Before proceeding further, we will say in a few words what was the political situation of Texas at the moment when the story we have undertaken to tell took place.
During the Spanish domination, the Texans claimed their liberty, arms in hand; but after various successes, they were definitively crushed at the battle of Medina, on August 13th, 1815, a fatal date, by Colonel Arredondo, commanding the regiment of Estremadura, who was joined by the Militia of the State of Cohahuila. From that period up to the second Mexican Revolution, Texas remained bowed beneath the intolerable yoke of the military regime, and left defenceless to the incessant attacks of the Comanche Indians.
The United States had on many occasions raised claims to that country, declaring that the natural frontiers of Mexico and the Confederation were the Rio Bravo; but compelled in 1819 to allow ostensibly that their claims were not founded, they employed roundabout means to seize on this rich territory, and incorporate it in their borders.
It was at that time they displayed that astute and patiently Machiavellian policy, which finally led to their triumph.
In 1821, the first American emigrants made their appearance, timidly, and almost incognito, on the brazos, clearing the land, colonizing secretly, and becoming in a few years so powerful, that in 1824 they had made sufficient progress to form a compact mass of nearly 50,000 individuals. The Mexicans, incessantly occupied in struggling one against the other in their interminable civil wars, did not understand the purport of the American immigration, which they encouraged at the outset.
Hardly eight years had elapsed since the arrival of the first Americans in Texas, when they formed nearly the entire population.
The Washington Cabinet no longer concealed its intentions, and spoke openly of buying from the Mexicans the territory of Texas, in which the Spanish element had almost entirely disappeared, to make room for the daring and mercantile spirit of the Anglo-Saxons.
The Mexican Government, at last aroused from its long lethargy, understood the danger that threatened it from the double invasion of the inhabitants of Missouri and Texas into the State of Santa Fé. It tried to arrest the American emigration, but it was too late; the law passed by the Mexican Congress was powerless, and the colonization was not arrested, in spite of the Mexican military posts scattered along the border, with orders to turn the immigrants back.
General Bustamante, President of the Republic, seeing that he would soon have to fight with the Americans, silently prepared for the conflict, and sent under different pretexts to Red River and the Sabina various bodies of troops, which presently attained to the number of 1200 men.
Still, everything remained quiet apparently; and nothing evidenced the period when the struggle would commence, which a perfidy on the part of the Governor of the Eastern provinces caused to break out at the moment when least expected.