I logged off just minutes before you made this reply, having to go out to the post office and get groceries.
Will start over and read the whole thread, and comment more in the evening.
{{{Hugs to all Texans!!}}}
Santa Anna, the commanding general in Mexico and brother-in-law to General Cos, was furious at him for surrendering San Antonio and the Alamo.
He gathered his 6,019 man army and vowed to eradicate the Americans from Texas.
The majority of the 150 men who fled to the Alamo with the approach of Santa Anna were hunters and trappers of the ilk of James Bowie and Davy Crockett and were referred to as "Texians".
They were from almost every American state, but none were Texans, except nine ethnic Mexicans who had joined the Revolution.
Upon arriving in San Antonio, Santa Anna's first act was to hoist upon the tallest building a blood red flag, meaning that no quarter was to be given.
There is no doubt that the defenders of the Alamo could have escaped had they chosen to do so, but they knew when they did not, they had chosen to die.
Thirty-two men who had gathered at Gonzales rode hard to the Alamo, and during Santa Anna's ten day bombardment of the walls, fought their way inside to die with the defenders.
The cannon breached the walls on March 5th, and in the early morning of March 6th, 1836, the Mexican army of over 4,000 men attacked the Alamo defended by less than two hundred volunteers.
The first assault never reached the walls.
The frontiersmen, who had been raised with a rifle on their hands, did not miss often, and the speed with which they reloaded was something the veteran Mexican troops had never seen.
After fighting off wave after wave, the defenders of the Alamo each died with rings of Mexican soldiers around them.
By nine o'clock in the morning the Alamo had fallen with a cost to the Mexican army of over 1600 soldiers dead and over 500 wounded.
James Bowie was slain on his deathbed suffering from pneumonia.
No white defender survived, and there was mass mutilation of the bodies after the battle.
The defenders bodies were stacked and burned. By official records, 182 corpses were in the pyre.
There was one white woman in the Alamo at the time of the attack, and she was a wife of one of the defenders.
By the express orders of Santa Anna she was allowed to live.
The most lasting damage to Santa Anna and the Mexican Army was the spawning of the legend of the diablos tejanos or Devil Texans...for they would see them again.
"Lone Star" - T.F. Fehrenbach [para]