The Mammoth Book of the West by Jon E. Lewis Page B

“No,” I said. “I am not prepared to die, and shall not do so if I can avoid it.” Then Crockett looked at me, and said, “You might just as well, for escape is impossible.” I made no reply but looked up at the top of the fortress wall. “I have often done worse things than climb that wall,” I thought. Then I sprang up, seized my travelling bag and unwashed clothes and ascended it. Standing on top, I glanced down to take a last look at my friends. They were all now in motion, but what they were doing I heeded not. Overpowered by my feelings, I turned away.
     
    In the darkness Louis Rose made it through the Mexican lines and out of San Antonio without incident.
    Somebody else escaped the Alamo that night. A woman Mexican non-combatant deserted and told Santa Anna’s commanders how small the garrison was. Emboldened, they ordered a mass storm of the fort on the morning of the thirteenth day of the siege, 6 March 1836.
    In the pre-dawn darkness of the 6th, the Mexicans approached the barricade surrounding the fort, forming an armed ring through which none could escape.
    As daylight broke, Santa Anna sent 1,800 men against the sides of the Alamo while his band blared out the “No Quarter” call of the Spanish battle march, the “El Deguello”. Twice the Mexicans charged, and twice they were rebuffed. Then Santa Anna sent in his reserves, and these breached the walls of the fort on the west and northeast. Colonel Travis died in the latter place, slumped next to a cannon, a bullet through his forehead. The outer walls were now abandoned and the survivors, fighting hand to hand, fell back to the convent and the chapel. DavyCrockett apparently fell outside the chapel, using his rifle as a club (although some evidence suggests that he, and six of his Tennesseans, were captured and tortured to death).
    What is known of the last minutes of the men of the Alamo comes from the non-combatants in the fort whose lives were spared, particularly the wife of Lieutenant Dickinson, Ham, the Black servant of Jim Bowie, and Joe, the Black servant of Travis. The rooms of the stone buildings were fought for one by one. Armed with his knife and a brace of pistols, Jim Bowie fought from his sickbed in the baptistry. The chapel was the last place to be taken.
    At around 7 a.m. with the din of battle dying down, Santa Anna judged it safe to approach the fort. One of the handful of Texans still alive in the chapel fired a last defiant volley, and the dictator retired to his adobe-walled command post. Only when the last Texan was dead did Santa Anna again venture forth to the Alamo, directing that the bodies of the fallen Texans should be burnt in two great funeral pyres.
    To capture the Alamo cost General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna over 1,000 of his men. He had also given the new Republic of Texas a battle cry which would bring it ultimate victory.
Victory for the Republic
    The Republic of Texas had been declared on 2 March 1836, four days before the fall of the Alamo. Meeting in the village of Washington-on-the-Brazos, 59 delegatesagreed a Declaration of Independence and a constitution borrowed from that of the United States. Slavery was legalized, and all Texans guaranteed an ample land grant. Almost as important as these acts, the delegates finally agreed to let Sam Houston lead the Texan army in meaningful fashion.
    Taking command of his rag-bag army in mid-March 1836, Houston began an elaborate, zig-zagging eastward retreat, always just out of Santa Anna’s impatient reach. Thinking “Old Sam” was scared to fight, many settlers panicked and raced for the US border – an affair known as the “runaway scrape”. Some of Houston’s army wept in shame, others became mutinous. Texas’s new government bombarded him with missives: “Sir: The enemy are laughing you to scorn . . . You must retreat no farther. The country expects you to fight. The salvation of the country depends on you doing so.”
    None of this had any effect on