The men within the walls had no need to be driven to their work. Every one was alert and at his post, and they met with a hot fire from cannon and rifles the Mexican advance. Just as the new day dawned, the ladders were placed against the walls and the Mexicans scrambled up their rounds. They were driven back with heavy loss. Again the charge for assault was sounded and a second rush was made for the walls, and once more the bullets of the defenders swept the field and the assailants fell back in dismay.
Santa Anna now went through the beaten ranks with threats and promises, seeking to inspire his men with new courage, and again they rushed forward on all sides of the fort. Many of the Texans had fallen and all of them were exhausted. It was impossible to defend the whole circle of the walls. The assailants who first reached the tops of the ladders were hurled to the ground, but hundreds rushed in to take their places, and at a dozen points they clambered over the walls. It was no longer possible for the handful of survivors to keep them back.
In a few minutes the fort seemed full of assailants. The Texans continued to fight with unflinching courage. When their rifles were emptied they used them as clubs and struggled on till overwhelmed by numbers. Near the western wall of the fort stood Travis, in the corner near the church stood Crockett, both fighting like Homeric heroes. Old Betsy had done an ample share of work that fatal night. Now, used as a club, it added nobly to its record. The two heroes at length fell, but around each was a heap of slain.
Colonel Bowie had taken no part in the fight, having been for some days sick in bed. He was there butchered and mutilated. All others who were unable to fight met the same fate. It had been proposed to blow up the magazine, but Major Evans, the man selected for this duty, was shot as he attempted to perform it. The struggle did not end while a man of the garrison was alive, the only survivors being two Mexican women, Mrs. Dickenson (wife of one of the defenders) and her child, and the negro servant of Colonel Travis. As for the dead Texans, their bodies were brutally mutilated and then thrown into heaps and burned.
Thus fell the Alamo. Thus did the gallant Travis and his men keep their pledge of "victory or death." Like the Spartans at Thermopylæ, the heroes of the Alamo did not retreat or ask for quarter, but lay where they had stood in obedience to their country's commands. And before and around them lay the bodies of more than five hundred of their enemies, with as many wounded. The Texans had not perished unavenged. The sun rose in the skies until it was an hour high. In the fort all was still; but the waters of the aqueduct surrounding resembled in their crimson hue the red flag of death flying in the town. The Alamo was the American Thermopylæ.
HOW HOUSTON WON FREEDOM FOR TEXAS.
We have told the story of the Alamo. It needs to complete it the story of how Travis and his band of heroes were avenged. And this is also the story of how Texas won its independence, and took its place in the colony of nations as the "Lone Star Republic."
The patriots of Texas had more to avenge than the slaughter at the Alamo. The defenders of Goliad, over four hundred in number, under Colonel Fannin, surrendered, with a solemn promise of protection from Santa Anna. After the surrender they were divided into several companies, marched in different directions out of the town, and there shot down in cold blood by the Mexican soldiers, not a man of them being left alive.