The detailed account of the Fall of the Alamo you are about to read is excerpted from John M. Myers masterful 1948 book, The Alamo, which was the first book to tell the complete history.

When he had at last breached the fortress (with cannon fire), Santa Anna did something of which only a very subtle man would have been capable. He did nothing for some hours.

The men of the Alamo, who had met every test exacted by danger and fatigue, were tripped and trapped. A barrage, laying down the carpet for an attack, they could have endured as only one more call upon their fortitude. They were keyed to violence, ready for it in all its forms. Cannon fire had been so continual that it had become accepted as normal. Under stress they could have held themselves together, but peace and rest temporarily dissolved them.

At nightfall, on March 5, the firing suddenly ceased.

It was only when no more bombs exploded and no more cannonballs thudded against the shattering defenses that they knew how exquisitely worn out they were. In ten days of ceaseless fighting there had been no more than snatches of rest for ill-fed men. Whatever the Mexicans might or might not be planning, they had to have sleep now that it was possible. With, only a few sodden men keeping watch out of dead eyes, they slept where they were.

Just what was going on behind the Mexican lines has been preserved, officially by Colonel Almonte, unofficially by Ben, an American Negro who cooked for Santa Anna throughout the siege. Infinitely more important than the reports of either of these, of course, is Santa Anna’s general order.

As early as the night of March 4, by Almonte’s account, Santa Anna called a staff meeting at which he declared his intention of making a full-scale assault upon the Alamo. Even with a breach beaten in one of the walls, some of his officers did not like the idea. Texian marksmanship had cost them heavy casualties at long range, and they didn’t believe it wise to move any closer until the garrison was more at a disadvantage.

They were for following up their former tactics until the walls were down, exposing the defenders to point-blank grape fire. Santa Anna overruled all objections. His reasons, if he gave his staff any, were not recorded, but they are not hard to imagine. He knew through spies that the Alamo was the only obstacle which intervened between his army and the rebellious North Americans he yearned to punish. He knew, too, that they were currently holding a meeting with a view to reorganizing their resistance. Now, before they could pull themselves together, was the time to hit them.

As it was, he had already lost ten days before this fort, and every day was money in the bank for Texas. Then there was sheer anger at the interference with well-laid plans. If the Alamo hadn’t proved so unexpectedly tough the Mexicans would by then have already reached the Sabine, and the revolution would have been over.

Ben, the cook, reported a conversation between Santa Anna and Almonte in the course of which the latter stated that the cost would be high. To this the former retorted that he didn’t care how many casualties there were, the Alamo had to be taken. As a result of his resolve his chief of staff issued the following order on March 5:

The first column will be provided with ten scaling ladders, two crow bars, and two axes. The second will be provided with the same quantity; the third with six, the fourth with two. Men carrying ladders will sling their guns over their shoulders...

Grenadiers and the cavalry companies will be supplied with six packs of cartridges and the infantry companies four, with two extra flints...All caps will be provided with chin straps... The men composing the attacking column will retire to rest at sundown, preparatory to moving at midnight... Arms, particularly bayonets, will be put in the best condition.

When the moon rises the musketeers of the San Luis battalion of volunteers will retire to their quarters... Other units will retire at sundown. The cavalry under the command of General Don Joaquin Ramirez y Sesma will occupy the Alameda and will saddle up there at three o’clock in the morning. It will be their duty to watch camp and to prevent the escape of anyone...

The numerical strength of the attacking force was not computed, but it can be given with reasonable accuracy. The strength of one of the battalions, at the time it took part in the assault, is definitely given at eight hundred men. As there are five battalions mentioned, it can fairly well be assumed that about four thousand men stood by for the action. From the toughness of the fight it can also be assumed that all four thousand were called upon to participate.

It will have been noted that there is a curious discrepancy between the strength of the other columns and that of column two. Although commanded by a general, this is listed as being composed of only three companies, whereas the third, for instance, was made up of the better part of two battalions. It seems likely that the Toluca Battalion of Volunteers, specifically cited as having taken a prominent part, but represented in the order only by its company of grenadiers, was unintentionally omitted from the clause dealing with column two. It should be remarked, also, that the cavalry under General Sesma, detailed for patrol duty, is a different body of horsemen from those under Colonel Morelos, designated as the fourth column, and should not be counted as part of the assault force. The cartridges referred to were not the metal contrivances now in use but folds of paper holding measured charges.

When Mexican firing ceased as night came down on March 5, Travis ordered his outposts to take their stations, and three exhausted men went out of the fort to keep watch against surprise. They were presumably relieved before three o’clock in the morning, but their successors were in no better shape. Now that they had let down, it would take days of solid rest to restore their faculties to keenness. Only movement could keep them alert at all, and as outposts they had to lie low, straining eyes and ears no longer in quick contact with the brain. How long each held out can’t be known. Scouts, woodsmen, hunters and Indian fighters, they succumbed to the need for sleep no man can push away forever and lay there as helpless as fledglings in a ground nest. One by one, it is known as certainly as if it was recorded, the sentries were dealt with by Mexican scouts crawling up on them in the dark. A knife in the right spot and a hand on the throat to deny the sleeper even the bark of death, and it was all over. None of them lived to give a peep of warning.

It will have been noted that there is a curious discrepancy between the strength of the other columns and that of column two. Although commanded by a general, this is listed as being composed of only three companies, whereas the third, for instance, was made up of the better part of two battalions. It seems likely that the Toluca Battalion of Volunteers, specifically cited as having taken a prominent part, but represented in the order only by its company of grenadiers, was unintentionally omitted from the clause dealing with column two. It should be remarked, also, that the cavalry under General Sesma, detailed for patrol duty, is a different body of horsemen from those under Colonel Morelos, designated as the fourth column, and should not be counted as part of the assault force. The cartridges referred to were not the metal contrivances now in use but folds of paper holding measured charges.

When Mexican firing ceased as night came down on March 5, Travis ordered his outposts to take their stations, and three exhausted men went out of the fort to keep watch against surprise. They were presumably relieved before three o’clock in the morning, but their successors were in no better shape. Now that they had let down, it would take days of solid rest to restore their faculties to keenness. Only movement could keep them alert at all, and as outposts they had to lie low, straining eyes and ears no longer in quick contact with the brain. How long each held out can’t be known. Scouts, woodsmen, hunters and Indian fighters, they succumbed to the need for sleep no man can push away forever and lay there as helpless as fledglings in a ground nest. One by one, it is known as certainly as if it was recorded, the sentries were dealt with by Mexican scouts crawling up on them in the dark. A knife in the right spot and a hand on the throat to deny the sleeper even the bark of death, and it was all over. None of them lived to give a peep of warning.

There was, however, of all the garrison one man who remained awake, or who happened to awaken, and who noticed a stirring at the rim of vision permitted by the light of a pale moon. He raised a shout which brought the Texians struggling out of the sleep that drowned them. That shout blended with the bugle call which was the signal for the charge. With cheers for Santa Anna the Mexicans dashed at the walls from all four sides.

Just as they were in full career the bugle sounded a different note, one which was taken up and swelled by the bands assembled at Santa Anna’s headquarters. Waiting in the shadow of a blood-red banner, itself a symbol of no quarter, El Presidente had ordered the sounding of the deguello. This word means “assassin,” and the call was an order to butcher without mercy or discrimination. Its military history dated back to the savage wars between the Spanish and the Moors. To the Mexicans, aware of its tradition, it was an elixir inspiring frenzied brutality.

The cheers for Santa Anna changed to less articulate but much more meaningful cries. Through the night, the battalions came with a rush, the men with the scaling ladders in the front rank, the rest flashing their bayonets at the end of readied muskets.

Travis, with a commander’s burden to make his sleep uneasy, had been about the first to hear the shout of alarm. He sprang from his headquarters, shouting, as quoted by his Negro body servant, who dutifully followed him: “The Mexicans are on us! Give ‘em Hell, boys!” He himself took his stance by the battery guarding the north wall, the one which had been breached at one end.

The Texians had very nearly been caught napping in the most literal sense, but a minute or so of warning was all they needed. All weapons had, of course, been loaded before they started to take it easy. Now they waited, not taking a chance of missing in the night, until the attackers were massed close to the walls. Then they gave it to them, blasting holes in the live lines with cannon loaded with small shot and scrap iron. At the same time the rifles fired, and after them the pistols. In his supposed diary, Crockett asserted that Santa Anna would have “snakes to eat before he can get over the wall.” By the proxy of his men he, indeed, ate snakes, rammed down his throat.

The scaling ladders were never planted that first time. In fact the Mexicans were lucky to be able to carry them away. Only the south column actually reached the wall it was headed for. Meanwhile the column at the north had been blasted back, and those to the east and west were wavering. Seeing themselves left alone, the south column gave up, too. The officers tried to hold their troops, but a second cannon volley turned wavering into a rout. The carnage was terrible, and officer casualties were particularly heavy. General Francisco Duque, leading the north column, had been badly wounded but continued to try to rally his command. In the eventual break for safety he was trampled to death by his own men.

The Texians had every reason for cheering but not long to indulge in it. The Mexicans, their flight not withstanding, were soldiers and brave ones. In spite of the bloody repulse, their officers were soon able to talk them up to it, and by dawn their ranks were reformed. Once again the charge was sounded, followed by the deguello, beating the air with its cry for murder.

As before, the south column made the best showing, actually throwing its scaling ladders against the wall.

And as before, the north column recoiled and those of the east and west were beaten back. It happened that in retreating, however, the east column swerved to the left while that of the west veered to its right. Whatever the reason, military or instinctive, the result was a massing of troops to the north. That routed column, encouraged by the unexpected reinforcements, stopped fleeing. Some of the officers were opportunists enough to weld all three forces into a body, and they came on once more. They reached the wall on the return trip, but there the gun fire broke them before they could use their ladders. The fighting on the south had grown even hotter meanwhile, for there the Mexicans had swarmed up the ladders and gained a foothold on the wall. Rifle butts and Bowie knives forced them off, and no one followed the first hardy few. North and south, then, the attackers gave way and hastened out of range of Texian rifle fire.

But the Mexicans hadn’t been beaten as easily as they had been the first time, and their officers had learned something. It was a while before they could put their new knowledge to use, though. The two attacks had been very costly. The participating units had to be resorted and checked over, and the men had to be given a chance to pull themselves together. It is very likely that the reserve was called upon at that time, for the heavy losses indicate the necessity. All in all it was several hours later, eight o’clock or thereabouts in the morning, before the attackers got around to risking another try.

Miraculously, the Texians hadn’t lost a man the first ten days of the siege at any rate, and not many of the garrison had fallen while repelling the first two charges. Yet the assaults had cost them most of their powder and ammunition reserve. Their reserve of energy was likewise running out, and it was clear that they would soon be called on to draw upon it again. They could tell by the activity in the enemy lines that the Mexicans were not yet ready to call it quits, but when nothing happened right away most of the defenders went to sleep again.

Those detailed for sentry duty could see the red flag on San Fernando Cathedral and the bustle around Santa Anna’s headquarters, now only five hundred yards away. Being human, they doubtless glanced at the eastern horizon from time to time on the frazzled chance of seeing a rescue expedition, but only the familiar Mexican cavalry patrols were in sight. Then at last they could see the infantry deploying into position once more. Roused from their last sleep, the men of the Alamo picked up their rifles, stood beside their cannon and grimly waited.

With the massed bands playing the cut-throat deguello from the spot where Santa Anna watched, the Mexicans swept forward from all four sides for a third time. It looked like a repetition of the other two assaults, but it wasn’t. When the east and west columns were checked by the fire of the garrison, they swerved to the north, not by coincidence but by preconceived plan. The north column, which had been holding back, rushed forward, allowing those of the east and west to fall in behind as support.

The Texians made hash out of the front ranks, but only three cannon were trained northward. The Mexicans died by squads, but the force was so large that its impetus wasn’t weakened. The men behind drove the men in front forward, and those who lived found themselves under the walls of the Alamo.

Jammed so close, they were safe from the cannon, but that was not the worst of the situation, so far as the defenders were concerned. By daylight, a man mounting the wall to shoot down at the troops trying to place scaling ladders was a fair target for the Mexican soldiers in the rear. As a Mexican general put it in a report of the battle, a Texian on the wall “could not live for an instant.”

So the ladders were thrown up against the north wall for the first time. The combined forces of the east, west and north columns had between fifteen and twenty ladders used against a fifty-four-yard wall, breached at one end. The defenders could not normally have afforded ten riflemen for such a stretch, though the only partially repaired breach had made it necessary to thin the defense of the other walls, putting the bodies of men to hold where stone had failed. Undoubtedly, too, riflemen assigned to the west and east walls had largely moved to the north when they saw the columns which had confronted them do so.

The south column had for a third time forced its way to the wall, but the fight there was a stalemate. It was at the north that the decisive struggle was taking place. Up the ladders came the Mexicans, under cover of rear rank musket fire, and they surged through the breach at the earthwork behind it. Once the attackers were high enough to scramble on the walls, however, their comrades had to hold their fire, and the men of the Alamo sprang to meet them, knife and tomahawk against bayonet.

A wall whose top surface is only two and three quarters feet wide isn’t much of a platform for a hand to hand fight. Its narrowness hampered the desperate garrison, but it was even more of a handicap to the attackers. A foothold in depth was impossible, so the men coming off the ladders had no protection for the awkward moment when they shifted from using their hands from climbing to using them for fighting. That moment was fatal to many, and the few that cleared the wall were shot or knifed before they could get their balance. Eastward, by the breach, the slaughter was even worse, as frontier rifles brought down every man trying to pick his way over the rubble.

For that few minutes, and for the last time, the defenders held their own, holding the Mexicans off at the south and throwing them back at the north. There from the breach to the westward angle the wall was kept in spite of the tremendous pressure, but that very pressure squeezed some of the Mexicans so that they overlapped the wall and found themselves facing the west one again.

They attacked at that point, and others eagerly peeled off the rear ranks to join them. Just as the Texians knew that they had to stand then or go down, the Mexicans knew that they had to make this assault good or swallow a decisive defeat.

The Alamo men were great and terrible that day, one and all terrific in their try for victory and their secondary will to make the enemy pay a ruinous price for success. But it took brave men to keep fighting them. It took well-disciplined men and determined leadership to accept the casualties the Mexicans endured that day, and to keep coming back for more. Of a strength of 800 men, the Toluca Battalion was reported to have lost 670 during the three attacks. This battalion supplied the shock troops for the final one, and most of its men fell on the way to or at the north wall.

That continued to hold, but the outnumbered Texians, desperately occupied, weren’t able to switch enough men fast enough to meet the new attack from the northern end of the west wall. Scaling ladders thrown down at the north were brought around. While the first men up were being killed by the few defenders, the men behind pushed past and dropped to the ground. The Texians guarding the breach found themselves taken from behind. They had to give way, and the attackers poured through the hole in the wall. To keep from being surrounded the men on the wall itself had to abandon it, and the Mexicans came over by platoons.

Just behind the wall was the earthwork supporting the battery of three guns, two in the middle and one at the west end. It was here that Travis, who had been in personal command of the north wall throughout, died holding on. The guns swept the wall in this sector for the last time, then the crews were never allowed a chance to reload. In the expressive phrase of Travis’ man, Joe, “the Mexicans poured over the walls like sheep” and rushed the battery.

Having emptied his own pistol, Joe had jumped down from the earthwork but hesitated a moment to see how his master was faring. Travis was down when Joe turned to look, mortally wounded, as was later found to be the case, by a shot in the head. But the will which had steered the defense of the Alamo for twelve days still had one spark left. His pistol had been fired, but he had drawn his sword before he was hit, and he still kept his grip on it when he staggered to his feet. The first wave of Mexicans had just mounted the earthwork, an officer in the van. That officer, seeing an adversary who held his ground, sprang for him, but Travis’ dying impulse was quicker. He drove his sword through the Mexican, then fell with him.

The line of soldiers behind ran over both officers, and Joe ran to take cover. By then the northern section was cleared of all but dead Texians. At about this time the hard-pressed defenders of the south wall had learned of the disaster. To avoid being shot in the back they had withdrawn, letting in more hundreds of Mexicans. The Alamo had been taken, but the bitterest phase of the struggle was yet to be fought.

The plaza, comprising by far the largest part of the fort, was in enemy hands. Remaining to the Texians were the long barracks on the east side of it, the smaller barracks on the south, the four stone rooms on the west side, the inner court and the chapel. All of these in turn became battlegrounds.

There was no thought of parley on either side. The Texians never doubted that there was only a choice between being slain in combat and being assassinated. The Mexicans on their part were worked up to a pitch of rage which admitted no pause to talk things over. The pitiless wail of the deguello kept telling them what was expected of them, even if they hadn’t had vengefulness to drive them. Their ranks had suffered horrible losses. They had seen their comrades slaughtered by the hundreds while they had futilely beat against the walls. Now they had the deadly defenders where they wanted them. They were obsessed with a maniacal hatred balancing the demonic resolution of the garrison. The fury of the combat didn’t abate until the last man of the Alamo was bayoneted as he lay dying.

This took some doing even before the plaza was cleared. Most of the living defenders found a place to put their backs against, but some were caught in the open. They were overpowered one by one, but first they smashed the heads of their attackers with gun butts, ripped Mexicans open with knives, chopped them with tomahawks, or throttled them to death even as bayonets entered their own bodies.

The eighteen-pounder, guarding the approach from the west, hadn’t played much of a part in the climactic third assault, but one group of Texians manned it even as the enemy flooded the plaza. Lifting it from its emplacement and swinging it around, they turned it on the attackers, mowing them down with a scatter charge. Before the Mexicans knew just what had hit them, the piece had been reloaded and fired again, but that was for the last time. Standing on the unprotected platform, the gunners were felled by a fusillade of musket fire.

Only Texian corpses remained in the open, but defenders barricaded in the barracks were dropping Mexicans as fast as they could fire and reload. The battle at this point resolved into a dozen separate engagements, pitting a platoon or so against the half-dozen or dozen defenders at bay in the various buildings and parts of buildings. There was no communication between the five subdivisions of the long barracks or between the four quarters of the shorter barracks against the south wall. All told, thirteen doors, counting the four giving entry to the four small buildings to the east, had to be beaten down by battering rams, crowbars and axes. Behind the doors were the semicircular barricades, described by Potter, made by packing earth between series of stretched cowhides.

So it was ram and thud till the doors splintered, with the defenders shooting from loopholes and windows and dropping as many Mexicans as they could in the meantime. Then when the doors shivered and gave inwards, the price of entry was death for the first attackers shoved in from behind. These were brought down by rifle and pistol fire, but after the first volley there was no chance to reload. It was a hand to hand encounter with the odds ten and twenty to one. Eventually the Texians were shot or overpowered at their makeshift ramparts, or else they were forced back into a corner of a room, there to die singly or in groups of two or three. In the long barracks, which had two floors, inevitability took a little longer. There the stairs had to be forced, and a fight in the upper story was added to the bloody fray on the ground floor.

The largest single group of Texians had holed up in a portion of the long barracks which served the garrison as a hospital. How many invaders were wounded gaining admission isn’t known, but the fury of the struggle is certified by the forty-two Mexican corpses found outside afterwards. But still the job of clearing the place wasn’t done, for a group of Texians at one end of the big room were defying seizure. The attackers found an answer to the problem, however. They dragged in one of the Alamo’s captured cannon and blew the cornered men to pieces.

Meanwhile the inner court was also under attack. Its twelve-foot north wall hadn’t been tackled, and its southern combination of earthwork and palisade had proved unexpectedly strong. To the east it was protected by the high walls of the chapel, but its weakness was exposed with the taking of the rest of the fort. Only a four-foot wall, and that with a passageway through it, divided it from the plaza.

David Crockett and his Tennesseans, charged with the defense of the court, were trapped in the open for their death fight. Some may have tried to reach the chapel, and one or two may have succeeded before its doors were of necessity barred. Crockett himself, however, evidently attempted to gain the southern barracks but got no farther than the eastern end of it. Unable to attain a haven, he and a few others had huddled together to kill while they could.

Kill they did, too. The world has scarcely seen a more powerful tribe than the first forest-born generation of Trans-Appalachian frontiersmen. The Tennesseans bashed, slashed, smashed, crushed, stamped and rent apart the squads upon squads that came at them.

Crockett and two of his men were reported to have been found in a heap with seventeen dead Mexicans.

Only the chapel of the Alamo and portions of the barracks where the battle still raged were now in Texian hands. Of all the buildings in the fort the chapel had the thickest and the highest walls. It had, indeed, proved impervious to cannon fire, and for that reason the fort’s remaining stock of powder had been stored there. Major Robert Evans, master of ordnance at the Alamo, had been detailed to blow up the magazine if the fort fell, according to Travis’ Joe, but he was shot while making a dash for it across the plaza. Therefore the building still stood.

Somehow the men serving the battery in the apse of the chapel had managed to move one of the pieces to its northeast corner, where it commanded the interior of the fort. Loaded with scrap iron, it wrought havoc with the troops massing to storm the chapel doors, though not for very long. One by one the eleven cannoneers were shot down.

When the first attack had commenced, the half-dozen women and sundry children in the Alamo had been ordered to the comparative safety of the chapel. Of these the only adult North American was Mrs. Almaron Dickinson, who passed on a brief account of what took place in the final phase of the last assault.

Mrs. Dickinson, having a baby at her breast and a husband on the walls, had all there was to worry about. Her first knowledge of total disaster, however, came when Lieutenant Dickinson rushed into the chapel crying: “My God, Sue! the Mexicans are in the fort. If you live, take care of our child!” He then dashed out to die with the rest of the garrison.

The doors of the chapel were barricaded behind him, but within a short while they were battered in by the attackers. A few Texian snipers remained on the roof, but the defenders below were soon overwhelmed. About the last of them was a wounded youngster who managed to reach Mrs. Dickinson’s side to ask her to write his family. He had scarcely completed his request when he was killed by a pistol ball.

Having mopped up in the main part of the chapel, some of the Mexicans set about investigating the rest of it. Most of the forward or western portion was still roofed over, sheltering two rooms which flanked the door. To one of these, a chamber which had served the old Mission of San Antonio de Valera as a baptistry, Bowie had been brought. Seguin reported that he had been quartered in the south barracks, but the captain had left on February 29 before the situation became critical. The threat of the assault had made it wise to move the invalid to what safekeeping there was.

It had been hoped that the thick chapel walls would shield him, but it had been foreseen that they might not. He had a brace of loaded pistols with him in addition to the knife which had helped to make his name a byword for cool courage. That courage did not desert him in his last minutes.

There was no one with him except his frightened servant, Ham, but Big Jim Bowie was accustomed to looking after himself. He had one foot and four toes of the other in the grave, but when Mexican soldiers burst open the door he lifted his pistols. He was gasping with pneumonia, and his eyes were glazed with fever, yet he could still use the weapons. He killed two Mexicans and then had to abide their hate. The hand which had once wielded a knife so skillfully was no longer up to it. He was helpless when the bayonets ripped his body. Who walked off with the great knife as his prize was never known. Nobody took the secret of the wondrous silver mines from him, though. It was lost with his life.

The Mexicans were by then more frenzied than ever. Their own awful casualties, the taste of complete victory over so dangerous an enemy, and the urging of the murderous deguello had maddened them until, by the admission of their own officers, they were amok. There were not enough Texians to glut their rage for killing, and many corpses were mutilated. Mrs. Dickinson saw Bowie’s body tossed on the bayonets of a dozen soldiers before it was finally thrown to the floor.

Within a few minutes of that bestial incident the remaining snipers had been shot, and the last cornered defenders had been struck down. In all, the three-part assault on the fort took five hours, but the deadly action within the walls is said to have been crammed into thirty minutes. By nine o’clock in the morning of March 6, 1836, the siege of the Alamo was over.