Hey, and welcome to a new history of old Texas. As we get ready here to go back in the field for another three weeks of surveys related to the battlefield of Medina, I thought I'd release this one other speech that I just did to the San Antonio Conservation Society that I felt nicely summed up where the research has brought us so far on the battle Medina, on the events leading up to it,

and on some exciting new clues and new connections that we've made

related to the evidence that we've turned up related to the battlefield.

So enjoy, and I'll touch base here in a few months.

Thanks.

I start this story back on September, September 16th, 1810.

This is the famous Grito de Dolores, the 16th of September, kind of recognized as Mexico's Independence Day.

When a parish priest in Dolores, in Dolores Juanuato, unleashes this cry of centuries of frustration with Spanish rule in Mexico

and sets off the war of Mexican independence. And it kind of snowballs within a week of launching

this cry. This movement has swelled and there's thousands of followers down in Wanawato and they've

conquered the city of Salaia. And then a few weeks later, they conquered the city itself of Wanawato and it just kind of takes

on its own momentum and eventually this army is descending toward Mexico City. Well at the same time

or around the same time San Antonio gets wind of this and San Antonio too is is able to kind of

unleash some of its frustration at this point with a couple

centuries of Spanish rule.

And, you know, San Antonio had already kind of established a reputation for itself as a bit

of a thorn in the side of vice regal and Spanish authorities.

It was very independent and it was very vocal about its independence and it was very vocal

too about its sense of neglect at the hands of Spanish

rule being so so far removed. And of course our famed Canary Islanders who set up the first

civil government here developed this tradition over the first hundred years of the city's

history of a really, really proactive self-government. And so every little attempt at kind of meddling

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