Welcome to a new history of Old San Antonio.

Episode 17, The Battle of the Alamo.

I'm Brandon Seale.

I'm a city, San Antonio. tonight I'm looking at your lovely life.

When San Fernando's bells rang out in the middle of the day on February 22nd, 1836, a Monday, San Antonio's were confused.

It took a minute for people to remember that a lookout

had been posted in the bell tower. He was watching for the return of the Centralist Army that

had been defeated the previous December after five days of brutal house-to-house fighting in San Antonio.

The so-called siege of bear had left much of the town damaged, particularly the old Mission

Valero, also known as the Alamo. Only 80 or so members of the victorious revolutionary army of the people had stayed around to repair the damage,

anticipating the return of centralist forces, albeit much later in the spring.

Yet as soon as he learned if his brother-in-law's defeat in San Antonio, Santa Ana gave the order to move out.

His 6,000-man army set out from San Luis Potosi around January 1st, 1836,

on a hannah-ballian march that would see him cover 600 miles and only 45 days, 13 miles per day,

during one of the coldest winters on record. When his army crossed the Rio Grande on February 12th

at San Juan Baptista, the site of those original Rio Grande missions that ceded San Antonio,

there was one foot of snow on the ground.

His men, many of them conscripts from southern Mexico, were wholly underdressed for the weather,

and the nature of the forced march drew out the column over a couple hundred miles.

The enlisted men were put on half-rations almost immediately,

which the officers pilfered anyway, and the thousands of camp followers,

women, children, mouleteers, and profiteers, only aggravated the shortages.

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