Unhappily the Texan army no longer existed, for its previous defeats had completely annihilated it. But if military organization might be lacking, the enthusiasm was more ardent than ever. The Texans had sworn to bury themselves under the smoking ruins of their plundered towns and villages, sooner than return beneath the detested yoke of their oppressors. And this oath they were not only prepared to keep, but had already kept at Bejar and Goliad: however low a people may appear, and is really in the sight of its tyrants, when all its acting strength is concentrated in the firm and immutable will, to live free or die, it is certain to recover from its defeats, and to rise again one day a conqueror, and regenerated by the blood of the martyrs who have succumbed in the supreme struggle of liberty against slavery.
General Houston had scarce been appointed ere he prepared to obey, and he reached the banks of the Guadalupe three days after the capture of the Alamo. The Texan troops amounted to three hundred men, badly armed, badly clothed, almost dying of hunger, but burning to take their revenge. General Houston was a stern and sincere patriot; his name is revered in Texas, like that of Washington in the United States, or of Lafayette in France. Houston was a precursor, or one of those geniuses whom it pleases God to create when He desires to render a people free. At the sight of this army of three hundred men, Houston was not discouraged; on the contrary, he felt his enthusiasm redoubled, the heroic relics of the ten thousand victims who had succumbed since the beginning of the war had not despaired of the salvation of their country: like their predecessors, they were ready to die for her. It was a sacred phalanx with which he would achieve miracles.
Still, it was not with these three hundred men, however brave and resolute they might be, that General Houston could entertain a hope of defeating the Mexicans, who, rendered presumptuous by their past successes, eagerly sought the opportunity to finish once for all with the Insurgents, by crushing the last relics of their army. General Houston, before risking an action on which the fate of his new country would doubtless depend, resolved to form an army once more; for this purpose, instead of marching on the enemy, he fell back on the Colorado, and thence on the Brazos, burning and destroying everything in his passage, in order to starve the Mexicans out.
These clever tactics obtained all the success the General expected from them; for a very simple reason: as he fell back on the Mexican frontier, his army was daily augmented by fresh recruits, who, on the report of his approach, left their houses or farms to enlist under his banner; while the contrary happened to the Mexicans, who at each march they made in pursuit of the Insurgents, left a few laggards behind, who by so much diminished their strength.
The Texan General had a powerful motive for falling back on the American frontier; he hoped to obtain some help from General Gaines, who, by the order of President Jackson, had advanced on Texan territory as far as the town of Nagogdoches. Such was the state of affairs between Houston and Santa Anna, the one retreating, the other continually advancing; though ere long they must meet face to face, in a battle which would decide the great question of a nation's emancipation or servitude.
On the day when we resume our narrative it was about eight in the evening, the heat had been stifling throughout the day, and although night had fallen long before, this heat, far from diminishing, had but increased; there was not a breath of air, the atmosphere was oppressive, and low lightning-laden clouds rolled heavily athwart the sky; all, in fact, foreboded a storm.
On the banks of a rather wide stream, whose yellowish and turbid waters flowed mournfully between banks clothed with cotton-wood trees, the bivouac fires of a small detachment of cavalry might be seen glistening like stars in the darkness. This stream was a confluent of the Colorado, and the men encamped on its banks were Texans. They were but twenty-five in number, and composed the entire cavalry of the Army of Independence: they were commanded by the Jaguar.
While the horsemen were sadly crouching over the fires, not far from which their horses were hobbled, and conversing in a low voice; their Chief, who had retired to a jacal made of branches and lighted by a smoky candil, was sitting on an equipal with his back leant against a tree trunk, with his arms folded on his chest and gazing at vacancy. The Jaguar was no longer the young and ardent man we introduced to our readers; his face was pale, his features contracted, and eyes blood-shot with fever, and, though faith still dwelt in his heart, hope was dead.
The truth was that death had begun to make frightful gaps around him; his dearest friends, the most devoted supporters of the cause he defended, had fallen one after the other in this implacable struggle. El Alferez, Captain Johnson, Ramirez, Fray Antonio, were lying in their bloody graves; of others he received no news, nor knew what had become of them; he therefore stood alone, like an oak bowed by the wind and beaten by the storm, resisting intrepidly, but foreseeing his approaching fall.
General Houston, in his calculated retreat, had confided the command of the rear guard, that is to say, the most honourable and dangerous post, to the Jaguar; a post he had accepted with gloomy joy, as he felt sure that he would fall gloriously, while watching over the safety of all.