Hi SAM! :)
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After the fall of the Alamo, General Sam Houston took charge of the Texas Army.
In order to gain time and troops from the surrounding countryside, Houston ordered a general retreat.
His orders were carried to the fort at Goliad where General Fannin had 500 men who had been denied by Fannin to help defend the Alamo.
Fannin tarried too long, and he and his force were captured on the way and sent back to Goliad.
A few days later three hundred ninety were marched up the road and executed.
The officers, including Fannin, were told of the fate of their men, then executed.
Hi SAM! :)
During the retreat of Sam Houston through Central and East Texas, in what came to be known as the "Runaway Scrape", he managed to gather 1400 ill equipped and ill trained volunteers to supplement the Texas Army.
When the Army was showing signs of disintegrating because of a lack of action, Houston turned them around to face the enemy.
In the meantime, Santa Anna had continued on his mission to eliminate the American threat to Texas.
Burning the town of Harrisburg to the ground, he swung back to the San Jacinto River to meet Sam Houston.
Houston deliberately allowed himself to be trapped between the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou, and burned all the bridges which might allow the Mexican forces to escape or his to retreat.
The Mexican Army, reinforced with troops from General Cos, numbered around 1200 men; Houston had only 918 men left by the time he pitched camp at San Jacinto.
On the afternoon of April 21st, while the Mexican Army was dozing in the heat and with the afternoon sun at it's back, the Texas Army walked almost a mile across open grasslands single file and charged the Mexican lines of bayonets and cannon.
The Mexican forces, with no sentries and no pickets, were taken completely by surprise.
The battle lasted only a few minutes.
The slaughter took much longer.
Houston could not control his men; they killed everyone that moved. When some of the Mexican forces attempted to swim away in the San Jacinto River, they were picked off by the expert riflemen.
At the end of the massacre, six hundred thirty Mexican soldiers lay dead and two hundred were wounded.
The diablos Tejanos, Devil Texans, lost TWO killed in action that day, and seven more would die later from wounds.
Texas had won it's independence.
"Lone Star" - T.R. Fehrenbach [para]
If anyone has a chance while in Houston, please go to see the San Jacinto Monument.
You can almost hear the sounds of battle and the crys from hundreds of throats, "REMEMBER THE ALAMO!", "REMEMBER GOLIAD!"