Dateline: Goliad, Texas the Presidio Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la Bahía After the Fall of the Alamo, terrified civilians start to flee with the army, in a melee known as the Runaway Scrape. Sam Houston now assumes command of the army at Gonzales. The newly created Texian army under his command was constantly on the move.
Gonzales is burned and the army along with the terrified civilians move east.
March 19, 1836: Battle of Coleto Creek, James Fannin’s own repeated pleas for help the same as Travis’s went unheeded, Fannin finally marched his men from Goliad on this day. Within hours the Mexican army caught them on an open plain. After a short, sharp engagement Fannin surrendered the next morning. General Urrea returned the captives to Goliad and locked them in the Presidio Chapel, where Fannin sought honorable terms. It was a false hope, as Mexican dictator Santa Anna had mandated the execution of all.
March 27, 1836: Palm Sunday— Mexican infantrymen and lancers formed some 300 captives into three columns and marched them separately out of the Presidio, ostensibly to the coast and freedom. But within a mile of the mission the guards in each column lined up their wards and shot them at pointblank range. Any prisoners still moving were bayonetted or impaled on the horsemen’s lances. Twenty-eight Texians managed to escape into the brush. The Mexicans returned to Presidio, where they butchered all 39 of the wounded, including the garrison commander.
Fannin was among the last to die. According to a Texian witness spared for his language skills, Fannin gave the officer of the firing squad coins and his gold watch in exchange for a promise the watch be returned to his family, he be shot in the heart and not the face, and his remains receive a Christian burial. The officer of course promised, then pocketed the watch and had his men shoot the colonel through the face and rolled his body into a ditch atop those of his men.
This action ordered by Santa Anna lives in history forever known as the “GOLIAD MASSACRE”.
Join me this Friday March 27th in Goliad to remember those brave men.