THE REPUBLICAN ARMY OF THE NORTH ARRIVES
These men were intent on determining Texas’ independence from Spain. As they moved west from Louisiana in August, 1812, they easily capturing Spanish fort at Nacogdoches. In November, 1812, they captured LaBahia/Goliad, but lost leader Lieutenant Augustus Magee. Victorious and now confident in their military successes and superiority, they moved again, this time northwest to the presidio town of San Fernando de Béxar (San Antonio).
These insurgents, this Republican Army of the North, did seem unstoppable. They included dedicated Tejanos, Texians, Indians, Blacks, ex-Spanish soldiers, and some “filibusters” of the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition from the United States. They also had the blessing and gold from the United States government.
Their first encounter with Spanish forces at the Béxar Presidio is now known as the Battle of Rosillo, fought a few miles southeast of modern San Antonio (just outside Loop 410 at IH 37 near Rosillo Creek) on March 29, 1813, it was a decisive Spanish defeat.
Within the week of this great Republican Army of the North’s success, on April 6, 1813, a Declaration of Independence, was adopted in Béxar for a Republic of Texas—the First Republic of Texas. Spanish royalist leader, Governor of Nuevo Santander and army General, Juaquín de Arredondo, began moving his army northwest from Aguayo.
That army was a substantial force of some 1,830 soldiers, of which two-thirds were cavalry, a third infantry. They also had cannons. Their intent was to recapture Béxar for Spain and cleanse the area of all rebellious republicans, the pirates, or filibusteros, who were trying to steal Texas and Mexico from Spain.
Arredondo’s army moved from their encampments in Aguayo, Nuevo Santender, northwest to Laredo. After their gathering more forces along the way, this army moved across the Rio Grande near Laredo and generally took the Laredo Road northward. His forces on this established road were sighted and monitored by republican scouts.
Scouts returning to the Presidio at San Antonio told defenders of the army headed their way. The defenders decided to go out of the town to meet the invaders and prepared a site for ambushing Arredondo’s army before it got to Béxar.
Realizing the main force was still generally along the Laredo Road, they decided that the best site for ambushing the royalists was south of the Medina River near the road from Laredo. While the battle’s actual site has not been confirmed, it is believed to be in this general area. Here, Republican forces led by José Alvarez de Toledo placed themselves at the ambush site while Tejano-Indian cavalry, led by Col. Miguel Menchaca, scouted, ready to tackle royalists.
The 1200-1400 Republican volunteers, were now on the move, looking for Arredondo’s army. They pulled and pushed two of their seven cannons through the sand south of the Medina River as the search for the royalists continued. By noon the volunteers and their cannons found the Spanish army awaiting them, ” in pistol shot range…eyeball to eyeball, …across an open area in that post oak flat…of about 40 yards” and behind a barricade of supply wagons with cannons of their own.
Royalist General Arredondo wrote in his report and memoirs: “There was a most hard fought battle lasting more than two hours, reaching the extreme of having their artillery placed within forty paces of ours.” One estimate suggests that over 900 cannon shots could have been fired by the royalist at the republicans in those two hours of battle.
Within those hard fought two hours republican forces first believed victory was at hand. But, according to one author, as the thick smoke from burned black powder of cannon and firearm cleared, it became apparent that Toledo’s republican forces were not winning. The terrible retreat back to Béxar began.
Royalist pursuit became by some accounts a steady execution and mutilation of those unable to retreat northward to Béxar. Republican soldiers who could run no more were “shot and hung by their heels in trees.” Nearly 400 ultimately survived the battle. Some ran into Indian lands. Others ran to families at Béxar.
Dead Spanish soldiers were buried with honors. Bodies of those thousand and more traitorous republican soldiers were left to rot where they fell, were they quartered and hung from trees, or otherwise died on that retreat to Béxar. Upon his arrival in Béxar, Spanish Gen. Arredondo, established martial law, and did his best to cleanse the town and region of the republicans. Some say the street now called Dolorosa was so named for the weeping of dozens of families whose detained fathers, husbands, and brothers, some 327, were taken for forced labor or for public execution in the Military Plaza.
BATTLE OF MEDINA: THE TERRIBLE AFTERMATH …
Mexican poet Guillermo Prieto, in his 1867 poem, Romance de Arredondo, reflected on the time of rule and control in Nuevo Santander by its Governor, the General Juaquin de Arredondo. Whether fighting Father Miguel Hidalgo’s followers in 1810 or Republican Army in 1813, the sentiment is chilling.
“Hello! Hello! to the Women. Hello! Hello! to the elderly. Run children and peasants far into the fields. There between the clouds of dust come the soldiers of Joaquín de Arredondo. This is the frontier of terror. When his legions pass, the earth trembles.”
The Republic of Texas Army, in 1813, was made up of 1400 Spanish royalists, Tejanos, Indians, and Anglo-Americans who now knew defeat and were running for their very lives. Many were headed back the ten miles to homes or shelter at the Presidio de Béxar, but only 50 of those 1400 men were known to have made it back alive. Arredondo ordered 200 of his cavalrymen to chase down and execute every fleeing enemy who escaped from the battlefield and hang them from the trees. They did so. Terribly so.
The surviving republican soldiers exhausted and wounded, even with hands raised in surrender found no quarter and no honored military burial. The slaughter was such that as late as 1828 travelers to the area could still find an arm or leg bone of those left dismembered and unburied.
The 50 who reached Béxar found themselves arrested and imprisoned by former friends or neighbors who did not want to face the wrath of Arredondo. Forty of the 50 were immediately taken and shot by a firing squad, their bodies dragged around before being displayed in various public places. Then, each day 3 more were taken for execution. A few who were allowed to survive, were forced to repair Béxar’s streets.
Upon arrival the General had all women who might be wives, mothers, sisters, daughters to any of the republican soldiers arrested. These women were herded into a big house (near the corner of Nueva and Dwyer Streets, across from the modern Bexar County Courthouse.) Here the women were prostituted, made to grind corn and make tortillas around the clock for the 1000 or more Spanish soldiers now garrisoned in the Béxar Presidio. The soldiers nicknamed this women’s prison, “La Quinta,” for that was the word given the great country houses in Spain. The children of these poor women were forced into the streets to beg for any food or shelter.
It is said the San Antonio street named Dolorosa is so named for the anguished tears cried by these women of Béxar for their husbands, fathers, and children as well as their mothers, sisters, and daughters in “the quinta.”
… AND CLEANSING TEXAS OF REVOLUTIONARIES
To cleanse this northern part of New Spain, Arredondo immediately gave orders to two of his cavalry units, commanded by Ignacio Perez and Cayetano Quintero, to “proceed as far as the U. S. border, stopping in Nacogdoches and Trinidad” and “clear eastern Texas of enemy combatants, revolutionary sympathizers, foreigners, and all those who had supplied, provisioned, or helped the Republican Army of the North in any way.”
To Arredondo, even those who had not participated in helping to overthrow Spain were guilty of treason. All traitors, men, women, children, were to be executed. These Spanish soldiers were merciless in carrying out their orders to clean the area of all traitors and filibusteros, those pirates stealing Spain’s lands in Nueva España’s Tejas.
By January 1814, Texas had an estimated 40 to 45% fewer folk, but was pacified…for the next 20 years.
Meanwhile, the revolution begun by Father Miguel Hidalgo continued south of the Rio Grande until 1821 when Spain finally retired from area and allowed the creation of The Republic of Mexico with its state of Coahuila y Tejas. The red, white, and green with 1821 at the center of the flag now flew over the old Presidio in San Antonio.
And, General Arredondo? By the end of the year 1821, though understanding the political reality of Spain’s situation and supporting this creation of a new county, but not wanting to be part of it, he retired with family to Spanish Cuba. His death there was in 1837.
Waiting in the wings was one of General Arredondo’s aides at that 1813 battle, Cadet Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who was cited by Arredondo for his bravery. In 1833, he was elected President of Mexico and quickly became an authoritarian who set aside Mexico’s very democratic Constitution of 1821. Texas was but one of the areas in Mexico confronting the new President’s discarding their Constitution. Having learned from his former commander how to treat those who opposed him. Cruelly oppressive, he moved on Texas, which in November 1835, had writing the Goliad Declaration of Independence and were flying the 1821 red, white, and green flag of Mexico over the Alamo.
Again, like Arredondo before him, Santa Anna again entered Texas to rid the region of these rats, the filibusteros, the pirates stealing his authority and land. He had learned from the best just how to do it.
SOME SOURCES
Folsom, Bradley. (2017). Arredondo: Last Spanish Ruler of Texas and Northeastern New Spain. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Map is from page 89. (Permission to use map was requested)
Handbook of Texas History Online (various articles) https://tshaonline.org/handbook
Hatcher, Mattie Austin. (Jan. 1908). Joaquin de Arredondo’s Report of the Battle of Medina, August 18, 1813. Translation Author: Mattie Austin Hatcher, in The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, 11(3), 220-236.
Jackson, Jack. (2006). Los Mesteños: Spanish Ranching in Texas,. College Station: Texas A&M Press.
Martinez de Vara, Art. (2016). Dios Y Tejas: Essays on the History of Von Ormy, Texas. Von Or,y, Texas: Alamo Press.
Swartz, Ted and Robert H Thronhoff, Editor and Annotator. (1985). Forgotten Battlefield of the First Texas Revolution. Austin, Texas: Eakin Press. (If you are the least bit interested in this period of Texas and regional history, pu-leeeze, get a copy before they are priced beyond reason. There were still a few on Amazon.
MAPS
From Ted Swartz’ 1985 Forgotten Battlefield of the First Texas Revolution.
