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The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas: Travis

A message sent out by Colonel Travis on the night of March 3 told of the events of the first days of the siege: "With a hundred and forty-five men I have held this place ten days against a force variously estimated from 1,500 to 6,000, and I shall continue to hold it till I get relief from my countrymen, or I will perish in the attempt. We have had a shower of bombs and cannonballs continually falling among us the whole time, yet none of us have fallen."

Santa Anna led a final assault on March 6. Scaling ladders, axes, and fascines were to be in the hands of designated men. Five columns were to approach the wall just at daybreak.

At the first onset Colonel Travis was killed and breaches were made in the walls. The outer walls and batteries were abandoned, and the defenders retired to the different rooms within. "From the doors, windows, and loopholes of the several rooms around the area the crack of the rifle and the hiss of the bullet came fierce and fast; as fast the enemy fell and recoiled in his first efforts to charge. The gun beside which Travis fell was now turned against the buildings, as were also some others, and shot after shot was sent crashing through the doors and barricades of the several rooms. Each ball was followed by a storm of musketry and a charge; and thus room after room was carried at the point of the bayonet, when all within them had died fighting to the last. The struggle was made up of a number of separate and desperate combats, often hand to hand, between squads of the garrison and bodies of the enemy. The bloodiest spot about the fort was the long barrack and the ground in front of it, where the enemy fell in heaps."

David Crockett was among those who were killed in one of the rooms. He had joined the defenders a few days before the beginning of the siege.

The chapel was the last point taken. "Once the enemy in possession of the large area, the guns could be turned to fire into the door of the church, only from fifty to a hundred yards off. The inmates of the last stronghold fought to the last, and continued to fire down from the upper works after the enemy occupied the floor.

Towards the close of the struggle Lieutenant Dickenson, with his child in his arms, or, as some accounts say, tied to his back, leaped from the east embrasure of the chapel, and both were shot in the act. Of those he left behind him the bayonet soon gleaned what the bullet had left; and in the upper part of that edifice the last defender must have fallen."

This final assault lasted only thirty minutes. In that time the defenders of Texas won immortal fame. Four days before, the Republic of Texas had been proclaimed. Those who fell in the Alamo were hailed the heroes of the struggle. "Remember the Alamo!" was the battle cry of the war for independence that was waged until the Mexican Army was routed at San Jacinto, April 21, 1836.

On the capitol grounds at Austin, Texas, stands a monument to the heroes of the Alamo, with the inscription: "Thermopylæ had her messenger of defeat; the Alamo had none."

THROUGH THE SUNNY SOUTH