Upon news of this outrage the people everywhere took up arms. Two hundred and twenty soldiers, including Captain Jack Hays’ company of scouts, left Gonzales immediately to attack Woll. They were commanded by Colonel Matthew Caldwell. The Mexican general came out to meet them, and an engagement took place on the Salado River a few miles from San Antonio. General Woll had six hundred infantry and two hundred cavalry. As they advanced the Texans received them with a rattling hail of bullets.
Three times the Mexican infantry charged with great spirit and coolness; each time they were driven back. They finally retreated, carrying with them their dead and wounded, and leaving the Texans in possession of the field.
This victory was offset by the defeat of a company of fifty-three Texans on their way to join Caldwell. They were commanded by Captain Nicholas Dawson.
General Woll met these men in his retreat from the river Salado, and attacked them in a small mesquit thicket where they were halted. After an unequal contest of half an hour, Dawson hoisted a white flag. The firing ceased, but as soon as the surrender took place, the prisoners were set upon by the Mexican soldiers and many of them killed. Dawson was killed after he gave up his arms. Out of his fifty-three men, thirty-three were killed and eighteen were made prisoners. Two only escaped; one of these, a lad named Gonzales Woods, seized the lance thrust at him by a Mexican cavalryman, jerked his assailant to the ground, then leaped upon his enemy’s horse and galloped away.
The morning after these skirmishes General Woll abandoned San Antonio and returned to the west side of the Rio Grande River. His prisoners, among whom were Judge Hutchison and ex-Lieutenant-Governor Robinson, were sent to the Castle of Perote (Pā-ro′tā), a prison near the city of Mexico.
5. THE BLACK BEANS.
Before the echoes of the bugles which sounded General Woll’s retreat had finally died on the air, volunteers came flocking to San Antonio eager to pursue him, and determined to cross the Rio Grande at all hazards and release the Texans languishing in Mexican prisons.
On the 18th of November seven hundred men, armed and equipped for a campaign, were assembled in the shadow of the twin towers of the old Mission Concepcion. General Alexander Somervell, appointed by President Houston to the command, put himself at the head of this small army; the order to march ran down the line, and with a shout the men set their faces toward the west.
After several days’ march they camped at Laredo on the banks of the Rio Grande River. They expected to cross at once into Mexico and take the enemy by surprise. But at the moment when everything seemed to them favorable for this movement, General Somervell issued an order for his soldiers to return to Gonzales, where they would be disbanded.
The men were dumfounded. Three hundred flatly refused to obey the order. The others, after much wrangling, followed General Somervell to San Antonio.