Worst hit was a horde of pitiful Indians from Yucatán marching under the command of General Víctor de Ripperdá, governor of that tropical district and former official in charge of the frontier post at Nacogdoches. His troops, hundreds of them with no shoes, no blankets, no warm clothing of any kind, simply fell down and died. Sometimes Garza, who rode up and down the files, would find eight or nine huddled together in a hopeless mass, clutching one another for warmth; after they all perished, the covering snow formed a rounded hump, a kind of natural mausoleum. When more fortunate Indians from colder climates, those with shoes and blankets, spotted such a mound, they dug inside, stripped the dead bodies of whatever cloth remained, and wrapped their own faces against the storm.
At the rear, Garza came upon soldaderas and their children suffering terribly, but like the Yucatecs they huddled in groups, and although many died, the stronger survived. It was shocking for those soldiers who formed the rear guard to stumble upon the frozen bodies of children abandoned in the snow.
Mules, oxen and horses struggled in the blinding storm, collapsing in huge snowdrifts that quickly buried them. When the norther subsided, and the surviving men and mules were counted, General Ripperdá found that his army had suffered a tremendous loss. Santa Anna, warm inside mission walls, must have known this, but neither then nor after did he refer to it, for he realized that when many soldiers are required to march over a great distance in unfavorable weather, somebody is apt to die. That was one of the chances of war, unpleasant but acceptable.
And from the practical point of view, Ripperdá’s experience in the Monclova blizzard may have been salutary, for it rid him of many largely useless Yucatecs, toughened up the line, and enabled one young lieuter ant who dreamed of impending glory to assure his fellow officers: ‘If we can survive that blizzard, we have little to fear from the rebels in Tejas. It’ll be Zacatecas all over again.’
When Benito Garza rode north of the Rio Grande toward Tejas with Santa Anna, he had an opportunity to see why the mexicano troops, officers and enlisted men alike, loved this dynamic man. He obviously thrived on campaign conditions and could hardly wait, Benito thought, to launch the attack. ‘Forward, forward!’ was his constant command to himself and his troops.
The dictator was going to be forty-two years old the next day, 21 February, and he would spend it in the saddle a few miles south of his ultimate target, the Alamo. The passing years had treated him well, and he looked, if the truth were voiced—and he liked it to be voiced—a good deal like one of Napoleon’s marshals, Ney or Soult, or even like the emperor himself.
On this campaign he had brought along none of his mistresses, and Garza heard him complain to General Cós: ‘How can a gentleman celebrate his birthday alone?’ So on Santa Anna’s natal day Cós ordered salutes to be fired and a ration of wine issued for celebration. The troops were now approaching the Medina, where Santa Anna had known his first great victory, with many, many more anglo rebels in the field then than there would be now. The general wanted to leave El Camino Real briefly and veer eastward toward the old battle site, but when this was done and the steep banks of the river reached, no one could locate exactly the scene of the battle, and Santa Anna was mildly displeased.
On the day after his birthday, Santa Anna moved his troops to within sight of the tall tower of San Fernando Church, just across the river from the Alamo, and there he made camp early. Scouts rode in to inform him of conditions in the town, and everything he heard was reassuring: No reinforcements and none on the way. Colonel Fannin and his large detachment bottled up at Goliad and he refuses to move to Béjar. Still no more than a hundred and fifty men, but they do have some cannon. And the entire town, General, is eager to welcome you.’
‘Are there any mexicanos fighting with them?’ This problem of loyalty irritated him.
‘Captain Juan Seguín has taken arms against you. Says he will fight for the Constitution of 1824.’
‘Do any support him?’
‘He led nine others into the Alamo. We have their names. Abamillo, Badillo, Espalier …’ He continued to read from the grubby paper, nine names in all.
‘They’re to be hanged. Not shot. Hanged.’ Even as he gave this order one of the mexicanos slipped out of the Alamo, but the other nine were determined to oppose the dictator with their lives, in defense of a new Texas which would later have little use for their kind.
Garza rode with the general as he entered the town in the lead, disregarding the possibility of isolated sniper fire from some misguided rebel. No doubt about it, this man was brave. Turning back to face Garza, he gave a short command: ‘I want the flag I showed you last night to be flown immediately.’ And now they reached the heart of Béjar, with Garza pointing out the church.
‘Can its tower be seen at the Alamo?’ the general asked.
‘Unquestionably.’
‘Fly the flag.’
So Benito Garza climbed the quivering tower stairs, accompanied by two dragoons, and when they reached the highest practical point he unfurled the big flag made from cloth which Santa Anna had brought north for this specific purpose.
The rude flag was very large, perhaps twelve feet long and proportionately wide, but despite its size, it carried no symbol of any kind. Its message was its color, a bold, sullen blood-red over all.
As the flag unfurled, a breeze caught it and spread it majestically in the sky. Those who saw it and understood its military meaning gasped, for this was the flag of No Surrender, No Clemency. The soldiers who fought against it knew that they must either kill or be killed, because no prisoners would be taken.
When Garza descended from the bell tower, an orderly informed him that the general wanted his assistance in translating an important document into English.
The two men went to a house located in the smaller plaza between the church and the bridge leading across the river to the Alamo. Here Santa Anna outlined the rules for this and all subsequent battles in the district of Tejas. They were, as he carefully pointed out, in strict conformance with international law and with the recently promulgated rules of the new dictatorship:
Every Mexican who has fought with the rebels or in any way supported them is to be hanged, and I want no protracted trials. Just hang them for treason. Every American colonist who has taken arms against us, to be shot, and again, no trials. Those who supported the rebels but did not take arms, to be expelled forever from Mexican soil. All American immigrants, regardless of their sympathies, to be moved at least a hundred miles south of the Rio Grande, whether they can bring their household goods or not. Absolutely no further immigration of any kind from the American states into Tejas or any other part of Mexico. The people of Tejas to repay every peso of expense incurred on this expedition to discipline them.
Now, this is very important and is to be stressed in any pronouncement we make. Any foreigner in Tejas who is arrested while in the possession of arms of any kind is to be judged a pirate and treated accordingly. Finally, the flag up there tells it better than I can. Once the battle begins, if the enemy has not previously surrendered, no prisoners will be taken. Make this extremely clear No prisoners are to be taken. They are to be shot on the battlefield where we capture them.
Shortly thereafter a white flag of truce showed at the Alamo and a parley took place on the little bridge crossing the river; here the final terms were spelled out to the Americans, in their own language. But they were, as Garza noted when he delivered them, somewhat softened: ‘If you surrender unconditionally, right now, lay down your arms and take a pledge never to appear in Tejas again, your lives and property will be spared.’ Garza, hoping that actual battle could be avoided and the invaders peaceably expelled, prayed that the norteamericanos would accept these surprisingly generous terms, but when the emissary returned to the Alamo the answer from there was delivered in the form of a cannon shot, whose roar reverberated across the main plaza. Santa Anna had his answer.
He did not lose his temper. Coolly summoning his genera
ls, he said: ‘We’ll not throw our entire force against that silly fortress. We’ll save it for later punishment of the entire state.’
‘How do you propose knocking them out of their position?’ General Cós asked, indicating the Alamo.
‘Siege. We’ll strangle them, bombard them with cannon, and shoot them down when they collapse.’
‘With your permission, Excellency,’ General Ripperdá said. ‘I had long experience with norteamericanos when I served at Nacogdoches. Those scoundrels will not collapse.’
‘Your norteamericanos did not face Santa Anna.’
So the siege began, and no prisoners were to be taken alive. The customs of war as observed by civilized nations justified such terms for treasonous rebellion against a sovereign state, and that is exactly what the Texican rebels were engaged in.
The sad fracture which threatened to destroy this lovely area was reflected in the names used by its people. Mexicanos called it the town of Béjar in Tejas; Texicans, San Antonio in Texas—and between them no compromise seemed possible.
The unfurling of the great red flag produced unexpected consequences in one San Antonio household. At the northern end of Soledad Street, in the old Veramendi place, Mordecai Marr and his mexicana wife, Amalia, saw the flag lazily fluttering in the breeze and realized for the first time that this was to be a battle to the death. They had hoped that differences between the central government in Mexico and the provincial one in Tejas could be peacefully resolved, but now men had to make decisions.
This was particularly difficult for the Marrs. To begin with, they were citizens of Mexico, of that there could be no doubt. She came from the grandest family in the region, with notable ties to the Veramendis of Saltillo, and her husband had embraced Mexican citizenship back in 1792 when he married her and came into possession of the vast ranch at El Codo. Not once in succeeding years had he even contemplated trying to regain his American citizenship, and in recent years when minor troubles flared he had been a pacifying agent, assuring American newcomers that the things they disliked could be easily corrected.
But since the new year, two events had altered the family thinking. From a Zacatecan refugee connected to the Veramendis they heard harrowing reports of Santa Anna’s treatment of that city, and this had made them wonder whether such a leader could retain the good will of his Tejas citizens. More confusing, they learned that inside the Alamo, among the handful of men preparing to defend it, was their respected relative Jim Bowie of Kentucky.
Back in 1831 this colorful outsider had married Ursula Veramendi, the winsome belle of the family. At first the respectable mexicano families of Saltillo and San Antonio predicted only bad consequences from such a union, but Bowie surprised them by becoming an ardent Catholic, a devoted husband and a fine father to his and Ursula’s children. Even the local priest had said: ‘The Jim Bowie marriage is one of the most reassuring in Tejas. Who would have expected it?’
The Marrs had deemed it imprudent to visit Jim inside the Alamo, for they certainly did not share his determination to resist Santa Anna. Also, when in 1833 the lovely Ursula and her two children died of cholera, Bowie’s essential ties with the Veramendi family were broken and the Marrs had not seen him since that tragedy. ‘He goes his way,’ Mordecai said to the old-timers, ‘and we go ours. But we respect him, always have.’
So there it stood on the afternoon when the flag signaled, and the longer Mordecai contemplated this dreadful twist of events, the more perturbed he became. He ate no supper. Pacing back and forth in the study that he had come to love as the heart of his home, he thought of the curious forces which had brought him to this unlikely spot. He did not love the United States, and he actively disliked most of the immigrants he met. Nor did he love Tejas, but he still loved the freedom, the bigness of the land he had elected for his home, and he did not want to lose that. The men in the Alamo represented a striving to keep that freedom, while the men who had unfurled the flag of death could represent only repression.
It was half after nine when he walked soberly into the big room where Amalia was busy with her needlework, and when he came upon her as she sat with the flickering light behind her lovely head, he saw her as if for the first time. How happy they had been! He’d been on the verge of marrying the Saldaña girl when Amalia Veramendi moved in to sweep him off his feet with her love, her wit, and her promises of a vast ranch if he married her. Never had he regretted the decision, although he did sometimes wonder what had happened to the Saldaña girl, whose first name he could not now remember.
‘Amalia, I’m going to join Jim Bowie.’
‘I will go with you.’ She said this so simply, her needlework in her lap, that he was overcome by her courage, but when he started to say that if she changed her mind—‘What other choice could I have?’ she interrupted, rising and kissing him. ‘We’ve had a wonderful life, Mordecai, because we always did everything together. Let’s not change now.’
They spent less than an hour getting a few things together, and it was well before midnight when they left the Veramendi home and walked quietly down dark Soledad Street to the church square. There they turned left, walked through the small area subtended by the loop in the river, and approached the little footbridge leading to the Alamo. Santa Anna’s guards stopped them, of course, but when Amalia told the officer: ‘I’m the Veramendi woman, my family owns that house over there,’ they let her and her Mordecai pass.
Once across the bridge, the proud couple, their white hair shining in the moonlight, turned and, without provoking any action on the part of the remaining guards, walked purposefully toward the old mission. When they were in hailing distance, an American patrolling the walls shouted at them, and Mordecai called back: ‘Veramendis, we come to see Jim Bowie.’ They could hear conversation inside and then see the cautious opening of the gate.
Quickly they slipped through, saw the huge area inside the walls and a rather small room to the right, where Jim Bowie lay prostrate from a sudden attack of the fever. Amalia, hurrying to his cot, whispered: ‘Jim, Mordecai is here. We’ve come to be with you.’ And the sick man reached out to grasp their hands.
The Marrs found the Alamo dominated by four remarkable men. Two were wild frontier heroes: Jim Bowie, in command of the volunteers, and Davy Crockett. The other two were cool, well-educated gentlemen: Colonel William Travis, commander of the regular troops, and James Bonham, a quiet man with a personal courage matched by few and surpassed by none. The original homes of these four epitomized much of Texas history: the two frontiersmen were from Tennessee, of course, while the gentlemen were from South Carolina. On the character of these four would depend the defense of the Alamo.
Next morning, while Señora Marr comforted the despondent Bowie, her husband explored the arena in which they would do battle. The huge walled-in area astounded him: ‘We could move all the people of Béjar in here and they’d fill only a corner.’ But as he walked about, surveying the walls and calculating their ability to withstand Mexican cannon fire, he learned the nature of this siege, for Santa Anna’s artillery began their morning bombardment. After taking refuge under a shed, Marr watched while large cannonballs came drifting in over the walls, landed in the middle of the open area, and rolled harmlessly along until they came to rest against some obstruction, hurting no one, destroying nothing.
Since the Mexican gunners seemed never to vary the position, aim or elevation of their cannon, the balls invariably landed in the same harmless spot, and when Marr realized this, he snorted: ‘We can hold out a month against that stuff.’
While he was reaching this conclusion, Colonel Travis was working in a small room, as far from the barrage as possible, composing with a scratchy pen a letter that would be remembered in Texas history. Staring at the red flag, he knew that unless reinforcements arrived quickly he and his men were doomed, but instead of surrendering, he threw his gauntlet into the face of the world:
To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World—
&
nbsp; Fellow Citizens and Compatriots:
I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna … The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat … I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch … If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due his honor and that of his country.
VICTORY OR DEATH
William Barret Travis
Substantial help was available in the countryside: at Goliad, some miles to the southeast, there was an organized branch of the army, and at Gonzales, due east, a random collection of untrained patriots. If these forces marched swiftly to the Alamo, it might be saved.
When Zave Campbell heard that Santa Anna was marching north with more than two thousand troops, his first thought was a practical one: I better get some cattle up to New Orleans. He therefore made hurried plans to get a herd together, but he was temporarily forestalled by the sudden disappearance of Garza and by the fact that Finlay Macnab, also apprehensive about the approach of Santa Anna, would not allow Otto to leave home at this critical time. Despite these two drawbacks, Zave felt that if he could but get to Gonzales and talk to the locals, he could enlist the help he needed there. Accordingly, he scurried about, grabbing items that would prove useful on the long drive and issuing last-minute instructions to María.
‘With me gone, you can help the Macnabs, if they need it.’
‘Take care of yourself, Xavier.’