Battle of the Alamo

For thirteen days in early 1836, a small band of Texian rebels held the Alamo, a former Spanish mission at San Antonio de Béxar, against the army of the Mexican president and general Antonio López de Santa Anna. On 6 March Mexican troops stormed the walls and killed nearly all the defenders. The defeat stirred the rebels to fight on, and "Remember the Alamo!" became their battle cry in the Texas Revolution.

In 1835 Mexico replaced its federal constitution with a centralised system. The new government moved to restrict immigration from the United States, enforce tariffs and end the exemptions that had let settlers keep enslaved people despite Mexican law; by 1836 Texas had some 5,000 enslaved people among a non-native population of about 38,000. Many settlers, most of them recent and often illegal arrivals from the United States, rose in revolt. Fighting began in October 1835, and in December the last Mexican garrison, under Santa Anna's brother-in-law Martín Perfecto de Cos, surrendered at Béxar. Mexico answered with the Tornel Decree, which declared foreign volunteers fighting in Texas to be pirates who would be given no quarter.

The Texians took over the Alamo, a sprawling compound designed to resist raids rather than artillery, and mounted on its walls the cannon the Mexicans had left behind. By January 1836 fewer than 100 men remained. Sam Houston sent James Bowie to remove the guns and abandon the post, but Bowie became convinced it had to be held. William B. Travis arrived with 30 men in February, followed by volunteers including the former congressman Davy Crockett. Bowie and Travis agreed to share command. Meanwhile Santa Anna marched north with an army of about 6,000, many of them raw conscripts, losing men to snow, disease and Comanche raids on the way.

The Mexican vanguard occupied Béxar on 23 February and raised a red flag signalling no quarter. Told that any surrender must be unconditional, the defenders fired their cannon in reply. Bowie fell ill the next day, leaving Travis in sole command. Mexican batteries crept closer each night, while Travis sent couriers pleading for help, among them his famous letter to "the People of Texas & All Americans in the World". A relief column from Goliad turned back, but a few dozen men from Gonzales slipped in. By early March reinforcements had brought the Mexican force in Béxar to almost 3,100.

Before dawn on 6 March, after the guns had fallen silent long enough for the defenders to sleep, fewer than 1,800 Mexican soldiers advanced in four columns, with cavalry posted to catch anyone who fled. Improvised grapeshot cut down the tightly packed attackers, and two assaults failed. On the third, the columns converged on the weak north wall and broke in. Travis was among the first killed. Defenders fell back into the barracks and church, where Mexican troops blasted open doors with captured cannon; some who tried to escape across the open ground were ridden down. Bowie died in his sickbed, though accounts differ on how. By about 6:30 in the morning it was over.

Most eyewitnesses counted between 182 and 257 Texians killed. Several who surrendered, perhaps five to seven, were executed on Santa Anna's orders; historians still dispute whether Crockett was among them. Mexican losses are uncertain: Santa Anna reported 70 dead and 300 wounded, while most historians of the Alamo place total Mexican casualties at 400 to 600. Women, children and Travis's enslaved servant Joe were spared and sent to spread word of the defeat.

Unknown to the defenders, a convention had declared Texan independence on 2 March. News of the fall set off a mass flight eastward, the Runaway Scrape, but also brought volunteers to Houston's army. On 21 April 1836 Houston surprised Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto; the general was captured and the war ended. In Mexico the battle has tended to be overshadowed by the Mexican–American War of 1846 to 1848. The ruined church became a Texas state shrine.

Our 1815 map shows Texas as part of New Spain, and the 1880 map shows Texas as a state of the United States.