[Andrew Torget] Santa Anna is eager to have this done and he decides that
the Texans can't possibly be defending themselves very well.
So, Santa Anna on February 25th,
decides that he's going to attack
from this side over here of the Alamo,
and he comes up through what is known
as (speaking in a foreign language).
He comes up this direction right here,
attacks the Alamo complex from this direction over here
and so the Alamo defenders come out
and start shooting at him.
And it's not a very long fight.
It is Santa Anna testing the defenses of the Alamo complex.
He's trying to find weak points.
He's trying to find out how many people are in the Alamo,
how quickly they can move from one side to another.
How organized they are, how prepared they are.
He's testing their limits,
he's testing their limitations
and trying to see what is available to him,
in terms of attacking them.
That night February 25th,
they send out more letters asking for help,
asking for support, asking for reinforcements.
And that's when Juan Seguin leaves the Alamo,
so he will not be at the siege anymore.
He leaves this evening,
we'll see him again when he gets to San Jacinto
because he will be a part of that fight.
The Tejano riders were preferred messengers
leaving the Alamo.
Why?
(murmuring)
Say what?
[Student] They knew the area?
[Andrew Torget] They knew the area absolutely so that's an advantage, yes.
(mumbling)
Yes, they're more likely to be able
to slip past Santa Anna's soldiers
than the Anglo rider might be able to make it out
of the Alamo complex.
And they were just as dedicated to riding
as hard as they could for help
and reinforcements as much as possible.
So, Juan Seguin leaves the Alamo that evening,
the way riders would go out is they'd wait
till the middle of the night.
Then they would go out the entrance
and then they would lead their horse as quietly
as they could through the dark towards Santa Anna's lines.
And then, when they got as close as they thought they could,
they would then jump on their horses
and ride 'em as hard as they could
and fly through the lines.
And earlier in the siege, it was easier to get out.
As you get further along,
Santa Anna encloses his defenses more closely
and it gets a little harder to get out.
But Juan Seguin leaves that evening
and it's really that night February 25th,
that a cold northeastern wind starts coming in to Texas
and the temperature drops precipitously.
As soon as the siege begins, it gets really cold
and really uncomfortable within the Alamo complex itself.
And so February 26th, the next morning,
Santa Anna tries another attack on the Alamo itself.
He attacks the corrals which is this area back over here,
it has some low walls.
And so he attacks the corrals and he again tries
to test the defenses of the Alamo complex.
This attack also does not go terribly well.
What do you think the Texans use
to defend themselves against this particular attack?
Remember the defenses we talked about?
(mumbling)
Uses the artillery.
Up on the Alamo itself, the chapel back over there,
this artillery rains a lot of lead down on Santa Anna's army
which makes it a very uncomfortable situation
for Santa Anna's troops, who quickly retreat and head back,
and that ends that.
And so for most of the siege what you have
is a grim routine.
It's a siege, not a whole lot happens during this time.
It got really cold, as I said.
And so, in the Alamo complex itself
you have men positioned all around the Alamo complex,
several feet in between all of them
because there's only about 200 of them in total.
And they kind of hunker down the whole time.
Santa Anna's constantly lobbying artillery
into the Alamo complex itself.
So it's a non-stop barrage,
which means they don't sleep very much for 13 days.
It's a constant, boom, boom, boom.
And some of these shells
that are being sent here are kind of like hand grenades.
They fly in here and then they erupt
and then they blow out from there,
sending shrapnel every which direction.
So it's very scary and very dangerous.
Again, they're not knocking down the walls
in any sort of significant way
but as you saw on the north wall,
even small cannons are gonna start knocking that thing down
before too terribly long because it's just not very solid.
So the routine kind of continues
that way as this sort of dance between Santa Anna's troops
and the Texan defenders continues.
The big dance there is that the Texans
are trying to keep these cannons as far away as possible
because the further away they are,
the less velocity they have
when those projectiles hit the walls
or come in to the Alamo complex itself.
Santa Anna by contrast wants to move those cannons
as close as he possibly can.
So every night he moves the cannons a little bit closer
to the Alamo complex itself.
This is where the Alamo defenders
actually have a bit of strategic advantage
in terms of their weaponry because the Alamo defenders,
not all of them but a lot of them
had what are called Kentucky or Pennsylvania Long Rifles.
Does anybody know what a rifle is?
What makes a rifle a rifle?
Yes, sir?
(mumbling)
It's a groove.
Yeah, it's a groove that twists
and spins the projectile.
And so, it's like throwing a football
when you put a spin on it
and that gives it more, you can get more distance
and you can get more accuracy as a result of it.
By putting that spin on the weapon.
So when they use a Kentucky Long Rifle
or a Pennsylvania Long Rifle,
the ball that's right here that gets ignited,
spins throughout here and so it goes much further
and much more accurately than a musket.
This is a Brown Bess Musket
and a musket has what's called a, "Smooth bore."
It doesn't have that rifling that will twist it.
And so instead of throwing like a football,
it's more like putting a shot-put kind of thing,
you just shove it that way.
And it doesn't go as far
'cause it doesn't have the same velocity
and it doesn't have the same accuracy as a result.
It has more of an arc and then kind of falls.
And so this is what a lot of the Alamo defenders
had within the complex.
These things are accurate up to 200 yards.
That's two football fields
that you can hit very accurately from.
Now the Mexican army by contrast,
is armed with Brown Bess Muskets right here,
which they bought on super-saver-sale from the British Army.
(laughing)
They didn't make 'em, (chuckles),
they bought 'em and they're great
but they're only accurate to about 80 to 100 yards, maybe.
Which is good if you're within a football field.
But it means that every night
the cannons get moved within 200 yards
and every morning the Texans start shooting
at the Mexican artillerist,
forcing them to back up the cannons or die.
And so you have this kind of dance that goes on,
day and night from the Alamo defenders,
and it's an exhausting experience for all of them.
They aren't sleeping, they're not eating well.
They're constantly worried and what they're waiting for...
What are they waiting for?
[Student] Reinforcements.
[Andrew Torget] Reinforcements, right.
Again, raise your hand
if you think they've gone in the Alamo thinking,
"Oh, we're going to die."
Think you can go in the Alamo thinking,
"No, we're going to make it, we just have to wait
"for reinforcements to arrive."
Yes, exactly and their dreams, their prayers are answered,
a little bit on the morning of March 1st,
which could also be the evening of February 29th,
it was a leap year.
So it was February 29th from there,
but it's three in the morning.
So it's either the night of February 29th
or technically, it's the morning of March 1st,
but either way, the calls for reinforcements had been heard.
William Barret Travis is sending letter after letter.
He's sending most of them to Goliad
but he's sending them to the colonies.
He's sending them to Gonzales
and beyond that, word is getting out
about what's happening at the Alamo,
what's happening in San Antonio,
and the men of Gonzales react to this
and put together a group of about 32 men
who ride to the aid and reinforcement of the Alamo complex.
And they come in on the Gonzales road, no surprise there.
76 miles from Gonzales, they come towards the Alamo
and then about three in the morning
they sneak through Santa Anna's lines
and they ride as fast as they can towards the Alamo.
And as soon as these 32 men ride through Santa Anna's lines,
Santa Anna's men, "Oh, right, we should do something
"about this," and start shooting at them.
So inside the Alamo complex, you hear nothing
and all of a sudden there's a lot of shooting and people
riding up as fast as they can toward the Alamo complex.
What do you think is happening?
[Student] We're being attacked.
[Andrew Torget] We're being attacked.
So they open fire on the Gonzales men
as they're making their way in.
And one of the Gonzales men actually gets shot in the foot
as they're trying to make their way in here.
Finally screaming, "It's us, we're friendly, let us in."
They go, "Stop shooting them."
And they open the Alamo gates and the Gonzales men
make it in to the Alamo complex.
They ride in right through over here,
come in and they're in right here and it's dark.
It's the middle of the night.
You've been praying with every fiber in your being
that reinforcements will show up at some point.
And you arouse from your sleep by hearing,
"Reinforcements are here, reinforcements are here!"
And you run out and you're super excited
and then you count heads, "One, two, three, four... 32?"
I thought it was going to be 400.
(laughing)
It's way better than nobody but it's not quite
what we were hoping for, or expecting.
But any case, it is a morale booster
because the real effect of this is not just 32 men.
The real effect of this is like,
"We finally got reinforcements."
And the Gonzales men who came in said,
"We're just the first of many who are going to be coming."
So there's a great shot of adrenaline
within the Alamo complex.
William Barret Travis orders the 24-pounder here,
shot off in celebration and the shot then flies
into San Antonio and tears through Santa Anna's tent.
He wasn't in there.
So that would have ended the siege pretty quickly.
(laughing)
So they miss him but they get his tent, so there you go.
And they're all pretty excited about that.
The next day, March 2nd, Texas declares independence.
This is a very blurry painting of the discussion
for independence that happens
in a place called Washington on the Brazos.
Which, I'm not going to surprise you, is on the Brazos.
And it's in Washington for all the obvious reasons.
It's a homage to George Washington and Washington DC.
You can see all the Anglo influence in all of this.
There is a convention that meets at Washington on the Brazos
much like the meeting at San Felipe de Austin,
November of 1835.
The consultation when they're trying to decide what to do.
Well they meet in March to try to decide what to do
and their decision is, "We gotta declare independence."
Why now?
We've been talking about the revolution
for some time at this point.
Had they had clarity at any moment
throughout this entire process?
Raise your hand if you think they've had clarity
at anytime in this entire process.
Raise your hand if you think,
"No, it's been a muddled chaotic mess all throughout this,"
yes, thank you, that's true.
So why now?
Why clarity at this particular moment?
What's changed?
Yes, sir?
(mumbling)
That's true, they will never get Santa Anna on their side.
There's no sweet talking that guy into agreeing with them.
So, that's absolutely true.
Yes, sir?
[Student] But Santa Anna sorta has his boot
on their throat so (mumbles).
[Andrew Torget] Yeah, I mean that's actually true.
You guys are pointing in the same direction basically,
which is to say, Santa Anna is now in Texas,
with an army as you said, "With his boot on their throat."
He's got a gun to their head literally, at the Alamo.
They gotta make a decision
and get on the same page or they're going to die.
So it's literally at a gunpoint, that the Texans
finally decide, "Okay, I guess we're on the same page now."
And we're fighting, yes, against Santa Anna
but what we're fighting for is independence.
And so they declare independence on March 2nd, 1836,
Texas Independence Day and it is almost exclusively
Anglos who make this decision.
There are two, but only two Tejanos at this convention,
Antonio Navarro, Jose Antonio Navarro, remember him?
He's the guy who helps get Decree 56 passed.
He's a good friend of Stephen F. Austin's.
He's there, and his uncle Francisco Ruiz is also there.
And so those two guys are the only Tejano representatives.
So you can see their names right here,
from Bexar it's Francisco Ruiz and Antonio Navarro.
And they sign the Declaration of Independence.
The rest of them are Anglos,
many of which are recent arrivals.
And so that war party side holds a lot more sway.
But again, the real decisive factor that gets Texans
on the same side to decide what they're doing during
the Texas Revolution, is the fact that Santa Anna
has invaded and laid siege to the Alamo.
That is one of the most important significances of the Alamo
siege itself is it forces the Texans to finally find clarity
of some kind and unanimity in what they've got to do because
they realize now, they really do have to get organized.
They have to build an army.
They have to put something... I mean a real army.
They have to put something together or they're all gonna die
or at least get run out of Texas and all the problems
that is gonna come with that.
So now the Texan defenders are fighting for independence.
The Alamo defenders, I mean, are fighting for independence.
But they don't know that and they will never know that.
They will never learn of the Declaration of Independence
because news will not get to them
before the end of the siege itself.
So on March 2nd, everything changes
but inside the Alamo itself, in some ways,
nothing has really changed.
The next day March 3rd, Fannin is not coming.
And this is where things start really getting grim
inside of the Alamo complex itself.
They had been pinning their hopes on reinforcements.
They've had the 32 from Gonzales.
But it seems unclear that anybody else is coming in a hurry
and their real hope is those 95 miles away,
you have 400 troops under James Fannin.
And word comes to the Alamo, rider comes into the Alamo
who had just come from Goliad, James Bonham,
who says, "Nope Fannin is not coming, Fannin has decided
"he is not going to reinforce the Alamo.
Here's Fannin, which I think is a great portrait
of the guy because he is kind of got his arms crossed,
looking at the distance saying to himself,
"Should I maybe, just not sure what I'm going to do here?"
'Cause he had gotten all these letters from the Alamo.
And he was like, "I don't know,
"should I go to their defense?"
He'd been on the wall, waffling about this whole thing
and finally decided, "Okay, I'll ride to their defense."
And so, he gets all his men organized, around 400 guys,
"Let's go," and they got a whole bunch of wagons together
with supplies and they start marching towards the Alamo.
And they're a few miles out of town and one of the axles
on one of the wagons breaks and he throws up his hands,
like, "Never mind, we're never gonna make it,
"turn 'em around, we're going back,
"we're going back to Goliad."
And he says, "No, I'm not gonna come to their defense,
"I'm not gonna come to the rescue, it's a death trap
"for me and for them, so I'm just not going to do it."
That was a giant morale blow for the people
inside the Alamo.
They knew that was their best opportunity
for any meaningful reinforcements.
And so, things at this point are starting to look
really grim within the Alamo itself because by the time
you get to March 4th, it's still cold, it's rainy.
The cannonade has been unceasing from Santa Anna.
He's gotten a few slightly bigger cannons
that he can move slightly closer
that are doing more damage to the walls.
The walls are truly starting to crumble by March 4th.
Things are starting to come down,
especially this northern wall right here.
This really becomes the weakest link
of the Alamo complex itself.
Moreso than the pile of sticks slash palisade
over there near the Alamo chapel.
Because the north wall is crumbling every day
and at night the Alamo defenders crawl over the walls
and try to rebuild them and there's only so much
that you can do with that in any given situation.
And so, this thing is literally crumbling in front of them
which is gonna leave an entire wall wide open for them.
Just as pressing is the running out of food and gunpowder.
They're running low on supplies,
they had not stockpiled in advance of this entire operation.
And now they're feeling the real brunt of that,
is that they know they're running out of food.
Santa Anna doesn't know that.
Santa Anna doesn't know that they're running out
of gunpowder but they can no longer fire the cannons
as much as they did before and William Barret Travis
had stuck to he was going to fire, he said,
"One of the cannons morning, noon and night so that people
"far away from the Alamo could hear and know
"that the Alamo still stood."
So he's still doing that but that's about as best
that he can manage in the circumstances.
And so, they're running low of all of this stuff
and they're recognizing that no one's coming.
Or at least haven't come thus far
and things are looking really dicey at this point.
Meanwhile, Santa Anna is in San Antonio
in his headquarters saying, "I can't wait any longer."
And again, this is where time is a major factor
for the Alamo siege.
Is that Santa Anna is impatient
because he needs to get out of Texas as fast as he can.
He needs to put down the Texas revolt as fast as he can.
But also within San Antonio he's got a very large army.
He'd organized again, 2,500 troops.
He arrived in San Antonio with about 12 to 1,500.
But troops were catching up every day
as he's getting further and further reinforced
and he has to feed all of them.
There's not a lot of food in San Antonio,
as the Alamo defenders discovered,
as they were scampering into the Alamo itself.
So it is becoming increasingly difficult
for him to feed his army during all of this.
And so, Santa Anna is faced with the prospect of trying
to force this siege to an end as quickly as he possibly can.
So he holds a council of war.
Where Santa Anna calls all his troops,
all his generals around him
and says, "What do you guys think we should do?"
Raise your hand if you think
that these generals say, "You know what we should do,
"we should charge the Alamo walls
"and attack them right now."
How many of you think, raise your hand if you think
that Santa Anna's generals said, "No, no, no, no,
"we should wait for those giant cannons that are gonna be
"here in two days, what if we wait for those,
"we'll just knock down the walls."
That's what most of the generals said.
It's like, "Why would you charge the walls?
"That's a death trap,
"maybe if we bring up the giant cannons,
"we can just knock down all of the walls,
"wouldn't that be a nice thing to do?"
But Santa Anna decided he wasn't going to wait any longer
for those cannons to arrive.
He was going to have to charge the walls themselves.
And to try to end the siege as quickly as possible.
Because again, he's in a giant hurry.
So March 5th, preparing for battle.
Santa Anna issues orders on March 5th,
for an assault on the Alamo complex itself.
And what he's going to do,
he says is, he's going, "To end the cannonade at nightfall
"so that the Alamo defenders can be lulled
"into some sort of fitful sleep and then
"in the middle of the night, he's gonna arrange his army
"in several different attack formations."
Pretty much on all sides of the Alamo,
he's gonna to attack multiple corners at once.
The idea being was you can spread out the Alamo defenders
more efficiently that way, which makes it harder
for them to defend themselves.
He knows there's not a lot of guys in there.
His officers are, most of them,
wildly appalled at this idea,
which seems like a great way to kill a lot of his own troops
and an assault on those 12-foot walls,
even if there are not a lot of defenders inside.
Especially when those giant cannons
are not terribly far away.
But Santa Anna orders this operation
and so within San Antonio itself
and within sight of the Alamo there's suddenly on March 5th,
a lot of activity in Santa Anna's army
as they're preparing for battle.
Getting their weapons ready,
getting their formations ready
and they're building something.
And if you were in the Alamo itself
and you peeked your head over the walls
which most of them did every day.
And you looked into San Antonio,
you would see that Santa Anna's troops are working hard at
building something or building a whole lot of some things.
What are they building?
[Students] Ladders.
Ladders, and what would you need ladders for?
Going apple picking?
(laughing)
Gonna scale those walls.
And so within the Alamo complex itself
they know something's coming.
They have a sense of what's coming.
The question is, is at this point,
do they commit themselves to martyrdom and commit themselves
to the idea that, "Well, if we're going down,
"we're gonna go down swinging."
There's the legend of the line in the sand.
William Barrett Travis takes his sword,
draws a line in the sand and says, "Who wants to walk over
"this with me?"
And basically die for this cause.
That story comes from the 1870s.
There's one source for this, one guy.
A guy named William Zuber.
Who said he, "Heard it from a guy who escaped
"from the Alamo and was there to see it."
That's our only source for that story.
So doesn't mean it's not true but it also means,
it's pretty suspect in terms of sourcing
and all that goes with that.
But I don't think you need the line in the sand
for you to accept that they recognize the odds
that they were against.
They were up against a giant, terrifying situation.
Where they're running out of food.
They're running out of ammunition.
There's nobody who's come to rescue them
and clearly outside the army that is surrounding them
and has been battering their walls
and making their lives hellacious
with the a constant cannonade,
seems to be preparing for an all-out assault.
Is that coming tomorrow?
Is that coming next week?
They don't know but they realize that they're running short
on what little they have in terms of time and opportunity
to escape a dreadful situation
that's confronting them at this moment.
So the Alamo defenders, as nightfall falls,
start making final preparations.
Men jump over this wall right over here
to try to repair as much of the north wall as they can
and they work for most of the night doing so.
The Texans always sent out sentries.
You can't really see it right here
but they had lookouts posted past the walls.
Who were supposed to scream and yell
if they saw something coming.
Posted outside the walls themselves
and then within the walls, who were exhausted,
which I think you can relate to.
They are... (laughing)
They've not slept in basically two weeks
and they're mentally exhausted.
And when the cannonade finally stops,
it's the first time in two weeks that they haven't
had a constant booming sound in their ears.
As much as they don't want to sleep,
it's pretty hard for them not to.
And so a lot of them fall off and drift off into
a very fitful sleep for the first time in several weeks.
Exhausted, terrified and pretty much at their wit's ends
I'm sure from this entire experience.
And so March 6th comes, in the middle of the night.
And the Alamo defenders don't know what's coming
but Santa Anna's troops have been preparing for this moment
where what they're doing is they get up at about midnight,
they start getting up at around midnight.
And the Sergeants, these are called Staff Sergeants,
they carried a big staff.
And what their job was, was to rouse their soldiers
by hitting them with the stick.
(laughing)
Everybody knew to keep their mouth shut
when they got whacked in the head with the stick.
But you got up, you'd already prepared your weapons.
You'd already fixed your bayonet.
You were prepared with your equipment
and they got into battle formation as quietly
as an army of 1,500 can possibly do.
He's gonna use 1,500 soldiers in this assault,
Santa Anna is, on the Alamo complex itself.
And so, what he's gonna do is he's gonna position
one 400-man unit over here, another 400-man unit over here,
another 400 something over here
and about 125 are gonna attack this wall over here.
And you can see he's hitting both sides of the north wall.
Santa Anna knows, that's one of the weakest points
'cause it's held up by sticks and dirt.
But he's also gonna attack over here,
he spreads some of the Alamo defenders that way.
And then over here, 'cause they think
this low walled corral is a weak point.
Even though the Alamo cannon is on top of the chapel,
can make mincemeat of them from up that direction.
So these different battle formations get into place
and they're in place by about three or four in the morning.
Kind of all surrounding the Alamo complex.
Santa Anna is over here on a hill,
where he has reserve troops of about 400.
Where he's going to commit them to battle
if it's absolutely necessary to send them in.
But he's got a massive number of men
he's gonna use on assault on the Alamo complex itself.
And so the assault begins quietly
when they send up a few Mexican soldiers
to slit the throats of the Texans
who were the lookouts outside of the Alamo complex itself.
All of whom had fallen asleep
and all of whom died without making a sound.
So, they kill those guys
and then at about five in the morning,
they're in final positions for the final assault
or the assault on the Alamo complex itself.
And then about five to 5:30 in the morning
they start moving toward the Alamo.
And then start picking up the pace,
coming in at double quick.
And then somebody yells, "Viva Santa Anna!"
And people start screaming and it's all out running
as fast as you can, screaming as loud as you can,
roar of people coming up against the Alamo complex itself.
Imagine you're inside.
You're in this fitful sleep
and then you hear this roar in the darkness.
And you wake up and you're waking up literally
to the worst nightmare you can imagine.
You stand up, you look over the walls
and there's a wall of men with fixed bayonets and muskets
running as fast as they can, right at you,
firing up against the walls right here.
It's a terrifying moment.
It's terrifying I think for the Mexican troops
as they're running up against this wall here,
looking at 12-foot-high walls, that they're going to somehow
try to assault and get over, while defenders on the top
can aim down at them and fire from the tops of these walls.
And so the first assault, you have Morales,
who comes against the palisade and then moves over here
to this wall over here.
You've got Romero who goes up against the corrals right here
and is pushed back by the cannonade
from the top of the Alamo structure itself.
And you've got Cos, remember Cos?
The guy who was sent out of Texas packing?
Well, he's back and he's assaulting this corner
of the northern wall right here and he comes up
against the wall and commander Duque is on the other side
of the north wall right there.
And the north wall is where really
most of the action is happening.
Because these Texan soldiers come running up against,
not Texas, I'm sorry the Mexican centralist soldiers
come running up against the walls right here.
And as they run up against the walls,
it's a weakened wall yes but it's still really high.
And it's really hard to get over that.
And so, they come up against the wall
and then they're just amassed at the bottom of the wall.
Whereas the Texan defenders can lean over the top there
and just shoot down into them, down over there.
As soon as this opening assault happens,
William Barrett Travis the commander of the Alamo,
he's sleeping right here, he jumps up,
hears the attack going on, runs out into the courtyard
right here and screams,
"They're on us boys, let's give 'em hell!"
He runs up this direction, comes up to this wall right here
and he's one of the first people
leaning over the wall, right here,
firing into the mass of men down at the bottom.
He's got a shotgun and he's shooting down there.
Leans over the wall, empties both barrels and then boom!
He's shot in the forehead with the musket ball
and is killed instantly
at the very beginning of the entire battle.
So, in the very beginning of the entire assault,
the Texan defenders have basically no leadership (laughs).
William Barrett Travis is killed at the very beginning
of all of this but in a certain sense that doesn't matter.
Because there's no strategy to be had here.
There's no effort to be made.
This is just an all-out survival, try to defend yourself.
And so the Mexican troops
that are assaulting the north wall,
this is what gets most of the attention.
And the Texan defenders having learned from Travis,
don't lean over the wall, they put their weapons over there
and start shooting down this way.
Because you don't have to, there's such a mass of men
down at the bottom that they can't do anything
and they can't get over the walls.
They somehow managed to lose most of their ladders
on the assault as they're running up to the walls
and so they're just amassed down there.
But the real damage happens from these cannons.
See these cannons right here?
What they did was they lowered the cannons,
aimed them into these mass of men and they blew these giant
shotgun blasts into the Mexican soldiers at the base
of the wall because they weren't filled with cannonballs
they were filled with scraps of metal that they had jammed
in there as a giant shotgun effect and they would just tear
through everybody at the base of the walls,
ripping them to shreds ripping off arms and legs
and disemboweling people and so you have blood and screaming
and body parts and a lot of thick smoke
all throughout this area,
because black powder weapons put off a lot of smoke.
It can be blinding clouds of this stuff.
And so, there is nothing but chaos and terror
from everybody.
From the Mexican soldiers.
For the Texan defenders up on the walls right here,
and the Mexican soldiers who are amassed up here
are just being slaughtered.
So, you know they do?
What do you think they do?
[Student] Retreat.
[Andrew Torget] They retreat, they do the only thing
any natural human being would do.
They turn it around and they run back.
So they retreat back from these different directions
and are turned around.
Duque himself is badly wounded
and so he'll have to be replaced by Castrillon.
But they retreat, now over here on the hill
is our friend Santa Anna, who's watching all of this.
How does he react to the retreat of his troops
in their failed assault of the Alamo walls?
[Student] He's mad, (mumbles).
[Andrew Torget] Yes, get back there or I'll kill you, exactly.
He is disgusted that they had been turned back
and so he orders a second assault.
And so, they turn around and they come for a second assault.
Again, Morales comes up here.
He's pinned down underneath
where the 24-pounder is right there.
Romero says, "I've had enough of the corrals,
"I'm coming this direction, over to the north wall."
Cos is back assaulting the same position.
And Duque has been replaced by Castrillon
because Duque has been badly wounded.
And so, they needed a different commander
in order to get over there.
And the same thing happens.
They attack the walls, they assault the walls, they come up
against them and they're being slaughtered, left and right.
The Mexicans cannot get over this.
They're being destroyed by the cannon fire
and by anybody who fires over the edge of the walls
and you know, one shot can go through three men.
And the slaughter-fest just a disaster.
You have bodies piled on top of bodies there at the base
of the wall with screaming and so much smoke that you really
can't see on either side, what's happening,
what direction you're going.
It's an absolutely terrifying experience
and so what do they do after
the second assault on the walls?
[Student] Retreat.
[Andrew Torget] They retreat, exactly.
Raise your hand if you think Santa Anna is proud
of his troops' movements at this particular moment?
(laughing)
Raise your hand if you think he is very dissatisfied
with this situation and wants to...
Yes, exactly, thank you.
And so, Santa Anna right over here is basically having
what I like to call a, "Conniption fit."
(laughing)
He is very upset with the circumstances
and he says, "Go back, attack a third time,
"we're not, not doing this."
And so, at this point he commits the reserve troops
and he has 400 of them on this hill
who have not fought at all up to this point.
And all of them are amassed
against the north wall right here.
So when you have Cos return, Castrillon return
and then the reserve troops hitting that north wall,
that is what finally punches them over the top.
You get enough bodies basically piled up,
just start throwing people over the top.
But they make their way into the Alamo complex itself,
as dawn is breaking on March 6th, 1836.
Coming over the walls, finally making their way over,
making their way into the Alamo complex itself.
And once that happens, as you can imagine, pretty much
all hell breaks loose within the Alamo complex itself.
Everything kind of opens up all at once,
as the troops pour into the Alamo complex.
A lot of people have tried to paint
what this would have looked like.
Your guess is as good as mine.
I've never been in combat and I'm lucky for that.
But I can't even begin to imagine
what that must have been like.
It's just, I think a pure agony
kind of situation for everybody involved.
Pure terror, pure chaos.
People like to romanticize battle and war.
And I, again have never been in combat myself.
But I've never talked to a veteran who has,
that romanticized it.
It is people killing people at the closest range possible.
Once you get inside the Alamo complex itself
it's a lot of hand to hand combat,
a lot of stabbing and gutting and clubbing.
And it is incredibly violent
and horrific affair on every level.
The Alamo defenders did have a plan if this happened.
They had a fallback position as such.
And so their fallback position was go back this direction
right here in front of the chapel
where you have a small wall.
This right here today is the Long Barracks Museum.
If you get to go to the Alamo complex
they've redone the Long Barracks Museum a couple of times
and their most recent incarnation's very good.
What they had done inside here is they've actually
dug trenches inside here to be a kind of low point
that they could get into as a fallback position.
Up here on the second floor was the infirmary
where the sick and wounded men had been placed.
And so, those guys are up there.
William Barrett Travis is dead over here.
James Bowie is right over here and he's on a sick bed.
And as soon as the Mexican troops get in there,
they're gonna stab him to death.
And he doesn't have much of a chance, obviously.
David Crockett as best we know is in this area right here.
He had been commanded to defend the palisades.
So, it's most likely that he stayed there
for the entire time but the troops that were on the walls
and the north wall and the rest of the complex,
retreat back and go in this area,
and some take defensive positions within the long barracks.
And this is where the really desperate fighting ensues
because it really becomes the last stand
for those who are within the Alamo complex
and really for the Mexican soldiers who were assaulting here
because the troops came over the wall so quickly
that the Texans were not able to spike their cannons.
You guys know what spiking your cannon means?
Does anybody know?
[Student] Making it useless?
[Andrew Torget] It is making it useless, absolutely.
What were you gonna say?
[Student] I was just saying, destroying it,
making it useless.
[Andrew Torget] Yeah, but the way you do that,
you ever seen Looney Tunes?
Where they've got the wick right there at the end?
That's where you light the wick
and it goes in and blows up a cannon?
Well, that's basically how these cannons worked.
And if you want to spike a cannon, you had to jam something
in there and then break it off so that nobody could put
a wick in there that could actually light the thing.
Does that make sense?
So that's what you're spiking right there.
You're basically making it unusable
by making it impossible for somebody to ignite it.
Well, Santa Anna's troops came over the wall so quickly
that there was no time in order to spike the cannons.
And they were unable to do so
and so the result was that the Texans' 19 pieces
of artillery are now going to get turned against them
and they weren't expecting
or definitely weren't planning on that.
So the result is, as they hold up right here
in the long barracks in these trenches in behind this wall
right over here, these cannons all
get turned around against them.
Especially this 24-pounder right here
and they just blow them to smithereens.
They unleash cannon volley after cannon volley over here
and they demolish the hospital.
All the men who are up there are blown to smithereens
by cannon fire that are breaking
and bashing through the walls.
It must have been a beyond terrifying
experience to be in there.
And then Mexican soldiers both blew up areas down here
and then assaulted in the long barracks.
So, if you go to the Long Barracks Museum today,
it's beautiful.
There's a lot of amazing artifacts that you can go see
but know that what you're walking on is where the most
desperate fighting of the Alamo siege happened
with a true hand to hand combat
and stabbing and slashing and clubbing.
That was bashing people's brains in, that was happening
in that building itself in that long barracks area.
Right in this territory right here.
And so the Alamo defenders move back into this area
and are being blown to smithereens.
A lot of the artwork that's been done about the Alamo
focuses on that last stand around the chapel,
mostly because the Alamo chapel is again,
the most iconic piece of what the Alamo looks like
and we usually put it in images right here.
But there's Crockett with his rifle using it as a club.
A lot of the guys did use their rifles as clubs
because you couldn't load those things very fast.
A good shot could load and fire that weapon
three times in a minute.
That's hard to do, that's really hard to do
and in this situation, it's very unlikely.
And so, they start moving back.
The last fighting did happen in front of the chapel.
And it is sort of the last-stand kind of area.
And this is where the history gets a little murky
and usually diverges from the mythology.
There's a significant amount of evidence
that some of the Alamo defenders burst out
of the Alamo itself and tried to make a run for it.
Out on the palisade side, heading that direction
'cause why would you not try to live?
There's nothing cowardly about that in these circumstances.
They don't have to die if they can avoid it.
If they did, the evidence seem to suggest
that they were run down by Mexican
(speaking in foreign language) which are cavalry men
on horseback.
Santa Anna had actually established the cavalry
to have a perimeter around the Alamo complex
for this very purpose.
So that if anybody did try to make a break for it
they would be cut down.
Those cavalries were also on orders to kill
any Mexican soldiers who are running away from the Alamo.
So would serve a double purpose to make sure
your own troops don't retreat.
But anyway, the final fighting happened in front
of the Alamo chapel itself, as best we can tell.
And most of the evidence seems to suggest that there was
a handful of Texas soldiers who were captured at the end
of the battle and were not executed
during the battle itself.
A handful of soldiers, from the Alamo defenders.
There's been several accounts, Mexican diaries,
from Santa Anna's soldiers and other accounts
that have pointed to soldiers surviving, a handful of them,
about seven or eight somewhere in that range.
The most famous one, I'm not going to read this to you
but this is from a diary of a man
named Jose Enrique de la Pena.
Who describes these men being captured at the end.
And de la Pena, identified who one of those captured
as Davy Crockett.
And this has caused all kinds of controversy
in Texas history amongst people who don't like the idea
of Davy Crockett being captured at the end
of the Alamo siege, as opposed to what Disney portrayed
him in the 1950s, going down swinging with his weapon.
Most people liked the idea of Crockett dying fighting.
A lot of the evidence suggests that Crockett
was one of those people, we'll never know.
This is not one of those things that we're gonna decisively
be able to answer 'cause it's one of those mysteries
we don't have enough evidence to answer.
There's a lot of evidence that suggests he was captured
at the end but he was still executed.
This is how Disney handled the death of Crockett
in the most recent 2004 Alamo movie
when they have him being executed at the end.
That's essentially the de la Pena diary account of the death
of Crockett because what everybody agrees on,
if they agree some people were captured,
is that Santa Anna, upon finding out
that they were captured,
immediately ordered their execution.
This is the no-quarter approach that Santa Anna
had announced at the beginning of the Alamo siege.
And so, the Alamo assault of March 6th,
ends after daybreak has broken over the Alamo itself
and all of the Alamo defenders had been slaughtered.
And a lot of Santa Anna's army, around 400
or so were killed in the assault as well.
So it's about 600 people died in about a 90-minute period,
during the assault on the Alamo on March 6th, 1836.