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The Alamo: 13 Days Of Glory

The Alamo (2004) The story of the ragtag group of soldiers who bravely fought for Texas independence is brought to the screen in this thrilling historical drama. With Mexican forces breathing down their necks, regular army commander Lt. Colonel William Travis (Patrick Wilson), militia leader Col. Jim Bowie (Jason Patric), and living legend Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton) must unite the men for a desperate final stand.

It was to be the stuff of legend, a virtual replay of the ancient tale of a desperate few selling their lives to buy precious time for the many, a story enacted as far back as Thermopylae if not beyond. Yet nowhere in the American saga would so many important elements be in play at the same time to ensure the creation of such a truly epic legend, the cornerstone of Texian mythology and reality at one and the same time. Men who were already living semimythical heroes were here in the persons of Bowie and Crockett. Around them stood a small cadre of men seemingly willing to risk all in defense of ideals of liberty and democracy. Arrayed against them were the myrmidons of absolutism led by a cynical incarnation of brutality. It was good and evil, the future and the past, freedom and slavery, all locked in mortal combat, an epic in the making that was ripe for begetting the cornerstones of Texian identity, and pride. It may have been a small event in the course of history, but it would loom paramount in defining Texas and its people now and forever.

As if to punctuate the holy place it was destined to become to Texians, the battlefield itself had been a place of worship. The Alamo was a large rectangular compound around a central area more than an acre in size, its west wall facing San Antonio. Most of the walls, in fact, were simply rooms-now barracks-on whose roofs the Texians had emplaced their cannon. Set back from the southeast corner of the compound was the Alamo church, a partial ruin, with cannon emplaced on a platform where once the roof had been. The compound was a place that could be almost impregnable to all but heavy siege artillery if properly garrisoned, but it was simply too big, the length of its walls requiring many times Travis's numbers to be properly manned. Instead, Travis had only something over one hundred fifty, though in the days ahead scattered parties of reinforcements would get through the spreading Mexican encirclement to bring Texian strength up to somewhere around two hundred, perhaps more. It was simply far too few, though day after day Travis held to hope that more would be coming.

Many of the local tejanos joined the garrison, having themselves come to prefer independence to Santa Anna's rule. One of them was Juan Seguin. In April 1835 he had volunteered to lead a company of militia volunteers in a march to support the legislature meeting in Monclova as it faced a threat from Cos. Milam was in his company, and they actually skirmished briefly with Mexican soldiery before returning to Texas, disgusted with Mexican politics. "We pledged ourselves to use all our influence to rouse Texas against the tyrannical government of Santa Anna," he recalled later. Thereafter he kept in constant contact with agitators throughout the unhappy colonies and tried to bring about an actual uprising in Victoria or Brazoria, only to have Mexican military commanders stymie his efforts. But then came the outbreak at Gonzales on October 2. That same day, "well satisfied that the beginning of the revolution was close at hand," Seguin held meetings in the San Antonio area and set out to persuade tejanos to rally to the cause.

The arrival of real hostilities forced the issue for the tejano community. Those on the fence could scarcely remain undecided much longer, while those still overtly loyal to the Constitution of 1824 and Mexico risked becoming outcasts in their own land. The overriding concern for tejanos in the gathering crisis had been self-government, the autonomy that would allow their province or state to be governed by those who knew best its interests and concerns. Despite mutual suspicions and resentments, they had been to date more than willing to cooperate with the Anglos when their ideological agenda intersected. Immediately after Collinsworth took Goliad on October 10, Seguin left with his company of volunteers to reinforce him, but then turned back to join Austin for the siege of Bexar. Lacking any Texian cavalry of his own, Austin desperately needed the vaqueros led by Seguin, and Austin soon appointed the tejano a captain in the new army. Seguin joined Bowie for the reconnaissance to the missions San Juan and San Jose, and then on to Concepcion, where he took part in the fight with Cos's lancers. After that, thanks to his familiarity with the land, Seguin would spend much time with his mounted company riding through the countryside seeking food and forage for men and animals. Indeed, the tejanos did more of such duty than any other Texian soldiers, and they took on a burden of much of the reconnaissance work as well. But still Seguin was back with Burleson's army in time for the final assault and taking of San Antonio. Meanwhile, Seguin spent much of his time patrolling after isolated Mexican cavalry mounts, including one successful raid with Travis.

The influence of prominent tejanos such as Seguin went far toward bringing their community together with the Texians in the crisis, and sensible commanders like Austin and Collinsworth took pains to ensure that tejanos knew that the insurgents did not regard them as the enemy. Collinsworth issued a proclamation in October promising to protect the lives and property of all citizens loyal to the 1824 Constitution without qualification, and the tejanos rewarded that protection by helping to provide food to volunteers whose own supply system was as yet nonexistent. After the surrender of Cos, when so many of the volunteers went off on the Matamoros fiasco or else simply went home, it was almost exclusively tejano horsemen like Seguin who kept an eye on the roads south of Bexar and the Rio Grande crossings, watching for any sign of a Mexican counterstroke. In San Antonio itself, historically the center of the tejano community, many of the bexarenos gave aid to the garrison under Neill, and then Bowie and Travis. Neill was convinced that if attacked, the volunteers could count on support from eighty percent of the townsmen, and Bowie seconded that with testimony that the people had been of great assistance to the Texians. When the Council authorized the employment of tejanos to assist the garrison, it provided that they be paid fairly, and several officers made efforts to have the services and losses of tejanos who assisted the Texians recognized by the government. "I think a distinction ought to be made between those who lost property while in our service," Travis wrote the very day that he got word of Mexicans on the Medina, "& those who were against us or were neutral."

Unfortunately, some believed that not enough of the bexarenos had proved their loyalty. Indeed, there were unsubstantiated rumors that the bullet that killed Milam had come not from a soldado's musket, but from a tejano gun. After the siege, in fact, the majority of the tejano townsfolk remained at least outwardly neutral. Others felt the divisions over sentiment in particularly bitter ways. Some families actually split between loyalty to the revolution and to Mexico, Enrique Esparza siding with Santa Anna and his brother Gregorio going into the Alamo with a dozen other bexarenos. The tejano clergy split, too, and there was no shortage of tejanos willing to send-or even carry-information south to Santa Anna's advancing columns. If the Texians won and declared for outright independence, then the tejanos could be certain that they would be an inconvenient minority. If the Texians remained committed to the 1824 Constitution and prevailed, then tejanos would still be citizens of Mexico and would have its laws to protect them. Few were actually centralists in sympathy with Santa Anna, but forced to choose between some rights under a fellow Mexican dictator and the uncertainty of an Anglo ruling class in a new nation, the devil they knew seemed preferable.

Once Travis and Bowie withdrew into the Alamo, both felt chagrin at just how few of the local tejano men joined them, though there were certainly other tejanos from other communities among the Alamo garrison. "The citizens of this municipality are all our enemies," Travis complained before long, suggesting that all who had not come to fight with them should be outcast as "public enemies," after San Antonio was firmly in the hands of Mexican soldados. Seeing the overwhelming force at Santa Anna's disposal, and the slimness of the Texian garrison, few could be blamed for choosing to wait to fight another day. Indeed, even some of the bexareno men who did come into the fort soon had second thoughts. Thanks to his marriage, Bowie probably had more intimate associations and sympathies with the tejano community than most Texians, and he had an instinct to stand up for an underdog, whether it be Protestant ministers trying to preach in a Catholic country or tejanos asked to make unthinkable decisions. He actually spoke with the bexareno men in the garrison, told them that Santa Anna had offered amnesty for any Mexican citizens who had taken up arms with the Texians, and advised them to leave while they could. Half a dozen did. Half a dozen remained, a division emblematic of the strained loyalties of tejanos as a whole.

But Seguin's loyalty was clear to him. In January 1836 the new Provisional Government gave Seguin a commission as a captain of cavalry in its newly ordained Regular Army, making him the only tejano so recognized, and sent him orders to report to Travis in Bexar. While there he had reverted briefly to his position as regidore and oversaw the election of a delegate to the convention scheduled for March I at Washington-onthe-Brazos. He was still in San Antonio on February 23 when the Texians evacuated to the Alamo, and he and the others lined the walls of the mission compound to watch as the Mexican army rode into the town to begin the siege. Five days later Seguin joined the other officers in the Alamo in a meeting to assess their position. "Taking into consideration our perilous situation, a majority of the council resolved that I should leave the fort and proceed with a communication to Colonel James W. Fannin, requesting him to come to our assistance," Seguin recalled.;' He left that same night for Fannin's garrison at Goliad, easily riding out through the as-yet incomplete Mexican encirclement. Learning the next day that Fannin was believed to be on his way, Seguin decided to await his arrival, but then he heard that Fannin had turned back and would not again attempt to relieve the Alamo. Immediately Seguin rode to Gonzales to meet with Houston and urge him to hurry to support Travis. Instead, Houston simply told Seguin to wait at Gonzales, and then on March 6 ordered him to return to the Alamo with a small train of provisions and new volunteers for the garrison.

The Alamo could have used those reinforcements. Within a day or two, and perhaps even hours, of the Mexican arrival on February 23, Bowie took a turn for the worse and disappeared into an improvised hospital from which he rarely emerged again, obviously desperately ill, and perhaps already dying. In the ensuing days it would be up to Travis to keep the defense going, to keep sending out riders with pleas for help, and to prepare for the inevitable enemy attack. Travis also seems to have instinctively understood that it was up to him to speak to the world for the garrison, and his dispatches soon took on the tone of a man addressing not just authorities in Washington, but posterity. "We will make such resistance as is due to our honor, and that of the country," he told Fannin that first day of the siege. He was "determined never to retreat." To another friend he wrote of his decision "to defend the Alamo to the last." Then on February 24 he sent out an address to "the People of Texas & all Americans in the world," making it clear that he knew the stage he occupied. Besieged, threatened with no quarter if he did not surrender, he called on patriots everywhere to rally to his aid. "I shall never surrender or retreat," he declared. "In the name of Liberty, of patriotism & every thing dear to the American character," he admonished men to speed to Bexar. Clearly, even if his newspaper in Alabama might have failed, Travis never lost his journalist's ear for the power of words, closing his plea with a declaration of "Victory or Death."

Santa Anna, meanwhile, knew he had nothing to fear from the garrison and so took his time, waiting until the bulk of his army was in the vicinity, contenting himself instead with constructing batteries to shell the Alamo, and gradually extending his lines to encircle the compound and cut it off from succor just as the Texians had done to Cos. In the days ahead there were isolated skirmishes and frequent bombardment from the Mexican batteries, mostly reconnaisances sent forward to test the strength of Travis's command and defenses. Crockett seemed to circulate around the walls talking to the men, joking no doubt, showing them the "b[e]ar" and letting them see an example of frontier bravado that Travis thought animated their own spirits. One night he led a raid in on some jacales that gave shelter to enemy riflemen, and set them ablaze. When not engaged in the skirmishing, Travis kept the men at work on their defenses. On March 3 there came encouragement when a rider got through with word of sixty men on their way from San Felipe and another three hundred expected, while Fannin, with some three hundred at Goliad, was finally supposed to be coming after all. If they all arrived in time, and if they could get through the Mexican cordon, Travis would have more than eight hundred, possibly enough to hold against any assault. But Travis did not believe that Fannin was really coming. Worse, he could see this afternoon the Mexican soldados building scaling ladders out in the open, betokening a heavy assault, and soon.

In a spirit of resignation, but not yet despondency, he sent out his last dispatches, one to the Convention at large and another to delegate Jesse Grimes. He detailed the almost miraculous fact that after ten days of intermittent shelling, he had yet to suffer any casualties. "The spirits of my men are still high although they have had much to depress them," he declared. Estimating that he faced somewhere between fifteen hundred and six thousand Mexicans, he pleaded for help but promised yet again to fight and die for Texas before he would surrender. His courage and that of his men would not fail them "in the last struggle," he said, revealing that the imminent possibility of death was cer tainly on his mind. Still he promised that "the victory will cost the enemy so dear, that it will be worse for him than defeat." He still did not doubt that this was the place to meet and stop Santa Anna, even if every day he could see the blood-red banner flying above the San Fernando tower in San Antonio, Santa Anna's reminder that he would take no prisoners. Above all, it was vital that the Convention decide on independence. Then every Texian would know what they were fighting for and rally to his aid. If the Convention failed to make such a declaration, he said, then and only then would he give up. The talk of independence made him even bolder, it seemed, for just after declaring his willingness to die, he boasted that if he had only five hundred more men, he could raise the siege and drive the Mexican army back below the Rio Grande.

Yet it was with rather less bravado, and more reflection, that he added a brief private note to those the courier took out that day. Travis addressed it to the man then looking after his infant son Charles. "Take care of my little boy," implored the father. "If the country should be saved, I may make him a splendid fortune; but if the country should be lost and I should perish, he will have nothing but the proud recollection that he is the son of a man who died for his country." These were the last words to come from Travis or the Alamo.

Within another day Santa Anna completed the ring around the Alamo, and no one was going to get in or out. From this point onward, it was almost certain that a strong assault would be successful. Travis had already succeeded in delaying Santa Anna for nearly two weeks, buying time for the convention being held at Washington-on-the-Brazos to wrangle interminably over a constitution and finally declare for complete independence on March 2, and also buying time, so he thought, for Houston to raise an army to defend Texas and to come to his aid. There was nothing more for the defenders to achieve by holding out, but until this time there seems to have been no thought of surrender, and indeed no expectation of humane terms if they did yield. Travis's March 3 letter would be the last words heard from the Alamo defenders. Their thoughts and feelings thereafter are forever shrouded in darkness. Almost forty years later a story appeared and went into Texas legend that told of Travis forming the defenders on the parade ground and drawing a line in the dirt with his sword, telling those willing to stay and die to cross it and stand with him. It may have happened, but more likely it was an invention, for the source of the story was decidedly unreliable. Once the gate closed on the courier Travis sent out that night, he, Bowie, Crockett, Dickinson, Esparza, and the rest ceased to speak, receding to scarcely more than shadows on the page until they came together one last time on their funeral pyres.

Santa Anna took no chances in planning his assault. Whatever his other failings as a commander, he was methodical. His officers preferred simply to continue the siege, confident that in another week or so, especially after heavy siege guns arrived, they could pulverize the Alamo into dust and force a surrender at no cost to themselves in life. Santa Anna wanted to take it by storm, however. Expecting that there would be more battles ahead, he needed to build the self-confidence of his army, especially among the inexperienced conscripts, some of them actually released convicts. He wanted to erase the shame of Cos's surrender with a glorious victory. To date, all of his outposts in Texas had been defeated by lesser numbers, even if the skirmishes themselves were minor. He needed real battlefield victory, and from the point of view of building morale and experience, Santa Anna made the right decision. Nor could he be unmindful of the continuing unrest behind him in Mexico proper. A crushing victory over insurgents here would send a loud message to the malcontents elsewhere to curb their republican zeal.

Nevertheless, Santa Anna made the right decision at the wrong place. Even if crumbling, still those Alamo walls posed a formidable defense, and must cost many lives even in an inevitable triumph. That being the case, he then made another correct decision, but again at the wrong time. He gave orders that his most seasoned and experienced regulars be the vanguard of the attack. It made sense, for they would perform better, with a better chance of success, while the conscripts and new men who followed could learn and take spirit from their example. But it also meant that the heaviest casualties would fall among his best troops, whom he would need for the campaign beyond Bexar.

Santa Anna gave Gels a chance to redeem himself by commanding the first column of three hundred men, whom he would lead against the northwest corner of the Alamo compound with ladders for scaling and axes and crowbars for breaking into the barricaded adobe rooms. Colonel Francisco Duque would take four hundred men similarly equipped against the north wall. Colonel Juan Morales should drive one hundred riflemen against the south wall and the fortified main entrance to the compound, while Colonel Jose Maria Romero and three hundred more struck from the northeast. That was only eleven hundred of Santa Anna's army. He intended to hold the balance in reserve under his personal command, ready to leap into any breach opened. Then sheer numbers would win the day. Meanwhile, Ramires y Sesma's cavalry were to patrol in a circle around the Alamo at some distance to catch any rebels who went over the walls trying to escape.

Carrying their scaling ladders, the soldados approached in their columns in the pre-dawn hours of March 6. By 6:00 A.M. they had almost reached the walls undetected when enthusiastic soldiers ruined the surprise by shouting "Viva Santa Anna!" Dozing sentinels on the walls awoke and saw the attackers within perhaps fifty yards, close enough that at the first blast from Texian cannon on the walls half a company of soldados were cut down. The alarm sounded quickly, and Texians ran to their posts. Travis, who had been asleep in his quarters, now ran to the north wall where his men already fired into the darkness at Cos's and Duque's men preparing to raise their ladders. The Alamo's commander shouted for his men to "give them Hell," and then leaned over the parapet to fire his shotgun into the throng, to be hit immediately in the forehead by a Mexican bullet, perhaps the first defender killed.

In the next few minutes, with fighting almost all along the walls, the Texians soon realized they were too few to hold such a long line, and the Mexicans quickly probed for the weak spots. Defenders had no choice but to abandon one position in order to go to another more threatened, and soon most of them were on the north wall where the columns of Cos, Duque, and Romero converged.

William C. Davis. . Free Press. 2004. H.W. Brands. . Doubleday. 2004. James L. Haley. . Free Press. 2006.

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