there were enough people who had been born here that Texas was forging a popular ethos and identity.

Forty years after the fact, one gets the impression that Susanna mostly told people what they wanted to hear, including Davy Crockett being surrounded by a pile of dead Mexicans.

William Zuber, reckoned an authority at the time, was ten years old at the time of the battle, living 100 miles to the northeast in Bastrop TX. From him we get the saga of Moses Rose, in legend the only man to hop the wall at the Alamo rather than face certain, albeit glorious death. If he existed, Moses was an older French guy in his 50's at the time, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. IIRC we are reasonably certain a Moses Rose did exist and was living in Bastrop for a period of time after the revolution. William Zuber quoted Moses Rose as his primary source, even quoting Travis's purported speeches word for word.

FWIW the part about Travis drawing a line in the sand was probably true. This was common practice at the time and had been done before the siege and probably after. Strictly speaking, Texian officers did not "command" anybody, their men were not soldiers and might simply ignore an order they didn't agree with or even leave (in the two weeks prior to San Jacinto, Sam Houston lost about 700 of his men this way). However, if you gave them a voice and allowed them to vote on the course of action they were far more likely to stay. Furthermore it was understood that taking part in a vote at all was tantamount to giving your word you were bound by the outcome, and stepping to either side of a line meant you couldn't deny your vote later. Coulda happened, but 200+ random guys who had never expected to be stuck inside the Alamo voting almost unanimously to die fighting seems a bit of a stretch. Possibly the vote was about something else.

More reasonable is the evidence that the defenders were planning a mass breakout within the next couple of days, do or die, in which at least some might escape. But Santa Anna probably took the Alamo when he did in response to his rival Urrea's victories against the Americans at Goliad.

my ancestor was in dickinson's unit.

From Gonzales?

Darn. Too bad you didnt PM Birdy before you went down, BC. It would have been nice getting a personalized tour.

yes

👍

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/onl...8Gz5xsQPUOEXz3WISz0lEP56M5Dmg8LXtTE0WnIA


TUMLINSON, GEORGE W.
Bill Groneman

TUMLINSON, GEORGE W. (1814–1836). George W. Tumlinson, Alamo defender, son of Elizabeth and James Tumlinson, Jr., was born in Missouri in 1814. He moved to Texas and settled in Gonzales. Tumlinson entered the Texan Artillery under Almeron Dickinson on September 23, 1835. He took part in the siege of Bexar and was discharged afterward. He reenlisted on December 14 for six months of service in Capt. William R. Carey's artillery company. Sometime before the siege of the Alamo began, Tumlinson may have left for his home in Gonzales, returning to the Alamo on March 1, 1836, with the Gonzales Ranging Company of Mounted Volunteers. Tumlinson died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

Thats something else.

One of the Immortal 32!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_32

Q. - Why did Santa Anna bring 20,000 Mexicans to the Alamo?

A. - Because he only had 3 pick up trucks and a station wagon to haul them in.

Wow.


He weren't very old. 22 years.

I throw Normandy on that list too.

I still need to do Pearl.

+1 on Gettysburg.

I became a believer in "restless spirits" at Gettysburg. I have never felt anything like it anywhere else.

From the ramparts of the Alamo while viewing the thousands of Mexicans gathered below Jim Bowie turns to Davy Crockett and asks, "What's this? We pouring concrete today?"

I've got that book along with A Line in the Sand and The Gates of the Alamo. I bought it at...The Alamo.

The Battle of Mine Creek was the second largest Cavalry battle of the WBTS, behind only Brandy Station. Mine Creek is about forty miles from my house and I have occasion to go by there quite a bit. Many times it's at night. I never look too close and stay focused on the road.

Remember the Alamo or which ever one you want in fight coming up for our country. It will determine whether our country is a republic of free people or a communist block of slaves. I pray it will remain a republic of free people.

Good thing old Santi Anna only had 5 pickup trucks. No tellin how many Mexicans he'd have brought if he had more.

Were they Toyodas?

Dang, I don’t know how I missed this.
Mike, what was the ruling on those human remains they found there a while back? I remember seeing the article about the find, but I missed it if there was any more information about them.
When we do Gettysburg overnight, we usually go on a ghost walk in the evening. If you get the chance, they’re almost always fun and interesting.
Several times, we spent an hour or so after dark up in the tower on Doubleday Avenue near the Eternal Light. Iverson’s Pits, where many of his men were interred originally, is supposed to be one of the spookiest places on the field. Never saw anything creepy, but once there was just something incredibly spooky about the place that particular evening.
One evening we drove through Devils Den, just looking around. We saw 3 people in the field there, I thought they had shovels. I was fixing to call the Rangers, thinking they were after relics.
The second trip showed they were actually camera stands, and they were hunting spooks! Don’t know if they found any or not.
Ghosts and spirits in Gettysburg has grown into it’s own little cottage industry in the summer time!
7mm

Emphatic yes, and also note he was another one of those political direct commission appointees to the Navy, like Hunter Biden.

I can’t explain the feeling. The Alamo is a special place. Hasbeen

Every battle field where Americans have fought for freedom is a special place.

The Alamo is one of the most special places I have ever visited.I can't explain the feeling either hasbeen.When I stand in the chapel,the walls seem to hum and the floor to vibrate.I have never been able to cross the threshold without my eyes brimming with tears of pride.Then,I usually leave before I succumb to the desire to choke the livin chit out of some rude jackass who has no idea of what the place means to our freedom.

When I go volunteer at the Alamo I portray some guy who is my own age; sixty-two.

In part I do this to point out that just because the average life expectancy for everybody at that time was about 35, that didn't mean that people got old any faster back then. We lost half our kids before age ten and after that chance infections, epidemics and injuries took their toll. Still, despite everything about one in five lived past 60 years of age. The oldest guy in the Alamo was 55.

Another real point of mentioning my age tho was that me as a 62yo in 1835 would have been born in 1773, before there was a United States. That is how young this country still was in '35/'36. Most American's parents and/or grandparents were of the American Revolution generation. To them the tyranny of a King George and invading Redcoats (or a Santa Anna and his Bluecoats) was more than an imaginary abstraction. Likewise they were very aware and proud of our own revolutionary American Constitution.

One of the ways where Santa Anna stepped in it was when, late in 1834, he abolished the Mexican Constitution of 1824, a document modeled after our own. The average government in Mexico City only lasted about two years back then before it was overthrown so that was nothing new, but Santa Anna went further than anyone before by actually ABOLISHING the Constitution he had a short time earlier promised to defend, kicking off yet another civil war in Mexico as some states fought to restore it. It weren't for nothing that the 1835 Anglo flag of this Second Texas Revolution was a Mexican flag with "1824" written on it.

So Santa Anna comes into power, and THEN abolishes the Constitution, and THEN sends an occupying Army to San Antonio, and THEN actually sends an armed force to the American (mostly legal Mexican citizens) settlement of Gonzales to at least partially disarm it. In modern parlance he couldn't have done a better job of "triggering" the American settlers than he did short of actually killing folks.

Which is likely why your kin went to the Alamo.

IIRC four sets of human remains so far, all where they really weren't expected, or at least regarded as less likely.

One set was scattered fragments as best I could tell from the descriptions, found outside around a tower foundation, said tower already being long gone at the time of the siege (the compound being more'n a century old at that point). These fragments may have been moved by earlier disturbances.

The other three were inside the church itself, a woman, a teenager and an infant, uncovered along the walls during attempts to assess the foundation.

To the best of my knowledge all of these remains or at least samples of the same have been sent off for identification. Bob is more up on the legalisms than I, but I believe the whole place could be declared a cemetery and that if they are Indians other restrictions may apply.

Its been a puzzle to me before now that neither of the proposed plans published so far have given consideration of the Campo Santo; the cemetery right in front of the church doors, that may contain as more'n 1,000 burials from over the eighty year period the mission was active. IIRC reliable illustrations show this Holy Ground was still marked by a low wall at the time of the siege so it seems it oughta be possible to do the same again today.

The bigger issue is that if you can't turn a spade in the Alamo Plaza without turning up bones, this is really gonna alter and delay the remodeling of this whole area to better represent the battlefield as it was in 1835. The first edition given to us by City Council was a politically correct, emasculated rendition celebrating diversity because "the Alamo siege was just two two weeks in a 300-year history". The second proposal at least is centered upon the siege, but the longer this takes the more likely "Progressive" sentiments are likely to prevail.

When I stood at the spot where the Confederate forces broke through the Yankee line, the hair on my neck raised up.

Typical of cherry-picked Texas poplar history, the Tejanos get short shrift. What we get is an image of a Magnificent Seven-type situation with a bunch of helpless peons endlessly getting beat up by the Comanches and Lipan Apaches.

Partly true, Indian raids occurred, this being the reason why Mission San Antonio de Valero (AKA The Alamo) was a walled compound, just like the other four San Antonio missions. How often these raids occurred is less certain. In 1805 for example, Comanches stole just about every horse in an around San Antonio, yet life went on. Associated with the five missions along twelve miles of river were a total of fifty miles of hand-dug irrigation ditches (acequias) allowing the cultivation of something like 2,000 acres (?? gotta look that up) supporting a population of 2,000 people.

Beside farming, the missions had large herds of cattle, sheep and goats, indeed the first cowboys in Texas were the vaqueros associated with the mission herds, later to include fortified private rancheros (ranches) along the San Antonio and Guadalupe Rivers. Cowboying back then, because of the Indians, was a hazardous occupation. But heck, being an Indian back then was likewise a hazardous occupation. The maybe 5,000 – 7,000 Tejanos in Texas in the early Ninteenth Century, far from being constant victims, are prob’ly better regarded as almost like another Indian tribe contending with their rivals in Texas.

Except these Indians were Catholics, sometimes literate, dressing like Gentes de Raison (people of reason ie civilized). If the Indians raided, Tejanos also sometimes struck back. If firearms were scarce and of poor quality, proficiency with the bow and lance was likely among these people but once removed from Indians. They are better judged by their deeds. By the time of the Alamo, vaqueros from San Antonio and Goliad had been regularly driving herds of Texas cattle 500 miles east to the Spanish garrisons in New Orleans for about eighty years. This “Beef Trail”, ignored by popular history was in frequent use during the subsequent Texas Republic period and was arguably among the toughest drives in history, several major rivers having to be crossed en route.

Compared to that, drives to Monterrey just 250 miles to the south were a sort of chip shot, the chief hazard being that if it hadn’t rained your cows would starve en route. The basis of organization for these drives would be impromptu organizations of vaqueros pooling their resources to stage a drive, muchas it would be for Anglo cowboys after the Civil War.

Buffalo were an essential part of the household economy for the 2,000 residents of San Antonio. In the fall and winter, expeditions would set out accompanied by the big, two-wheeled ox-drawn carretas (carts) upon which much Texas commerce would roll clear up until the coming of the railroad. The feral longhorn cattle carried a tick-borne microorganism lethal to buffalo and cattle of non-African ancestry, said disease later referred to as Texas Fever. Buffalo had already all-but disappeared in the San Antonio area, these expeditions having to travel around 100 miles north and west of town.

Individual Tejanos also traveled clear across Tejas to the El Paso settlements and even California.

Obviously, all of these things could not have occurred if the Tejanos were constantly beset by implacably hostile Indian tribes while remaining helpless against attack themselves.

Even more vulnerable were the frequent trade convoys consisting of collections of carretas moving to and from San Antonio doing everything from shipping cowhides and tallow to Monterrey (nobody ate longhorns if they could help it) to blocks of ice packed in sawdust from ships on the coast (a journey that took two weeks each way). Two oxen could pull a cart loaded with 500 lbs while running solely on prairie grasses, which were free. The downside was oxen were slow, five to seven miles a day under the best of circumstances. Whole lightly-armed families might accompany carretas on these sometimes months-long journeys, a process that continued clear through the Republic Period and into Statehood, finally being supplanted by the railroad in the 1870’s and 1880’s. In 1857, there were still an estimated 500 of these Tejano carreta families hauling freight to and from San Antonio.

Besides carretas, before, during and after the Republic Period Tejano and Mexican vaqueros were engaged in driving large herds of horses and mules from Mexico proper to the American settlements in Louisiana. Again in 1857, Olmstead reported more than 100 horses and mules passing through San Antonio from Mexico every week, herded by vaqueros. Likewise in 1840, during the Great Comanche Raid, when the Anglo residents of Linnville on the Texas Coast first saw the distant Comanches driving a herd of 2,000 stolen horses they just assumed they were Mexican horse traders. Indeed those horses HAD been stolen from Mexican horse traders who were lodging in Victoria.

Of course, Texas pop history has it that none of this is happening, instead its just Jack Hayes and his Rangers against the implacable Comanches at a time when in reality, the Comanches were trading more stock to the American settlements than even the Mexicans were, much of it stolen in Mexico of course.

What triggered the Great Comanche Raid of 1840 was the Council House Fight, immediately after that treaty negotiation gone wrong, some 300 Comanche warriors stormed into San Antonio looking for revenge, only to find the Texians had forted up in Mission San Jose, five mile south of town proper at that time.

No surprise that when they first stormed into the town square of downtown San Antonio, they asked directions (in Spanish) at the local Cantina.

Santa Anna's career would go on for another forty years after the Alamo, during which time he would be President of Mexico five more times. The guy had fits of brilliance, else he never would have survived the snake pit of 19th Century Mexican politics for so long.

There was no tactical reason for the Mexican Army to pass through San Antonio, the crumbling Alamo mission compound defended nothing. Coming up from Mexico on the way to East Texas, one crossed the San Antonio River 100 miles to the south of San Antonio at a town called Goliad. The Spanish had built an actual stone fort guarding this strategically important crossing point; the Presidio La Bahia. That was where the decisive battle of this war was expected to take place. At the time of the Alamo there were 500 Americans, the "Texian" Army (there were almost no Texas residents in it), waiting for the Mexican Army at Goliad.

Santa Anna however was recalling the First Texas Revolution of 23 years earlier, and also the fact that General Martin Perfecto de Cos and his 1,500 Mexican troops had just been driven out of the Alamo in December likely offended his considerable ego. Against logical expectations, Santa Anna divided his forces in two. Half of the Mexican Army did come up from the South against Goliad as expected, under the capable General Jose de Urrea. Santa Anna's half of the army marched an extra 300 miles to do an end run around Texas and come in from the west.

Santa Anna left Saltillo MX at the end of December with 2,000 men at the start of an arduous eight-week trek. This force, coming north, crossed the Rio Grande about 50 miles west of present day Laredo/Nuevo Laredo close to present day El Indio TX. The cavalry and artillery units in the Mexican Army were typically individuals of some means, the Privates in the infantry however were mostly conscripts, poor farmers pressed into service. When a young man was so drafted, it was usual for his wife and children to accompany him on campaign. these were not always the problem one might think, the women especially were skilled foragers who worked to keep their family fed, so valuable were they, they were given a term "Soldadera"; woman soldier.

Most of Santa Anna's force had been conscripted from Central and Southern Mexico, they had never experienced cold weather. Just south of the Rio Grande they encountered a blizzard, an estimated 500 men and 1,200 of their women and children perished, the single largest loss of life in this war.

They say amateurs talk tactics whereas professionals talk logistics, Santa Anna had a supply train of 300 oxcarts, each hauling around 500 lbs; small arms ammunition, cannonballs, tents, uniforms, food etc etc.... Oxen are strong and can run on grass, but they are slow and have to be given half a day to graze. Slowed by his train of ox carts, Santa Anna was approaching San Antonio from the west at around five miles per day. 1,500 men, 4,000 women and children, 300 ox carts and hundreds of horses and mules, all approaching from the west at five miles per day.

The Tejanos in San Antonio of course, mobile and out on the plains as they often were, had been aware of the approach of this army for at least a month prior to Santa Anna's arrival and began to evacuate the town accordingly. The only people who were almost entirely clueless of the slow approach of this major force were the Americans associated with the Alamo, indicating how little they communicated with the locals, and how little the locals talked to them.