Free The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation by James Donovan Page B
Authors: James Donovan
mud-and-stick shacks called jacales . Above and below Béxar, fields of corn were watered by acequias, man-made irrigation ditches that flowed through and around the town. A few miles to the west lay a range of limestone hills.
To the east, across the sixty-foot-wide river lined with cypresses, acequias also flowed on either side of the former mission originally named San Antonio de Valero but now called the Alamo, after a presidial company once garrisoned there from Alamo de Parras, Mexico. Built more than a hundred years before, the crumbling compound had been one of five missions in the area; the ruins of the other four lay along the river to the south. Beginning with the Alamo in 1793, all had been secularized when the numbers of Indian converts had dwindled. The compound had been a military post for more than thirty years. A thick adobe wall surrounded most of the Alamo’s buildings. Several hundred of Cós’s men were there, fortifying the makeshift redoubt with several artillery pieces, a few of the larger ones being placed in the roofless church. The front of the structure had been piled high with dirt and rubble, and a crude ramp enabled cannon to be dragged to the top, albeit with great difficulty.
The fortifications in town were even more impressive. Log and earth barricades, some of them twelve feet high, blocked the main streets and reinforced the doors to several of the larger buildings, and nine cannon on swivels protected the town squares and the roads leading to them. At the entrance of every street, a ditch was dug ten feet wide and five feet deep. Over this was a breastwork of upright posts built with portholes for muskets and a large one in the center for cannon.
On October 27, while the Texians were still camped on the Salado, five miles outside of town, Austin authorized Travis, the owner of several fine horses, to raise a cavalry command of fifty or so volunteers, each to be armed with a double-barreled shotgun and a brace of pistols. Travis wasted no time in doing so, and the next morning, his horsemen were in the saddle and on the road toward Béxar. They had just crossed the San Antonio River when they heard gunfire up ahead.
The day before, Austin had sent Bowie and James Fannin—an ambitious young Georgia slave trader who had attended West Point for two years before moving his family to Velasco in 1834—to the mission closest to Béxar, Concepción, to lead a scouting party in search of an acceptable bivouac for the army. Juan Seguín accompanied them as guide. They were to return by dark. The detail of ninety-two men reached the abandoned mission, and the river a quarter mile beyond, just about noon. They promptly engaged in a skirmish with a small force of Mexican cavalry, which galloped back to town. Bowie decided the position was too good to risk losing, regardless of Austin’s orders to return by nightfall. He carefully placed his men near a bend in the river just west of the mission, on a broad river bottom six feet below the rolling prairie, and settled in for the night.
Early the next morning a dense fog covered the ground. A Texian picket saw a Mexican cavalry scout, took a shot at him, and rifle and musket fire promptly erupted from both sides. General Cós had learned of the detachment and sent out four hundred men to cut off and destroy it; they quickly surrounded the outnumbered Texians. The colonists were backed up to a body of water that, while preventing an attack from the rear, made retrograde movement difficult and invited attack on the flanks.
Fortunately for Bowie and his men, the Mexicans neglected such tactics and made a direct assault. As they did so, Bowie shifted his two wings to a more favorable position. As Mexican infantry and artillery advanced across the prairie, he shouted to his men, “Keep under cover, boys, and reserve your fire; we haven’t a man to spare.” A scatterload of canister (a tin cylinder filled with lead or iron balls) from two Mexican
To the east, across the sixty-foot-wide river lined with cypresses, acequias also flowed on either side of the former mission originally named San Antonio de Valero but now called the Alamo, after a presidial company once garrisoned there from Alamo de Parras, Mexico. Built more than a hundred years before, the crumbling compound had been one of five missions in the area; the ruins of the other four lay along the river to the south. Beginning with the Alamo in 1793, all had been secularized when the numbers of Indian converts had dwindled. The compound had been a military post for more than thirty years. A thick adobe wall surrounded most of the Alamo’s buildings. Several hundred of Cós’s men were there, fortifying the makeshift redoubt with several artillery pieces, a few of the larger ones being placed in the roofless church. The front of the structure had been piled high with dirt and rubble, and a crude ramp enabled cannon to be dragged to the top, albeit with great difficulty.
The fortifications in town were even more impressive. Log and earth barricades, some of them twelve feet high, blocked the main streets and reinforced the doors to several of the larger buildings, and nine cannon on swivels protected the town squares and the roads leading to them. At the entrance of every street, a ditch was dug ten feet wide and five feet deep. Over this was a breastwork of upright posts built with portholes for muskets and a large one in the center for cannon.
On October 27, while the Texians were still camped on the Salado, five miles outside of town, Austin authorized Travis, the owner of several fine horses, to raise a cavalry command of fifty or so volunteers, each to be armed with a double-barreled shotgun and a brace of pistols. Travis wasted no time in doing so, and the next morning, his horsemen were in the saddle and on the road toward Béxar. They had just crossed the San Antonio River when they heard gunfire up ahead.
The day before, Austin had sent Bowie and James Fannin—an ambitious young Georgia slave trader who had attended West Point for two years before moving his family to Velasco in 1834—to the mission closest to Béxar, Concepción, to lead a scouting party in search of an acceptable bivouac for the army. Juan Seguín accompanied them as guide. They were to return by dark. The detail of ninety-two men reached the abandoned mission, and the river a quarter mile beyond, just about noon. They promptly engaged in a skirmish with a small force of Mexican cavalry, which galloped back to town. Bowie decided the position was too good to risk losing, regardless of Austin’s orders to return by nightfall. He carefully placed his men near a bend in the river just west of the mission, on a broad river bottom six feet below the rolling prairie, and settled in for the night.
Early the next morning a dense fog covered the ground. A Texian picket saw a Mexican cavalry scout, took a shot at him, and rifle and musket fire promptly erupted from both sides. General Cós had learned of the detachment and sent out four hundred men to cut off and destroy it; they quickly surrounded the outnumbered Texians. The colonists were backed up to a body of water that, while preventing an attack from the rear, made retrograde movement difficult and invited attack on the flanks.
Fortunately for Bowie and his men, the Mexicans neglected such tactics and made a direct assault. As they did so, Bowie shifted his two wings to a more favorable position. As Mexican infantry and artillery advanced across the prairie, he shouted to his men, “Keep under cover, boys, and reserve your fire; we haven’t a man to spare.” A scatterload of canister (a tin cylinder filled with lead or iron balls) from two Mexican