This Week in Texas History
by BARTEE HAILE
Santa Anna overruled his general on the ground on March 23, 1836 and gave the infamous order for the mass execution of all the Goliad prisoners.
The Tampico captives served as guinea pigs for the dictator’s get-tough policy toward meddlesome foreigners. A number of Americans were among the 28 followers of Gen. Jose Antonio Mexia tried for piracy and put to death in December 1835. Encouraged by the “so what?” reaction in the United States, Santa Anna issued the infamous no-quarter decree that his puppet congress made the law of the land on Dec. 30.
Gen. Jose de Urrea, commander of the eastern army sweeping north up the Texas coast, believed the summary slaughter of prisoners was unconscionable overkill. But he had to do something with the Texans taken at San Patricio on Feb. 27, 1836, and Santa Anna demanded their immediate annihilation. A last-minute plea from an Irish priest gave him a good excuse for letting the rebels live, and he shipped them off to Matamaros.
Urrea faced an identical dilemma two weeks later at Refugio, where 33 armed insurrectionists raised the white flag. He saved the problem this time by shooting the half that hailed from Kentucky and Tennessee and turning loose those claiming colonial residency and Mexican citizenship.
Later in the week, Urrea fought a bloody two-day battle with Col. James W. Fannin, which was interrupted by the Georgian’s sudden and unexpected offer to surrender. Since the Mexican had already lost 250 soldiers and feared more fatalities if the fighting continued, he was willing to promise his opponent the moon.
Negotiations hit a serious snag, however, when rebel representatives insisted upon humane treatment as POWs and prompt parole to the U.S. Urrea took Fannin aside for a confidential chat and privately pledged complete compliance with the unacceptable terms, if only he would lay down his arms.
Fannin should have known better than to strike the fatal bargain. He was well aware of Santa Anna’s standing order, which had been so mercilessly carried out at the Alamo. What on earth made him think Urrea had the power to keep such a pie-in-the-sky promise?
Reporting to his superior by messenger, Urrea recommended clemency for the captives. Santa Anna answered with a direct order for the execution of every last one of the “perfidious foreigners” and, just to be on the safe side, sent the same instructions to the colonel in charge of the Goliad garrison.
By the time Jose Nicolas de la Portilla received his orders on March 26, Urrea was long gone. Resigned to the inevitability of the massacre, he preferred to be someplace else when the killing commenced.
The prisoners were in unusually high spirits that dreadful night following word from Fannin, whose gullibility knew no bounds, that the Mexicans were busy making the necessary preparations for their safe departure. The unsuspecting souls sang themselves to sleep with a few choruses of “Home Sweet Home.”
Haunted by a hellish vision of what the morning would bring, the brave wife of a Mexican officer could not close her eyes. The kind heart of Francita Alavez already had gone out to the prisoners at Capano Bay, where she coaxed the guards into loosening the ropes cutting off the circulation in their arms, but that act of compassion paled in comparison to her current mission of mercy.
Senora Laves had a kindred spirit in a colonel named Francisco Garay, who was willing to risk his life to save as many prisoners as possible from the firing squads. At first light he led a score or so of confused captives to his tent in a peach orchard and told them not to budge until he returned.
As the condemned filed past, Senora Alavez spotted a young boy in the doomed ranks. She pleaded with a high-ranking German mercenary to leave the lad with her, and without a word or change in expression the request was miraculously granted.
Minutes later, the sound of musket fire and the screams of the dying shattered the Palm Sunday silence. “Curse you, Santa Anna!” Francita Alavez shouted. “What a disgrace you have brought to this country!”
From his sanctuary in the orchard, Dr. J.H. Barnard heard the murderous madness. “I saw through the trees several of the prisoners running with their utmost speed and directly after some Mexican soldiers in pursuit of them.
“Colonel Garay now appeared and said to us, ‘Keep still, gentlemen. You are safe. This is not from my orders, nor do I execute the.’”
Three hundred and forty-two died that day shot down like rabid dogs. Of the estimated 65 survivors, no fewer than 37 owed their lives to the “Angel of Goliad,” as Francita Alavez always would be known, and the courageous colonel who refused to obey an immoral order.
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