charged by their treacherous foes, who butchered them without mercy.
Only an advanced post of three men succeeded in escaping.

The five hundred men whom we had left in San Antonio de Bexar, fared
no better. Not being sufficiently numerous to hold out the town as
well as the Alamo, they retreated into the latter. The Mexican
artillery soon laid a part of the fort in ruins. Still its defenders
held out. After eight days' fighting, during which the loss of the
besiegers was tremendously severe, the Alamo was taken, and not a
single Texian left alive.

We thus, by these two cruel blows, lost two-thirds of our army, and
little more than seven hundred men remained to resist the numerous
legions of our victorious foe. The prospect before us, was one well
calculated to daunt the stoutest heart.

The Mexican general, Santa Anna, moved his army forward in two
divisions, one stretching along the coast towards Velasco, the other
advancing towards San Felipe de Austin. He himself, with a small
force, marched in the centre. At Fort Bend, twenty miles below San
Felipe, he crossed the Brazos, and shortly afterwards established
himself with about fifteen hundred men in an entrenched camp. Our
army, under the command of General Houston, was in front of
Harrisburg, to which place the congress had retreated.

It was on the night of the twentieth of April, and our whole
disposable force, some seven hundred men, was bivouacking in and about
an island of sycamores. It was a cloudy, stormy evening: high wind was
blowing, and the branches of the trees groaned and creaked above our
heads. The weather harmonized well enough with our feelings, which