Siege of Bexar Part One
After the Mexicans defeat at Conception General Cos then set-up defensive positions when he moved to the Main Plaza in San Antonio and then later into the Alamo. Texians established camps on the river at an old mill near San Pedro Springs. These moves set the stage for the Siege of Bexar that would last six weeks.
The Texians saw their numbers grow to over 400 men, including Juan N. Seguin, who brought with him a company of Mexican/Texians. While discussion among the Texian officers produced little support for an attack, some volunteers went home for winter clothes and equipment. With the arrival of more reinforcements from East Texas in early November led by Thomas J Rusk it offset the departures and now the Texans numbered about 600. The Texians and Mexicans skirmished from time to time as the Texians scouted for supplies, but neither side produced much success.
The beginning of the end. Both the Texian and Mexican troops grappled with significant morale challenges during the Siege but when the Texian’s learned of the pack animal train coming with supplies and Silver to pay the Mexican troop in the Alamo was attacked and captured along with 300 mules and horses on November 8th led by William B. Travis and when no Silver was found and the supply animals carried only fodder for horses rather than the pay for Mexican soldiers, this would later lead to about 160 Mexican desertions and 150 casualties totaling about 300 while the Texians casualties numbered thirty to thirty-five the difference reflected the greater accuracy of the Texian’s rifles.
Winter was coming, but diaries and letters of men who were there, including William Fairfax Gray and Colonel Juan Almonte, wrote it was shirtsleeved weather. In his diary, Samuel Maverick wrote that a norther blew in Nov. 20 and the temperatures fell to near freezing for a week, returning to mild weather. As is usual for Texas In San Antonio we now have the who’s who in Texas being born, Stephen Austin James Bowie, Juan Seguin, James Fannin, Jr., Thomas Rusk, William Travis, Edward Burleson, Erastus “Deaf” Smith, Ben Milam, Noah Smithwick, William Gordon Cooke, James Neill, Francis Johnson and yes a mere 15 year old boy Sion Record Bostick whom would later lived, died and buried in San Saba. Owner of the Bostick House Hotel that stood across from the Courthouse on the corner where today theAlamo Pecan & Coffee now stands.
In Part Two we will hear what Sion R. Bostick published in his Reminiscences of the Siege in 1901.
Part two next week