Our Cat/10/ic Heritage in Texas
the courtyard, where Santa Anna had just arrived with his staff. Asked what should be done with the prisoners, he turned his back on them with the words, "You know my orders." A volley of shots rang out. The last survivors fell. The defenders of the Alamo had held Santa Anna's army at bay for ten days. On March 6 they paid their last measure of devotion that Texas might be free. 46 Tiu deatl, of Travis, Crockett, and Bowie. Hardly had the firing ceased before Santa Anna asked Ramon Muzquiz, the political chief; Francisco Ruiz, son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the two alcaldes of San Antonio, and Father Refugio de la Garza to accompany him to identify the bodies of Travis, Crockett, and Bowie. "On the north battery of the fortress convent," says Ruiz, "lay the lifeless body of Colonel Travis on the gun carriage, shot only through the forehead." It appears that the brave leader, when he saw that all was lost, shot himself "to prevent his falling into the hands of the enemy." 47 The body of Crock_ett was found at the fortification built near the middle of the west wall, which faces the city. Around him were piled the corpses of his Tennessee boys, mute testimony to their desperate courage. Bayoneted and run through with swords, Bowie lay on his bed in one of the rooms on the south side of the chapel. As in the case of Grant, the Mexican acquaintances of Bowie held a grudge against him and wantonly wreaked vengeance on his earthly remains. Tiu dead and tlu survivors. The number of the men who fell at the Alamo remains undetermined. Ruiz, who was ordered by Santa Anna to gather the dead and burn them, gave the figure as 182 in his report. Martinez Caro, secretary to the General, wrote in his Verdadera Idea de la Campaiia de Texas that, although he put down 600 in the official report at the request of the commander in chief, "One of the best accounts of the attack is found in Filisola, G11erra de Texas, II, 4-19. Other accounts are found in Santa Anna, Memorias, translated by Willy X. Watkins, 92, (Texas Arc/,ives); in a report by F:rancisco Ruiz, translated by J. H. Quintero and published in the Texas Almanac, 1860, 80-81; Gray, From Virginia to Texas, 135-140; Telegra,PI,, and Texas Register, March 24, I 836 i Martinez Caro, Verdadera Idea Sobre la Campana de Texas, 101-104, in Castaneda, TIie Mexican Side of t!,e Texan Revolution. 47 Andrew Briscoe, a close friend of Travis, so stated in an account published in the New Orleans Post and Union, March 28, 1836. Anselmo Bogarra (Vergara?), a private messenger, sent by friends immediately after the fall to Seguin at Gon- zalez, and Antonio Perez, who took the news to Ruiz and Navarro at San Felipe, both declared that Travis had shot himself rather than be taken prisoner.
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