On the morning of the 21st of April, 1836, Houston, with his army of
seven hundred Texans, and Santa Anna, with his army of more than twice
that number of Mexicans, were encamped within a mile of each other near
the banks of Buffalo Bayou.
The country was in a wild panic. Men, women, and children were fleeing
before the very rumor of Santa Anna’s approach, as in the pioneer days
they had not fled before the tomahawks of the Comanches.
Houston’s slow retreat[26] (begun on March 13), from Gonzales to the
Colorado, from the Colorado to various points on the Brazos, with the
enemy close upon his rear, had filled the stoutest hearts with doubt and
alarm. After more than two months of suspense charged with the terrible
episodes of San Patricio, Refugio, the Alamo, and Goliad, and the
burning of San Felipe, Gonzales, and Harrisburg, the people began to ask
of each other what would be the end.
Here at last, on an open field and in a fair fight, the question was
about to be answered.
Santa Anna, after the fall of the Alamo, was filled with vain glory. He
called himself the Napoleon of the West, and looked upon the Texan
“rebels” as already conquered and suppliant at his feet. From his
headquarters at San Antonio he directed his army to possess the country
and to shoot every man taken with a gun in his hand. One division, under
General Gaona, was ordered to Nacogdoches; General Urrea, after the
battle of Colita, was ordered to sweep the coast from Victoria to
Anahuac with his division; the central division, under Generals Sesma
and Filisola, followed Houston almost step by step in his retreat. Santa
Anna himself accompanied this division.
On the 15th of April, believing that Houston was at last in his power,
the Mexican commander-in-chief left his main army on the Brazos and
marched, with about one thousand men, to Harrisburg, where he hoped to
capture President Burnet and the members of his cabinet. He found
Harrisburg deserted; whereupon he set fire to the town, and hurried to
New Washington. From there, after burning the straggling village, he
intended to move on to Lynch’s Ferry (now Lynchburg) at the junction of
Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River. His plan was to pursue the
government officials to Galveston, whither they had retreated, make them
prisoners, and so end the war. While his troops were in line for the
ferry (April 20) he was startled by the arrival of a scout who reported
the approach of Houston with his entire command. Santa Anna, thus cut
off from his army, was taken completely by surprise.
This was the moment Houston had so long awaited.
“We need not talk,” he said to Rusk, the Secretary of War, who was with
the army. “You think we ought to fight, and I think so, too.”
[Illustration: Deaf Smith.]
The rising sun of April 21 looked down bright and glowing upon the two
hostile camps. The Texans were in a grove of moss-hung live oaks; in
front of them a rolling prairie, gay with spring flowers, stretched away
to the marshy bottom lands of the San Jacinto River; behind them Buffalo
Bayou rolled its dark waters to Galveston Bay. The “Twin Sisters,” two
small cannon presented to the Republic by the citizens of Cincinnati,
were planted on the rising ground before the camp. They were flanked on
either side by the infantry. The cavalry, under the command of Mirabeau
B. Lamar, was placed in the rear.
[Illustration: Battlefield of San Jacinto.]
Santa Anna’s camp also faced the prairie, but it had directly in the
rear the oozy, grass-grown San Jacinto marsh.
The day before (20th) when the ground was first occupied by the two
armies, there had been some skirmishing. But this morning passed in a
quiet, which was broken only by the arrival of General Cos at the
enemy’s camp with a reinforcement of five hundred men.
Toward noon a profound silence fell upon the Mexican camp. The men,
officers and soldiers, from Santa Anna to the humblest private, were
taking their _siesta_ (afternoon nap).
Meantime, General Houston, after a short consultation with his officers,
sent for Deaf Smith.
Deaf Smith was a bold, cool-headed, shrewd guide and spy, who had come
from New York to Texas in 1821. He was hard of hearing (hence his
nickname), silent and secretive in his manner, with the instinct and the
unerring sight of a savage. It was Deaf Smith who had guided Fannin and
Bowie from La Espada to Mission Concepcion, and led Johnson and Milam
through the dark streets at the storming of San Antonio. It was he who
had been sent to meet Mrs. Dickinson on her dreary journey from the
Alamo; and when General Houston retreated from Gonzales, Deaf Smith,
with one or two companions, was left to spy upon the movements of the
enemy.
Houston dispatched Smith with secret orders to cut down and burn Vince’s
bridge, about eight miles distant.
This bridge, which both armies had crossed on their march to their
present position, spanned Vince’s Bayou, a narrow but deep stream
running into Buffalo Bayou. To destroy it was to destroy the only means
of retreat for either army.
General Houston, after making these arrangements, paraded his army. The
men were in high spirits. Their eyes were dancing, their fingers itched
to pull the triggers of their guns. The day was waning; it was nearly
three o’clock in the afternoon. At this moment Deaf Smith galloped in,
his horse white with foam, with the news that Vince’s bridge had been
burned.
The order to advance was given. A single fife struck up the curiously
inappropriate tune, “Will you come to the bower I have shaded for you.”
The cannon were rushed forward within two hundred yards of the Mexican
camp, and fire belched from the mouth of the “twins.” The left wing of
infantry under Colonel Sidney Sherman began the attack. There was a cry
which split the air: “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!” and the
whole force hurled itself forward like an avalanche.
The effect was appalling. The Mexicans half awake, dazed and bewildered
by the sudden charge, hardly tried after their first feeble volley, to
return the fire of their assailants. Within a few moments the Texans,
still uttering their hoarse watchword of vengeance, had leaped the
barricade, and were in the very heart of Santa Anna’s camp.
Too excited or too thirsty for revenge to load, they beat down the foe
with the butts of their rifles, clubbed them with pistols, slashed them
with keen-edged bowie knives. The Mexicans fled like frightened sheep,
some into the muddy morass where they were caught as in a trap, others
toward the bayou and the ruined bridge, others again to the cover of the
timber where they made haste to surrender. “Me no Alamo! Me no Alamo!”
cried many of the panic-stricken soldiers, falling on their knees before
their captors.
[Illustration: Sidney Sherman.]
By twilight the fleeing Mexicans were nearly all captured or killed, and
the victors had time to breathe and to count their own dead. They had
seven dead and twenty-seven wounded. Among the latter was General
Houston, who received a wound in the ankle, which caused him to limp
during the remainder of his life.
The Mexicans lost six hundred and thirty-two killed and two hundred and
eight wounded. Seven hundred and thirty-two prisoners were taken.
Among the prisoners were the oath-breaker, General Cos;[27] Almonte,
Santa Anna’s private secretary; and Colonel Portillia, the officer who
had been in command at Goliad when Fannin and his men were shot. General
Santa Anna, riding a handsome black horse, had escaped. He was pursued
as he fled from the field by Henry Karnes, who knew from the flying
horseman’s glittering uniform that he must be an officer of rank; he did
not dream, however, that he was following Santa Anna. He felt sure of
capturing the officer at Vince’s Bayou, for he rode straight for the
destroyed bridge. But after a single second of hesitation on the bank,
the horse and rider seemed to rise in the air and then plunge downward.
When Captain Karnes reached the stream, the gallant animal was
floundering in the mud on the opposite side, unable to clamber up the
steep bank. The rider had disappeared.