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Monday, April 1, 2019
Texas History Minute would be treated well. He pled for the lives of the Texans, but Santa Anna would have none of it. He insisted they all be shot. Not trusting his general, Santa Anna sent orders directly to Urrea’s subordinate, Col. Jose Portilla, who commanded the garrison. Portilla ordered his men to take the prisoners out of the garrison on March 27, Palm Sunday, and marched them into a nearby field. His officers lined up the Texas prisoners, took aim, and fired. A storm of bullets mercilessly cut through everything in their paths, and the Texas soldiers fell to their The Texas Revolution began in deaths. The sight of hundreds of November 1835 after longbodies before Portilla and his simmering disputes with Mexico exploded into open warfare. Events senior officers was not enough. Several were still alive but in Texas were part of a series of uprisings and rebellions that spread wounded, and Portilla ordered across Mexico, which had the effect them beaten to death. The eighty men wounded at Coleto Creek of eroding the forces still loyal to and too weak to move were then the government. The commander taken out and shot. Fannin was of the Mexican Army, Gen. forced to watch the entire Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, slaughter. He was then taken to declared in December that any the fort and executed. foreign prisoners taken would be immediately executed. Santa Anna The bodies – more than 430 men was president of Mexico eleven times in its turbulent early history, -- were then put into a pile and burned. No effort was made at a willing to overthrow elected governments and subvert Mexican burial. The remains were left to rot in the field. law whenever it suited him.
The month of March 1836 began with high hopes and idealism for Texas forces trying to free themselves from Mexico, but a Dr. Ken Bridges string of military disasters pushed the Texas army to the edge of collapse. In the midst of these losses, one of the darkest incidents of the war occurred as more than 400 prisoners were executed at Goliad.
In the meantime, Texas settlers fought several small battles with Mexican forces and attempted to organize their resources. James Fannin, a Georgia native and onetime West Point cadet, served under Gen. Sam Houston, head of Texas forces, to piece together an army. Houston appointed him as a colonel. In January 1836, Fannin led an expedition toward Matamoros on the south side of the Rio Grande. When news came in February that Gen. Jose Urrea had taken the city, Fannin pulled back to Goliad to prepare their defenses at an old Spanish presidio Fannin had renamed Fort Defiance. After the Alamo fell to Santa Anna’s forces in early March and all defenders killed, Houston ordered Fannin to withdraw toward Victoria. Fannin hesitated but ultimately left. On March 19, Urrea’s forces caught up to Fannin. The armies fought at Coleta Creek, but Fannin was outnumbered three-to-one. By the next morning, faced with low ammunition and many injuries, Fannin attempted to negotiate his surrender to Urrea.
A month later, after the Battle of San Jacinto, Santa Anna himself was a prisoner of war, felled by his own arrogance. Certainly thoughts of the slaughter of the prisoners at Goliad and the Alamo came to Santa Anna’s mind. The memories of those deaths were certainly in the minds of the Texas troops, many of whom called for revenge. Instead, he was forced to surrender and to order all remaining Mexican troops out of Texas. Santa Anna was sent to the United States and eventually released. He continued to cast a dark shadow on the unstable Mexican political situation until he was exiled from Mexico for good by 1855. Gen. Urrea, in the meantime, came to despise Santa Anna. Within a year, Urrea was leading an army against him. The effort to topple Santa Anna failed, and Urrea was sent to prison in 1838.
Texas had to face the consequences of the horrors at Goliad. It had lost hundreds of soldiers but also lost talented men ready to put their gifts to use for the future of Texas when the The Geneva Convention would not peace returned. Once the war ended, Gen. Thomas Rusk rode be ratified for decades but already out to the site of the deaths. In standards were expected for June 1836, he had his men treatment of prisoners of war. Fannin agreed to surrender and give provide a proper burial. Identification of the individual up all weapons. Urrea ordered dead was now impossible, but them to march back to Fort they were buried with full military Definace, now under Mexican honors. A memorial was erected control. By March 25, Fannin’s at the site in 1938. 240 men were joined by 80 more prisoners from the Texas loss at Refugio. Dr. Bridges is a Texas native, writer, and history professor. He Urrea had no desire to execute these can be reached at drkenbridges@gmail.com. men and had promised that they
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